The Pain Colony

by Shanon Hunt

  But Garcia didn’t speak.

  “No,” Malloy insisted through clenched teeth. “No way.” He refused to imagine it, even as his eyes shifted to the framed picture of Suzanne, Robbie, and Tyler at the beach, the one that had sat on his bookshelf for over fifteen years.

  Garcia stood with his head lowered, his jaw set, his eyes downcast.

  A wave of nausea ran through Malloy, and the taste of copper filled his mouth.

  “Garcia!” he hissed.

  His chest tightened as his hands clenched into fists. He wanted to explode in a fit of rage, to tell Garcia he was a fucking idiot and throw him out of his office. Throw him out of the building. He would have done it except that his throat had closed and he couldn’t speak. His muscles began quivering as his rage melted away and grief racked his body. In an instant, all the energy drained out of him, and he fell back into his chair. His vicious, accusatory stare at Garcia turned into a plea, but no words formed. Instead his mouth twisted, and his eyes blurred as involuntary tears welled up.

  Garcia waited, respectful but helpless, as Malloy hunched with his head buried in his hands.

  ***

  Malloy tried to ignore the nausea created by motion sickness and the reek of cigarette smoke that filled the cab of Garcia’s Ford Ranger. Neither of them bothered to turn on the radio. Garcia stared straight ahead from behind the wheel, his face expressionless, lost in his own thoughts. Malloy gazed out at the long line of cars stopped on the other side of the freeway, and for once in his life wished he were sitting in it, heading back into the office instead of north to Flagstaff to examine the corpse of Tyler Steele.

  It’s Tyler Steele. Malloy still couldn’t grasp that in a world of seven billion people, one of barely a handful of people he loved had ended up in a file on his desk. What else could possibly have those kinds of odds? He had a higher probability of being struck by lightning. He thought his breakfast might come back up, and he lowered his window to get some air. The hot gust that hit him in the face offered no relief.

  “You all right, boss?” Garcia asked without looking over.

  He rolled up the window but didn’t answer, afraid to open his mouth. He breathed through his nose and distracted himself with sad memories. His mind rolled back through the years of Tyler, like old home videos. Suzanne trying to convince Robbie and Tyler that peas were actually LeBron James’s all-time favorite food. Robbie and Tyler running through the house with armloads of sticks and rope to complete their wilderness shelter in the backyard. Both boys strutting down the stairs dressed in collared shirts and ties that Suzanne had bought them for their eighth-grade dance.

  He’d practically raised Tyler. Tyler’s mom was single and she worked during the day, leaving Tyler without a ride home after school. Suzanne would collect Robbie and Tyler from school, supervise them as they did their homework, and then let them play together until evening. Tyler had a string of objectionable male role models, men he referred to in later years as the “fuck of the month.” Most nights, he stayed at the Malloys’ until bedtime or even overnight.

  Tyler and Robbie remained best friends until their sophomore year in high school. As Robbie became involved in sports and clubs, Tyler found a new crowd and drugs. To Malloy’s deep disappointment, Tyler disappeared before finishing high school. It wasn’t until three years ago that Malloy found him. His very own DEA team raided a small-time meth cooking operation in a suburban home in Tempe. Tyler was one of the group arrested.

  Malloy had offered Tyler the deal of a lifetime: He would drop the charges if Tyler agreed to rehab. It was a long shot, given how long Tyler had been using and the abysmal success rate for meth addiction rehabilitation. But saving Tyler was something Malloy desperately needed so soon after the loss of Suzanne, and he knew she would have wanted him to do it.

  So with a heavy dose of tough love from Garcia and a heavy dose of genuine love from Malloy, Tyler recovered. He moved to Prescott and got a job as a server at a Claim Jumper restaurant. In six months, he was promoted to store manager. Malloy and Garcia visited whenever they were doing field work in the area. Tyler proudly showed them his office and some of the new ideas that he’d implemented.

  The last time they were there, just as they were getting ready to leave, Malloy had patted Tyler on the back and told him he was proud of him. Tyler pulled him in for a hug, the first time he’d ever shown such an overt sign of affection, and said, “I love you, Pete. You’re the only dad I ever had. Thank you.” That had been six, maybe eight months ago.

  Now Malloy sat shell-shocked, with his head pressed against the window. His chest felt hollow, but his head was raging with questions. Why? Why Tyler? He knew that later he’d be ready to really answer that question, using his professional experience, attention to detail, and knack for analytical thinking. But not yet.

  For now, he just needed to be angry with a god he didn’t even believe in.

  Chapter 40

  Dr. Will Lozano, the forensic pathologist in Flagstaff, stepped into the dimly lit waiting room and introduced himself to Malloy and Garcia.

  “I’m really sorry about your friend,” he said as he led them to the exam room. “Stacy mentioned you knew the victim.”

  “Thank you.” Malloy didn’t mean to sound terse, but he didn’t want it to turn into a conversation.

  Lozano seemed to get the message. He held the door for them. “Right this way. It’s fortunate he was found not long after his time of death. I’d say about nineteen hours. I’m getting ready to do the internal exam, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to see the victim before I cut.”

  Malloy had witnessed a handful of autopsies over his career, but he was physically and emotionally unprepared for this one as he stepped into the sterile, over-lit room. The sour, acidic smell of bile and decomposition seemed to pour down his throat. He swayed and caught himself with a rolling gurney, which shifted under his weight. The metal instruments crashed to the floor.

  “I got it, boss. I got it.” Garcia dropped down to clean up the mess. It was a kind gesture to save him some humiliation, but it didn’t work.

  Malloy walked to the furthest corner of the room to collect himself. It wasn’t Tyler’s body emitting the stench. Decomposition gasses took days to build up to a truly foul odor. The stench had to be coming from a different corpse, but it still took him a full minute to convince himself to return to Tyler’s table. His lips were press so tightly together, his jaw ached, and when the doctor asked him if he was okay, he could only nod.

  Lozano pulled back the sheet, exposing Tyler’s body.

  Malloy swallowed hard and looked down. God. His heart broke again, and he swallowed a second time to fight back tears.

  Garcia cursed through gritted teeth. This was also hard for him.

  Malloy lingered on Tyler’s peaceful, childlike expression. Even though he’d promised himself he wouldn’t allow it, his head filled with memories. Pete! Spray me! as he and Robbie ran through the wet grass while Malloy watered the garden, pretending he couldn’t hear them until they got close enough for a good dousing. Pete! How do you like my birdhouse? which he’d brought home from art class and to this very day sat on a shelf in the Malloy family room. Tyler had always wanted his approval, and he had been generous with it.

  He pulled away and forced himself to survey the rest of Tyler’s trim body. His eyes stopped at shin level. “What happened there?”

  “The bruises appear to have been sustained at different times. See here.” Lozano pointed his pen to the lower shin. “These bruises are yellowish, nearly healed. I’d say at least a week old, maybe two.” He shifted his pen to the other left leg. “These couldn’t be more than a day or two old. Still inflamed.”

  “What does it mean?” Garcia pulled a rubber band off his wrist and tied his hair back, as though it was in the way of his vision.

  “I’ve seen similar bruises on fighters, particularly in martial arts or kickboxing,” Lozano said. “Maybe he was taking some classes.” />
  Malloy and Garcia exchanged a glance. Highly doubtful.

  “It could also be the result of self-mutilation, which we’ve seen in some drug users, though it’s not typical for a heroin user.”

  Garcia visibly bristled. “He wasn’t a heroin user. He was a recovered meth addict. Emphasis on the ‘recovered.’”

  Lozano instinctively took a step backward.

  “I’m sorry,” Malloy said. “He was close to the victim as well.”

  He shot Garcia a look of warning. He was in no mood to abide Garcia’s temper.

  “I understand,” Lozano said. “But you raise an interesting point that I wanted to discuss. Take a look at his arms.”

  Malloy bent forward for a closer inspection, then shrugged. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly. The victim has evidence of drug use in the past. Look—some very old scars here.” He pointed to faint track marks inside the elbow of Tyler’s left arm. “What’s curious is that he shows no sign of recent drug use. I found no trace of methamphetamines in his system. I looked closely at the usual injection sites and then his entire body for the needle hole that resulted in his demise. I couldn’t find it. We usually see damaged, even collapsed veins in drug abusers, but his veins look very healthy. This leads me to the possibility that the heroin was injected into the spinal artery.”

  Malloy nodded. He meant through the wound where the port once was.

  “If that were the case,” Lozano continued, “it likely would have resulted in anterior spinal artery syndrome, which could have led to paralysis in his limbs.”

  “Oh god.” Malloy stared, frozen, at Tyler’s bruised shins.

  “I’m not officially connecting the dots on this yet,” Lozano said. “But something for you to think about.”

  Malloy was grateful for a moment of silence. He didn’t see any obvious relationship between Tyler and the previous eight victims besides the spinal port. Maybe Tyler’s death was something entirely different.

  “Physically, the victim is healthy and fit,” Lozano continued.

  Garcia stepped closer. “Look at his body. I know addicts, especially tweakers and junkies. They’re thin and weak. Tyler isn’t. Look, he has muscle tone, like he’s been working out. How many addicts do you know who exercise?”

  Lozano nodded. “His teeth are healthy. In fact, they’ve been cleaned professionally. His fingernails, clean. But there’s more I need to show you.”

  Lozano matter-of-factly rolled the body face down.

  “Jesus fucking god!” Garcia yelled.

  Malloy queasily turned away.

  “What is that?” Garcia asked. “It looks like he was whipped.”

  “That’s what it looks like to me, as well,” Lozano said. “The directionality of the lashes looks more like the markings of a whip. They’re not characteristic of burn scars, and given their width and depth, they’re not knife wounds. But these wounds are in fact healed completely. If he was whipped, it was weeks, maybe months ago.”

  “What does that mean? He was tortured?” Garcia’s voice cracked.

  Lozano didn’t answer. “Finally, we have a small wound between L2 and L3 on the lower spine, which appears to be similar to your victims who were found with intrathecal access ports. The wound is only partially healed, as you can see, and there was no bandage or dressing covering the wound when the victim was found, even though the body was found fully clothed.”

  Malloy peered at the wound, willing it to be something else—a skin infection, maybe, or a cyst. But its location was so precise, and it appeared to be the exact size of a port.

  “What the fu—I mean …” Garcia looked defeated. “What happened here? Why? What’s going on?”

  Lozano sighed. “The manner of death is accidental drug overdose.”

  “Doc, come on,” Garcia pleaded.

  “The only other thing I can tell you is this. I’ve examined hundreds of OD deaths, and I’ve never seen a case like this. I’m a pathologist hired to provide a medical assessment, but if I were an investigator, I’d have an awful lot of questions about circumstances that don’t match the usual pattern.”

  Malloy’s stomach threatened to heave. There was nothing more to learn today.

  “Thank you for your time, Dr. Lozano. We won’t hold you up from completing your exam, and we need to get back to Phoenix. We appreciate that you called and let us come. If you find anything else that might help, please call.” He handed Lozano a business card.

  “You’re welcome.” Lozano handed him a vial of blood in a sealed biohazard bag—the sample from Tyler. “As you requested. I’ll send the brain tissue sample to your lab if you’ll kindly leave the information with my assistant up front.”

  He turned back to the body, then spoke over his shoulder. “Agent Malloy, one other thing that perhaps you already knew. The victim was HIV positive.”

  ***

  Malloy and Garcia walked in silence to the parked pickup truck.

  Garcia pulled out a pack of cigarettes and tapped one into his palm. “Boss, I don’t like what’s happening here.” He rested the cigarette between his lips, pulled a lighter, and lit it.

  Malloy sat down in the cab to avoid the smoke and gazed out the window at the empty parking lot. He didn’t like what was happening, either. He felt that something evil had tapped, quite literally, into the blood of these victims, like a bad sci-fi movie where aliens collect humans and attach them to tubes to suck their life energy.

  A minute later, Garcia put out the cigarette and sat down behind the wheel, but he didn’t start driving. He stared vacantly out the window. “There’s something very wrong going on. That kid was tortured. He was tortured and killed. His killers knew he had a drug history, and they shot him up and dumped the body, far from home, far from anyone who would know him. Tyler had nothing on him but clothing, and he never would’ve been IDed if he hadn’t already been fingerprinted from a prior. The killers probably hadn’t banked on that. Just a useless, HIV-infected drug addict found in a dumpster.”

  Malloy was still stunned by the HIV result, even though he was certain Tyler never would have confided such devastating news. Tyler wouldn’t have been able to bear the disappointment on Malloy’s face.

  “Make sure you get that blood sample to Jordan Jennings’s lab,” he said.

  He needed to collect his thoughts. He was deeply inductive in his approach, and he needed time alone to think. He couldn’t see the connections, find the pattern, with chatter in his ears.

  Garcia understood this and remained silent as he pulled out of the parking lot.

  Tyler’s case was different. The first eight victims had died by their own hands, doing something risky and deadly, driven by wild-eyed euphoria. And while it appeared that Tyler had ODed, Malloy didn’t believe it. Like Garcia, he believed Tyler had been injected with heroin, likely through the port, resulting in paralysis.

  What if they’d dumped him before his heart had stopped beating? What if he’d awakened in the dumpster, unable to get out? Jesus Christ. He felt his face tighten and shook his head, willing the image to disappear.

  His phone rang, and he quickly palmed the tears from his eyes. He fished around for his phone and finally found it in the side pocket of his bag. Melanie. He hit the speaker.

  “Yeah.” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat.

  “Sir, I’ve got an agent from the bureau here to collect case files for elixir.”

  There it was. That word. “Sorry?”

  “The files for L-X-R?”

  Damn it, he’d forgotten all about the bureau’s reclaiming the files. He wasn’t ready to part with them yet. He needed to look for connections between the vics and Tyler. He pounded his fist on his forehead. Why hadn’t he copied them?

  “Fine,” he barked.

  “They already have the files for the eight victims, but I told them another had come in.”

  Ack, he’d spoken too quickly. Melanie knew they were in the field investigating. He grapp
led for an explanation. “False alarm. The vic isn’t related to the LXR case. Just a typical heroin overdose. We drove two hours for a wild goose chase.”

  “Oh, good! They seemed awfully confused when I said that. Okay, I’ll set it straight. Thanks.”

  Malloy dropped the phone into his bag.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Garcia asked through gritted teeth.

  Malloy pulled out his Tums and shook two into his hand.

  “Boss.”

  He tossed the Tums into his mouth and chewed slowly. Facing forward, because he was too ashamed to look Garcia in the eyes, he answered. “We’re on our own.”

  Garcia pounded his palms on the steering wheel.

  “Shit.”

  Chapter 41

  Austin triumphantly slapped his notebook down on the table after crossing off the last thing from his list. The upcoming summit was now just two weeks away. This would be a night to remember.

  Hammond’s face glowed with childlike joy. “Austin, wait until you meet this team. I mean, it’s so amazing to connect with a group of brilliant people who not only have the same vision as you but are just as deeply focused and driven to make it successful. It’s incredible. This summit is going to be life-changing for you.”

  Austin was indeed excited. He’d begun planning his part of the talk already—nothing on paper just yet, but some key points he wanted to make. If this group was really who Hammond said they were, he planned to put on the best show he’d ever done. These were people with so much wealth they could buy entire governments. They could change the course of history.

  Well, that was the plan, wasn’t it?

  He was overcome with respect for Hammond. Who else had the ability and resources to gather and mobilize this kind of money and influence?

  Like he’d read Austin’s mind, Hammond added, “And remember, when you’re planning your presentation, these folks are wealthy investors. Businessmen and politicians. They aren’t medically trained. Keep it light.”