by David Beers
He pulled out a pair of handcuffs he'd bought at a novelty store on the seedier side of town. He slapped one on her wrist and one on the industrial machine pumping out all the cold air.
"See you in a little while," Bradley said. He walked out and closed the garage door behind him. It only took him a second to understand where he messed up. The girl's shrieks easily permeated the freezer. "Fuck." He had a room that was sound proof, but it wasn't the garage.
He went to the kitchen, gathered what he needed, and rushed back.
"That's not going to work for me," he said as he approached her. Silver duct tape in one hand, a rag in the other. The woman tried to back up, to get away from him, but there was nowhere to go.
"PLEASE!" she shrieked.
Bradley stopped walking toward her. "You want to go home?"
"Yes, please. Please. I won't tell."
"Tell you what, if you can survive a night in here, and then me surgically removing your eyes, I'll let you go."
He crossed the distance, ignoring her shrieks, and shoved the rag deep into her throat before wrapping the duct tape around her head.
Bradley wasn't tired when he got off work the next day. He had worked a twelve hour shift but didn't feel it in the slightest; he was like a kid on Christmas.
He drove home, following the speed limit, but only barely. He had told Charlie about what waited at the house, Charlie nodding along as usual. He was beginning to wonder if Charlie could actually understand the joy that came with what Bradley was doing. Perhaps no one could, not if they didn't experience it themselves.
Later, he told himself. Now just get home.
Once he pulled in the driveway, he quickly made his way through the house, unlocking the garage door and stepping into his freezer.
"Oh, God," he said, a smile spreading across his face even in the room's cold darkness. "Oh, God, yes."
The girl sat against the industrial freezer, her head tilted slightly down and to the left. Her eyes were open, and Bradley could see tiny ice crystals on her eyelashes. Her skin was blue with a white sheen to it—the ice freezing to her.
Bradley walked over and knelt down. He didn't try to lift her head up, knowing that the muscles and ligaments were frozen in place. Instead he dipped his own head down so that they stared into each other's eyes.
"Oh, yes. Yes. Yes."
The bright blue looked back at him, unharmed by the cold. Ready to stare at him forever.
Chapter 6
"I'm about to call it a night," Tommy said.
Christian didn't need to look at a clock to know the time; it was well past three in the morning. The paperwork was finished and they knew what they would say to the rest of the police and agents tomorrow, well … Actually today, at seven in the morning.
Christian hadn't been alone much in over thirty-six hours and he could barely stand it. He had managed to keep from saying it out loud, though.
"Sounds good," Luke said from the whiteboard. He hadn't written anything on it, only stared at it for the past thirty minutes.
"He does that," Tommy had said. "You just have to get used to it."
"Christian," Luke called from across the room. "I can give you a ride home if you’d like?"
"I'd rather call a taxi," he blurted out, unable to hold it back.
Luke and Tommy both laughed.
"Well, you might rather, but that's not happening," Luke said, stepping back from the whiteboard and walking to one of the chairs at the bar. He pulled his jacket off it. "Let's go. You're only a half hour from here."
The three walked upstairs and onto the grounds of Luke's estate.
"How much money do you have?" Christian asked. "Like, just a general amount is fine. I don't need it down to the pennies."
Tommy shook his head and unlocked his car door. "I'll see you two in a few hours. Try to get some sleep."
The door closed and Christian looked over to Luke. The driveway they stood on was a quarter mile long, extending to a gate at the very end. The driveway ended in a circle just in front of the house, a small garden sitting in the middle. Lights illuminated the front of the house, casting artful shadows while at the same time showing the superb landscaping.
"I don't have a lot of taste," Christian said, "but all this looks really nice and I imagine it's pretty expensive to keep up. So how much are you worth?"
"Somewhere between three and five million," Luke said. "Come, let's go."
Christian climbed inside the car, easily the most expensive one he'd ever sat in. An electric car, and when Luke started it, no sound emanated from the engine.
"That's weird," Christian said, though he knew it would happen. "You're always used to hearing the engine crank up."
"You get used to this, too," Luke said.
Christian looked over at Luke as they circled around the driveway. His hair was short and wavy, his face thin and angular. The shirt he wore wasn't tight, but Christian could see muscle resting beneath.
"I wanted to talk to you, Christian," he said.
"About what?"
"What you did today. How did you know what was in the eye? Tommy wasn't paying attention, neither was Roger, so both of them thought you looked up to see it. You didn't, though. You knew what was there before it'd even been pulled out."
Christian turned his head and stared out the window.
"I don't know."
"I think you do. I'd like you to tell me."
"I just ... I'm starting to see him. I can't explain it any better than that." Christian hated talking about this. He had hated it in grade-school when his teachers asked him how he knew who stole something from their desk. He hated it in college, when he was able to make massive jumps of logic that none of the other students could. He hated explaining himself.
"Don't go away, Christian. Don't go into yourself. I saw you do that for a short time today. I'd like you to speak to me now. What do you mean you're starting to see him?"
Christian sighed. "I ... uh ... Do you have a girlfriend?"
"Me? Not for quite some time," Luke said.
"Have you had one?"
"Yes, in the past."
"I've never had one, so this might not be right. But, I imagine the more time you spend around a woman, the more you can anticipate her thoughts, actions, things like that. Am I right?"
"Yes," Luke said.
"Well, the more time I spend around the crime scene, the more clearly I can see him. Only, the major difference is, I'm seeing his past. I'm understanding what made him do this."
Luke didn't look over and was quiet for a second, before saying, "And you think his past will help us find him?"
"Numbers are motivated to work following the logic inherent inside them. Humans are motivated to work following the logic inside them as well, only that logic was built off of their past. If we understand someone's past, we'll understand their future."
Luke drove back to his house alone. He kept the windows rolled up and the radio off, listening to the sound of the car’s tires rotating at a hundred miles per hour down the highway.
Luke had waited two years without beginning what he came here to do. Partly, that was because he needed to increase his bonafides, and partly because he wanted to know the landscape. Now he'd accomplished both endeavors, and had been seriously considering starting.
He didn't know what to do with Christian Windsor.
Emotionally stunted, but with abilities the rest of the world could barely imagine. Even with his arrested emotional development, Christian understood these gifts well. The comparison to a girlfriend had been masterful.
Luke switched lanes, passing a car without looking over.
Luke didn't worry; he hadn't his whole life. The world had been easy, since his earliest memories at two years old. There was nothing to worry about once you understood that even God couldn't strike you down. Ten years ago, Luke decided why he had been placed here, and he spent the last ten years fully understanding it. He had played around with his purpose a bi
t in academia, but knew that he would truly reach his potential within the FBI.
He didn't fear Christian Windsor, but thought the boy could make things harder for him. His intelligence might even rival Luke's own, and his insight into human behavior ... Luke had worked to mask his past, so that the truth of his birth and adolescence would never be known by anyone. But if Christian could understand his past simply by being around him ...
Luke would need to deal with it.
Christian walked up the stairs to his condo; he'd kept it while at Quantico, renting it out until this last semester when he knew he might return. It looked nothing like Luke’s house, but that was okay with Christian. He didn't think he'd be able to handle something that large, especially not living by himself. He liked the smallness of his condominium. It reminded him of his mom's house.
He put his bag down on the kitchen table and picked up the landline.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Mom. Sorry to wake you, I just wanted to let you know I'm home."
"I wasn't asleep. You know I haven't been sleeping well lately."
"I know. Did you take melatonin?"
"No. We both know it doesn't work, and you're just trying to use it as a placebo on me," she said.
Christian smiled. He rarely did it around people, but his mother brought it out with no problem.
"Get some sleep, son. Call me tomorrow, okay?"
"Okay, Mom."
Christian hung up the phone. He pulled his computer from his bag and walked to his bedroom, lying down, and opening the laptop on his chest. He opened his music program and then placed the computer to his side, letting the songs begin their endless loop.
He'd been able to explain what he did to Luke because he had to do it before. People had been asking him that question his entire life—how he did what he did. His mother was the one that helped him figure out the right answer, the one about the girlfriend. Christian wouldn't have thought of that on his own if he had a million years.
His eyes glazed over and he found himself in the room named Surgeon.
Even the music playing in his bedroom couldn't make its way in here. He was alone, his own mind the only thing he had or wanted for company.
"What happened to you?" he asked as he stared at the pictures on the wall. The headless torso, the cut having been ragged and rough. Whoever did this wasn't used to cutting things, at least not yet. "Maybe you don't like it. Maybe you only did that to leave us a message. That you’re brutal."
Because it had been unnecessary, cutting the head off like that. When what he wanted, apparently, were the eyes—or at least one of them.
Christian looked to his right and saw the room moving, remodeling itself to fit his needs. The digital wall had changed, turning into another door. He went to it, knowing that by the time he crossed the threshold, the rest would be ready on the other side.
He opened it and found himself in a fully dark room. He heard the door close behind him, but there was no fear in this place, regardless how black it grew. Christian might fear the outside world, but his mind ruled here.
Christian Windsor finds himself in someone else's life. The room he just stood in is gone, just as reality left when he entered his mansion.
Now he stands in someone else's home, though much of it is hazy. This happens when he's first learning of someone; he can't see everything correctly in the beginning, because he doesn't know the person well enough yet.
The house isn't small, like Christian's apartment. He walks through the living room, the furniture looking like smudged ink, unable to make out much more than the shape of chairs or couches. He heads to a bedroom, and finally, the room clears up some.
He sees a single bed against the wall, and a small television sitting on a chest-of-drawers. A computer is on a table.
"You're not married," he says to the empty room. "No one ever comes over to your place, though it's big enough to have them if you wanted. You're lonely, though you don't know it. You've been lonely your whole life, haven't you?"
This strengthens Christian's vision some, the connection between him and this killer. Loneliness. Christian understood loneliness even if the man who lived here couldn't. He moves to the drawers but doesn't pull them open; he knows that he will see nothing but a hazy dream world even if he did, his vision not strong enough for that yet.
He looks to his left and sees an open bathroom door; through it, he sees a sink which is completely clean. A single toothbrush sits in a holder, yet he sees no toothpaste. No discarded medicine bottles. Not even any hair.
"You're clean. Meticulous even. And you think that's going to help you do all of this, because you won't leave anything for anyone to find."
Christian waits for a second, staring at the bathroom though not venturing to it. "This was your first one." The thought comes to him in a giant leap. The bathroom gives it to him. The cleanliness of it all. Murder affects people, their minds, and this person's mind hasn't been changed yet. It hasn't been altered.
"This was your first, but it's not going to be your last, is it?"
Later that morning, Tommy stood in front of a room full of policeman. Luke was to his right and Christian sat in the back left of the room, as close to the corner as he could get without actually melting into it.
"Okay," Tommy said. "As far as evidence, we have a partial shoe print, the left shoe, made with blood. No fingerprints. We have nothing underneath the victim's nails, and no wounds on the victim's body—"
"Outside of the head being chopped off?" someone said from inside the crowd.
"Yes, besides that. No other bruises. The autopsy revealed chloroform residue inside the lungs, which we suspect is how the killer managed to keep her from fighting him. He murdered her right after applying the chloroform, which means he cut her head off while she was still alive." Tommy took a sip from the water glass on the small podium. "The victim's eyes were removed, completely."
"They're calling him The Surgeon. How neat was the cut?" someone asked.
Luke cleared his throat and Tommy looked over to him, knowing that he could speak to medical knowledge better than anyone in the room.
"The cut on the neck wasn't neat at all. He basically hacked at it until he was able to separate the head from the body. The eyes were different. Care was taken, and the cuts were nearly surgical in their precision. He excavated the eyes in a way that kept them from being damaged. Even when he placed the eye in the victim's mouth, it was kept intact."
"What was found inside?" another cop asked.
"The eye?"
"Yes."
"A sliver of someone else's eye, but not this victim's," Luke said. "The eye colors were different shades, but we ran DNA tests just to ensure the victim didn't have two different color irises. There was no match."
"So this isn't his first victim?"
"We don't believe so, no," Tommy said.
"It's the first victim that he doesn't personally know." Christian's voice was abnormally loud, as if he wasn't sure anyone could hear him if he lowered it even slightly. Tommy looked back to the corner of the room, but Christian wasn't looking up. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor. "The sliver of eye came from someone he knew, and it might be someone already dead. This, in the killer's mind, is the first person he's done this to."
In all their talks, Christian hadn't said anything about that, although in his favor, the question hadn't come up. Tommy simply figured the answer was no, given that someone else's eye was found inside their victim.
He wouldn't contradict Christian right now, though. "This is Agent Christian Windsor. He's working with us on this case. Now, I don't want it going out that there is disagreement between the three of us. If Christian says this is the first murder, then it is. Does anyone have any other questions?"
Chapter 7
"Thawing the body took a long time," Bradley said. "Much longer than I thought it would. I don't know if I'll do that again."
Charles and Bradley we
re outside on the lawn. Bradley had said Charles wanted to get outdoors for a few minutes, even though Charles said no such thing. The bastard was simply using it as an excuse to talk more. Always talking more.
And Charles now knew Bradley wasn't lying. He saw the news this morning. A body had been found decapitated, just like Bradley said he'd done.
"They didn't tell everything, though. They never tell everything," he said, standing behind Charles's wheelchair. "I won't go into details of what they kept out, just in case you get the wise idea of telling someone about our conversations, but the police keep things from the public. This way they can tell the difference between crackpots and actual leads."
Goddamnit, Charles thought. God-fucking-damnit.
The bastard thought of everything, any little piece of information that Charles might be able to use against him was kept at a distance.
"Are your children coming to visit you soon, Charlie? I looked at the guest register and it's been a month since anyone's been here. Go ahead. Write out your answer."
Charles reached into the bag at his side and pulled out the small tablet the nursing home supplied him with—supposedly one of the great amenities. He turned it on and then loaded up the word processing app, as he now understood they called these things. They used to be programs. Now they were apps. The whole damn world was insane, changing needless names and cutting off people's heads, apparently.
He used the little digital pen and started scribbling on the tablet.
Two weeks, I think.
"Why don't they come more often?"
Vacation. Europe.
"Ah," Bradley said. "I didn't go too far back in the records. Do they usually come regularly?"
Every two weeks.
"That's good. Do you miss them?"
Charles paused, not immediately writing. What did he want to tell this man? And could he lie? Would the bastard know if he did?