Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense

by Carter Wilson

  “That’s a good friend.”

  “I told him we’d get more out of her than they will. They still don’t know what they have here.”

  Jonas walked in the townhouse and peered into the living room, seeing no one. “Where is she?”

  Anne nodded and shut the door. “In the kitchen.”

  Jonas turned the corner past the living room and found the woman sitting at a dusty glass kitchen table, a can of Diet Coke nestled inside the loose grip of her right hand.

  She was hunched over the table. Skinny. Pale skin and a faded long-sleeve t-shirt. Dirty blond hair sprung from darker roots in uncombed ropes, hanging down, hiding her face. Jonas noticed the tattoo on her left arm, some kind of serpent, the ink faded, the outline washed. Tribute to a decades-old decision.

  “Hello,” he said, hoping not to startle her. “I’m Jonas.” She looked up, her bright blue eyes flashing at him.

  They were the only features of her face that still held beauty. She wasn’t old, but she had aged hard, as if she crammed a life’s worth of living in a few short years. But he could see that once she was probably the type of woman men fought over. Now, she was a few years and a handful of bad decisions short of beautiful.

  “I’m Rose,” she said. “Rose Fitzgerald.”

  Anne entered the kitchen and took command. “Rose,” she said, “Jonas is helping me with this investigation. As I explained in the car, we’ll be talking to you for a little bit here and then you’ll be interviewed more thoroughly by the FBI. Between all of us we are desperately trying to find your brother.”

  Rose looked at Jonas. “You with the FBI?”

  “No, ma’am. I have a personal interest in this case that goes back to my time in the Army. I served with your brother.” Jonas asked, “When was the last time you saw your brother?”

  “When he was seventeen. I was fifteen.”

  “Where was that?”

  She nodded out the window. “Close to here. Virginia, where we grew up.”

  Jonas noticed her accent.

  Anne took a seat at the table across from Rose. Jonas remained standing.

  “Where are your parents now?” Anne asked.

  “Mom is dead. Car accident. Dad’s still in Virginia, though a different town. Don’t talk to him much.” Rose took a sip from her soda. Jonas watched her effort to swallow.

  “When did you move to Pittsburgh?” Anne asked. “’bout ten years ago.”

  Anne’s questioning was slow and casual. Friendly, but cautious. “What do you do for a living, Rose?”

  “Worked at Home Depot until about three months ago. Got laid off. Bad economy and all.”

  “That must have been hard for you.”

  “Not lookin’ for pity.”

  Anne let the silence settle in the kitchen for a few moments. Jonas watched her study Rose, just the way she had studied him the first time they met at Calloway’s funeral. She was scanning for a connection.

  “What we’re here to do is understand more about your brother’s background. Anything that might help us find him. Now, we don’t have much time, so do you mind if I go ahead and ask you some questions about him?”

  She shook her head. “That’s what I came here for, right?”

  “Right.” Anne leaned forward in her chair. “Rose, did you ever marry? I ask because you and your brother don’t share the same last name.”

  “No. He was always Fitzgerald. Must have changed it.” Her words were heavy and dull, dropping out of her mouth like lead. “I jes know it was him, though. I mean, the image on the video wasn’t that clear. But...it was him. At first I didn’t see it, because he looked so different. But the way he stood. The way he leaned. And his ear.”

  “Tell us about his ear.”

  Jonas spoke up. “It was a childhood injury,” he said. “I remember it from the Army. I don’t remember what he said happened, but there’s a scar that ran down the side of his left ear and onto his cheek.”

  “Knife,” Rose said. “Happened to him when he was twelve...” Her voice trailed.

  “He never made contact after you last saw him?” Anne said. “Not with your parents either?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  Anne took a moment to study Rose. Then, she said in a low voice, “Did you think your brother was dead?”

  “Why would I think that?”

  “It’s...” Anne shifted her gaze briefly to Jonas and then back to her subject. “It’s a sense I get from you. You...you connect death with your brother somehow.”

  Rose looked uncomfortable. “What do you mean ‘sense?’”

  “Anne is very intuitive,” Jonas said. “It’s what makes her a good investigator and why the FBI uses her services.”

  Rose looked from Jonas to Anne and finally to the table. “No, I didn’t think he was dead. I guess I never thought about it much. We were never close.”

  “Rose, why did Rudy leave home? What happened to his ear?”

  Dampened shouts from a domestic argument bled through the walls of the townhome, the man’s voice deep, full of bass and vitriol. Jonas couldn’t make out the words, but he didn’t have to. Rose shifted in her seat and tapped a long, painted nail on the side of the sweating soda can.

  Anne didn’t repeat her questions. She sat and patiently waited for Rose to speak first.

  Jonas focused on the argument in the neighboring townhouse. He made out a garbled bitch and a fucking. The woman yelled something and then enough silence settled in to make Jonas wait for the sound of a gun firing a single shell. It didn’t come.

  Rose began to tell her story.

  32

  “I WAS jes ten,” she said, “when Rudy came back home...” Rose’s voice was slow and controlled; her words soft. Appalachian drawl laced with melancholy. Her gaze remained fixed on the table. “I remember when he opened up the front door. It was night, jes after dinner. The search for him had died down. It’d been two months and all, and, though no one ever said it out loud, I think we all thought Rudy was gone forever.”

  Rose tapped on her can again. A short but powerful burst of a yell came from next door, but she didn’t seem to even notice.

  “He’d been abducted?” Anne asked.

  “Yes. That’s right. Abducted at twelve years old.”

  Anne placed a recorder on the table. In her softest voice, she said, “Do you mind if I tape this?”

  Rose shrugged.

  Anne pressed the record button and nodded at Rose to continue.

  “Rudy opened up the front door and looked like little-boy death. Skinny. Dirty. Dried blood all over his face. Eyes wide like a doll’s. Unblinking. No one moved for a moment. We all jes thought he was a ghost, you know? Least that’s what I thought. I was scared to death of the boy at the door. He sure wasn’t my brother—least not the one I remembered. Then finally my mom screamed and ran over to him, falling all over the skin and bones standing in the entryway. She scooped him up and she jes cried. My dad called the police, and I sat there and watched it all, unbelieving. Rudy was back.”

  Jonas leaned forward. “What happened to him?”

  Rose didn’t look up. She shook her head and kept staring at her soda can. “Rudy didn’t talk for the first three months he was home. Not a word. Took him to all sorts of psychologists and counselors, but he just sat there, dumb. They knew he’d been abused. Had a long nasty cut along his ear.” Rose drew her finger along the left side of her head. “Bruises on his face and body. Damn nearly starved to death. And doctor said he’d been raped. Repeatedly.”

  Jonas tried to see the face of a twelve year-old Sonman in his mind and couldn’t. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Police found a dead man a few miles away in an old abandoned house. Throat cut and mouth split wide open. Ear missing. Found a basement with locks on the doors and found Rudy’s blood down there on an old mattress. No one knew if Rudy killed the man or someone else did, but his death allowed Rudy to escape.”

  “Did they find out who he was?”
/>
  “Rudy called him the Preacherman.”

  “So Rudy started talking?”

  “Never about what happened to anyone but me. And that was jes one time.”

  “What did he say happened?”

  The world seemed heavy on Rose. “It was five years later, jes before he left home for good. Rudy was different by then, and I was too self-absorbed to really give a shit. My parents had split up and my mom went to go live in Phoenix with some guy she met at a conference. But Rudy was the stain on the family. He was so smart, but he was horrible in school. Failed every class.”

  “How do you know he was smart?” Anne asked. Jonas noticed she wasn’t pressing Rose to tell them what Rudy said happened to him.

  “Because...because he could do, like, insane math problems in his head. And he was always doing word jumbles.”

  “Word jumbles?”

  “Yeah. You know, like in the paper. Rearranging letters to form a word. Like ‘rose’ can also be ‘sore.’ But you could jes tell him a word and he could tell you what other words you could make from it. Did it all the time. It was...well, to be honest it was creepy. But impressive, too.” Rose stood and walked to the refrigerator, helping herself to another soda. “Some of the kids called him Rain Man.”

  “Was he ever diagnosed with any kind of condition?”

  “Condition?”

  “Yes, like...well, like autism. Or one of the spectrum conditions of autism, like Asperger’s Syndrome.”

  Rose looked confused. “No, not that I know of. Don’t suppose my parents ever gave it much thought. Though my dad always said he was special.”

  “Was your family religious?”

  She managed a weak laugh. “Hardly. But Rudy...after he came back. He got all religious.” Rose turned to Jonas, her eyes dull with fatigue. “He would quote Christian scripture to you about anything, but mostly about the Rapture. It was really annoying. I never knew what the hell he was talking about. We were all hoping it was a phase but he was that way until he left.”

  “Did he ever go to church?”

  “Never.”

  Finally, Anne reached out across the kitchen table with her hand, not touching Rose but letting her know she was nearby. “Rose, what did Rudy tell you happened to him?”

  Rose flicked her gaze upwards and studied the ceiling fan for a few seconds. “He joined the Army when he was seventeen and my dad did nothing to stop him. Fact, thought it might be good for him. Bring him out of his shell. Maybe make him normal again. About a week before Rudy left, I went into his room. I asked him if he was taking his CD player with him to the Army, because I wanted it. He just stared at me for a long time, like I was the crazy one or something. Then out of the blue I asked him. I asked what happened to him in those two months.”

  Jonas felt his breathing quicken. “What did he say?”

  Rose took her time before answering. “Said a man named the Preacherman took him. Older man. Elephant skin and rotten breath, Rudy told me. Said the man locked him up.

  Made him eat dog food. Hit him. Raped him. Would strangle him until he was nearly dead then let him breathe again.”

  “Jesus,” Jonas muttered.

  Rose put her head down and let the words spill out. “Said this Preacherman had a woman who followed right along in it all. Even laughed when the Preacherman cut him with a knife, nearly taking his ear off. Rudy thought he was gonna die and wanted nothing more than death, until he started reading the Bible. Bible that the monster gave him. Rudy said it gave him hope, because one day there would be judgment, and Rudy knew he’d be all right then. So he waited it out. One day, Preacherman wasn’t careful enough, and Rudy got his knife and sliced the old man up. Kilt him. Came home that day.” She paused, then looked up. “Said he never saw the woman again.”

  Rose stopped talking. “What else did he say?”

  “That was it. He didn’t say nothing else about it. One week later he was gone, and I never saw him again until that video played on the news. He...he killed that woman in Cleveland, didn’t he? I know it’s been such a long time, but the man on the tape was him. I jes know it.”

  “We don’t know, Rose. We just need to find him.”

  Jonas glanced to his right and looked out the kitchen window. It was dark, but a streetlight glowed in the distance, casting dying embers onto the house. For a moment he thought he saw something move in the window, a head quickly pulling out of view. He looked at Anne and she to him, and he searched her eyes for a flicker of intuition to confirm his paranoia. He saw nothing, then dismissed his concern.

  “Why would he want to kill her?” Rose asked.

  “It’s nearly impossible to say,” Anne responded. “For someone like him, with his history of abuse, a number of things could trigger violence.”

  Jonas looked at the window again. Nothing was there. A knock at the door.

  Rose jumped in her seat. “It’s okay,” Anne said.

  The door opened and a portly man in a rumpled grey suit stepped inside. He seemed winded from the walk up the stoop. “Time’s up, Ms. Deneuve,” he said.

  “Okay,” Anne said. To Rose: “These men are with the FBI. They’re going to ask you a few more questions and then you can get to your hotel.”

  “I’m going with them or we’re doing it here?”

  “You’re going with them,” Anne said.

  Jonas saw a flash of fear in Rose’s eyes.

  “It’s okay,” Anne said. “I work with them. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Jonas stood and walked over to the agent, introducing himself. He received a nod and mumbled hello.

  “You were across the street the whole time?” Jonas asked. “Yeah. Why?”

  “You see anyone outside. Lurking around?”

  “Lurking?”

  “Yeah, you know. Hanging around suspiciously.”

  “I know what lurking is.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “Because I wasn’t sure if you were being serious. You think me and my partner missed seeing a lurker when you civvies are interrogating someone in conjunction with a serial killer?”

  Rose’s voice called from the next room. “Serial killer?”

  “Nice work,” Jonas said.

  The man squeezed his forehead, as if he could push out the negative thoughts as easily as popping a zit. He looked up defeated.

  “Jesus Christ. No,” he said. “No lurker. Or peeping Tom. Or interloper of any sort. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” Jonas said. “Take it easy. I was just asking.”

  “We need to go now,” the agent said. He put a hand on the back of Rose’s elbow and guided her toward the front door.

  When she reached the door, she turned back to Jonas. She looked at him like a beaten dog still searching for approval in her master’s eyes. Jonas knew all she wanted was someone to tell her everything would be okay.

  He nodded at her. “It’s okay, Rose. You’ll be okay.”

  She nodded back and walked out the door. Jonas couldn’t help but feel he just lied to her.

  33

  A RINGTONE woke him up before the alarm did. Jonas reached over and checked his phone. The first thing he noticed was the caller: Anne. The second thing was the time: 4:32am.

  Jonas shook the sleep from his head as he answered. “Anne, what is it?”

  Silence for a few seconds.

  “She’s dead, Jonas. Rose is dead.” Jonas pushed himself up. “What?”

  He heard a sniffle. She’d been crying.

  “I just got called by the office. A...a grey sedan was found parked next to a city ball field, about two miles from the safe house. Inside were three bodies. He fucking killed Rose, and he killed the two agents who were taking her to debrief.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Jonas, I just—”

  “Dead? All of them? For sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my God, he was out there. Last night. He was outside your place
.”

  “I know. I—”

  “And you didn’t feel anything? Sense him at all?”

  “No, Jonas. It doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes it does, but not always.”

  “You say that a lot. Goddamnit. Why didn’t you feel him out there?”

  “It’s not my fault they are dead, Jonas.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and let out a slow breath. “I know. I know. I’m...I’m sorry. I just...fuck. I can’t believe this.” A thought occurred to him. “Are you home now?

  “Yes.”

  “You should get out of there.”

  “Jonas, he doesn’t want me. He’s not still around here.”

  “He might be. You need to be safe.”

  She ignored his request. “Jonas, he used a knife on them. On all of them. He overpowered two federal agents, both of whom were armed, and he killed them all with a knife.”

  “God, I...I told her...”

  “I know, Jonas. You told her the same thing I did. We told her everything would be okay. And now she’s dead.”

  Jonas stared at his curtained window and tried to understand what it all meant, but he couldn’t focus. The only thing he saw was Rose’s face as she stood by the door, looking for approval.

  Jonas had sent her to her slaughter. No matter how everything else turned out, he didn’t think that was something he would ever get past.

  Another memory that would haunt him forever.

  PART II

  34

  JULY 21 DENVER, COLORADO

  SWEAT RUNS off Rudiger’s chin and drips onto the stained concrete floor of the abandoned airplane hangar, slickening the surface. Close to a hundred degrees outside. Little cooler inside, but not much. He wants to prop the doors open and get some of the Denver breeze, but can’t chance it. Doors closed and locked. No windows.

  He’s pleased with his work. His muscles are developed perfectly for the task. For the cutting, the lifting. The drilling.

  The crucifixes will take another day to complete—longer than normal. But this isn’t a normal job. This time there’ll be three instead of one. He uses a small blade to carve ornate designs into the wood of the heavy beams in the main cross. It’ll be his final work. Final crossing, the good Lord had said.