Kill the Next One

by Federico Axat

  “Skip the sources. Just tell us what it is, already,” Ted broke in.

  “Yeah,” Irving said. “Let’s get to the good stuff.”

  “Fine. The police have an eyewitness,” Marman said, pausing to gauge the reactions of the other three.

  “Someone who saw what happened?” Justin asked.

  “What part of ‘eyewitness’ don’t you understand?” Irving said.

  If anyone else was in the habit of walking around the library area at night, Justin thought, they might have noticed him there at some point and told the police about it.

  “Yes, someone who saw what happened,” Marman corroborated. “I even know the guy’s name: Wendell.”

  “What else?” Irving didn’t seem very impressed.

  “Fiona says her father was talking about Wendell as if he were the key to everything. She said he was providing key information: not only was he there when the murder took place, but he can also lead them to the murderer. Segarra promised the dean that the case would be solved in less than a week.”

  “Wow. And who is this Wendell guy? A student?”

  “I have a friend who works in the student office, and he’s checking it out right now. For the time being, nobody seems to know anyone by that name.”

  “If it isn’t a student, it’s got to be somebody on the grounds crew, or a security guard, or something like that.”

  Ted spoke calmly. “We need to find out who Wendell is. Can you?”

  “If he’s a student, probably,” Marman said. “Though I doubt he is, to be honest. We would have heard about him by now.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Justin said.

  Ted went back to room 503. He had some thinking to do.

  74

  1994

  The murder of Thomas Tyler was never solved. His dossier ended up in the police department’s cold case files, along with what little evidence had been collected. There it remained for years. Nobody in the Box ever learned who Wendell was or what kind of key information he had provided that might have thrown light on the subject.

  Tyler’s killer went on to kill again. Not once, but many times.

  75

  Present day

  Laura was still on the ground, her back propped against the grimy building. Over the perimeter wall she saw treetops swaying rhythmically. The clouds had darkened and the breeze had turned into a stiff wind. Dry leaves skated across the asphalt parking lot before her. Marcus’s voice, emerging metallic from the tiny speaker of her phone, was all that kept her halfway focused.

  “Laura, are you there?”

  “Yes. The signal is weak. I’m shaking, Marcus.”

  “You’ll be all right. If McKay is shackled—and doesn’t remember anything—there’s no reason for worry. But if he does remember, why did he lead you two there?”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, there’s still one other thing I can’t figure out. You said there’s a witness in the police file named Wendell.”

  “Precisely, but he wasn’t a real person. The police made him up and spread the rumor that they’d found an eyewitness. It made sense if they were guessing that the killer was a college student who’d get jumpy and make a mistake. As soon as I saw that name in the file, I understood everything…”

  “I fail to see it.”

  “Listen to me, Laura—please. McKay killed the professor over his girlfriend, who was cheating on him. Wendell was the only person who could expose him, so McKay needed him dead, too, like in the cycles. See?”

  “I’m trying to think.”

  “Laura, Bob and I are heading up to meet you there. I need the exact coordinates from you. Bob has contacted the FBI, and they’ve got a team on the way. I realize it can’t be easy to think clearly while you’re in the situation, but you can trust me. Think about what I first told you. McKay and Blaine are brothers. Blaine had an airtight alibi when his girlfriend was killed, but what about McKay? He could have done it, easily. We don’t know anything about the relationship between the two brothers.”

  Laura was having a hard time getting used to the idea that Ted and Blaine were brothers. How did that piece fit the puzzle?

  “Marcus, I’m going to hang up. They’ll suspect something’s up if I’m not back soon. I’ll text you the coordinates.”

  “Okay, Laura. Be very careful. If McKay did kill the professor, and probably his brother’s girlfriend as well, then there’s another reality we have to deal with. A lot of time passed between those two deaths. Bob thinks there might be more.”

  She said nothing.

  “I’m telling you this because I need you to promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “I will. Good-bye.”

  Laura hung up but continued to press the phone to her ear. Shock and surprise began to recede, while fear gained ground. The factory looked suddenly menacing. She hardly knew Lee Stillwell, a guard who didn’t even work on her wing. But her need to feel that someone was on her side was so strong that she could think about nothing but going back in and joining him.

  She turned on her phone’s GPS and texted Marcus the coordinates.

  There might be more.

  She reentered the factory, mulling over everything she knew about the case. She was still shaken by Marcus’s new revelations, but she was starting to see beyond them and to understand the invisible strings that had been manipulating Ted the whole time. The main challenge was figuring out how much of it Ted was now aware of.

  Laura walked past the offices and stopped in front of the side door where Ted had paused minutes ago. Why was this inner door padlocked? Without thinking twice, she tried the largest keys on the ring until she landed on the one that opened the lock. She found herself in a furnished office in complete disorder. She tried the light switch, with no luck. She turned on her cell phone’s flashlight and explored the room. It held a wooden desk, a broken chair, and several filing cabinets. In spite of the general filth and decay, it was obvious that this office had been visited with some regularity. Laura tried one of the desk drawers. Against all her expectations, it opened easily. Inside was a series of sturdy document folders, which she didn’t dare touch. She opened the other drawer, the one on the left, and found more folders. She knew what was in them. She was sure of it.

  She pulled out the first folder and opened it. It contained a handful of pages, which she flipped through with one hand while holding her phone in the other. She’d been right. She was looking at a series of newspaper clippings about the murder of a woman named Elizabeth Garth.

  Who had her throat slit.

  Unable to restrain herself, Laura read three or four articles about the case.

  Then she leafed through the other folders in the drawer. Ten of them, all told. All women.

  There might be more.

  76

  Present day

  Laura hadn’t been gone for five minutes when Lee began getting uncomfortable. McKay observed him with a calm, enigmatic smile.

  “What is this place?” the guard asked.

  Ted looked up, and to the left, and to the right, as if he might find an answer floating in the air.

  “A sort of refuge, I guess. A getaway.”

  Lee wasn’t too surprised. He’d heard about much creepier things at Lavender than some rich guy who liked to hang out in an abandoned factory.

  “So you remember now,” Lee said unenthusiastically. “When the doctor comes back we can go ahead and get out of here.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be coming back.”

  Lee narrowed his eyes.

  “I don’t think she’ll be coming back very soon,” Ted went on. “It sounded like a pretty serious emergency.”

  “She only said a few words before she left.”

  “Maybe so.”

  Ted sat on the edge of a steel desk. Pieces of rusted metal, paint cans, and other junk lay scattered on the desktop. His hands were shackled in front of him, but even so, Lee was on the alert. This guy might have gotten word to somebody on th
e outside to come help him escape. Dr. Hill trusted him, but in Lee’s opinion she was acting in a very unsafe manner.

  “Before I got locked up at Lavender, I was planning to commit suicide.” The sudden change of topic was accompanied by a remarkable transformation in Ted’s face.

  “Are you sick or something?”

  “No.”

  Once more, that dreamy expression…

  “I still want to kill myself, Lee.” Ted opened his eyes very wide. Mad eyes. Imploring eyes. “I want to do that more than anything in the world.”

  Lee immediately went on the alert. He inched his hand toward his gun but didn’t unholster it.

  Ted smiled, not stirring a hairsbreadth where he sat.

  “Keep your cool, Lee. I want to make you a proposition.”

  “Like what?”

  “When the doctor gets back, I’m going to try and escape. You give me my fair warning, everything to the rule book, tell me to stop or you’ll shoot, all that. I’ll simply disobey. Bam bam, case closed.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, McKay. If you step out of line, you’ll get a bullet in the leg.”

  “Come on, Lee. Play along with me for a minute, okay? Dr. Hill will be a perfect witness. Nobody will care whether you aim at my leg or my head, and nobody could prove it if they did care. I can run pretty fast—these chains aren’t all that tight. It won’t be a simple shot.”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Lee repeated. “All I want is to get back to Lavender before three and go home to my wife.”

  “Now that you mention it, about your wife—Martha, wasn’t that her name? Imagine: What if you really could have your dream cabin by the lake? Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Lee wrinkled his brow and kept his mouth shut.

  “Imagine, Lee, if you could also buy a four-wheel-drive pickup, and you and Martha could drive to your house in the middle of nowhere, buy all the supplies you need, and spend two or three days there together. Imagine if, after you retire, you and Martha could take two or three months and travel around Europe. Have you and your wife been to Europe? Imagine: seeing it all without worrying about how much it costs…”

  “‘Imagine,’ ‘imagine.’ Okay, John Lennon, what’s your point?”

  “My point, Lee, is that we can make all this a reality right now.”

  “How?”

  “There’s a huge basement underneath this factory. A million bucks are hidden there. In cash. All yours.”

  Lee smiled.

  “A million bucks, in the basement?”

  “Come on, Lee. You just saw my weekend house. I own this property, and plenty more. Do you really doubt I’d keep a little stash like that tucked away for an emergency?”

  “No, I don’t doubt it at all. What I doubt is that you’d have it conveniently tucked away here in the basement.”

  “So why do you think I brought you here?”

  Lee studied Ted for several moments. Then he looked at the door to make sure they were still alone. The last thing he wanted was Dr. Hill overhearing this conversation.

  “I thought you couldn’t remember anything.”

  “Which was true. But things are starting to come back. Look, Lee. The million bucks are sitting there. All we have to do is take a peek in the basement and you’ll see. It’s that easy. Who cares what it’s doing there or where it came from?”

  The guard had his doubts, Ted could clearly see.

  “We all come out ahead on this, Lee. I’m not asking you to kill somebody else—just me. Believe me, it’ll be better for everyone all around if I get a bullet through my forehead.”

  “I can’t shoot you just because you’re trying to escape.”

  Ted understood what the guard was hinting at.

  “Maybe…maybe I could do a little more than just escape. I could attack Dr. Hill. Make a grab for her throat, like this.” He mimed the action. “Then you shout for me to let go, I step away, try to pick up something to clobber her with. Anything on this table would do.”

  “I’m not saying I’d go through with it.”

  “I understand. We’re just speculating. You shoot me in front of Laura, she’ll see that you were just reacting, defending her, and the shooting is perfectly justified. I’m sure there’ll be questions from the police for you to answer, maybe a form to fill out. But that’s all. Later, you come back here and get the money.”

  “Where is it? I want to see it.”

  Ted smiled.

  “Through that basement door. The key isn’t on the ring with the others. It’s hidden in that hole over there.”

  The door to the basement was metal and looked like solid steel. Lee felt around in the hole Ted pointed out and found the key.

  “If Dr. Hill comes back, I’ll tell her I heard a noise down there. Don’t do anything dumb.”

  Before he fit the key into the lock, Lee turned.

  “Wait. Before I see the money and make a decision, I have to know what you did.”

  “It would be better if that died with me.”

  “The money…”

  “The money was a precaution. It’s mine, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Well, then, let’s go.”

  They climbed down a narrow staircase to a landing, where they found an electrical panel.

  “The breaker board for upstairs.”

  Lee looked at him in disbelief and, after a second’s hesitation, flipped the main switch. The lights went on. They continued down the stairs, Ted going first and stepping carefully so as not to trip over his chains. Lee followed at a prudent distance.

  Downstairs everything was a mess. There were old machines, huge wooden crates, filing cabinets, desks, chairs. Whatever hadn’t been taken in the final move out seemed to have ended up in this forgotten underworld. There were plenty of hiding places upstairs, but the situation was much worse in this labyrinth of junk and discarded debris. The windows high up on the walls had been bricked over, and the electrical lighting was too dim. A city of outstretched shadows seemed to arise at every turn.

  Ted moved easily through the byways of this labyrinth. Lee followed in silence. What sense would it make to give him a warning? The bastard wanted to be shot.

  Or did he?

  On two or three occasions they heard the unmistakable scurrying of rodents. Lee had a deep aversion to rats, but he didn’t say anything. He and Ted stopped in front of a tall shelf lined with ancient typewriters and covered with a film of dust. Next to it, in a lobby with pretensions to opulence, was a decrepit green corduroy sofa long past its glory days. Ted pushed it aside. Lee was observing from a cautious few yards back when from the corner of his eye he glimpsed a rat racing across the floor. At least he’d have a good excuse to give to Dr. Hill, Lee thought. There really were weird noises down here.

  Under the sofa was a trapdoor with no handle. Ted told the guard he’d need something sharp to get it open. Lee had to keep himself from laughing.

  “I’m not going to give you anything sharp,” he scoffed. “Stay back and keep still.”

  Lee used one of his keys to lift the trapdoor. He was suddenly feeling a little excited, no denying. What if he really could get hold of the money? A plan began to form in his mind. He had no reason to shoot McKay; as soon as Dr. Hill got back, he’d insist on getting out of there immediately. He was responsible for the patient’s safety, and she couldn’t contradict him. McKay would keep his mouth shut, because now Lee knew too much. Then he could come back later on and pick up the money. He smiled.

  If there is any money.

  In the space under the trapdoor he found a large metal box. Lee slid apart the two locking clasps with his thumbs. The box opened with a soft click. When he lifted the lid, there they were, wrapped in clear plastic bags: ten perfectly formed blocks of hundred-dollar bills. Lee had never seen so much money at one time. He could take a trip with Martha, he thought excitedly. McKay must have some sort of telepathic power, because he had suggested the perfect plan: Marth
a had always regretted not having seen other countries. The farthest she had ever traveled was to North Carolina, to visit her sister. Now she could…

  Then something crawled from below and leaped out from beneath the metal box with astonishing speed. It was big and gray, with enormous toothy jaws. Its eyes shone when the light hit them, and Lee, who had been squatting by the trapdoor the whole time, jumped back and lost his balance. The animal stuck its head up through the hole in the floor, and that, together with a quick movement on Ted’s part, was the last thing Lee saw. Then a shadow embraced him and it was as if his head exploded.

  He gave a stifled scream.

  Typewriters rained down on him as the whole shelf toppled over.

  77

  Present day

  On her way back to the assembly floor, Laura imagined many things, but the last thing she imagined was that the guard wouldn’t be there.

  Ted was waiting for her in the middle of the vast room, his arms loose on either side of him. His chains were gone.

  “Where is Lee?”

  “In the basement.”

  Laura wondered if that implied he was still alive. She didn’t dare ask.

  Stay calm.

  “I chained him up,” Ted said, displaying his wrists. “I’ll let him go later. You, however, should leave now, Laura.”

  “Leave? Why? I thought we were making progress. Let me take you back to Lavender. Whatever is disturbing you now, we can get you past it. Think about your family, think about—”

  “Laura, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But therapy can’t solve everything. Some facts are irreversible.”

  Laura kept her distance.

  “Go on,” he snapped. “Get out, go back the same way we came, back to my house. And don’t tell anyone.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  For a moment he hesitated. A conflicted expression flitted across his face and disappeared.

  “Nothing bad.”

  Laura was beginning to understand what was going through Ted’s mind. She saw that he was confused and that she should use what she knew to help.