Gideon

by Grant Rosenberg

  Yes, it was going to be a fantastic night.

  75

  The night was rapidly going from bad to worse.

  Kelly had no idea how long he stood there, staring. She’d never paid much attention to him when he came into the clinic ranting about how her father had removed his heart. Most of the time Ramona dealt with him, appeasing him the best she could, before sending him on his way. Kelly had only spoken to him once, trying to calm him down, but he had been too far gone for her to penetrate his deep-seated hallucinatory bluster.

  Kelly remembered his eyes being wild and unfocused. Now those eyes were clear and penetrating and filled with pain. Kelly had seen the signs many times before; the stiff way he moved, the manner in which he tilted his head, the tightly pursed lips. This was a man who was physically suffering, but had the fortitude to forego medication and tamp down the pain as best he could. It was like watching a junkie going cold turkey.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked in a voice that sounded like tires rolling over a gravel road. It was clearly agonizing for him to speak and equally agonizing to listen to.

  Kelly nodded.

  “Who I really am?” he asked.

  Kelly slowly turned her head from side to side as she made muffled sounds behind the gag.

  The man inched closer. He walked with a slight limp and his shoulders were bunched up around his neck. He wouldn’t give the outside world the satisfaction of seeing his anguish.

  He reached out and Kelly noticed he was missing two fingers on his left hand. The skin was leathery and tight from scar tissue and his dexterity was limited. She wondered how he’d tied the ropes around her hands and feet, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting out of here alive.

  She shivered as his hands brushed her face. For a moment she feared he was going to strangle her, but then she felt her gag being loosened. Before he removed the rag from her mouth, he cautioned her, “Scream, and I kill you.” He didn’t ask if she understood or would comply. It wasn’t a question or request. It was a simple fact, and Kelly believed him. She vigorously nodded, and the filthy rag was yanked out of her throat.

  She gasped, drawing fresh air into her lungs. Even though the garage was an incubator for dust mites and countless varieties of mold, she’d never tasted sweeter oxygen.

  “You recognize me from the clinic,” he stated.

  Kelly measured her words carefully, knowing that any wrong comment might set him off. “You seem better now.”

  He swallowed and winced in pain. The words came out slowly. “Not better. Just not drugged.”

  “Certain pain medications can have drastic side effects; hallucinations, paranoia, confusion, memory loss…”

  “That’s why I stopped. I needed to focus. To know the truth.”

  “The truth?” she asked, treading on thinning ice.

  “About who killed my father.”

  Kelly’s heart sank. She didn’t know who the Hollow Man’s father was, but this turn in the conversation meant the ice beneath her feet was cracking.

  “Your father? I didn’t have anything…”

  He shook his head. “Not you.” He swallowed again, his features scrunching up in agony. “Gideon.”

  The blood rushed out of Kelly’s face. She’d foolishly believed that her father’s identity was known only by Tommy and Angelo Moretti. If word had spread, it meant she was in mortal danger.

  The man stared at her. He was looking for a reaction, and he’d gotten one. He slowly nodded, then turned and disappeared back into the shadows, leaving behind a terrified Kelly, whose only questions now were how much longer would she live and how painful was her death going to be?

  Pete finished his drink, checked his phone (still no messages) and stood up to leave. He glanced over at Alexa’s table and saw that she was dining with an attractive, slightly older woman who exuded an air of authority and prosperity. Pete immediately recognized her: Deanna Frost, an ambitious, camera-friendly criminal defense attorney who’d represented the defendant in Pete’s first homicide case.

  The press had dubbed it “The Honeymoon Horror”. Marcus Washington and Julie Stein had gotten married at the San Francisco courthouse on a beautiful summer day in August. They spent their wedding night at The Painted Lady, a quaint B&B housed in a refurbished Victorian in the heart of the Mission.

  The next day, guests complained of a pungent odor coming from the Garden Suite. When the newlyweds didn’t respond to the persistent knocking of the housekeeper, the manager used her passkey to enter the suite. She froze at the sight before her, then turned and projectile-vomited across the brand new carpet runner in the hallway.

  The young mixed-race couple had been bludgeoned to death, their heads turned to bloody pulp.

  The shocking nature of the case instantly made it international fodder. Locally, the case took on additional importance because Julie Stein worked for the President of the Board of Supervisors.

  Pete and Ron were assigned the case, and a prime suspect quickly rose to the forefront. Leonard Bach was a proud member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and lived with his mother just two doors down from the hotel. Bach had recently completed a six-year stint at Corcoran for felony assault against three African-American men. Prison officials were unified in their assessment that any attempts to rehabilitate Bach were futile. It would only be a matter of time before he was back in the system.

  The police recovered a short-handled, three-pound sledge from the dumpster in the alley next to Mrs Bach’s house. There were no prints on the handle, but the blood and hair on the hammer were a match for the victims.

  Leonard Bach was scooped up for questioning before he could pull a disappearing act.

  Ron and Pete grilled him for hours. Bach had no specific motive for the murders, other than the blood oath he took to cleanse America by carrying out violent acts against minorities. Racially mixed marriages were at the top of the AB’s list of unnatural acts that needed to be punished.

  Bach had no alibi, except the word of his fifty-eight-year-old alcoholic mother, who claimed to have heard Len downstairs in his room all night, chanting along to H8Machine and Blood Red Eagle.

  The police definitely liked Bach for the crime. He had means (the murder weapon was readily available at any hardware store); motive (his undying commitment to his fraternity of hatred); and opportunity (the murder took place less than a hundred feet from his house).

  There was also the fact that Bach had worked a few days for a local contractor who did renovations in the Garden Suite at The Painted Lady. The owner of the B&B had given the contractor a key so his crew could come and go through the suite’s exterior door without bothering the manager or the guests. It would have been easy for Bach to get hold of the key and make a copy for himself, which would allow him direct access to the room where the murders took place.

  The only problem with the case against Bach was the police had no hard evidence that placed him at the scene that night, or linked him to the murder weapon. Despite pressure from City Hall for an arrest, and the entire Homicide detail knowing in their collective gut that Bach was guilty, the DA wouldn’t prosecute without something more tangible.

  The SFPD doubled their efforts and launched a massive search to find the store that sold Bach the murder weapon. It was a long shot at best, but one worth taking. Police and Inspectors canvassed everything from big box outlets to specialty hardware stores. Over a hundred and fifty three-pound sledgehammers were sold citywide in the last month, but no cashiers remembered making a sale to Leonard Bach.

  No one, until Dwayne Murphy picked Bach out of a six-pack. Dwayne and his son Ja’von ran a small builders’ supply store in the Oceanview neighborhood. They carried the brand and model of the sledge that was used to commit the murders, and Dwayne swore he remembered selling one to Bach. “It’s not often that a man with a swastika tattoo on his neck shops in a store owned by African-Americans. When he does, it’s a memorable occasion.”

  There was no rec
ord of the purchase, so all they had was Dwayne Murphy’s word. Ron and Pete knew their evidentiary case was less than solid, but hoped the DA’s office would get on board. If they decided to prosecute, the case most likely wouldn’t go to trial for six months, and during that time Ron and Pete could dig deeper to hopefully find more solid evidence.

  Based upon the sheer preponderance of evidence, Bach was arrested and charged with a double homicide. His case was fast-tracked and a short three months later he sat in a courtroom, dressed in a conservative gray suit and a shirt collar that covered most of his neck tattoos. Bracketing him at the defense table was a team of high-profile, high-priced lawyers who were being paid by a political action group called Southern Pride, which didn’t hide the fact that they were a White Nationalist organization.

  The case drew comparisons to the O.J. Simpson trial, except in reverse. Bach’s defense was spearheaded by Deanna Frost. Tenacious, brilliant and extremely photogenic, she was the perfect choice to convince a jury that her client was a victim of police profiling based upon his past. Yes, he was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and yes, he had committed crimes for which he paid his dues. But, the DA’s case was based on smoke and mirrors and lacked any substantive evidence.

  She set her sights on what she considered to be two “soft” targets – Dwayne Murphy and Pete Ericson – and went to work.

  Bach had testified that he’d never been in Murphy’s store, and since it was impossible to prove otherwise, Ms Frost painted Murphy as a “well-meaning small businessman who had mistakenly identified her client as a result of pressure from the SFPD and the general feeling of indignation within the African-American community”. While the prosecution countered, Frost’s summation was difficult to challenge.

  When it came to Inspector Ericson, Deanna took off the gloves. She highlighted the fact that it was the Inspector’s first case, and she brought every minute detail of the investigation into question. Ms Frost relished taking a sharp razor to Inspector Ericson, and successfully planted the seed that in his eagerness to solve his first homicide case (and a very public one at that), the Inspector overstepped his bounds in pushing for an arrest. No new evidence had surfaced in the past three months, which in her mind made it all the more obvious that her client was not only innocent, but a shining example of prejudicial bias.

  Deanna was a courtroom pro and Pete was a neophyte. After a few questions, it was clear he was no match for her, and once she smelled blood in the water, she relentlessly badgered him until the judge called it a TKO.

  The trial ended in a hung jury. The SFPD and the DA’s office took a public relations hit and Leonard Bach was free to walk the streets. In fact, he sued the city of San Francisco for false arrest and defamation of character. However, the case was dropped three weeks later when Bach was killed in a shootout between the Nazi Lowriders and the 415 Kumi Nation.

  Pete came away from the trial wiser and calloused. He knew what everyone knew, that Leonard Bach committed the murders, but Deanna Frost had played the system and played him. Pete vowed to never be played again. From that point onward, he became a hardliner; he wouldn’t quit investigating a case until he was convinced that a suspect was either guilty or innocent. If that meant his record of closing cases would suffer, so be it. He wasn’t walking into another courtroom without knowing that his investigatory findings were bulletproof.

  This philosophy had served Pete well since then and gave him a reputation among defense attorneys as an extremely tough nut to crack.

  Pete wasn’t eager to see Deanna Frost again, but the table where she and Alexa were dining sat squarely between him and the door. He thought about sneaking out the back, but he was a decorated member of the San Francisco Police Department… he had his pride. Fuck it.

  As Pete passed by their table, Alexa gently grabbed his wrist. Pete feigned surprise. “Did you hear from her?”

  Pete shook his head. He didn’t want to prolong any part of this. “I’ll meet her at the clinic.”

  Alexa nodded, then motioned to Deanna. “Do you know…?”

  “Counselor,” Pete said without a hint of a smile.

  “Inspector,” Deanna responded with an open and friendly face. She carried no animosity, but why would she? “I haven’t seen you in court lately.”

  “My arrests haven’t been high profile enough to whet your appetite.”

  Deanna smiled. “I’m still getting business from the last one.”

  Pete couldn’t help himself. “You mean you’re still defending racist murderers who…”

  Alexa leapt in before it could get ugly. “So, you two do know each other.” She turned to Pete. “Good luck with everything.”

  “Thanks.” With that, he turned and calmly walked out the door.

  “What the hell happened between you two?” Alexa asked Deanna.

  “He was inexperienced, I was on the rise and saw an opportunity for an easy kill. I took it.” She took a drink, then, “Is he still single?”

  Alexa did a double take. “Are you serious?”

  “Why not?”

  “Weren’t you sitting here a minute ago when that cold front came through?”

  Deanna shrugged. “I’m not looking for anything permanent.”

  “Deanna, I respect the hell out of you, but when it comes to Pete Ericson, you’re completely tone deaf. He’s in a relationship with my oldest and dearest. In fact, there’s an excellent chance they’ll be engaged by the end of the night.”

  Alexa had no way of knowing, but the chances of Kelly and Pete getting engaged at the end of the night were infinitesimal… and getting smaller with each passing second.

  76

  The Hollow Man reemerged into the light with a knife in his hand. This wasn’t something he happened to find lying around on a dust-covered workbench. It was a Strider, a US military-issue weapon with a glistening nine-inch titanium blade that looked like it could slice through steel with the flick of a wrist. Kelly didn’t want to imagine what it could do to flesh.

  “I can help you,” she said. “Get you proper medication. Put you into a program to deal with the pain and…”

  He held up the knife menacingly. “We were talking about Gideon,” he rasped.

  Kelly stared at the blade. She had a frightening image of him suddenly lunging and swiping at her throat, severing her jugular with a single stroke. Her focus on the knife was so intense, she didn’t hear him when he asked, “Do you know him?”

  Kelly looked up to his face. It reminded her of a doll she’d accidently left near a bonfire on the beach one summer. The next morning she retrieved her doll, only to find that one side of its face had been turned into waxy slag.

  The Hollow Man caught her staring and leaned in closer. “It doesn’t look human, does it?”

  There was no right answer to that question, so Kelly remained silent.

  “Do you know Gideon?” he asked again, this time with an undercurrent of threat.

  Kelly was at another critical crossroads. She surmised he was aware of Gideon’s identity, or she wouldn’t be tied to a chair about to die. Sticking with the truth was her only course of action.

  “I only found out a few weeks ago… after my father’s death.”

  “Gideon brought pain to my family. To me.”

  It suddenly dawned on Kelly. “When you said my father removed your heart, you were talking about the emotional pain you suffered.”

  He nodded. “When I found out he… he was Gideon, and that he’d killed my father…” He shook his head, trying to find the right word. “Revenge. I promised revenge.”

  “Why do you think my father was responsible?”

  “My cousin told me.”

  Kelly felt like someone had just walked across her grave. She barely had enough strength to utter, “Your cousin?”

  The man looked at her silently, prolonging the agony of the moment, then acknowledged what Kelly feared. “Tommy Moretti. Do you know him?”

  Kelly shook her head. Now was
the time to lie. “No.”

  He tilted his head, weighing her response. “How about my brother? Angelo?”

  Kelly had no response. His cousin? His brother? Who the hell was this guy? Angelo didn’t have a brother. Not one that was still alive.

  The Hollow Man saw the emerging awareness in Kelly’s eyes. “I had one week left in Afghanistan. We were sent on patrol.” He held up his maimed hands, motioned to his scarred face. “Ambushed. Seven died. The troop left me, thought I died, too. It took three weeks, but I finally made it out.”

  “Anthony Moretti,” Kelly whispered.

  He nodded. “So you do know me. And you do know my brother and my cousin… and that they’re both dead.”

  Kelly shook her head. “No! I have no idea what...”

  Anthony sprung forward. Kelly’s scream was abruptly cut short when the Strider was pressed up against her throat. She froze, knowing that if she as much as swallowed, the razor that lay across her jugular would slice into her tissue.

  “Lies. Tommy told me about you. How he was drawing you in. You killed him, then Angelo.”

  Kelly didn’t dare a response. There was no way out of this. At least death would be quick. Tears ran down her face, falling on Anthony’s deformed hand and glistening on his waxy skin.

  His face was almost touching hers. “I killed your father. I stole the car and ran him over. I was wearing Tommy’s jacket, which is how they got onto him, but it was me.”