But someone picked up.
“Kyle?”
“Yes,” Kyle said, recognizing Dana’s voice. “Where’s Eddie? Is he down there with you?”
“Eddie stayed up in New York with Celia,” she said. “They’ll be coming down tomorrow. Aren’t you coming with them? Is everything okay?”
“Have you spoken to him today?”
“About an hour ago, yes,” she said, her voice growing concerned. “Kyle, is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything’s fine.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“It’s nothing,” Kyle said, trying as best he could to sound calm and reassuring. “I just couldn’t get in touch with him and wanted to tell him a few things about the mediation today. That’s all. Just needed his advice.”
“Did you try his cell?”
“Yes,” Kyle said. “No answer. So I thought maybe he was with you.”
“He’s probably with a client,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll call you as soon as he’s done.”
“I’m sure,” Kyle said. “I’ll try his office again and leave a message with the receptionist.” They exchanged goodbyes and hung up. He looked over at Liam. “Did Eddie say why he was so interested in learning about energy transfers?”
Liam shrugged. “He just said he was curious.”
Kyle searched his memory for any similar interest Eddie had taken in their conversations. There wasn’t much, just the conversation about John of God. Maybe a few other small ones, but Eddie didn’t really have to show an interest because Kyle always told him everything anyway. Eddie was his sounding board.
“So tell me,” Kyle said, “who do you think is behind all of this if it’s not Hillier?”
“It is Hillier.”
“But how?” Kyle asked. “We saw him on the ferry when the last one happened.”
“That’s what I was trying to explain to you when I came to your office yesterday.”
“But how can it be Hillier if we know he didn’t kill the woman in Union Square?”
“Oh, he killed her. I’m sure of it.”
Kyle was confused. “But how? We were with him when she died.”
“It’s Hillier. There’s no doubt about it,” Liam said, then relaxed his brow. “But it’s not the man you’re thinking of.”
The wave of confusion crashed against a wall of suppositions as Kyle struggled to make sense of what the hell Liam was saying.
How could it be Hillier if it wasn’t the man he was thinking of?
But as the wave settled into a placid sprawl, the confusion was pulled back and Kyle suddenly knew who Liam was talking about.
He knew who the killer was.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Hillier watched as the man slightly shifted about in his chair.
“We’re going to change tactics here,” the man said. “I’m just going to get at what I’m really looking for. How about that?”
Hillier didn’t answer.
“Okay. Here’s what I know. I know you kill before each game.” The man paused. “Or, at least, they usually die.”
Hillier knew the last statement was a reference to the girl, the one in the coma.
“In any event,” the man continued. “I know your health improves miraculously after you do it. And I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the mind’s energy. Like an energy transfer. So let’s start out small. Am I right?”
Hillier eyed the man. “Why do you care?”
“Because I need to know how you do it.”
“Why?”
“It’s not to stop you, if that’s what’s worrying you,” he said. “I just want to know how you do what you do. If I wanted to stop you, I’d just use this.” The man raised the gun he was clutching.
He was right. Hillier knew that, and had already considered it. And he didn’t have many options. His energy was waning, his mind slipping. He didn’t have time. So he looked up and asked, “What do you want to know?”
The man’s eyes widened and he leaned forward with interest. “Just that. How do you do it?”
“I just do,” Hillier said. “I always could.”
“But how? Who taught you? Was it some kind of energy practitioner? Deeksha?”
“I’ve talked to a few practitioners to learn more about what I do, but no one taught me how to do it. It’s just something I’ve always been able to do.”
The man sighed. “So it’s just part of you? No one taught you and you can’t teach someone else how to do it?”
“Not to this level, no. And if you can,” Hillier shrugged, “I don’t know how.”
“Fuck,” the man said, standing up. “So it’s one of those things where either you have it or you don’t?”
“It is.”
The man was visibly frustrated, but composed himself quickly. “All right. Okay. But you can transfer it, right?”
Hillier remained silent again.
“You’ve been doing that, haven’t you? That’s the reason why he’s been lights out, isn’t it?”
Silence.
“Look, I know you can. Why else would you be timing the strokes to his starts? So I get it, okay? I know. I know you can transfer the energy you bring in over to someone else. Like those Deeksha guys, you can transfer the energy you receive. So let’s stop with the games and just confirm it. You can do that, right? You can transfer the energy.”
Hillier looked down, glossing over his limp body. “If I had the energy to spare?” he asked. “Yes, I can.”
The man’s eyes brightened. “And will it have the same effect on whoever you transfer it to as it has on you? Can it make someone healthy again?”
The answer wasn’t as cut and dry as the question assumed. Yes, there were some tangential affects to other parts of the body, but it didn’t necessarily make someone physically healthy again. Not unless it was an illness the mind could control. But he wasn’t about to go into details with the man. He’d just give him the answer he was looking for, so he said, “Yes, it will.”
“And it can even get someone paralyzed walking again?”
“Yes,” he lied.
“So what do you need?” the man asked.
“For what?”
“You know what. To get you healthy again and do a transfer.”
“You know what I need,” Hillier said.
“But who?”
“The person has to be a match.”
“What type of match? Like a certain blood type?”
“Frequency.”
“Frequency?”
Hiller nodded. “The brain emits energy. I work better with certain types, and not at all with others.”
“So that’s how you do it? You go out on the prowl and hunt for someone who’s a match?”
“Yes.”
“And how do you know? Do they have any specific markings?”
Hillier shook his head. “It’s a feel. I just know. There’s an attraction, and the stronger it is, the stronger the source.”
“Does it have to be someone young?”
“It does if you want me to have enough to get myself healthy and then still have enough to transfer energy to someone else.”
The man stood still, looking straight into Hillier’s glazed eyes. “And you have to kill them?”
“In this condition,” Hillier said, again looking down at his frail frame—limbs that trembled whenever he exerted the tiniest of tension, “I wouldn’t even draw enough to get myself healthy, let alone spare some for someone else if I didn’t take it all.”
The man’s expression seemed mixed with confusion, wondering if he should press on. But he did. “And if you do that,” he said. “If you find a match and take it all, you could transfer it to someone to make them healthy again? Make them walk again?”
“Yes,” he lied again.
The man nodded. And the more he nodded, the more he seemed to be absorbing what had been said and the more his expression changed—becoming more resolute, more convinced. He’d m
ade a decision. But he didn’t say what it was. He didn’t get a chance before they heard the doorbell ring above.
The man didn’t say anything, and neither did Hillier. The man simply walked away and went upstairs, leaving Hillier to wonder if he’d done enough. Wondered if the man was desperate enough to trust him.
He could only hope.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
As soon as Kyle had it figured out, he didn’t wait to ask the how’s and why’s. They had to move. He had less than an hour.
He grabbed Liam, rushed outside and hailed a taxi. He told the driver to head to Brooklyn—to Carroll Gardens. He then made a quick call and left a voicemail message saying where he was headed. He wasn’t certain that’s where they’d find Hillier, but it was a pretty good guess. And he didn’t think his chances of coming up with something better would increase with whatever else Liam could tell him, as Kyle had already figured out who the killer was. It wasn’t difficult once Liam insisted that the man’s name was Hillier, just not Evan Hillier. Not the Yankees’ ace. And since the killings were occurring before each of the pitcher’s starts, there still had to be some connection between the journeyman’s historical performance at home and that the hemorrhages were occurring like clockwork right before each home start. So it had to be a family member, but Hillier wasn’t married and had no children. So that left either his father or mother, or some random member outside the immediate family. Kyle went with the parents first, quickly crossing the mother off the list of possibilities. Besides the fact that her name wasn’t Hillier anymore—having remarried after divorcing Hillier’s father while Evan was still a toddler—the woman lived in New Mexico. He remembered that because the media made a big deal of how Hillier’s thirty-eight inning scoreless streak was snapped when his mother came to see him pitch in Arlington.
So that left Hillier’s biological father. Kyle didn’t know much about him other than remembering a few interviews he’d given, but he was pretty confident Liam had tracked the man down and pinned him as the primary suspect.
When they settled into the taxi, Kyle didn’t even bother asking if he was right. Instead, he jumped to the next plausible theory he assumed Liam had discovered. “You think he’s transferring the energy to his son?” he asked.
“He has to be,” Liam said.
As the taxi weaved around traffic Kyle asked, “So give me the specifics. What did you find out?”
“I came across some fan’s website devoted to Hillier and clicked on an interview his father gave over a month ago. It was a short sit-down before one of Hillier’s games. The interviewer probed into Hillier’s childhood, and how the dad hadn’t really been in his life.”
“I read the same thing,” Kyle said. “It was in one of the early articles when Hillier first started to string together a few stellar outings. The dad … what’s his name? Troy?”
“Terry.”
“Right,” Kyle remembered. “Terry. He and the mom were married right after high school. Shotgun wedding. They lasted about a year before they divorced. I think the article said he was still a part of Evan’s life, but it didn’t seem like a major one. I didn’t get the sense there was any animosity there, but I did get the feeling the dad wasn’t around too much.”
“Yup. And in the interview he was asked about that,” Liam explained. “About whether he saw the potential in Evan during Little League games and playing catch with him. You know, trying to set the scene like he was Robert Redford or Kevin Costner playing catch with the kid in the cornfields. And Terry had this weird pause when he was asked the question, visibly uncomfortable with the topic. It was clear. And then he curtly answered that he didn’t, that he wasn’t around much because Evan’s mom had moved the family to New Mexico and it was tough for him to get out there much because of his job. And then his eyes started to get watery, and he gave one of those sappy responses about coming to a point in your life where you feel the need to correct your wrongs, and he rambled a bit, like he was lost in the moment, forgetting he was being interviewed on television. Then regained his composure and became tight-lipped when pressed a little further about what he meant. All Terry would say was work made things difficult to be more involved with the kid.”
“Did he say what he did?” Kyle asked.
“He didn’t, and they moved on and for the rest of the interview it was all about Evan, how proud he is as a father, how his son’s perseverance should set an example to kids to never give up. Typical fluff piece.” Liam adjusted his glasses as he paused to soak in the moment and embrace the undivided attention. “So it got me thinking. What the hell did this guy do? So I Googled him up the whazoo, even had my cousin, who’s a lawyer, do a Lexis search on him, and paid to have a background search. I found out the guy owns a consulting firm and has homes in Manhattan, Aspen, Paris and Mexico. Immediately my antenna went up. So I got in touch with a few of the Crusaders and tossed it around with them and, sure enough, one of them found a link.”
Liam let the sentence linger some, waiting for the prompt Kyle eventually gave him. “What was it?”
“KnightWare.”
“He worked for them?”
“His consulting firm had a few contracts with them.”
“For what?”
“Consulting.”
“Obviously. But consulting for what?”
“It didn’t say. An activist group was able to get the government to do some B.S. investigation on KnightWare about ten years ago and Hillier’s company showed up on some tax records that were made public as having a few contracts with a KnightWare subsidiary for consulting services.”
“His website doesn’t say what type of services his company performs?”
“No website, no advertising, nothing.”
“Did you find out anything else?”
“About the company? No. But it’s so obvious. He has to be the guy my contact told me about, the KnightWare assassin. It makes perfect sense. Hillier probably set up the consulting firm so he could funnel in the money he receives from KnightWare and whoever else hires him without raising any eyebrows with the IRS about where he’s getting it from. Meanwhile, his consulting services actually consist of taking out people in a way that doesn’t even leave a suspicion of them having been murdered.”
“But who? Who is he murdering for money?”
Liam shrugged. “Who knows? Could be anyone. We would never get suspicious because the cause of death would have been a stroke. Could be a political activist about to find out some dirt, could be a rival CEO or political enemy someone wants out of the way, maybe even a spouse someone with the dough would rather want dead than pay through the nose in a divorce. Who the frig knows? People plot murders for any number of reasons. And if you have the money at your disposal, hiring a guy like Hillier is the cleanest way to do it. How can anyone ever prove it was a murder? It’s genius. It’s the perfect cover story.”
Kyle couldn’t dispute the theory, no matter how lacking it was in hard evidence.
“But it doesn’t matter about the specifics of who he’s killing and who he’s contracting with,” Liam continued. “I didn’t need to know that much detail. The larger pieces of the puzzle were in place. Terry Hillier was the one siphoning the energy, killing these people, and then transferring it to his son on game day—kind of like a really supped-up version of Deeksha. The KnightWare connection was more like the last bit of glue that brought it all together. He’s gotta be the guy in the story. He’s the assassin.”
“Did you ever follow him? Talk to anyone he knew?”
“Dang right I did,” Liam said. “I did surveillance for a few days, and the man I saw was not the man in the interview.”
Kyle didn’t understand.
“He looked older,” Liam explained, “frail, unsteady.”
“So you think he’s doing both?”
Liam nodded. “He’s soaking in the energy to get himself healthy, then he’s transferring it to his son on game day to give him the extra edge he needs. Helpi
ng him dial in with super-focus when pitching.”
“You think the kid knows?”
Liam shrugged. “Probably not, right? It didn’t seem that way on the ferry. If he did know, he probably would’ve given up the midnight superstitious ferry trips a while ago. He’d know it wasn’t superstition that’s mowing down those batters.”
Kyle turned and looked forward, absorbing the specifics, already having guessed at the generalities once he figured out whom Liam had been talking about. “You’re probably right. He probably isn’t even conscious of the transfer. If Terry can siphon someone’s energy without them even knowing about it until it’s too late, I’m sure he’s able to give his son a boost without him ever knowing what was happening.” He looked back at Liam. “And Eddie? You told him all of this? Everything you just told me?”
“Yes,” Liam said, then let his mind wander to a conclusion he hadn’t even fathomed a few minutes earlier. “You think it’s Eddie that has him? You think he did it to keep me from getting in trouble by doing it first?”
Kyle drew a deep breath. “No.”
A sheet of surprise enveloped Liam’s face. “You don’t think Eddie has him?”
“Oh,” Kyle said, “I’m sure he has him. It’s just got nothing to do with you.”
“You think he just wants to stop him from killing?”
“No.”
The taxi pulled up in front of Clinton Street as Kyle paid the driver and both men stepped out.
Liam looked up at the twin brick townhouses and their matching rounded ornate bay windows. “This is Eddie’s house?”
Kyle nodded.
“I don’t understand,” Liam said, following Kyle to the ground floor entrance, watching him stoically ring the doorbell. “What would Eddie want with Terry Hillier if he didn’t want to stop him?”
Kyle turned to Liam, an eerie sense of calm having erased his panicked urgency. “You ever meet Eddie’s daughter, Celia?”
Liam shook his head.
“Eddie ever tell you about her?”
Liam shrugged. “Nothing specific. Just that she’s one of his kids.” Liam turned as Eddie’s door opened. He looked down at the girl in the doorway.
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