The Ackerman Thrillers Boxset: 1-6

by Ethan Cross

  “And how does that help me with Eddie?”

  “You need to examine your own heart. We should forgive others in the same way we hope others forgive us. If you go in with a humble spirit and a forgiving heart, then you’ll be fine. But here’s a question: What if, as you suspect, Eddie still possesses a spiteful personality? What if he responds negatively? Will you give in to your anger?”

  “Just because people make me angry, doesn’t mean I have an anger problem. It seems more that I have a people problem.”

  “Last week, I was told you had an incident with a local sheriff.”

  Marcus gritted his teeth and growled deep in his throat. “We needed this Podunk sheriff to serve a warrant on one of the security guards who was supposed to be protecting the truck that Demon’s cronies altered. The guard turned out to be dirty. He had taken a bribe to look the other way and erase the security footage.”

  “I don’t believe the guard’s culpability was the issue. This sheriff claimed that you defecated in his breakfast. He threatened to file a formal complaint with the Department of Justice.”

  Marcus laughed at the memory and Emily’s description of it. “That’s only partially correct.”

  “How do you partially defecate in someone’s breakfast?”

  “This local sheriff, I find out, is running for re-election, and he’s in there at some greasy-spoon diner jibber-jabbering and won’t go with us to serve the warrant until he’s finished his breakfast. We tell his office that this is a time-sensitive investigation. They respond that we’ll just have to wait. So we wait. For forty-five minutes. Finally, I go in and find this sheriff laughing it up with a bunch of old banker types. They’re just sitting there, cackling like a bunch of old hens and sipping their coffee.”

  “How does that connect your excrement to his breakfast?”

  “I’m getting there. So I walk up and introduce myself. I ask if he’s the sheriff. Anyway, long story short, he gave me attitude, and I pissed in his coffee cup.”

  “You urinated in a fellow officer’s coffee cup in the middle of a crowded restaurant?”

  “No, I took the cup into the bathroom. Then I urinated in it and brought it back out to him.”

  “Do you feel that was an appropriate and proportionate reaction to his behavior?”

  “To be honest, Doc, considering some of the other things I thought about doing to him, I think pissing in his coffee was a pretty measured response on my part. I actually think it displays some real personal growth.”

  23

  The past …

  It was the biggest house Marcus had ever seen.

  And probably the most famous place he’d ever been, if you didn’t count the lady in the bay or other New York City landmarks that had become commonplace to someone born and raised in the city. This was even in a whole other state: New Jersey. Other than a few camping trips with his dad, he had never been anywhere that didn’t begin with “The New York …” His dad, NYPD Detective John Williams, always said, “Why go on vacation? This is the greatest city in the history of the world. If you can’t find it here, it doesn’t exist.”

  But Marcus Williams, now seeing his teenage years within reach, had a sense that his world was finally starting to grow beyond the old neighborhood of brick and concrete.

  It was a far cry from what stood before him now. The sprawling green of the manicured grounds and the massive white-and-black mansion seemed to be composed of colors he had never seen before. Or maybe they were only more vibrant than he had ever seen.

  He still couldn’t believe he was here, and he even had the permission of his parents. He hadn’t necessarily lied to them, merely withheld information. He had waited for a busy moment to ask if he could go to a birthday party with Eddie from school, knowing they wouldn’t question him. They were just glad that he was getting out of the house and away from his action figures and the “damn Nintendo.”

  Of course, Marcus didn’t volunteer which Eddie from school he was going with, even though he knew his father didn’t want him hanging around Eddie Caruso or ever spending the night at the boy’s house. His father had told him that Eddie’s father was a criminal and “not a very nice man.” But Marcus didn’t care about that. Eddie’s father was never around anyhow, and he wanted to be Eddie’s friend, not his father’s.

  Marcus didn’t know the kid whose birthday he was about to celebrate. Eddie had told him that the party was at the home of an associate of his father’s—someone named Tommy Juliano. The birthday boy, Nicky Juliano, was turning two years old. Eddie had said that the party was just as much for Nicky’s brother Junior, who was graduating from eighth grade, so there would be lots of kids of different ages there. Maybe even some older girls.

  Eddie, who had never been without a girlfriend since kindergarten, was always talking “about” girls, when he wasn’t talking “to” them. Marcus wasn’t completely oblivious to the opposite sex. He noticed them. They sometimes noticed him. But that was about as far as the interaction ever went, and when it did go farther, he usually said or did the wrong thing and scared them away.

  The mansion had its own parking lot, and the whole lot was filled with the shine of the newest model cars. Eddie’s mother parked the big Cadillac, which was also brand new. Eddie had bragged incessantly about his father just bringing it home from the dealership.

  The inside of the mansion was as clean and sparkling as the exterior. Junior Juliano met them at the door. He and Eddie exchanged an elaborate handshake full of fist bumps and finger wiggling. Eddie was much younger than the eighth-grade graduate, but the older kids always seemed to like Eddie. Everyone seemed to like Eddie.

  “This is my boy, Marcus. He’s part of my crew, but his dad bleeds blue, so watch what you say around him.”

  Marcus, having no idea what it meant to bleed blue, punched his friend in the arm, which earned a little chuckle from Eddie and the response, “It just means that your dad’s a cop, asswipe. Don’t spaz out on me.”

  “Why does it matter if my dad’s a cop?”

  “It doesn’t. Just don’t mention it to anyone.”

  Sometimes he hated being a cop’s kid. The others treated him like he was a junior officer, and he felt obliged to live up to everyone’s expectations. At least, he had, before he became part of Eddie Caruso’s “crew”—which was really nothing more than a scared and insecure group of kids mobbing together for survival.

  In the years before he had become Eddie’s best friend, on the same playground he now ruled, Marcus had felt as if he died more days than he survived. He hated school. It was a constant barrage of overwhelming input. All those social interactions. All those people to analyze and quantify. When he became Eddie’s friend, people started liking him even if he said or did the wrong thing. None of the other kids screwed around with Eddie and his “crew.”

  Junior Juliano laughed and said, “We have almost an hour before the kids from my class are supposed to get here, and my little brother, Bratman, has already dug into the cake and opened his presents, so … You two little scumbags want to see something cool?”

  24

  Corin Campbell was a gorgeous young woman. Her sister, Faraz’s girl, had paled in comparison when she had handed Baxter the photo of Corin. He wondered at the time if drugs had caused the contrast between the two siblings. If the roles had been reversed and Corin were handing him a picture of Samantha, Baxter wondered, would Sammy have been the beautiful sibling?

  He didn’t think so. He had a feeling that Corin had always been the golden child. Prettier. Smarter. Catching the eye of all her sister’s potential boyfriends … Jealousy was always a good motive, but not one he planned to pursue.

  He knew within seconds after meeting Corin’s sister that Sammy Campbell wasn’t involved and didn’t know where her sister had gone. He knew that not only because of the answers to his questions, but from watching Sammy answer them. She simply didn’t have the capacity to harm her sister and lie about it. She barely had the capac
ity to form complete sentences, let alone link those sentences into complete thoughts.

  Unfortunately, that also meant she didn’t possess any information that could help him find Corin. All she really had for him was an old photo and the knowledge that her sister had disappeared.

  But Samantha had introduced him via phone call to the first of the usual suspects.

  Corin’s boyfriend, Blake, had suggested a coffee shop to meet. Baxter had insisted on meeting at the couple’s condo located in the city’s trendsetting Dogpatch neighborhood. He claimed he wanted to get a better feel for Corin, but that was only one reason. An old detective’s rule of thumb was to find the person the victim was sleeping with, and you’ve found your killer. But Baxter didn’t know if the boyfriend was the one she had been sleeping with or if Corin even was a victim.

  When he opened the door to the condo, Blake reminded Baxter of a former Nickelodeon teen heartthrob, about five years past his prime. Handsome but haggard. When Baxter looked into the kid’s eyes, he saw something else. The hollowness of loss and grief.

  The handsome medical student ushered him into the small apartment. The space was cramped but elegantly decorated with modern art furnishings. Everything had a certain enforced symmetry.

  Baxter concluded that Corin had been the one who decorated the condo.

  The other element that stuck out was the smell of old garbage. The dishes overflowed the sink. Takeout bags and empty junk-food boxes littered the counters and table tops.

  Baxter concluded that Blake had been the one who destroyed the condo.

  Obviously, Corin had been in charge of cleaning, and judging by the preciseness of her decorating, he suspected she’d be pissed to see what Blake had done with the place.

  The kid said, “So you’re a private investigator?”

  Baxter smiled warmly. “Something like that. But, if I may say so, that is quite a suit. Didn’t know medical students wore that sort of thing.”

  Blake had brown hair, slightly receding into a stylishly spiked widow’s peak. He wore a suit more expensive than Baxter’s fees would be for this whole case, and he smelled like cigar smoke and gin and tonics.

  Blake said, “Don’t let it fool you. The suit was a gift from my father. I had lunch with him today at the club. He insists I look the part.”

  “And what part is that?”

  “Son of a high-priced lawyer.”

  Baxter nodded and made notes in a pocket-sized, leather-bound notebook.

  He wrote: FIL=lawyer. Enemies? Revenge? Ransom?

  He said, “Has he been helping in your search for Corin?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “No particulars. Just figuring that high priced meant money and resources and access to the police chief and a whole swarm of private investigators.”

  Blake’s gaze fell to the table covered in burger wrappers and Chinese takeout boxes. And beneath those, flyers displaying Corin’s face and a 1-800 number.

  Baxter didn’t shy from the obvious. “So let me guess, man. Your dad didn’t want you to become a doctor, and he felt threatened by your relationship with Corin.”

  Blake’s lip curled in disgust. “My father simply doesn’t care. At all.”

  “Sounds like a difficult sort of dude.”

  “As long as I don’t ask for money and don’t make him look bad, he could care less.”

  “My dad was just the guy who drove our house around when I was a kid. So I feel you on that, brother.”

  Blake shrugged it off. “I honestly don’t think my father could have gotten anything more done than what’s being done already.”

  “The cops have been helpful?”

  “Yeah, they’ve been fine. Not that I would know any different. I’m not an investigator.”

  “No leads?”

  “Nothing they’ve shared with me. We’ve put up thousands of flyers. I’ve been on TV twice, offering a reward. My father did offer to pay that.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably tax-deductible, and good publicity. Nothing came in on the wires?”

  “No. The only thing the cops found was that her Facebook account had been hacked and some photos altered. Apparently, it’s a kind of Internet prank going around right now. Adding some skull face in the background of people’s pictures to freak them out.”

  Baxter made a note of that. “Do you have any of those pictures?”

  Pulling out his cell phone, Blake swiped around and then showed the device to Baxter. It took him a moment to find the skull face, a twisted game of Where’s Waldo. He stared at the face a moment, feeling a vague familiarity with it. As if he’d seen it before.

  “Can you send me those pictures, please. Number’s on the card I gave you. Another thought. I’m just putting this down to see if you pick it up, brother. Are you absolutely sure she didn’t make it home that night?”

  Blake shrugged. “I can’t say anything for certain. But nothing was out of place, and the police couldn’t find any signs of forced entry. Plus, her car would have been here if she was abducted from the condo.”

  “Unless the person who took her also took her car. But that’s only if someone else is involved.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time that a person put on one face to the world and hid their true self. Maybe she just split.”

  “Why would she ever—”

  “I don’t mean to imply anything or twist you up, man. But the questions have to be asked and answered and contemplated. In a case like this, with a missing person, you have to establish a lot of questions that have simple yes or no answers. The first is: Did she leave or was she taken?”

  Anger filled Blake’s eyes. “She wouldn’t have run. She was happy. She loved her life, and she loved me. The only reason she would be gone is that someone took her.”

  Baxter had studied Blake’s eyes and facial expressions throughout the whole exchange. He was an avid student of kinesics, the study of body language and facial expressions, and from every indication his trained eye could identify, the young man was being truthful.

  “Okay, the next questions I would ask are: If she was taken, did she know the person or was it a stranger? A single perpetrator or a group? That sort of thing.”

  “You think Corin is dead?”

  Baxter measured his response. “The odds aren’t in her favor. But I’m a bit like an old bloodhound. Once I’m onto a scent, I don’t let up. Dead or not, I intend to find out what happened to her.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Enemies?”

  “None.”

  “Guys who may have taken a perverse interest? Even if she thought they were just friends.”

  “Nothing like that. She didn’t even have many girlfriends.”

  “Where was she seen last? Or where was she supposed to be last?”

  Blake seemed to consider his answer carefully, not as if he was hiding anything but as if he wanted to ensure that his answers were precise. “She would have come home after her last class.”

  Baxter considered this. The car was an obvious point of abduction. She could have also parked in the wrong spot and been accosted by someone out to rob and mutilate her, but Baxter’s gut told him this was premeditated. “Where did she usually park for class?”

  “In the parking garage, but it has security. The footage shows her getting in and leaving the lot. She must have stopped somewhere between here and there.”

  “If you had to guess what happened to her—and be honest—what do you think?”

  The young medical student looked toward the oak floor. “I hate to even speak it aloud, but Corin was tough and smart. She knew how to defend herself. She wouldn’t have been taken by some crackhead, and she wouldn’t have abandoned me and her life. The only thing that I can think is that she was kidnapped. But we haven’t received any ransom demands …”

  The implications hung in the air like flies buzzing over a fresh corpse. Baxter asked, “Nothing else that seemed stran
ge? Nothing she was worried about? Any changes in behavior? Listen, brother, don’t hold anything back. Finding her may depend on the most insignificant of details.”

  “Just the skull-face thing in her pictures. But the cops said that particular hack has affected thousands of people. If there was anything else, I would have told the cops and would tell you now. It’s like she vanished into thin air.”

  25

  Corin Campbell tried to mentally project herself to a happy place. A meadow or a park or playing in the snow with Sammy on some early childhood vacation. Anywhere other than this cold, concrete chamber. She had completely lost perspective on how long she’d been here. Several weeks at least, but she supposed it could have been any amount of time. She could have been in this hell for days or weeks or only a matter of hours, and she wouldn’t have known the difference. Everything was relative. Pain could make seconds seem like hours, and pleasure could make days seem like a matter of a few moments.

  She couldn’t say that her time here had been marked by nothing but pain. There was also the fear. Which she found to be even more soul-crushing than the pain. Corin had been in a constant state of fear and despair from the moment she had seen the man in the skull mask. Even when her tormentor wasn’t with her, she could feel his presence in the air pressing down on her, pushing inside her.

  The only way she was able to mark time was by his visits to her lonely corner of hell.

  She wondered if Blake would still want her after all this. Not because of the physical aspects; she didn’t doubt his understanding. But her mind was shattered in a way now that made her doubt she could even look at him the same. The world would never be bright and safe to her again. She would never be the petite brunette in love with life, the girl Blake had fallen for. Although, she supposed that the woman he had fallen for wasn’t truly the real her either.

  Corin rolled over on her bare, sweat-stained mattress. Her legs shook with spasms of pain at the slight movement. That was another reason she doubted that she actually was in hell. She reasoned the genuine Satan would not feel the need to break the shins of his captives in order to ensure they couldn’t escape. That act itself inspired hope in a strange way. If her tormentor felt the need to cripple her, perhaps that meant help was within reach.