by Osborne, Jon
Angel rose to her feet and followed the Cleveland cops back into her living room. A sheet of paper lay across the mahogany coffee table, ten feet in front of the cabinet-style television upon which sat family portraits of Angel and Granny Bernice throughout the years: Angel’s first day of kindergarten, tears slipping down Granny Bernice’s plump cheeks as she dropped her off at the doorway to St Ann’s. Angel learning how to ride a bike, Granny Bernice’s running behind her the entire way; her arms outstretched and ready to catch Angel should she happen to fall. The two women outside Progressive Field right before they’d gone inside and watched the Indians get their butts kicked again by those despised Yankees.
Despite all of the frantic activity going on in the house while harried crime-scene techs processed every last square inch of the scene, Angel felt completely and utterly alone. She knew that it was a feeling that would stay with her for a very long time to come – if not forever.
The young cop cleared his throat again and nodded down to the sheet of paper on the coffee table. “We found this underneath the couch, right next to the…”
He paused and looked over at Angel.
“Go ahead, officer,’ Angel said. “You found it underneath the couch right next to the body.”
The young man nodded but still looked uncomfortable. He rubbed the muscles alongside his throat with the palm of his right hand and ran his tongue across his perfect white teeth. “Yes, ma’am. We found it underneath the couch right next to the body.”
Stosh Meyers reached into the breast pocket of his neatly pressed uniform shirt and extracted a small pair of rubber-tipped tweezers. Unwrapping the tweezers from their sterile plastic packaging, he adjusted the note on the table so that both he and Angel could read at the same time.
The entire page consisted of three neatly typed sentences:
WHAT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IS TO SAFEGUARD THE EXISTENCE AND REPRODUCTION OF OUR RACE AND OUR PEOPLE, THE SUSTENANCE OF OUR CHILDREN AND THE PURITY OF OUR BLOOD, THE FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE OF THE FATHERLAND, SO THAT OUR PEOPLE MAY MATURE FOR THE FULFILLMENT OF THE MISSION ALLOTTED IT BY THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE.
EVERY THOUGHT AND EVERY IDEA, EVERY DOCTRINE AND ALL KNOWLEDGE, MUST SERVE THIS PURPOSE.
AND EVERYTHING MUST BE EXAMINED FROM THIS POINT OF VIEW AND USED OR REJECTED ACCORDING TO ITS UTILITY.
CHAPTER 25
Thunderous applause rained down on Betsy Campbell’s ears as she rose to her feet on the massive stage and took a graceful bow in the ten-thousand-seat auditorium located in downtown Seattle. Fifteen minutes later they announced the winner of the competition.
She’d won!
The next hour seemed a blur as time simultaneously stood still and raced forward. Great job, Betsy! someone shouted. Way to go, girl! someone else called out.
Still grinning ear-to-ear from her unexpected win, Betsy packed her prize-winning flute into its hard plastic case and snapped shut the metal fasteners. She couldn’t wait to get home and tell Brian the good news! He would have been there himself, of course, but leaving the house presented just too big an obstacle for him these days. The cancer in his brain had entered the advanced stages now, and the invasive chemotherapy had taken its horrible toll on him a little more with each passing day.
Betsy felt a sharp twinge in her heart that momentarily dulled her pleasure of winning the competition. Brian had fought with her tooth-and-nail over having a baby, saying that he didn’t want to saddle her with raising a child on her own after he’d passed away. After all, being an interracial couple in Washington had never been especially easy on them in even the best of times, and Brian hadn’t wanted the few ignorant people who still remained in their neighborhood to take it out on their baby once he’d gone.
But, as always, Betsy had eventually prevailed. And now she was entering her sixth month of pregnancy – though you certainly wouldn’t have known it just by looking at her.
Betsy smiled to herself with the secret knowledge as she pushed open the doors to the auditorium and stepped outside into the bright sunshine that was streaming down from the cloudless blue sky above. On her walk through the parking lot, she mentally picked out baby names. Brian Jr. if it was a boy, of course; but what about for a girl? Betsy frowned. Maybe Grace, maybe Stephanie. She just couldn’t decide. They were both extremely beautiful names, and she and Brian were going to have an extremely beautiful baby – she had absolutely zero doubt in her mind about that. Mixing Brian’s Caucasian features with her own more-ethnic features created a can’t-miss proposition for breathtaking good looks. Hell, the kid would probably wind up being so attractive that he or she would grace the cover of Vogue one day. And if that turned out to be the case, Betsy wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. God knew the child would possess the looks for it.
Then again, wasn’t that the way all mothers felt about their children?
Still smiling to herself, Betsy reached her green Subaru hatchback a moment later and slid the silver key into the door lock, twisting her right wrist until the locking mechanism disengaged. Hopping inside the late-model vehicle, she cranked the engine into life and put the car into reverse; far too preoccupied with her happy thoughts to notice the huge blonde man who was huddled down in the back seat of the Subaru and gripping an enormous, glittering butcher’s knife in the palm of his huge right hand.
CHAPTER 26
Dana and Blankenship were sipping coffees in a small deli located on Tipton Avenue in Yonkers ten hours later. Dana had just dumped a second packet of sugar into her steaming drink when her phone rang in her pursed. She dug it out and flipped it open before placing it to her ear. “Whitestone.”
Bill Krugman’s voice came across the line, strong and clear. “Dana,” he said, “how’s it going with your new partner out there in New York City?”
Dana glanced across the table at Blankenship. “Sitting here having coffee with him now, sir,” she said, lifting her eyebrows at Blankenship to let him know she was talking about him. “By the way, thanks for the head’s up on that one. I really appreciate it.”
Krugman chuckled. “Hey, I told you that I was bringing Blankenship in from Nebraska to work with you. I just didn’t tell you when. Anyway, is he as good as advertised?”
“Better,” Dana said. And she meant it, too. Blankenship was a class act all the way, no two ways about it. His sterling reputation throughout the FBI had obviously been well deserved.
Krugman asked, “Any progress on the Jarvis case?”
Dana fiddled with the swizzle stick in her coffee cup while she brought the Director up to speed. When she’d finished relating all the details, Krugman said, “What about the father of Laura Settle’s baby? You guys question him?”
Dana blew a wavering cloud of steam from her coffee and took a tentative sip. “Didn’t need to. NYPD ruled him out for us. Michael Timmons was at a restaurant on Broadway when the murder happened. Airtight alibi. The restaurant owner himself vouched for the guy. And the New York cops ran a full background check on Timmons, too. No connection whatsoever to Lee Maxwell Jarvis or any white-supremacist groups at any time during his life.”
Krugman paused for a long moment. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Well, since the trail out there already seems to have gone more or less cold, why don’t you pass along the investigation to Mulvey and Kendall in the New York City field office? I’ve got a fresh trail that I want you and Blankenship to follow, anyway.”
Dana frowned. “Another murder, sir?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Where?”
“Seattle, Washington,” Krugman said. “Another pregnant black woman with a fetus cut from her stomach with a knife. Can you and Blankenship get out there tonight?”
Dana’s insides clenched. She rose to her feet and motioned for Blankenship to do the same, pulling back the sleeve on her blazer and checking her watch. Almost ten p.m. already. They’d really need to hustle if they wanted to catch the last red-eye out of town. “Headed out to the airport now
, sir,” she said. “With any luck we’ll be on the West Coast in five hours.”
CHAPTER 27
Stosh Meyers held up the typewritten note between the tips of the tweezers and looked over at Angel. “What the fuck is this shit?” he asked.
Angel’s pulse pounded in her wrists. Her palms flooded with sweat. Nausea gripped her stomach and squeezed hard. She knew exactly what that shit was. What’s more, she’d actually learned it in its original German, which had been her minor at Walsh University during her college days down in Canton, Ohio.
“It’s from Mein Kampf,” Angel said, her voice sounding robotic to her own ears, like it was coming from somewhere far outside her body. “Literal translation: My Struggle. It’s from Adolf Hitler’s autobiography. His fucking manifesto.”
Stosh raised a blonde eyebrow into a question mark on his forehead and turned back to the young cop. “Great job, Deputy Ludwick.”
It was a dismissal the young officer understood immediately.
When Ludwick had cleared out, Stosh turned back to Angel. “Say that again?”
Angel took a deep breath and let it out again in a soft hiss over her teeth. “It’s from Mein Kampf,” she repeated, her entire body numb, save for the intense tingling sensation electrifying her fingers and toes. “We studied it in college. If you count the number of words in those three sentences, I think you’ll find they add up to eighty-eight.”
Stosh looked confused, and Angel didn’t blame him. If she hadn’t been forced to, she never would’ve studied that shit either.
“What’s the significance of the eighty-eight words?” Stosh finally asked.
Angel gritted her teeth. “It’s a stupid fucking code. ‘H’ is the eighth letter in the alphabet. If you put two of them together you’ve got ‘HH’, which stands for ‘Heil Hitler’. It’s underground shit. If you’ve ever seen the white kids wearing football jerseys with the number eighty-eight on them, that’s their way of saying ‘fuck you’ to the brothers without the homeboys realizing it.”
Stosh blew out a slow lungful of air, looking uncomfortable with the conversation. White people who weren’t racists themselves always hated it when the subject came up. The issue was just too sensitive, a powder keg ready to explode simply by twisting the word “nigga” into the word “nigger”.
It was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room no one ever wanted to acknowledge.
“Why the fuck would Razor Diggs plant some shit like this at a murder scene, Angel?” Stosh asked.
“No idea. You got him in custody yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“No.”
Angel nodded, understanding the Cleveland cop’s reasoning. She knew that she’d kill the murdering bastard if she were able to get within even fifty feet of him. Stosh knew it, too.
“But you’ll look into this for me?” she asked.
“Headed over there now.”
Angel looked Stosh directly in the eye and held his stare to let him know just how deadly serious she was about this. “Keep me in the loop on this one, OK, Stosh? That woman was my entire life.”
Angel’s old friend reached out a hand and touched her shoulder lightly. “You know I will, Angel.”
CHAPTER 28
The Race Master stood on his outdoor firing range in Southbridge, Massachusetts and aimed his antique pistol at the head of Christopher Johansen, the wayward operative who’d disobeyed direct orders regarding the girl in Cleveland and who was now strapped to a wooden post thirty yards away.
By no coincidence whatsoever was the gun balanced in the Race Master’s right hand at the moment a 7.65 mm Walther pistol – the same make of weapon that a fifty-six-year-old Adolf Hitler had used to splatter his own brains all over the walls of his underground Berlin bunker as the Russians had closed in on him on April 30th, 1945. As a matter of fact, the gun had been chosen for precisely that reason. An unsubtle tribute to the greatest man who’d ever walked the face of the earth.
The Race Master shook his head, remembering the Fuhrer’s life fondly. Still, while death before dishonor might have been a noble sentiment, it certainly wasn’t one he intended to emulate for himself. No, his end would come quite naturally, and not for another thirty years or so, if he had any say in the matter.
The Race Master gripped the pistol at his side and called out to the traitor in a cheerful voice. “Hey there, Christopher! Are you ready to meet your Maker?”
The badly beaten man’s eyes flooded with terror. Pitiful little grunts emerged from the silver masking tape covering his mouth. Rivers of bright red blood streamed down his face from a nasty-looking wound on his head.
The Race Master lifted the pistol high above his head and fired it off once, startling a massive flock of birds from the branches of the trees all around them. On cue, Josef Sullivan stepped forward and ripped away the masking tape from the traitor’s mouth.
Christopher Johansen sucked a ragged breath into his lungs, looking very sick. “I’m sorry, sir!” he yelled. “Please don’t kill me!”
The Race Master held a hand to his ear and cocked his head to one side. “What was that, Christopher? I can’t hear you. You’re sniveling like a little bitch over there. Just calm down, man.”
Johansen’s bright blue eyes bulged wildly from their sockets. “I said I want to live, sir! Please don’t kill me! I’ll do anything you want!”
The Race Master considered this for a long moment, then leaned over and stroked Bane’s massive head. “You’ll do anything I want, Christopher?” he asked. “Anything at all?”
Johansen nodded frantically, looking for all the world like a bobblehead doll stationed on the dashboard of a moving car. “Yes, sir! Anything! Just please let me live! I’ll never fuck up again, I promise!”
“Will you pay me, Christopher?”
“Yes, sir! I swear it!”
The Race Master nodded himself, a bit more calmly than Johansen. Then again, he was the one holding the gun, now wasn’t he? Sort of took the guesswork out of figuring out who was in charge here. “How much money will you pay me in exchange for your life, Christopher?” the Race Master asked. “How much is it worth to you, exactly? Ten thousand dollars? Twenty? Fifty? What’s the going rate these days for defying me?”
Johansen swallowed hard. “I’ve got almost a million dollars stashed away, sir. You can have all of it.”
The Race Master lifted an eyebrow at the mention of this unexpected windfall. A fresh influx of cash certainly couldn’t hurt the cause. Because paying nearly two hundred men from his own pocket often tended to make balancing the books a somewhat tricky proposition at times. “Where is this money, Christopher?” the Race Master asked.
“Buried behind my house, sir. Right next to the shed. Four paces west as you’re facing the door. It’s in a lockbox five feet down. No one else knows it’s there. I’ve never told anyone about it.”
“And I can have all of this money, Christopher?”
“Yes, sir. Every last cent.”
“As long as I don’t kill you? That’s the deal, right?”
Johansen nodded again, even more vigorously this time. Hope flooded into his eyes and replaced the terror that had been residing there just a moment earlier. He blew out a slow breath that deflated his already thin chest another six inches. “Yes, sir. That’s the deal. As long as you don’t kill me.”
The Race Master pressed his lips together and holstered his weapon at his side. “Very well, Christopher. I guess today’s your lucky day then. I won’t kill you.”
Turning to the huge dog at his feet, he then cut short the grateful sigh of relief in the other man’s throat by pointing in Johansen’s direction. “Angriff, Bane!” he ordered.
Five seconds later, Bane finally got his first taste of human blood.
From all appearances, it was a treat that had been well worth the wait.
When all the dust had finally settled on the gory scene thirty seconds later – Johansen’
s traitorous throat shredded to ribbons now and his high-pitched screams of agony still echoing in the deep woods all around them – Sullivan approached, his face green with nausea.
The Race Master laughed and reached out a large hand, clasping it onto the younger man’s shoulder. “Buck up now, Josef,” he said. “It wasn’t that bad, was it? Anyway, who’s our next target?”
Sullivan swallowed away a huge lump from his throat while his employer’s dog busied itself by licking Johansen’s bright red blood hungrily off its thick black lips. “Janice Wiley, sir,” Sullivan said. “A college professor in New Mexico.”
The Race Master waved a hand in the air, enjoying the feeling of absolute power rippling through his muscles.
He was a god.
“Very well, Josef,” the Race Master said, “you may proceed with the next execution.”
CHAPTER 29
Blankenship slept on the plane ride out to Seattle, but Dana couldn’t stop her mind from buzzing. The adrenalin rush flooding through her veins right now made her feel like she’d just downed fifteen cups of espresso in the space of ten minutes.
Her heartbeat palpitated irregularly in her chest. Her stomach swam with nausea. Her head throbbed. And why the hell not? The murders of Laura Settle and Betsy Campbell were among the most repugnant she’d ever investigated in her entire career, rivaling even the disgusting bloodbath in which both her parents had died at the sadistic hand of Nathan Stiedowe way back in 1976.
Dana glanced over at Blankenship. He had two adorable little girls that he needed to worry about. Two adorable little girls who might not have made it into this blink-and-you-missed-it, sometimes-beautiful world had Lee Maxwell Jarvis encountered Blankenship’s wife during her pregnancy.
Her stomach went even more sour at the thought. Because being a parent meant more than just the fun stuff, she knew, more than just long days strolling along sandy beaches with the waves rolling in over your bare feet. More than just giggle-filled nights spent over endless bowls of popcorn while you your most comfy sets of pajamas and watched the latest sequel to Ice Age or The Little Mermaid or The Lion King, giggling uproariously the entire time. And she’d do damn well to remember that if she were lucky enough to become Bradley’s mother.
