Chill Factor

by Chris Rogers

  “Neither,” Banning corrected. “More of a … an elite clique. And it never seemed that we were committing crimes, but I suppose we skirted the edges. When one of the professors—Spangler—made it clear he didn’t like our elitist attitude, Jay convinced female students to write out complaints against him—for sexual harassment, although of course that term hadn’t been coined yet. Professor Spangler was so demoralized he would’ve resigned on the spot, only the dean talked him out of it. A month later, a guard found the professor’s car in the parking lot. He was drunk in the backseat with a female student bruised and crying. Next day, Spangler left the school. Quietly.”

  “But it was your gang who roughed up the girl?” Carter asked pointedly.

  “Nothing could be proved, but the dean blamed us. A few weeks later, an associate professor—a woman with a ‘rumored’ drug addiction—was found passed out naked by the swimming pool with a quantity of LSD tabs. After the Spangler situation, she’d have been asked to leave, too, but somehow Jay hushed it up—without anyone ever discovering that we were instrumental in the woman ending up by the pool. From that day on, she was in Jay’s pocket, providing everything from confidential files to”—Banning cleared his throat—“group sex.”

  According to The People’s computer files, Tesche had utilized a similar combination of blackmail and control tactics to construct a network that now stretched across the nation. Black lines crisscrossed a map connecting a Texas senator, several state representatives, a New York City bank president, an immigration agent, key personnel in the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Treasury, and, in Los Angeles, a legendary Hollywood producer.

  Some of these people were of no real consequence politically, but they could obtain information, deliver messages, accidentally lose important papers. Councilman Gib Gibson, without even knowing it, had nearly become Mike’s latest token.

  What Tesche planned to do with this network no one had yet figured out. If he could create the havoc of this past week in one city, Dixie shuddered to think what he might have done in others.

  “I’m still unclear why Tesche, after all these years, conducted such an elaborate scam to even an old score with you, Mayor.”

  “Because he could, cher.” Doc Arceneaux interrupted, “All the reason he needed.” Thirty-two years in Houston and Doc still talked like a Cajun TV chef, but his folksiness made him popular among the ranks. “Tesche, he’s a narcissist. Relates to people only as they can satisfy his own desires. Those who won’t? Or can’t? Disposable, like used Kleenex. We’re seeing this narcissist type more and more. Don’t like your teacher? Go get Daddy’s rifle, shoot up the school. Blow all the suckers away. Experts like me hate to admit it, but these kids don’t fit the profile of parental abuse, neglect, no. Like Ted Kaczynski. Like Kip Kinkel—fifteen years old, from Oregon, kills his parents, two school friends, wounds twenty-two others. Solid families they come from. Not perfect, but good mommas, good daddies, people who care about their kids. But also overindulge their kids. All that permissiveness from the sixties, thinking any physical discipline is child abuse, no matter how infrequent or judicious. Creating well-educated monsters who see humanity as one big Christmas stocking, full of goodies they can demand—”

  “Doc,” Carter argued, “I don’t see it. Tesche didn’t blow anybody away. He got others to do his dirty work.”

  “Smart lady, this FBI agent,” Doc said. “Yes, cher. Unlike Kinkel and the Unabomber, Tesche discovered the art of finesse. He has charm, patience. He makes people bombs. His desire to even the score with an old college mate sits on a shelf in his mind. Until the right moment. Then he wraps Avery Banning in his web and moves in. Not for the kill. For control. My question, Mayor—” Arceneaux stopped to pencil a note on the unpainted drywall. “What terrible injustice did you do to Mr. Tesche?”

  Everyone in the room had followed Doc’s explanation with rapt attention. Now they turned that attention to Banning. From Tesche’s files at The People’s training center, which were still being examined, they knew he had studied cult mind-set and had added that tool to his arsenal.

  The Mayor wiped a bead of sweat from his cheek. “A kid named Beagle … no, his real name was Joe Brickle, but we gave him the nickname because he was such a loyal dog. Joe wanted so damn bad to belong. So we pushed him. ‘Do this, Beagle, do that… you can make it, Beagle … no, that’s not right, try harder, you can do it.’ Only Joe Brickle couldn’t make it. He was a screwup …”

  Banning shot a glance at Arceneaux. “I overheard his last session with Jay, and I’ve relived it in my nightmares ever since. ‘Beagle, the only way a screwup like you will ever achieve greatness is postmortem,’ Jay told him. Like soldiers who charge a line of fire and die in action. Dying takes courage. You have that kind of courage, Beagle. You may never achieve anything else significant, but you have that kind of courage.’ Later that night, Beagle climbed to the top of the highest building on campus and jumped.”

  In the silence that followed this, a gust of air brushed the polyethylene against Dixie’s shoulder and fanned the room with paint fumes.

  “You’re talking mind control,” Carter said.

  “If you’ve never experienced it, cher, sit in on a snake handler’s revival meeting. I defy you to stay immune to the magnetism these people have.”

  The Mayor sighed. “Jay Tesche chose his students with intense care—men who were low in self-esteem, impressionable, desperate to believe in something. From there, he simply figured out what each one wanted and provided it in carefully measured doses.”

  “You knew all this, yet you went along with him?” Carter’s voice sharpened.

  “I was impressionable. Hell, in college, isn’t every kid ripe for changing the world?” When no one commented, Banning continued. “But I turned Jay in. Later, I needed to understand, and I backtracked everything Jay had studied. He was brilliant, so some of what he did was over my head, but it included a lot of fringe techniques that were theoretically debatable—sleep deprivation, subaudial and subliminal commands, positive and negative reinforcement—” Banning looked around and seemed to notice the mass bewilderment.

  Arceneaux waved him silent. “Take a young man—woman—who’s never excelled. Who’s starved for approval. Pick a skill he’s good at and praise him. Pick another—something he’s not so good, but maybe could do with practice. Praise him, he’ll improve. First time he messes up, take away approval. ‘You let me down, hey? I trusted you, believed in you, look how you repay my trust—by not living up to what I know you can do.’ He’ll walk through fire to regain your approval. It’s a classic method for handling unruly adolescents.”

  “Doesn’t work with my kids,” the junior agent muttered.

  “You’re not Jay Tesche,” Banning said softly.

  “What happened?” Carter asked. “Tesche was kicked out of school?”

  “He agreed to leave. You see, I had no proof, only my word. Joe Brickle wasn’t drugged. He climbed to the roof alone and dove off in front of half the school.”

  “And what happened to your … elite clique?”

  “After Jay left, the group broke up. Grades fell off. Athletes who excelled while we were together lost their edge. Some dropped out before graduation. Jay was the magnet that pulled us together and the inspiration that made us excel. Without him, we had little in common … except shame.”

  Without him, what would happen to the women who found solace at The Winning Stretch, aka the Church of The Light? Angela with her woman-child mannerisms? Rose, locked in her private room? Would she ever come out? Had Tesche stockpiled enough cash to support the self-contained Church over time?

  “So, let me get this straight,” Carter said crisply. “To retaliate for your turning him in nineteen years ago, Tesche organized three bank robberies, engineered police shootings of two women, then assassinated two officers and the Police Chief. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just shoot you?”

  Ba
nning shrugged. “I suppose he wanted to see me drummed very publicly out of office. Humiliated, as he was all those years ago.”

  “Revenge.” Doc wrote the word large on the wall, then struck through it. “You’re getting hung up on it. But that was only lagniappe to Tesche. To him, the whole charade was all a game.”

  A game, a con. Mike Tesche had fooled everyone. Dixie figured that should make her feel better about being sucked in. Maybe in a hundred years it would.

  Chapter Seventy-three

  The Suds Club on a Monday offered precisely the level of raucous anonymity Dixie needed. Owned by a former prosecutor who, like Dixie, had seen the justice scales tipping the wrong way too often, the club attracted lawyers the way a scab attracts fingernails. They came here to drown the day’s miseries, hoping to see their courtroom cohorts and opponents soused in even greater misery.

  The familiar scent of yeast from the ninety-nine varieties on tap and soap suds from the adjacent laundromat engulfed Dixie as she entered. A rock-and-roll goodie, recorded by a local band called “The Convictions,” all current or former prosecutors, played on the Wurlitzer. Dixie found her usual corner booth, ordered a Shiner Bock, and unplugged the vintage Pabst sign lighting the niche. She wanted no company tonight.

  “Antisocial?” Belle slid her classy rump on the opposite seat.

  “Can’t you take the hint?”

  “And miss out on an opportunity to needle you?”

  “Domestic socialite like you should be home with the hubby and kiddies.”

  “Go ahead, take shots at the good life, Flanni. You could have it, too, if you weren’t so damned hardheaded.” Belle twirled her wineglass on a bar coaster and dropped the barb from her voice. “From what I hear, you eliminated the blind lady from the equation today.”

  “A defense lawyer’s supposition. My hands were nowhere near the garrote that ended Mike Tesche’s life. And Philip Laskey will survive to stand trial. I gave him your card.”

  “Can he afford me?”

  “You might find deeper pockets among the twenty-seven accomplices. But I think maybe this one’s worth saving. You’ll work it out.”

  Belle twirled the glass some more. “What happened out there?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” She related the string of disasters that ended at The People’s training center. “Mike Tesche could read people as easily as you and I can read this beer label—”

  “The one you’ve almost destroyed.”

  “He picked up on vulnerability and knew exactly when and how to draw you in. Dammit, I liked the guy! What does that say about my judgment?”

  “Maybe that you’re more human than you like to let on.”

  “Tesche was scary, Ric, but not the only manipulator out there waiting to pounce.” In the past week, Dixie’d been played for a sap emotionally, financially, psychologically, and she wasn’t even sure she liked her new hairstyle. “How do we protect the people we care about from predators?”

  “Protecting everybody you care about sounds like a big job to take on.”

  “Barney would say, ‘It’s the tough jobs that make us, lass.’”

  “Didn’t your sainted father also say, ‘Experience is the best teacher—if not always the gentlest’? Maybe it’s not your place to shoulder everyone’s experience.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “From what you told me, Edna decided to renew her life. Met a number of new friends, enjoyed new experiences even before she met Tesche—”

  “Some of those new friends were cons.”

  “Or just businesspeople. Would you have denied Edna the new clothes? The day spa?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You admit that Terrence Jackson checked out fine. And the astrologer-slash-shrink did help Edna lose weight.”

  “If you’re trying to reason me out of a funk, forget it. It’s been a damn rotten week.” Dixie signaled the waitress to bring another Shiner and another glass of wine for Belle.

  The lawyer’s shrewd gray eyes leveled at Dixie. “Did you and Parker have a clash before you went to see Tesche?”

  Dixie’s pager had recorded two messages from Parker and the usual from Amy and Ryan. Dixie had returned the calls to her sister and nephew.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on between Parker and me. He beckons with one hand and pushes me away with the other.” Their drinks came. When the waitress left, Dixie raised her bottle to Belle’s glass. “To the freedom to funk.”

  Belle drank to the toast but smiled thinly. “Flannigan, I once defended a poet who talked about love. You meet this soul mate, he said, this person your heart knows is perfection, who completes you, who fills you with song. Life is so good you could die right then and be forever grateful for a few days of bliss. Then, with time, you notice the rough edges. She slurps her coffee. She nags you about smoking. She talks too loud with your friends. You make suggestions, smooth out the parts you don’t appreciate. Then you see a few shallow spots—she doesn’t feel as deeply about certain things as you do. You begin to whittle and reshape this soul mate to fit an ideal in your mind, the same person your heart once knew was perfection.”

  “In other words, I’m a stubborn fool. What did you defend this poet against?”

  “Killed seven women. Claimed he was madly in love with every one of them.”

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Tuesday

  Dixie’s students had heard her name in the news again. She spent most of the first hour explaining how it felt to be shot. She couldn’t talk about Mike Tesche yet; they seemed to respect that. She ignored Joan’s fresh bruises and, toward the end of class, finally got in some instruction.

  “How’s your son?” she asked Lureen on the way out.

  “Little pissant wants to be a cop.” A grin illuminated the woman’s face. “One week the other side a them effin’ bars, seeing uniforms on the free side. Tell me it don’t matter who they hang wit’.”

  Dixie hugged her. She’d been giving out a lot of hugs since she took the garrote from Philip Laskey’s hand. Give one to get one. Cows going to slaughter.

  Dixie left the center without glancing into Mike’s empty classroom. All the way down the hall she could swear she heard the muted sounds of Mozart. Or maybe it was Bach.

  Pointing the Mustang toward Amy’s house, she dialed her number on the cell phone.

  “I’m fine,” Dixie told her sister, before she could ask. “No broken bones, no bullet holes.” The crease in her arm didn’t count. Luckily, the full details of Mike’s death hadn’t been released yet, so Amy wasn’t as panicked as she might’ve been. “Is Marty around?”

  The copied pages of Edna’s journal lay on the passenger seat, topping a handful of mail from Dixie’s post-office box. Marty would find some of his mother’s words painful. But others, Dixie knew, would surely grant him the peace he’d desperately sought for so many years.

  “Marty went to see Belle, then he’s flying back to Dallas. Last night, he sprinkled Edna’s ashes in her garden. He’s going to be all right. He said to tell you that Ashton agreed to sign a partnership agreement. Dixie, have you talked with Parker?”

  No. She hadn’t returned his calls, but she’d listened twice to his messages on her voice mail. “Don’t worry, Amy, I’ll call him. First I want to talk to my nephew. Is he around?”

  “You just missed him. He rode his bike to the park.”

  This time Dixie had a notion at which park to find Ryan. She spotted his scrawny, T-shirt-clad shoulders and eased the Mustang out of sight at the curb. His bicycle was slanted against a tree, a dirt bike close by. Ryan sat at a picnic table. A man—sandy hair, tattoos, black tank top—sat on top of the table, booted feet on the seat, arms resting on his knees.

  As Dixie aimed a directional microphone, she recalled the King Pin posture Ryan had taken as he traded porno with his peers. The man on the table sat in command, despite his casual pose. Dixie hadn’t liked Ryan’s big-man-on-ca
mpus posture, but his subservience to this guy chilled her.

  “Did you look at those last photographs before you sold them?” The man spoke low and secretively, his voice husky.

  Ryan shrugged, that familiar lazy roll of his narrow shoulders. “Sure. I mean, you know, sort of.”

  “You knew those were models, didn’t you? Posing like that. Not really doing what it looked like.”

  “Really?” Ryan clearly hadn’t known.

  “Looked real, though, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Kids make a bundle, modeling like that.”

  Ryan didn’t say anything.

  “Takes a good-looking kid like you to make the big bucks.” Then he stared out at the park. “Nice town you’ve got here, but kinda slow. You travel much?”

  “No. It’s okay here.”

  “Yeah, real nice. But like I said, kinda slow. You said there’s an arcade? Any girls there?”

  Ryan shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  “You’re not into girls? I mean like into?” He laughed and punched Ryan’s arm. “Bet you’ve got something they’re hot for.” He laughed again. “Hanging down to your knees, I bet.”

  Ryan’s weak chuckle sounded embarrassed.

  Dixie dialed HPD Vice Division. She knew someone who would handle this the way it needed to be handled, to take this slimeball off the streets—and off the Internet.

  But she also knew he might make them as cops. Leaving the microphone positioned and a recorder going, she strolled casually across the grass, behind Ryan’s line of sight, as if headed to the water fountain. When she was close, she veered and straddled the guy’s dirt bike.

  “What the shit, bitch—?”

  “Nice wheels,” Dixie commented.

  “Aunt Dix?!”

  “I’ve been listening to your conversation with my nephew.”

  “Me and the kid were just talking.” He slid off the picnic table and started toward her.

  Dixie casually exposed the .38, holster unsnapped for quick access. He stopped walking.