by David Beers
She couldn't find her own soul.
"You'll have to decide if you want to try to build another one, or if you're fine living here like this. If we let you walk out today, you'd be dead tonight, and that's something we can't do, Linda. It's up to you how you want to continue living, in here or out there."
It took a long time to figure that out. Entire notebooks filled up with her journaling. Words screamed into pillows for hours at a time until her throat burned and her was voice missing. When they okay'd her to leave, Martin was waiting outside.
"I ain't goin' back in there," he said, smiling.
It took three years. Three years of living in another world, a world of feelings that felt like an alien species coming down to enslave her rather than something that her mind should have processed naturally. Three years of meetings and tears. Three years that weren't simply missing from her life, but had effectively ended it. She was born again when she left the institution.
In Linda's previous life, she wouldn't have been able to even look at Matthew Brand. She would have cowered in fear and begged him to not hurt her if he showed up to claim her. She didn't know why the man in Florida, Joseph Welch had wanted to see Brand, but regardless of his reasons, she felt the same.
The police didn't want Linda to have that chance. They wanted him to show but only so they could apprehend him. Linda wanted him apprehended too, but she wanted just a small chance to speak with him first. Because she was still angry, at him, at Garret, at herself (although she didn't think she hated herself any longer). Jeffrey Dillan wrote a book that explained a side of her husband she never understood and a side of this killer she thought impossible. So she wanted to talk to him, and tell him that she might understand why he was doing this, but that he would never have her. That she didn't allow anyone to walk over her anymore; Linda fought too hard during those three years to cower now because a hardship reared up from the darkness of her past.
That's what she wanted to tell him. The same thing she wanted to tell Garret when she was dead and at the white, shining gates of God's Kingdom.
You can't control me.
* * *
Allison watched Linda Lucent walk down the steps and to her car.
"She just keeps going to work every day as if nothing was out of the ordinary. When she arrives, we have someone follow her up the elevator and sit on the floor with her. Not directly in sight, but near the elevators."
"No one near the stairs on the other side of her floor?"
"No. Normally the other person remains in the car in case he needs to pursue."
"Put someone on the stairs leading to her office. Go ahead and call it in now, I'd like them there when we arrive."
Allison waited while the cop in the front seat did as she asked. This woman was like a tank, just going to bulldoze her way to hell's gate if she wasn't careful. Allison admired it, but thought it probably—in the end—the dumbest trait one could have. Complete belief in what she did, regardless of who told her differently. If Allison wasn't here, this woman would be dead in a day, and Linda Lucent would never, ever think about thanking her for that service.
Lucent's car started and pulled from the driveway, so Allison's—with two police in the front seats—followed.
"You've seen nothing else?" She asked for the third time.
"Nothing. The house is silent twenty-four hours a day. No one in besides her, no one out besides her. The guys in the back report the same."
"They're hidden, right?"
"Yeah. Using that fancy new digital camouflage."
Everything was pretty tight. Unless she put a cop in Lucent's car, there wasn't much else she could do to protect the woman. Now, she needed Brand to show up. To make his grand appearance trying to outsmart the F.B.I., Allison, and almost every piece of law enforcement the country possessed. She thought Dillan would turn out right. Brand wouldn't be able to resist. There was something in him that wanted to be known. Since a child, he'd been told he was the greatest thing to ever grace Earth, that no one could stop him if he wanted something. Told at eighteen he was a disappointment because he hadn't changed the world yet. So this? Fooling a group of cops? It would be too simple.
"You're sure she's going to work?"
"Unless she's changing her routine from the rest of the week, yeah. This is the way she goes and the time she goes at."
Allison looked around at the small roads of Durham. Stoplights and stop signs and gas stations advertising the two for one special on two-liter cokes.
"What if a car hits us?" She asked.
"Excuse me?" The cop in the passenger seat asked. She couldn't remember his name, would have to look at the tag on his shirt when they got out of the car. They’d explained he was only on this beat for the day, the normal cop on his day off.
"What if a car were to hit us right now? Just plow into our side? Who would follow Lucent then?"
"No one," Manning said from the driver's seat.
"That's got to change as well. We'll need two cars on her. One like us, up close, and one coming from much further behind. If Brand got some idea out of a movie and decided to just take us out with an armored truck, there wouldn't be anything stopping him from pulling away and going after her next. Can you have a car arranged for the ride home this afternoon?"
"We should be able to."
"You ever have a ride along with an agent before, Overton?"
That was his name. Overton. Fred Overton.
"No, my first one," he answered.
"They like to tell us what to do," Manning said, glancing in the rear view to smile as he said it. Allison smiled back for a second before her eyes found Lucent's car in front of them again.
* * *
Matthew knew two things were true about cops. They were all the same when they wore the badge and they were all human beings, as different from the half that wore the badge as ants from elephants, when the badge came off. When they wore it, the world looked like one large felony, ready to be arrested or gunned down if the moment arose. When the badge sat on their nightstand, they had financial fears and cared about who won the Super Bowl just like the rest of the country. When the badge was off, they were normal citizens.
The thing that occurred to Matthew on his ride to Durham, was that if the cops were busy watching everyone else, who was busy watching the cops? The answer was obvious. No one. No one would ever watch the cops because Matthew wasn't after cops anymore. He was after the cops' families. The cops were the protectors, the ones that no one needed to worry about. The realization, albeit juvenile and something he should have seen long before, made Matthew understand how this all would happen. It was a get out of jail free card that would only work one time. Afterwards, that game was over.
Also, there weren't a lot of other options.
Linda Lucent, for all practical purposes, was as locked down as the people hidden in hotel rooms waiting for this to end. Twenty-four hour surveillance, multiple people on her at all times in multiple places. There was no back door entry to this house; that had been a one-and-done too. Linda was poor bait to anyone that possessed even a brain stem, because the risk of capture was too high. Impossibly high. Matthew couldn't stop seeing the reward though, even as he followed her to work and followed her home, watching the police and detecting no discernible way to get around them. Their eyes were so transfixed on Lucent that they wouldn't miss a feather falling from the sky if that feather didn't belong, if a bird had not flown above them just seconds earlier. He was the only one watching the watchers though. Not even the F.B.I., this Allison Moore, had done anything to make sure they were safe. All eyes, maybe in the collective country, were watching what happened with Linda Lucent.
So at four in the morning, Matthew Brand walked up to the steps in front of Robert Horner's apartment. The sun still rested below the horizon and the entire complex was dark. Matthew stood there for a few minutes, looking at the door, deciding if this was the only way. He ran through calculations in his head, running plans
through formulas that ended in probabilities of success. Every one he found, everything he could see, ended in a lower chance than what he was about to attempt. He could see no way around it. Everything ended in disaster. Except this. This kept him out of prison, out of a gas chamber, and out of the realm of picking strangers on the street. To get where he needed to be, he had to start here, in front of this door. To get his son back, there was no other place in the world he could be.
He didn’t want to do this, didn’t really want to murder someone that wasn’t directly related to the web of Hilman’s death, but there were no other choices to make. For Hilman, unfortunate deaths had to happen. Even this one.
He pulled the two pieces of metal from his pocket and put them in the deadbolt. A few minutes later, he felt the near silent slide of the bolt working its way backward. He took the metal pieces to the knob, and listened as the door unlocked completely.
Matthew stepped inside, cool air rushing his face, masking the mugginess outside. He closed the door behind, hearing the barely audible click and nothing else in the apartment. Horner's work shift started in five hours. He would wake in three, go to the gym for a hard workout and then head back here to put on his blues and the badge that rested somewhere in this house. Matthew placed the two pieces of metal into his pocket and pulled out another—much different than the other two. This one a razor blade and not made for picking locks.
He crept through the apartment, passing the living room, the kitchen, and finally entering the hallway that led to the bedroom where Horner slept.
The man's only crime was his job. Which was to say, he had committed no offenses here. Matthew breathed silently in the dark hallway, seeing the open door before him. Time was short and growing shorter by each breath. Either do it or get out of this apartment.
Matthew walked down the hallway quickly, his feet sure and silent. No sounds from him or anything else, except the man breathing in his sleep.
Ten feet away.
Eight feet.
Five.
Three.
Then Matthew was there, standing over a man who would help bring his son back. In the end, nothing else mattered.
He brought the blade down across Robert Horner's throat, a deep incision that left no possibility of a flesh wound. He dragged it through the skin and connective tissues, going deep to slice the vocal chords too. Blood spurted up in long, warm streams, landing on Matthew's face, causing a stark contrast with his strained, pale skin. He didn't pull the blade out, but dug in deeper, cutting through all resistance. Robert's eyes blurted open, his mouth shrieking in pain that no one would hear because he could no longer speak. Instead, a gurgling noise came from his mouth, followed by the same dark flow of blood that ran from his neck.
Matthew pulled the blade out with a jerk, splattering blood against the wall behind him as his hand flung back.
A few more seconds of gurgling.
A few more pumps of blood as Robert's heart finally got the message that Robert was, indeed, dead.
Matthew looked down at his work, the first work he'd ever done not directly in his son's name, not directly in retribution for Hilman's murder. A life taken, one that wasn't at fault. Different than the child because the child showed another man what real pain felt like. That child was the eventual progeny of a murderer. This man, he'd only been assigned the wrong case and happened to live alone. No one would look for him tonight. No one would look for him until Linda Lucent was missing, because people didn't look very hard for low level beat cops, and Robert would be forgotten about.
"I’m sorry," Matthew said, his hands at his sides. "I am. It was…necessary.”
If this brought Hilman back, if it brought him a step closer to talking to his son, then the world could burn around him. The entirety of the human race could fall if that was what was necessary. He brought the hand not holding the blade to his face and roughly smeared both the blood away. This was necessary. Even if he didn't want it, innocents might need die so that Hilman could live.
Matthew walked away from the body to the closet, opening the door and turning on the light as he walked in. He saw the beautiful blue of a policeman's uniform hanging in front of him. He undressed, showered, and after cleaning his razor, made some alterations to the wardrobe. When he finally dressed, he was undoubtedly a Durham police officer. He wasn't Robert Horner, but he was a cop.
Now, in the patrol car, the other cop was making a joke and Matthew laughed along with it.
"They like to tell us what to do."
A few seconds later, with everyone silent, the cop in the front seat said, "I'm just giving you a hard time, Agent Moore. We'll get the second car out here by this evening at the latest."
"No harm, no foul," she said from the back.
Matthew found this particular agent, this Allison Moore to be an interesting creature of sorts. He thought she must have made a good manager, if a poor detective. She saw the weaknesses around her, and fixed them without angering anyone.
"Do you think he's coming?" Matthew asked.
"He's too smart. He's not showing up here with all of us around," the cop next to him answered. "The problem is, as soon as we go back to our everyday lives, he'll strike then."
"I'm not sure," Moore said. "I think he will come. Soon, too."
"Well, he won't make it very far if he shows up here. I just hope we don't have to kill him before we cuff him."
Matthew rode along, watching the car in front of him, seeing the woman's head turn this way and that as she navigated to work. How many years had she been allowed to live while his boy rested in the dirt? Such a weak waste of humanity, and yet all these resources were being used to protect her, even now. He wanted to scream at the cop next to him, tell him to pull up next to her and Hilman be damned, he'd fire a few rounds into the car and be done with the heifer. He would then have to fire a few rounds into everyone in his car and somehow find his way out of downtown Durham drenched in blood.
Not now. Soon.
It was the sheer disgusting nature of the woman that made him feel so strongly about her death. Her unbelievable denial about her life, her husband, and everything in between. He could probably tell her he was the police and the bitch would climb in whatever car he told her and then ride with him all the way back to Florida.
She needed to die and the only pity was that Matthew couldn't let her until Hilman was born.
"That's a tough lady, isn't it?" The cop in the driver’s seat, Manning, asked.
"Tough lady might be right, but stubborn and stupid bitch might be better. You guys are only out here doing this because she refused to go into hiding. Otherwise, you'd have your normal beat and be home to whoever loves you each night. We've tried to turn her refusal into something that could be good for everyone involved."
"Why wouldn't she go into protective custody?" Matthew asked, not turning around. The beard he wore itched his face, but he kept his hands on his lap. He wasn't wearing any of the delicate disguises he'd been known for years ago, but sprayed on a heavy tan and a shaggy wig that covered up his ears, forehead, and eyes partially. The F.B.I. wasn’t studying the men in blue, they were the good guys. A cop works his four on and then takes his three off, no one looks when a new guy shows up.
"Said she wasn't leaving her house. Told me she would like to talk to Brand if she got the chance, so not to worry too much about her. She's old and angry is all I can tell. Hard to blame her with everything that's happened."
Matthew didn't say anything in response, and the rest of the ride to work was silent.
* * *
He watched her all day. At her office, in the lunchroom, followed behind as she went to the restroom. She walked with a different air than the woman he'd known a decade ago. His meeting with her had been short, an encounter she didn't even know existed, but he learned all he needed to know about Linda Lucent. This woman was different than the one he wanted to take though, or at least looked different in her gait, in her interactions with the people
around her.
Matthew took his place next to the elevator. People greeted him and went on with their day, a cop in the office having become a part of their life. No one felt nervous, no one having any idea that the creature they were all so scared of stared at them. Watched them. Judged them. To be fair, he didn't truly care about anyone else in the building, only the woman occupying the cubicle fifty feet from him. He could see the top of her head from where he sat, moving up and down in irregular patterns as she attended the work before her. Who was the woman he looked at now? Not the one he knew. Not the housewife that allowed her husband to become such a vile beast.
Or maybe Matthew was being tricked. Maybe the things Moore said in the car were deceptions to spread amongst the ranks of those involved. To make this woman seem stronger than she was in case Brand did show up.
He watched her the entire day, the hate in him not subsiding at all, but a growing realization that perhaps the woman he came here to meet might not be the same woman that actually lived here. That didn't change anything. She was still coming with him, and he actually looked forward to it a bit more because of this. He would find out which woman lived here. The one the F.B.I. agent described in the car or the one that had allowed the abomination of Garret Lucent to grow unchecked. He would find out, and in the end, it would be the same for her. He'd come too far, one man already lay dead in a great pool of drying blood, and Matthew wouldn't change his mind just because this woman might have changed hers.
