The Inner Circle (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  “Hours passed and finally we got everything straightened out. It had been clear from the beginning what had been going on inside that house, but first we needed confirmation. Sure, the idea that all these kids were lying to us crossed our minds. But I just had this feeling, this feeling in my gut, and I knew these kids were telling the truth. Especially Carver.

  “The thing was, we still had a murder to deal with. We couldn’t just wash our hands of it and forget everything. Something had to be done. And this ... well, this was where I could have lost my job—where the other officers could have lost their jobs, too. You see, in the next town over there had been a series of home invasions. Whoever was doing it would go in, wreck the place, steal some stuff, and leave. A few times the people who lived in those houses were home, and they were badly beaten. One man was even killed. The perps hadn’t been caught yet, so right then it made the most sense to blame what happened on them. If and when they were eventually caught—they weren’t, surprisingly—we would deal with it then. So I called my supervisor, explained what had happened—the truth, mind you—and then I explained about what I wanted to do, how I wanted to change the story. It took some convincing but he eventually relented, made the disclaimer that if anything were to come back and bite us in the ass, he had never been in the know.

  “So here’s what we decided, the two uniforms and myself—the burglars broke into the house, not knowing the house was occupied. The man, hearing something downstairs, came down to inspect, and that was how he got shot. And the burglars? They disappeared into the night, took their gun with them, and were never heard from again. Like I said, if and when the perps got themselves caught, we would be in a world of trouble. The emergency call served as the only problem in the plan, but when Carver told us what he had said, how he had claimed he needed help, that ‘he’ was trying to kill him, it was enough for us.”

  Graham went silent again, still staring down at his hands, which had gone motionless.

  “What about the mother?” I asked.

  Graham looked up at me, his face blank, like he had no idea what I was talking about. Then, slowly, he began to smile.

  “Again, another thing that could have really messed things up. When we had decided on a story, when we had explained to the children what had ‘really’ happened, I went to the hospital. I found her and asked if I could speak with her privately. I could tell by her eyes she wasn’t an honest woman. That yes, on the outside, she looked honest and wholesome, but on the inside she was rotting. She thought my presence there signified a completely different outcome, and she had good reason to think that.”

  Graham had taken the woman aside and looked at her evenly and said, “Your husband is dead. He was shot to death earlier this evening by an unknown intruder at your home.”

  Tears stood in her eyes. Her face began to sink. She started to turn away, but Graham gripped her arm and pulled her back.

  “Don’t shed tears for him,” he whispered coldly. “Your husband was a disturbed son of a bitch that molested the children you and he took in under your care. You can go and try to deny it as much as you want, but we both know the truth. And we both know the world isn’t going to miss your husband one iota.”

  Tears still brimmed her eyes, but her face had begun to take shape again, reddening along the cheeks. He could almost feel the anger radiating off her.

  “You realize too that you’re an accomplice. That even if you never touched one of those kids, you still allowed your husband to do with them as he pleased. In a way, you’re just as bad as him, if not worse.”

  The woman tried to deny it, said that she and her husband had given the children a home when nobody else would, that they loved them and would never hurt them. But Graham could see the truth in her eyes, the denial she had been feeding herself all these years beginning to regurgitate. Before she had been denying what her husband had been doing all this time, and now it changed, denying the fact that she was just as guilty.

  Graham left her there at the hospital. He had already decided she wasn’t going to be charged. That in the end it would only cause more trouble. That by charging her it would bring all the children into the picture, cause them even more pain than they had already suffered.

  He went back to the station, filled out the proper paperwork, made some calls, got all the children taken away from the house to an orphanage two towns away.

  He had no intention of telling his wife what had taken place—it was just too awful—but the next day she sensed something was bothering him and asked what was wrong. He told her, and she listened without comment, and when he finished the story she said, “So that boy has no home?”

  Graham shook his head.

  “Then we must provide him a home. Graham, we must save him.”

  It wasn’t that easy though. Adopting was a long and arduous task. But it helped that Graham was a police officer, his wife a librarian. It helped that they had tried for years to conceive but were never able to, had even started going through the channels of adoption. And it helped that every weekend Graham and his wife went to visit Carver at the orphanage, that Graham’s wife would bring Carver books to read from the library.

  Eventually the paperwork was pushed through, the papers were signed, and Carver became a part of the Fredrick household.

  Graham said to us, “You have to understand, neither my wife nor myself were trying to make Carver our son. He was already ten years old by that point, and we weren’t that naïve. But he was a good kid. We saw potential in him. And we knew that for his potential to really grow, he had to be in a good, safe environment. I’m not saying the home we provided him was the greatest, but it was good enough. We made sure he was challenged, that he was respected, that he felt loved.”

  Ronny asked, “What about his last name? How did he come up with Ellison?”

  Graham beamed proudly.

  “One of the books Carver read in high school was Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It became one of his favorite books. By that time he had been using Fredrick as his last name. We all understood that it wasn’t going to last. That if he wanted to keep it, that was fine, but that if he eventually wanted to change it, that was fine too. The truth was Carver had never really had a true last name. He had never had a proper identity. Just like the narrator of Invisible Man. So when Carver graduated high school he had it legally changed. And Fredrick? Well, I don’t think anyone ever questioned it, but Fredrick became his middle name. Carver Fredrick Ellison.”

  A beat of silence passed, and I said, “So that’s it then. That’s the whole story.”

  “That’s it, Ben. That’s all she wrote. You know the rest. Carver always stayed in touch with us. He even came to my wife’s funeral. And when I decided to quit the force and move away, move someplace where I could be alone, he was the only one I told. I never thought I’d see him again, but then years later he showed up and ... well, here we are.”

  Silence then, and I realized Graham was watching me. I held his stare for several long seconds, then glanced down at my watch.

  “I think we’re missing lunch,” I said.

  Nobody moved. Nobody said a word.

  Graham kept watching me, his face still blank.

  “What?”

  “You know that quote Carver was always talking about, the one by Edmund Burke?”

  I nodded.

  “He didn’t learn it in any of his high school classes. It was a quote I had up in my den at home, the words burned into a piece of wood. Carver was eleven the first time he saw it and asked me about it. He asked me, how could he become a good man? And I told him he didn’t have to worry, that he already was.”

  Graham smiled, shook his head slowly.

  “That’s what always drove him, I think. Seeing that quote when he was eleven. Or maybe it was something that had happened even sooner. Like killing that man. I don’t know, but every time I think of that quote now, I image a candle surrounded by darkness. And the darkness, it represents evil, while the ca
ndle represents good men doing something. But the thing is, good men can only do so much before they tire out and all their work is wasted.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked. “That Carver was wasting his time?”

  “Not at all. None of you have been wasting your time. But ... I think we need to accept the reality of the darkness around us. That’s something Carver never could accept. He always thought the candle would still be burning, no matter what happened. That no matter how heavy and thick the darkness grew, there would always be a speck of light left.”

  Graham looked around at us.

  “And while I respect all of you—I know all of you are good men—I’m almost glad the vote went the way it did. Because every day the world is growing darker. And I’m afraid that pretty soon whatever light is left is going to be extinguished, never to be lit again.”

  41

  For lunch Beverly had made the Racist a massive double cheeseburger, topped with lettuce and tomatoes and onions. Steak fries accompanied the burger, along with a long slice of dill pickle and a small plastic bottle of Heinz ketchup.

  He took a large and hearty bite of the burger, chewed awhile, and said, “This is really good. She made it just like I’d asked.”

  In less than twenty-four hours the man had become a completely different person. So much so that I had trouble still thinking of him as the Racist. Now he had graduated to simply Mason Coulter, forty years old, husband and father from a town in Arizona, just another hapless victim in Simon’s game.

  He had changed out of his clothes and was now wearing the sweatpants and sweatshirt. He was sitting on his cot, eating the meal Beverly had provided. Apparently he’d eaten his breakfast too, because the plate I had replaced was wiped clean.

  I sat at the desk and watched him, not sure what to say. Drew had already told me about how the man had done a complete one-eighty, but it was hard to believe.

  Besides his one compliment to Beverly, Mason didn’t talk for the rest of his meal. He saved the pickle for last, chomping it down in three bites and then licking his lips of the juices, a crooked but healthy smile on his face. Finally he looked at me, held up the plate, and nodded.

  “Excellent,” he said.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  “It was really good.”

  “So you said.”

  He gave me a curious stare, then got up from the cot and took his plate to the spot where the other plates had been before. He set the plate down and picked up the stack of papers by the pile of his dirty clothes, came back to the cell bars and held up the stack in front of him.

  “Did everything in this really happen to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s some fucked up shit.”

  “Yes it was.”

  “And your wife and daughter ... you still haven’t found them yet?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think they’re still alive?”

  I sat up straighter in my chair and took a long, deep breath. “I’d like to think they are.”

  Mason said nothing for a long moment. “So these people, Simon and Caesar, this whole Inner Circle ... they’re a bunch of douche bags, huh?”

  I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “That’s right. A big bunch of douche bags.”

  “What would you do if you were to confront Caesar? If he were to walk through that door right now.”

  “I’d kill him.”

  “You wouldn’t hesitate?”

  “Not at all.”

  “But what difference would it make? You know, in the end.”

  “Maybe none. But it would make me feel a hell of a lot better.”

  Mason watched me, his head cocked slightly, seeming to measure me. Then his eyes shifted at something past me. “What is that?”

  “What is what?”

  “That.”

  He was looking at something over my shoulder. Even though I knew what he meant, I glanced back anyway. There, right beside the door, was a plastic screen with two red buttons underneath.

  “Those,” I said, “are in case of an emergency.”

  “What kind of an emergency?”

  “A bad one.”

  He kept the frown on his face for a moment, then nodded and asked, “Do you still dream of Michelle Delaney?”

  The question caught me off guard. “What are you up to, Mason?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The other day you barely wanted to talk to me. Now you want to be friends. What gives?”

  “I’m sick of being trapped in here.”

  “So you figure if you play nice, we’ll let you out.”

  “I guess. But I know you guys are jumpy after what happened before with that Christopher Kane guy.”

  “Christian Kane.”

  “Right. And it’s just ... yeah, I have anger issues. Like I told you, I’ve had them all my life. That’s no excuse for what I did during my game, but there you have it.”

  “And?”

  He tossed the bound manuscript on the cot and raised his hands up to his sides in surrender. “And what?”

  At that moment I wished I had the Kid’s nifty gadget with me, the one that could analyze Mason’s voice so I could see whether or not he was telling the truth. A part of me knew to be hesitant, but another part felt as if he was being on the level.

  I leaned forward in my seat, my elbows on my knees, and interlaced my fingers. “The other day you said I misjudged you.”

  “You did.”

  “Then tell me about yourself, Mason. Make me understand.”

  “You mean like my childhood and shit?”

  “Just anything you’d like to share.”

  He stood silent for a while, just staring back at me. Then he nodded slowly and turned and sat back down on the cot.

  “I always knew I was going to be a mechanic, even before I got into high school. My old man had been a mechanic so it just made sense, like it ran in the blood. And it’s good, honest work. I was never one to try to rip somebody off. I started dating Gloria in my last year of high school. She had this brother, a guy named Adam. He was in this biker gang. And when I say biker gang, understand that I mean an actual biker gang. These guys were the real deal.”

  “What was their specialty?”

  “Arms, mostly. But they would also transport drugs every now and then. Whatever helped pay the bills.”

  “Prostitution?”

  “Not that I knew of, but then again I knew better than to ask questions.”

  “You end up in the gang?”

  “Nah, Gloria wouldn’t let me. I wanted to, you know, but Gloria was really strict about it, and I guess I could see why. Adam, though, he was actually really cool to me. He understood how things were, and he told me once that even if his sister was okay with it, he wouldn’t let me join. He knew just how dangerous being in the gang could be, and he didn’t want something to happen to me. He knew that if that happened, it would kill Gloria. So I started just working as a mechanic in their shop, doing work on their bikes and shit. All of it was legit. I got a paycheck and everything.”

  “So how’d you end up in jail?”

  “Adam. He was doing a last-minute run one night. The guy he was supposed to go with fell out, got really sick or something. So he asked me to come along. Said it would be real simple, just a drop off and that was it. He just wanted me along for the extra protection. I mean, even if I wasn’t in the gang, I still carried a piece on me, so I could give him some backup.”

  “You expect me to believe he couldn’t get anybody else to go with him?”

  “Man, at that point I was just happy to tag along. I mean, even though Gloria made me swear to never join the club, that didn’t mean I didn’t want to be a member. From the outside it looked like a pretty sweet life.”

  “Dangerous, though.”

  “Well, yeah. But right then, it was just me and Gloria. Had we had Anthony then, maybe I wouldn’t have gone along.”

  “But you did.”r />
  “That’s right, I did. I went with Adam to the drop. We didn’t even make it the whole way there. On the way, a cop tried to pull us over. We both were carrying meth. We took off, went different directions. The cop ended up following me. Chased me for a couple long miles until I ended up in a dead end.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “They busted me for possession with intent to distribute. As you can imagine, that didn’t go down too well. The club had a lawyer and everything, but seeing as I wasn’t an actual member, they weren’t too quick to use him to help me out. I mean, the cops were sweating me to give them names. They knew I wasn’t a member, that I was just related to one. They wanted to break me to get to Adam and the rest of the club.”

  “But you didn’t break.”

  “No, I didn’t. Trust me, the last thing I wanted to do was go to prison, but I wasn’t about to rat out my brother-in-law.”

  “What about your son?”

  “He wasn’t born yet. Gloria didn’t find out she was pregnant until I had already had my sentencing. The way we figured it, our boy had been conceived a night or two before I went on that drop with Adam.”

  “So what happened inside?”

  “There was a rival gang. They knew who I was and what I was in for. They tried to come for me. I managed to fight some of them off, but not all. It happened way too soon once I got inside. The club hadn’t been able to get me protection yet.”

  “And?”

  “And the rival gang, they were mostly black. When they came at me, I ended up killing one of them in self-defense. It caught the attention of the AB. They were impressed. I was too scared then to really think straight, so when they approached me, I just went with the flow.”

  “How long were you inside?”

  “Too goddamn long.”

  “Did you have any other issues?”

  “Not while I was still with the Brotherhood.”

  “And then once you got released?”

  “I packed up Gloria and Anthony and got the fuck out of there. We moved three states away. Adam and the club said they were really sorry, that they wanted to make it up to me, and maybe they did, but I wasn’t about to trust them anymore. I didn’t want them raising my son anymore than they already had. So we moved and I tried getting another job as a mechanic, but as you can probably guess it was tough with my record. I did come across one place, but they were associated with the AB. It was the last place I wanted to work, but money was getting tight and I was getting desperate, so I stopped by. They hired me right on the spot. Then five years later ... well, I woke up and my family was gone.”