by David Beers
"I did it," Bradley said.
Charles closed his eyes and wished for death. This couldn't be happening. The orderly had to be messing with him, playing a prank that he'd go back and tell his friends about.
I got this old fart at work believing I'm a murderer. He's scared shitless!
"It was ... God, it was good, Charlie. I can't even tell you how it felt, not really. It's something you have to experience. Was that what surgery was like for you? Was there any way to actually describe it?"
Charles shook his head. His eyes still closed. The orderly came to get him after nap time and was now taking him to the common area.
This was all a joke. It had to be.
"I froze one of her eyes last night. I'll figure out how to bring it in here to show you, but I can't just yet. I need to make sure that I keep it frozen. I'm sorry, Charlie. I know you were wanting to see it, too."
Charles opened his eyes. Thank God, they had arrived. Bradley would have to shut the fuck up.
"I'll be back with your food in a little bit. Is this okay, in front of the television?"
Charles nodded.
The orderly patted his shoulder as he walked away. Charles could almost feel slime where Bradley touched him, a poison the pat had transferred to him.
Betty Lewis was already heading for Charles, having probably seen the damned orderly from a mile off. Ready to just start gabbing away, not caring in the slightest that Bradley Brown had just confessed to murder.
"How are ya, Charles?" the old hag asked.
Charles stared at her with wide eyes.
"You don't look well," the hag said. "You look like you've just seen a ghost! Did I ever tell you about the time my sister saw a ghost? She must have been ..."
Charles didn't look at the television. He didn't turn away from Betty at all. He stared at the old hag while she spoke, not hearing a single word.
He thought about nothing else but Bradley's words—about the fact that a psychopath had started killing, and Charles couldn't tell anyone without dying himself.
CHRISTIAN SHOOK his head in small short bursts. He wasn't sitting in front of the FBI Director now, but his therapist, Dr. Melissa Keens. Well, not exactly in front of her, as they were using their computers to video chat. Since coming to Virginia, he obviously couldn't travel home for his sessions, and he sure as hell wasn't getting another therapist.
"You're doing it again," she said.
"I know," though Christian didn't stop shaking his head back and forth.
"What did you tell the Director?"
"That I needed a night to think about it. I asked for a night. A night's not long enough, though, not nearly. I don't want to do this, Melissa. I don't want to work for that man or his serial killer group or even the FBI."
Melissa was quiet for a moment. If she had heard her patient call her by her first name, she didn't say anything—nor had she the other five hundred times Christian did it. Everyone else called her Dr. Keens, but not Christian.
"What did your mom say about it?"
"I didn't tell her."
"Because you know what she'll say, don't you?" Melissa asked.
"Do you take some kind of pleasure in describing the rope that's tied around my neck?"
Melissa smiled. "A little. But Christian, your mother will say that you have to take this chance. If you think about it, how many other people in Quantico would kill you ... literally kill you, to have this opportunity being placed in your lap?"
"I don't know; I haven't thought about how many psychopaths are in my class. Based on usual statistics, probably five would kill me."
"And how many, based on usual statistics, are envious?"
Christian didn't say anything; he knew exactly what she was getting at: he had a chance the vast majority of people would never receive.
"I'd like to know why you're scared of field work?" Melissa asked. "What is it that makes you so against it?"
He finally quit shaking his head and looked at her on his computer screen. "You're the shrink. Don't you already know?"
"Maybe, but I'd still like to hear you say it."
"Because I'm not good around people." His words were short, clipped. "I hate you right now, you know? And because I couldn't help but say that is the exact reason why I don't want this job. I want to look at spreadsheets. I want to profile killers and write reports on them. I do not want to be looking at crime scenes. No more than I want to be looking at you right now."
His psychiatrist didn't so much as twitch at his harsh words. "You can close your computer, Christian. No one makes you come here and no one can make you take that job. But, the right things in life are rarely easy. It's the easy decisions we repeatedly make which lead to the outcomes we do not want."
"I'm sorry," Christian said, looking back down at his feet. "I didn't mean it."
"I know. So what are you going to do?"
"I guess I'm going to take the job."
"Good, because I would kill you if you didn't," Melissa said.
LUKE TITAN SAT next to his partner, both of them in the FBI Director's office. Luke didn't like Alan Waverly, and in fact, thought he might like to kill him one day. He knew it could be accomplished, but the time hadn't come yet.
To Luke, Alan Waverly was someone who rose to his current position based upon political reasons and not merit. Tommy, his partner, rose through the ranks due to a lot of hard work and an inkling for deductive reasoning. Alan Waverly, though, was a politician—a poor man's version of Bill Clinton, despite how high he'd risen.
"The kid is different," Waverly continued. He'd flown both Luke and Tommy up here to tell them about the new addition, which was serious in and of itself. "He hasn't technically been diagnosed, but the people that know him best say he's a high functioning autistic."
"With all due respect, sir, why do you think he should be put on our team?" Tommy asked from Luke's left.
Waverly looked to Luke. "You have any idea?"
He always did that, tried to test Luke, to see if he knew things that he shouldn’t—things that hadn't yet been handed down from on high.
"No, sir," Luke said. He lied to the Director every chance he could. Luke wasn't concerned with what society said about him ... as long as it said the right things, and it had been for the past two decades. If Luke moved too quickly now, he could cause the world to start saying things he didn't prefer to hear, and that wouldn't be good.
Waverly nodded, looking back to Tommy. "His inability to form connections with other people doesn't mean he can't understand other people. In fact, his tests show that his emotional intelligence is one of the highest we've tested at Quantico. He is, literally, a genius on Luke's level."
"Yes, sir," Tommy said.
Luke's face didn't change at all with the Director's last sentence, but the words rang loudly inside his head—like a large bell, its rope being repeatedly pulled on from beneath.
"He accepted the position this morning. He's starting tomorrow; I want him on this decapitation case, okay?"
"Yes, sir," Tommy said.
"Yes, sir," Luke concurred, the bell clanging almost too loudly.
CHAPTER 4
T ommy looked at the young man and understood immediately what Waverly meant about him being different. Tommy had only met the Director twice before, both times involving promotions, with the final one occurring a year ago when he teamed Luke and Tommy up.
Now they were adding a third, and Tommy understood his feelings on the subject didn't matter. Luke had been silent, of course. The man never gave the world much as to what he thought, which was smart. Tommy did the same, especially when it came to orders from on high. You kept those thoughts to yourself, lest someone else decided spreading your dislike could benefit them.
"So, this is everything we have," Tommy said. "The papers are calling him ‘The Surgeon’." The table in front of them was covered with photos of the crime scene. The three of them had flown to Atlanta the previous day, and they now stood in Luk
e's basement, though that didn't accurately describe the room. Perhaps second house was a better term. The place was huge, complete with plush furniture and massive televisions. Pool table. Full bar.
Luke had done well for himself before joining the FBI.
They worked here for most of their cases, printing out whatever photos were needed and connecting securely to the FBI servers as necessary. Luke liked working in his basement, and despite Tommy's original hesitation, he found he liked it, too.
Tommy used his computer for much of his work, but Luke wasn't like that. He needed space to move, and when he really got started, he liked to write on walls. The part of the basement they reserved for work was decked out with whiteboards, each wall able to be written on and then erased when finished.
They asked Christian to arrive first thing this morning.
He now stared at the photos in front of him, standing above the table. He hadn't said more than two words since showing up.
"It's probably going to be a little awkward at first," Tommy said, knowing that if he didn't offer the kid a lifeline, Luke certainly wouldn't. "Luke and I have a way of working together and we're going to need to make some accommodations for you, but—"
"Where's the eye?" the kid interrupted.
Tommy's brow furrowed as he glanced at Luke. His partner only shrugged.
"It's at the morgue with the rest of the body."
"We should go there," Windsor said. "When is the autopsy taking place?"
"Tomorrow, I believe."
"Can you get it pushed up for today?"
"Why?" Luke asked, the first question he had decided to bless the group with.
Windsor didn't look up. "There's something inside the eye."
"Why would you think that?" Luke said.
"He took one and left one. The one he took was a present for himself. The one he left was a present for us."
"I SHOULDN'T HAVE SAID that back there, should I?" Christian asked the two in the front of the car.
"Said what?" Tommy asked from the driver seat.
"I shouldn't have said we need to leave and head to the morgue. I'm the new guy here. I should be quiet and let you two decide, right?"
"No, you're fine," Tommy said. Christian heard the smile in Tommy’s voice, understanding that his new partner thought him a bit odd.
No one said anything else as the car pulled onto the highway, heading to where Christian had directed them.
Christian kept his eyes open, but if either Tommy or Luke looked in the rearview mirror, they would have seen them glaze over. Christian only knew what he looked like when he went inward because his mother told him.
If you have to do it, do it in private, honey. People will think it's very different.
Normally he heeded her advice, but right now he wanted to look at everything they had just shown him. Again.
Christian no longer saw the car. Instead, he stood in the foyer of a massive mansion. Two staircases split out fifty feet in front of him, one turning left and the other right, a half spiral to the second floor of the building. From there they would continue their spirals up ten floors, with massive wings jetting off to either side.
Christian began building this place when he was seven.
His mind needed somewhere to put everything it captured—and it captured everything. Whatever Christian heard, saw, or thought was categorized and placed in here. Most of it would never be needed again, but if it ever was, he could access it at any given moment.
He already felt the new room being built, construction happening on the mansion’s west wing. Christian took his time walking up the staircase. He had no taste for decoration, so his feet echoed off the stone that he laid down years ago. He thought once he finally had the time, he would study interior design some and decorate the place the way it deserved. For now it was cold and utilitarian, the same as his brain.
He finally made his way to the new room. Other rooms sat across from it, as well as to the left and right, each one of them having a word or phrase etched above their door.
This room, the newest, simply said Surgeon.
Christian walked through the doorway and into the room. The walls were digital, as were most of the rooms in his mind. Not much furniture filled the middle, but the pictures he'd been shown were now replicated perfectly across the walls. Christian turned around, wondering what else his mind might have put in here that he hadn't been consciously aware of during the briefing.
"Nothing yet," he said aloud. He walked across the room to a thin pole protruding from the floor and rising to his face's height. An eyeball hovered over it, not touching anything. The missing one, not the eye they were heading to see. Its blue color had startled Christian when he first saw it, but his mind still captured and replicated it perfectly.
He didn't need to bend down to see it; he only stared forward.
"Was it the blue you liked?" he asked. "Or just the eyes? Or is it both?"
LUKE SAT in the passenger seat of Tommy's car. The three of them drove in silence, with Tommy periodically trying to make conversation with the boy in the back. Luke definitely considered him a boy, despite whatever age his body showed. A boy ... but a very, very smart boy.
Luke had figured there would be something in the remaining eyeball, although he hadn't said anything about it yet. He would let the pathologist perform the autopsy.
Tommy, of course, hadn't known, and Luke didn't figure anyone else in the FBI would have thought of it either. Not by looking at the eyeball, certainly. There was only the slightest laceration at the very bottom of it, and the glue placing it back together was flawless. No one else saw it at the crime scene, and without a doubt, the boy hadn't seen it either.
Yet he knew.
This was something Luke hadn't planned on.
Waverly hadn't been lying about Windsor's intelligence; Luke did his own research the previous night, looking into Windsor's past. It took a few hours, but eventually he knew every standardized test Windsor had taken, as well as his scores. High functioning autism was the correct diagnosis, with some doctors classifying it as Asperger's. Luke thought that was probably right, too. This boy differed from others with the same diagnosis in another way besides his intelligence: his emotional attention.
Windsor had known something he shouldn't have, simply by looking at crime photos. He'd known something about the criminal, something no one else had even guessed at.
This will be interesting, Luke thought as the car rolled on in silence.
"YOU THINK HE'S RIGHT?" Tommy asked as he and Luke walked to the restroom. They'd left the kid sitting in the ‘cutting room’, waiting on Roger to come out of his office and start the autopsy. "You think there's something in the eye?"
Luke pushed the bathroom door open and went to the sink.
"Yes, there probably is."
"Why do you say that?" Tommy unzipped his fly, hearing Luke splash some water on his face.
"There was a small incision at the base of the eye. I saw it when forensics was looking over it."
"You didn't feel that necessary to discuss?" Tommy asked, turning his head as far as he could over his shoulder.
"I figured if I was right, we would figure it out during the autopsy. Forensics didn't see it, so I thought my eyesight might be going bad."
"I bet that's it," Tommy said, finishing up. He went to the sink and started washing his hands. He wasn't upset; he knew his partner's operating protocols. Luke rarely said anything until it was necessary to pull the rest of the group along. "He's smart, huh, this kid?"
"I'd say so."
"Smarter than you?" Tommy looked up from the sink at Luke, grinning.
"What do you think?" Luke said, flashing his own small smile.
He walked from the bathroom leaving Tommy to finish washing his hands.
If he threw that grin around a bit more, he might actually get laid, Tommy thought as he grabbed a few paper towels.
Tommy followed Luke back to the cutting room and the meta
l table that he'd seen over and over again. Bodies came and went on the table, and Tommy supposed he was similar to the table—both unchanging when it came to bodies.
It was necessary for this job.
"Roger, this is Christian Windsor. He's new to our group," Tommy said as Roger walked into the room.
"Nice to meet you," the pathologist said without even looking at the kid.
He went to the metal table, and pulled back the white sheet draped over it. The body and head rested as they would have if no decapitation had occurred. Except for the two inch space separating them.
An eyeball lay next to the head.
"Okay," Roger said, slipping gloves over his hands. "So we think there's something inside the eye. I ran some X-ray images earlier today, just to make sure we weren't dealing with some kind of explosive device, and while there isn't anything inside that can kill us, something is in there."
The pathologist grabbed a small blade and picked up the eyeball. Luke, Christian, and Tommy stood around the table, with Roger at the head. Tommy looked over to Christian, but the kid only stared at his shoes, not even following the eyeball turning in Roger's hand.
He made his incision, cutting firmly and deep, opening up the flesh.
"Whoever did this drained it before putting anything inside," Roger said as no blood poured from the eye. Using his two thumbs, he pulled open the incision. The inside was hollowed out, like a hardboiled egg without the yoke.
"Jesus," Roger said. Using tweezers he pulled something thin and small out.
"What is it?" Tommy asked.
"It's a part of someone else's eye. He shaved off the iris and pupil," Christian Windsor said, still not looking up from his shoes.
CHAPTER 5
Bradley decided he wasn't going to take the eye into work and show Charlie. It was an unnecessary risk, at least right now. He knew the cops had found the body; it'd been all over the local news. Bradley didn't return to Crystal's apartment—that would have been one of the dumbest things he could do. So many killers got caught like that, returning to the scene of their crimes.
