by Andrew Mayne
Finally, I look up the name of the arresting officer and get a number.
“Hello?” says a man with a gruff Baltimore accent.
“Is this Officer Kimberly?”
“Sergeant Kimberly. Who may I ask is speaking?”
“My name is Theo Cray. I have a question about a case.”
“Are you a cop?”
“No … I’m an independent investigator.”
“What the hell is that?” he replies, clearly short of patience with me.
“You see the story on the news about the house in Los Angeles with all the dead bodies?”
“Yeah? You have something to do with that?”
“Well, I found them. I’m here in Atlanta. Maybe you heard about that?”
“Something. What do you need?”
“Could you pull up a website and look at the photo of the suspect?”
“Hey, guy, I’m in the middle of dinner. Can this wait?”
“Trust me. Just do it.”
“Hold on …” A minute later, “Fuck. Those motherfuckers.”
“I take it you recognize that man.”
“No fucking kidding. I pulled that piece of shit in after the kid’s mother came running out to my squad car. He was two blocks away washing down his van without a fucking care in the world. Arrogant prick said that he had diplomatic immunity or some shit like that. Which he didn’t. But apparently he had something just as good.
“We book him. Get the statement from the kid, even get a rape kit. A couple hours later, some assholes from the State Department show up saying they have to put him under their custody.
“Our captain wasn’t having any of that. Next thing you know, they’re sending in their lawyers and fuck all. We’re like, you take care of him.
“When I tried to follow up on the case, there was no docket. Nothing. They just whisked him off and the prosecutors declined to prosecute. Fucking weasels.
“I cornered one of them at the courthouse after I was on the stand for something else. I asked her how the hell they let that one slide.
“Know what she said? ‘It was a domestic dispute that got out of hand.’ A fucking domestic dispute. A little boy gets raped and that monster tries to stab a blade between his ribs so he won’t go tell anybody. Prosecutor somehow decided that never happened. Fuckers.”
He takes a deep breath. “Jesus. Looks here like they shot that asshole. Good fucking riddance. Wish I could thank whoever did that.”
“You just did,” I reply.
“Fucking serious?”
“Yep.”
“Well, good. People may give you shit, but you did the world a good thing. Anything I can do for you?”
“Yes, actually. Oyo killed a lot of kids after he was let go. While I don’t think the people who got him out expected he would do that, they didn’t seem to put too much thought into the matter.”
“No shit.”
“I need a name of one of the feds. Somebody you might have remembered.”
“Jeez. That’s going back. Like I said, the folks came from the State Department. But I’m not sure if they knew who the fuck he was. They were just flacks.”
“Probably, but the suspect must have talked to someone to get him out.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Can I call you back? Maybe I got something.”
I sit by my phone waiting for his call. Half an hour later, he rings me back.
“Okay, this is all I can get. We keep a log of incoming and outgoing calls. While we can’t listen in, it’s legal for us to track who somebody called. One of our detectives has a database and it started a couple years before then. It doesn’t list the name of who placed the call, but I know when they let that asshole make his call. So this is the number.” He reads it off to me.
I type it into a search engine.
I check the number twice to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. I’d been expecting some line to the CIA or the State Department. This is something else … this is the smoking gun.
“Did you look this up?”
“Yes. Right before I called you. Ain’t that a peach. And it’s the direct line.”
“Damn,” I reply.
“Good luck on that one.”
No shit.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
ROOM SERVICE
I sit back on the hotel bed, fully dressed, check my watch, and decide I have time to call Jillian.
“Is this the elusive Dr. Theo Cray?” she says after picking up the phone.
“Still elusive. Before I tell you what I’ve been up to, tell me something about your day …”
“Ha. All right. From the news, I can tell you that it’s not as exciting. Carol and Dennis got an offer on the diner.”
Carol and Dennis are her dead husband’s parents. Jillian took over running their Montana restaurant after serving in the army. When I met her, I could tell her heart wasn’t in the place and she was ready to move on, but her love for them was too strong to ever let them know.
“Are they going to take it?” My interest is a little selfish.
“I think so. Carol and I have been selling a lot of pies, and I think I’m going to help her spin that off into its own thing.”
“Oh … that’s cool,” I reply.
“Yeah …”
Say it, Theo. Say it. “You know … Texas could always use more pie …”
“Oh, really?”
“Maybe you come back down and let me help you test recipes?”
“I’ll consider it,” she says. There’s a warmth there.
“Please do. There’s just one catch …”
“Another serial killer?”
“Uh … no. Not quite. I may be spending the rest of my life inside a federal prison—or worse.”
“Worse?” she asks.
“I made someone very upset. He’s in full ass-covering mode and may or may not be trying to get me renditioned to some black-box prison in the middle of nowhere.”
“Fuck, Theo. Tell me what I need to know. I’m not going to let them do that.”
There is nothing warmer to a man’s heart than the woman he loves telling him she’s ready to sneak behind enemy lines and rescue him.
“Don’t go GI Jane just yet. I’m working on a solution. A little bird told me that I may be called to some secret intelligence-agency court where what they really do is put a gag order on everything and detain you preemptively.”
“What can you do?”
I hear the sound of a key in a lock.
“Gotta run. If you don’t hear from me again …” I blurt out, “I love you,” before she can respond.
I pocket the phone as an older man with receding red hair steps into the room. Still sweating through his gym clothes, he stares at his key and then looks at me, confused.
“I think this is my room,” he finally says.
“When did you know about Oyo?”
The man, Senator Hank Therot, head of a House counterintelligence committee and capable of green-lighting black-ops budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars with a stroke of a pen, glares at me. Then the realization dawns. “You’re that professor asshole. You’re so goddamn dead. I’m going to have you buried in a hole, then lose the hole.”
“When did you know about Oyo?” I repeat. “When did you know what he really was?”
I know for certain that by the time Oyo grabbed the kid in Baltimore, Therot was fully aware of what this man was and didn’t care. In fact, I have evidence that Therot, who personally pushed to make Oyo an informant, did everything he could to protect the man, because exposing him meant damaging his own reputation.
Therot looks around the room suspiciously, searching for a camera or recording device.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he says, then turns for the door.
I could have predicted as much. There’s no way in hell he’d ever confess to any connection. But it doesn’t matter. The people that kept him in power, the recipients of that funding—the fo
rmer politicians turned lobbyists and contractors—realized he was a liability.
I made a deal. I’m not happy about it. Cavenaugh is getting his terrorist-profiling lab from me, and I get Therot. It’s a devil’s bargain. I rationalize to myself that I’ll be able to do some good on the inside, but deep down I fear that’s what everybody thinks before they go down the slippery slope and start using phrases like collateral damage in order to sleep at night.
Therot collapses before his hand can reach the door.
I’d coated the outside door handle with a contact poison that knocks you out in small doses. Senator Therot, his pores wide open from a workout in the hotel gym, got the full effect.
While he dozes, I take out a bottle of sanitizer and spray every surface, ensuring that no trace of me remains.
I’m done by the time the expected knock comes at the door. With latex gloves on, I open it and wipe down the exterior doorknob while two men wait alongside a wheelchair.
I give them a thumbs-up, and they load Therot’s unconscious body onto the seat and strap him upright.
They head for the service elevator as I step to the stairs. When I cast a backward glance, I catch William Bostrom’s eye as he and Mathis push Therot through the door.
We exchange knowing nods, aware that this won’t really end the pain, but killing monsters never does. It’s just something you have to do when you see them for what they are.
When I reach my rental car parked three blocks away, I see a familiar figure leaning against the side, sipping coffee from a paper cup.
“Let me guess, you’re here to tie up loose ends?” I say to Cold War Bill, only half joking as my left hand cradles a small canister while my right goes to my side, ready to pull the pistol tucked into my back belt.
He rolls his eyes and makes a groan. “That’s not how it works. It’s easier and less messy to just buy somebody off. Which is what I think we did.”
I can’t tell if there’s a little bit of recrimination in his voice, or just a general bitterness at the world.
He continues, “I’m here to make sure nothing gets fucked up. Do you trust your people?”
“Not one bit,” I reply. “But I trust their self-interest.”
“Right answer. One more question, just for my benefit. Why?”
I look back in the direction of hotel. “It seemed like the most efficient way to eradicate the vector that made Oyo possible.”
Bill strokes his chin, nodding. “Okay, Professor. So it’s all just biology to you?”
“And mathematics. Don’t forget the mathematics.”
Bill mutters, “Goddamn. I think you scare me more than Oyo.”
“I’m just following things to their rational conclusion.”
“That’s what scares me. How long before you decide people are the problem and cook up some kind of killer bacteria to wipe us all out?”
“A bacterium would be an inefficient way to do that.” I glance down at the small canister I’m holding in my fist. “Now, a designer prion …”
Bill looks down at my hand, then stares at me for a long moment, trying to tell if I’m kidding. “Shit. Now I don’t know who should be more worried about this deal you struck: you or them.”
Which is exactly what I want them to think.
Cold War Bill tosses his half-finished coffee into a trash can as he shuffles off—probably trying to decide how to warn his superiors that Professor Cray might actually be some deranged genocidal maniac plotting the apocalypse.
I pocket the cylinder and get back into my car and head for the highway, unconcerned with Therot, Bill, or his bosses.
I have a lab to build.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Mayne is the author of The Naturalist and Angel Killer and the star of A&E’s Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne. He is also a magician who started his first world tour as an illusionist when he was a teenager and went on to work behind the scenes for Penn & Teller, David Blaine, and David Copperfield. Ranked as the fifth bestselling independent author of the year by Amazon UK, Andrew currently hosts the Weird Things podcast. For more on him and his work, visit www.AndrewMayne.com.
