THE DEAD SOUL: A Thriller

by M. William Phelps

  Jake walked over, kissed his wife on the mouth. After that, he held Dawn by the shoulders, stared down into her eyes. “Relax, honey. You can do this. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Reminds me. I need to tell you about Denny Garcia—”

  “I know, I know. That professional insight.” Jake stepped back, put his hands in his pockets, jiggled the loose change. A flock of pigeons fluttered down from the ledge of the building after a guy on the bench tossed some seed.

  “Unless you want to rely on a cellphone to tell you what the make-up of your killer is. Jake, serials grow into the role through trauma. You know that. I studied Bundy in college. I’m telling you. Denny can help you glimpse into that world.”

  “You’ve been OD-ing on DVR’d episodes of Dr. Phil again, haven’t you, Dawn? Anyway, my guy is nothing like Bundy.”

  “Write me off, okay. I get it.”

  “So I’ll keep me eye on Denny when he gets out of high school.”

  “I have to go. We’ll talk about this later.”

  Jake knew Dawn only wanted to help. She yearned to dig into something and come out of it with an ah-hah moment. Look, Jake. Look what I found! It would make all of that time away from home worth something.

  As they walked toward Dawn’s car, Jake’s phone buzzed. “Hold on,” he said. “Don’t leave. … Yo, Dick. What’s up?” Jake didn’t take his eyes off Dawn as he listened.

  “We got ourselves a hot lead, Detective.” Dickie sounded excited for the first time since the case began.

  “The seedling?”

  “Well, sort of still working that out. No, this is bigger. Come on. Hurry. We’re heading out now. I’m in the back parking lot.”

  “What is it?”

  “Couple of blues were questioning a friend of Lisa Marie’s and scored.”

  Jake put his iPhone away. “Gotta run, Dawn. Don’t worry about Denny. Do your best. That’s all you can do, right?”

  “I won’t give up on this kid, Jake.”

  “Of course not.”

  Jake leaned in through the window and pecked his wife on the cheek. She watched him run toward his car around the corner. He turned before disappearing, “Eat that mac and cheese, okay.”

  12:25 P.M.

  Across from D-15, on the opposite side of Harrington Street, he sat on a park bench near a fountain. The small stone-lined garden housed a granite statue of Lady Justice. On a plaque in front of the lady were the names of Boston’s dead police officers.

  The mailman had some time to spare for lunch. So he decided to sit outside the precinct and get a better look at the man in charge of investigating him. Not for a moment did he consider that he would run into to Dawn, too.

  Watching Dawn get out of her car and approach Jake, he held up the photo. It was then he realized the picture in the newspaper had not done the woman any justice.

  Wow.

  Dawn Cooper was a true hottie. An eleven!

  While waiting for Dawn, Jake spied the mailman sitting there. But considered him to be just another city worker enjoying one of the last few warm days of the year. It had rained so much over the past few days, it seemed everyone was outdoors.

  After Dawn drove away, the man the Boston Globe had dubbed the Optimist walked into D-15. He went up to an officer sitting at a chest-high desk inside a cage, asked if he could use the bathroom.

  The officer pointed to the left. There was a sign—a funny cartoon picture of a keystone cop sitting on the toilet eating a donut—on a door marked THE LOO.

  “It’s really not for public use, but since you’re a quasi-government employee, what the hell.”

  “Thanks for nothing.”

  Inside the bathroom stall, the Optimist unzipped his pants. In the process of relieving himself, he thought of how much he had accomplished thus far. Here he was, inside Detective Jake Cooper’s world, having stalked Jake and his wife, and no one suspected a thing. It was such a simple pleasure. Such a wonderful way to enjoy the game. The next murder had to be personal, he knew. Jake needed to feel it.

  His mood changed as he went to zip up. It happened this way sometimes. Going to the bathroom forced him to look down. Once in a while, those grotesque scars carved on his shins stood out and spoke. On each leg were the marks left behind from that moment in the basement with the Teacher when life went from bad to worse. Those two letters, so grossly stamped—skin welds—by that man, were a reminder of what he had been made to feel like all these years.

  The human stain.

  That’s why he wore the handcuff key around his neck as a pendant—to remind himself that he could escape from anything. Any time. The Teacher could no longer hold him hostage.

  He flushed the urinal. Buckling his pants, he couldn’t stop his mind from spinning backwards in time. This was when hurting himself meant the most. When he cut, it stopped the pain. The memories stayed, but fogged over. Yet he couldn’t chance it here. Not the restroom. He had to let the recollections flood him.

  That knife. The fire in the furnace. The Teacher had him by the throat, forcing him down the stairs.

  “It’s time. You resist, you’re dead.”

  But just like that he was back inside the bathroom. Looking at himself in the mirror. Washing his hands with that foamy soap, drying them under the hot air.

  But the screaming in his head was too loud.

  He stared at himself, through the reflection in the mirror.

  “Leave me alone … Stop touching me like that. I don’t like it.”

  Total recall. The Teacher walked over to a table set up amid the cobwebs hanging from the dirty pipes in the basement of Bainbridge. In his mind it was a movie. He watched the Teacher pick up a soldering iron that looked an awful lot like the hair curling iron he remembered his mother once using on him. The Teacher bent down. Rolled up the boy’s pant legs. Then he screamed as the Teacher carved the letters into his shins, branding him for good.

  “No … no … please …”

  “I would cut your legs off,” he heard the Teacher whisper in his ear, “but I cannot keep you alive at the same time. I need to teach you to have control if you are to carry out my plans.”

  The Optimist was back in real time. Walking out of the bathroom, he realized how gratifying this game he had begun months ago with Alyssa Bettencourt at Quincy Market now was. The past and present had juxtaposed so well. With each victim, a small part of that moment in the basement was erased. And soon, with this next victim he had planned, every tear would be wiped away.

  32

  Wednesday, September 10, 12:42 P.M.

  Barton Colby was white as milk, his face frozen. Two blues stood at the doorway. Another pair were stationed at the end of the driveway. Dickie and Jake stood in the kitchen. Barton’s father, Dr. Nathan Allen Colby, was handcuffed and told to sit on the living room floor. Mrs. Colby was in the foyer, hyperventilating, talking fast, gasping for air while trying to speak to the family lawyer on the telephone.

  Instead of heading to Framingham, Jake followed Dickie to the Colby house. The blue colonial was about a mile from the Taylor’s. Barton was good friends with Lisa Marie. Narcotics came up with a tip that Barton was stealing his father’s prescription pads. Barton Colby was the local high school Oxycontin dealer.

  “Operating a drug factory is a serious crime,” Dickie said to the elder Colby. “You’re a doctor, sir. Oxy is a prescription-only drug. Let’s see how this looks. You’re writing out scripts for your neighborhood friends. Trying to make a few extra bucks to pay off that breast job you just bought your wife.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like ten years in the federal pen to me.”

  They had Barton Colby in a squeeze. Seeing his father bound like a criminal, Barton was going to open right up. Questioning teens was tough. They protected themselves, even if a best friend had been abducted and butchered. Jake had sent a team out to question Lisa’s friends. Not one of them had mentioned Barton. It was clear the fear was in being found out themselves. Still
, what if Lisa was one of Barton’s customers? If so, the stakes had changed. Buying drugs would put Lisa in sections of the city Jake had not yet connected her to. The theory Jake was working under had Lisa being swiped off the street by her killer as she headed home from the library.

  “Maybe he needs to go downtown, Jake. Maybe get tossed in with a few dudes that like middle-age, gray-haired doctors who get their nails done at the salon. What are they calling them now, heterosexuals?”

  “Metrosexuals, Dickie.” Jake looked up in the air.

  Dickie called for two blues to come get Mr. Colby. A motorcycle roared by the outside of the house. A nosey crowd of neighbors gathered at the end of the driveway.

  “Hold on. Hold it!” Seventeen-year-old Barton Colby stood from his seat at the dining table. He had been rubbing his temples. Thinking. His leg bouncing. “Just wait a damn minute.” Barton wore a tattered T-shirt, black, a dragon on the front, red Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers, ripped jeans, and gauge earrings.

  “Something you need to tell us, son?” Dickie walked toward the boy.

  Barton’s mind raced in ten different directions. He tried to figure out what to say. Or how to say it, actually. Whatever information he divulged was an admission of something illegal.

  Barton stepped into the kitchen, brushing shoulders with Dickie in the doorway. The granite countertop sparkled from the overhead light. The stainless steel fridge with French doors was restaurant big. The floor tile was Italian. Certainly, imported. “Listen, I can help you guys. Just take the cuffs off my dad.”

  Dr. Colby grimaced. He hadn’t said a word. His wrists burned, the skin rubbing against the metal and bone.

  “We’re investigating a possible narcotics ring here, one that might involve murder. Your dad is a grown man.” Dickie looked toward one of the blues. “Officer Martin, take that scumbag dope dealing doctor out to your car. Get him to D-Twelve. Lock his ass up.”

  “Wait, man. Just wait a minute.”

  “Martin, take him away.”

  A blue on each side, Dr. Nathan Colby was hoisted off the floor, carried out of the house like an Occupy Wall Street protestor going to jail.

  Jake stood next to Barton. Kicked out a stool along the marble breakfast bar. “Sit down, kid.”

  The other blue in the house knew enough to walk Mrs. Colby outside. That left just Dickie, Jake, and Barton Colby.

  “You’re screwed, kid.” Dickie leaned over the boy’s shoulder, spoke in his ear. “You’re going to jail. We know you’re writing your own scripts.”

  “Dickie, relax. Give’m a chance. Lisa Marie, Barton, let’s start there.”

  A routine arrest led to the Colby house. A couple of high-schoolers in a BMW had been stopped outside Fenway Park after running a light. The cop spotted a bag of dope the passenger tried hiding underneath her thigh. As soon as the blue mentioned the pot, the little rich boy started shaking, crying. “I can help, I can help … That girl who was murdered, she went to my school. I heard that this kid, Colby Something, was selling her Oxy. Word is that Colby gave her an overdose, covered up that crime by knifing her.”

  The tip was off. But here they were. In Barton Colby’s house asking him about Lisa. All because an astute cop knew enough to bring the information to Narcotics, who took it to Jake.

  Teamwork. Sometimes it actually worked.

  Barton put his face on his palms. Elbows on his knees. Rocked back and forth. The hum of the refrigerator kept the pace in the background.

  “Take a breath, kid. Relax a little. Begin with Lisa’s buying habits.”

  “That’s just it, man. She was not a user.” Barton looked up. Stared at the kitchen appliances lined up along the countertop. “She just liked to hang with me over here to get away from her nagging parents. Freakin’ father of hers is a weirdo. I think he liked to touch her.”

  “She ever tell you that?”

  He shrugged. “No.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to Lisa?” Jake pulled up a chair. He put a foot on it. His knee was eye-level with Barton’s chest. Dickie opened the refrigerator, took out a Coke. Barton didn’t turn to look. He could hear the sharp metallic crack of the lid followed by the fizz of tiny bubbles bursting inside the can.

  “I’m not really sure. I was so wrapped up in that game, that stupid friggin’ computer game. When she came over and talked, you know, like, I wasn’t listening. She’d hang in my room. Sit down on my beanbag chair next to me. Say stuff that was bothering her. Watch me play. She’d tell me what she was doing. What was going on at home. But the game. I listened and nodded and didn’t hear anything she said.”

  “I bet you wished you did now. All that, ‘Why wasn’t I there for my friend?’ bullshit.” Dickie took a slug of his Coke. Continued: “Hindsight, kid. It’s the plague of the guilty.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Any text messages from her we can look at? Emails? Letters? Notes?” Jake wanted to stay focused on getting a lead out of the kid.

  Barton Colby dropped his shoulders, a telltale sign that he was ready to talk. Then he stood.

  “Whoa there, cowboy.” Jake put a hand on Barton’s shoulder. “Sit your ass back down. You move when we say so.”

  “I’ll take him, Jake. What, you want to go upstairs into your room?” Dickie put a hand over his stomach, burped. “ ‘Cuse me there.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jake motioned that it was okay. As Dickie and Barton walked up the stairs, Jake wandered around the den. He looked at family photographs. Flipped through address books. Notes the family left one another on an antique rolltop desk. Pick up bread. Drop dog off at vet’s. Honey, we need to talk …

  Pretty normal dysfunctional American family, from what Jake could tell. No love in the notes. All business. A family on the run.

  Jake walked into a second living room. One of those with furniture nobody ever sat on. It was spotless. A photo above the fireplace featured Barton and Lisa Marie. They over-smiled. Wore graduation hats and gowns. Held diplomas in hand like relay race batons. A pair of best friends getting ready for high school. They were younger. Eighth grade, Jake figured.

  Dickie came in carrying Barton’s cell phone. “Holy shit.”

  “What did you find?”

  Barton Colby stood in the kitchen. He had both hands in his jean pockets. Shoulders slumped. Eyes on his sneakers, withdrawn.

  “Text message from Lisa right around the time she was killed.” Dickie held the phone up as if he were in an ad for it.

  “You’re kiddin’ me?”

  There were several, actually. Most were meaningless in the scope of the investigation. Normal texts between kids. WHAT R U DOIN 2 NITE? PIZZA? MOVE-E?

  But then …

  cant do dinnr …

  need 2 meet MM

  2 by that thing

  “Sit back down, Barton.” Dickie pointed to the sofa. “There.”

  The boy fell on the soft leather couch, which swallowed him up.

  Jake stared at the text. Then sat down on the coffee table in front of Barton. “Okay. You see it? Now tell me what it means.”

  Barton stared at his nails, picked one of them with the other. “That’s the thing. I’ve been over it a thousand times, man. I don’t remember what she said. She was here that day. In my room, early. I was playing that game. She talked about buying something. I don’t know what. She left here and went to the library. I got that text an hour after she left.”

  “Look at me when you speak, Barton. You had better think harder, boy. A lot harder. You understand me.”

  Dickie stood in back of Jake, laughing under his breath. Rubbed Jake’s shoulders like a boxing coach. “Kid, you won’t like David Banner here when he gets mad.”

  “Come on. I didn’t do anything. I don’t know.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “She started getting into selling stuff on eBay. I don’t know what. But she bought and sold all types of car parts and rare cactuses a
nd other plants. It kept her busy. She didn’t need the money. She liked the thrill, I guess. She liked meeting people. She’d set up eBay purchases, met customers at the library and the park across the street from it.”

  Computer forensics hadn’t found anything on Lisa’s computer to indicate such a thing.

  “We never found one iota of evidence on her computer, Barton, to support your theory,” Jake said. “Why are you lying to us?”

  “She brought it over here once a week so I could wipe it clean.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because she was chatting with a former boyfriend her father hated. She was afraid her parents were snooping in her computer. We all do it. Wiping computers clean once a week for a kid is like cleaning your room. Some kids have parties just for that purpose.”

  “When she said ‘that thing’ in the text, what did she mean? Was it something from eBay she was hoping to sell or buy?”

  “I swear, man, I don’t know.”

  “What about the chatting? Why would she want to keep it hidden from pops?”

  “She said her parents, if they ever thought she was talking to that kid again, would take the computer away and keep her confined to the house like a prisoner. And she really liked the dude.”

  The front door opened. A middle-aged man with hair plugs, wearing a double-breasted, shiny Armani suit—circa 1983—trounced into the living room. “Barton, don’t you answer another question.” He took out a business card and threw it at Jake. “Allen Jacoby.”

  “Hey,” Dickie said, snapping his fingers, “I’ve seen you on TV, late at night, after Leno. Those commercials. It’s you!” Dickie did his best impression, dropping his voice low. “ ‘Never again will you be left alone by a system out to trample on your rights. Malpractice. Auto and work injuries. Unemployment. Sexual harassment. We got you covered.’ ”