Every Wicked Man

by Steven James

  “Yeah, but I was only, like, a block away.”

  “Well, he loves you. He’s concerned about you.”

  “He—wait. What did you say?”

  “Patrick. He’s concerned for you.”

  “No. Before that.”

  “He loves you.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes. But he doesn’t know how to show it yet. Give it some time. He’s still new at this stepdad thing.”

  Tessa was quiet.

  Christie tossed her dirty clothes into the hamper, then handed Tessa three books to place on the shelf: The Cloud of Unknowing, Dark Night of the Soul, and The Way of a Pilgrim.

  “So really, though,” Tessa said, “how was your weekend?”

  “Nice. Quiet. Reflective. Gave me a place to think some things through.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, some personal things.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m not trying to be overly secretive. I just needed some time to myself.”

  “Was it me?”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. Did I do something?”

  “Oh. No. Absolutely not. It’s me. It’s just me.”

  “You sure it wasn’t me?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Okay,” Tessa said, but not right away. “Gotcha.”

  * * *

  +++

  It wasn’t unusual for me to lose myself in my work, and when I checked the time at last, I saw that it was almost four o’clock.

  The agents who spoke with Reese in Phoenix hadn’t found out anything—though they did note that he seemed a little less than forthcoming.

  Calvin had promised to contact me, but I still hadn’t heard from him. There was some paperwork for him to fill out if he was going to be officially brought in to consult on this case and, before we went any further with discussing things, I needed him to complete those forms, but he didn’t answer when I tried his cell.

  It’s common to do a tox screen after a suicide to see if there were any contributing factors—alcohol, illegal drugs, prescription meds that might cause suicidal tendencies—so we had the results from the other deaths. They confirmed that each of the people had Selzucaine in their systems.

  If we could discover where they got the drug, then finding their dealer might be the way for us to track down Blake or the Matchmaker.

  However, since the suicides were in three different states, I anticipated that it would be unlikely that the victims all purchased drugs from the same person.

  Also, if we could match the shipping locations of the silent ladies with known drug distributors in the cities in which the victims lived, it might lead us somewhere helpful.

  Maybe that’s what Mannie meant when he said to follow the Selzucaine back to the source.

  I sent an email to Sasha and cc’d Ralph requesting more info on Selzucaine trafficking and known dealers.

  I thought that since the videos were posted live online there must be some way for the potential victims to contact the observer who was there when they died. So I studied the Internet histories of the victims and found that they all frequented the same chat room. It didn’t appear to be a suicide club, as Calvin had mentioned, but rather a dating site.

  The Matchmaker.

  Oh. Okay. If that was the case, then it fit in a grisly way: he was setting up the victims with the person who would watch them die.

  Too many investigators come up with a theory and then try to prove it. Calvin taught me to do the opposite—to hypothesize and then try to find flaws in the theory. “The truth will withstand all inquiries,” he told me once. “Vigorously try to disprove yourself. When you can no longer do so, you are finally on the pathway towards a valid deduction regarding the case.”

  Never assume. Hypothesize, test, revise.

  I passed the information along to Cyber to analyze and to see if they could trace the location of the site’s administrator.

  Greer had come through for me and gotten a reservation tonight at seven at Giuseppe’s, and I’d sent a text to Christie that I would meet her there. Now I heard back from her, letting me know that she was home from the airport and was looking forward to seeing me at the restaurant.

  Pumpkins, huh? she texted.

  Cheaper than hiring agile pedestrians.

  I’ll meet you at 7.

  See you in a couple hours.

  * * *

  +++

  Timothy considered canceling tonight’s book signing.

  No, no, no. You can’t. You have to go. People might get suspicious. If they get suspicious, they might come looking. And if they come looking, they’ll find out what you did to Julianne.

  He wanted to tell the voice that he hadn’t done anything to Julianne, but there she was, dead and cold upstairs in his bedroom.

  Resting in his bed.

  He said nothing.

  Alright.

  He would go to the signing, and afterward he would figure out what to do with the body. Something permanent. Something that wasn’t going to bring any suspicion onto him.

  Thinking about her caused him to be distracted and made it hard to decide what section of his book to read at the signing. His muscles were aching, one of the symptoms of his condition—exacerbated, no doubt, from the fatigue of shoveling out that hole earlier in the day—and he felt like he had no energy, like he was spiraling down and down and down, deeper into some sort of obsidian sadness. He didn’t like the word “depression,” had never liked it. He wondered if he should start taking his meds again.

  No, the drugs take too long to work anyway, and remember how they dull everything? Muting the good, the bad, making you live in a living fog? Don’t take the meds. You can handle this on your own.

  Timothy paged through the novel Julianne had read to him when he met her at the waterfront, and then reviewed the next chapter. Maybe this was what he was looking for. Maybe this was the section to read tonight at the bookstore.

  Maybe maybe maybe maybe.

  48

  Deer Valley Airport

  Phoenix, Arizona

  Jake Reese swallowed tightly and stared across the steaming tarmac at the private jet thirty yards away. Three men stood next to it. One of them set Toby’s car seat beside him on the ground; the other two flanked him and held some sort of assault rifles.

  Toby was quiet. Not a peep from the car seat.

  Jake was terrified. From where he stood, he couldn’t tell if his son was alive or not.

  “Is he okay?” he called to them.

  “Sleeping,” the man in the middle replied. “Do you have the canisters?”

  “I’m not giving you anything until I know he’s okay!”

  “Do you want me to shake him? Pinch him? Make him cry?”

  Jake worked his jaw back and forth. “Don’t touch him. What you want is in the trunk of my car. Come and get it.”

  “You try anything, your son dies.”

  “I understand.”

  The man in charge of the car seat nodded to one of his associates, who strode forward to look in Jake’s car.

  Jake unlocked it, popped the trunk, and stepped back.

  Somewhat cautiously, the guy peered inside, then inspected the two sizable canisters and announced, “They’re here. We’re good.”

  “They’re sealed?”

  “They’re sealed.”

  The man looming over Toby nodded toward Jake, who immediately rushed forward, trembling, to get his boy.

  Toby was still quiet.

  Jake dropped to his knees. “Toby?” he gasped. “Dada’s here.”

  The child didn’t stir.

  Jake unbuckled him, eased him from the car seat, and lifted him gently toward his chest.

  “Toby, oh my Toby.” His wo
rds became a desperate plea to the God he wasn’t even sure he believed in. “You’re okay, I know you’re okay.”

  Finally, Toby sniffled and opened his eyes. He threw his arms around his father’s neck and made no sound but just held on, clinging to him, loving him, this man who’d accidentally left him behind in their car to die.

  “Our business here is concluded,” the man who’d brought Toby said. “If you try anything, if you tell anyone what you’ve done or the research you were involved in for us, we know where you live. And we will find you if you try to run.”

  “I won’t try to run.”

  “Alright.”

  “Are you the real Ibrahim?”

  “That’s no concern of yours.”

  “Are you Fayed Raabi’ah Bashir?”

  “Keep asking questions you don’t need to know the answer to and see how well that works out for your family. How long will it take to synthesize?”

  “You don’t want to mix those two chemicals early. They’re inert when separate—ideal for shipping. But they’ll become potent when mixed together. Wait until you land in New York. Remember that once they’re mixed, they’ll reach their prime potency in four to five hours. Give it five to be safe.”

  “And the effects?”

  “When snorted with the Selzucaine . . . Well, I guarantee you’ll get the results you’re hoping for.”

  Mixing a stimulant hallucinogenic, like Selzucaine, with an anesthetic analgesic depressant, like Tranadyl, would produce a similar effect to a speedball, when you shoot up heroin and cocaine.

  A potent drug interaction that led to waves of euphoria and then a crash.

  And then euphoria again.

  Quite a ride, until you die of an arrhythmia or you bottom out into a coma.

  Yes, he had sold his soul to the devil. But at least he’d saved his son. The brain-muddled addicts would eventually shoot up or snort their way into the grave anyway—they were just getting what they deserved.

  No. No one deserves that.

  Jake did his best to quiet his conscience, to beat it down with his well-rehearsed rationalizations.

  “Five hours,” the man said. “Alright. I understand.”

  Then Jake took his son home to spend as much time with him as he could before his past found him out and caught up with him for good, which he was becoming more and more convinced would eventually occur.

  49

  I finished skimming Vidocq, still unsure what specifically Calvin wanted me to glean from the memoirs of the pioneering detective.

  However, I did take away a few of Vidocq’s hints: Go where the criminals are, gain their confidence, and get them to respect you, to like you, even. Use subterfuge whenever necessary.

  Good advice, reinforced by my own personal experiences.

  It was just after six, and I started gathering my things to head out for my dinner date with Christie when Ralph stopped by my office to tell me that Senator Murray had gambling debts that he was keeping quiet.

  “How do we know this?”

  “Greer sent me a memo. I’ll forward it to you. He said it took some digging.”

  “Well, if Murray does have debts and his son knew about them, it’s possible that he really was speaking to his father when he said, ‘This is for you,’ just as Mannie claimed.”

  “You think someone paid to cover his dad’s debts and then watched him commit suicide in return?”

  “I’m not sure what I think, but that’s a possibility.”

  I knew we were drifting into speculation, but when you’re working a case with so many variables, sometimes it’s helpful to just throw ideas out there and see where they lead.

  “Is this you looking for motive?” Ralph asked me.

  “It’s me looking for answers.”

  Ten years ago I never would’ve believed the scenario we’d laid out here, but today, with the upsurge of live-feed suicides and homicides, it was, tragically, not that incomprehensible.

  “I couldn’t find any legislation that the senator is currently reviewing that appears to be directly related to the case,” he said. “However, he has a pet project right now dealing with new technology in encryption and Internet privacy.”

  “Internet privacy?”

  “I know—and then his son dies while live-streaming his suicide. He’s on a committee that’s examining the practicality of instituting quantum encryption capabilities in our military networks. With all that we know about this form of sending data, it’s unhackable. There might be something there. I’m going to keep looking into it.”

  “Listen,” I said, “I found evidence that a blogger and freelance journalist named Thomas Kewley from Baltimore took his own life. Based on my conversation with Calvin, Kewley was likely onto the Matchmaker when it happened.”

  “Hmm . . . Have you heard anything more from Werjonic?”

  “No, not since we spoke at lunch. I tried calling him a little while ago, but he didn’t pick up.”

  Ralph saw me straightening my tie instead of loosening it, which would’ve been more natural for me to do at this time of day.

  He looked at me quizzically.

  “Big date with Christie,” I explained. “Welcoming her back to the city.”

  “Nice. When this is all over, maybe the four of us can get together—you, Christie, Brin, and me.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Hey, you don’t by any chance know where Sasha is, do you?”

  “The last time I saw her was about an hour ago. She was working with Greer on the Selzucaine connection.”

  “Yeah. I wanted to speak with her about that. I pulled up a number of leads on who the major distributors are along the East Coast.”

  “Check in with Greer at his office. It’s on the eighteenth floor. She’s probably up there.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “By the way, you ever hear of Vidocq?” I asked.

  “What’s that, some yoga pose? Yogurt brand? Some sort of French cheese?”

  “A French detective, actually. He lived about two hundred years ago. Calvin bought me a book of his memoirs. Calvin seemed to indicate that it has something to do with the case, but I’m not sure what that might be.”

  We left my office, and Ralph walked beside me toward the elevator bay.

  “Hey,” he said. “How well do you know Greer?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. A vibe.”

  “A vibe?”

  “Okay, we’ll call it a gut feeling. And not a good one.”

  “I’m not a big believer in gut feelings.”

  “I know.”

  “Did he do something to make you suspicious?”

  “No. Nothing in particular.”

  “I don’t know him extremely well, but he’s a straight shooter. I trust him.”

  “Alright. That’s enough for me.”

  We reached the elevators.

  “Say hi to Christie for me.”

  “Will do. Keep me up to speed.”

  A nod.

  “And let me know what you find out from Sasha,” I added.

  “I will.”

  * * *

  +++

  free

  wonder

  thinking losing spinning memory turning once again.

  briskly fading go season’s viewing sharply they blur now unfocused again . . .

  The words tilted and jumbled through Timothy’s head. All a mess. Nonsense.

  Or maybe not.

  He tried to make sense of them, tried to put them into sentences, but found it hard to focus, hard to concentrate.

  Mental deterioration.

  “No. No, that’s not it.”

  Fear and madness and pain.

  And madness.

  And pain.
r />   Stay on track, Timothy. Focus!

  “But how, when there’s a dead body in my bed?”

  He took a deep breath and stared at the mirror. He hadn’t wanted to come upstairs because of Julianne’s corpse in his bedroom just down the hall, but this was where he kept the lotions and anti-itch creams.

  And truthfully, part of him wanted to make sure she was still there, that she hadn’t somehow moved from where he’d left her.

  He saw that she had not. Not even a little.

  Now, he stood naked in front of the mirror and squeezed some aloe vera gel onto his palm.

  It felt cool and tingly to the touch as he slathered it across his arm. He also spread some on his stomach and over his legs where more sores had begun to appear. He probably used too much because it ended up being globby and gooey even after he spread it out, but it did calm down the itching a bit—at least enough for him to shift his attention to preparing for the book signing.

  As he gazed at himself in the mirror, it struck him that he was deteriorating quickly. He hadn’t realized how much scratching he’d been doing and how much the sores with those tiny black fibers in them had spread. That’s what happens when the bugs get under the skin. They can spread anywhere.

  “Alright, it’s time,” he said. “Get dressed, Timothy. Get ready.” He wasn’t sure why he spoke the words aloud.

  Focus!

  Timothy steeled himself and then walked into the bedroom to get his clothes.

  From research for his novels, he knew that corpses will typically give off a strong odor after twenty-four to thirty-six hours, but if the air is warm enough, it can start much sooner. So, when he brought her up here, he’d kept the window open and let the weather that had winter in its throat leak into the room. He didn’t have perfume, but he did have some cologne, which he sprayed onto her wrists and cheeks as a security measure, a way to help. Just in case.

  Thankfully, the bad odors had not yet come.

  But he didn’t sniff her closely because he knew they were on their way.

  He found a black turtleneck long enough to cover the length of his arms and the scratches on his neck from when he was nervous before his fight with Julianne, and tugged it on.