Mortal Fear m-1

by Greg Iles

FETISHISM [23 SUBCATEGORIES]

  FROTTEURISM

  GAY MAN’S WORLD [28 SUBCATEGORIES]

  GOD IN THE BEDROOM

  HETS ONLY [HETEROSEXUALS]

  HIV POSITIVE?

  INCEST SURVIVORS: WOMEN ONLY

  ISLAND OF LESBOS [31 SUBCATEGORIES]

  JAN KRISLOV [THE CEO ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS]

  MEDICAL-SEXUAL QUESTIONS [M.D.s RESPOND AS TIME PERMITS]

  NECROPHILIA

  PHONE SEX, STUCK IN ADOLESCENCE

  PRIVACY RIGHTS (14 SUBCATEGORIES)

  QUEER NATION

  RAPE COUNSELING

  ROMANCE

  SEX POLICE

  UROPHILIA

  VOYEURISM

  YOUNGER MEN, OLDER WOMEN

  ZOOPHILIA

  “Many of these are medical terms,” Lenz observes.

  “Drewe had to bring home a DSM-III-R manual just so I could figure out what some of them meant. Now I name a lot of the threads myself.”

  “Are there many physicians on EROS?”

  “A fair number.”

  “How many?”

  “Over a hundred.”

  Lenz seems to be thinking. “Are these headings permanent?”

  “Some are, but the idea of EROS is to be dynamic, to respond as various needs arise. For example, ‘ISLAND OF LESBOS’ is constant, but many of its subcategories change every day. It covers all kinds of lesbian behavior and interests.”

  “Let’s look.”

  I click the mouse on LESBOS and watch the new window open, revealing another column of thread titles.

  “What’s ‘Penetrating Discussion’?”

  “Some lesbians are into penetration, others aren’t. They discuss various objects to use for it. What’s better, natural versus artificial, like that. I figured you knew all about this stuff.”

  “I have some lesbian patients who use vegetables for stimulation. I sometimes think about it when I walk through the produce section of a grocery.”

  “That’s garden-variety stuff, pardon the pun. You know what shocked me? They talk about size a lot. One woman said most vegetables were too large for her. She said the perfect thing to use was an Oscar Mayer wiener. Don’t laugh-it’s true. I said, ‘Isn’t that too soft for the job?’ And you know what she said? ‘Not if you freeze it.’ If you freeze it!”

  Lenz beams with the pleasure of a man who is rarely shocked. “But how does she stand the temperature? That could damage her tissues.”

  “That’s exactly what I said. She told me that when she’s ready, she just takes one out of the freezer and runs it under hot water for about sixty seconds. Then it’s perfect.” I shake my head. “I’m telling you, anything you can possibly think of, it’s already been done and posted on EROS.”

  “What about these graphics files?”

  “That’s Miles’s project. Jan Krislov originally wanted EROS to be purely text-based. She saw that as another way to keep the level of discussion high. But the demand for graphics has become so great, and the technology so much better, that she’s had to give in. The whole thing is Miles’s baby, of course.”

  While Lenz nods thoughtfully, I click out of the forum and into the live-chat area. “I guess we’d better start checking room by room for prose that sounds like our man.”

  Lenz takes something from a drawer. “I’m going to tape our session,” he says, pressing a button on a small Olympus recorder. “That way I won’t have to make notes of any instructions you give me. It’ll save-”

  The psychiatrist jumps as one of the phones on the desk rings. He looks to see which number it is, then answers. While he turns away and speaks too low for me to hear, I punch up the EROS e-mail window on the Toshiba and compose a quick message to Eleanor Rigby: Please DO NOT log onto EROS again until you hear from me. Strange things happening. Will send further mail via Internet. HARPER. Before sending the message, I disable the Auto-File function so that no record of this note will be saved to Lenz’s hard drive. Then I click the mouse on SEND NOW. MESSAGE MAILED flashes just as Lenz hangs up the phone.

  “That was Daniel Baxter,” he says, his voice brimming with excitement.

  “What is it?”

  “Strobekker just contacted the Bureau.”

  “What?”

  “He sent a message to Daniel’s personal e-mail address at Quantico. Could that be possible?”

  “Sure, if the Quantico computers are connected to the Internet.”

  “Some are. But the Unit’s computers are supposed to be sealed off from the outside. This message came across the internal e-mail system, the same way a secret case memo would. The Quantico technicians say they can’t locate the source of the message. Daniel is rattled. He’s faxing us a copy now.”

  The fax machine rings on cue, and we both stare at the slowly emerging page. When Lenz is sure no more is to come, he tears off the curled sheet and lays it on the desk. It reads:

  PLEASE STOP TRYING TO LOCATE US. YOU CANNOT SUCCEED. YOU WERE NOT EVEN CLOSE TODAY IN DALLAS. AN INNOCENT MAN DIED FOR NOTHING. IF YOU KNEW WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH, YOU WOULD NOT EVEN TRY TO FIND US. YOU WOULD REALIZE THAT OUR WORK WILL ULTIMATELY BENEFIT ALL MANKIND. OUR WORK IS ALMOST COMPLETE. WE WILL SACRIFICE NO MORE LIVES THAN NECESSARY. WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT WE SHALL COME TO YOU. YOU MUST TRUST US, AND LEAVE US ALONE.

  THANK YOU.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Lenz says. “Notice the use of the pronoun ‘we’? Often that’s a ploy, but in this case it fits with the evidence indicating a team offender situation.”

  “You mean like a cult? Like the California police were assuming?”

  “No, no. Forget that drivel you heard in New Orleans. True cult murders are almost nonexistent. Ninety-nine percent of cult homicides are committed for standard motives. For example, a cult leader will mask the elimination of a rival as a ceremonial killing. More often than not, it’s lawyers and the media who turn homicides into ‘satanic’ murders.”

  Lenz touches the fax with his forefinger. “No, we’re dealing with something altogether different here. No threat at all, you notice that? Not even any baiting. The author was simply trying to communicate his thoughts. He really believes we cannot find him-or them, as the case may be.”

  My gut tells me the author of the note may be right.

  “Daniel asked whether this might be the work of a disgruntled employee or prankster inside the Bureau,” Lenz muses. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

  “But if you’ve never seen a note like this, maybe the killer didn’t write it.”

  “Oh, he wrote it. I perceive the lack of overt threat as more dangerous. The work of a more confident, and thus more organized, personality. And here… I think he actually believes we might stop hunting him if we understood his ‘work,’ whatever that is.”

  I read softly: “ ‘We will sacrifice no more lives than necessary.’ What do you think that means?”

  “We’re dealing with some degree of megalomania here. A tremendous ego-or group of egos-that believes itself a part of some grandiose or holy mission. That’s fairly common. Who knows what kind of twisted logic leads him to think that by killing he is saving the human race. Hitler thought he was sacrificing no more lives than necessary when he murdered six million Jews.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, scanning the note again. “The tone is eerie. Like Jonas Salk trying to explain his polio vaccine to a bunch of Stone Age bushmen. You know, ‘Some of you may be paralyzed from this, but in the end it’s for the greater good.’ ”

  “Albert Sabin had the live vaccine,” Lenz says softly. “But you’re right.”

  “Dallas was his early warning system. This is his response. He invaded the FBI’s computers to send it. That fact alone is his threat. He’s telling you you’re not in his league, Doctor.”

  “He’s wrong,” Lenz says quietly. He waves his arm at the arrayed technology. “Tonight is the commencement de la fin.”

  “The what?”

 
“The beginning of the end.”

  I memorize the message before Lenz can set it aside.

  “I told Daniel I’d get back to him in an hour with an analysis,” he says. “We’re going to spend that hour on EROS. Are you ready to guide me, Cole?”

  Despite my fatigue and my anger at being coerced into my present position, a powerful current of excitement is circulating through me. The man who killed Karin Wheat just issued a direct challenge, and no Southern male is very good at ignoring those. It may be juvenile and atavistic, but it definitely gets the pulse pounding. I take a huge bite of cold pizza and wash it down with Diet Coke.

  “Let’s nail this arrogant son of a bitch.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Dr. Lenz and I have been logged onto EROS for nearly two hours. He went into Microsoft Word for five minutes to compose an analysis of the “Strobekker” note and fax it to Daniel Baxter at Quantico, but aside from that, we’ve been trolling the private chat rooms like bass fishermen on a slow morning, casting spinners under likely looking trees and piers, dragging artificial worms across dark bottoms. With Jan Krislov’s conditional approval, Miles has given Lenz the ability to monitor rooms that the subscribers believe to be private. The psychiatrist seems surprised by each new encounter, whether a steamy tryst in Regency England or a postnuclear tete-a-tete in some virtual retropunk dive.

  All my system queries on the Strobekker account have come back: Subscriber not currently logged on. The characters scrolling across my screen turned to alphabet soup long ago, and the dot-matrix printer recording them now sounds like a herd of cocaine-addicted gerbils.

  Suddenly my eyes come clear and a numbing tingle heats the back of my arms. “Move over!” I tell Lenz, jumping up from the Toshiba.

  Before he can even get out of his chair, I’m clicking the Dell out of the room he was in and into the room I was monitoring.

  “What is it?” he asks over my shoulder. “Is it Strobekker?”

  “Maybe,” I reply, reclaiming my seat at the Toshiba. “Just read and follow along.”

  Lenz takes his chair and leans forward until his nose is almost against the screen of the Dell. “‘Levon’ and ‘Sarah’? Those aren’t his aliases.”

  “I think ‘Levon’ is him.”

  “Why hasn’t Turner called, then?”

  “Read the screen, damn it! Read ‘Levon.’ ”

  “This stuff about God?”

  “Yes! Look how quickly his responses pop up. And not a single error. Now shut up and read!”

  I focus on the dialogue moving down my screen:

  LEVON› If it were given to you to create God, what qualities or powers would you give him?

  SARAH› What do you mean? I can’t create God. God already exists.

  LEVON› But if he _didn’t_ exist. How would you conceive of him?

  “What are those marks?” Lenz asks. “I saw them in your printouts. Emphasis?”

  “Yeah. Like italics.”

  SARAH› Well… I’d make Him all-powerful, like He is.

  LEVON› Is he?

  SARAH› Of course.

  LEVON› And what of the Devil?

  SARAH› What about him?

  LEVON› Doesn’t Satan have any power?

  SARAH› Some. The power to tempt, I guess. But God has more.

  LEVON› Then why does evil flourish in the world?

  SARAH› Because humans are weak. We choose evil.

  LEVON› But why does God _let_ us choose it? Why have evil at all?

  SARAH› Well, to test us. Because of free will.

  LEVON› But if God made us, Sarah, why must he test us? If God is all-knowing, he must know ahead of time that we are fallible. So the test is meaningless, isn’t it?

  SARAH› You’re confusing me. Not everyone chooses evil. Some choose good.

  LEVON› Of course. We all choose good _some_ of the time. But we choose evil sometimes as well. Haven’t you done things you were ashamed of?

  SARAH› I don’t like this conversation.

  LEVON› I’m sorry. I’m a nosey parker, aren’t I? What about this? If you were creating God, what would he _look_ like?

  SARAH› Well… fatherly, I guess. Strong. Strong but fair. Just.

  LEVON› Why not motherly? Was your mother not just, Sarah?

  SARAH› Of course she was.

  LEVON› But…? She wasn’t strong?

  SARAH› She was strong. In her way. But

  LEVON› But what?

  SARAH› Not strong like a father. Not strong enough to protect me.

  LEVON› Protect you from what? From your father, perhaps?

  SARAH› What are you trying to do?

  LEVON› I didn’t mean to offend you, Sarah. But sometimes I sense things. Pain. I sense pain now. In you I sense something dark. Hurtful. No one likes to think about those spiritual cubbyholes, but we all have them. I would make God very different than you would, Sarah. I would make God a woman. A mother. A strong mother. Strong enough to make up for the weakness of fathers. Strong enough to _defy_ fathers. There are women like that in the world.

  SARAH› Was your mother like that?

  LEVON› No. My mother was like a silk veil in a strong wind.

  “It is him,” Lenz whispers, his eyes glued to his monitor. “I remember something like that from your transcripts. Jesus.”

  “Stay cool, Doctor.”

  “We’ve got to trace him!”

  “Baxter’s guys are taking care of that. I’m a hell of a lot more concerned about this woman he’s talking to.”

  “He’s still got a zero error rate,” Lenz says. “He’s not close to her.”

  “You’d better fucking hope not.”

  “Quiet, Cole! We’re missing it!”

  Suddenly a frightening thought hits me. I tap out a system search on the Toshiba and my fears are confirmed: Brahma isn’t using the Strobekker account. I grab Lenz’s arm. “Baxter’s techs can’t trace this connection! It’s not Strobekker’s account! They don’t know what to look for. Call EROS right now and give them the new alias and the name of the room!”

  Lenz hits a speed-dial button on the nearest phone. I read as fast as I can to catch up with the text that appeared while we were talking.

  LEVON› My name is not Levon, Sarah.

  SARAH› I know that.

  LEVON› Would you like to know my real name?

  SARAH› I don’t know. You frighten me a little. I like talking to you. But you see too much. I’m afraid you want too much.

  LEVON› Too much what?

  SARAH› Honesty.

  LEVON› How can one want too much honesty, Sarah?

  SARAH› You know what I mean. It’s not human nature. We need little white lies. To get along with each other.

  LEVON› And to get along with ourselves?

  SARAH› Is that so terrible?

  LEVON› Doesn’t God demand total honesty, Sarah?

  SARAH› That’s different.

  LEVON› How?

  SARAH› God is God. He accepts us no matter what. He forgives us.

  LEVON› I would accept you no matter what.

  SARAH› That’s easy to say. But you don’t know. You don’t really know me.

  LEVON› I don’t need to. Nothing you could possibly say or do would offend me.

  SARAH› Are you so sure?

  LEVON› Yes.

  SARAH› But acceptance isn’t the same as forgiveness. You can accept someone but still be disappointed in them. You can live with them but never forgive them.

  LEVON› Not me, Sarah. I’m not like that.

  SARAH› How do you mean?

  LEVON› In my eyes you could never do anything that required forgiveness.

  SARAH› What do you mean?

  LEVON› I mean whatever you could possibly think of doing, and then have will enough to carry through, that would be your nature. I would never wish you to go against your nature.

  SARAH› But that’s crazy. That’s like saying everyt
hing is okay. What if I were a mass murderer? Or a rapist?

  LEVON› I would accept you.

  SARAH› But what if I were a child molester?

  LEVON› I would fold you into my arms, Sarah. It’s not my duty to judge you. If that is your inclination, so be it. It is someone else’s biological imperative to stop you from molesting children. That duty belongs to the parent. And if a parent were to kill you for doing that, I would accept his or her behavior as well.

  SARAH› But what if _I_ was the parent? The parent _and_ the molester? That happens, you know.

  LEVON› Alas, it is the rule. But then it is the imperative of the other parent to stop it.

  SARAH› But what if the other parent _can’t_ stop it? What if she’s too weak? What if she’s afraid?

  LEVON› Your tears are scalding my heart. If someone is too weak, they either enlist help or they fail.

  SARAH› Help? No one can HELP in situations like that! The police don’t DO anything.

  LEVON› Who said anything about police? One should always look first inside oneself. That is where help lies.

  SARAH› But what can a woman do in that situation? A weak woman? A woman who’s afraid of guns?

  LEVON› Pour strong whiskey on the father’s face and torso while he is sleeping, then set him afire with a cigarette.

  SARAH› My God. Did you just think of that?

  LEVON› Yes. But I’m sure it’s been done many times. There are other ways. So much misery builds up in the world because people are afraid to act. They would rather endure. That is the nature of Homo sapiens. To endure unmitigated hell and hope that if we sit through enough of it things will change for the better. But they never do. Look at the Russian peasants. The Jews in Germany. The Armenians. One must be willing to risk everything at every moment for survival. And the more you have to lose, the more willing you must be to fight at a moment’s notice. If a man accosts you on the street, push him away. If he curses you, knock him down. If he is stronger than you and attacks you, shoot him.

  SARAH› Are you really like that?

  LEVON› I do not tolerate impudence. My father taught me that.

  SARAH› Are you very rich?

  LEVON› Yes.

  SARAH› That explains it.

  LEVON› NO! I am rich _because_ I have never taken abuse from anyone.