The Scorekeeper

by Dustin Stevens

  “Meaning what?” Grimes asked.

  Pausing for a moment, Reed worked the steering wheel with both hands, the back end of the car finally straightening out. Easing forward, he pulled past the cruiser with Greene and Gilchrist sitting along the edge of the road before pushing the gas down.

  Surging ahead, he shot back in the direction he had driven less than an hour before, this time abandoning the sirens and running with just the flashers on.

  “Meaning...” Reed said, pulling his attention back to the conversation, “meaning, I need you to go back into the files.”

  For a moment, there was no response, Grimes contemplating the request, what it could mean.

  As he did so, Dr. Mehdi inserted, “Reed, can you tell me about Della? I was speaking to her not long ago when the phone died and we got cut off.”

  Flicking his gaze to the rearview, making sure the cruiser was still behind him, Reed said, “Like I said, she’s alive. Her hands are pretty messed up, and her vitals were low, but the medics said she seemed fairly stable.

  “They were taking her to urgent care to run IV’s and put her under observation before moving her in town if necessary.”

  Pausing, he thought back on all that had transpired, before adding, “Captain Ludgate has a team going with her for surveillance, said they’ll stay on her as long as necessary. I told her we’d reach out in the morning to figure out any further arrangements.”

  In the background, he could hear Grimes grunt, a sound he took to be in the affirmative.

  “I’d like to be there when she wakes up, if possible,” Mehdi inserted, shooting past the final part of Reed’s statement. “She just went through a lot, both physically and psychologically.”

  Reed’s first response was to agree. For most of the night, Mehdi was the person she’d been in contact with, even if it was done under the guise of acting as her mother.

  Still, those sorts of decisions were made far above his head, where things were often decided by financials rather than common sense.

  “When you say back to the files,” Grimes inserted, his processing finally catching up, “you want me to check for the court history of the case.”

  “I do,” Reed said. “I don’t know what it’ll reveal, but my final appeal seems pretty telling, given everything else we know.”

  “It does,” Grimes agreed. “Phrasing also suggests there’s been more than one already.”

  Nodding, Reed shifted lanes, headed toward the freeway. With the clock just approaching five, already he could see the first signs of morning traffic starting to appear around him. Red taillights flared as he buzzed past, drifting to the side.

  “Agreed,” Reed said.

  “Where are you now?” Grimes asked.

  “On our way in. Be there shortly.”

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Dr. Mehdi was gone from her seat in the corner of Captain Grimes’s office as Reed entered. Having expected as much, Reed gave only a quick glance to the empty chair before sliding down into his usual spot across from the captain. By his side, Billie remained standing, leaning heavily against his calf.

  “Doc head to urgent care?” Reed asked. Assuming a stance on the end of the seat, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Peering at the computer screen, he tried to determine what held the captain’s attention.

  Seeing far too much writing to decipher on his own, Reed pushed ahead, asking, “What did you find?”

  “Appeals,” Grimes said, the single word coming out as little more than a grumble.

  Behind them, Reed could hear the front door open. Through it came the sound of heavy footsteps and belts loaded with equipment, telltale indicators that Greene and Gilchrist had caught up with him.

  “Appeals,” Reed repeated. “Plural.”

  “Very,” Grimes said, his focus still on the screen. Finishing the page he was on, he used the mouse to scroll down further, keeping his attention turned as the two officers filed in.

  Flicking his gaze to the reflection in the window to their right, Reed could see them fill in behind him, both standing and staring toward the screen, waiting for whatever came next.

  “Meaning?” Reed asked.

  Not in the mood for any guessing games, for any more of the shenanigans Ethan Mabry seemed to be enjoying putting them through, he noticed just a hint of an edge in his voice.

  Trusting the captain would recognize it for what it was, he didn’t offer an apology, instead focusing on the screen, hoping something would jump out at him.

  “Meaning,” Grimes said, his voice rising as he turned to look at the group standing at the corner of his desk, “Mabry filed seven appeals over the course of his incarceration. Each successively more unlikely, the court stopped hearing them after the first two.”

  Feeling his eyebrows rise, Reed flicked his gaze toward the screen.

  Seven was an excessive number of attempts, especially for such a short sentence. At that rate, one was barely even heard and turned down before the next was up on the docket.

  Even knowing what Reed did about how things had gone, adding to it what he presumed Mabry must have thought, it was no wonder the court had refused to push it any further.

  One at a time, questions sprang to the fore. What the basis of each one was. How the court had perceived them. What Mabry’s mental state must have been in after each was turned away.

  And with each one, Reed shoved them to the side, none getting him any closer to the single piece of information he needed so badly at the moment.

  “Okay, so he filed a bunch of appeals,” Reed said. “But that doesn’t tell us where he might be.”

  A series of horizontal lines appeared on Grimes’s forehead as he stared across the desk, his hands laced over his stomach. “You think he’s still here? That he didn’t just jump parole, get in a car, and hit the open road?”

  Casting a glance to the corner of the computer monitor, he added, “Been eight hours now. He could be past St. Louis or further.”

  For a moment, Reed considered the notion. He thought of Mabry piled behind the steering wheel of a car, headed west, a smug look on his face, feeling like vindication was finally at hand.

  “No chance,” Reed said. “What did Cicotte say in his testimony? That Mabry was smart, but he insisted people know it.

  “This whole night has been about that. He couldn’t just do an interview or file a civil suit or something, he had to put together this entire maze and send us all chasing our tails all night.

  “The Klauss thumbprints, the cryptic messages, the shrine, he’s getting off on all this. There is no way he just up and leaves, especially after that last message.”

  With each word Reed spoke, he could feel his own conviction growing stronger. No longer with his hoodie, he was dressed in just a plain t-shirt, though still, he could feel his body temperature rising through the sweaty cotton.

  The end was near. It had to be.

  No way did it just dissolve with the discovery of Della Snow.

  “My final appeal,” he whispered. Perched on the edge of the chair, he let his gaze glass as he stared at the monitor, willing things to come into focus.

  One item at a time, he pieced through what he knew, putting the new information against the narrative they had already formed.

  “All the people he felt wronged him,” Reed said, “Sheila Damien, Paul Klauss, even Mark Lawson and Ray Cicotte, they all got pulled in somehow. He made sure every person was at least mentioned.”

  Pausing for a moment, he considered things further before blinking twice, his vision clarifying as he stared at the screen.

  “Except...”

  His voice tailing away, Grimes turned to look at the screen as well. Behind him, Greene and Gilchrist both leaned in a bit closer.

  “Who was his attorney?” Reed asked.

  “Didn’t have one,” Grimes replied. “Represented himself.”

  A wry smile passed over Reed’s face, gone as soon as it had arrived. Of cour
se he did. Trusting anybody else, accepting that they might know something he didn’t, was something Mabry wouldn’t be capable of.

  “Who was the presiding judge?” he asked.

  Using the same rolling button on the mouse, Grimes shoved it upward, pages blurring past, one after another. Getting clear to the top, he scanned quickly before inching downward.

  “The Honorable Ned Lunardi,” Grimes read off.

  “And the appeals?” Reed asked, bits of enthusiasm creeping into his tone.

  “Also would have been Lunardi,” Grimes replied. “He was the judge for this jurisdiction right up until he retired at the start of this year.”

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Once the events at the woodshed quieted down, left to nothing more than the criminalists, The Scorekeeper closed out of the window. The camera there had done its job, giving him peace of mind that Della Snow was okay.

  A little banged up, but nowhere near what he had been through.

  And it wasn’t like she wouldn’t soon be handsomely compensated for her troubles.

  Perhaps even more affirming for The Scorekeeper was the fact that his final message had been delivered. When first putting this last stretch of his plan together, his immediate concern had been on where to place it. Back and forth he had gone between the underside of the lid and the wall of the shed, wanting to ensure that it was seen.

  Opting for the former had been a decision he didn’t come to lightly, deciding on it solely for the fact that trying to clean away decades of rot and decay on the shed wall would have been impossible.

  And made for a far less poignant statement.

  Sitting down on the couch for the last time, The Scorekeeper brought up his final camera feed onto the main screen, flicking his gaze to the big screen television on the wall to make sure it was up and active. Once it was in place, he stood and circled around to the far side of the screen, turning and checking the TV behind him.

  Seeing his own form twisted before him, he couldn’t help but smile.

  The vitiligo he was born with wasn’t his fault. Nor was it his parents. It was one of those rare genetic tricks that God liked to play from time to time, a way of balancing the deck in life.

  The Scorekeeper had been born with traits others could only dream about. A supreme intellect. Sharp business acumen. An affinity for working with his hands. All things that had turned him into an engineering and design magnate. A man that could run a business by day and a small farm by night and do both equally well.

  A man that could quickly ascend even in someplace as bleak as FCC.

  As a way of making him seem less imposing, of providing him with some form of humility, the powers that be had seen fit to give him the disease. Half of his visage looked like it was covered in scales, a swirling pattern that started at his hairline and went down to his neck.

  The other resembled a burn victim, random striations of color stretched downward.

  Childhood with such an ailment had been hell. It had imparted a heavy wariness on The Scorekeeper, a distrust for others around him. Even as he was pulled from public education and homeschooled, chose to earn his college degree online, that healthy unease around others never abated.

  Heavy clothing didn’t help. Trying to hide behind copious amounts of makeup didn’t either.

  No matter what he accomplished, the intelligence that he possessed, nobody ever saw past the external.

  Until Sheila Damien.

  Or so he had thought.

  His entire life, he had been forced to wear this cursed badge of horror. It had defined him, how he saw himself, how the world looked at him.

  He refused to wear another. Especially not one put there by a system that was more interested in what it saw than in what really happened.

  After all this, going back was all but a certainty, but that was an eventuality he had long since made peace with. The outside world now had even less to offer him than before. At least there, he could still maintain some form of standing.

  To say nothing of what the outcome of the night finally gave him. For so long he had been keeping score, hating the fact that so many inferiors seemed to have bested him.

  No longer. In one fell swoop, one single evening, he had overtaken them all.

  Just as he always knew he would.

  Leaning forward, The Scorekeeper adjusted the camera feed on his computer a few inches to the side. Making sure he was framed correctly, that everything was in order, he reached out and pulled the HDMI cable from the side of the laptop.

  Behind him, the television screen went dark.

  Bending at the waist, he checked that the final piece he had stowed under the couch was also in place.

  Everything was ready.

  All he had to do was sit and wait.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Officer Wade McMichaels’s truck was sitting on the corner as Reed sped past. With Judge Ned Lunardi’s house being just a few miles from Ray Cicotte’s place, Reed had asked Grimes to call and have them join.

  Falling into line behind Reed and the cruiser carrying Greene and Gilchrist, the convoy was led by lights flashing, bypassing the sirens. Despite the coming onset of dawn, there was no need to have the blaring wail present on the outskirts of town, having not seen a single car since leaving Hilliard.

  For much of the early part of the drive, Reed had wondered if they should even go with the flashers, ultimately deciding it was worth it to push any early traffic there might be out of the way. Especially considering if Ethan Mabry was sitting at the judge’s house, he’d likely been there all night, monitoring things, waiting for them to arrive.

  Whether they showed with the sirens on or not likely wouldn’t change the outcome in the slightest.

  Too many times over the course of the night, Reed had felt his adrenaline spike. Like a pendulum swinging to and fro, it had kept his system in a suspended state, every nerve ending practically dancing just beneath the surface.

  Making the final turn onto Lunardi’s street - the blue arrow on the GPS again pointing the way - Reed could feel it spiking in a way rivaled only by those few moments before finding Della Snow alive. His mind worked through every possible thing the coming minutes might hold, from what seeing Ethan Mabry in the flesh might bring to if he had left them another present, interested in nothing more than extending his game as long as possible.

  Veins stood out on Reed’s forearms and the backs of his hands as he squeezed the wheel tight, the leather casing squeaking slightly. Rolling his wrists forward a tiny bit, he lowered the top of his head to either side, a pair of pops ringing out in response.

  Flicking his gaze to the rearview mirror, he could see Billie raised onto her front paws behind him. Dark ears stood straight up, silhouetted against the lights of the cruiser behind him, a pair of reflective discs framed between them, staring his way.

  As if feeding on the sentiments he was feeling, the combined toll of the evening, his growing lack of patience or understanding or even empathy for Ethan Mabry, she seemed to practically bounce in place, as ready as he was to be out of the car.

  Nodding grimly, Reed flicked his gaze to the GPS. Giving the gas one final nudge, he pounded out the last quarter mile, taking in his surroundings to either side.

  The street they were on was technically a residential neighborhood, though it didn’t much resemble any of the places Reed had ever lived. Every hundred yards or so was an entry, a gate of wrought iron or brick surrounded by heavy landscaping.

  Some included shrubs and flowers, others towering oak trees.

  What the homes themselves looked like behind them, Reed could only guess at. Most sat well back off the road, a few window or security lights the only signs that they even existed.

  Shoving by them, Reed alternated his attention between the screen mounted on his dash and the road ahead, slowing just slightly as they reached their destination.

  Hooking a hard right onto a cobbled driveway, the driver’s side tires edged off th
e pavement, sliding into the grass. Punching the gas once more, Reed could feel the tires fling loose topsoil, the backend fishtailing just slightly before the tires made their way back onto firm ground.

  Twisting the steering wheel twice to straighten his path, he aimed the front of his sedan down the center of the drive stretching straight back. Gunning the engine again, he surged forward, traveling for more than a hundred yards as a towering mansion came into sharp relief before them.

  Two stories tall, the entire front was lit up with floodlights, throwing a bright glow on columns running from the ground to the roof. On both floors, a porch was stretched the width of the home, with matching wings made of brick on either end. A bright chandelier hung down over the main entrance, serving as a spotlight illuminating the front.

  Easily one of the nicest homes Reed had ever seen, in Columbus or anywhere else.

  Which made the aged and battered Volvo and Geo Metro parked out front seem all the more glaring.

  Keeping the speedometer pinned at thirty-five, Reed pushed until almost even with the home before mashing down on the brakes. Thrusting them to a stop behind the two parked cars, he waited until his sedan had just rocked back on its chassis before jerking the emergency brake and twisting the ignition off, leaving the keys where they were.

  The instant his foot hit the ground, his gun was out and drawn, Billie by his side.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  There was no doubt in Reed’s mind that Ethan Mabry was present. Or at the very least, had been.

  Ned Lunardi was the only piece of the puzzle that had as yet gone unaccounted for. The sole person that hadn’t had a light shone on their role in the proceedings.

  A point that was hammered home by the fact that otherwise, there would be no reason for the number of lights on outside the house.

  Holding up just barely long enough for the group of four officers to join him, Reed kept the front end of his weapon pointed toward the ground. Walking straight for the sprawling marble steps leading up onto the porch, he could feel his heart racing.