Every Wicked Man

by Steven James

  Her legs were also bound, and now that she began to get her bearings, she realized that she was in the trunk of a car. “Timothy,” she called angrily. “Let me out!”

  First, she twisted onto her stomach and futilely kicked her legs up against the trunk’s hood.

  Then, although it was awkward and uncomfortable with her right arm torqued back the way it was, she turned onto her back and tried. Despite her best efforts, though, she could tell almost immediately that she wasn’t going to be able to free herself, so she shouted again for him to let her out, then heard a garage door closing.

  “Timothy, whatever you’re thinking of doing, you better think again. There’s a man who gave me your name, and if he finds out anything happened to me, he’ll come after you. He will not stop, and he’s not someone you want to be on the wrong side of.”

  No one replied, but she could hear someone outside the car and it sounded like the person was going through a pile of tools.

  “Timothy!” she hollered. “Untie me!”

  “You don’t deserve to live.” The voice sounded coarse and deep. She couldn’t tell if it was Timothy or not. She already doubted his sanity and wondered if he might have different personalities that came out, especially when he was perpetrating his crimes or speaking to his victims.

  Victim. No. Not a victim. You’re going to get out of this.

  Turning to the side again, she tried to maneuver her arm free but couldn’t quite decipher how it was tied. When she attempted to move her legs, it became clear that she wasn’t going to be able to untie herself until she had the use of that right hand.

  Assets, Julianne. What are your assets? What can you use to get free?

  The light that came through a rusted-out section of the car near the lock didn’t reveal much. She tried to focus on what lay inside the trunk with her: a pile of rags, a first aid kit, a tire iron, so—

  Wait. The first aid kit. Maybe there’s a scissors or a blade of some type in it.

  The man outside the car began to mutter to himself, something about how this one was different from the rest, how this one was special.

  She scooted over as far as she could, and it took three tries and tremendous effort, but finally she was able to nudge the first aid kit to her good hand.

  Working with her arm behind her, she managed to wedge the kit in place and pop it open. She felt her way past some bandages, a roll of gauze, some first aid tape, and then—yes. Her fingers closed around the blade of a scissors.

  By the size and shape, she guessed it was a fabric scissors, the kind paramedics use.

  From outside the trunk, she heard more muttering and then footsteps and a door—but not the rattling garage door—creak open and then close.

  Do it now. You have to do it now. You have to get free.

  She managed to turn the scissors so that the blades angled against the rope. It was too thick for her to close the blades, so she worked them back and forth to try sawing through it.

  A few moments later, the man returned, the door closing creakily behind him.

  Julianne felt her heartbeat skidding forward, faster and faster.

  The strident footsteps approached the car, and then he threw the trunk open.

  She was on her side, and before she could turn to see him, he placed a strong hand on her shoulder, holding her firmly in place.

  “Look at you,” he said in that odd, indistinguishable voice. “What have you found?”

  He roughly tore the scissors from her hand. When she pulled on the rope, she realized she hadn’t been able to sever it.

  “I don’t think it would be fair of me to take these from you, as clever as you were getting them out of that kit there. So here you go.” He tucked the scissors under the rope around her thigh, out of reach from either of her hands. “I’ll leave these here for you, sweetie, as a little reminder of how close you came to getting away.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” she seethed. “You are not going to get away with—”

  Letting go of her, he picked up one of the oily rags and stuffed it into her mouth as she tried to wrench herself away from him.

  He tied another rag around the first one to hold it in place. Despite how desperately she attempted to pull free and see his face, she wasn’t able to do either.

  Once she was securely gagged, he said to her, “Some of the newer cars—they just don’t work as well for this. But with the older ones, you can be pretty sure that the carbon monoxide will build up in a space this small pretty fast. I know how much you like photography. I promise to take a picture of you when it’s all over. For posterity.”

  With that, he closed the trunk, and as she tried futilely to cry out, he started the engine. Less than five seconds later, she heard the car door close and then the house door as he left her alone in the garage to die.

  STAGE IV

  Depression

  Silent ladies. Hot car deaths.

  Turtles struggling toward shore. The Matchmaker’s lair.

  35

  Monday, November 5

  My head was still throbbing a bit, but it wasn’t anything a few Advil couldn’t handle.

  Greer called me while I was collecting my notes for work. It was the first time we’d spoken since Saturday, and there was a lot to catch up on.

  I told him what I’d found at James Leeson’s gravestone last night.

  “The silent ladies,” he muttered.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you don’t have any idea who you chased?”

  “No. I’m seeing if we can pull up videos from the subway station.”

  “Okay.”

  “Mannie said that he chose to talk with me because I would do what needed to be done when the time was right.”

  “What was he referring to?”

  “I don’t know. He also told me to follow the Selzucaine back to the source and that Jon killed himself for his father. I’m still not sure how that fits in with what we know or exactly what it all means.”

  “Huh.”

  “And, oh—Ralph Hawkins is in the city. He’ll be coming in to the federal building this morning.”

  “Know him by reputation only. Never actually met him. From what I understand, though, he gets the job done.”

  “He does.”

  “And nothing more on Mannie’s whereabouts?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “But he’s the one who left that mannequin head for you to find?”

  “There’s no way to be certain at this point if it was him. It’s possible it was the person I chased instead. We’re running prints.”

  A short pause. “Good. Maybe that’ll give us something useful.” He asked me if I’d seen the senator’s press conference.

  “I did. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was hell-bent on going through with it.”

  “Something’s up.”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed, and I could hear a head shake in his voice. “Do you know how many people have already claimed to be there at the house, hoping to get that twenty-thousand-dollar reward? Last I heard there were close to a hundred.”

  “I’m surprised it’s not more.”

  “I’m wondering if we should take a closer look at the senator’s life,” he said.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe he was pressured to make that offer. Compromised in some way.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Possibly.”

  “If we start poking around, we’ll need to tread softly. He is a ranking member of Congress.”

  “Not to mention a good friend of the assistant director,” he noted.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll put some feelers out. I can be a soft treader when I need to be.”

  I was filling him in on the suicide videos when he yawned and then
apologized. “Sorry. It’s not you. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “That makes two of us.” I thought of that living mannequin head I’d envisioned, like a death mask that was trying to tell me something important through its bloodless lips, something I wasn’t able to understand. “The more I have on my mind, the less sleep I tend to get.”

  “You must not get much sleep at all then, brother.”

  “Admittedly, there are times when it’s a bit slim.”

  “So what’s the plan for today?”

  “I’m going to check on the receipt I found in that woman’s jacket—the parking lot receipt from the garage over near the federal building. At least it gives us a time and a place to work from.”

  “Besides, most people in Manhattan don’t even own a car. And with what it costs to park in the city, we should be looking for someone on the high end of the socioeconomic scale. That narrows things down.”

  “If the driver was even from New York City at all,” I reminded him.

  “Be careful with assumptions, right?”

  “Always. Oh, and I’m planning to have lunch with Dr. Werjonic.”

  “The Dr. Werjonic?”

  “Yes. He was my advisor for my postgrad studies. He’s lecturing here in the city this week.”

  “That guy’s a living legend.”

  “I’m hoping to be able to pick his brain a little. Maybe get some inspiration or direction related to the case.”

  “Sounds good. Alright. Talk to you soon.”

  After the call, I found myself caught up thinking about the implications of the senator’s press conference until Tessa joined me in the kitchen.

  “Okay,” she said. “So with Mom at that monastery, I’ve been thinking about monks and nuns and stuff. For some reason that got me thinking about Easter.”

  “Alright.”

  “You ever been to an Easter egg hunt?”

  “When I was a kid.”

  “Well, they’re from the devil. They never end well. There’s always at least one kid in tears. Always. I’m pretty sure Easter egg hunts were invented by the same people who decided clowns would be fun for kids.”

  “You don’t think clowns are funny?”

  “Clowns are to funny what Cheetos are to health food.”

  “That is . . . so true.”

  She sighed. “I hope when Mom comes back she doesn’t have a monk haircut.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

  * * *

  +++

  Tessa was heading toward the door to go to school when Patrick suggested dropping her off on his way to work.

  “I can walk. I do it every day.”

  “It’s cold out there this morning.”

  “Not any colder than usual.”

  “It’s not a problem. Really.”

  She looked at him curiously. “Are you being for real here? I’m not in the first grade.”

  “No, I know. I’m just trying to be helpful. It’s no problem, really. I’ll grab my things.”

  Just to get going, she gave in. “Whatever.”

  Five minutes later when she was getting out of the car, he said, “Have a good day at school.”

  “Now there’s a contradiction in terms.”

  * * *

  +++

  Though I was feeling a little overly protective of my stepdaughter, I hoped she wasn’t intuiting the extent of my concern. With Mannie on the loose and Christie not back yet, I couldn’t help but have the girl’s well-being on my mind.

  I called in to see if the lab was able to pull any prints from the mannequin head I’d found last night. The technician I spoke with told me that so far they’d only found Mannie’s and Blake’s prints—and mine, from when I’d picked it up.

  “Alright. Listen, I’ve been thinking: I want you to look for DNA as well.”

  “DNA?”

  “Is it too late to do that?”

  “At this point it’s not ideal, but we can give it a shot. It would probably be contaminated. Why?”

  “In the past, there were instances when Blake made his prostitutes kiss the mannequins that he had.”

  “You want us to look for the DNA of a fille de joie on this mannequin head?”

  “Anyone’s DNA, but yeah. On the lips, particularly. Let me know what you find.”

  Earlier, I’d sent an expedited request through to find out whose prints had been on the jacket the woman left in the woods beside the graveyard, but when I checked my messages, I found that the request had been denied, leaving the lingering question of whose prints those were.

  And the even more baffling mystery of why I wasn’t being told her identity.

  * * *

  +++

  At the parking garage, I reviewed the security footage at the time listed on the receipt and found that a late-model black Ford Focus with New Jersey plates had come through. However, when I ran the tags, I discovered they were actually registered to the Jeep Cherokee of a man in Newark.

  Evidently, someone had switched the plates, which meant I needed another way to identify this car.

  When I zoomed in and studied the vehicle closely for any unique markings, I noticed a broken front passenger-side headlight from some sort of fender bender. It was a long shot, but I wondered if this car had ever been pulled over for a missing headlight or if it’d been written up as part of an accident report.

  I put a call through to Greer to have him check with local and state law enforcement in New York and New Jersey, then I continued studying the footage to see if I could catch sight of who left the car, but I came up empty. As I was getting ready to leave the garage, Greer called back.

  “We’ve got nothing on the subway video of the guy you chased, but I do have a name with regard to the car,” he said.

  “Who is it?”

  “Sasha Daye. She’s registered with an escort agency in Manhattan. Upscale. High-end clients.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “Yeah. She’s got a place in Brooklyn over near Prospect Park.”

  “Text it to me.” I was already on my way to my car. “I’ll meet you there.”

  36

  Christie entered the confession booth.

  The cramped quarters smelled of dried leather and the stale taint of body odor. A screened partition separated her from the man waiting to hear her confess her sins.

  “I don’t know how to do this.” Christie wasn’t sure how loudly to speak and had the sense that she was probably talking too softly. “I’ve never been to confession before.”

  “Okay. And you may speak up. No one else will hear you, I assure you.”

  She raised her voice a notch. “I’m not Catholic.”

  “Have you been baptized?”

  “Yes. I’m a Baptist, actually.” Irony. He said nothing. She went on, “Do I call you Father?”

  “Not if it makes you uncomfortable. Does it make you uncomfortable?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She wasn’t sure which of the monks was on the other side of the confessional, but his voice was raspy and weathered, as if he’d spent a lifetime at sea rather than singing and chanting here at the monastery. Maybe a life bereft of small talk and chatter did that to someone’s voice.

  “Just tell me what’s on your heart, my child. Something brought you here today. What is it?”

  “I believe I may be living in the worst kind of sin.”

  “And what sin is that?”

  “The greatest commandment is to love God, so the greatest sin is to fail to love him. Right?”

  “Or to blaspheme him, perhaps. But you are correct. Failing to love God is a mortal sin. Do you believe in God?”

  “Yes. I do believe in him, but I’m afraid I’ve stopped loving him.”


  “And to your understanding, what is the cause of this loss of love?”

  She hesitated but then plowed forward. “I have cancer. It’s bad. I’m dying. Even though I want to believe God will heal me, I find myself doubting that he will. My love feels like only a dry husk of what it used to be. It’s hard to put into words.”

  “Sometimes belief and unbelief can both be fruit that hang from the same vine. When a man came to Jesus to have him cast a demon out of his son and Jesus told him that all things are possible if only you will believe, the man cried out, ‘I do believe, help my unbelief!’ So in this instance, the man held both belief and unbelief in Jesus in his heart at the same time, perhaps even to equal degrees.”

  Christie knew the story but had never quite looked at it like that. “Are you saying that doubt isn’t wrong?”

  “Sometimes doubt is simply a stepping-stone on the journey toward a deeper faith. You don’t need to understand God to love him. In fact, if you make understanding him a prerequisite for loving him, you’ll always be disappointed.”

  “How can I fall in love with God again?”

  “Through obedience, my child.”

  “Obedience?”

  “First John, five, verse three: ‘This is what loving God is—keeping his commandments.’ Have you heard that verse before?”

  “Yes.” She’d memorized it many years before but in a different translation. She knew that John never separated obedience from love, but still, this idea of obedience as a way of expressing love for God was a tough one to grasp. “Father, our church teaches grace—God’s undeserved love for us—and salvation through faith rather than works.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you love your husband?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You cannot show your husband how much you love him by committing adultery. And so it is with God. We cannot express our love and devotion to him by running after other lovers.”