The Golden Ratio

by Cole McCade

  “We are not looking at you,” Seong-Jae promised. “No one can see you.”

  “You can,” Walters hissed, his voice trembling.

  Malcolm slouched down in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. “You were arrested and sentenced to twenty years for attempting to write over fifty bad checks in the space of a year, weren’t you, Dale?” he asked gently.

  Walters whimpered. “Had to,” he said. “M’sorry. Had to. Didn’t have no more money.”

  “Do you remember what you bought with the checks that cleared?” Malcolm prodded—persistent, but soft. Malcolm had a way of making more vulnerable suspects feel at ease, when he wanted to; as if he understood them, understood their reasons.

  It worked on Seong-Jae so often, too.

  But that was why he kept his mouth shut—and when Aanga started to open his, Seong-Jae caught his eye, shaking his head sharply with a soft sst under his breath.

  Aanga was good at his job.

  But this was somewhere to let Malcolm take the lead, and only step in to support him.

  Aanga’s jaw set.

  He never did like having control of a case taken out of his hands.

  But he had wanted Seong-Jae’s knowledge, his consultation, his advice…

  And that meant more than just pointing him at the case like a weapon and pulling the trigger.

  After a few moments, Aanga sighed, slumping back in his chair.

  Fine, he mouthed.

  Malcolm had never taken his gaze off the ceiling, simply waiting, and after several long moments, Walters spoke. In his reflection his posture conveyed shame, defiance, all in the jut of his jaw and the tremor of his lips and the stiffness of his shoulders.

  “…had to cover up,” he said. “Had to cover up so they couldn’t see. How’d you know? How’d you know I don’t wanna be seen?”

  “I saw your court records,” Malcolm soothed. “I know. You bought layers and layers of clothing. Bandages to cover your face, your hands. No skin exposed. Sunglasses to hide your eyes, hats and hoods to pull over your head. You didn’t want anyone to see you. You had to be invisible.”

  “If they can see me,” Walters whispered, a quaver in his voice, “they could kill me.”

  “Exactly,” Malcolm said. “And you only did it to be safe from them.”

  Garza leaned down and whispered to Aanga. “Them?”

  “Don’t,” Aanga hissed back softly, and he was right, Seong-Jae thought.

  This had to be approached delicately.

  Because he, too, had read Walters’ court records, which was how he knew exactly what Walters was processing in this moment; why direct scrutiny made him uncomfortable.

  Not just his arrest records.

  But a case at the beginning of 2001. A mass shooting in a Phoenix area drive-through restaurant. Twenty-seven people dead, including the two perpetrators.

  And Walters the only survivor.

  His check-writing sprees had started shortly after.

  “If they see me,” Walters said again, “they gonna shoot. All the shooting, everywhere. Nobody see me and I’m gonna be okay.”

  “Nobody can see you now, Dale,” Malcolm reassured, that gravelly voice so calming, so steady, as if offering Walters a spoken hand of stability. “We can hear you, but we can’t see you. And no one wants to hurt you. But you remember what happened that day, don’t you? I read about you. You were brave. You survived.”

  “Wasn’t brave.” Walters’ reflection shook with how hard he jerked his head from side to side in denial. “Coward. All them ladies and babies and people, they died and me, I just hid.”

  “They were victims,” Malcolm said. “But you were a victim too. You couldn’t have saved anyone. You were smart, and you hid. And you’ve been trying to hide ever since. You hid at the prison too, didn’t you?”

  Walters snapped his head up and down; he looked already dead in the hollowed-out window refection, eerie. “Make ‘em put me in the box. Nobody sees me in the box.”

  “You’d act out so you’d get put into solitary. So no one could see you inside that safe space,” Aanga said.

  Walters immediately stopped talking.

  Malcolm turned his head, giving Aanga a flat look, arching a brow that seemed to ask, Do you mind?

  Aanga just spread his hands, and Seong-Jae sighed.

  Too many cooks in the kitchen, as the saying went.

  But Malcolm turned a look on Seong-Jae next, nudging his head a little toward Walters.

  He supposed it was his turn, then.

  “Mr. Walters,” he said. “Do you want to save people? The way you felt you could not, that day at the restaurant?”

  Walters made a sick sound, squeezing himself tighter; his fingers dragged down to find the bare skin of his forearms below where he’d shoved the wrists of his undershirt up, digging in. “Couldn’t. Couldn’t. No good, no good, gotta hide, nobody see me, coward, coward. Dirty dirty coward, covered in blood.”

  “I do not think you are a coward,” Seong-Jae said softly. “I think you are a brave man, who can be braver if you help us stop the man who let you out.”

  “Weren’t no man!” Walters’ voice rose, cracked with distress. “The bunny. The bunny with the bad face.”

  “The bunny,” Seong-Jae agreed. It was better to use language Walters was comfortable with, speak in his terms, keep him calm. “The bunny is going to hurt people, Mr. Walters. Just like the men you hid from. The bunny has already hurt dozens of people. But if you can tell us who the bunny is, then we might be able to stop him. We can make sure he never hurts another person or child again…and we can make sure he does not hurt you.”

  “Did you see his face?” Malcolm added. “Did you recognize his voice?”

  Jittering his head from side to side, Walters slumped. “…no face. Just bunny. He talked all high. High and squeaky and he was singing.”

  “Ring around the rosey,” Aanga interjected, and Walters’ head snapped back, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Pockets full of posies!” He whimpered, eyes gleaming wetly, his ropy limbs shaking, tendons standing out against striated, weathered skin. “They all fell down…all of them fell down…unclean blood, dirty blood…”

  “You saw?” Aanga asked. “You saw him kill the other inmates? The guards?”

  But Walters said nothing, only trembling in place.

  He was not here anymore, Seong-Jae realized.

  The catastrophe at the prison had taken him back.

  Back to that day at the drive-through.

  He was living it all over again, and the man in the rabbit mask had forced him to reenact the most traumatic scenario of his life, traumatic enough to reshape his psychology:

  A mass murder where he survived through chance and luck alone, while watching everyone around him die.

  Yet this time had not been chance, or luck.

  But by the Golden Ratio Killer’s deliberate design.

  Seong-Jae looked at Malcolm; Malcolm looked back, concern furrowing his brow into deep seams, before he tugged Seong-Jae’s jacket sleeve and pulled him over.

  “Should we leave him alone?” he whispered against Seong-Jae’s ear, so low it was more breath formed into inflections than words.

  Seong-Jae considered, then shook his head, still watching Walters’ piteously shaking reflection over Malcolm’s broad shoulder. That could have been him, he thought. With so many traumas he had faced, so many things that nearly broke him…

  He could have ended up so lost, so alone, that the only thing he could do was stumble afoul of the law again and again until the kindest thing to do was to lock him up where he could not hurt himself, because no one was willing to take more time for him than that.

  “Mr. Walters,” he coaxed. “Will you tell us what happened when the rabbit came?”

  Walters moaned, and Seong-Jae thought he might not respond—but in the reflection, his eyes closed, and he sniffled.

  “…no one wanna hear. It bad. It baaad.”
/>   “I want to hear,” Seong-Jae promised. “I want to hear you. Every word. Tell me, Mr. Walters. So that I can carry this with you.”

  Walters went still, his shaking stopping.

  He sat up—and in the reflection, his eyes were wide and lost as he looked directly at Seong-Jae, his lips hanging slightly slack.

  “You…want to?”

  “I do,” Seong-Jae repeated, keeping his voice steady, low. “I am listening.”

  Walters hesitated for a few moments more, his breaths rasping like dry sobs, before he clamped his hands against the edge of the table. The knuckles were wrapped in gauze now, cleaned.

  “He let me out,” he said—like it was an accusation, a crime in and of itself. “I heard the wet smash, the crying, and then the door was open. All the doors. He opened all the doors and he said pied-piper, come with me, come with me.” His lips trembled. “Didn’t want to. Didn’t want to come. But everyone else was coming and they pushed me and I had to go. The leaf in the river, I had to go. And the white rabbit was leading us all, and he sang ring around the rosey and we had pockets full of posies, and then…and then…” His lips crumpled together, and he whined softly. “…then everyone started falling down. They hit the guard man. The mean guard man who spits in our food. They hit him and dragged him and then they hit and dragged the other guard men, too. Everyone who was in the boxes, and then…then people in the cages, too. Everybody out, everybody out. He got the keys. He took the keys from the guard man and he opened all the cages.”

  Walters stared at Seong-Jae fixedly, leaning forward, against the table—the cuffs chained to the table rattling, straining.

  “He told me,” he whispered. “He told me I was a special one. He told me I could go. He told me how to get out, and he told me I could go, but I didn’t want to.” He slammed his fist against the table hard enough to make it shudder and scrape its legs against the floor. “He said he’d find the other special ones and I wouldn’t go alone, but if I didn’t leave…”

  He sank back against the chair, slouching as if his bones had fallen out, then thunked the heel of his palm against the side of his head.

  “…the wet smash,” he whispered. “He showed me. He showed me all the wet smashes. Showed me the hurt. I didn’t wanna get hurt. Coward. Coward. I was the coward again so I ran away while all the screaming was happening. I didn’t wanna go and it was too bright outside, but I went. And then I tried to get money from the man because I was cold and people could see me, and then you found me.” His head jerked from side to side, toward each of them. “Can I go in the box again now? Alone?”

  Seong-Jae remained silent, parsing that slowly, teasing out facts from the impressions of Dale Walters’ distress.

  The killer had been in solitary, and escaped…and released the other prisoners from the solitary confinement cells, then others in that particular cell block. In front of Walters and several other prisoners, the killer had beaten multiple guards—if not to death, at least violently enough to frighten Walters, and re-awaken his trauma; but the press of the crowds during the break had made it impossible for him to run and find somewhere safe to hide.

  But he had been on the killer’s list.

  Him and the other “special ones,” chosen because they were part of the suspect’s game. Chess pieces to move to his design, to mask his own movements.

  In the silence, Malcolm murmured, “We’ll leave in just a moment, Dale. So you can be alone. No one will see you. But before we go, can I ask you to look at some pictures? No bad pictures. No blood.”

  Walters pressed his lips together, then nodded. “Okay. Okay. I’ll look.”

  With slow, careful movements Malcolm took a file folder from Aanga. All of that raw, aggressive strength in his thick body could transform so easily when he guarded his movements, until the power in the flexion of muscle against his finely tailored suits became less the power to harm and instead the power to protect, so that anyone watching him would feel less threatened and more…

  More that it was safe to be in his presence.

  That he would not let anyone hurt them, including himself.

  And Dale Walters visibly relaxed while watching him, and only flinched minutely as Malcolm—eyes downcast, on the table instead of on Walters—leaned forward and spread out six mug shot photographs across the table in front of Walters, minus his own.

  “Do you recognize these men, Dale?” Malcolm urged. “Are any of these men the rabbit?”

  Walters stared down at the photos, scanning right to left and back again, chin jerking slightly up, down, left, right, before he shook his head, seeming to deflate.

  “N-no,” he said. “Don’t know.” Another head-shake, sharp, spasmodic, his mouth drawing up into a distressed little wrinkle of puckered pink. “I stay in the box. I don’t know no one. No one at all. I eat in the box, I live in the box.” He shrugged listlessly. “Don’t know them.”

  He paused, then. Frowned. Tilted his head.

  Then tapped the photo of Neil Samson. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, with an almost severely handsome face and salt-and-pepper spattering of thin beard.

  “Him though,” Walters said. “Him was nice to me. Was in my room. When they first put me in, put us in together. Nice man.” He lifted his head, staring at them mournfully. “I stabbed him. Made him red. So they put me in the box. Tell him? Tell him I’m sorry? He was so nice. He’s alive?”

  “He is alive, as far as we know,” Seong-Jae assured, and drew his chair back slowly, careful not to scrape the legs, careful not to make any sudden movements as he stood. “And we will tell him you are sorry for hurting him. Thank you, Mr. Walters. We will leave you to be alone now.”

  He caught the others’ eyes, tossed his head.

  One by one, Malcolm and Aanga rose, Malcolm gathering the photographs once more, with Garza watching them with troubled eyes before turning to lead the way from the room.

  “Goodbye,” Walters called after them softly, almost forlornly. “Goodbye.”

  “Take care, Dale,” Malcolm said.

  And Walters smiled at them beatifically, before they filed out into the hall.

  Once the door closed, Garza let out an explosive sigh, dragging her hand back through the slicked-back tail of her hair, then pulling the elastic loose and letting it tumble free, head rolling forward with a groan.

  “That,” Malcolm said, rubbing his temples, “is a feeling I understand far too well.”

  Aanga settled to lean against the wall, propping his hip against the frame of the observation window, crossing his ankles, tucking his hands into the pockets of his slacks. He looked over his shoulder, through the window, watching Walters; through the lenses of his glasses, caught in Seong-Jae’s peripheral vision, a smaller version of Walters plucked and fidgeted at the bandages on his knuckles.

  “Odds he’s faking?” Aanga asked.

  “Low.” Seong-Jae drifted to the window, staring through at the tired shape of a man who did not seem to know how to fit into his own self, as if life had pulled him out of alignment and his edges no longer matched the space he took up. “You do not play pretend so convincingly with that sort of trauma.”

  “And even if he is faking…” Malcolm settled himself against the opposite wall, the crisp shirt under his suit coat straining as he crossed his arms. “If he’s our suspect, we’ve got him in custody. What’s he going to do, break out again?”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Garza said tightly.

  “I think we’ve gotten everything we can out of him,” Aanga said. “You can probably process him back through holding and into the facility.”

  Seong-Jae stiffened, a flashfire bolt of frustration snapping through him. “No,” he bit off, before he could truly check himself.

  Garza blinked at him. “No?”

  Turning on his heel, Seong-Jae glared at her. “You must have social programs for rehabilitation and counseling,” he said sharply. “Get him into a halfway house. A group center. Something. If
you want to criticize us for our role in letting a murderer escape, you are perfectly within your rights. But I am also within my rights to criticize you for using prison as a substitute for mental health treatment.”

  He could not seem to unlock his jaw; could not seem to stop the words, either, even if he knew they were unwise, but something had to give and if he did not vent something in this terrible case, he would break.

  Seong-Jae flung his hand toward the observation window, and Walters. “He has spent nearly half his life in prison for writing bad checks. For acting out his trauma.” He swallowed, throat tight. “Do not put him back in that box. Put him back into a life.”

  “Seong-Jae,” Aanga warned softly, and it was the warning, the don’t in his tone that hit Seong-Jae too hard. Harder than he could handle, leaving him ready to crack.

  He needed someone on his side on this.

  “Joshi,” Malcolm countered, shaking his head—and then he was there, catching Seong-Jae’s hand, leaning against his side and lightly tangling the tips of their fingers together, grounding him, being with him. “Seong-Jae’s right.” Quiet, but firm, his steady gaze never leaving Joshi. “I know you can pull strings.”

  Joshi’s expression shifted oddly, almost crumpling—before blanking as he looked away, sighing, adjusting his glasses absently. “…I’ll try.”

  “You won’t have to,” Garza said. “Fuck.” She shook her head, her agitated hands catching her hair up and tying it back again, a messy twist with one lock looped around to secure it at her nape. “I’ll pull the strings,” she said through her teeth. “Look, I got a conscience, okay, there’s just…”

  “A lot,” Malcolm said. “We know. And we can’t each of us fix everything singlehandedly.” He squeezed Seong-Jae’s hand. “But when we run across the things we can, we do.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed wearily. “What we can, we do.”

  Seong-Jae only tightened his grip on Malcolm’s hand, saying what he could not say aloud right now, what he could not express to convey the rush of relief pouring through him.

  Improving Dale Walters’ living conditions could not bring back so many dead, and would not capture the primary suspect.