The Thief of All Light

by Bernard Schaffer

  “That’s enough,” Waylon said.

  “Oh, I agree,” Bender said. “Now, let me be real, real clear about this so there’s no mistake. We will be conducting the follow-ups on both homicides from here on out, given that you’ve completely lost scope of these investigations and bought into some fairy tale concocted by a megalomaniac who thinks that by getting his name back in the papers, the public might forget what he did. But I’ve got news for you, Jacob. No one will forget what you did. Now get the fuck out of this building. You’re a disgrace to everything it stands for.”

  Rein stood fixed in place, hands at his sides, eyes locked with Bender. Then his head twitched and he relaxed, keeping his voice low and even as he said, “You’re right. Good luck and I hope you get the guy.” As he turned to leave, Carrie reached for him, but he kept walking.

  He went down the elevator, shutting out the people around him. Lawyers talking to clients about plea agreements they should make. Fathers telling their sons to tuck in their pants before they went in to see the judge. Behind him, two uniformed police officers talking about how much overtime they were making to stand around at court that day. He shut each of them out, one by one, closing the doors on their conversations and closing the doors within himself to the places that cared.

  He walked through the courthouse lobby, steering clear of the security guards and the lockboxes. He’d leave it for Carrie. It did not matter. He told himself he would close all of the doors.

  All of the darkest ones he’d unlocked, journeying down into the depths of his psyche with the child rapists and teenaged killers. All of the ones that helped him connect with the haunted spirits of the people he needed to make confess. He would close all of those doors first, sealing them off, and then he would close the rest.

  The ones that let him feel anything at all.

  Cars passed by him on the street, filled with people focused on getting to work, waiting to see if their checks cleared, wondering who their husbands were screwing, worried about medical test results, none of them concerned about killers or the killers’ victims. Bodies could be decomposing in the windows of every building they drove past and none of those people would have noticed. He craved that oblivion. He’d sought it all that time he was pushing lawn mowers and cutting up logs, but something had always dragged him back toward the past. Something inside of him would not surrender, no matter how much he begged.

  No longer, he thought, walking down the street, watching the cars, deciding he would be like these people from now on. He’d learned his lesson. There is no redemption. There is no going back. Once you have left the garden, there is only the wasteland, and it is a place without allegiance to anything you’ve left behind.

  He has taken a child. Her name is Natalie. They call her Nubs.

  (I don’t care.)

  Another sweet, beautiful child who deserves to live.

  (It’s someone else’s job now.)

  You’re already responsible for the death of one little girl. Wasn’t that enough?

  He pictured Carrie’s face when Waylon told her about Molly. Watched her fall to her knees screaming, the lines of spittle connecting her teeth, the inhuman howls of anguish. He’d heard them before from too many parents, too many husbands, too many children who would never see their mothers again. The screaming would not stop. Ever. The killings would not stop, ever.

  “It’s finished,” he said aloud. “I’m finished.”

  What about the girl? You’ve given her enough that she could begin tracking down the suspects. She might find him.

  (Bill will watch over her. He won’t let her go alone.)

  She won’t wait for Bill. You know she won’t. She’ll rush in at the first hint of finding the little girl, and the killer will take her, too. But he’ll do it slow. So slow. His fury at the nightclub will pale in comparison to what he does when she invades his den. He’ll make her watch as he kills Nubs. He’ll make her watch, and participate, and eat the child’s cooked organs. Anything to make the horror stop. Anything to get him to turn off the blowtorch and pull out the nails and let go of the pliers ripping off chunks of her flesh. He will make her—

  Rein gasped, unable to breathe. He clenched his eyes shut and bent forward, gulping at the air that would not go into his lungs. Images flashed that he could not escape, crimson-soaked bodies and wide-eyed children staring lifelessly at the ceiling, but this time he was speeding down the highway at eleven o’clock at night. This time he was feeling the warmth of alcohol coursing through his system. This time he was desperate to get home and turn on all the lights in his apartment to shut out the darkness, to spend the rest of the night sitting in his living room, clutching the sides of his chair, terrified of falling asleep.

  He clenched his eyes shut, trying to shut out the images, gritting his teeth and whipping his head side to side trying to shake them loose. He never saw the car coming toward him at the intersection. Nothing before the screech of tire rubber against the road, and a sudden, deafening impact.

  Metal crumpled under metal, whipping him face-first into the steering wheel, cracking him across the forehead so hard there was an explosion of bright white light. He was knocked backward, thrown into a vortex as the car spun. Both of the cars, spinning and spinning, turning from the point in space where they were joined together in a tangle of metal and smoke.

  The spinning finally stopped and he opened his eyes, sitting up, peering through the clouds of dark vapor, eyes watering from the impact, still dazed, and he saw what he’d hit. Long lengths of fine blond hair stuck up through the shattered glass of the other car’s rear window, smeared dark with blood. Just behind the door, the top part of a child’s safety seat.

  Rein grabbed his door handle, trying to force it open, but the frame was bent, and it snapped free in his hand. He dropped onto the seat and kicked the window wildly, screaming and screaming and screaming for help.

  Rein stumbled over to the nearest lamppost, pressing himself against it, clutching it like a man at sea would pieces of wreckage. In the shimmering haze, he saw the front door of the courthouse burst open and Carrie come running through it, searching for him.

  He wiped sweat from his eyes and face, huffing and panting, seeing Carrie’s head turn side to side, looking up and down the street. Looking for him.

  You fool.

  She saw him bent over at the end of the block and came running.

  I am the door that cannot be closed.

  25

  THE WINDOWS WERE DOWN, BATHING HIS FACE IN COOL AIR. COOL AIR against his damp hair and beard. Cool air rippling through his shirt, helping it to dry. Carrie turned around to look at him. “You should have seen it. I thought Bill was going to toss a chair across the room at Bender.”

  Waylon grunted as he drove, trying not to smile. “Come on, now. I only gave him a little bitty piece of my mind.” He looked in the rearview mirror. “You all right back there? Don’t puke in my car.”

  Rein closed his eyes, listening to the wind. “I’m fine.”

  “Can you believe those assholes tried to hassle me about giving me back my gun?” she said. “I was trying to get out of there to go find you, and they’d switched guards at the front. The idiot couldn’t find the sign-out sheet for me to leave the damn building.” She snapped her fingers and said, “That reminds me.”

  Waylon watched her stick her hand into her front pocket and saw her take Rein’s knife out. He looked in the rearview mirror. “Jesus H. Christ, you took that in there?”

  Carrie went to hand it to him, but Rein had not moved.

  Waylon scowled in disbelief. “Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what would happen if they ever matched that weapon to the injuries?”

  Carrie looked down at the folded metal claw. “What injuries? What is this thing, anyway?”

  “It’s called a karambit,” Waylon said. “Put it away and don’t let anyone else see that. Especially those idiots from the County.”

  “All right, all right,” she said,
sticking it back in her pocket.

  “I can’t believe you were dumb enough to keep that thing,” Waylon muttered, eyeing Rein. “Son of a bitch, Jacob. That was stupid.” He looked at Carrie. “As soon as we get back to the station, that thing is getting destroyed. I don’t want to see it ever again.”

  “What are you mad about? I thought it was something from his work,” Carrie said.

  “It was for work, all right,” Waylon said. “Just not the landscaping kind. You tell her what you did with that?”

  Rein’s eyes were still closed.

  “I don’t know why I’m complaining. At least if she has it, I know you won’t cut anyone’s nuts off with it this time,” Waylon said.

  “You were the one that shot him,” Rein said.

  “I shot him because that’s what normal people do. Normal people holding guns shoot bad guys doing bad things. We do it all the time. Normal people do not reach inside the open wound and start cutting another man’s privates out.”

  “Normal is limited, Bill. Your problem is that you are normal. You think rationally and you are confused and afraid of a world that isn’t,” Rein said. “That’s why you’ve always needed me.”

  As they spoke, Carrie laid her hand on the outside of her pocket, feeling the karambit’s outline against her palm. Now that she knew its pedigree, it felt like a talisman and she would not let go of it. She touched it, thinking of how Walter Krissing must have screamed when it entered him. She touched it and wondered how Rein’s face looked when he performed the first cut. She touched it, feeling the curved spine and hinge where the curved talon’s peak of blade folded into the handle and tried to imagine why Rein had brought it with him now.

  Waylon’s voice brought her out of her thoughts, saying, “Grab the case file.” When she’d reached into the leather bag near her feet and drew it out, he said, “Give me the rundown on the suspects you developed.”

  “These on the top all have mental health records, rap sheets, and a history of interest in serial killers. They live in remote locations where they’d draw less suspicion.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Ten or so.”

  “That’s no good,” Waylon said. “The County isn’t going to help us on these follow-ups. They’re stuck on the separate incidents theory. Bender assigned half his men to round up every person going in and out of that bar and see if they can’t beat a confession out of them.”

  “Asshole,” Carrie muttered.

  Waylon looked in the rearview mirror at Rein. “So what’s the play? Which one do you want to talk to first?”

  “None of them,” Rein said.

  Carrie looked back, “What?”

  “We don’t have time to talk to all of them. Not while he still has that little girl. Every second we waste, he’s getting closer to his next identity.”

  “Krissing,” Waylon said, spitting the name out.

  “Walter always liked to groom his victims. To form a relationship with them and make them care for him. What condition we find the little girl in depends on fast we act.”

  “Why did Krissing try to bond with them if he was just going to torture them and kill them?” Carrie asked.

  “It made their suffering sweeter to him if it contained the element of betrayal.”

  Carrie gritted her teeth at the idea of Nubs being groomed by her mother’s killer. “I’m going to kill this bastard when we find him. I swear to God, even if he didn’t touch a hair on Nubs’s head, I’m going to kill him.”

  “Let’s just find her first,” Waylon said. “So if we aren’t going to start interviewing these suspects, what are we doing, Jacob?”

  “Sociopaths come in contact most with mental health agencies when they are children,” Rein said. “Parents, neighbors, teachers at school, the parents of other kids, Children and Youth agencies—they all form a sort of protective shield around juveniles. Society works very hard to keep children safe. It’s the one thing we do right. Once they turn eighteen, we cast them out into the world.”

  “That all sounds great, but are you going to tell me what we’re doing or not?” Waylon said. “I’m just driving, so at least tell me if I’m going the right way.”

  “You’re going the right way. We need to speak to the doctors at the Vieira Juvenile Center. They will tell us who our most likely candidates are.”

  Waylon weighed the idea, pursing his lips together until his mustache hung down to his chin. Eventually, he said, “Not bad. I had the same idea. Just wanted to make sure you were on the same page.”

  “Bullshit,” Carrie said.

  “That hurts my feelings, young lady,” Waylon said.

  “Your heart will just have to go on.”

  * * *

  Vieira Juvenile Center was another boxy, gray government building built by the same contractor who built all the other boxy, gray buildings in the region. The genius of closed-contract projects where high-level elected officials were allowed to decide which of their cousins or nephews would be awarded those contracts. Half the money allocated for the building actually made it there, with the other half being doled out behind closed doors.

  In Coyote Township, the head of the Board of Supervisors had been loyal to the Republican party for long enough that he’d been awarded a position at the County, overseeing roads and highway maintenance. In return, he hired all the sons-in-law and cousins of other Republicans in the county who had not been smart enough or had a clean-enough record to become deputy sheriffs or courthouse security guards.

  County jobs came with pensions and benefits, paid well, and were hard to lose. In the nearby cities, the scams and leeching were the exact same, but instead they called themselves Democrats. The party did not matter. It was just a façade that the people in charge used to disguise themselves. Corruption runs deep in any government; it is just more apparent in the smaller ones.

  Rein followed Carrie and Waylon up the winding concrete steps, past the barren hill where grass did not grow. The windows were blacked over, revealing only the outlines of figures standing behind them like apparitions. Rein could see someone’s hands pressed flat against the window and heard a loud thump that shook the glass, and then a second thump that made Carrie and Waylon both turn their heads. They heard a muffled scream. The hands withdrew from the window, and it was empty once more.

  “I hate this place,” Carrie said as they neared the top.

  “Believe it or not, they do good work here,” Waylon told her. “At least, they do the best with what they have.”

  An abandoned basketball court sat to the side of the entrance, a rim with no net drooping from its bolts on a ruined backboard. The pole was eaten through with rust, and grass grew up through the court’s cracked asphalt. Unused picnic tables sat on one side of the court, outside of the windows, within full view of the locked rooms inside. Rein remembered the County’s proud announcement that they were installing an outdoor recreation facility at the Juvenile Center for the low cost of $2 million, including a garden and patio and tennis court and picnic area for families to spend time together, to foster bonds that would carry them into the future once they were reunited.

  The public had fought the project, claiming the little burglars and sexual deviants did not deserve such coddling, and the County seemed to cave, scaling back the original design to something much less costly. They let enough time pass for the public to move on to other pressing matters before construction began. Somehow they’d still run over the original $2 million budget building just the half-court and picnic area.

  Waylon held the door open. “After you.”

  The lobby was a wide, open room with secondhand couches and garish orange paint with diagonal lines of green and tan striped from one wall to the other. Framed cartoon drawings showed small children holding hands beneath a smiling sun. The secretary at the counter sat behind thick glass that she did not slide open as they approached. Rein waited as she turned the pages of a slick entertainment magazine, then said, “Hello
,” waiting for her to look up.

  At last she did, saying, “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, we’d like to speak to the doctor in charge of sexual offenders.”

  “And you are?”

  She eyed Rein, trying to decide where she knew him from, her head tilting clockwise as if the weight of her brain was making her head lopsided. Waylon nudged him aside, slapping his large, gold chief shield against the window and said, “Chief William Waylon, Coyote Township. We’re investigating two homicides. Call the doctor, please.”

  “A chief, huh?” she said, looking at the badge as she picked up her phone. “I didn’t know chiefs investigated crimes.”

  “In all fairness, he’s not really doing much of the investigating,” Rein said.

  Waylon turned his head between the two of them and said, “All these years, and you’re still not funny.”

  “Oh, I’m funny,” Rein said.

  “You are the least funny person I know.”

  “Then you must know some really funny people.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “Ask her,” Rein said.

  Waylon looked at Carrie. “Is he funny?”

  “Kind of,” she said, casting an eye on Rein. “I guess so?”

  “She’s just being polite,” Waylon said.

  “Well, is Bill funny?” Rein said. “I mean, aside from that mustache?”

  Carrie laughed, then covered her mouth. “Sorry, Chief.”

  “See?” Rein said. “Funny.”

  The door opened next to the reception glass, and a dark-skinned woman with short hair looked out at them. She addressed Waylon first. “I’m Dr. Shelly, can I help you?” Her voice slowed to a trickle as she looked past him and saw Rein. “Jacob?”

  “Hello, Linda.”

  Her large eyes turned toward him. “What are you doing here?”

  “The usual,” he said.

  She inspected Waylon and Carrie, assessing them both and determining they were police, her face bearing the natural distrust all social worker and mental health professionals have for them, then back at Rein. “Is that the right thing for you to be doing?”