by David Beers
Luke cleared his throat and Tommy looked over to him, knowing that he could speak to medical knowledge better than anyone in the room.
"The cut on the neck wasn't neat at all. He basically hacked at it until he was able to separate the head from the body. The eyes were different. Care was taken, and the cuts were nearly surgical in their precision. He excavated the eyes in a way that kept them from being damaged. Even when he placed the eye in the victim's mouth, it was kept intact."
"What was found inside?" another cop asked.
"The eye?"
"Yes."
"A sliver of someone else's eye, but not this victim's," Luke said. "The eye colors were different shades, but we ran DNA tests just to ensure the victim didn't have two different color irises. There was no match."
"So this isn't his first victim?"
"We don't believe so, no," Tommy said.
"It's the first victim that he doesn't personally know." Christian's voice was abnormally loud, as if he wasn't sure anyone could hear him if he lowered it even slightly. Tommy looked back to the corner of the room, but Christian wasn't looking up. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor. "The sliver of eye came from someone he knew, and it might be someone already dead. This, in the killer's mind, is the first person he's done this to."
In all their talks, Christian hadn't said anything about that, although in his favor, the question hadn't come up. Tommy simply figured the answer was no, given that someone else's eye was found inside their victim.
He wouldn't contradict Christian right now, though. "This is Agent Christian Windsor. He's working with us on this case. Now, I don't want it going out that there is disagreement between the three of us. If Christian says this is the first murder, then it is. Does anyone have any other questions?"
CHAPTER 7
"T hawing the body took a long time," Bradley said. "Much longer than I thought it would. I don't know if I'll do that again."
Charles and Bradley were outside on the lawn. Bradley had said Charles wanted to get outdoors for a few minutes, even though Charles said no such thing. The bastard was simply using it as an excuse to talk more. Always talking more.
And Charles now knew Bradley wasn't lying. He saw the news this morning. A body had been found decapitated, just like Bradley said he'd done.
"They didn't tell everything, though. They never tell everything," he said, standing behind Charles's wheelchair. "I won't go into details of what they kept out, just in case you get the wise idea of telling someone about our conversations, but the police keep things from the public. This way they can tell the difference between crackpots and actual leads."
Goddamnit, Charles thought. God-fucking-damnit.
The bastard thought of everything, any little piece of information that Charles might be able to use against him was kept at a distance.
"Are your children coming to visit you soon, Charlie? I looked at the guest register and it's been a month since anyone's been here. Go ahead. Write out your answer."
Charles reached into the bag at his side and pulled out the small tablet the nursing home supplied him with—supposedly one of the great amenities. He turned it on and then loaded up the word processing app, as he now understood they called these things. They used to be programs. Now they were apps. The whole damn world was insane, changing needless names and cutting off people's heads, apparently.
He used the little digital pen and started scribbling on the tablet.
Two weeks, I think.
"Why don't they come more often?"
Vacation. Europe.
"Ah," Bradley said. "I didn't go too far back in the records. Do they usually come regularly?"
Every two weeks.
"That's good. Do you miss them?"
Charles paused, not immediately writing. What did he want to tell this man? And could he lie? Would the bastard know if he did?
Yes, he wrote.
"Well, when they come, Charlie, you know better than to speak about this, right?"
Yes.
"Good. I thought so, I just wanted to check ... We should probably head back in. I've got to make my rounds."
Relief flooded Charles. The bastard's rounds were to Charles what water was to a desert plant.
They moved through the nursing home's back door and into the common area.
"I'll catch up with you later, Charlie," Bradley said, giving a little wave as he walked away.
I've got to do something, Charles thought. I can't keep going through this.
"That's just absolutely awful," one of the old hags sitting around him said. Charles looked at the television. A police press conference about the decapitation stared back at him.
BRADLEY DIDN'T GO to his rounds. He would get to them when he had time, and right now, he simply didn't. He knew the police were holding a press conference and he needed to see what they had to say. The news kept things from the public during their reporting, but maybe the cops would give out more information.
He entered the employee break room, fully expecting some cow to have it on a talk show. Bradley already had a plan to get them to change it, nothing too obnoxious. He knew better than to make a scene over something like this.
Luckily, the television was already on the press conference, the other two people in the room sitting down and staring up at it hanging in the room's corner.
"How long's this been on?" Bradley asked.
"Just a few minutes," Cheryl said.
"Is there any truth to the rumor that something from the victim's body was removed?" a reporter asked.
"I can't comment on that. What I will say is any evidence we've found is being looked at carefully and diligently."
So, someone was talking, leaking about the eyes. Maybe Crystal's family. Maybe someone in the police department.
"Sir, why is the FBI involved in this case?"
Bradley's mouth opened slightly, just enough so that his lips no longer touched. The FBI? From one murder? He figured they would get involved, but he thought it would take time. Perhaps he could even fill up much of his garage before then.
"We're here supporting the police force, but due to the ruthless nature of the crime, we feel it's best to be involved early," the agent said.
"Do you think this might be a serial killer?" a reporter asked.
"There's no evidence to support that at the current time."
Bradley looked around him at the other two people sitting in the room. Neither were returning his glance. "Psycho, huh?"
"Yeah, pretty bad," an older, black orderly said. Bradley thought his name might have been Reggie, but couldn't remember.
"Back to work," Bradley said, turning from the room and walking into the hallway. He didn't stop walking once outside the break room, but kept going, his mind on autopilot, taking him through the rounds he needed to complete. His conscious mind focused on the damned FBI. They shouldn't be here this early, if at all. The FBI got involved when things started crossing state lines, and only then if the murders could be connected to one another. Yet, here they were, right there on the goddamn television screen.
The ruthless nature.
Was that what they saw him as? Saw what he did as? They didn't know what the fuck a ruthless nature was. If the FBI wanted to see it, though, Bradley would show them. He'd put on a fucking clinic—just like his own father had for him.
CHAPTER 8
L uke Titan wasn't what Veronica Lopez had expected. She, of course, had seen dozens of pictures, and even watched some of the speeches he had given—but somehow she thought he'd be more nerdy.
The man sitting in front of her held no visible qualities she associated with a nerd, however.
"So, Ms. Lopez, do you realize the awkwardness of what you're doing yet?" he said.
This was their first meeting. Everything else had been arranged by Veronica's publicist, ensuring that Titan would work with her throughout the project.
"What's that?" she asked, smiling, thou
gh wondering if Titan would take this seriously. She'd heard that he only took his own projects seriously, and everything else was beneath him.
"You’re writing a book on work that hasn't been finished yet. We aren't completely sure that what we designed will actually do what we expect."
"You left the project, though, right? You wouldn't have done that if you didn't think it would be completed," Veronica said.
Titan shrugged. "I left it in good hands. I just think it might be premature to write an entire book on the Sphere."
"Well, I think the market will disagree. This is going to be a huge best seller."
"How many of the other scientists are working with you?" Titan asked.
"All of them, for the most part."
"Bridgette?"
Veronica nodded. "Yes, she's definitely contributing."
"Good. She's a smart one. Where would you like to begin?"
Veronica pulled her cell phone from her purse and placed it on the coffee table. "I'll be recording all of this. That's okay, right?"
"Of course."
"Great. Thanks." She hit the screen a few times and then they were ready to go. "I suppose, I'd like to hear, in your own words, what the Sphere is meant to do. I think that's as good a place to start as any."
VERONICA'S MIND was simultaneously ablaze and exhausted.
She looked at her cellphone with a sense of dread, knowing that she would need to hit play on the recording, and that if she did it right now, she wouldn't sleep the rest of the night. She would stay up listening to Titan's words, trying to parse them, to understand what he said on a deeper level than she had the first time.
Because the man was brilliant.
Beyond brilliant. Easily the smartest person working on the project.
There had been rumors that when he left, the Sphere's forward movement to a market ready endeavor had slowed considerably. The other scientists Veronica interviewed all denied it, but now she knew the truth. The Sphere might still make it to market—it had to, really, with all the money the government had sunk in it—but when Titan left, a large part of the brainpower behind it left with him.
Veronica ignored the phone and turned to the kitchen. She went to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of cheap white wine, pouring herself a glass. She left the bottle on the counter and sipped the wine.
People working on the project called it the Sphere. The actual name was Orbital Monitoring System, and the idea had been Luke Titan's. It was a joint effort between private and public sectors, with everyone from governments to research universities giving up prominent scientists to join the project—a major reason for getting onboard was the prestige that came with it.
When Titan was asked to describe the Sphere, his answer was the simplest and probably the most accurate out of anyone she'd asked so far.
"It's humanity's best chance to continue living on Earth."
Veronica had countered with, "What about the argument that we should be worrying about the human impact of living on Earth? Global warming and such?"
"Legitimate question, but I'll leave that for someone else to figure out. I wanted to make sure that nothing from outside destroys us."
The problem, as Luke Titan had seen it, was that virtually no one was looking toward the sky. In fact, when he first introduced the idea of the Sphere, you could fit everyone looking for asteroids, across the entire world, inside two McDonald's restaurants. Asteroids passed by Earth all the time, and it only took missing one (the sky watchers missed about eighty-five percent, actually—though most moved by without hitting Earth's atmosphere) and the entire human population would be wiped out.
"These type extinction events can't be predicted with any regularity, but they do happen. The last major one landed in the American midwest."
The Sphere would take care of any asteroids which could harm Earth. It would circle the planet like a satellite, but monitor basically a gazillion light years outward, ensuring that any asteroids would be seen long before they had a chance to crash into Earth.
And then, suddenly, Luke Titan left the project. He quit and joined the FBI—out of all things. Veronica hadn't asked him about that, but she was at least as curious about his change of direction as anything else. It made no sense, not to anyone that used to work with him on the Sphere, and certainly not to her.
"Not tonight," she said and stepped away from the phone. She went into her living room and sat down, turning on the television. There'd be plenty of time to think about Luke Titan.
CHAPTER 9
A t two in the morning, Christian finally came across something useful. He'd been on his computer for the past three hours, having spent the rest of the day sitting in on interviews with Tommy and Luke. He didn't speak much in them, only took in the information Crystal Hembree's parents and coworkers gave. Nothing he heard granted him a clearer picture of the man they were hunting, though.
Crystal hadn't known the killer, or at least, what she did know about him wasn't true. None of her family or friends would have known him either.
The eye removal made Christian think the man would move in quick succession. He was a collector, obviously, but the eyes meant something very intimate. They were called the windows of the soul. People averted their eyes when lying. Christian himself could barely stand to look at someone else's.
The eyes.
The hack of the head, the eye in the mouth, all of that had been for show. The only thing that mattered was the eye he took, and the sliver he left inside the other eyeball ... Christian wasn't ready to venture down that road yet, though.
The eyes. The killer would want more of them, and soon. Whatever he was doing with them, whatever purpose they served—one wasn't enough. But he couldn't leave the bodies of each person he took for others to find, not if he wanted to stay out of custody; he had to know that.
Christian had started pulling missing person reports for the five counties surrounding the one where Crystal Hembree turned up.
The past week there had been two missing persons, one of which was found, and one that seemed to be a runaway.
Tonight though, a family reported someone new.
The police required two days before someone could actually be classified as missing, which meant that this person had been gone for at least forty-eight hours.
Christian quickly pulled up the picture. Another woman. Age twenty-five. Blonde hair. Pretty, but not beautiful. White. Christian zeroed in on her eyes.
Blue.
Just like Crystal Hembree’s.
They weren't as dynamic, more subtle. Gentler, maybe.
Christian stared at the woman's eyes for a long time, maybe an hour or more.
Finally, a little bit before dawn, he closed his computer and rolled over on his side. He looked at the nightstand next to him, wondering if this was a route he should venture down. Before, when he used what his mother called his gift, it had always been for innocent things. And if not innocent, than certainly not evil. Could he do this without losing himself?
THE APPOINTMENT HAD BEEN SCHEDULED at six in the morning. Melissa didn't do this for other patients, but she understood Christian Windsor wasn't like other patients. All of them, of course, had special needs—were individuals—and needed to be treated differently ... but Christian was special even among them. Now that he was back in Atlanta, she’d have to start making some extra accommodations for him.
She stepped out into her waiting area, a coffee mug in her hand.
"Ready?" she asked.
"I'm sorry for this. I know you don't like working these hours," Christian said.
"It's fine. I'm normally in the office anyway, just not seeing patients yet. Come on back."
She let him lead the way to her office, a path they both knew by heart. Christian had no problem taking the lead in here, and she knew that meant he felt safe—felt it was as much his home as hers. It took him two years to be able to do that; he'd always let her lead before, following a foot or two behind, and then o
ne day, he simply took over without saying anything.
He sat on the leather couch while she moved to the leather chair to the left of it. He hadn't been in this office in quite a while, but he still sat in the same corner of the couch. Some people sat in the middle, and yes, even that said something about the person. Those in the corner said they weren't sure what the world would throw at them; those in the middle said it didn't matter what came, they would handle it.
"Where would you like to start?" she asked.
Christian stared at the picture on the other side of the wall, as he always did when they spoke in here.
"I'm not going to be able to do this job."
"You took it?"
He nodded.
"It's a bit early to decide you can't do it, isn’t it? When people first take a job, they often feel they're in too deep—that it's too much for them."
"You don't understand," he said.
"Then help me to."
"What I do, what I'm able to do, I don't like it. I never have. But I'm not able to stop it. It's why I wanted to be an analyst in the first place. I can use this thing with numbers the same way I can with people. The numbers, though, they aren't going to take me into dark places. This will. I don't know if I'm strong enough to go there."
"What kind of dark places?"
"I'm not sure if I can talk to you about an open case."
"You can. I'm legally and morally obliged to keep this private from everyone, unless you give me permission to do otherwise. Everything we discuss will remain confidential, as long as you're not going to harm yourself or someone else."
Christian was quiet for a few moments.
"I stared at a woman's eyes for a long time last night. Her eyes were beautiful."
"Were?" Melissa asked. "Is she dead?"
"Most likely. She's a missing person."
"And you think the man you're chasing took her?"
He nodded. "When I stared at her eyes, I saw more and more about him."
