Brethren

by Shawn Ryan

  "Great," Jason said. "All I did was take a few days off to be with my father, who came to visit. Are you going to report on that?"

  "If he brings it up at a public meeting, I pretty much have to. But I told Quintard I'd already checked into it and gotten comments from both Captain Silverman and Detective Franklin. I said I didn't think there was anything wrong with a detective who was burning himself out on a case to take a few days off. I also told him I thought maybe he had a vendetta against you and Detective Franklin. It seemed to shake him up a bit, so maybe he won't bring it up."

  "Oil, hell bring it up all right. Anything to embarrass me," Jason said. "He doesn't care much for Badger or me. We don't kiss his flabby ass. And he'll figure he can bullshit his way out of any story that you write. All that, of course, is off the record."

  "Sure," Bradley said.

  "Did Quintard say anything more about my trip to the lake?" Jason probed, wanting to know if his father's work on Webster had succeeded.

  "Nope, just said he thought it strange that you'd go up there for some R and R when this case was so hot," Bradley said. "Like I said, I disagreed with him.

  "Well, I just thought I'd let you know what was going on."

  Bradley said. "I'll see you tonight. The show starts at seven."

  Jason hung up and rubbed his eyes. Things were just getting too damned complicated. One thing right after the other. This kind of stress was what made people end up on a water tower, picking off passersby with a high-powered rifle.

  "What's up?" Badger asked.

  "That was Bradley, the reporter whose pants I trashed the other week," Jason said. "He asked if we were going to be at the commission meeting tonight. I told him we'd be there."

  "Personally, I'm looking forward to making Quintard look like a raving shithead," Badger said. "I want a chance to be heard in public."

  "In that case, you'd better let me do the talking," Jason said. "You'll get too hotheaded and say something that'll sound bad on the evening news."

  "Hotheaded? I'm not fucking hotheaded," Badger said indignantly.

  "Oh yeah, like that time you called Quintard on the phone to ask him about the bracelet on the drug dealer. Or slinging your coffee cup into the wall when you got pissed off the other day. You're a real cool customer," Jason said. "You're liable to get up in this meeting and ask him to step outside so you can whip the shit out of him.

  "Look buddy," Jason continued, "I'm just saying let me take the heat on this one. I need you to keep an eye on things in case anything comes back about Benton."

  "Okay, I get your drift," Badger said. "I'll be a good boy. But motherfucker, I wish we'd hear something."

  They didn't for the next three hours and then it was time for Jason to leave for the commission meeting.

  "Okay, here's how we'll work this," Jason said. "You haul ass over to keep an eye on his house, see when he gets home. I'll head to the commission meeting. If you find out anything, you come running to the J and A building."

  After Badger left, Jason went into the rest room, combed his hair, and washed his face. He adjusted his tie and wished he had brought a sports jacket with him that day. It would've made a better impression.

  "Well, if Badger doesn't get back with good news, there's not much that's going to help," he told his reflection in the mirror. "No jacket in the world is going to make you look good. That's going to be up to you."

  Grabbing his Levi's jacket off the back of his chair, he headed for his car. He arrived at the and A Complex about quarter to seven. The parking lot was full, including a healthy array of TV news vans. He knew most of the vehicles were here for the upcoming circus, with him as head clown.

  Taking a deep breath, he opened one of the center's glass doors and walked in. Something was wrong with the door's spring-loaded hinges and, instead of quietly shooshing shut, it slammed with a thump. To Jason, it sounded ominously like the closing of a cell door.

  Chapter 29

  « ^ »

  Shaped like an amphitheater, the five-hundred-seat auditorium bulged at the seams. Each seat had someone in it and about two hundred people stood along the back or sat in the aisles. The air-conditioning system was straining to keep everyone cool while makeshift newspaper and magazine fans waved throughout the crowd.

  Fifteen minutes before the meeting got under way, commission assistants stood at the doors, turning people away. There was no more room. Many would-be spectators got angry and demanded to be let in anyway. Finally, police officers were called to keep the peace.

  A young man tried to prevent Jason from walking in, but relented with wide-eyed apologies when Jason gave his name.

  Holy shit, Jason thought, I feel like a steak about to be tossed on the grill. As he walked down the wide steps to the dais at the bottom, his eyes fell on the circular wooden table that builders used to spread their blueprints on so commissioners could see. To Jason, it looked like an Aztec sacrificial table. Where's the curved knife that's going to carve out my heart? he wondered.

  He nodded to four of the five commissioners sitting behind the curved, glossy wood podium. The fifth was Quintard and Jason gave him a brief, cold stare, then kept his eyes averted. Each of the otter commissioners nodded back and Jason detected no animosity in their faces. A couple, Pauline Carrington and chairman Bill McCracken, even smiled as if to say: Sorry about this.

  Quintard sat like a satiated tick on the far right-hand side of the podium. He wore a gray suit with a ridiculously loud tie that practically shouted: Look at me! Look at me!

  McCracken motioned for Jason to come closer.

  "Hello, Jazz," he said. He offered his hand and Jason shook it. A rumble rose from the crowd.

  "I don't think they like you fraternizing with the enemy," Jason said in a low voice.

  "To hell with it," McCracken said in a Southern drawl that disguised his Harvard law degree. "I think this is a steaming pile of Quintard's horseshit. I wouldn't even have allowed it on the agenda, but he pulled an end run by leaking the information that it was on there. He must've walked right to a phone booth and started calling TV and newspapers the minute he put it on the agenda. Anyway, by the time I'd heard about it, the whole county was buzzing. It would've caused more of a ruckus to remove it than to let it stand."

  McCracken smiled ruefully. "Sorry, Jazz, but sometimes politics make us do shitty things simply to save our asses. But I tell you what, I don't intend to let this get out of hand. Although, to be honest, I would like to pose a few questions myself and I think some of the other commissioners would, too. We're all as interested in this as the next guy. Still, you don't have to answer anything that will jeopardize the case."

  "Thanks, I don't intend to, but I appreciate your support."

  "We're saving you for last," McCracken said. "There are about five items ahead of you, so it'll take about thirty minutes to get through those. You can sit over there where the department beads usually sit."

  Jason looked at the two desks at each end of the podium.

  "Which side?" he said.

  "Whichever one you think will be the easiest to defend in case of a frontal attack," McCracken said, smiling.

  Taking his seat at the end of the podium, Jason gazed into the sea of faces. Some were hostile as hell—grim, angry faces looking for a scapegoat. It was difficult to direct hate at a faceless killer and they needed someone to blame. Jason was it.

  Other faces, though, simply looked interested. Many people came seeking information and answers. They weren't mad, just confused and curious. Terrible things were happening around their homes and to their children and they desperately wanted assurances that everything possible was being done, that it probably wouldn't happen to them. Jason couldn't blame them. He felt confused, too, and wanted someone to give him assurances and answers, too.

  Maybe Badger was getting some answers right now, he wished. He hoped so.

  It was a wide cross section of people who came tonight, he noticed. Everyone from businessmen in p
instriped suits to blue-collar workers still in their greasy work clothes. Farmers with overalls, CAT Diesel Power caps, and callused hands sat next to housewives with children on their knees.

  Murder knows no social or economic boundaries, Jason thought as he looked at the faces. It touches everyone and every—

  His heart stuck in his throat and he thought he heard himself gasp.

  Joseph Benton was in the audience.

  He sat about halfway up the middle section, staring into space with a blank expression, as if his body was in the room, but his brain was not.

  God, if that guy is the killer, he's got the largest balls on the planet, Jason thought.

  But there was something strange about Benton. His face twitched uncontrollably, first his right eyebrow, then his left cheek, then his lips, on and on. The movement never stopped, it just migrated from place to place. Brief glimpses of pain darted across Benton's face, as if he were being punched by tiny fists, and his skin was the color of sculptor's clay.

  Death must look better, Jason thought. Shit, he can't be the killer; he's too nervous.

  He'd have to be one cool operator to come here, supremely confident that he could keep his composure, Jason reasoned. What could he be thinking?

  Maybe you can get an idea, a voice inside said.

  His father had taught him rudimentary lessons for reading other people's emotions. He'd been pretty good at detecting what Stephen was feeling, but he could read his father's facial expressions about as well as he could read his hidden emotions, so it really wasn't an accurate litmus test.

  Can I do it here without giving myself away? Jason thought. One look at Benton and curiosity overcame nervousness.

  Dropping his eyes, Jason cleared his thoughts. The noise of the audience began to blur and fade into a voiceless drone. He washed his mind clean except for the picture of the sweating, twitching Joseph Benton.

  Jason felt part of his mind leaving his body, like an arm reaching out. A collage of emotions swept into Jason—fear, anger, confusion, hate, sadness—the emotions of the audience as a whole. It was too heavy, too much, and Jason felt as if he were drowning. The emotions sucked the life from him. He began to lose identity, his sense of self, becoming only a nameless part of the faceless whole. The thought terrified him and he yanked himself back, shutting out the fear, slamming the door.

  He sat silently for a moment, recovering. He must refocus, sharpen his mental eye, block out everything but Benton. He gave it another try.

  Concentration making his temples throb, he zeroed in on Benton. This time he found him easily.

  At first, Jason wasn't sure what he had latched onto. It was almost alien in its confusion, in the depth of its sickness. Its blackness was impossible to dispel, a feeling of utter doom and despair.

  This is Benton? Jason thought. The man's sicker than I thought.

  At the heart of the darkness, though, Jason detected a quiet core, an oasis in the middle of this stygian desert. But the core grew smaller each second, its brightness dimming, as though being swallowed by an inky night.

  Swimming through the blackness of Benton's soul, Jason moved closer. He reached out to make contact with it. Then he touched it.

  Help me. Oh God, help me please. The pitiful voice speared Jason's mind. Whoever you are. Get me out of here.

  Get me out of here or kill me.

  Jason thought he might throw up. The despair was a living thing, a drowning succubus that wanted to grab him and climb to freedom. Jason released his hold and scrambled backward in desperation. A wave of sheer hopelessness crashed into him as he fled and he heard one more, wretched Oh God help me before he was back in his own body.

  He shivered as reality enfolded him. With a shaking hand, he wiped the beads of cold sweat forming along his hairline.

  Dear God, the man is going through the tortures of the damned. It almost felt as if two people were in there, good fighting evil. And evil was winning. Is that the mind of a killer? How could he live like that?

  It was the same question Joseph Benton asked himself. How could he live feeling like this?

  He felt worse than sick; he felt diseased, as if he were covered in filth. He woke up every morning feeling unclean and even five showers a day didn't make him feel any better. Was this what insanity felt like?

  Sitting in the auditorium, he knew there was something wrong with his being here. He should leave, but he wanted to know what the police were doing on Amanda's case. What they were doing to find her killer. Her killer—the words made him retch slightly. He swallowed the vile liquid that filled his mouth.

  He hadn't slept much lately, usually waking to awful dreams with only nauseating remembrances of a hideous high-pitched cackle and blazing, incandescent eyes. Yet now some of the worst images came when he was awake. He'd be sitting at his desk, poring over some numbers, when horrible sounds would begin, terrible gagging noises as if someone were being strangled. Other times, he was swamped with the smell of blood, as if a tub of it had been dumped on him and couldn't be washed off.

  The worst ones, though, were the childrens' voices he kept hearing. He couldn't make out what they were saying, but the tone was pleading. Every time he heard those, whatever he'd eaten that day would fly back up. More than once he filled his office wastebasket.

  He was sleepwalking, too, something he'd never done in his life. He'd fall asleep in bed only to wake in the backyard, in the garage, or in the basement, even standing in front of the fireplace watching a roaring blaze. Those were the times he really couldn't understand. Although fall was approaching, it still was hot outside. Why would he start a fire? What was he burning? It wasn't wood. He didn't have any. And he never woke up before everything in the fireplace was devoured by flame.

  And that huge dent on the back of his car. Where did that come from? Can people drive their cars while sleepwalking? If he had, where had he gone? What had he done? That was the most frightening question of all.

  His wife had never questioned his strange behavior, because she was either knocked out by tranquilizers or too sloppy drunk to notice. And yesterday she'd moved in with her mother in Toccoa, so she wouldn't be around any longer. He expected the divorce papers to arrive any day.

  A rapping brought Benton out of his daydream. McCracken was calling the meeting to order.

  "I know why most of you people are here," McCracken said, "but we have a few other items of business to handle first."

  A groan arose from the seats.

  "Don't worry," McCracken said. "We'll get through them as quickly as we can."

  Approvals of the construction of a warehouse and a Baptist church and the granting of three new liquor licenses—which Quintard voted against—and the commission was finished with the busywork part of its agenda. It took thirty-five minutes. Sure went by quickly, Jason thought.

  The room started to buzz with anticipation and the arc lights of TV news gathering clicked on, bathing the room in artificial light. The rustle of paper could be heard as reporters readied their notebooks.

  Jason felt the nerves of his stomach start dancing. Badger still hadn't showed up. He was on his own.

  "Now we will address the next item on the agenda, the one I suspect all of you have come to hear," McCracken said. "But before we start, I have a few words for the audience.

  "I understand your concern over this matter," he said. "I'm concerned, too. I have three children of my own. However, this is not a public hearing and questions from the floor will not be allowed. Neither is it a kangaroo court and sentence will not be passed. This is an information gathering meeting, part of the commission's normal business, and we will treat it as such. If there are any outbursts, any attempts to disrupt these proceedings, the persons making the outburst will be escorted out. Detective Medlocke does not have to answer any questions that may jeopardize the investigation. Is that clear?"

  "What investigation?" a man in the audience cried. "They haven't done shit."

  "That's the kind of
disruption I'm talking about," McCracken said, his voice taking on an icy edge. "Officer," he said, pointing to the man who had yelled out, "please ask that gentleman to leave quietly."

  "You can't make me leave," the man said as the officer came toward him. "I have a right to be here."

  "Not when you trample on the orderly flow of this meeting," McCracken said. "Do that and you give up your right to be here. You just did."

  The man left, but not before directing a few obscenities at the podium.

  "Now, does that make my position clear?" McCracken said as the door closed on the man's swearing.

  Many in the crowd nodded.

  "Fine," McCracken said. "Now we will begin. Since I am chairman of the commission and I have the gavel"—he smiled mischievously—"I will start."

  Sonuvabitch McCracken, Quintard thought as he shifted in his chair to get a better view of Jason.

  Quintard knew it would be difficult to get the crowd involved, get them on his side, now that McCracken had thrown one person out. Obviously that was McCracken's intent. Nothing like a few cries of anger from the audience to turn the tables in his direction, Quintard knew. And he had developed a few questions to make that happen. Now he'd have to try another tack.

  And now the bastard is taking the first question. He's trying to take this out of my hands. Quintard vowed not to let that happen.

  "Detective Medlocke," McCracken said. "Can you fill us in on where the investigation into the child murders stands?"

  "At this moment, we are following a few leads from the last two incidents," Jason said.

  "What leads?" Quintard burst in, eliciting a scornful look from McCracken.

  "I'm not at liberty to discuss them. Doing so may jeopardize their usefulness."

  Jason decided to be civil to Quintard, at least at the outset. But he'd be damned if he'd let Quintard run roughshod over him. And he wasn't giving anything away with Benton sitting a few rows up.

  "Are you close to apprehending the killer?" Quintard asked.

  "Let me say this: In any murder investigation, you're always one small step away from catching the murderer. It only takes one misstep on the murderer's part."