She looked at him sternly. “People have enough troubles in this world without having to worry about being crucified.”
“Amen to that.” Jonas leaned down and snapped off the top of a yellow rose and handed it to her. He then took a red one and stuck it into a crack on the top of his father’s wheelchair. It was very therapeutic, Jonas decided, visiting his father. He could say whatever he wanted and not be judged or blamed. Jonas was the type who liked to vent now and then, but wasn’t necessarily looking for advice. An Alzheimer’s facility turned out to be the perfect venue.
“Want to walk with us, Bennie?”
“Oh, yes. That would be lovely.”
Jonas kept strolling at a snail’s pace, pushing his father, while Bennie kept up in her walker, which clunked along the stone path. There was no one else outside.
“I’m sorry, dear. What’s your name?” He had met her at least twenty times. “Jonas.”
“I’m Bennie.”
“Hi, Bennie.”
She nodded politely as she leaned over the walker. “I used to dance. New York City, of all places.”
Jonas nodded at his father. “He was a captain in the
Army.”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes belying a sadness that seemed to have settled in out of nowhere. “I know that.”
“Does he...does he ever say anything? To you?”
Bennie grunted as her walker caught an edge of the stone path. She corrected it and continued forward. “Oh, no. He doesn’t say anything. Other than humming, he’s a quiet one. Quiet like the night.”
“He always was.”
Bennie stopped and stared at the Captain. “Yes,” she said finally. “He still knows. He’s still in there. Some are too far gone, but he still knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Knows the world. Knows things. Knows just enough.”
“Enough for what?”
A thin sheen of moisture glossed over her eyes. “Knows enough to be scared. Like me. I know too much. I’m here too early, but I guess there’s no other place for me. I’m waiting to forget, but it hasn’t happened yet. Only spots are black to me, here and there. But time will change that.” She looked up at him. “Jason?”
“Jonas.”
“Jonas. Of course, dear. Do forgive me.”
The Captain changed his tune, the humming taking on a slower and more sorrowful cadence. As his head sunk against his chest, sunlight highlighted the patchwork of white stubble on his ruddy cheeks.
“Do you have a wife, Jonas?”
Jonas laughed. “God, no. I don’t know who would put up with me.”
Bennie smiled but looked confused. “But you’re such a handsome man. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Maybe you need a better job,” she said. She nodded to herself. “Women like a man with ambition.”
Jonas considered this. “I’m briefing the President tomorrow.”
“Oh. Oh, my. Good for you.”
Jonas reached the end of the path and stopped pushing the wheelchair. “There is a woman. Not my girlfriend. I think she doesn’t even much care for me.”
Bennie leaned in with a conspiratorial grin. “But you’re
sweet on her.”
Jonas smiled. “Maybe I am.”
“Is she pretty?”
Despite the freedom of confiding in someone who wouldn’t remember him next time he came to visit, Jonas had to push through an ingrained reluctance to share. “Yes, Bennie. She is. She’s beautiful.” He turned the wheelchair around and Bennie deftly adjusted her walker behind him, following Jonas back toward the building. “She’s a medium,” he said.
”I was always a small,” she replied after some thought. The wheels of the chair crunched as they rolled over pea pebbles, and Bennie’s walker thudded in the packed dirt of the pathway. The sun felt hotter now and the Captain seemed to fade, as if the brightness of the day wilted him. The three of them remained in silence on the short trip back to the ward—even the humming from the Captain faded into a long and singular note until it died completely. Back inside, the air was antiseptic and cool, refreshing and depressing.
He parked his father’s chair at the end of a quiet hallway. It seemed almost heartless, like leaving a baby in a stroller in some abandoned building. But the Captain, when he was able, usually steered himself to this same place before falling asleep, so Jonas could only assume he liked it here. Maybe it was quieter here, away from the anxiety and fear that rippled through much of the ward. Maybe it provided the only sanctuary of peace the Captain could scratch out in a world of internal chaos. Whatever it was, Jonas wouldn’t ever know, and the mystery that was his father continued on, as it had since Jonas had first been able to say, “Daddy.”
Bennie continued on to her room without a goodbye or even an acknowledgement Jonas had been her date, if even for just a few minutes. Jonas was convinced his father was now asleep, and he leaned over and kissed the old man on top of the head.
“Bye, Dad. I’ll be back again soon. I love you.”
Jonas brushed the back of the Captain’s hand with his fingertips, and his father’s hand suddenly seized Jonas’s and held tight. The squeezing continued with unexpected force for a few seconds before slowly fading into the gentle grip of an old married couple holding hands as they walked down a city street. Jonas stood there, content with the touch, and waited until the Captain was the first to release the bond.
It took nearly ten minutes.
26
WASHINGTON D.C.
“YOU THREW your BlackBerry at him?” Anne flipped the cracked phone over in her hand, trying to turn on the lifeless device.
“It was all I had. Hit him pretty good. Middle of the forehead.”
“Nice,” she said. “That must’ve been when the call disconnected. I didn’t hear the police arrive.” She handed the phone back to him and tilted her head to the side. “That call scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what was going on.”
“Sorry I couldn’t call you sooner than I did. The police
weren’t too keen on letting me get near a phone.”
“Would it make me look weak to say I was worried sick?”
“Do you care about looking weak?”
“A little.”
“It doesn’t make you look weak.”
Dusk slowly succumbed to night as Anne leaned back on Jonas’s couch and swirled her fingertip along the rim of her wine glass. Jonas was exhausted from the day—the adrenaline from the night before had seeped from his system, leaving behind only a massive desire to sleep. Though he still had work to do before tomorrow’s briefing, Anne had insisted on coming by the scene of the fight to see if any residual evidence spoke to her special gifts. Jonas found himself eager to see her.
“I didn’t know much of what was happening either. He’s a strong motherfu—...bastard. Really strong. When he pulled the knife, I thought I was done for. Thank God you called the police.”
“Why does he want you?”
“No idea,” Jonas said. He held up the broken phone. “Did you get...anything from this? Did it tell you anything?”
“Just that you need a new phone.”
Jonas leaned forward. “I’m beginning to think you call yourself a medium just to get attention.”
Anne gave him a stupefied look. “I’m not a medium. And look at these legs,” she said, drawing the tips of her nails along the back of her calf, which spilled out beneath a thin black dress. “Do you really think I need attention?”
“Point taken.”
“Not everything leaves a signature with me,” she said. Jonas held up a Ziploc bag. Inside was the butt of a cigarette.
“How about this?”
“Is that from him?”
“Not sure. But I think so.”
“Shouldn’t the police have that as evidence?”
“Evidence of what? A mugging? Somehow I don’t think it would receive real high priority.”
She reached out and Jonas handed her the baggie. She turned it over in her hands. “Can I take it out?”
“Sure.”
Anne opened the top and carefully lifted out the butt between two fingernails. She then placed it in the palm of her left hand, where she cradled it like a newly hatched bird. She closed her eyes.
“Anything?” Jonas asked. “Shhhhh.”
Jonas waited and watched, the weariness of the day crawling slowly along his body like a sunbeam moving along the floor of an empty room. He needed to sleep. He needed to prepare for a presidential brief regarding the Peace Accords. He needed so many things that had nothing to do with the previous night’s events. But he couldn’t let it go, because it meant something.
Anne lowered her head and her lips moved, quickly, quietly, speaking half-words understood only by her. She clasped her hand around the cigarette, gently at first, then squeezing until her fingernails dug into her palm. Jonas leaned forward, wondering what it was she saw. He wanted to ask, but he remained silent. He could hear the wall clock in his nearby bedroom faintly ticking away the seconds.
Anne opened her eyes. Her clasped hand opened, and she dropped the cigarette butt back into the baggie.
“It’s his,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“What did you see?”
“I didn’t see anything. I sensed things.”
Jonas felt his patience slipping away. “Like what?”
She drew in a long breath. “You said he was strong. He is strong. I can feel it. But there’s something more about him. Something different.”
“He’s a serial killer, Anne. Of course there’s something different about him.”
“That’s not what I mean. What I mean is I sense some kind of...I don’t know...disability maybe?”
“What kind of disability?”
“I’m not sure. Not physical. Mental.”
“You mean he’s bat-shit crazy? That’s not a big leap.”
Her eyes flashed frustration. “Jonas, would you shut up for a second?”
“Sorry, I can be an ass.”
“Yes, you can be.” She looked back at the cigarette butt in the bag. “I don’t know what it is, but I get the sense he believes he’s doing the right thing. Which, of course, isn’t unusual for either serial killers or mass murderers. He’s not killing out of joy but out of...duty.”
“Duty? There was no duty in him when he killed that family in Somalia.”
“Maybe his motives have changed. Maybe he’s more... focused now. His need to kill is no longer just a base desire—he’s given meaning and purpose to it. I think he feels justified in what he’s doing.”
“So there’s a connection between a successful businessman in Pennsylvania, a student in West Virginia, and me?”
She shook her head. “If there is I have no idea what it could be. But I think he’s trying to find something. I think he’s on some kind of a mission. Religious killings often suggest some kind of goal is being sought.”
“So when he reaches that goal he stops killing?”
“Probably not. His mental illness will likely never let him think he’s reached whatever goal he’s set for himself.”
“Is that the disability you sense? Mental illness?”
She didn’t answer for a few moments as she considered the question. “I don’t know,” she concluded. “I think it’s something more than that. A condition. Some kind of mental illness that still allows him to function in society, but is directing him to kill. He...” She started to say something else but stopped, allowing herself instead another sip of wine and a moment of silence.
Jonas stared at the floor and tried to file everything Anne just said in a place that would make it make sense. He had to believe in her abilities, which was not easy.
“Why would he want me? To finish what he failed to do in the Mog?”
“I don’t know. But you’re connected to the murders through him. It’s what I sensed in you the first time I saw you in the church. He tried to kill you once, and he tried again last night.” She leaned back on the couch, her hair spilling over the top of the cushion, and gazed at nothing. “You’re personal to him, which is why I get an imprint from you.”
Jonas stood and walked to the kitchen, where he refilled his wine glass. “Do these ‘imprints’ tell you where he’s going next?”
He could hear the sigh from the other room. “No.”
Jonas walked back into the living room and dimmed the lights, thinking the glare too harsh for the moment, though he didn’t really know what the moment was. He stood behind the couch, holding his wine and soaking in what Anne had just said. With her head tilted back on the cushion, Jonas could see the outlines of her face, the simple arch of her nose, the smooth curve of her forehead that had yet to develop creases of worry and time.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
She pushed her head back more, connecting her gaze with his.
“Nothing,” she said. “Not now. It’s too easy to over-think, and then we’ll make a mistake.”
“I don’t think we have enough information to avoid mistakes. I think—”
“Jonas?” she interrupted. “Yes, Anne?”
“Sometimes you talk too much.”
Jonas had at least a half-dozen responses, some of them funny, but he held back. She smiled as she watched him struggle.
He took a step toward the couch, and Jonas now stood directly over her. He thought about how little he knew about her, and yet the sense of comfort and familiarity was so strong that this was the first time he had even reflected upon it. It was rare for him to feel so at ease with a woman. Maybe rare wasn’t the right word. Different. He approached his relationships much the same way he approached everything in life: defensively. He would skim the surface of the water at high speed, enjoying the ride but always looking around for the direction to turn once something got in his way. Sometimes he would turn and leave it all behind, but usually the obstacle popped up too suddenly, too soon, and he would smash into it, disintegrating into a million bits of excuses and anger. In either case, it never ended well.
But Anne was different. He wasn’t even in a relationship with her, but he didn’t feel the need to look too far ahead with her. Perhaps it was because she could already do that, so he could settle back and let the other person do the navigating. Whatever the reason, Jonas was content to stop wondering and just let things happen.
“Now you’re thinking too much,” she said, looking up at him. The V of her dress tightened against the inside of her breasts as she arched back into the couch.
“I’m not allowed to talk or think?”
She smiled. “You’ve changed,” she said. “Changed? You barely know me.”
“Your accident on the Beltway. It changed you, didn’t it?” He felt his defense mechanisms screaming to be unleashed. “I don’t stop for stranded motorists anymore.”
She didn’t chide him for avoiding the subject, but she didn’t back down either. “You’re fascinated by him.”
“Sonman?” She nodded.
“Fascinated?” Jonas looked down at her, but looked away as he decided to tell her the truth. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m fascinated by someone who just doesn’t care. By someone who just does whatever the hell he wants to do. No moral boundaries. It’s in complete contrast to what I was raised to be.”
“Do his...his moral freedoms make you jealous?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“It’s just a question, Jonas. Do you wonder what it would feel like to do whatever you wanted to do, regardless of societal laws?”
He took a deep breath. “Doesn’t everyone wonder that at some point?”
“Maybe,” she said. “And maybe he’s out there, wondering what it would feel like to be normal.”
“I have no idea what he’s thinking.”
“I’m not trying to make him sympathetic, Jonas. I just think i
t’s okay to try to understand monsters, even as we work to destroy them.”
Jonas pictured himself sitting with his father, talking to him, letting himself be open and honest. Dropping his shield. He closed his eyes and began to speak.
“I have changed. The accident made me think of...of all the memories I told you about. Of what I saw. Of how I nearly died.” He felt himself disappearing deeper within his words. “It was the one moment when I experienced an evil that very few people get to see. And that moment, that one moment in that apartment in Mogadishu, I realized for the first time my life deviated from some kind of script.”
“Script?”
His eyes remained closed. “Everything I’ve ever done seems according to some kind of plan. Some kind of linear progression, a roadmap to achievement. Good childhood, good schools, military service, good career. I’ve always gone according to plan.” Jonas licked his lips. “But the horror that day, it was as if there was a break in the plan. A tear in my life, where something completely raw and evil and...
real...leaked in.”
“And how did that make you feel?”
Jonas paused for nearly a minute, knowing the truth but not wanting to say it. “I didn’t realize it until I started remembering it all again, but...I don’t know even how to say it. It excites me.”
Her tone didn’t change. “Excites you?”
“In a way, yeah. The thrill of being faced with such horror, and battling to overcome it. It is exciting, even as fucking horrible as it all is.”
“Are you unhappy with the way your life turned out?”
“Not at all. But...goddamnit, this is going to sound really arrogant, so I’m just going to say it. I feel like I’m meant for greater things than being a Senator’s Chief of Staff.”
She was silent for a moment. “Maybe you have a hero complex. You always want to save everyone. The problem is that most people don’t need saving, or at least don’t want to be saved. That kind of complex wreaks havoc on relationships.”
Well, shit, that would explain a lot, Jonas thought. “Is that it, Jonas?”
His eyes were still closed but he sensed she was closer. He felt her looking up at him from the couch.
“Do you want to save people?”
Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense Page 13