by Joe Conlan
“Thank you. I was. I wasn’t expecting Rick to retire. I don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to communication skills either. You know that as well as anyone. Can’t say I’m not ecstatic though. I’m sure you must have gotten the scoop from Leland. How did the meeting go this morning?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure. He seemed pretty peeved I wouldn’t give him my file. He kinda threatened to keep the case open for a while longer. I’m pretty sure he was just bluffing. You never know with him. I’m a little bit worried he’s letting his personal feelings get in the way. I know he’s been speaking fairly often with Alyssa Anderson. We keep an eye on those things. There’s just not enough evidence to prove Paul Anderson was murdered. I think he knows that just as well as I do. I’m hoping he closes this case sometime soon for the sake of the family.”
Daniel was thinking she would probably soon get her wish based on his recent conversation with Howard Evans. He said, “I’m sure Leland will take a look at everything and make the right decision. He’s a good agent and a smart man.”
“That’s a perfect place to move on then. What are you doing next week? I want to have you over for dinner.”
Daniel started to fidget in his seat. If he were to be perfectly honest with himself, the idea of going to Annie’s apartment for dinner was extremely enticing. In fact, the thought caused a stirring between his legs. His face turned three different shades of red before the guilt set in. He abruptly stood up and paced around his office then responded after an awkwardly long pause. “Annie, I couldn’t do that. I don’t think it would be appropriate.”
“Daniel, we’ve been friends forever. I can’t invite you to my apartment for dinner? I don’t see the problem. Does she have you on that tight a leash?”
“Come on. You know it wouldn’t be cool. We almost got married.”
“That’s ancient history.”
“Right, Annie. That really makes a difference.”
“Alright, Alright then, how about lunch at a public place? There’s nothing wrong with that. I want to celebrate your accomplishment with you. It’s my treat. Or would that put her nose out of joint too?”
“I don’t know. Deborah has issues with us. She worries I chose her on the rebound. I don’t want to cause any problems.”
“You don’t have to give her a detailed account of everything you do. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. This is perfectly innocent. C’mon, what day is good for you?”
Daniel always had a difficult time saying no to Annie. Parts of his body were urging him to say yes, while his head and morals were shouting no. If it weren’t for Deborah’s insecurities, his response would have been quick and easy. There was no question Annie still held a very special place in his heart. She was his first true love. In the end, it was his overactive sense of guilt that dominated. He’d be beating himself up afterwards if he were to accept.
“I’m gonna have to pass. I usually have a hard time getting out of the office for lunch anyway. Let’s get together when Deborah can be a part of it, too.”
Annie decided to leave the absurdity of that comment alone. There wasn’t much of a chance Deborah would agree to do anything if Annie were a part of it. It was pretty clear to Annie that Deborah didn’t like her from the first time they’d met at Daniel’s last birthday party. For now, she would let him off the hook.
“Alright. Well congratulations anyway. It was a promotion well-deserved. If you change your mind about lunch, let me know.”
“Sure thing, Annie. Thanks for the offer.”
When Annie hung up the phone, she was a little flushed in the face and felt a hot tingle from head to toe. It seemed to happen just about every time she spoke to Daniel lately and it annoyed her to no end. For five years, he was hers. It was she who rejected his marriage proposal. Now eight years later, he was married, had two kids and she badly wanted what she couldn’t have. She had no business pursuing him, whether her reasons were just sexual in nature or something deeper. On the surface, she couldn’t even decide exactly what she was feeling. She had no real desire to explore her motives either. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t like what she found.
Like Daniel, Annie had a plan for her life at a very young age. Being a child of mixed race, she was the victim of young children’s cruelty and flat out prejudice. It wasn’t exactly a great environment for developing a healthy self-esteem. This was especially true since some of the offenders were members of her own family. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, she’d used those experiences to make herself a better person. She certainly had the tools to accomplish her goals as she was gifted with exceptional intelligence and born into a family of practically limitless wealth.
Her father, Walter Bryan, was of African American descent. Her mother, Cassie, couldn’t be whiter. She was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. They met in Boston in the early 1960s while working on the presidential campaign to elect John F. Kennedy. It was Walter’s side of the family that was affluent. He was one of three grandchildren who inherited his grandfather’s multi-billion dollar estate.
Annie’s great-grandfather made his fortune in the automobile industry. A talented and savvy businessman, he got his start when he opened a used car lot on Cambridge Street in Boston. Unlike the typical used car salesman, his emphasis was on honesty and customer service. One lot soon turned into two, and then three. Within seven years, he opened a new car sales center which was ultimately expanded to a second location in Logan County. His business ventures didn’t stop there. After making his first million, he began to invest in real estate and acquired full or partial ownership of several major commercial centers and high rise buildings in downtown Boston. By the time he passed away at the ripe old age of ninety-eight, he had accumulated a net worth in excess of three billion dollars and was considered one of the wealthiest black men in America.
Annie had no recollection of her father. He died suddenly and unexpectedly of a massive heart attack when she was just eight months old. Growing up, most of Annie’s relatives in close proximity were from the Bryan side of the family. Cassie had a spinster aunt, who lived in New York, but they rarely visited her. To expose Annie to a family environment, Cassie remained close with her mother-in-law, the matriarch of the Bryan family. Annie spent most special occasions and holidays at her paternal grandmother’s home, where all the family members would gather. Though it was the site of some of her fondest memories, it was also there where she fell victim to the most painful variety of prejudice.
Hearing the insults coming from strangers was unacceptable and hurtful, but much easier to brush off her shoulder. When it came from friends and neighbors, it was often devastating. Being subjected to racism at the hands of her own family was almost impossible to handle for such a young girl. This was especially true when that child was smart enough to understand the hatred behind it. It only took one bad seed and in the Bryan family that came in the person of the man Annie referred to as Uncle Byron. He wasn’t related by blood to Annie- he was married to Walter’s sister. Nevertheless, he did his best to spread his poison to many of Annie’s closest family members. If Annie had just known what a slime he was back then, she might have avoided a lot of heartache.
Uncle Byron’s unabashed use of all the racial slurs against white people and those of mixed race was unrestrained. He was insufferable in his attitude toward Annie and her mom. As a toddler and then preteen, Annie was fine with Uncle Byron’s refusal to acknowledge her. He scared the hell out of her anyway. His treatment of Cassie was another matter. The hate seemed to ooze from his pores whenever the white woman entered the room. Most often, he would get up and leave immediately, mumbling horrible insults under his breath. Other times, it wasn’t so subtle. At one Christmas family gathering, when Uncle Byron had overindulged with the spiked eggnog, he spit in Cassie’s face for offering his children gifts.
What hurt Annie most was Uncle Byron’s refusal to allow his children to speak to her. Byron’s two daughters and three sons
had become almost as intolerable as he was. Annie was excluded from any games in which her cousins participated. She was cursed at, teased, and tormented at every opportunity. Even worse, her cousins born to Walter’s other sister chose to hang out with Byron’s five children. They told Annie it was better to have five cousins to play with than just one.
As Annie grew older, she became aware of the true reason for Uncle Byron’s behavior, though it certainly was no excuse. He had worked for Walter’s father for thirty years as his right hand man. In Byron’s not so humble opinion, he was a major contributor to the old man’s fortune. When it came time to divvy it up, he didn’t get a penny. His wife received an inheritance not nearly the size of Walter’s. Then upon Walter’s passing, his share belonged to Annie and her mom. Byron’s greed and jealousy bred and nurtured the deep hate and prejudice he directed with great vengeance against Cassie and Annie. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but at least something good came of it. Annie’s need to succeed propelled her to an exceptionally successful academic career. She followed in her father’s footsteps and attended Harvard Law School. It also helped her advance to the position she now held with King Cruise Line. When Annie set a goal for herself, she aimed high and almost always achieved her target. She was a woman who sat comfortably in the driver’s seat and controlled her own destiny. At least it was what she wanted to believe.
Chapter 4
He was nameless. His mother, Cherie Tucker, gave birth to him on an arctic, late November Chicago morning without assistance, in the rear cargo space of a Chevy van. She cut the cord with a pocket knife she kept in the front seat console. Taking the newborn infant to the hospital to be examined by a physician was out of the question. They would admit her and there was no way she’d go without a fix for several days. His arrival into the world wasn’t registered with the Illinois State Census and therefore a birth certificate was never generated. As far as the United States government was concerned, he didn’t exist.
His cradle was the floor of the van for the first eight months of his life. The fact that he survived his first Chicago winter could be considered a minor miracle. On several occasions, Cherie pondered throwing him in a garbage dumpster when she woke up in the morning to find his skin the deep blue color of a berry. She was both disappointed and exhilarated when she checked his breathing and found he was still alive. The child was a nuisance to her, but giving him to the state would have been too easy a solution. For an offer of one day’s crack dose, she would probably admit she took pleasure in making her child suffer.
His feedings were sporadic and without the benefit of the advice of a practicing pediatrician. Nursing him was not an option. It would interfere with her business. To keep the infant from shrieking when he was hungry, she would fill his bottle with whatever liquid food substance she had at hand. Some days, the child’s only sustenance was water mixed with coffee creamer. On his lucky days, he would get cow’s milk. The inconsistent and inappropriate nourishment for a child his age provoked a variety of digestion and lack of nutrition problems that caused him serious illness. It would bring joy to his mother that the child seemed to have the resiliency of a superhero, always surviving for another day of her torture.
Several months before his first birthday, Cherie had become her pimp’s number one whore, earning her an apartment in a low rent housing project on the south side of Chicago. For the next decade and a half, the home became the nameless boy’s prison. Cherie treated her son like her personal outlet for a dark side that rankled in the pits of her corroded conscience. His confinement was intentional, his torment, an amusement. Even in the early months of his life, whenever she had business outside of the apartment, she would leave him alone for up to five or six hours. In order to avoid the interference of nosy neighbors, she would lock him behind the thick, oak door of her bedroom closet. At first, his wailing could last up to half the time she was absent. Despite his infancy, eventually, he habituated to the dark space, lack of company and nourishment, his body finding a way to survive against all odds.
By the time the boy was two years old, Cherie felt comfortable leaving the apartment for days at a time. Periodically, she left boxes of cereal or crackers on the dining room table for him, though she always made sure her cat’s food dispenser was full. Most of the time, he was forced to live on water and what rotten food he could find in the refrigerator. If Cherie had known the boy would turn to her pet’s food for sustenance, she might have let the animal starve too. Fortunately for his development, the cat food provided the protein and minerals lacking in the human fare at his disposal.
There was no television, toys, or any form of entertainment for a young child in the apartment. Kitchen utensils, his mother’s cat, the cockroaches, and other vermin that infested the apartment became his playthings. He named and communicated with them in a language he invented on his own. His interaction with his mother was too limited for him to learn the English language at the age most children began to speak. His audible conversations with both the inanimate and living objects in the home embarrassed and infuriated Cherie, especially when he rattled off his gibberish in front of johns she invited to the apartment. This behavior would always be punished by imprisonment in the closet, and often a merciless beating that left him black-eyed and bruised.
The physical abuse stopped one day though not through any act of love, sympathy or generosity on Cherie’s part. She had discovered a way to profit from her son and to help foster her drug habit. If it had been up to the boy, in all likelihood, he would have chosen to continue with the thrashings. One of Cherie’s wealthiest clients offered her a substantial amount of money to have sex with her son, just five years old at the time. From that point on, she didn’t hesitate to exploit his body for all kinds of perverse and aggressive sexual acts, including, when requested, having incestuous sex. At first, the act of fornicating with his mother repulsed him. His small frame didn’t discourage him from fighting fiercely to resist the violation. When he eventually resigned himself to the idea he was powerless, he withdrew into a silent panic. As his body was sold with increasing regularity to the degenerates of the neighborhood, his panic transformed into a smoldering rage.
Unable to direct his fury toward his aggressors, he began to fantasize, using his playthings for more sinister acts. He considered using a butcher’s knife to decapitate his mother’s cat. Knowing this would only bring about severe punishment, he came up with more subtle ways to release his wrath without being discovered. One of his favorite games was to strangle his mother’s pet until it lost consciousness. The look in its eyes as they bulged from their sockets made him shiver with excitement. The occasional rat that had the misfortune to stray into the apartment found the cat to be the least of its worries. With the speed and dexterity of a seasoned hunter, the boy was able to catch them with his bare hands. Then he would take his time to dismember and eviscerate the creature. Cutting off its head was always his final act.
The man without a name grabbed his binoculars, stuffed them in his backpack along with the other equipment he would need for the day, and walked briskly out the door of his new apartment. He was happy with his decision to settle in Ft. Lauderdale after abandoning his position with King Cruise Line. The security job was one of the best things that had ever happened to him. It had given him the ideal opportunity to perfect his craft. No question, he had a good run on the Diamond. The time had definitely come, however, to move on to bigger and better things.
Paul Anderson wasn’t his first kill, though it was the most complex to date. It was hardly a product of genius but good progress. His mother, who he preferred to call the Tucker slut, had been his first. In his mind, she was nothing but a crack-addicted, two-bit whore who didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as a shit-eating fly. It was an easy decision to make her his initial victim and an easier murder to plan. She was always falling asleep either in her bed or on the living room sofa with a lit cigarette in her mouth. His idea to cremate her alive didn’t take an Ei
nstein. That night of his liberation and salvation, as the Tucker slut slept peacefully on the couch, hot embers from her cigarette falling to the floor, the fifteen-year-old boy collected the few personal items from his room he had packed for this occasion. Just before he left the apartment, he detached the pipe from the wall that supplied gas to the oven, allowing the propane to flow freely into the open air. Within five minutes there was a deafening explosion. The boy waited outside in the back courtyard for several minutes more, carefully listening for any screams of pain. He was rewarded for his patience with much more. He saw his mother’s frantic attempts to open the window to escape the burning apartment. His body tightened with the intense pleasure of an orgasm as he watched the flames engulf her. When the screams stopped and the sirens of fire trucks and ambulances carried by the brisk Chicago winds became louder, he smiled for the first time in his life.
The opportunity with King Cruise Line came more than ten years later. During the time between the death of his mother and his employment with King, he began to fantasize about killing again. As time passed, the fantasies became more regular and gruesome. His favorite was to imagine slitting some whore’s throat and bathing in her blood, while pleasuring himself. It would always end with the most intense orgasms. He used his first killings on the ship to hone his skills. A master of falsifying documents, he specifically applied for a security position claiming on his resume he was an expert in video surveillance. After extensive research both on the Internet and at the library, his knowledge of the profession was as strong as anyone experienced in the field. Impressing his interviewers, he was offered a position to man the ship’s surveillance monitors.
In the beginning, he preferred to keep it simple. He chose his victims after carefully observing their behavior over a period of days. The first was a sixteen year-old British girl who had a habit of sneaking out of her room in the wee hours of the morning, in search of young men. On the monitors he had seen her enter several boys’ cabins and giving a teenager a blow job in the Jacuzzi. Most evenings, it was clear she had been drinking. For several nights, he fantasized about slitting her throat then using her blood as a lubricant to fuck her but that would be too risky. So, he continued to watch her for the next few nights, waiting for the perfect opportunity to arise.
