by Ed Gaffney
But no matter how much Zack didn’t want to face it, this time, he had to. His father’s contention that it would be hard to prove that the judge double-dipped was something that could not be ignored. So Zack took a deep breath, exhaled, and then said what he must have known would seal the deal. “Well, I wouldn’t do this unless I was sure that a motion for new trial would succeed, but if I had to, I’d call you as a witness at an evidentiary hearing, and ask you about it in open court.”
Zack had always referred to his father as Angry Dad, and it looked like Terry was about to get a firsthand demonstration why. “Oh. You’re going to call me as a witness? Are you serious, Zachary? And just what do you think is going to happen—assuming that I can’t quash any subpoena you try to use to get me in there in the first place? Do you think I’m going to sell myself down the river and admit I took that money from Alan Lombardo?” He was getting good and worked up, now. “Well think again, sonny. Let me give you a little fatherly advice, okay? Do not put me on that stand. Not only will I contradict everything you put in your motion for new trial, but I will tear your buddy here a new asshole, and then we’ll see who gets disbarred.”
The judge was obviously talking about that time a couple of years ago when Terry threw a well-deserved punch at Kenny Lakey, an assistant district attorney who, at the time, was the biggest douche bag in New England.
“You know what?” Terry couldn’t take this shit anymore. “If you’re talking about that jerk Lakey, I’ll take my chances. He was coaching his witnesses to lie. I heard him in the hallway outside the courtroom, clear as a bell. And for your information, he threatened me first.”
By now, Angry Dad’s hands were shaking, and his face was baboon’s-ass red. “I tell you what, boys,” he squeezed out of his clenched teeth as he headed for the door. “You think long and hard about what you want to do. Because I swear to God, if you try to ruin me over this, you are going to find out just how powerful a federal judge really is.”
SEVENTEEN
My Dear Vera,
Once again, I find myself seeking your forgiveness.
Not, of course, for Mr. Seta. I realize that it is well outside of your purview to absolve me of any guilt I might choose to carry as a result of his death.
Indeed, there may be no absolution available to me from any source after what I did to that man’s face. What a courageous individual he was. It was a privilege to take such a life.
But back to my apology to you.
I truly regret the timing of my last letter, in which I identified Mr. Seta as the next one to die at my hand.
I simply did not give you a fair chance, did I? The code in that letter certainly wasn’t unbreakable, but it was time-consuming enough to make it impossible to solve between the time you received it and the time you learned that my good friend Laurence had met me, and with me, his fate.
So this diary entry will not only tell you who I am going to cause to suffer, but when I will do it. You will see, I trust, that I have learned to be more than generous not only with my hints, but with the time you will need to act upon them.
September 12.
I have resolved to strike again. And again, I find myself consumed with excitement.
Joy’s soul lies in the doing.
But before I begin my work, I must confide in you certain secrets, because as you know, I find myself compelled to share information with Detective Demopolous. I would not wish any companion in the world but her.
She, of course, knows me not. But she is keenly aware that I watch her often, from a respectful distance. I cannot help but believe that there are times she focuses on a face in a crowd, and thinks, “That one may smile, and smile, and yet prove a villain.”
Her goal is simple. She must catch me, and thus avoid more killing, more death. So noble a calling, but I fear a futile one. I believe it was Shakespeare who said, “For what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? And live how we can, yet die we must.”
Still, I treasure Detective Vera’s efforts, her very presence in my humble life. She makes this little world, this precious stone set in the silver heavens, my playground. And I owe her deeply for that.
My friend, I know that I torture, and that I kill. I know that I am weak. But forbear to judge, for we be sinners all.
Dearest Vera, I am returned to you.
If the good people of the postal service deliver this missive in a manner consistent with their previous efforts, it should reach you well before my next action. You should have a minimum of twenty-four hours to take whatever steps you deem appropriate.
I have a great deal of admiration and respect for you, Dear Vera, but I do not think you will stop me. I suspect that when I next write to you, it will be to bring you tidings of my latest endeavors, and to assure you that the victim did suffer, before dying.
I remain, Eternally Yours.
P.S. “All trust, a few love.”
(Seta Homicide Evidence ID Number 13)
September 14
Vera slammed the letter down. Okay. Now she was mad.
That was unusual.
She always felt that one of her strengths as a policewoman was her ability to be somewhat emotionally detached from the crimes she sought to prevent, or the criminals she sought to apprehend. Of course she hated murder, and of course she hated murderers, but when she was on duty, she was usually able to let the cooler, more professional part of her take care of the police work.
But this was different.
First of all, she was completely grossed out by the disgusting and really creepy way this guy wrote to her and about her, as if he had adopted her as his—whatever.
But worse than that was the way he described what he did to Laurence Seta.
Some of the people closest to Vera were elderly men and women. Her grandmother was now well over eighty, and she was probably the best friend Vera had in the world. And for Grandma’s boyfriend, Galen, as he put it, “Seventy disappeared in the rearview mirror a long time ago.”
So the idea that some jerk would deliberately target, torture, and murder an old man was just too much for Vera to take without getting emotionally fired up.
She was getting a headache.
Screw this guy. She was going to break this code, and bust this loser once and for all.
According to the letter, they had until tomorrow sometime.
Ellis walked into the conference room with a folder and a legal pad he had been working on for the past three hours. The cream cheese that had somehow found its way onto his shirtsleeve this morning was mercifully gone.
“You okay?” he said.
Vera exhaled deeply. “I just want this to be over,” she said.
“You know if this case is getting to you, you should talk to somebody.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Easy for you to say. You’re married.”
Ellis smiled. He had kind eyes. “Listen. I’m just saying if it ever gets to be too much, come on over. We’ll have a few beers. Mi casa es su casa. Key’s always under the mat.”
“Thanks.” He might be a bit of a slob, but there was no denying that Ellis was a good guy. And then Vera noticed the pad he was carrying. She pointed to it. “You getting anywhere?”
Ellis sat down next to her and showed her the pad. “Okay. We had the time to type this thing into the computer, and there aren’t any misspellings. But we do have something, I think.”
He showed her a list of sentences he’d written on the pad. “Look at these.”
1. Joy’s soul lies in the doing.
2. I would not wish any companion in the world but her.
3. “That one may smile, and smile, and yet prove a villain.”
4. “For what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? And live we how we can, yet die we must.”
5. This little world, this precious stone set in the silver heavens
6. But forbear to judge, for we be sinners all.
“Do they mean anything to you?”
“Not
hing. The language of some of them is pretty strange, but this guy sounds like a pompous loser. Maybe it’s just the way he writes.”
“Not him,” Ellis said. “Shakespeare.”
Vera looked again at the list. “These are all from Shakespeare?”
Ellis took another sheet of paper from the folder and showed it to her. “They’re pretty much word for word from five different plays. The first is from something called Troilus and Cressida, which I’ve never heard of, and I thought I knew a little about this stuff. The second is from The Tempest, the only comedy in the group. The third is from Hamlet, the fourth from Henry the Sixth, the fifth from Richard the Second, and the last one is from Henry the Sixth again.”
Oh great. Shakespeare. Vera’s headache grew. She was a decent student, but her strengths were history and geography. The only time she ever came close to liking Shakespeare was during freshman English in college, when they read one of the comedies. The teacher was so into it that he managed to make it fun for the whole class.
But if it was going to take a knowledge of Shakespeare to figure this out, she was going to be in a world of trouble.
Ellis continued. “We looked again at all the other letters he’s written, and there wasn’t any Shakespeare in any of them. So we figured whatever he’s trying to tell us has to be in these quotes.”
Vera looked at them again. “And there’s no chance these five plays were all about serial killers, right?”
Ellis smiled. “Well, Hamlet is about some pretty nasty characters, from what I remember. But I don’t think The Tempest is. I don’t know much about the other ones, though. I wonder if we should get an expert in here.”
But something about the way this murdering creep operated made Vera think that an expert in Shakespeare was not what they needed. The last letter didn’t need any kind of expert. Just a dictionary, a little time, and some Crazy Pete Thinking.
Crazy Pete was her grandmother’s cat, and he never entered or exited a car except through an open window. He slept on a shelf in the linen closet, and refused to drink anything except water with ice cubes in it.
Grandma always said it was just the way Crazy Pete looked at the world. And when presented with an unusual puzzle or mystery, Grandma always suggested Crazy Pete Thinking. The kind of thinking Zack used when he cracked the code in that first letter with all the unused letters.
“What about this P.S.?” Vera asked. “‘All trust, a few love’? What the heck does that mean?”
“That’s one thing we have figured out,” Ellis said. “It’s Shakespeare again, but it’s out of order. It’s from All’s Well That Ends Well. The quote, in order, is ‘Love all, trust a few.’”
“So where does that leave us?” Vera asked, stumped.
“Now we have seven passages from Shakespeare that we don’t know what the heck to do with.”
Vera pulled the list of quotes over in front of her again. The themes of the quotations varied, the lengths varied. Their meanings certainly didn’t provide a victim’s identity.
Something about that P.S. was bothering her, though. “I wonder if the clue in this message is hidden the same way that the clue in the first letter was hidden.”
Ellis looked up from some notes he was making. “I don’t think so. Like I said, nothing’s misspelled in this letter.”
“I don’t mean misspellings.” Vera took the book of quotations and started flipping through it. “You said these lines are pretty much word for word, right?”
“Pretty much. A few of them have a word wrong, though.” He paused. “Holy crap. That’s it, isn’t it?”
By this time, Vera was already looking up the actual quotes in the book. “Okay. The first one, ‘Joy’s soul lies in the doing.’ That’s exactly word for word.”
“What about the next one: ‘I would not wish any companion in the world but her’?”
Vera flipped through the reference book. “Here it is. ‘I would not wish any companion in the world but you.’ You, not her.”
Ellis scribbled YOU on a fresh sheet on the pad.
“The next one’s wrong, too,” Vera said. “The actual quote is: ‘That one may smile, and smile, and yet be a villain.’ Not ‘prove a villain.’”
Ellis wrote BE on the sheet in front of him.
Vera went on. And ‘For what is pomp, rule,’ and all that, should be ‘Why, what is pomp.’ ‘This precious stone’ isn’t ‘set in the silver heavens,’ it’s ‘set in the silver sea.’”
Ellis wrote down WHY, then SEA.
“And the last one, ‘But forbear to judge, for we be sinners all,’ is also wrong. That should be ‘for we are sinners all.’
Ellis wrote the last word down, and smiled at Vera. “We’re gonna get this Eternally Yours jackass, aren’t we?”
Twenty-Two Seconds
HE WAS TEN FEET AWAY FROM THE SHOOTER when Zack got his chance.
He was finally close enough so that he could just shove the chair at the gunman and hit him with enough force so that if the blow didn’t topple him, it would at least knock him off balance. And that would be all Zack needed.
By the time the shooter reoriented himself, Zack would be all over him, and this nightmare would end.
But just as he prepared to push the rolling chair toward the shooter, a powerful wave of vertigo swept over Zack. He clung to the chair for another moment, certain that if he let go, he’d immediately collapse, unconscious.
He inhaled deeply to gather himself, and took aim.
And then, before he could let go of the chair, his vision blurred, the world spun, and the floor came up and hit Zack in the shoulder.
Monster
STEPHANIE WAS GETTING DRESSED, BUT SOMETHING was different this morning. Apparently she had more time, and instead of racing around, in and out of the camera’s range, she was standing still, in front of her full-length mirror, trying different things on.
So he was getting something of a fashion show, including long looks at her naked, in her underwear, half clothed, putting clothes on, and more importantly, taking clothes off.
The low-cut tank top without a bra was by far his favorite.
He was getting aroused.
That was wrong. It was unquestionably very wrong for him to be a sexual voyeur like this. Watching her, of all people.
But he couldn’t stop himself.
The delicious perversion of it made the pleasure all the more intense.
But he didn’t want to let this aspect of the project overwhelm him. He had great things to accomplish, and distractions like the ones she was providing this morning were nothing compared to the real excitement he would get when he ultimately made direct contact with her.
She finally settled on the most boring outfit that she had tried on, and when she moved out of the camera’s range, he got back to the work he should have done some time ago.
He called up from his computer the digital images of Laurence Seta, the file he had labeled “L.” These would make interesting additions to the portrait of Stephanie that he was generating.
He retrieved the file of the young woman standing naked in front of her mirror with the wounds from the first two victims added to the image. Then he cut and pasted the two shots to Mr. Seta’s cheeks and the one directly into his forehead and added them to the appropriate parts of Stephanie.
Now she really looked like something out of a horror movie. Standing naked in front of the mirror with several gunshot wounds to her face, as well as her chest, vagina, and buttocks.
And of course there was the missing finger.
That image turned him on even more than the live girl trying on clothes while he secretly watched.
He shut off the computer before he got hopelessly mired in lust.
It was time to do some training.
He moved into the next room, which he had set up to resemble a shooting gallery of sorts.
It was more of a virtual shooting gallery, because as soundproofed as it was in here, there was always a chan
ce that the report of multiple gunshots would penetrate the barriers he’d set up, and all he needed was for the police to come around asking questions. They’d never find the secret entrance to this most private part of his home, but he liked to be in complete control of all official police contacts.
So instead of firing real bullets, he had a laser pistol, with a variety of targets.
But his training was not to sharpen his aim in the traditional sense. That was unnecessary. His live targets were always immobilized, and it was completely within his power to determine from what range he would shoot them.
This training was for dire circumstances.
Given the way he took care of all of the details surrounding each of his attacks, he didn’t believe he’d ever be foiled by the unexpected. He was extremely careful about the victims he selected, and he was always sure that whatever prey he had chosen was securely bound before the execution portion of the encounter began.
What he was training for was the unforeseen. Specifically, an approach from behind.
That’s where a lesser individual would fail. Sure, he had reason to be cocky—he’d gotten away with whatever he’d wanted for a long, long time. But just because he hadn’t been surprised yet didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
And he needed to make sure that if it did, he was ready.
The quiet approach of a relative or neighbor who somehow managed to gain access to the house unbeknownst to him. The unplanned arrival of a delivery when his back was to the door.
Anything.
So his goal was to be able to identify, just from sound, the location of a target, and visualize it so well that he could turn and shoot in one motion, with deadly accuracy.
Because this target would not be taped to a table or a chair. It would not be unconscious, or twitching feebly from countless volts of electricity blasted by a Taser.
This target would be fully mobile, and very motivated to run away.
He would have only one shot, maybe two. He needed to be sure that at least one of those two shots would be lethal.