by Erik Carter
He knew that the stress wasn’t simply the fallout of his meltdown or the byproduct of one sleepless night. It was because of what had come to his brain after the meltdown. The mission that he remembered. What he now had to do.
He could feel the eyes of everyone in the studio upon him. It wasn’t his harried look that was drawing their stares; it was because of the damn event. The Adam Steele meltdown, the city of Portland had quickly named it. The Ron & Roc Show had been talking about him all day long, their banal idiocy fueling the fire.
He looked around at the others. Everywhere he turned, he found another set of eyes darting away as if they hadn’t just been looking at him. One person tried, and failed, to conceal a laugh. He knew going into this business that it was the sort of work where one mistake could ruin a man’s career. And he wondered if last night’s gaffe had done just that. He thought about Alicia and the kids.
Finally Adam’s eyes landed upon a well-dressed man in his mid-fifties with smooth salt-and-pepper hair and a handlebar mustache. Carl Bradford. The news manager. Bradford’s arms were crossed over his stomach, and he was looking right at Adam. Unlike the rest of his colleagues, Bradford did not look away when their eyes met. Also unlike the others, Bradford didn’t wear a look of judgment. It wasn’t a friendly look either, but it was perhaps a look of concern.
Adam turned his attention back to the printout in front of him.
A Seaside man was brutally murdered this afternoon.
He continued reading while the makeup artist touched up the part in his hair and sprayed it down with hairspray. The next line he read made him gasp.
Isaac Bennett, age 33, died of a knife wound to the throat. He is said to have been chanting in a foreign language, and before he died, he wrote out the name Joseph.
He looked at the name. Isaac Bennett. He read it over and over. Isaac Bennett. Impossible. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The meltdown. What he had done. Isaac Bennett. It was happening. This was no coincidence.
He read the next line.
An hour later in Longview, Washington, Philip Vasquez was found murdered with a stab wound to the chest. According to witnesses, he too was muttering in a foreign language.
Adam’s hands shook. He felt sweat break out under the makeup that had been applied to his forehead. He stood up.
“Is everything okay, Adam?” the makeup artist said.
“I … That’s good enough. I have to run to my office before we go live. Forgot something.” Adam stood up, removed the tissue paper ring from his shirt collar and began to cross the newsroom toward his office. As he walked, he saw Bradford still staring at him. His look had changed from concern to frustration.
He kept thinking about the news report he’d just read—that he was going to have to read on-air momentarily. There wasn’t just one of them who had been killed. There were two of them. It was happening. Everything was happening right now. He wasn’t alone.
The mission called to him again. He could feel his career slipping out of his grasp. It felt like his entire world was on the verge of collapse. But it didn’t matter. He had the mission now.
Adam stepped into his office and sat down at his desk. He opened a drawer and pulled out a phone book then searched through the pages for a few moments. His phone was on the far side of his desk, and he picked up the receiver and dialed a number. He waited, and someone on the other end picked up.
“Yes, is this Nathan Cook?” Adam said. The person on the other end of the line confirmed. “Mr. Cook, what would you say if I told you this: actiones secundum fidei?”
Chapter 9
Owen stood among a group of homeless people outside an appliance store downtown. He had chosen a rough neighborhood as his base of operations, staying in a sleazy hotel. He was keeping his profile as low as possible, and somehow living among the filth and the rejected souls reminded him not only of the blasphemy that he was trying to wipe out but also of the mercy that Jesus showed upon everyone. It was chilly, and he pulled his arms in tight. He had stopped by a consignment shop and purchased a ratty, old trench coat and a threadbare pair of pants. After putting on his well-worn SuperSonics ball cap, he had completed the look.
He stood in a group of about eight to ten men. Some white, some black. They stunk. And they talked incessantly. Their vulgarity and ignorance made him shudder. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the televisions on the other side of the store’s barred-up windows. The Channel 16 News was playing on a variety of screens, some big, some small, some color, some black-and-white.
The man beside Owen turned to him. “Yo, man. Isn’t that the guy who freaked out last night?”
He was referring to Adam Steele, the Channel 16 anchor who was voicelessly wording some news story from the dozen or so muted screens they were watching.
“What are you talking about?” Owen said.
The other man turned to him and took a half step back. “Damn, brother. You got some blue-ass eyes on you.”
Owen had always received comments about his piercing blue eyes, and it was his biggest concern about his mission. That they would give him away. He was going to remember to wear sunglasses as often as possible.
Another man wearing an orange hunter’s stocking cap spoke up. “Yeah, that’s him,” the man said as he stared at the screens. “Goddamn weirdo, I tell ya.”
“What are you talking about?” Owen said.
The man beside him gave him a look. “How in the world you ain’t heard about this?”
“I’ve … been out of town.”
The man looked him up and down and grinned. “Been travelin’ for business, have ya?”
The man in the orange cap spoke up. “This Adam Steele, man … They’re right in the middle of a show last night, and he just freezes up, starts staring out into space.” The man did an impression, opening his eyes and mouth wide, dropping his tongue out.
The other men laughed.
“It’s been all over the city,” the first man said. “The Ron & Roc Show talked about it all morning.”
Owen shouldered his way through the group of men until he stood before the window. He leaned closer and looked at one of the screens. At the Channel 16 news desk, Adam Steele sat with his longtime co-anchor, Brittany Smalls. The camera then focused solely on Steele as he began a story. He looked off somehow. Rattled.
“Look at him now,” the man in the orange cap said, pointing at one of the screens. “Something’s wrong with that dude.”
Owen and everyone else around Portland had been used to seeing Adam Steele on TV for several years now. Steele was clearly not himself tonight. He was flustered.
The words Longview, Washington, appeared at the bottom of the screen along with the name Philip Vasquez and an image of Vasquez’s workplace. A few moments later, the words Seaside and Isaac Bennett appeared over footage of Bennett’s beach house. A uniformed cop escorted a man and a woman into the house. Owen leaned forward, getting right up to the bars protecting the window and studied the two. The man wore a T-shirt and jeans and a leather jacket, and the woman was Asian and wore a blouse and skirt. Owen watched as the pair took the steps up to the front door of the house. They could be local Seaside detectives, perhaps. Or, given that the two murders had crossed state lines, they could be feds.
Owen reached into his trench coat and took out his camera. He aimed it through the bars of the window at the biggest color screen and snapped a picture of the two plain-clothes.
The men around him burst into laughter.
“This guy’s crazy!” the one in the orange hat said.
Owen left, hearing their laughter behind him as he walked away.
Chances were, those two people from the news footage were feds. And Owen was going to have to keep an eye on them.
Chapter 10
Dale sat on the edge of his motel bed, his body sinking into the cheap comforter and loose springs of the mattress, as he watched the newscast. The anchor—whose name had been announced as Adam Steele—was talking about th
e murders. Steele stammered through his lines. He looked rattled. “Vasquez … he died immediately, and though Bennett was alive when his neighbor arrived on the scene, he succumbed to his wounds before arriving at the hospital. Officials are … are baffled by the seemingly connected incidents.”
The image on the screen changed to a shot of the Seaside beach house and Dale and Spiro walking across the lawn with the uniformed cop.
“Check it out, Spiro,” Dale said. “We’re famous.”
Spiro was at the table a few feet away. She rolled her eyes.
“Due to the distance between the two murders, police believe these may be the works of two or more killers but are not ruling out the possibility of a serial killer.” Adam Steele cleared his throat.
The camera angle went wider, showing both Steele and his female coanchor. She looked at him, confused, then smiled awkwardly for the camera and moved on to the next story. Dale stood up, turned off the television, and sat down with Spiro. On the table were the contents of the case file and some books as well as some paper sacks and wrappers from a local fast food place. It wasn’t the healthiest of options, but Dale was able to find a chicken sandwich there. Dale pulled his chair to the table and grabbed one of the books. Spiro closed the folder she was looking at. She glanced around the room.
“This place is a shithole,” she said.
The Sleepy Slumber Inn certainly wasn’t the nicest lodging in the world. Dale’s room had a single, queen-size bed with a thin, red comforter. Walls that could use a paint job. Matted carpet. Black-and-white TV. But Dale had stayed at some very questionable places due to SAC Walter Taft’s policy of second cheapest, requiring his agents to procure the second cheapest option available in terms of everything from lodging to food to brand of ink pens. But Dale, along with all the other BEI agents, routinely pushed the envelope with this unofficial rule. For instance, the second cheapest lodging in the area of Portland in which he and Spiro were staying could result in one of them being stabbed in the middle of the night. So Dale had chosen the fourth or fifth cheapest option instead.
“Like I told ya, Walter Taft is one cheap SOB,” Dale said.
“Find anything in those storybooks of yours?” Spiro said, pointing at the Bibles that Dale had among the materials spread out on the table.
“I’ve been looking for any connection between the Josephs of the Bible and death by slit throat. Not finding anything in any of the three. You’ve got the Joseph in the Old Testament, whose father favored him over his eleven other brothers and gave him a coat of many colors.”
“Oh, so Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
“One and the same. Joseph’s brothers were so jealous they sold him into slavery, but Joseph had a rags-to-riches story and climbed the ranks to become the second most powerful man in Egypt right beneath the Pharaoh. In the New Testament, we have, of course, Joseph, the husband of Mary, mother of Jesus, perhaps the most trusting husband of all time. And then there was Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Jesus who convinced Pilate to give him Jesus’s body after the crucifixion.”
“They didn’t have pilots back then.”
“Pontius Pilate. The Roman prefect, a governor, who was the ruler of Judea during the trial of Jesus of Nazareth. After Jesus was crucified, Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus in a stone tomb. Of the three, the only connection I’m seeing at the moment is with this Joseph—Joseph of Arimathea. And that’s only because there’s a body involved.”
“A pretty flimsy connection.”
Dale shrugged. “It’s what I got at the moment. From a psychologist’s standpoint, do you see any religious connections?”
“I’ll have to do some research,” Spiro said and gestured to the materials in front of her. “I know nothing about Christianity. I’m a scientific person. I’ve never had time for nonsense, particularly old mythology. We live in an enlightened age, or at least we’re supposed to. And yet we have people believing in some cloud being ruling over them and everything they do. It’s ridiculous.” She scoffed. “Dream on, man. Dream on.”
Dale was slightly taken aback by her choice of words. It was hippie-ish, almost youthful. And it didn’t fit her clinical demeanor. Or her age.
“I don’t completely shut my mind to the idea that there may be factors we can’t understand,” Dale said.
Spiro turned on him. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Here I was starting to think you were sort of smart. And yet you believe in Cloud Man.”
“I didn’t say that at all. I just think that there is the possibility that there are forces we don’t yet fully comprehend. No, I don’t believe in the tenets of any religion. I just know there are a lot of things that science has yet to explain and other things that would sound crazy had science not already explained them. Like the duckbilled platypus.”
“Excuse me?”
“The duckbilled platypus. Imagine that you never heard of the creature. And I came up to you and told you that I had discovered a mammal that laid eggs. That had the tail of a beaver, the feet of an otter, and, most strangely, it had a duck’s bill. Not a mouth like any other mammal but a bill. Like a bird. An aquatic bird. Would you believe me?”
“Probably not.”
“By comparison, a duckbilled platypus makes Bigfoot seem pretty damn plausible. So maybe those people out searching for Bigfoot aren’t so crazy after all.”
Spiro shook her head. “They are crazy, and it’s because the sole reason they’re searching for Bigfoot is that it hasn’t been found. You’re right. The idea of an overgrown ape is not that outlandish. No one is out looking for a great white—an overgrown shark—because it’s already been found. Everyone knows it exists. Duckbilled platypus has already been found too. The Bigfoot searchers don’t want to actually find it. Then what would they do? They’re just like the God freaks. They’re chasing something that they hope exists. You sound like a person with a scientific mind desperately reaching for a way to believe in the mystical.”
“Or maybe a scientific mind that isn’t so darn pessimistic.” He winked at her.
She scowled and grabbed one of the folders from the table. She looked at it for a moment then bolted up in her chair.
“Conley! Look at this.”
Dale got up and stepped behind her. “What is it?”
She was holding the image showing the writing on Bennett’s arm. “The way the last letter is cut off,” Spiro said. “It’s almost like it wasn’t finished.”
Dale leaned in close. Excitement surged through him, the endorphin rush that came when creativity collided with intrigue. “I think you’re onto something here,” he said and squinted at the edge of the photograph. The end of the word Joseph was cut off by the edge of the photograph.
“You can’t even see the end of the writing,” Dale said. “What other images do we have?”
Spiro quickly rummaged through the photos and pulled out a picture showing all of Bennett’s splayed body. The writing on his arm was entirely visible, but as Dale leaned in to look closer at the picture, he couldn’t see much detail because the photo was taken from too far away.
But it was clear that there was more scribbling on Bennett’s arm.
“Look at those peaks and valleys in the trailing part,” Dale said, pointing to the edge of the writing. “When I first saw it, I thought it was just a spasm. Ya know, him dying and all. But you’re right, Spiro. There’s more to that message. And I think I know what Bennett was trying to write.”
Chapter 11
Carl Bradford sat at his desk at the Channel 16 building. His office was sparse, as Bradford liked to keep distractions to a minimum. Along the walls were a handful of local awards, his college degree, a few mementos from his previous career as a bank manager, and two pictures from his stint in the Army. His desk had a cup filled with pens, his coffee mug, and a desk calendar. Just what he needed and nothing more. He never used the fluorescent lights in the ceiling above, and the single lamp behind him put out a faint, warm glow. As
the news director, he worked at night and liked to keep his office dark. It seemed somehow fitting to him.
Bradford had his sleeves rolled up and his tie loosened, and with his left hand he absentmindedly twirled the end of his handlebar mustache. Sitting in the chair on the other side of his desk was Adam Steele. When Bradford came into this position five years ago, Steele had already been a mainstay at the station. His track record and reputation were stellar. Along with Brittany Smalls, they formed a great team, and Bradford felt like his leadership skills were almost certainly unneeded. Steele and Smalls could take care of themselves.
But the previous night, Adam Steele had had some sort of breakdown. Smalls had finished her last line, and when it was Adam’s turn, the camera found him staring blankly into space, eyes glazed over, mouth gaping. Portland had been buzzing about it for the last twenty-four hours. When Adam turned in another bizarre performance in this latest newscast that just wrapped a few minutes ago, Bradford knew that he had to talk to him.
Bradford looked at Adam for a moment before speaking. Adam was pulled in on himself, slightly hunched. He was avoiding eye contact. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
“What’s going on, Adam? First your meltdown the other night. And now your behavior tonight during the segment about the killings.” He stopped fiddling with his mustache. “Got problems at home?”
“Everything’s fine.”
Adam spoke in a tone that imparted confidence, but Bradford noticed him subtly wringing his hands. Bradford watched him for a moment longer and clicked his tongue before speaking.
