Mr. Midnight

by Allan Leverone

  Milo was impressed. This girl was sharp, especially for someone who made a living selling her body to strangers. He almost wished he could get to know her better before killing her and dumping her body, but realistically, knew that would not happen. Impulse control had never been one of his strong points, especially where his unique hobbies were concerned. His enjoyment of Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker would proceed at its own pace, more or less regardless of his intentions.

  He had crossed roughly half the distance from the kitchen to her chair when another intense vision, similar to the one he had experienced earlier this morning, crashed into his head with a vengeance, walloping him like a baseball bat to the skull. He crumpled to his knees, this time managing to avoid smacking his forehead on the wooden chair. His surgical supplies—knives, bandages, more pliers, clamps—fell from his hands, scattering around him like snowflakes during the first winter storm.

  Milo’s eyelids blinked rapidly as he struggled to maintain consciousness, the vision pounding in his brain. In it were the same group of three people he had observed earlier, except now they stood clustered at a doorway, presumably the front door of the same house. The two younger people—probably a couple but it was impossible to say for sure—were outside the house standing on the landing, while the older woman, the one who had done most of the talking in the first vision, remained inside in the foyer, speaking to them through the screen door.

  And once again his attention was drawn to the younger woman like metal to a magnet. Now that she was standing, he could see her more clearly and, as he had thought earlier, she was breathtakingly beautiful. Milo Cain had a keen eye for the female form and even in this moment of pain and confusion, could not help but admire the young woman’s physical gifts.

  But despite her beauty, or perhaps partially because of it, he hated her. As with the first vision, the very sight of the woman caused an instant, visceral rage to well up inside him, a pulsing to begin behind his eyeballs, a feeling like his optic nerve was going to explode, which of course was ridiculous because he wasn’t really “seeing” her, at least not with his eyes. A bloodred shadow seemed to outline her form as she stood on the landing, a development new to this vision and one that did not extend to the other two people in it.

  Milo watched her and hated her. The animosity he felt toward this young woman he had never met was far beyond anything he had ever experienced. He wanted to reach through his brain, fasten his hands around her pretty neck, and choke her and slam her to the ground. Then he would kick her and stab her and slice her, do the sorts of things he had planned for Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker, only in the case of this unknown woman it would not be to achieve any kind of satisfaction, sexual or otherwise; it would be for one purpose only: to destroy her, to tear her apart and stomp on her and crush her delicate bones and watch her blood spurt and her flesh rip, to turn her into a rotting dead shell of a human being and then spit on the carcass.

  He watched closely—not that he had a choice—as the trio interacted. He forced himself to bring his roiling emotions under control, at least enough to pay attention to the conversation. It was as if he was standing on the stoop next to the young couple, inches away from them, but completely invisible to them. He was close enough that had he actually been there in a physical sense, he could have reached out and begun strangling the girl at whom all his hate was directed without even fully extending his arms.

  But of course he wasn’t there physically, so he watched and listened, drinking it all in, already having come to the conclusion he would not rest until he had hunted this girl down and snuffed the life out of her, and in the most painful manner possible. Somewhere in the back of Milo Cain’s racing mind—he kneeled unmoving on the filthy floor of his shabby hovel, eyes glazed over, tongue lolling, drool oozing from the side of his mouth, yet he had never felt so alert, so alive in his entire life—he wondered why this beautiful woman he had never met generated such incredible animosity inside him. But it was a detached curiosity, similar to how a scientist might wonder as he performed experiments on an animal how much pain he was causing: the question was there, but the answer didn’t really matter.

  Milo observed the conversation with rapt fascination. None of the people were happy, that much was clear immediately. A sense of despair enveloped the older woman like a cloak, like she had been living with whatever heartbreak was eating away at her for so long it was second nature, like she would not know how to get through her daily routine without it.

  The man seemed agitated. It appeared he wanted to protect the young woman from something that he knew was bothering her but had no clue how to do so.

  But the young woman was without a doubt the most miserable of the strange trio, and it seemed to Milo that he wouldn’t have needed any strange psychic ability to sense it. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying and her face was bloated and puffy and she seemed unable to stand still. Good, Milo thought. Serves you right, you stupid fucking little whore. Wait until I get ahold of you, then you’ll find out what it really means to cry.

  He tamped down on his once-again rising tide of anger and forced himself to pay attention. Whatever drama was playing out here seemed to be drawing to a close. The older woman was talking, albeit reluctantly. In a voice choked with emotion she said, “You see this number?” She pointed next to the door.

  “Of course, it’s the address of your home—7 Granite Circle.”

  “That’s right. Now please forget you ever saw it. Forget you were here and don’t ever come back. I don’t think I could handle it again.”

  The young woman looked like she had been kicked in the teeth by a mule and Milo felt a sense of vicious satisfaction spread through his body. Yes, he thought. Give it to her good, make her suffer! Get her ready for me!

  And then, as quickly as it had thundered into his head, the vision disappeared and the three people vanished. His eyes cleared and he found himself back in his ratty condemned tenement, crouched on the dirty floor three feet from the torture chair, Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker watching him closely, a mixture of fear and curiosity in her eyes. He wiped the drool off his cheek absently with the back of his hand, lost in thought.

  7 Granite Circle.

  Interesting.

  He had no idea in what city or town 7 Granite Circle might be located, but that minor point didn’t concern him. Milo Cain was nothing if not resourceful. He searched around on the floor until finding a scrap of thin cardboard, a packaging insert for the chocolate snack cakes that so often made up his dinner. Grease and stale chocolate cake crumbs crusted one side of the cardboard, but the other side seemed relatively dirt-free. He rose to his feet and wandered into the barren kitchen and rooted around in a drawer, eventually locating a pen. He jotted the address down on the clean side of the paper. It seemed important and he didn’t want to forget it.

  Then Milo returned to the living room and began gathering his surgical supplies off the floor, his interest in Rae Ann waning, his mind on other things.

  CHAPTER 23

  “What the heck was that all about?” Kevin shook his head in bewilderment inside the dirty yellow taxi as they braced for another thrill ride back to their hotel. “Is it just me or does it feel like we just spent the last two hours inside some bizarre LSD trip?”

  Cait was silent for a long time, her head turned away from Kevin as she watched the traffic roll by. Finally she said, “Do you think she really meant what she said about never coming back? Could it really be possible that I’ve finally found my mother after thirty years, only to lose her again forever?”

  “Try to look at it from her point of view for a minute,” Kevin said. “For the last three decades she has dealt with what was obviously a very traumatic event—giving her children up in an illegal adoption just hours after their birth—by pushing the painful memories away and locking them up in some rarely visited corner of her brain. When we showed up on her doorstep today, those feelings of guilt and loss came rushing back.”

 
“But still,” Cait persisted. “How can I simply forget my mother when it took so long just to find her?”

  “You can’t force yourself upon her, and if what she truly wants is to be left alone, you’re going to have to respect those wishes. But that might not necessarily be the case. Maybe what she needs right now is some time to absorb this new reality, where she suddenly has the potential for a relationship with her daughter. Maybe after a few weeks or months she’ll be able to open herself up to that reality.”

  The cab driver made a quick lane-change, accelerating past a slow-moving produce truck and then cutting the wheel sharply back to the right. The car crowded into the nearly nonexistent space inches in front of the truck’s bumper. The momentum pushed Cait against her seat belt. She unsnapped the buckle and slid over, leaning into Kevin’s bulky body. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

  “And that’s another thing,” she continued as the cab rocked on its springs. “I have a brother! Not just a brother, but a twin brother! How am I going to go about finding him?”

  “Well,” Kevin answered. “We can go back to Arlen Hirschberg in Tampa. He’s a little pricey, but he was able to locate your birth mother quickly and without too much trouble. He can probably do the same thing for your brother. The problem is…”

  “I know,” Cait said. “Bad things will happen if the two of us get together. Are you really buying that mumbo-jumbo? Does it make any sense to you?”

  “It’s more than just a question of ‘bad things happening,’” Kevin said firmly. “You heard your mother. Bad things will happen to you. Really bad things, like you getting killed.”

  Cait waved her hand as if shooing away a pesky mosquito and Kevin said, “No, no, you’re not allowed to disregard what she said just because you don’t like it or it’s inconvenient for you. You know me, I’m naturally skeptical. Suspicious, even. All cops are. But this woman knew, before you ever brought it up, about your Flickers. She described them perfectly, even admitting to possessing exactly the same ability.

  “That being the case,” he continued, “I think we have to give credence to what she said about how much danger you would be in if you found your brother. We may not understand what’s going on yet, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore your mother’s concerns.”

  “But none of it makes any sense. Why would twins, each of whom have inherited the same unusual genetic ability, be somehow incompatible based solely upon their geographic proximity to each other?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Kevin answered, exasperated. “I just found out about all of this, too! But there is so much we don’t understand—so much that no one seems to understand—about these Flickers, that I think you should assume, until proven otherwise, that what your mother said is true. Maybe it’s like blood transfusions, somehow.”

  “What? You’ve lost me.”

  “Yeah, you know, blood transfusions,” Kevin said excitedly, becoming more animated as he warmed to the subject. “You know how, if you receive a blood transfusion from someone who is not the same blood type, your body will reject the blood? Maybe it’s something like that.”

  “But we’re twins,” Cait replied. “Twins share the same blood type, don’t they? That scenario would be impossible with my brother and me.”

  Kevin shook his head. “I’m not trying to suggest this Flicker thing is exactly the same as rejected blood transfusions. I’m just saying that there are plenty of scenarios where two seemingly compatible people are found to be medically incompatible, for reasons that may not be readily apparent. Organ transplants would be another example. Sometimes the human body rejects a donated organ for reasons the experts don’t even understand.

  “Let’s face it,” he continued. “As far as we know, nobody outside your own bloodline even knows these Flickers exist, so it’s not like they’ve been the subject of any scientific research. We have no idea what sorts of personality traits might be associated with them. Until we learn otherwise, I think we have to treat everything Virginia Ayers just told you as being true, if for no other reason than the risk of assuming otherwise is so extreme. I don’t want to see you put in danger.”

  “There’s still no proof,” Cait mumbled stubbornly. “Where’s the proof? How can I just take her word for it?”

  “Where’s the proof?” Kevin asked incredulously. “Did you really just say that? Her story is the proof. The proof is in the fact that this woman turned her life upside down and destroyed her marriage—Christ, her husband was so devastated he ended up killing himself—to protect her newborn children. The proof is in the hundreds of years of family history she related. That’s all the proof I need, and it damn well should be all the proof you need, as well.”

  “But still…”

  “There is no ‘but still.’ You can’t pick and choose what you want to believe, especially when it’s so important. If you accept that Flickers are real—and you know they are—and if you accept that your birth mother has the same ability—and you know now that she does—then you have to accept what she said about your twin brother also, at least until you see proof otherwise.

  “But,” he continued, holding his hand up to stop her from interrupting. “When we get back to Tampa, we can sit down and do an Internet search on your family history. If what Virginia told you is true, there should be plenty of archival evidence, in the form of newspaper reports and the like, of the murders to back up her story. Don’t you agree?”

  “Probably,” Cait admitted grudgingly.

  “Not probably, definitely. So let’s make a deal.” The taxi turned a corner and pulled to a stop in front of their hotel. “If we find out through these online searches that there is a history of twin deaths in your family, then you forget you ever learned of the existence of your twin brother. If it turns out the whole thing is some bizarre tale concocted by your long-lost mother because she’s just loony, I will help you do everything possible to locate your brother. That seems reasonable, don’t you think?”

  Cait sighed deeply and opened her door. “I suppose.”

  “Hey, look on the bright side,” Kevin said with a smile.

  “There’s a bright side?”

  “Of course. We’ve been so wrapped up in trying to figure out what the hell went on at your mother’s house that you didn’t even notice we almost got killed six or seven times on the ride back here. That’s something, right?”

  The cab driver fixed Kevin with a stare, but his scowl turned to a tight-lipped smile when he received his tip. Apparently in Boston insults were forgivable if the price was right. Kevin slammed the door and the taxi pulled out into the heavy traffic almost immediately, serenaded by a chorus of angry horns.

  Cait watched the car pull away, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, lost in her thoughts. Kevin took her gently by the elbow and led her inside.

  CHAPTER 24

  Milo squinted at the computer keyboard, typing carefully into the search engine, anxious to see the results for his entry: “Granite Circle, Massachusetts.” He had jotted down the address to be sure he didn’t forget it, but it was burned into his mind like it had been put there with a branding iron. He was determined to find the fucking little bitch from his strange vision and teach her a much-needed lesson.

  Milo knew there was no logical reason for the burning hatred he felt every time he thought about the pretty young woman roughly his own age. As far as he knew, she had never done a thing to him and, in fact, they had never met. He was certain of that. The only two times he had ever seen her were inside his own head.

  But he could not help how he felt, and he was determined to place everything else in his life—including his current project, Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker—on the back burner until he could settle this mysterious score with the beautiful unknown woman.

  To that end he sat in a utilitarian plastic chair in the Boston Public Library, perched in front of a gigantic desktop computer that had probably been brand-new sometime around the turn of the century, checking search en
gine results for “Granite Circle, Massachusetts.” Milo couldn’t afford a computer of his own, and in any event, had no need for one. The World Wide Web was of little interest to a man who spent the majority of his time in the shadows, moving from dark alley to dark alley, living his life outside the realm of so-called “normal” society.

  Milo felt uncomfortably exposed in the library. The lighting seemed harsh and unnaturally bright, causing the shadows cast by his body to stretch away at odd angles, their edges knife-blade-sharp on the chocolate brown of the worn carpet. The soft murmur of muted voices should have been soothing and reassuring, but instead seemed fraught with danger, as if at any moment someone would leap from between rows of hardcover volumes and point accusingly, shouting, “That’s him! That’s the man who mutilated and murdered my wife/girlfriend/daughter/top-earning prostitute!”

  But this was the only way to accomplish what needed to be done, short of traveling through the state checking telephone books to see if any of the towns in their coverage areas contained a street named Granite Circle, so it was the library or nothing.

  He looked around nervously. No one was paying any attention to him. He relaxed slightly and ran the second vision through his mind again, concentrating with particular emphasis on the young woman’s recitation of the address. “7 Granite Circle.” He had replayed it a hundred times in his head, each time willing the stupid bitch to recite the name of the town or city as well, each time infuriated when she did not. She was fucking worthless, and this was just more proof of that fact.

  The search results popped onto the monitor’s screen after a length of time so absurdly short it seemed impossible the damned computer could have done its job. In just .22 seconds, less than a quarter of a second, Google claimed to have examined its entire database and returned over six million results. Ridiculous.