Notorious

by Carey Baldwin

“Hello?” The Hawk sounded impatient, even with its modulated voice.

  “Still here. Still at your disposal.” He pressed his fingertip against the tip of the knife, then smiled at the drop of blood that bubbled forth from beneath the skin.

  “How long will it take you to get to Dallas?” Hawk asked.

  “I can be there in under an hour, depending on traffic.” He laid the phone in his lap, covered his ears with his hands, and started the engine. Once the engine noise died down, he grabbed the wheel and pulled away from the curb, heading for the highway.

  “I’ll call you back,” the Hawk said abruptly. This was the third conversation he’d had with it when it had suddenly had to hang up. That, and the circumstances of the mission he’d been given, left him the impression the Hawk held a position of some importance in the world. But he was neither foolish enough nor curious enough to speculate further on who his employer might be. He preferred to focus on the task in front of him, and on his own special talent.

  Malachi had always had the underpinnings of his gift, but at first, it wasn’t finely tuned. Though by now, he’d built up quite a bit of tolerance, as a child, he couldn’t bear certain sounds: the low rumble of the washing machine, for example, would make him clap his hands over his ears and scream. Then the screaming would cause the neighbors to knock on the door, and soon it was all too much, and he’d faint. When his mother vacuumed, he’d hide under the bed and cry until she’d finished. Once, at church, the bells rang out, and their resonance made him thrash around on the floor with his eyes rolling back in his head. That led the pastor to advise his mother to get him a medical diagnosis.

  So she took him to a neurologist. The EEG and CT scan came back normal. But then, at the pastor’s urging, the doctor ordered a PET scan, and voila, it lit up like a rainbow, with greens, yellows, and reds—­he’d seen a picture of it that his mother saved, and it reminded him of a sun flare he’d seen in his science book. The specialist explained that certain colors represented increased neural activity in his limbic system—­the part of the brain that controls emotion.

  He was then placed on antiepileptics, but the medicines did nothing to quell his fits. In the end, his mother stopped all the drugs. Instead, she sent the laundry out and ceased vacuuming when he was at home. They stopped attending church. Which, truly, was no great loss and saddened him only because his mother missed the false comfort it had given her.

  He changed lanes, then turned on his Escalade’s navigation system. He knew how to get to Dallas, of course, but he wasn’t sure of directions to the particular Preston Hollow address. A map came up on the screen. He shifted into cruise control.

  Life hadn’t been all bad. There were benefits to his keen hearing, even though it caused him discomfort. Just as animals sense fear in others, he could hear fear rolling off a person’s skin. Unlike the soul, which has a nice, soothing hum, fear squeals like a pig.

  In grade school, he’d put that knowledge to good use. He knew which boy would make an easy target, and he would rob his lunch or humiliate him on the playground. These were only innocent pranks, but they helped hone his gift. With time, his skill grew so great he could not only detect emotions, such as fear, elation, and arousal; he finally recognized the one thing that set him apart from all the other children—­his ability to hear the soul.

  His was a true gift and not meant to be wasted. To put it to good use, he decided to end his mother, since hers was a rather lonely existence. His father had died of a heroin overdose before he was born, and she’d never found another companion. Instead, she focused all her time on Malachi, smothering him with affection. This affection was unrequited, as loving someone was not his talent.

  He could not feel.

  Or perhaps he did care a little for the woman because even though she did not hum, and therefore he knew she had no soul, he honored her with a death that mattered. His very first meaningful death. Not as spectacular as he would’ve liked. But then again, he was only eleven, so chopping off her ears prior to strangling her seemed rather extraordinary at the time. The police never so much as suspected him. They placed him in a foster home without a second thought.

  And so it began.

  There was a rickety auditory vibration, not a soothing hum, of course, that the lowly exuded. They sounded quite a bit like broken washing machines, and whenever he came across such individuals, he knew they could be swiftly disposed of. With others, he had to spend more time, studying them, tuning in. But that was back in the early days.

  Eventually, he became so skilled that merely walking into a person’s habitat was enough to determine that individual’s mortal worth from the echoes bouncing off the walls and shimmying out from beneath their beds.

  Encouraged by his growing discernment, he practiced killing the lowly—­who required no special consideration—­until at last, he considered himself ready to seek out gainful employment in the form of contract work. There was plenty of that to go around. He got his first jobs by hanging out with local thugs, but it didn’t take long for him to branch out and develop his own connections. It was hard to get good help, and in the hit-­man business, if you were adept at what you did, the demand far exceeded the supply.

  He hired himself out as the Thresher—­he was good at separating the wheat from the chaff—­taking great care never to come face-­to-­face with his employers. All monies were left at prearranged drops. Since no one knew his real name, or what he looked like, he was not only safe from the police, but his reputation grew far beyond that of an ordinary man. Once, he heard a rumor that the Thresher was seven feet tall and could crush a man’s windpipe one-­handed.

  The pay was excellent, and the work remarkably easy to find. There was always someone who wanted to off a spouse or a coworker. But when that type of thing—­which seemed to be somewhat seasonal, picking up around the holidays and slowing down during the summers—­dried up, he supplemented his income with small jobs. Breaking in and stealing the cat from an ex-­wife, or “repossessing” a philandering husband’s favorite set of golf clubs, for example. Malachi rarely needed to travel outside of his native Texas to find employment though he had ventured to bordering states on some occasions.

  His phone rang again. “Thresher speaking.”

  This time the Hawk didn’t bother with a greeting. “How far away are you?”

  “Twenty minutes. You’ll have the diary soon, but I’m going to need more money.”

  “Not after the way you screwed up.”

  “It wasn’t me who screwed up. It was just a set of unfortunate circumstances that I was unable to predict because you failed to give me a full set of information. All you told me was to get the diary and eliminate the target. I needed more information about the target’s personal life. Now the situation is even riskier. The area is crawling with police.”

  “I decide what information you do and don’t need—­but just to give you fair warning, the FBI brought in a ­couple of hot shots to run interference for Langhorne—­Atticus Spenser and Caitlin Cassidy. You can Google anything you want to know about them.”

  “That doubles my risk.”

  A scratching sound that might’ve been a scrambled sigh came out of the phone’s speaker. “Deliver the goods, and you’ll get an extra ten grand.”

  “Twenty-­five.”

  “Ten.”

  “Am I authorized to do things my way? Use any means necessary to carry out my mission? Because I will not be micromanaged.”

  “Just get the fucking diary. And remember what I said about consequences if you value those big balls of yours.” It hung up.

  As he pressed his foot on the accelerator, he noticed his heart picking up speed along with the Escalade. His mission just got a lot more complicated, and his reputation was riding on it.

  Chapter Four

  Wednesday, October 16

  4:30 P.M.

  Dall
as, Texas

  DUTCH LED THEM up the massive staircase, down several corridors, and into a far wing of the Worthington Mansion. When he pushed open a door marked Presidential Suite, an unexpected gust of hot air and a rancid odor hit Caitlin in the face.

  Sheridan crossed to the window and closed it. “Been airing the place out. Stank something awful in here.”

  Death’s putrid smell laced itself through her stomach and cinched tight.

  “Mrs. Langhorne expelled her bowels when she was killed.” Then, as if Caitlin wasn’t aware, he added, “That’s not unusual.”

  She nodded, only half-­listening. Her gaze had been immediately drawn to a wooden, four-­poster bed frame—­the mattress was missing. In spite of the heat, she shivered, as though a ghost had just walked across her grave.

  “The body was posed. When I arrived on scene, Mrs. Langhorne was spread-­eagle naked in a pool of her own blood and feces. And this one”—­he jabbed a finger at Dutch—­“was hanging out in that recliner over there, gawking at his wife’s body. Didn’t bother to cover her up.”

  “It was a crime scene,” Spense offered.

  A glazed look came over Dutch’s eyes. “That’s right. I didn’t want to disturb the crime scene.”

  “Uh-­huh. And what the hell were you doing in here if not murdering your unfaithful wife?” Sheridan asked.

  “By midnight, I suspected something was wrong. So I came upstairs and checked every room on the second floor. They were all locked, except this one.”

  “Your wife’s gone missing from a party for two hours, and you finally get around to checking on her,” Sheridan said.

  “We’d agreed to meet before midnight. I had no idea she was in danger.”

  “I’d think most men would want to keep a better eye on the little woman.”

  Sheridan’s body language and tone set Caitlin’s teeth on edge. Assumptions might be necessary from time to time to move forward with a case, but made prematurely, they became a dangerous enemy of the truth.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t live my life by most men’s rules. And definitely not by yours.”

  “Don’t care if you do or you don’t, not even a hair on a rat’s ass—­as you put it before. But a jury . . . now they just might. So you weren’t in any hurry to check up on Cindy, and once you found the body, you claim you took yourself a seat and did nothing. For a solid hour. What took you so long to call for help?”

  Dutch shrugged.

  Caitlin could see him slipping backward into shutdown mode. “I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like for you, Dutch, but this is important. What were you doing from the time you found your wife’s body, around midnight, until the time you called 911?”

  “At one o’clock in the morning.” Sheridan held out the recorder.

  “I guess I was in shock.”

  “I guess so. I mean your wife is laid out naked on the bed with a bullet in her chest and her legs wide open.” Sheridan stroked an imaginary goatee. “Or maybe, you spent that time staging the scene to make it look like some whack job did it, then got rid of the gun.”

  “You took a BlueView of my hands. Swabbed me yourself. You know there was no gunshot residue on them. I wasn’t destroying evidence. I was in shock.”

  That’s it, Dutch. Fight back.

  “Thanks for reminding me about the lack of gunpowder on your hands. Of course, a member of law enforcement, a special agent such as yourself, would’ve washed off the residue and gotten rid of the murder weapon before calling for help. Don’t you agree?”

  “If I were guilty, yes, I would’ve done those things—­and a hell of a lot more. I would’ve created an alibi, for example.”

  “Crime of impulse. You didn’t plan it ahead, so you couldn’t manage the alibi. But after the fact, your training kicked in. You posed the body. Wrote the word SLUT in all caps—­that was a nice touch, I gotta say—­on your wife’s forehead with her lipstick, got rid of the gun . . . somehow . . . and then washed your hands.”

  “How did he get a gun inside if the murder wasn’t premediated?” Caitlin challenged.

  “Security must’ve been tight since Cambridge was the guest of honor. That would mean the gun would’ve had to have been planted beforehand. Ergo, the crime was premeditated, and Agent Langhorne would’ve created an alibi for himself.”

  “He’s a federal agent and a family friend of the Cambridges. You think the governor’s boys checked him for heat? He just swaggered in the door with his off-­duty carry. Doesn’t mean it was or was not premeditated.”

  “Did you bring your off-­duty with you?” Spense asked.

  It would be easy enough to verify if he’d passed through security, Caitlin thought.

  “No. At a function like this, no reason to complicate things by bringing a gun,” Dutch answered. “There was a metal detector at the front entrance, but neither Cindy nor I walked through it. We came early to help Heather, and it wasn’t set up at the time.”

  “Seems strange to me you weren’t carrying, considering the nature of the function. What if there had been trouble?”

  “I didn’t bring my pistol because Cindy asked me not to. She hates guns, and I try not to carry them when she’s with me unless it’s really necessary.”

  “Which is it? You didn’t bring a weapon because you didn’t want to complicate things, or because your wife didn’t want you to? Or are you lying? Here’s what I think: You brought it. You used it, then you got rid of it.”

  Spense sat down in the recliner that was positioned a few feet from the bedframe. He rocked his head back and stretched out his legs. “Anyone move this recliner?”

  All eyes turned to Spense.

  “No,” Sheridan said, after appearing to think on it a minute.

  “It’s facing the door, not the bed.”

  “So what?”

  Something clicked into place in her head. She saw the look on Spense’s face and knew they were on the same page. Spense bolted to his feet. “So Agent Langhorne couldn’t have been gawking at his wife’s body if the chair was facing the door.”

  “Make your point.”

  “He was lying in wait in case the killer returned to the scene of the crime. That’s why he didn’t call the police. Once he realized Cindy was dead, and there was no bringing her back, he wanted to take care of the killer on his own.”

  Dutch’s face colored. Spense had hit it right.

  “Who’s to say your boy didn’t shoot her, then lie in wait for the lover?” Sheridan asked. “He’s a cold-­blooded killer, any way you slice it.”

  “Wouldn’t you have waited for the murderer—­if it had been someone you loved?” Spense asked Sheridan.

  A chill ran down Caitlin’s spine—­because she understood exactly what Spense was saying: that he would have been lying in wait, ready to take his revenge with his bare hands. Her head went light, and she grabbed the bedpost to steady herself. The long plane ride, the lingering smell of death, the heat—­it was all getting to her.

  And she couldn’t stop picturing Cindy. Images flashed in her head, alternating between Cindy headed up the stairs in her beautiful gown and Cindy lying naked and bloodied on the bed. She peeled her hand off the post. The crime scene was talking to her, and she had to listen, whether she wanted to or not, for Cindy’s sake. The answers, at least some of them, were right here in this room.

  “No one heard the shot?” she asked. “If the killer used a silencer, we’re back to premeditation.”

  “No silencer. At least we don’t think so. The presidential suite is far away from the ballroom, and several guests claim they heard a car backfire shortly after ten o’clock. Our theory is that given the remote location of the room, the band music—­possibly even crashing cymbals—­the sound of the single gunshot was covered well enough for it to be passed off as incidental. But I like th
e way you’re thinking.” Sheridan handed her a set of crime-­scene photos. “Captain asked me to share these with you two—­no harm to the case since your boy was present when they were taken anyway.”

  He’d had them all along and was just now handing them over despite his captain’s instructions. She could tell by his reluctance and his tone he thought Dutch was getting special consideration because of his law-­enforcement status—­and in truth, he was right. Otherwise, Sheridan wouldn’t be discussing the case with them at all. She took a seat in the recliner Spense had vacated to view the photos. “Blood spatter on the headboard and the spread. Looks like she was shot on the bed itself. Not placed there after.”

  Sheridan nodded. “We believe the victim went upstairs to meet her lover, not the governor. We think she got undressed and lay on the bed, waiting for this mystery man. But her husband followed her upstairs. He waited a few minutes, then burst in and found her naked. He shot her, then, in a fit of rage, he grabbed the scissors from the desk, and shredded the dress that she’d hung in the closet.” Sheridan walked to Caitlin’s side and indicated a photo of Cindy’s designer gown, the shoulders still attached to a hanger, the delicate chiffon skirt shredded to bits.

  Dutch’s face turned a color that made Caitlin think of the sky just before an impending storm. It was hard to say if his sudden emotion was because the sight of the dress reminded him of his loss or because Sheridan’s blatant accusation infuriated him the way it did her.

  Spense pulled out a notebook. Caitlin was glad of it, because that meant he’d handle the notes, and she could concentrate on the scene and the behavioral clues the killer, and the victim, had left behind.

  Talk to me. I’m listening.

  “I assume you’ve verified the governor’s whereabouts at the time of the shooting with his protective detail? How many men did he bring with him? What kind of advance scouting was done for the mansion?” Spense had his pen poised and ready.

  “We did verify his whereabouts. Unlike Langhorne, Cambridge has an alibi, and an airtight one. The security detail stated he never left the first floor during the entire fund-­raiser.”