Every Wicked Man

by Steven James

  “By the way,” Ralph said, “you ever hear of a zedonk?”

  “A zedonk?”

  “On the plane, I was flipping through a magazine someone left on the seat beside me, and there was this article about zedonks.”

  “I’m guessing that’s a mixture of a zebra and a donkey?”

  “Yeah. Which is odd enough in itself, but I kept thinking about how at least it’s better than the alternative.”

  “The alternative?”

  “A donkbra.”

  “Um, yeah. I would say so.”

  “Other combinations wouldn’t be much better either.”

  “Other combinations?”

  “A hippopotabra. A chiwawabra. A crocabra. A German shepabra.”

  “Ralph, it sounds like you’ve been spending time with my stepdaughter. I could hear her saying that.”

  She looked at me questioningly from where she sat on the couch.

  “Speaking of her,” Ralph said, “how’s it going this weekend? Christie still gone?”

  “It’s going well. She flies back tomorrow afternoon. Tessa keeps asking me to let her drive even though she doesn’t have her license yet. Is that normal?” I was speaking lightheartedly and loud enough for her to hear.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Asking the wrong guy,” Ralph replied. “But I can say that teen girls tend to have a love-hate relationship with their dads. Stepfamilies just add another monkey wrench to the works.”

  “Hey, by the way, you wouldn’t by any chance know what a dotterel is?”

  “That’s cheating,” Tessa told me.

  “They’re kinda like sandpipers,” he said. “Shore birds, you know. I think they stay mostly in coastal areas, sandy beaches, that sort of thing.”

  Ah. That’s why a group of them is called a “trip.” Because you would trip over them. Tessa was right—that was a big clue.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Oh, it’s . . . I was just curious.”

  “Anyway,” he said, “I gotta go. I’ll see you in the morning at the Field Office.”

  “Sounds good.”

  After the call, I told Tessa, “So, dotterels are shore birds similar to sandpipers. I think they’re usually found in coastal areas and on sandy beaches.”

  “That was too easy. You just asked your friend.”

  “If I can’t use the Internet, I need some source of information. Ralph works.”

  “Ralph. Is that Agent Hawkins?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he the guy who looks like he just might decide to eat you for dinner?”

  “He does a good job of hiding it, but there’s a teddy bear nestled in there somewhere under that Kodiak fur. By the way, you ever hear of zedonks?”

  She eyeball-rolled me. “I heard your whole side of the conversation.”

  “Oh. Right. A chiwawabra—ever hear of that?”

  “An annoying miniature dog and a zebra.”

  “Very good.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  As she passed by to get a glass of water from the kitchen, I folded up my laptop so she wouldn’t see the images of the suicide video I’d been watching. However, the cryptogram was still beside me on the table and it caught her attention.

  “What’s that?” She pointed to the words that I’d scrawled on the top of the page. “‘Remember death’?”

  “Oh, it has to do with—”

  “Memento mori.”

  “What?”

  “It’s this saying in Latin. Means ‘Remember that you have to die.’ So ‘Remember death’ would just be another way to translate it.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “You’re always asking me how I know stuff. I just do. I learn something and then I remember it. It’s not that hard.”

  “Gotcha. Sorry. So what else do you know about Memento mori?”

  “The ascetics especially would use the phrase to remind themselves of the brevity of life and to help them refocus on the stuff that really mattered. Kind of like Carpe diem. You know, ‘Seize the day,’ except from the opposite perspective.” She pointed at the photocopy of Mannie’s cryptogram. “What’s the rest of that?”

  “Some sort of cipher.”

  “You don’t know how to decode it?”

  “Not yet. No.”

  “So . . . ‘Remember death,’” she said reflectively, “and you’ve got this code?”

  “Yeah. Why? Does that mean something to you?”

  “I don’t know . . . Maybe . . . There’s this guy buried here in New York City and on his gravestone are all these weird markings, some sort of code, right? For, like, a hundred years no one knew what it meant—maybe nothing—so then one day, someone at a newspaper solved the riddle and decoded it.”

  “What did it say?”

  “‘Memento mori.’ Or maybe it was ‘Remember death,’ I’m not certain. It was one of the two. I just heard about the story one time. We should look it up.”

  “I should look it up.”

  “Okay, you should, sure, but either you let me do it with you or I’ll go back to my room and do it myself where you can’t supervise my online activity. And I might go to a site that’s not appropriate and you wouldn’t know about it. Let me help you.”

  I was about to reply, but she kept going. “Besides, if you say no, I might be tempted to pout, and you’ll eventually get tired of trying to get me to snap out of it and just give up and let me have my way. And don’t even try to argue with me about that ’cause I’m more stubborn than you are.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Oh yes, I am.”

  I folded my arms. “I’m thirty-five years old. I have nineteen more years of experience at being stubborn than you do. You’re no match for me.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, I’m so stubborn I’m gonna let you have the last word.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it as she tilted her head and smiled. She waited for me to speak, watching me with wide, expectant eyes.

  “Don’t even try that puppy-dog look with me,” I said.

  “You know how I feel about dogs. That wasn’t very nice.”

  “Nice is not on the menu for today.”

  “I like that. For you, that was definitely A-list material.”

  “What’s the deal with you and dogs, anyway?”

  “Don’t get me started.”

  “I thought you loved animals.”

  “I do. Dogs don’t count. Any animal that can smell sixty thousand times better than human beings can and spends its time smelling people’s shoes and other animals’ butts is not on my list of most beloved animals.”

  “Did you get bitten by a dog once?”

  “What are you, a psychologist now?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out why you hate them so much.”

  “Who ever said that dog-loving should be the default setting for life? No, I wasn’t bitten, but half a million people in North America are, every year. Imagine if that was the same with any other animal. Think about the public outcry. Sharks. Snakes. Raccoons. Armadillos.”

  “Armadillos? Really?”

  “Half a million people,” she reiterated, ignoring my comment. “But when it comes to dogs you don’t even hear the stats reported on the news. But it makes sense that they bite—I mean, what do dogs eat? I’ll tell you what they eat—meat and bones. What does it look like I’m made out of, broccoli and falafel? So, what about helping you?”

  I sighed. “Alright. You can help me look at the cipher. But that’s all. Once we figure out how to decode it, that’s it. Do you know the name of the guy with the encrypted gravestone?”

  “No.” She took a seat beside me. “But let’s find out.”

  * * *

  +++

  Dark water lappe
d at the pier.

  The icy wind skidding across the river left no doubt that winter was on its way.

  Julianne studied the road paralleling the shoreline but didn’t see Timothy’s car.

  Though it was nighttime, there were sporadic exterior lights on the warehouses and dock buildings near her that illuminated small sections of the parking area, the boat ramps, and the pier. She waited in a pool of light so that he could see her, just in case he walked rather than drove.

  To get to know him better and to study his methods, she’d spent most of the day perusing excerpts of his writing online, the book she’d gotten from Miranda’s bedroom, and a copy of The Nesting Dolls, the book that’d come out since the young woman’s disappearance.

  And she wasn’t sure what to make of what she read.

  When Timothy had suggested this location, he’d said that he knew “a good place by the river” for them to meet. Now she wondered why he’d phrased it like that—said it was “a good place”—and if he’d been here before, maybe with Miranda.

  It was the same phrase Lonnie Stillman, one of the killers in The Nesting Dolls, had used.

  She made sure she had a round chambered in her gun as she waited for Timothy’s arrival.

  30

  It took a little time, but eventually we tracked down what we were looking for.

  James Leeson’s tombstone in Trinity Church Cemetery was located near the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway. He died in 1794 and was buried there on the north end of the graveyard near a soldier’s memorial monument.

  However, it wasn’t until 1889 that the Trinity Record newspaper printed the solution to the cryptogram:

  Once you saw the way to decode the cipher, it was relatively easy to visualize since it was based on a tic-tac-toe board’s layout.

  The letters A through J contained one dot with the corresponding parts of the tic-tac-toe grid drawn around them. The letters K through S had two dots along with their corresponding lines, and the remaining letters only contained the lines with no dots.

  Tessa had been right. Encoded on James Leeson’s gravestone were the words “REMEMBER DEATH.”

  “Why are the i and the j in the same square?” she asked me.

  “I think that in the colonial days they used an abbreviated alphabet.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “High school history class. So be sure to pay attention in school.”

  “Ha.” She studied Mannie’s cipher. “So now, we need to decode this message.”

  Having no idea what Mannie might have written, I said to Tessa, “This part I need to do alone. It might have to do with blood.”

  Despite her affinity for gothic horror stories and death metal music, she was as fond of blood as I was of needles.

  “Ew. Really?”

  “Maybe.”

  Though she grumbled, she gave in and left for the couch to read her new Sabian novel but kept looking up from it as if she were hoping that I would change my mind.

  I set about decoding the message Mannie had left me, and it didn’t take long before I’d figured it out.

  TEN TONIGHT LEESONS

  GRAVE GO ALONE

  I stared at the words.

  Evidently, Mannie had a lot of confidence that I would solve his cryptogram—and do so before this evening.

  I took the laptop and the code to my bedroom, put through a call to dispatch, collected my SIG, and returned to the living room. “I have to go, Tessa. Lock the door behind me. Don’t open it for anyone except me. Do you understand?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I just need to take care of something.”

  “You’re scaring me. What did the message say?”

  “Don’t be scared. I should be back in an hour or so.”

  “What if you’re not?”

  “I will be. I promise.”

  “How long should I wait until I call the cops to find out if you’re dead?”

  “Don’t worry about that, trust me.”

  I almost gave her a light forehead kiss, but after a short hesitation I just awkwardly patted her shoulder instead.

  Once outside, I waited for the officers from the cruiser I’d called for while I was in the bedroom and told them to keep a close eye on the building. “No one enters our apartment. Got it?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  Then I left for Trinity Church Cemetery to search out James Leeson’s grave.

  31

  Julianne saw a pair of headlights slicing through the night toward her along the road hugging the riverbank.

  While she was more than capable of killing on her own, she’d decided that she wanted a partner just as she’d had with Dylan. It was more satisfying to her, maybe because of the shared secret, maybe because of the shared danger. Whatever it was, she wanted to kill with someone, but she needed someone she could trust.

  And she wasn’t convinced that Timothy Sabian was that person.

  The car pulled to a stop five yards in front of her, and Timothy stepped out, joining her in the wash of light from the nearby warehouse while that cold wind swept over them from across the water and up the boat ramp.

  “Did you learn anything about Miranda?” Timothy asked as he approached her.

  “All the arrows point to you, Timothy.”

  “Are you sure? What arrows?”

  He really doesn’t know. He really has no idea.

  “Did you bury her in the woods up in the Adirondacks, or dump her body in the river here, at this dock? You used both methods in your books.”

  “But those things aren’t real. They didn’t happen.”

  “I can’t work with someone I don’t trust, and I can’t trust someone who’s unbalanced.”

  She tossed the folder that Blake had given her to the ground at Timothy’s feet.

  He bent and flipped it open, then thumbed through the papers. “Where did you get these reports?”

  “From a friend.”

  “Who?”

  “You were careless, Timothy.”

  “Who gave you this information on me? Dr. Percival?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what you did.”

  “So did I do it? Did I kill Miranda?”

  “Were you sleeping with her?”

  “What?”

  “Were you involved in a romantic relationship with that young woman? You knew her before that final book signing, didn’t you?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You used different pens to inscribe her books.”

  Timothy was quiet.

  Julianne unpocketed the necklace that she’d helped herself to in Miranda’s room. “And this? In your latest book, the killer gives his lover a pearl necklace.”

  He continued to stare at her without speaking.

  “You gave it to her, didn’t you?” Julianne said. “You gave it to Miranda. Just like Lonnie did in your novel before he killed Rose.”

  Timothy scratched at the base of his neck, leaving bloodied fingernail streaks behind.

  Julianne held up the copy of his latest novel. “Why didn’t you tell me you two were lovers?”

  “What does it matter? I wanted to know if I—”

  “If you killed her.”

  “Right. Yes. If I did.”

  “I’m going to read you something, Timothy.” She flipped to a bookmarked page. “‘Lonnie kept squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. He was strong, yes, he knew he was strong, but he was also scared. Even after the woman stopped moving, even then he kept squeezing her throat, hands tight around it, fingers clenched, arms trembling with the exertion. Even then. That was the fear part. It wouldn’t let him stop, wouldn’t let him let go.’ Does that sound familiar, Timothy?”

  “I wrote that, yes, but why are you�
�”

  “You wrote it. You lived it!” She read the next paragraph: “‘Finally, when the tears came, he was able to release his grip and step back. He tried to wake her, but she lay still and refused to move, even just a little, even just a secret little bit in her fingers or her toes or her eyelids or anything.’”

  “Stop reading!”

  But Julianne didn’t stop. “‘And no matter how much he shouted for her to stop playing games like that, she didn’t sit up. She didn’t start breathing again. When he shook her, she flopped around like she wasn’t made of anything solid at all, and when he didn’t, she just lay there. So still. So so so disobediently still.’”

  “I said stop reading!”

  Enough. Take care of this. You can’t trust him.

  Movement drew her attention away from Timothy.

  A set of headlights appeared on the road he’d driven up. Another car, still in the distance, but coming their direction. This was a relatively isolated spot, and Julianne wondered if maybe it was a cop patrolling the riverfront. That might work to her advantage—or it might not, depending on how she handled things.

  Or could it be someone Timothy asked to come and help? You didn’t work alone when you were with Dylan in Detroit. Maybe Timothy isn’t working alone here.

  That was something she hadn’t considered.

  Timothy took a step forward, and she dropped the book and whipped out her Beretta. “Stay where you are, Timothy.”

  He stopped and slowly held his hands out to his sides.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said. “You’re going to pop the back of your trunk. And then you’re going to hand me the keys.”

  “I’m not going—”

  “Do it!”

  Timothy scratched at his stomach.

  “Now!” She cocked the hammer.

  * * *

  +++

  Timothy thought and thought hard.

  Bugs swarming over him. Nervous nervous nervous. It always got worse always got worse when he was nervous.