by David Beers
He finally quit shaking his head and looked at her on his computer screen. "You're the shrink. Don't you already know?"
"Maybe, but I'd still like to hear you say it."
"Because I'm not good around people." His words were short, clipped. "I hate you right now, you know? And because I couldn't help but say that is the exact reason why I don't want this job. I want to look at spreadsheets. I want to profile killers and write reports on them. I do not want to be looking at crime scenes. No more than I want to be looking at you right now."
His psychiatrist didn't so much as twitch at his harsh words. "You can close your computer, Christian. No one makes you come here and no one can make you take that job. But, the right things in life are rarely easy. It's the easy decisions we repeatedly make which lead to the outcomes we do not want."
"I'm sorry," Christian said, looking back down at his feet. "I didn't mean it."
"I know. So what are you going to do?"
"I guess I'm going to take the job."
"Good, because I would kill you if you didn't," Melissa said.
Luke Titan sat next to his partner, both of them in the FBI Director's office. Luke didn't like Alan Waverly, and in fact, thought he might like to kill him one day. He knew it could be accomplished, but the time hadn't come yet.
To Luke, Alan Waverly was someone who rose to his current position based upon political reasons and not merit. Tommy, his partner, rose through the ranks due to a lot of hard work and an inkling for deductive reasoning. Alan Waverly, though, was a politician—a poor man's version of Bill Clinton, despite how high he'd risen.
"The kid is different," Waverly continued. He'd flown both Luke and Tommy up here to tell them about the new addition, which was serious in and of itself. "He hasn't technically been diagnosed, but the people that know him best say he's a high functioning autistic."
"With all due respect, sir, why do you think he should be put on our team?" Tommy asked from Luke's left.
Waverly looked to Luke. "You have any idea?"
He always did that, tried to test Luke, to see if he knew things that he shouldn’t—things that hadn't yet been handed down from on high.
"No, sir," Luke said. He lied to the Director every chance he could. Luke wasn't concerned with what society said about him ... as long as it said the right things, and it had been for the past two decades. If Luke moved too quickly now, he could cause the world to start saying things he didn't prefer to hear, and that wouldn't be good.
Waverly nodded, looking back to Tommy. "His inability to form connections with other people doesn't mean he can't understand other people. In fact, his tests show that his emotional intelligence is one of the highest we've tested at Quantico. He is, literally, a genius on Luke's level."
"Yes, sir," Tommy said.
Luke's face didn't change at all with the Director's last sentence, but the words rang loudly inside his head—like a large bell, its rope being repeatedly pulled on from beneath.
"He accepted the position this morning. He's starting tomorrow; I want him on this decapitation case, okay?"
"Yes, sir," Tommy said.
"Yes, sir," Luke concurred, the bell clanging almost too loudly.
Chapter 4
Tommy looked at the young man and understood immediately what Waverly meant about him being different. Tommy had only met the Director twice before, both times involving promotions, with the final one occurring a year ago when he teamed Luke and Tommy up.
Now they were adding a third, and Tommy understood his feelings on the subject didn't matter. Luke had been silent, of course. The man never gave the world much as to what he thought, which was smart. Tommy did the same, especially when it came to orders from on high. You kept those thoughts to yourself, lest someone else decided spreading your dislike could benefit them.
"So, this is everything we have," Tommy said. "The papers are calling him ‘The Surgeon’." The table in front of them was covered with photos of the crime scene. The three of them had flown to Atlanta the previous day, and they now stood in Luke's basement, though that didn't accurately describe the room. Perhaps second house was a better term. The place was huge, complete with plush furniture and massive televisions. Pool table. Full bar.
Luke had done well for himself before joining the FBI.
They worked here for most of their cases, printing out whatever photos were needed and connecting securely to the FBI servers as necessary. Luke liked working in his basement, and despite Tommy's original hesitation, he found he liked it, too.
Tommy used his computer for much of his work, but Luke wasn't like that. He needed space to move, and when he really got started, he liked to write on walls. The part of the basement they reserved for work was decked out with whiteboards, each wall able to be written on and then erased when finished.
They asked Christian to arrive first thing this morning.
He now stared at the photos in front of him, standing above the table. He hadn't said more than two words since showing up.
"It's probably going to be a little awkward at first," Tommy said, knowing that if he didn't offer the kid a lifeline, Luke certainly wouldn't. "Luke and I have a way of working together and we're going to need to make some accommodations for you, but—"
"Where's the eye?" the kid interrupted.
Tommy's brow furrowed as he glanced at Luke. His partner only shrugged.
"It's at the morgue with the rest of the body."
"We should go there," Windsor said. "When is the autopsy taking place?"
"Tomorrow, I believe."
"Can you get it pushed up for today?"
"Why?" Luke asked, the first question he had decided to bless the group with.
Windsor didn't look up. "There's something inside the eye."
"Why would you think that?" Luke said.
"He took one and left one. The one he took was a present for himself. The one he left was a present for us."
"I shouldn't have said that back there, should I?" Christian asked the two in the front of the car.
"Said what?" Tommy asked from the driver seat.
"I shouldn't have said we need to leave and head to the morgue. I'm the new guy here. I should be quiet and let you two decide, right?"
"No, you're fine," Tommy said. Christian heard the smile in Tommy’s voice, understanding that his new partner thought him a bit odd.
No one said anything else as the car pulled onto the highway, heading to where Christian had directed them.
Christian kept his eyes open, but if either Tommy or Luke looked in the rearview mirror, they would have seen them glaze over. Christian only knew what he looked like when he went inward because his mother told him.
If you have to do it, do it in private, honey. People will think it's very different.
Normally he heeded her advice, but right now he wanted to look at everything they had just shown him. Again.
Christian no longer saw the car. Instead, he stood in the foyer of a massive mansion. Two staircases split out fifty feet in front of him, one turning left and the other right, a half spiral to the second floor of the building. From there they would continue their spirals up ten floors, with massive wings jetting off to either side.
Christian began building this place when he was seven.
His mind needed somewhere to put everything it captured—and it captured everything. Whatever Christian heard, saw, or thought was categorized and placed in here. Most of it would never be needed again, but if it ever was, he could access it at any given moment.
He already felt the new room being built, construction happening on the mansion’s west wing. Christian took his time walking up the staircase. He had no taste for decoration, so his feet echoed off the stone that he laid down years ago. He thought once he finally had the time, he would study interior design some and decorate the place the way it deserved. For now it was cold and utilitarian, the same as his brain.
He finally made his way to the new room. Other r
ooms sat across from it, as well as to the left and right, each one of them having a word or phrase etched above their door.
This room, the newest, simply said Surgeon.
Christian walked through the doorway and into the room. The walls were digital, as were most of the rooms in his mind. Not much furniture filled the middle, but the pictures he'd been shown were now replicated perfectly across the walls. Christian turned around, wondering what else his mind might have put in here that he hadn't been consciously aware of during the briefing.
"Nothing yet," he said aloud. He walked across the room to a thin pole protruding from the floor and rising to his face's height. An eyeball hovered over it, not touching anything. The missing one, not the eye they were heading to see. Its blue color had startled Christian when he first saw it, but his mind still captured and replicated it perfectly.
He didn't need to bend down to see it; he only stared forward.
"Was it the blue you liked?" he asked. "Or just the eyes? Or is it both?"
Luke sat in the passenger seat of Tommy's car. The three of them drove in silence, with Tommy periodically trying to make conversation with the boy in the back. Luke definitely considered him a boy, despite whatever age his body showed. A boy ... but a very, very smart boy.
Luke had figured there would be something in the remaining eyeball, although he hadn't said anything about it yet. He would let the pathologist perform the autopsy.
Tommy, of course, hadn't known, and Luke didn't figure anyone else in the FBI would have thought of it either. Not by looking at the eyeball, certainly. There was only the slightest laceration at the very bottom of it, and the glue placing it back together was flawless. No one else saw it at the crime scene, and without a doubt, the boy hadn't seen it either.
Yet he knew.
This was something Luke hadn't planned on.
Waverly hadn't been lying about Windsor's intelligence; Luke did his own research the previous night, looking into Windsor's past. It took a few hours, but eventually he knew every standardized test Windsor had taken, as well as his scores. High functioning autism was the correct diagnosis, with some doctors classifying it as Asperger's. Luke thought that was probably right, too. This boy differed from others with the same diagnosis in another way besides his intelligence: his emotional attention.
Windsor had known something he shouldn't have, simply by looking at crime photos. He'd known something about the criminal, something no one else had even guessed at.
This will be interesting, Luke thought as the car rolled on in silence.
"You think he's right?" Tommy asked as he and Luke walked to the restroom. They'd left the kid sitting in the ‘cutting room’, waiting on Roger to come out of his office and start the autopsy. "You think there's something in the eye?"
Luke pushed the bathroom door open and went to the sink.
"Yes, there probably is."
"Why do you say that?" Tommy unzipped his fly, hearing Luke splash some water on his face.
"There was a small incision at the base of the eye. I saw it when forensics was looking over it."
"You didn't feel that necessary to discuss?" Tommy asked, turning his head as far as he could over his shoulder.
"I figured if I was right, we would figure it out during the autopsy. Forensics didn't see it, so I thought my eyesight might be going bad."
"I bet that's it," Tommy said, finishing up. He went to the sink and started washing his hands. He wasn't upset; he knew his partner's operating protocols. Luke rarely said anything until it was necessary to pull the rest of the group along. "He's smart, huh, this kid?"
"I'd say so."
"Smarter than you?" Tommy looked up from the sink at Luke, grinning.
"What do you think?" Luke said, flashing his own small smile.
He walked from the bathroom leaving Tommy to finish washing his hands.
If he threw that grin around a bit more, he might actually get laid, Tommy thought as he grabbed a few paper towels.
Tommy followed Luke back to the cutting room and the metal table that he'd seen over and over again. Bodies came and went on the table, and Tommy supposed he was similar to the table—both unchanging when it came to bodies.
It was necessary for this job.
"Roger, this is Christian Windsor. He's new to our group," Tommy said as Roger walked into the room.
"Nice to meet you," the pathologist said without even looking at the kid.
He went to the metal table, and pulled back the white sheet draped over it. The body and head rested as they would have if no decapitation had occurred. Except for the two inch space separating them.
An eyeball lay next to the head.
"Okay," Roger said, slipping gloves over his hands. "So we think there's something inside the eye. I ran some X-ray images earlier today, just to make sure we weren't dealing with some kind of explosive device, and while there isn't anything inside that can kill us, something is in there."
The pathologist grabbed a small blade and picked up the eyeball. Luke, Christian, and Tommy stood around the table, with Roger at the head. Tommy looked over to Christian, but the kid only stared at his shoes, not even following the eyeball turning in Roger's hand.
He made his incision, cutting firmly and deep, opening up the flesh.
"Whoever did this drained it before putting anything inside," Roger said as no blood poured from the eye. Using his two thumbs, he pulled open the incision. The inside was hollowed out, like a hardboiled egg without the yoke.
"Jesus," Roger said. Using tweezers he pulled something thin and small out.
"What is it?" Tommy asked.
"It's a part of someone else's eye. He shaved off the iris and pupil," Christian Windsor said, still not looking up from his shoes.
Chapter 5
Bradley decided he wasn't going to take the eye into work and show Charlie. It was an unnecessary risk, at least right now. He knew the cops had found the body; it'd been all over the local news. Bradley didn't return to Crystal's apartment—that would have been one of the dumbest things he could do. So many killers got caught like that, returning to the scene of their crimes.
The eyeball rested in a small, plastic sandwich bag. Bradley had spent the last twenty-four hours thawing it out. That was nothing to the time and investment he'd put in to his garage. A drop in the bucket, if anything at all.
But everything would be worth it, shortly. His garage ... his temple. His place to find what was denied him (No, don't you even think that!).
Bradley went to his garage, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. The cold immediately attacked him, even through the long sleeve shirt and heavy jacket he wore. Over the past year, scrimping and saving, Bradley had turned his garage in to a freezer. The entire thing. He used thermal lining across the walls, then an inch thick metal over the lining. Finally, a one inch thick slab of plywood was placed over it all.
He purchased two large industrial air conditioners at five thousand dollars apiece. Mother was owed some thanks for that, of course. Mother and Father. God rest his soul.
Now, the condensers pumped out air at fourteen degrees, twenty-four hours a day.
Bradley walked across the garage, standing at the center of the far wall. He carefully stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out two tiny needles. He placed the eyeball against the wood, right at eye level, then—careful not to pierce the iris or pupil—he shoved the first needle through, and with a bit more of a push, the plywood beneath. The second needle followed the first.
Bradley took his hands away. Frost was already growing on the eye.
"There," he said. He stared back at the single eyeball, seeing for the first time how it would all look when he filled this entire room—every single inch of the plywood—with eyes. All of them returning his stare.
He would have what he always wanted. What he always deserved.
"Here, does this smell like chloroform?"
Bradley chuckled as he stared into his freezer later tha
t night.
A woman lay unconscious in his living room, and Bradley had used that line just before he shoved the rag in her face. Here, does this smell like chloroform? He thought it had been funny as hell. Couldn't stop laughing about it, actually.
He nodded to himself a few times as he stared at the empty garage—empty except for the eyeball at the back.
"I have to," he said, closing the door and returning to the living room.
The girl was unmarked; Bradley had done everything perfectly. one of Ted Bundy's quotes always stuck in his head. Something like, the first time you murder, you go through everything five hundred times to make sure it's all perfect. The hundredth time you murder, you have to ask yourself where you put the tire iron.
That wouldn't happen to Bradley.
And that was why he couldn't use the same methods every single time he killed. The Zodiac knew that, using different weapons and locations.
The first time, he gave the cops a hint to what he was doing, but he wouldn't do it anymore. One hint was enough for those bumbling idiots.
He didn't want to kill this girl in his house, that would create too much evidence—microscopic stuff he wasn't sure he could clean up with a hundred percent accuracy.
The garage, though, could serve two purposes.
He grabbed the woman by her feet and started pulling, moving her across the living room and into the hallway.
"Hewwwooo?" she said.
"Hewwo," Bradley said back, smiling.
"Whah am I?" the girl tried asking.
"You're home now," he said. The girl was waking, trying to slow herself down as he dragged her across the house. Her eyes were open, more understanding behind them—if not quite memory of what happened.
"What is this?" she said, her voice strengthening.
"Almost there," Bradley said, still smiling.
He turned the final corner and dragged her through the garage door. The girl was trying to get up now. Bradley walked to her head and slammed his fist down on the side of her face. She fell back to the ground, sobbing.