The monster who’d done this to him—who’d crushed his soul to dust—was also seated in the first-class cabin, two rows up at the portside window. They’d made eye contact prior to boarding, but Paul Garrison had failed to connect the dots, most likely because the face he’d seen looking back at him was a crumbled ruin of what had stoked his dark passions so long ago.
In the years following the abuse, Leonard had been drawn into the boundless world of computers, where the cold logic of ones and zeros offered comfort and control—a chosen escape that proved highly lucrative later in life. In fact, he’d bankrolled millions. All of it, however, could not buy back the innocence and joy that had been stolen from him by Garrison.
Besides wealth, computers had also provided a way for Leonard to keep tabs on Garrison—to spy on him and devise a way to make sure no other boys would ever become his victims. Garrison had been easy enough to bait, because prison had done little to temper his repulsive urges. A few rousing conversations in a chat room were all it had taken to slip him fictitious pictures infected with spyware. Their first rendezvous had been scheduled for next week, in fact. The perfect setup. The perfect opportunity to cut him to pieces.
…Until Bounty4Justice jump-started everything. No more waiting, watching. Leonard needed to get to the monster before someone else did. And perhaps this was better. True retribution at the hand of one of his victims, up close and personal, paid for and enjoyed by an audience of millions. Why shouldn’t the son of a bitch go down in front of the world?
The technology used by the website impressed Leonard—its eBay-like functionality, its anonymous-submissions mailbox, and its clever methods of evading the authorities. The problem was that in targeting Garrison, Bounty4Justice had prompted the monster to run for cover, undermining Leonard’s plan and risking the possibility that Garrison might disappear forever.
Fortunately, since Leonard’s spyware gave him full access to Garrison’s Gmail account, he’d been able to recover the Qatar Airways e-ticket confirmations that exposed the monster’s bold plan to flee to Bangkok. Now here Leonard was, booked with an identical itinerary to Thailand via Doha, just a few seats away from Mr. Paul Lawrence Garrison, shadowing him to the other side of the planet to exact the sort of justice for which no bounty could ever be a reward. He would show his torturer true hell.
The final grueling minutes ground by until finally the plane glided into Hamad International Airport and taxied to the terminal. Deplaning onto the jetway, Leonard kept a comfortable distance behind Garrison, then tailed him along the concourse. Undoubtedly, prison had taken its toll on the molester. Haggard and gaunt, he walked like an elderly man, probably because of some injury to his leg or lower back that hadn’t healed properly. Or perhaps, if there was a just God somewhere in this cruel universe, Garrison himself had been physically violated so harshly in prison that he’d suffered irreparable nerve damage.
They funneled into the sleek main terminal, where signboards in Arabic and English pointed travelers to customs and passport control, then passed through the duty-free annex, where scaffolding had been erected to remodel one of the storefronts. The corridor turned a hard corner, and Garrison slowed unexpectedly, hesitating. Leonard saw what had spooked him. Up ahead, a cluster of airport security guards and other uniformed men stood scrutinizing the arriving passengers joining the customs queue. One guard had a glossy paper in his hand and was intently checking it against the faces of the people entering the area.
Garrison stopped and spun around, nearly colliding with Leonard.
“Excuse me,” he said, flustered, sidestepping around Leonard and shuffling back in the opposite direction.
A guard who’d been focused on the long view of the corridor noticed Garrison’s abrupt retreat, and he alerted the others. One of the suits signaled two of the guards to investigate, then pulled out a radio.
Panic gripped Leonard as he realized that his retribution was slipping away from him with every step the guards took toward Garrison. He pivoted and hastened after the man. Something crazed and animalistic sprang forth from the deepest realms of his subconscious, which no psychotherapist had ever tapped, where all the poison had pooled and putrefied. Every nerve ending in his body buzzed as if electrified.
As an adult, Leonard had a significant size advantage over Garrison. He could easily overpower him and choke him to death with his bare hands. But the guards might well intervene before the deed was done. As if it were foreordained, his eyes fell on the boxes of tools workmen had set beneath the scaffolding. He passed over the hammers and heavy wrenches and instead snatched up a heavy-duty Sawzall fitted with a chunky battery pack and a twelve-inch serrated steel blade intended for ripping through metal wall studs.
Now he was right up behind Garrison. He clamped his hand around the back of the monster’s neck, locking his fingers like a vise. Garrison struggled wildly, trying to pull away, but Leonard compelled him irresistibly forward.
“Who are you?” Garrison shouted. “Wh—what are you doing?”
A group of Qatari men dressed in flowing white robes and ghutra headdresses stepped out of the way, looking alarmed as Leonard shoved Garrison through the door to the men’s room.
Inside, there was no one at the sinks or urinals, no feet beneath the stalls. Leonard turned the dead bolt. Then he slammed the butt end of the Sawzall into the back of Garrison’s head like a battering ram.
# 13.02
Outside the restroom, the taller of the two customs guards tugged at the door handle with all his might, but it didn’t budge. On the other side, he heard chilling screams above the metallic roar of a power tool. He stepped back in fear as more security guards arrived, along with a Qatari soldier in desert fatigues and a burgundy beret. The soldier commanded the guards and the onlookers to move back and raised his H&K MP5. He aimed the weapon’s snub-nosed barrel at the door and unleashed a fusillade of bullets that shredded the door frame and the lock. Then he drove his shoulder into the door, once, twice, and it blasted inward and slammed against the bathroom wall.
Now the guards had their guns out, too, but as they crowded in behind the soldier, everyone froze in horror. On the floor before them, in pieces, was the American fugitive. Wild-eyed behind a mask of blood and gore, another man got to his feet, smiling madly. He held down the trigger on the bloodied power saw, and the reciprocating blade rattled and sliced at the air. Then he lunged at them.
# 13.03
The bullets pounded into Leonard Albanese’s chest and drove him backward, sending him slipping across the blood-soaked tiles, tumbling to the floor beside the molester’s dismembered corpse. Before the wretched world mercifully dissolved away once and for all, he turned his head, retching up blood, and saw two words on the display of his phone that brought one final, bittersweet smile to his face:
MESSAGE SENT
AS OF 9:00 AM EDT, YOUR CURRENT BOUNTY IS $612,808
CURRENT STATUS: Guilty
FOR THE LATEST UPDATES, VISIT:
http://www.bounty4justice.com/ALAN.BATEMAN
# 14.01
@ Long Island
The rain lashed at the windshield as Special Agent Rosemary Michaels entered the quaint village of Sag Harbor, which despite its affluence still maintained the nineteenth-century charm of the whaling town evoked in the pages of Moby-Dick. On the radio, a BBC World Service correspondent had just finished recapping the latest sectarian dysfunction in the Middle East, and the announcer came on the air with a teaser:
Online auction sites revolutionized how we buy and sell everything from furniture to baseball cards. But what happens when auctions offer up justice to the bidding public? Is crowdsourcing mob rule the Web’s next great frontier? Join us for that discussion, coming up on The Brian Lehrer Show…
“Just what the world needs,” Michaels muttered. “More lunatics.” She clicked off the radio to clear her head and drove in silence through the town, then along back roads leading to the bay. On the final approach to her
destination, she spotted half a dozen media vans parked along the curb, the news network minions beginning to emerge.
“Nothing to see, people,” she grumbled. She flashed the LED light bars and gave the siren a quick double tap to warn them that she wasn’t stopping for a photo op. “I will run your ass over. Don’t you get in my way.”
Up ahead, a lone Sag Harbor PD patrol car, white with a thick blue stripe, secured the cul-de-sac outside a bronze gate bearing Alan Bateman’s ostentatious monogram. As she rolled the Impala to a stop, a female officer in rain gear got out of the cruiser. Michaels clicked the window down to a pelting of cold rain.
“Agent Michaels?” the cop said.
“Yes. Hi.” She flashed her creds.
“I’m Susan Knox,” the officer said, glancing at the ID. “Nice to meet you. Didn’t think you’d get here with the storm. I’ll radio Officer DeJoy to let you in. Just go ahead and park under the carport.” She pointed a fob at the gate, and its two sides swung slowly inward like saloon doors.
Michaels eased the Impala through the opening, eyeing a discreet Sotheby’s real-estate placard posted on the gate’s left flagstone column. Liquidation of the estate was a good start, both here and at Bateman’s four other homes, she thought, but the proceeds would barely put a dent in what he owed taxpayers for his epic Medicare scam.
She followed the drive through ancient oaks and maples to where it bisected a flawless lawn with enough acreage to host a World Cup tournament. She scanned the grounds: left toward the dense tree line that hemmed the property, then right toward the sunken clay tennis courts and clubhouse on the private stretch of bayside beach. Not a soul to be seen.
“Damn. Not good, people.”
The gabled Arts and Crafts mansion sprawled along the waterfront in a massive L footprint, complete with a five-car garage and motor court. A chubby officer, presumably DeJoy, emerged from beneath its lodge-style porte cochere and waved her forward.
# 14.02
They convened in the foyer, at the foot of a grand staircase. DeJoy, first name Victor, seemed starstruck, barely able to maintain eye contact with her. Michaels had grown accustomed to this reaction. She’d been dealing with it ever since puberty. The blessing and the curse, all wrapped in one. And there was little she could do to compensate for it, even with the overly conservative image she maintained for the Bureau. She skipped makeup altogether, dressed like a nun, cut her hair in a tight bob, even shunned perfume. It was an ongoing experiment in minimalism. Hell, back when she’d joined the Marine Corps, after graduating from Cornell, she’d even experimented with a buzz cut to see if that might do the trick. But the jarheads found it sexy. Her most recent boyfriend, four months removed, had tried to explain the affliction to her: “You’ve got those big, happy green eyes with wispy lashes, those spooned-on cheekbones, full natural lips that collagen would envy…and you’ve got a killer bod. It’s distracting. You walk in a room, people notice. You know, in a good way. Whattaya expect?” But with her thirtieth birthday fast approaching, she figured nature would surely dish out its own remedy, slow and steady, and she’d be ruing these wasted glory days.
“It sure is quiet around here,” Michaels said. “Place is like a mausoleum.”
“Welcome to Bateman Manor,” said Officer DeJoy, easing into her eyes.
“Where is everybody?”
DeJoy pursed his lips. “You’re lookin’ at it.”
“Just you inside?”
He shrugged. “It’s not like Bateman’s going anywhere. He’s wearing an ankle tracker. Wouldn’t make it five feet off the property before the entire force would be on him.”
“Have you seen the bounty on his head?”
He shrugged. “A few hundred thousand, right?”
“Try six hundred K and counting. And this is one hell of a big house, with lots of windows. So who’s watching the outside?”
“You saw the gate. The rest of it’s the waterfront. Short of an amphibious invasion…” he said, attempting levity. But it fell flat. He went to the door and turned the locks. Then he keyed a six-digit security code into the control panel mounted next to the door frame. “I understand your concern. But this place has tighter security than the Pentagon. Follow me—I’ll show you what I mean.”
DeJoy led her past a mahogany-paneled sitting room with a hearth big enough to roast an ox, to the decked-out gourmet kitchen, then through the French Provençal dining room, which was jammed tight with the auctioneer’s tagged crates, to a door at the heart of the mansion. He turned the knob, saying, “Welcome to mission control.”
They entered a windowless room, redolent of ozone, humming with enough electronics to require an extra-low setting on the room’s designated thermostat. To the left, she eyed a bank of LCD panels displaying high-definition live video feeds of the home’s public rooms and corridors and exterior. Lining the wall to the right were tall rolling racks of routers, servers, and components linked to cable bundles that snaked neatly up through framed cutouts in the ceiling panels. All the bells and whistles of smart-home technology.
“Everything can be controlled from here,” DeJoy said. “Surveillance, air-conditioning, lights, irrigation, appliances, home entertainment system, Internet, you name it. Pretty cool.”
Michaels scanned the labeled video feeds, which in addition to the rooms they’d already passed through included a billiards room, home gym, conservatory, office, library, indoor pool, bar, wine cellar, and home theater. Evidently, bedrooms and bathrooms were spared Big Brother. A separate bank of screens monitored the outdoor pool, boat dock, tennis courts, and the rest of the property. Every shot was static. “I’m not seeing Bateman anywhere, Victor,” Michaels said. “Where is he?”
“Right here, Rosemary,” a voice replied from the open doorway behind her.
# 14.03
“To what do I owe this pleasure? You miss me?”
“In your dreams,” she said, staring into the scammer’s glassy eyes and guessing that cocktail hour must have started at dawn.
Denied his weekly facial, tanning, and spa treatments, and dressed in an off-the-rack Nike running suit, Alan Bateman was a grainy facsimile of the haughty executive she’d handcuffed and escorted out of the executive suite of Total Health Affiliates, Inc., back in mid-July. Despite the overgrown facial stubble and the sorts of blemishes that afflicted mere mortals, however, he could still easily be a pitchman for the snifter of scotch cradled in his right hand. Though by Michaels’s assessment, Botox and a facelift had more to do with that than good genes.
“I’m here to check on your security,” she told him.
Bateman pulled up his left pant leg to reveal the clunky black transponder strapped around his ankle, just above his Mizuno running shoe. “I’m tagged. And as you can see, Officer DeJoy is a pit bull.”
DeJoy chuckled in a way that told her the two had gotten chummy.
“Well, no offense to Victor,” she said, “but I find this all grossly deficient, given the circumstances.”
“Are you referring to Bounty4Justice? Is that what you’re worried about?”
“That’s right. If you’re smart, you’ll worry about it, too.”
He waved his hand dismissively.
“It’s been sending you text messages, right?” she said, eyeing the rectangular bulge in his breast pocket.
“Maybe.”
“Chase Lombardi received text messages, too. You see what happened to him?”
“Lost his head, it seems. Literally,” Bateman said, unfazed. He sipped his scotch.
“Well, without appropriate safety measures, you could be next. That sniper is still out there. And he’s damn good. If you’ve been reading those texts, you might have noticed that your bounty almost doubled overnight.”
“How about you, Victor?” Bateman smiled smugly and motioned to the sidearm hanging from the officer’s belt. “Want to take a shot at me and cash in?”
DeJoy rolled his eyes.
“I’m sure there’re plenty
of people who would love to see that,” Bateman said. “Speaking of which, did you know that I’m trending on Twitter more than Kim Kardashian or the pope? Pretty good, eh?”
“Congratulations,” Michaels replied. “Your parents must be proud.”
# 14.04
They withdrew to the kitchen. Michaels slipped out of her coat and draped it over one of the island’s bar stools, while DeJoy stood by the dueling Sub-Zero refrigerators gawking at her; Bateman stared out the Palladian windows that overlooked the pool, the cove, and a private boat dock to which a cabin cruiser named Alan’s Mistress was tethered, bobbing in the choppy water. Outside, the sky was quilted in sickly green clouds that spewed sheets of rain.
“Man. Sure is nasty out there,” Bateman said.
“Away from the windows, Alan,” she said. “Move it.”
He pouted and strolled over to the island, sipping his scotch.
She turned to DeJoy and said, “I need you to put a call out to your chief right away. Tell him I have to speak with him, because we’re going to be moving this party to the county jail.”
“Sure thing.” DeJoy unclipped the talkie from his belt and paced out into the dining room to radio his boss.
“What?” Bateman scoffed. “County? No way in hell you’re getting me to go there. We have a deal.”
“Deal’s off, Alan. We didn’t foresee this. Got the emergency court order first thing this morning.” She reached into her blazer pocket, pulled out an envelope with an official court seal on it, and held it up for him. “Here’s your copy.” She slapped it on the granite countertop.
Bounty Page 7
