Splicer (A Thriller)

by Theo Cage

  CHAPTER 55

  Jayne was quick in court. Now Rusty knew she was even quicker in bed. The need to wash away the lingering anxiety and fear of the past days drove them both into a kind of frenzy that surprised him. She was hungry. She made his skin red and his backside prickle with her heat. He dove into her with abandon, lingering as long as he could. When he finally climaxed, she took control, turning him over and applying herself in earnest to an encore. She screamed, uninhibited, throwing her shoulders back above him. He arched his back till his muscles cried out and bit into her arm when he came again.

  As he rolled into a ball, under the covers, she leapt off the bed. She returned moments later with a jar of pickles. She crawled in beside him and unscrewed the top.

  "I'm afraid to ask what you have in mind," he said, only his face exposed, looking at the jar. She was sitting up, naked. Rusty was taken with her casualness over their nudity, so soon. She pulled out a large pickle and summarily bit off the end. He grimaced reflexively.

  "Don't worry," she smiled, "with these, I hardly need you."

  He pulled himself up to a sitting position. "Give me one of those."

  She turned, bent down and licked his chest, which still tasted vaguely of lime. She handed him the jar.

  "I don't think the first word that popped into my head when I first met you was sensual."

  "You just figured that out now?" she said, looking surprised. As if to punctuate her statement, she popped the pickle into her mouth and sucked the juice out of it.

  "Stop that. It must be illegal."

  She laughed. "Well, if it is, you're an accomplice."

  "Most people smoke after sex or eat ice cream, don't they?"

  "I thought you didn't smoke," she said.

  He shook his head. She turned to him. "There's something about pickle juice that I find so sexy. I don't know what it is. Some childhood puberty memory or something." She bit off another piece. "And it's obviously Freudian. Which is a lot of crap, by the way."

  "Ooooh," he sang, his mouth full. "An anti-Freudian. Always wanted to have one of those."

  "You just did," she whispered.

  "Any connection here between this strange urge for pickles and that copy of the Satanic Bible I found on your shelf?"

  She squeezed another pickle out of the jar. "I leave that there for nosey guests."

  "Have you read it?"

  "Of course I have," she said. They ate in silence for a few moments. Rusty placed an arm on her thigh, which caused her to move closer. Finally she said "Fine. I know it's killing you to know. I had a case a couple of years ago involving this family charged with child abuse. They claimed they were Satanists. I bought the book as part of my research."

  "And ...?"

  "All that Satanist nonsense you read about in the papers? Sacrifices and ritual killings? It's all crap. Designed to divert the jury's attention away from how sick these people really are. Some lawyer invented the defense years ago and it keeps being dredged up. These people were just demented. Plain and simple. They used the Satanic label to somehow justify their acts. If you ask me, you can't justify that kind of thing. In any way. Satan or not."

  "Did you get them off?" asked Rusty. The question brought a little chill into the room.

  "I protected their rights." She dropped the last part of the pickle into the brine with a splash. Small drops of pickle juice dotted her chest. He moved to lick one of them off, then stopped. He leaned back and propped his head on one of her pillows.

  "I want you again. Whenever you're ready, just let me know," he said.

  She dropped her head forward revealing the long slow curve of her back. "Sorry." she said.

  "I thought you'd be used to those kinds of questions by now."

  "The rhetorical ones?"

  "Listen, Jayne. I'm just a curious bystander to the whole legal process. It wasn't rhetorical. I really wanted to know."

  She seemed to hang there in the room, lifeless, unbreathing. He could smell her perfume. "I guess all those years of living with a criminal lawyer - a really good one - has put me on the defensive permanently."

  He dropped one eyebrow. "Who would that be?"

  "My father," she said, catching his look and smiling again.

  "Oh."

  "Good comeback."

  "I'm avoiding. It's what I do best. I thought the subject of your father might be a little too heavy right now. I'd love to hear about it, but it's up to you."

  "You're being especially accommodating. Are you always this nice to people?"

  "When I'm in bed with them."

  She rolled over to face him. "I don't mind talking about it. Here it is in a nutshell, my troubled philosopher. He was a strong, very tough, dedicated human being. He had this effect on people. He had so much self-confidence - so much energy. Almost everyone felt like they were less than him, in his presence. Do you know what I mean? Like there was no contest. He was the Alpha of the Alphas. Very intimidating, but also very comforting. So as the only girl growing up in his shadow, what do you do?"

  "Grow balls."

  "Which is what I did. But I still loved him like crazy. And because of that, when my mother disappeared, we all had a real tough time trying to understand what was going on. That he could do something like that. Because he was like a rock; a huge righteous rock. But there was so much damning evidence. The eyewitness reports. The blood on the seat of the car they found. We all hated him then."

  Rusty touched her hair. It was something he had always wanted to do. "How do you feel about it now?"

  She shook her head. "You don't understand. My father went to prison. We were sent off with an aunt and uncle. It was horrible." He held her. She laid still, her breath on his arm. "He died there. Never knowing."

  Rusty pulled her closer, aroused by her nearness and her heat but surprised by the affection for her that was growing in him like a hard knot in his chest. Then it struck him.

  "Never knowing what?" he asked quietly. She seemed to shiver. Her arms were suddenly covered in goose flesh.

  "That my mother wasn't dead."

  CHAPTER 56

  The morning broke with a thunder clap. And an instant headache.

  Rusty had drunk far more alcohol the night before than he had in years. He wasn’t doing well.

  Rain was pouring down the bedroom window, the room dark and filled with shadows he hadn’t noticed before. One of the shadows might be guilt - another shame. He kept seeing Shay’s face, something he should have seen the night before. Not because he was making love to another woman but because he had chosen that method to escape reality. Sex would change everything, right? But of course, nothing had changed.

  Rusty rolled over and saw the other side of the bed was empty. He put his hand on the sheets. The bed was still warm where Jayne had laid. He could hear sounds in the kitchen. What would Shay think? Why would she expect Rusty to act any different than he had a thousand times before. Avoid responsibilities - pretend a roaring train wasn’t speeding toward you at a hundred miles an hour. Some monster had killed his ex-wife, someone he had loved, and someone he had shared a life with. And what was he doing about it?

  He held his head in both hands. For the first time in days he felt like bawling like a baby - but the tears wouldn’t come. There was too much anger. Why couldn’t he get his life on track? What was the missing element that continually escaped him?

  He knew he needed to find Grieves before the cops did. Grieves had knowledge of the whole narrative tucked away in his deteriorating memory banks. Where was that asshole? He tried to think like him. Where would he go? What would he do? He had no friends or family to speak of.

  Rusty was pretty confident Grieves’ wife would call him the instant he showed up at her front door – he just didn’t believe that would happen. Could he put himself in the head of a madman? A guy who thought about coding and programming and computer languages every minute of his life?

  He jumped out of bed and threw on his underwear and raced
into the kitchen.

  Jayne was sitting at her small kitchen table, wrapped in a bathrobe, drinking tea. She looked worried. Probably wondering why she had ever invited Rusty to stay at her home in the first place.

  “I think I know how to find Grieves,” said Rusty.

  CHAPTER 57

  The Metro Power Users group, one of the cities biggest computer clubs, met on the first Wednesday of every month on campus at the University of Toronto. Members came by bus and rapid transit, or parked far to the north on the visitor’s parking lot, then negotiated a series of tunnels, stairs and junctures to make their way to Donner Hall.

  Donner Hell, as it was known to the students, was a newly constructed lecture hall boasting comfortable upholstered seating, a fresh air and heating system that worked, and surprisingly good acoustics. It also had the solid ambiance of a bank vault, buried as it was three stories underground, and thus the name. The room was dark and cavernous, only a dimly lit stage greeting Jayne as she entered from the double doors to the right of the podium. She was early. Two young men, one with a ponytail and ripped blue jeans, were maneuvering what looked like a jerry-rigged computer into place on a desk near the front. No more than a dozen people were seated in the first few rows playing with tablets or pointing animatedly towards the dais. Jayne poked her head in at first, surveying the audience, all of whom looked under the age of 20, all male. The nerd-look she had expected was nowhere in evidence.

  The idea to come here tonight was Rusty’s. His plan was simple - call five or six computer clubs. Give them a $100.00 for their membership list, tell them you want to mail out a product announcement. They eventually found Malcolm Grieves on one list. MTPUG. He used to be the treasurer for God's sake. One meeting a month. How could Grieves resist attending the meetings? It was the only family he had left.

  Jayne felt confident that she hadn't been followed. Rusty, driving her Lexus out of concern that his car would be recognized, took a number of detours, dodging suddenly down back alleys and once drove against the traffic again on a one-way street. There was rarely a vehicle in sight on some of the smaller side streets. At one point they stopped on a tree-shaded residential cul-de-sac; wartime homes row on row lined up off into the shadows. They waited quietly. No lights followed them down the street. When they arrived at the university they opted for the distant north-end parking lot, seeing faces everywhere in the shadows but none that materialized into a living, breathing, homicidal maniac. Yet.

  Rusty was beginning to feel that they needed another scare. He was finding it more difficult by the minute to stay vigilant and alert. The whole idea of being tracked by professional killers seemed more preposterous with each false alarm. If these faceless agents wanted the codes, would he be prepared to hand them over? Almost certainly. If Shay's life was the consequence, he would have handed them over without thinking. But he never got the chance to make that decision. Sitting there, waiting, he looked over at his nervous passenger. His lawyer. Now lover. She was impressive from both perspectives.

  "I want you to understand that everything you told me last night, stays with me," he said. She looked at him, uncertain. "Client attorney privilege," he added. Jayne still said nothing. It was bothering her. For years she had carried the burden alone. Knowing that her father died in prison for a crime he didn't commit - that her mother had run off to the States and had planned the whole incident to make it look like her father was a murderer. She learned later that her mother even smeared her own blood on the upholstery of the family sedan. Her need to escape from him, her fear of reprisal so great, that she traded freedom for never seeing her sons again. But she had risked it with her daughter. Every year they met secretly for a week, their only contact. To notify the authorities now would lead to extradition and the likely imprisonment of Jayne's only remaining parent. A terrible secret. Why had she told Rusty? Was it just time to let go? Or something else? He let it pass and pulled out into the street.

  :

  The pathways that led to the campus center were constructed of long round over-lit concrete tunnels. The buzz of the overhead fluorescents seemed to echo down the passageways like the background music from an early Ken Carpenter horror flick. Their voices and their footsteps were amplified horribly. As they turned through each bend in the passage, the tunnel behind them would cant out of view as if each section was designed with its own unique angle of deflection. Side tunnels jumped into view unpredictably, bearing cryptic signs that read OPT lab, McMann and Husbandry. Jayne expected at every turn to confront the twisted face of Malcolm Grieves, his skin painted the color of gangrene by the overhead lighting.

  Eventually they came to a turn marked by a dark blue plastic panel that indicated DONNER HALL with an arrow to the right.

  "Listen," said Rusty carefully. Jayne looked about, standing warily at the junction of four white tunnels. "If we were being followed, with this echo, we'd be hearing something. The place seems deserted. I think most of these hackers must come by bus because the parking lot was literally empty."

  Jayne nodded and leaned back against the glossy tunnel wall.

  "What are you going to do?" she asked, looking in the direction of Donner Hall.

  "I'll stay behind you, see if anyone looks suspicious." He was also going to be watching her. If you're going to be running for your life, you might as well do it with a beautiful young woman, he thought. "Just ignore me. Act like you've come alone. I'm not going into the Hall. I'll stay outside. If Grieves doesn't show up, then just leave."

  "And what if he does?" she asked quietly, her eyes wider than usual.

  "Talk to him? I don't know! Use your feminine wiles to lure him away?"

  "You think I have feminine wiles?" she asked distracted.

  "Some of the best I've seen," Rusty whispered.

  "Why are we whispering?" Jayne replied, smiling.

  "Because I think they can hear us downtown. This is like talking inside a giant megaphone?"

  "Let me see what I can do,” she said, turning to leave, then hesitating. She turned back to him and touched his arm lightly with her hand. "And be careful."

  :

  Rusty watched as Jayne clicked softly away on the shiny cement flooring. With her shoulders back, her head high and her long slender legs moving quickly down the hall, she looked like anything but a victim. But his senses told him there was some quality of frailty about her that his eyes couldn't detect, something bravely child-like in the way she forced herself erect and covered up her fear.

  Jayne climbed the aisle way to the rear of the lecture hall and sat near the middle of the row, her eyes constantly on the door. She opened her nylon jacket and put on a pair of dark rimmed glasses; the ones she wore in court to add seriousness to her appearance. She crossed her arms and sat back as the room slowly filled. After a moment a voice came from behind her.

  "I only came because I was impressed."

  Jayne felt the warm breath of Malcolm Grieves on her ear, but fought the urge to turn. She stiffened slightly, instantly angry with herself for reacting.

  "Impressed that you could find me this easily. In fact, I'm flattered that a woman of your obvious talents and wit would be even the slightest bit interested in my, let's call it, plight." He had moved closer, his lips only inches from her cheek. This was the first thing she noticed when she began practicing criminal law - the repeat offenders, the cocky auto thieves, the purse snatchers and muggers - they had virtually no regard for her personal space. They would press their noses right up against hers and scream obscenities. Spit dotting her face, she would reel against a breath full of alcohol, tobacco and hate. Their reactions no longer surprised her, only puzzled her.

  "You were followed," he added, moving away from her.

  "By whom?"

  "By whom?" he mimicked her. "How correct. You didn't see? Amateur. It was me."

  "Then of course you know I'm not alone," Jayne removed her glasses and turned.

  Grieves studied her bright emerald eyes and for a
moment was fixed by them, impaled, like those moths in museum cases marked with tiny labels covered in achingly precise handwriting. He turned from them finally and slouched over the back of the next chair, his arms folded.

  "Brought your boyfriend? Little excitement for the middle of the week? They call it hump day don't they?" Jayne turned from him and replaced the glasses.

  "Well? You going to throw a net over me? Cuff me?"

  "Grieves, you need to testify." He almost laughed, his eyes on the front door, people straggling in.

  "Look at those morons," he chuckled. "Go to school, work hard, get a degree, find a job if you can. And the only place that's hiring is Doomed 'R'Us Incorporated. Jerk yourself off with your computer at night. Commit a felony, meet a sexy attorney and make babies who can do the same damn thing all over again."

  "If you don't testify, nothing will change. It will be just like the last trial."

  "You mean a farce?"

  "Exactly."

  "And when did you see the light?"

  "I knew Ludd was lying. Hell, the prosecutor knew he was lying. But why stop him, he was lying on his side."

  Grieves thought about that for a moment. "And how will it be different this time?"

  "The media. This trial will get coverage - it's going to be a big event. You can tell your story."

  "How I spent my summer vacation by little Malcolm Grieves?"

  "Tell whatever you want. You testify, they'll listen."

  "And Redfield?"

  Jayne stopped to collect herself. She would only have one chance to build some kind of trust with Grieves. She needed to say the right things. "I doubt that Redfield did it." Grieves raised an eyebrow. “But that's irrelevant. It's my job to protect his rights and keep him out of jail. Without you though, the real culprits, the real story, won't get told."

  "I can't believe this. The real story? You sound like the lead-in to a TV mini-series."