Evil Like Me

by Steve Bradshaw

  He moved down the hall in inches. Someone could jump and shoot any time. Probably should have tied you guys up. Probably not still unconscious, although I did beat the hell out of ya. He backed into a vacant room. If you’re up and about, you would scatter, increase options. Or you could have left. Nurse Sims took too much time … and my damn head’s killing me. Yeah. Good chance you idiots left by now. I can’t be worth that much to ya.

  He backed into the next empty room, checked it, and eased on to the next. Guess Wilcox and Petty get back from Oklahoma tonight. He leaned out. A groan rolled from the other end. Shit. Maybe I hit ’em harder than I thought.

  He slid out the room and moved to another set of rooms down the empty hall. Each time he checked for patients and his pursuers before moving on.

  He counted seven sedated patients. Everyone’s out like a light. Damn good meds, he thought as he chuckled and shook the metopryl fog from his head. Then he thought about Angelina. Baily backed into the next room and caught movement across the way.

  The blunt force to the back of his head shot pain down his spine. His knees buckled, and he fell like a tree. Baily’s borrowed gun broke from his grip on the cold linoleum and slid across the floor to a bloody hand and sinister smile.

  Thirty-Three

  “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

  Edmund Burke

  *

  Bald Knob, Arkansas

  *

  “They may screw with my car. Let’s see if they can screw with my gun.” Wilcox jumped out and shot at the bouncing lights. After three, both were out and red taillights spun to a stop.

  Burnt gunpowder choked the air. Keller yelled from the backseat, “Focus off your ignition.”

  Petty slid over and turned the key—it started. “Tony, go around. I’m driving.” The spinning tires fishtailed. A cloud filled the campsite. Wilcox felt for the trunk and ran his hand up the side. He found the door and leaped inside as they dropped down a slope into a dark abyss. Pushed against the seat, he reached for the door. It grazed a tree and slammed closed. The car leveled and shot into the air taking the tops off saplings as they descended like a piper cub with no engines. The landing was hard, but the battered cruiser whined forward cutting a swath in the tall grass between the fat trees.

  “Thanks for waiting,” juggled out of Wilcox as he searched for his belt after slamming into the ceiling twice.

  “If we’re lucky, I’ll find a road out of here before we run off another cliff.”

  “Keller, tell me about these people,” Wilcox said. “Who the hell are they? What do they want? Why the hell are they chasing us?”

  “I can’t see everything?”

  “Shit. And I guess you don’t know anything about the damn ignition either.”

  “Some psychics can interfere with electrical circuits. It’s not difficult.”

  “You mean telekinetic bullshit, like bending spoons and levitation?”

  “Not levitation. That is very difficult. Interfering with circuits and bending spoons is easy.”

  “You’re killin’ me, Keller.” Wilcox attempted to light a cigarette as he bounced around the front seat. “That stuff was debunked a long time ago. Even Houdini exposed fakes.”

  “Psychics selling something are always fakes,” Keller said. “You don’t know real ones.”

  “So you admit most of this crap is pure trickery,” Wilcox puffed.

  Petty focused on the driving as she spoke. “By definition psychic means relating to or denoting faculties or phenomena inexplicable by natural laws, especially telepathy and clairvoyance. Hunter is not saying all psychics are fake, Tony.”

  “I hate photographic memories, too,” he grumbled lighting his cigarette.

  “Thousands claiming to be psychic were tested by the government,” Petty added. “Twenty-three were contracted. That should tell you something.”

  “There are not many of us. We don’t talk about what we see and can do. We hide to avoid persecution. It’s not as bad as when we were called witches, warlocks, and Satan worshipers.”

  “Are you saying psychics are looked down on?” Wilcox asked.

  “Yes, because people don’t understand. Not too long ago we were burned at the stake, drowned, imprisoned, and put into insane asylums. My parents tried to talk to me when I started having my experiences. I thought they didn’t understand. I saw bad things. I thought I was evil.”

  Petty snaked through the thick brush between small trees. With lights off she avoided the large shadows and hoped for no drop-offs. “Are you certain your parents were remote viewers, Hunter?” she asked.

  “Government files. Signed contracts. They joined Scanate in 1972. They left in 1978. Then it moved to Fort Meade and was named Gondola Wish. The military took over the program.”

  “Why’d your parents get involved in the first place?” Wilcox asked.

  “My mother believed something good would come of it. My father was recruited from the military. They met at Fort Meade. They were very powerful psychics.”

  “You have proof besides contracts that are easily forged?” Wilcox asked.

  “They buried stuff in a metal box, a cornfield south of the farmhouse in Stringtown. I have government psychotronic program manuals, one for each decade. They are classified manuals, not the fake stuff the CIA released in 1996.”

  “I see them getting the 1970s manuals. How’d they get a hold of the 1980s and 1990s?”

  “Remote viewers are close. They watched out for each other until they started to die.”

  “The end of the remote viewer underground railroad,” Wilcox muttered.

  “Because my parents were the most powerful in the program, they were tracked down and watched their entire lives,” Keller said. “When they learned I was not adopted, that I am their biological son, everything changed. They knew my powers would be substantial.”

  Light cut through the trees a half-mile back. “Our company’s back. Talk to me Keller. Tell us anything you have on these people. I need to consider options.”

  “I am limited. They have a psychic with them.”

  Petty navigated the winding course like Pac-Man surrounded. Lights popped over the ridge. “Fog lamps,” Wilcox yelled. “Try harder Keller. Give me something.”

  “They work for Major Cankor. Two are local, hired to find us in Bald Knob Park. One is Russian, the leader, they call him Bender.”

  “What do they want?” The lights got bigger.

  “As I told you before, they want to kill you and Dr. Petty. They know you are here. They know who you are. They know you are too close, know too much.”

  “Well I’ll be goddamned,” Wilcox muttered as he checked his gun one more time.

  “They want to take me. They will say they won’t hurt you. Do not believe them. They have no plans for you to leave this park. You present problems they do not want.”

  “What about this Cankor fellow, can you access his thoughts?” Wilcox asked not believing he was buying into the psychic mumbo-jumbo. The impossible struggle he had coming into the park was almost over after he witnessed the scrawny man in action.

  “I can access sometimes, but not often. Major Cankor is a psychopath.”

  “So what?” Wilcox asked.

  “A psychopath’s amygdala is often small and always dysfunctional,” Keller said.

  Petty cut sharp and flew by another fat trunk. The move forced the cruiser into a thick cluster of bushes. When they broke through the other side, they were airborne. Seconds later they crashed into a field. Petty cut the wheel sharp and spun a 360 to a dirt cloud stop. They sat in a grassy basin surrounded by trees. The lights behind were gone.

  “There’s an opening to the north,” she said. “It could be a river or a road.”

  “It is a gravel road,” Keller said.

  “You are still killin’ me, son. You’ve gotta speak up sooner. Go, Petty.” She accelerated and the car ran toward the only gap in the tree line a
hundred yards away.

  “It is part of my problem,” Keller whispered. “I don’t talk much. I’m a quiet person.”

  “Around me, speak up Keller. I do not read minds. Hell, I have trouble reading anything.” They bounced across the field, the trailing floods reappearing. “And why the amygdala, Petty?” Wilcox asked. “Why not some other part of the brain?”

  “Some theories are the amygdala was once our primary communication organ,” she said. “It is believed to be the home of ESP—sixty million years ago the method of interaction for animals and humans. Evolution happened. Humans developed other communication methods and most lost ESP. Many believe animals still use it. Instead of ESP, we call it instinct.”

  “Thanks, Doctor Science.” The lights shot into the field behind them. Wilcox raised his gun. “I’m gonna shoot out those goddamn fog lamps. Keep this baby level.”

  “Shoot now,” Keller yelled. “I’m sharing early.”

  Wilcox got one lamp with his first shot. Bouncing across the field and four shots later he got the second. Their car dove through the gap in the tree line. It flew over a wide creek bed and plowed to a stop on a gravel road.

  “Good drivin’, Petty. Now let’s get out of here. I only have one bullet left.”

  The crooked board nailed to a tree said Huntsman Road, but they missed it. Petty kept the lights off and held the battered cruiser between the dark ditches. Ten minutes later they came upon the spinning blues.

  “What do we have, Keller?” Wilcox asked.

  “I’m getting … not good.”

  The squad cars were parked nose-to-nose blocking the road. “Says ‘White County Sheriff’s Office’ on the doors.” Petty slowed. “Not good? Do I accelerate, or do we stop and talk?”

  “Push through,” Keller said. “I mean, I suggest we do not stop.”

  “No,” Wilcox said. “We’re gonna stop. We don’t need the county sheriff after us, too.”

  The two uniformed, white males stood by their doors with hands resting on their holstered guns. “Keller, get down on the floor under the blanket. Do not come out unless I call you,” Wilcox said with his head straight ahead. He reached over and touched Petty’s arm. “Let me do the talking please.”

  They stopped. The two sheriff deputies moved thirty feet off each fender. The older one did the talking. “Step out of the car, and show me your hands.”

  Petty and Wilcox got out. Wilcox held up his badge. “I’m Memphis homicide, Detective Tony Wilcox. With me is Dr. Victoria Petty, the Shelby County Medical Examiner. We are on official business. What is the problem?”

  “Anybody else in the car?” the sheriff asked.

  “I just told you, I’m a cop.” Something’s not right.

  The two pulled their guns and bent their knees.

  Thirty-Four

  “The most dangerous thing is illusion.”

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  *

  “I wouldn’t move if I were you, mister.” The sheriff cocked his gun.

  “We’re not moving. You can lower your weapons,” Wilcox said.

  “Been a killin’ in Henryetta. Okmulgee County Medical Examiner’s dead. There’s a three state search for you two, and a man named Hunter Keller.”

  “If that’s true, I’m sure it’s concern for our safety. We were in Henryetta investigating a possible connection to unsolved homicides in Memphis. We met Dr. Proust at the Middleton residence, and were attacked, a man they call Major Cankor. He claimed to be with the DIA—I doubt it. Cankor killed Dr. Proust and fled. We were threatened and left. Dr. Petty and I have been avoiding Major Cankor and his people all night. We stopped at Bald Knob for our own safety. When I return to Memphis, I will file my report. The homicides are connected.”

  “You got Hunter Keller with you?” the sheriff asked again.

  “Yeah,” Wilcox shot back. “He’s in my backseat hiding,” he said. “Did you hear one thing I just said? I am a Memphis homicide detective. Dr. Petty and I are not the bad guys, sheriff. We are on police business. We witnessed a killing and are now hunted. There are dangerous people in your county, in your park now.”

  “Just tell me where Hunter Keller is, Mr. Wilcox.” the sheriff ordered.

  “I’m a goddamn cop like you. Where is the professional courtesy? Okay. Look. Here’s how we’ll do this. You can look anywhere you want for this Keller guy. You can climb all over my car if that will make you happy. However, if you have something on me or Dr. Petty, charge us right now. If not, get the fuck out of our way or there’s gonna be trouble you do not want. I don’t know how good you think you are, but I’m way better.”

  On Wilcox’s last word the jeep flew past and skidded to a stop next to the squad cars. As the steaming cloud of dust settled, Wilcox saw the shattered headlights and pulverized fog lamps. Two meaty guys with shaggy hair jumped out with guns. They flanked the elder officers and smiled like imbeciles. The third—a tall, lanky albino with a bald head and snake beneath Russian flags tattoos on both arms—took the position between in the middle of the foursome.

  “These people leave fire burning,” he said in a thick, eastern bloc accent. His dark lips on his white face moved very little as he spoke with a caustic tone and destroyed the English language.

  “Dangerous thing these person to do in woodland. Bad behavior burn trees to ground and kill animal. Shame on you bad people. And you drive car reckless through park. You shoot gun in my direction. You hit car lights. You make difficult to see where go in woods.”

  The white Russian pulled a gun from his waist and let it hang at his side. Wilcox felt his gun stuffed in his belt pressing against his spine. With one bullet and facing five guns, Wilcox had to find the words to talk their way out. Hunter Keller was right. He never should have stopped.

  “You do something about this, yes Mr. Sheriff Johnson?” the albino said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bender. We can’t have dangerous behavior in Bald Knob, Mr. Wilcox.”

  “It’s Detective Wilcox.”

  “Give me your gun.”

  “It’s in my car with the Keller guy. No more bullets either. I ran out shooting assholes chasing me in the park.”

  “So, you admit to Mr. Bender’s claims.” The sheriff took a step closer. “You may not know it is illegal to shoot in the park. You asked for a reason. I have one—the unlawful discharge of a firearm in a public setting. I will need to arrest you Mr. Wilcox.” His smile said more.

  Wilcox backed one step. “Let’s cut the bullshit. You’re not cops. You can’t arrest a raccoon. I don’t know how you got your outfits and squad cars, but I hope you didn’t do something stupid.

  “And for the record, I know your scumbag friends work for Major Cankor. You’re probably a local boy looking for a big payoff. You best think it through. This is not your normal deal. Messing with a homicide detective and medical examiner will change your lives forever. I can promise you no one will stop until they get you old farts. You will die in the electric chair. Before you make a huge mistake, you best factor in we are not alone.”

  “You’re not alone?” Bender said with his gun pointing at the dirt.

  “Hey albino Gorbachev, I’m not talkin’ to you. Don’t know how you do things in the Soviet Fucking Union but here we have GPS and Wi-Fi. My people know exactly where I am. I’ve been talking to them ever since you showed up in my mirror you little prick.”

  “You talk to people?” Bender said looking around. “I see no people.”

  “You will. The Memphis police, FBI, and the real local cops are coming. Their chopper will be touchin’ down on this road soon. Damn amazing, all the modern technology makes it hard for idiots like you to get anything done.”

  “People know you here?” Bender asked.

  “Did I forget to mention the roads in-and-out of this park are shutting down? A perimeter is being set. None of you will get out. I suggest you put down your fucking weapons before …”

  Bender’s gun exploded. Wilcox dropped.


  “Do not move doctor lady. You next. Is very easy. You give Hunter Keller now.”

  Petty tried to see Tony on the other side of the car. “Please. Let me help him. I’ll cooperate.” The second explosion from Bender’s gun sent a bullet off the fender inches from Petty. She jumped and froze.

  “One warning for you doctor lady. You give Hunter Keller. We go. Then you fix big mouth detective man.”

  The lead sheriff deputy lowered his gun with doubt in his eyes. “Lady, just do what he says. None of this has to happen.”

  “But he’s not here,” she said.

  “Why you lie to me.” Bender walked to Wilcox.

  “I’m not,” Petty said. “You have the gun. You just shot a policeman.”

  “You lie to protect little man. You think I not serious. I need show serious?”

  “He was with us. He got out. He left back in the park,” Petty said.

  “You remember car no start, yes?” Bender said. “I make happen. I do that. I know he close. I know what you know. I now make you tell.”

  “But I …”

  “You tell Keller come now,” Bender ordered. “You tell little man no more game.”

  “If you are a psychic, you know Hunter Keller can see the future,” Petty said.

  “I know this, yes,” Bender said.

  “You know he saw the blockade. Saw you. He left us.”

  Bender knelt over Wilcox and pushed the barrel of the gun into his head. In the steaming headlights Petty saw the ruddy complexion and twisted smile and chards of glass embedded in his wounded face. He looked at her with one eye, the other swollen closed. She saw a cold blooded killer.

  “I shoot detective man first. I shoot you next. I find Keller alone.” His eye danced.

  “No! Wait.”

  “Tell him where Keller is,” the sheriff deputy said. Even he could not hide his disgust.

  “I’ll give you Keller”

  Bender cocked the gun.

  “Don’t shoot! Keller is here,” she said. “He is here.”

  “Put it down Bender,” the sheriff said. “Our orders are to get Hunter Keller.”

  Bender dropped his gun staring at the headlight.