The Finders

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  Anklan wheeled back to face Davies, handed him a crisp ten-dollar bill, and said, “Tell Shelley never again. In fact, have her take me off the list for any of this crap.”

  Davies bristled at Anklan’s mention of Director Fedorchak. “You and me both, brother. I’m just volunteering to help out in my free time and, like I said, they knicked me for forty bucks. You know,” Davies caught Anklan’s eye and continued, “this fucking place.”

  “I’ll talk to Shelley.”

  “Let me handle it, Barry. You’ve got all this other stuff going on,” Davies said and pointed at the man’s wheelchair. “I’ll make sure she understands. This shit’s got to stop.”

  Davies almost made it out of the extra-assistance wing home free when he found himself face-to-face with the director of Silver Years. Shelley Fedorchak entered the hallway and appeared, mercifully, to be in a hurry—maybe another one of her guests had croaked in the night. His heart skipped a beat at the director’s double take, but Davies smiled and kept on moving, praying Reichsführer Fedorchak hadn’t seen him slip out of Barry Anklan’s room … and hoping she wouldn’t go sleuthing.

  Davies had a few sips left in his flask, but with the ten spot he’d liberated from Barry Anklan and the five in his money clip he could maybe get him 750 milliliters of the cheap stuff at Dean’s Liquor. They’d be open by the time he made it across the park. Hopefully, the fat cashier wouldn’t be working today. She always got pissed whenever he grabbed at the pennies in the change tray by the register, as though it were her own private copper mine.

  Weston Davies smiled and headed out the front entrance of Silver Years Retirement Home.

  CHAPTER 24

  The Silver Years director had been correct on both counts. Gomsrud Park did contain well over a mile of hiking trails. The director had also been right about a certain white-haired gentleman who trekked about the park’s pathways—beginning slightly after nine o’clock each and every morning—as Everyman had shadowed Weston Davies the past two mornings. From his perch on a park bench facing the retirement center, Everyman had spotted the senior citizen exiting Silver Years’ front entryway. He stood up and headed toward the nearest of the park’s footpaths, past an abstract metal sculpture that looked like something the cat screwed, and worked his way ahead so he could lay in wait, off the trail and among the shrubs, for old Mr. Davies to pass by.

  Everyman had never told the Champines when he’d be stopping by, but he turned up at the Bridgeport rambler on four additional occasions. The first time was not long after his initial visit, bringing boxes of children’s vitamins, apples, oranges, and bananas for the two to eat, bags of frozen vegetables as well, plus a half-dozen tubes of toothpaste and a couple of new toothbrushes for the dentally challenged youngster—Everyman had gotten a long glance at the kid’s teeth on his first visit. He’d also brought bars of antibacterial soap, bottles of shampoo, laundry detergent, a few picture books, and some first-aid creams. Corny, but when Everyman returned again at Christmas, he brought with him a roast turkey with all the fixin’s. He showed up again in the spring—with additional supplies, coloring books, and puzzles—to see how the two had survived the winter.

  Everyman had last visited the Champines in July, when he handed the kid more coloring books, crayons … and a jungle knife.

  He and Nicky Champine would talk about life while the kid colored. He’d ask how the boy was doing, if he was learning new things, if he was keeping hygienic. But Everyman never discussed with Champine any visitors the two of them may have tucked away in their basement room.

  Though he’d followed the Velvet Choker Killer’s exploits via the news, it was none of Everyman’s business.

  The kid could speak, but stuck mostly to “Yes” or “No” for food or in response to a direct question. The boy combined his words with nods or shakes of the head, along with finger points at anything of interest. The kid wasn’t going to recite the Gettysburg Address anytime soon, but Everyman could tell the lights were on upstairs.

  When Everyman got up to head home at the end of his last visit, the kid ran over and gave him a long hug, likely for the gift of the jungle knife.

  Taken aback, he patted the boy on the head.

  Everyman hated the usual dime-store psychiatry. No, he didn’t strangle the neighborhood dogs or cats. No, he didn’t pull the legs off spiders when he was growing up. Well, maybe he yanked a few legs off of daddy longlegs, but no more so than the average rugrat did. His parents had been normal … enough. He’d even made it to Webelos in Cub Scouts until the anal-retentive den mother made his troop clean up one park too many. And he wouldn’t ascribe a sexual-like necessity to his extracurricular activities, although, in years past, there’d been a certain amount of that.

  No, Everyman thought, it was something that had always been inside him, something he’d been born with, flowing quietly beneath the surface; a river running silent and deep, endlessly cutting through his psyche. Everyman would further define it as an internal gnawing that never left—an irrepressible itch from which he could not escape—until he was drawn, like metal shavings to a magnet … until he could no longer deny his true nature.

  On the flip side, Everyman wondered if he was capable of human affection.

  If he was capable of love.

  But he knew; his entire life had been in answer to that query.

  It was during his time in Houston that Everyman received the only moniker he felt suited him. And that had been the result of a massive screwup as well—likely a second reason he took pity on Nicky Champine. Back in the day when cameras weren’t ubiquitous, his disguise was maybe a baseball cap, an old pair of glasses, and a heavy jacket. It was supposed to be a simple shove-and-snatch in one of the parking ramps that serviced the Galleria. She was a small thing he’d been following for a week or two, young, dark-haired, maybe all of five feet tall and a hundred pounds. But the girl had a tiny can of Mace hooked to her key chain and she wielded it like a gunfighter. It took a couple hours of waiting for an opening to get the old van into the spot next to her vehicle. And a half hour after that she came trekking out, shopping bags in hand, heading to her driver’s door.

  He took a quick glance about the lot.

  No possible witnesses in sight.

  Perfect.

  He jumped out from the sliding door, had a hand around her throat, pulling her backward. He almost had her inside the van when she went Wyatt Earp with the pepper spray. He was lucky she dropped all bags and ran back to the Galleria as he was vulnerable, had sunk to his knees, was wiping at his eyes, when he realized he needed to get the hell out of there.

  To this day he had no idea how he raced the van out of that parking ramp without side-swiping a dozen cars. A block from the Galleria, he double-parked, thanked God he had a Perrier sitting in a cup holder, which he used to rinse his eyes as best he could before being physically able to get the hell out of Dodge.

  As for the girl, the description she gave the Houston police that got fed to the newspapers was basically, “I don’t know, it all happened so fast. Not fat, not thin. Not tall, not short. Glasses, I think. Maybe brown hair. He could be everyman.”

  And the name stuck.

  Local murders and disappearances, most of which he’d not been responsible for, were blamed on Everyman. Be careful was the theme that humid summer, lest Everyman get you. Some pencil-necked scribe at the Chronicle—obviously a lit major—even juxtaposed his current activity with some medieval Middle English morality play, The Somonyng of Everyman, where some poor sap representing mankind must account for his deeds before God in the great hereafter.

  If twenty-first-century Everyman had to justify his deeds before God, he’d be in one hell of a bind.

  Fortunately, Everyman didn’t believe in God.

  A month later he left Houston.

  Everyman hoped to return there someday, to look up the girl from the Galleria parking lot, to see how she’d been doing. He knew her name—after all, it had been in the papers a
t the time. Sure, she might have gotten married—if memory served, she was a looker—but in the age of Google and Facebook, he could find the breadcrumbs and track her down.

  She’d seen his true face and he hadn’t changed all that much. Not really. A few more lines, a few more pounds. Perhaps he’d hold a can of Mace in front of her so she’d make the connection.

  Then they’d get reacquainted … and make up for lost time.

  Everyman spotted Weston Davies walking along the Gomsrud trail. The resident of Silver Years strode past at a solid pace for a man north of eighty. Everyman didn’t make any attempts at camouflage. If Davies peered right, he might have seen him standing motionless in the foliage, but the old man’s concentration clearly lay only on the trail in front of him.

  It made no difference to Everyman if he’d have been seen or not.

  This was only going to end one way.

  After Davies passed, Everyman stepped onto the trail, picked up speed, gaining quickly on the elderly hiker.

  “Mr. Davies,” he shouted, now thirty feet behind the senior citizen, too far to trigger a panic response. “Mr. Davies, please.”

  Weston Davies stopped and turned around, his face a wrinkled question mark. “Do I know you?”

  Everyman approached, breathing as though he’d just run a marathon. “I do the accounting for Silver Years and was in a meeting with the director.”

  “Fedorchak?”

  Everyman remembered the name—Ukrainian or something—and nodded. “She got a call about your son.”

  “I don’t have a son,” Davies said.

  Everyman swung again. “Son-in-law?”

  “Jerry?” Davies said, his face scrunched tighter. “Jerry and Paige haven’t spoken to me in over a decade.”

  I wonder why, Everyman thought. Up close, Weston Davies had a drinker’s face—blushed red cheeks and nose due to enlarged blood vessels. He bet if he frisked the old guy, he’d find booze.

  “I imagine it’s pretty serious then,” Everyman said. “Director Fedorchak told me you walk the trails and I ran here to get you.”

  “Well, what the hell do they want from me?”

  What had Silver Years director Shelley Fedorchak told him earlier over the phone? That Weston Davies was a lovely spirit? Christ, the staff at Silver Years was probably ecstatic—jumping with joy—that this geriatric prick disappeared for half of each day to sneak drinks in the woods. And the other inhabitants at the retirement home probably hoped Davies wouldn’t return until after eight p.m., when they were all in bed and asleep.

  Hell, he’d be doing the residents at Silver Years a favor.

  “To let you know what happened to Jerry,” Everyman said softly. “Perhaps discuss funeral arrangements.”

  “Why would I have to make arrangements?” Davies said. “Jerry grabbed me by the shirt once.”

  Everyman contemplated doing Weston Davies right here and now but didn’t want to lug the old man’s carcass a couple hundred yards through the undergrowth, toward the ravine, toward the desired spot in the clearing. Instead, Everyman made do thinking about how he was going to do so much more to this geriatric prick than son-in-law Jerry ever thought possible … much more than grabbing at the old fucker’s shirt.

  “That is regrettable,” Everyman said. “But what I meant was they’d inform you about Jerry’s funeral—you know, day and time, what church.”

  “Christ on a crutch,” Davies said and looked at his watch as if the news of Jerry’s passing had gummed up his already brimful agenda. “I needed to pick something up.”

  “If it’s close by, I can drive you there after you’ve talked with your daughter.”

  Davies stared at Everyman with renewed interest. “If Jerry’s gone, I’m going to need a stiff drink. Any way you can pick me up a fifth of vodka?”

  Unbelievable. Everyman thought again about doing Weston Davies right here and now, but instead said, “I don’t think Shelley would approve.”

  “How ’bout a pint?”

  Everyman shrugged. “I’ll pick up the vodka while you’re calling your daughter.”

  “Jerry would thank you,” Davies said without emotion, not even attempting to feign sincerity.

  “Let me show you a shortcut to the north trail, Mr. Davies,” Everyman said. “It’ll shave off ten minutes.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Silver Years director Shelley Fedorchak was with the book club in the library. Today was guest author day, but Everyman told the aide or receptionist or whoever answered his call that it was of paramount importance that he speak with Fedorchak immediately—that time was of the essence—and off the aide ran to retrieve the director. He doodled on a piece of scratch paper as he waited, thinking about winter, how it was only a couple of months away, and coming fast. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but Everyman knew that to be a lie. It was the absence of snow and bitter cold that made the heart grow fonder.

  And Everyman recalled his days on the West Coast fondly.

  Someday he might return.

  It was in San Francisco where he honed his craft, where he actually got good. No more wild bullshit after the pepper spray incident in Houston. When Everyman went out, he used makeup and wigs from a theatrical supply store off Haight Street. Whenever he went on the hunt, his looks would be altered—sometimes realistically, sometimes absurdly—so he’d look nothing like himself.

  Never anything like Everyman … at least until the final moments, where he revealed his true face. He felt it only right that they should know.

  He owed them that.

  When he lived in San Francisco, Everyman had been an executive salesman—before the dot-com bubble burst, ruining everyone’s good time—and his true homes had been the nation’s Hyatts, Sheratons, Embassy Suites, or The Fairmonts and Hiltons of Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto. But it wasn’t the tech bubble crash that led to Everyman yanking up roots; it was his boss and chief executive officer at Screen-Com Software, a highly likable man by the name of Eugene Knox.

  Everyman thought the world of Knox, liked reporting to him, and enjoyed the good-natured give-and-take—the warm rapport—they’d developed. He also knew Knox to be meticulous, sharp as a tack. Eugene Knox missed nothing. So it was regrettable that upon returning from a London conference, when Everyman went straight to his downtown office from San Francisco International Airport to submit his expense report and list of new contacts, he found Knox waiting for him, a bit shocking considering the time of night.

  He asked Everyman to come into his corner office and poured him a glass of bourbon.

  Knox was jovial at first, told Everyman he had the silliest of notions to share with him, but Everyman knew all about masks, and saw behind the one Knox was wearing that night. He sipped the Maker’s Mark and let his boss say his piece. Everyman had always passed his expense reports on to Knox, who was a cost accountant at heart—by choice and by profession—and something in the news had tripped Knox’s trigger, a call to a clerk at the Sheraton in Seattle to get a copy of an illegible invoice had led to a brief conversation about something that had occurred during Everyman’s stay there. Evidently, some poor woman had spent a great deal of the evening drinking cocktails in the hotel bar, as business travelers are wont to do, often in excess. The woman returned to her room, ran a brimming tub of hot water for a bath, and, evidently, had been so intoxicated that she passed out, slipped down, and drowned.

  Everyman was astounded at how the synapses in Eugene Knox’s brain worked. How connections were made and, like a bloodhound, Knox kept on the trail. The man was truly incredible. He had all the tools right there in front of him. The expense reports were at Knox’s fingertips. He had all of the exact dates and cities. Knox tapped into the internet, performed a website search of the different newspapers from the various cities Everyman had frequented. Going back an arbitrary year and a half, he plotted out each one in great detail. The records nerd in him, Everyman guessed.

  A maid at
the Hyatt Regency in Washington, D.C., had been found dead in a room she had been cleaning. She’d been strangled with the curtain cord that, left tied about her throat and anchored to the base of the ceiling fan, had kept her swaying in some warped, slow dance macabre, facing the window, her bulging eyes staring blindly out over the nation’s capital. The Dallas Morning News article told of how a woman had left an Italian restaurant, alone, walked to the ramp in which she’d parked her car. She was found the next morning, sitting in front of the steering wheel, with the shoulder strap of her seat belt wound tightly around her throat. Her larynx was crushed. Everyman’s expense report, yanked from the electronic files, showed that he had eaten dinner at that same restaurant that very same evening. It was odd in that Everyman’s dinner receipt indicated that he’d paid for this particular outing in cash.

  How … unlike him.

  The Los Angeles Times told a similar story. A business woman enjoying the nightlife had been grabbed from behind, dragged into a dark ally, and choked to death with the leather strap of her own purse. Her body then stuffed into a dumpster. Everyman had made several profitable leads at that Los Angeles Tech Show while he stayed four days at the JW Marriott that very same week.

  At the Hotel Sofitel in Minneapolis, which coincided with Everyman’s conference with the Honeywell Group, a female chef, who worked the coffee shop’s lonely overnight shift, was found in the meat freezer, strangled with her own apron.

  At the Toronto Hilton, during a Screen-Com–sponsored lobbyist convention, the one that Everyman had spearheaded, there had been another drowning, much like the one in Seattle. It had been ruled an accident. No foul play. No robbery. Her door had been locked. But then again, how much does it take to wipe up a one-sided struggle in a hotel bathroom, then let the door latch lock shut behind you as you slip silently out into a midnight hallway?

  At New York City’s Emerald Plaza Hotel, coinciding with Everyman’s signing of the Hexcon Industries account, a cocktail waitress in the hotel bar left for a quick break to call her boyfriend and never returned. Janitors found her early the next morning in a desolate, downstairs hallway. Her body was stuffed inside one of those old-fashioned, wooden phone booths. She’d been strangled with the phone cord.