Onyx Webb 8

by Diandra Archer

  “Yes,” Maggie said, looking at her notes. “The LAPD is planning on releasing 180 photos of women found in Franklin’s home.”

  “When?” Pipi asked.

  “A week from now, maybe ten days.”

  “Are these woman suspected victims?”

  “That’s what they want to find out. They’ve also got several hundred hours of video they aren’t going to release.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope,” Maggie said.

  “Okay, keep me updated,” Pipi said. “With that many photos, chances are good the LAPD will need more help.”

  Maggie stood up. “I’m on it,” she said, then turned and headed toward the door. Wait, wait, Maggie thought. Three… two… one…

  “I want you to go see Newt,” Pipi said right on cue.

  “I have,” Maggie said. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Let me rephrase,” Pipi said. “I want you to go to Lynchburg and talk to Newt.”

  Maggie turned and stepped back to the desk. “Talk to him? And how do you propose I do that? The last time I tried—”

  “See, that’s your problem, Maggie,” Pipi said. “You tried to talk to Newt. This time I’d like it if you didn’t try to talk to him and actually did.”

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  SEPTEMBER 9, 2008

  Prior to the FBI raid eleven months earlier, Tara Schröder knew virtually nothing about art plundered by the Nazis during WWII. Now, she’d learned more than she wanted to know—including the fact that her grandfather, Lucas Schröder, had played a central role in moving thousands of pieces of the plundered art from Europe to the United States.

  Many of the stolen works were those earmarked for Adolf Hitler’s never-realized dream of building a Führer Museum. Others were intended for high-ranking officials, including Hitler’s right-hand man Hermann Göring.

  But a rift between Hitler and Göring had created an unexpected opportunity for Lucas, who began making regular trips to Paris to meet with Göring starting in late 1941. Having gained Göring’s trust, Lucas was put in charge of placing values on the stolen art, directing the best pieces to one of Göring’s many secret warehouses in Paris and Berlin—warehouses that even Hitler knew nothing about.

  When the Allied Forces invaded in 1944, they found most of Göring’s hidden art repositories—but not all of them.

  Only Lucas knew of each location.

  After the smoke cleared, Lucas began shipping the art to the Schröder Gallery in New York, where it then found its way into the hands of private collectors—one of those collectors being billionaire Declan Mulvaney.

  The FBI understood Tara had nothing to do with the stolen art, but they didn’t care. The result was bankruptcy and closure of the gallery. Which was better than doing a stint at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut.

  Looks like it was a great gallery,” the FBI agent said as Tara handed him the keys to the door. “What kind of art did you sell?”

  “Besides stolen, you mean?” Tara said.

  “That’s not what I meant,” the FBI agent said.

  “I know,” Tara said. She reflexively touched her shoulder. “Damn it. Hang on, I forgot my purse.”

  “Alright, go. But make it quick.”

  Tara left the agent in the empty showroom and made her way to the office. It was completely empty except for an old office chair and the safe still sitting in the corner, the door hanging open as if to remind everyone who came in that there is nothing of value here anymore.

  Tara bent down to get her purse sitting next to the safe and peered inside. Gambler’s superstition? She was ashamed even as she did it, but then she saw something.

  She couldn’t believe it, but it was kind of hard to see inside. There was a manila envelope taped to the inside back wall of the safe. Whatever it was, it looked old.

  Tara grabbed the envelope and quickly opened it, still hunched over on the floor.

  There were two things inside:

  The first was a yellowed newspaper clipping from the New York Times—dated June 1933—about a showing held at the Schröder Gallery. The artist’s name was Onyx Webb. Tara didn’t need to read the article to know the show was a success because the other thing in the envelope was a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills.

  Tara heard footsteps coming down the hall and quickly shoved the contents of the envelope in her purse.

  “You ready?” the FBI agent asked.

  “Yeah,” Tara said, working to keep her voice steady. “I was just going to check the safe—you know, one last time, just in case.”

  “Look all you want,” the FBI agent said. “Our guys already checked it, and trust me—they don’t miss anything.”

  Tara was still shaking when she took a seat at the bar at The Lambs Club on West Forty-Fourth Street and ordered a pomegranate martini. The drink came, and she downed it in three quick gulps. Then she ordered another and headed off to the women’s restroom.

  Tara closed the stall door behind her and locked it. Then she put the seat down and sat on the toilet. She didn’t need to go. She needed to count the money.

  Jesus, Tara thought when she’d finished counting the stack of bills for the second time.

  It came to $12,000.

  Tara returned to her seat at the bar and quickly downed the second martini. If she hurried, she could beat the traffic trying to get out of the city for the weekend and be in the high roller room at the Taj Mahal by six.

  LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA

  DECEMBER 8, 2010

  Newt Drystad made the mile walk from the shoe store on Madison Street, where he’d been employed as the stockroom manager for the past three years, back to his room at the Commonwealth Hotel.

  A four-story brownstone near the James River, the Commonwealth was no doubt a handsome building once upon a time. But now, time had had its way with it—as time tends to do with everything.

  In the winter, the rooms were dank and drafty. In the summer, they were hot and humid. Newt didn’t care. For whatever reason, Newt found the place comfortable, even with its cheap, prefab furniture, and IKEA-hard bed.

  Like most hotels built in the late 1800s, the rooms were cavernous, while the bathrooms were ridiculously small—too small to swing a cat in, as his father described every time he’d come to visit.

  Newt would have preferred to stay at the Craddock Terry, of course, but the daily rate was way out of his budget. Even if he could afford the Craddock Terry, the memories of the time he and Maggie had spent there precluded it.

  So, Newt had moved up the street to the Commonwealth.

  Newt lived alone, and he liked it that way.

  He wasn’t dating and didn’t plan to.

  Other than his father, Newt had absolutely zero visitors. Maggie called and wrote him letters for a bit, asking if she could come down and discuss what had happened.

  There was nothing to discuss.

  Newt took the stairs to the second floor and went to his room. Once inside, he locked the door behind him and picked up his mail from the floor where the man at the front desk slid it sometime earlier that morning.

  It was a routine Newt had become used to. It was comfortable. Predictable. No surprises. Until the serial killer postcards started to arrive.

  The postcards were addressed to: Spider Boy, c/o The Commonwealth Hotel, Lynchburg, VA.

  The back of each card contained a riddle, and none of the cards were signed. They didn’t need to be. Who they were from was obvious. They were from him.

  The Leg Collector.

  On the front was a picture of Ed Gein, a serial killer who achieved infamy using the body parts of his victims to make furniture. The running joke within the FBI was that the director had once used the skin from a failed agent for a lampshade. Being a joke didn’t stop agents from glancing at the lamp on the director’s desk when called into his office.

  The riddle on the Ed Gein card read:

  The maker doesn’t want it.


  The buyer doesn’t need it.

  The user has no idea they’re using it.

  What am I?

  The answer was obvious.

  It was a coffin.

  The next card arrived the day after, the front of which had the picture of Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber who killed three people by sending bombs to the victims from his shack in rural Montana.

  The riddle on the Kaczynski card read:

  What happens twice in a moment, once in a minute, but not at all in a thousand years?

  The answer was the letter M.

  The following day brought still another card, this one with the picture of Robert Shulman, who’d been convicted of murdering five prostitutes between 1991 and 1996. The message read:

  Which is faster, hot or cold?

  Hot, of course. You can catch a cold.

  The next four cards, in order, were pictures of: Robert Succo, who’d killed seven people in Italy, France, and Switzerland; Juana Barraza, a female wrestler who’d bludgeoned and/or strangled eleven people to death so she could rob them; and Richard Ramirez—a.k.a. the Night Stalker—who killed thirteen people in Los Angeles between June 1984 and August 1985.

  Newt took that day’s card and sat down on the edge of the bed. The front of the card had a picture of Huang Yong, a Chinese serial killer who’d murdered seventeen boys between 2001 and 2003.

  Newt didn’t bother reading or solving the riddle. Every riddle was so easy a child could solve it.

  A child.

  Which was the point of the messages. It was how the Leg Collector saw Newt now. As a child—which wasn’t that far off, providing Newt was taking his meds.

  Which he was.

  Even so, Newt couldn’t help but notice the Leg Collector’s hidden message—the one that was playing out from card to card.

  Ed Gein killed two people.

  Ted Kaczynski killed three.

  Robert Shulman, five.

  Robert Succo, seven.

  Juana Barraza, eleven.

  Richard Ramirez, thirteen.

  Huang Yong, seventeen.

  Newt knew another card would arrive tomorrow, this time with the picture of one of three people—Larry Eyler, Sergei Ryakhovsky, or Alexander Spesivtsev—each of which had murdered nineteen people.

  2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19…

  All prime numbers.

  Arriving in order from lowest to highest.

  More cards were sure to come, with a growing number of victims for each.

  23, 29, 31, 37…

  This was a game to the Leg Collector. One he was playing for no other reason than to show how clever he was.

  Newt was tired of the game and refused to allow himself to get drawn in again. Newt chased the Leg Collector for seventeen years. Seventeen years was enough.

  Newt got up and dropped the postcard in the trash, and then went to the bathroom to take his evening meds—medications in addition to the pills he’d taken for years to control his tendency to slip into a frozen state. Taken together, they were seriously debilitating, so much so that in an hour—when the meds were at their peak—he’d have a hard time adding two plus two and getting four.

  That’s who he was now: A mathematical savant who could barely function. A genius who no longer wished to be one.

  A person who used to track and catch the world’s most dangerous serial killers, and now no longer could—nor did he care.

  CRIMSON COVE, OREGON

  NOVEMBER 11, 2008

  As I’ve told you a number of times already, I have absolutely no need for electricity,” Onyx said.

  “The caretaker’s house has it,” Noah said.

  “You may thank my father for that,” Onyx said, turning away and starting up the spiral metal staircase and leaving Noah alone at the bottom of the lighthouse.

  Over the previous months since learning about Onyx, Noah had found himself staying overnight in the caretaker’s house more and more and having electricity there was a must. But spending time in the lighthouse with Onyx by candlelight was getting old. How his grandfather had put up with it for all those years was beyond him.

  But there was one thing he and his grandfather, Alistar, would’ve agreed on. Onyx Webb was an amazing woman—dead or alive. And although Noah wasn’t sure how he felt about the way she got the energy she needed, he understood. Her life ended too soon, and her spirit deserved to continue—that, and God she was stunning.

  “A month from now, you won’t be able to live without it,” Noah called out, instantly realizing the stupidity of the statement.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Onyx said from up on the staircase.

  Onyx remained out of sight, atop the lighthouse, while Noah met the foreman of the crew sent by the power company.

  “See that red stair?” Noah said.

  “Yeah, what about it?” the foreman said.

  “No one goes past that red stair. The only place that needs power is the foyer area here in the lower portion of the lighthouse,” Noah said. “Got it?”

  The foreman shrugged. “We’re gonna be here five, maybe six hours. What do you want us to do if someone’s got to take a leak? Go in the woods with the bears?”

  Noah was tempted to say exactly that. “There’s a bathroom in the caretaker’s house,” he said instead.

  “Is that your Z4 Roadster out there?” the foreman asked.

  “Yeah,” Noah said. In truth, the car was his grandmother’s—another mysterious, out of the blue and out-of-character purchase that she clearly couldn’t afford.

  “Just curious,” the foreman said. “I was thinking of getting one myself, but for fifty grand I could buy a boat. Hell, out here, I could by a house.”

  “Okay, you can come down now,” Noah called up the metal staircase once the workmen had gone.

  Ten minutes passed and when Onyx still had not come down, Noah went out into the clearing and gazed up at the top of the lighthouse. “They’re gone, Onyx,” Noah called out through cupped hands. “Come down. I’ve got something to show you.”

  Noah went inside and began flipping through the stack of albums he’d brought from home, which was why he’d borrowed the car from his grandmother for the day. Eventually he found the record he was looking for and pulled it carefully from the sleeve.

  “Please don’t tell me that is permanent,” Onyx said from the base of the stairs.

  “What? The turntable?” Noah said. “No, this is my grandfather’s—one of the few things of his that didn’t get stolen.”

  “Well, I’m glad for that,” Onyx said.

  Noah set the record flat on the turntable, slid the speed selector to thirty-three, hit the power button, and—as he hoped—the vinyl disc began moving in circles.

  “I grew up listening to music on vinyl records on this record player,” Noah said. “I want you to listen to something.”

  Noah carefully lifted the tone arm and set the stylus on the record and the introduction guitar strains of Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” began to flow through the Harman Kardon speakers and reverberated off the interior walls of the lighthouse foyer.

  “Do you hear it?” Noah asked.

  “Yes, Noah, it would be hard not to,” Onyx said. “I don’t suppose you could turn it down a—”

  Noah reached for the volume knob, but to Onyx’s chagrin—rather than turning the volume down—he turned it louder.

  Onyx watched as Noah closed his eyes—swaying subtly from side to side as he listened to some magical nuance in the music only he could hear.

  “Wait, there—there—did you hear that?”

  “What am I listening for?” Onyx asked.

  “The imperfections,” Noah said, opening his eyes. “The crackle and pops as the needle rubs up against years of play embedded in the dusty grooves of wax and the distortion from the subtle warping of the vinyl from heat and humidity. Today everything is done digitally, but digital music is sterile. They think they can make the sound perfect, but t
hey don’t get it. Perfection by its very nature is imperfect. The only perfection that exists is imperfection. Music was never meant to be perfect. It was meant to stir emotion. The more perfect the recording, the less I care about it. Dust on a record album makes the music better. But the music industry seems hell-bent on shoving digital down our throats because it’s cheaper to produce and doesn’t cost anything to ship. But you watch, that’s going to change. Vinyl records are going to make a big comeback.”

  In truth, Onyx could hear the subtle cracks and pops as the needle worked its way down the vinyl groove ten times more than Noah could. Ghosts had exceptional hearing, so much so that she could hear the sound of a car engine starting from two miles away. But she found herself moved by Noah’s intensity and decided not to make a point of it.

  “Yes, I hear it now that you point it out,” Onyx said.

  It was the most passionate Onyx had ever seen Noah about any topic, and it was refreshing to see someone who cared so much about something. The only thing Ulrich ever cared about was smoking, drinking, gambling, and Claudia.

  But Onyx also found herself feeling the sting of jealousy course through her, wishing she could feel the kind of emotion Noah was describing.

  But she couldn’t. Jealousy? Anger? Regret? She felt each of these, sometimes daily. But joy? The kind of intense joy that Noah was describing?

  No.

  Onyx remembered feeling that way but did not feel it now.

  “I’m not a music snob,” Noah said. “Well, maybe I am—but I don’t care. Nothing is better than listening to music on vinyl. Just pulling the record out of an album’s inner sleeve is like foreplay to a true music lover. Just lowering the stylus down and hearing it touch the groove is an emotional experience—the musical equivalent of great sex.”