by Scott Blade
"That's strange."
"I know. I did learn something interesting though. Apparently, the suspect has something to do with the Secret Service."
"Secret Service?" Shane asked, surprised. He looked up toward the sky with a confused expression on his face.
She got my attention.
"Yes."
"Good work, Ally. I will be back in D.C. soon."
"Shane, there is one more thing. It is important," Ally said. She cleared her throat over the phone. She sounded nervous. Shane had never known Ally Embers to be nervous.
"Ally? What is it?"
"Mr. Graves's office called. He wants you to call him immediately. He is in town. He wants you to meet him," Ally said.
"Great," Shane said.
"Shane, it might be about your partnership. His secretary said he wasn't happy that you were not around."
"I'm on my way back," Shane said. He hung up.
We looked back down at Shutter's skeleton. Shane began shoveling the dirt back on top of the grave.
He whispered, "Sorry."
He finished reburying Gillard Shutter and patted the mound of dirt. He walked past his parents’ graves and thought about them for a moment.
The new StoneCutter would die. If he was a copycat, we would dispatch him as normal. However, if he turned out to be the real StoneCutter, then we would have to make special arrangements, unforgettable arrangements.
4
Suspect
"Don't waste your time on me. You're already the voice inside my head."
––Blink 182, I Miss You.
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The cops arrested a suspect for the new string of StoneCutter murders. Shane and I were eager to learn about him.
Shane sped his car through the winding country roads away from his family estate and down the freeway towards D.C.
He pushed all of his work off until he could learn more about the StoneCutter suspect. We both wanted to know who the man was. He wanted to know if the new suspect was the man who killed his parents and created the dark monster that inhabited him––me.
I'll admit that I felt estranged because of this StoneCutter mess, but we had to get to the bottom of it, even if it took us to the pits of hell.
Shane turned on his cell phone and dialed Terrance Graves' number.
The AT&T bars were half full. Being out this far from civilization provided little cell phone coverage. Too bad we couldn't reach down, grab one of those bars off of the screen and beat our AT&T salesman to death with it.
"Hello?" a voice finally answered.
"Terrance?"
"Shane?" the voice asked. "I've been waiting for your call."
"Sorry Terrance, I should have been here sooner. I had a personal errand to run."
"I hope that it is finished now. I need you back."
"For the moment, it is dead and buried," Shane said, a hint of my voice echoed behind his.
"Good. I need you to come by the Grand Hotel in the downtown plaza. Can you do that?"
"Sure. What is this about?" Shane said.
"I can't explain over the phone. Just try to be here soon."
"Terrance, I have to swing by the office first. There is something that I need to pick up," Shane said.
"No. Come straight here. This is a priority," Terrance replied. "Whatever else that you have going on can wait until after."
We wanted to go to the office in order to find out about this new suspect.
The only thing that was more important was protecting our secret. In order to do that, sometimes I had to adhere to the needs of Shane's life. That was the balance that we maintained between our worlds. This was a case where Shane's boss needed him. We could wait until after morning to find out about the suspect. He wasn't going anywhere.
Besides, Terrance Graves rarely came out of the New York City office. However, today, he was in D.C. and he wanted Shane to meet with him. Whatever he wanted to meet about must have been important.
"Okay, Terrance. I should be there within the hour," Shane replied.
"Good. When you get here, go to the fourth floor. Secret Service will be waiting for you. Tell them who you are and they will let you in," Terrance said. "See you then."
"Secret Service?" Shane asked, speaking into an already dead line. Terrance hung up the phone abruptly.
The mention of the Secret Service shocked both of us. Highly trained, government bodyguards made us nervous. Living in D.C. had forced us to encounter them before. They even patted us down for weapons before, but never had we gone to a hotel and voluntarily allowed them to frisk us without knowing what we were getting into first. It felt like we were going into a location filled with guys who were trained to smoke out our kind, like entering the lion's den.
I guess the only way that Shane and I were going to find out why Terrance was with the Secret Service was to check it out.
Shane was more nervous than I was. He was close to making partner in his father's firm. Now was not the time to be off vanishing. And Terrance had caught us doing just that.
Terrance possessed enormous influence with the board, although, it was no longer just his firm. Every member of the board had a stake in Graves and Associates. They owned it collectively. They were the unnamed partners.
Still, we didn't need Terrance angry with Shane. Now, we had to appease him more than ever. So we headed to his important meeting with the U.S. Secret Service.
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Back in Washington, D.C., Shane's black Mercedes pulled up into valet at the Grand Hotel. A young man ran up to our car and took the keys.
Shane looked up to the top of the hotel. He sighed. He was not looking forward to going into a mysterious meeting without knowing any details. He was a tiger crawling into the tall grass without knowing what other beasts lurked in the thick brush.
What was Terrance doing with the Secret Service?
What was so important that it couldn't wait until after we had discovered the identity of the StoneCutter suspect?
Suddenly, Shane realized something that we both completely overlooked. Ally said a strange thing earlier. She said that the Secret Service was keeping the identity of the StoneCutter suspect a secret.
I wondered if this meeting was about the StoneCutter suspect. Now, I was intrigued to learn more.
Shane entered the hotel and surveyed the lobby. Immediately, we noticed one agent stationed there. He sat on a sofa near a majestic, albeit fake, fireplace. He read a magazine, but stared directly at us as we entered.
Shane looked over to the elevators. A man and two kids waited for the lift to open. We walked toward them.
The doors opened and we got on the elevator with them.
"What floor?" the man asked, motioning to the buttons.
"Four. Thank you," Shane replied.
The doors shut and we began going up. Then suddenly, the elevator stopped. It appeared stuck.
"Shit, what now? Not another power failure?" the man said.
The elevator was quite crammed. The lights on the ceiling flickered, initiating the beginning stages of Shane's claustrophobia, something that I wasn't prepared for. Uncontrollably, I began coming to the surface of Shane. For only a brief moment, we lost the balance and his eyes became black. One of the children, a little boy, stared directly up at me.
He winced in terror as he saw the dark, crawly thing that lived inside Shane. He grabbed a tight hold of his father's pants leg. He trembled and held on for dear life as he looked again and saw that I faded from Shane's surface back into my hole in his brain.
"Sir, what is wrong with you?" the man said, jerking the boy up hard by his arm, almost dislocating it.
"Calm down!" Shane blurted out. He stared coldly at the boy's father as my claws retracted into him.
The man's expression was one of utter shock and terror. Slowly, he released his son from his abusive grasp.
The elevator had resumed and the doors opened to the third floor. A single moment passed.
"Th
is is your floor," Shane said in a voice that was perfectly pleasant as if nothing happened.
The man scooped his terrified son up in his arms and jerked his daughter by the wrist. The trio exited the elevator at a speed that was virtually a leap and as they ran out. The doors closed.
We were left alone in the elevator's box. Suddenly, standing in the box, Shane and I experienced a flash of something that we hadn't felt in a long time. We felt fear. The air in the elevator's car seemed to evaporate.
Shane's chest began heaving. We were overwhelmed with an abrupt sense of claustrophobia, my Achilles' heel.
We hadn't experienced claustrophobia in years. This was not a good sign.
Occasionally, a confined, dark space reminded me of the coffin. Whenever Shane felt the fear of being confined, it overwhelmed him. He froze up. Like a car frozen on the side of the freeway during a blizzard, he stalled out. It was up to me to rise to the surface and protect us.
Luckily, the lights flickered back on. The elevator doors opened again and we were safe on the fourth floor.
Shane returned to normal.
He stepped out into the hall. The hotel looked expensive. The hallways consisted of crown molding, antique fixtures, and vibrant colors.
Standing in the open elevator doors were two serious looking Secret Service agents.
"Mr. Lasher?"
"Yes," Shane answered.
"Please, raise your arms and spread your legs?"
Shane did as they asked. One agent frisked us. He searched Shane so hard that I feared he might find me lurking in my shadowy hiding place. After a moment, he stood up and the other agent seemed to relax more.
"Okay, Mr. Lasher. You can continue. The Secretary is expecting you," the agent said.
The Secretary? I thought.
"Head down the hall. Around the corner, go to room 416. There is an agent posted out front. You can't miss him."
Shane smiled at the agents and continued down the hall as instructed.
I recoiled in my hiding place, lowering my guard.
At room 416, an agent waited. He knew that Shane approached. He stood at attention and opened the door as we neared. He motioned for Shane to enter.
Inside the hotel room, Shane noticed that it overlooked a French cafe near the National Mall.
The suite was large. The living area was carpeted, had four large sofas, and a flat screen TV attached to the wall.
The first thing that I noticed was the number of guards posted: one guard patrolled the balcony; two roamed the halls, one stood at the door, one waited in the lobby, and one stood idle in the kitchen. The Secretary, whoever that was, had at least a six guards protecting him.
Seated on the sofas were two well-dressed assistants. They scribbled notes while occasionally texting on their cell phones.
Shane was so silent that no one even noticed that we had entered the room. He cleared his throat in order to make his presence known to the assistants. One of them put down her phone and looked up at him.
She squinted her eyes and adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses.
"Mr. Lasher?" she asked.
"Yes," Shane answered.
"You look just like your magazine pictures," she said, standing up. She looked him up and down.
"Thanks," Shane replied. I knew those pictures were a bad idea, but Shane thought they would help maintain a human image. I thought that the only reason that he wanted to do them was to feed his vanity.
"Do you think that I can have your autograph?" she asked.
Shane was a little surprised. He still was getting used to his celebrity status.
"Sure," Shane answered.
The assistant was about ten years older than we were and had no wedding ring on.
Great.
"What should I sign?" Shane asked. At the tail end of his question, she pulled out the GQ issue that he posed for last year.
She carried it with her? How pathetic, I thought.
"I just happened to have picked it up this morning out of my car," the assistant said.
"Ok. This is my first autograph," he lied. "So, what do you want me to write?"
"Something clever," she answered.
That's helpful.
"What is your name?"
"Marsha," she said, pulling a black marker quickly out of her purse, like a gunslinger from the old west drawing his gun. She held it out to him.
Shane reached out, grabbed the magazine and the marker from her.
He stared at the cover. His eyes followed the perfect design of his exposed abs. He wondered if they air brushed them.
Suddenly, Shane was stumped. So I took the marker and wrote:
To my fan, Marsha.
Meeting you was KILLER!
Your friend,
SHANE LASHER
Shane returned the magazine and marker back to her. She giggled after reading the message.
"Shane," a dark voice said from the shadows of the master bedroom.
We looked up to see Terrance Graves appearing from the doorway. He stood tall and lean for a man in his fifties. The suit he wore was flawless. It was black without a single wrinkle, only perfect creases.
Behind Terrance, a woman in her fifties stepped out of the bedroom. She wore a pants suit that looked overly worn. It was dark blue with a crinkled, white top underneath––definitely the attire of a busy politician.
Shane recognized her face. At first he couldn't place it. He only knew that she was famous.
"Shane, I'd like you to meet, Eline Kline, the Secretary of State."
The Secretary of State was in fact very famous. Her husband was a former President. She was very political.
What was she doing meeting with us? I wondered.
"Hi. Nice to meet you," Shane said, extending his hand out for a handshake. As she shook it, she studied him from head to toe, assessing what kind of lawyer he was. The Kline family experienced their fair share of lawyers. Scandals plagued the Kline’s due to Eline's unfaithful husband and his escapades with young interns.
Eline Kline was infamously direct. She was a no-nonsense politician. She was also highly intelligent, but Shane was not intimidated. He had me.
"Shane, we need to speak to you candidly," Terrance said.
"Of course. What is going on?" Shane asked. He was dumbfounded by all the secrecy, not to mention the armed guards.
The mechanical cogs and wheels turned and coiled in Shane's head. I was gearing up, alert. I was ready to spring out in case Shane needed me.
"This matter is delicate. Let’s go out onto the balcony. I will explain," Terrance said, guiding them over to the sliding glass doors.
Shane, Terrance, and the Secretary walked out to the balcony overlooking Constitution Avenue.
Terrance looked at the Secretary and back at Shane.
"What is going on?" Shane blurted out once again and without my consent.
"I know that you worked hard on the StoneCutter case. I know that you successfully got Gillard Shutter off. Now, we need your help again. Mrs. Kline is an extremely important client. She and I have had a long professional and personal relationship together."
Shane nodded.
"Mr. Lasher," Eline Kline interrupted with a thick Massachusetts accent, "I have five children. They are all grown. My oldest son is forty-five years old. His oldest is twenty-one and has a baby. I am a great grandmother. I am the Secretary of State for the United States of America, and I am asking for your help."
Eline Kline's posture faltered. Her demeanor appeared to be flooding with emotions. She teared up. That was not something that either Shane or I expected from such a professional and put-together politician.
Terrance placed his hand on her shoulder in order to calm her. I noticed that their relationship was friendly, familiar, and even perhaps flirtatious.
This was all interesting to Shane, but the only thing I wanted to know was who the new StoneCutter suspect was. I needed to know his identity. I craved it. I needed to know if he was the o
ne who created me. Shane needed to know.
We wanted the StoneCutter for ourselves. We needed to know if he was the real deal or a faker.
"Eline needs you to represent one of her sons," Terrance said.
"Her son? What does he need representation for?"
"Lies! They lie about him!" Eline said, bursting into the conversation and Shane's personal space as she latched onto him. Her fingertips squeezed the sleeves of his jacket. This woman surprised even me with her desperation.
The Secret Service agent that was posted on the balcony reacted to her outburst. He stepped forward and waited until he realized that she did not need him. He was quick. I had to be careful around them. I was the scavenger, creeping through the alligator's nest of eggs. One falter or slip and I could get eaten.
"Shane, the Secretary's son is the StoneCutter suspect," Terrance said, reaching out to Eline and embracing her in his arms like a concerned brother would.
Her son was the StoneCutter?
Now, I was aroused. Now Shane and I listened with deadly focus.
"Help him, Mr. Lasher. He is my son. My baby. Please help him," Eline begged.
"Shane is the very best, Eline. I'm sure that he will do what he can for your son."
Shane took hold of Eline's hand. We squeezed it tightly. Shane tried to reassure her by staring deep into her eyes, giving her the same fake smile that he gave his clients just before I killed them.
Oh, everything will be alright. I will make it alright. I thought.
"I will acquit him of these outrageous charges. I will save your son, Madame Secretary," Shane said, nodding.
I grinned beneath his surface.
My eyes gleamed through Shane's. I peered at this woman. She had no idea what I was going to do to her monster of a son. He was forty-five years old. He was old enough to have killed Shane's parents. If he was our creator, then he faced a deadly reckoning.
"Eline let me speak with Mr. Lasher alone. I will join you promptly in the living room," Terrance said. He stared into Shane's eyes and cocked his head to one side, studying Shane. In that brief moment, I thought that he saw me. I thought that he recognized me. I must have lost sight of caution. I got too excited.
