THIRTY-NINE
Having cashed his check from Thorvaldsson, the first thing Severin spent money on was a visit to a cardiologist, who—after testing his heart eight ways from Sunday and assuring Severin that it was just fine—referred him to a good psychiatrist at Swedish Hospital. To Severin’s mild irritation, the head-shrinker confirmed know-it-all Wallace Zhang’s diagnosis of panic attacks and prescribed an antidepressant that was supposed to also be very effective in treating anxiety. Two months of medication later, Severin’s panic attacks and heart palpitations had all but stopped. He figured, begrudgingly, that he probably owed Zhang a beer or two for pushing him to get help.
Feeling much better about life in general, he dusted off his resume and applied for internal investigations positions with Boeing and Microsoft. They were full-time positions with good benefits. In the meantime, he was working as a line cook at the Spaghetti Factory in Downtown Seattle—and, to his mild surprise, enjoying it. He even tried to restart things with Janet—the woman who’d dumped him just before he took the Thorvaldsson job. They went on a handful of dates over the course of a month, with Severin half pleading to her that he deserved another chance. That he’d had an epiphany or two about himself in the preceding weeks. That he was cutting back on his drinking. That he was changing his ways. But then one day he got stone drunk while watching a Seahawks game and forgot that he’d promised to drive her to the airport to catch a redeye flight to Atlanta. After that, she cut the cord for good.
*****
It wasn’t until nearly a year later that Severin, who had moved into a nicer apartment with a view of Seattle’s Elliot Bay, learned of the final chapter of his unconventional vigilante investigation. Logging on to his email service always required that he pass through a tremendously annoying web page of clickbait quote-unquote news headlines that rarely involved more than the basest of gossip or sensational nonsense. Which reality TV star was pregnant with which washed-up country music star’s baby. Which teenagers murdered their parents for the inheritance, and so that they could play Nintendo without someone nagging them about doing their homework. Which NFL superstar, high on cocaine, was arrested for driving his SUV 115 miles an hour down Hollywood Boulevard. But that day, as Severin sat in his kitchen chair with a steaming cup of decaf, about to click the mailbox icon that would take him away from the crap “news” page, one headline grabbed his attention. It said: “You Won’t Believe What These D.C. Lawyers Got in the Mail.”
Something told Severin he should click on the link, so he did. An article opened. It described how each of the five partners in the international trade practice group of the prestigious law firm of McElroy, Steen & Duff had received, via express mail originating in Micronesia, a small box containing a human finger. According to the FBI, the prints of the fingers matched those of a set that had previously been submitted to law enforcement when another of the firm’s attorneys—one Benjamin Holloman, Esquire—had applied for a nonresident concealed carry handgun permit in Fairfax County, Virginia the previous year. According to his coworkers, Holloman had mysteriously disappeared without a trace 11 months earlier. A preliminary analysis of the tissue revealed that all but one of the fingers had been severed while Holloman was still alive—indicating that he may have been tortured. Indeed, given their varying levels of decay, it seemed the fingers had been severed over the course of several days. Stranger still, each box also held two small passport-sized photographs—one each of two U.S. Department of Commerce investigators who were murdered while on assignment in China last year, and whose remains had only recently been repatriated. An investigation into Holloman’s disappearance had as yet yielded no viable leads.
Severin sat back in his kitchen chair and looked out his window, down onto Elliot Bay, where two bulk carrier cargo ships sat at anchor waiting their turn to dock at the massive Pier 86 grain terminal. There could be a number of people who wanted to see Holloman dead. Perhaps Xiu and his international trade fraudster goons, worried that Holloman might betray them to the U.S. government to save his own skin (Severin already knew that Xiu had a habit of at least threatening to sever people’s fingers). Or maybe a current or former law practice colleague whom Holloman had stabbed in the back along the way in order to elevate his own career trajectory.
But there was only one person out there who knew Holloman had flown to Micronesia. Only one who would have bothered to send photographs of the Commerce investigators. Probably only one who would have been vengeful enough to ensure that the last days of Holloman’s life were abounding with horror and terrible pain.
Severin closed the article and sat back in his chair, thinking that what goes around comes around. Then he went to the kitchen, put two ice cubes in a tumbler, and poured himself a giant bourbon.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
D.C. Alexander is a former federal agent. His debut novel, The Legend of Devil’s Creek, was a #1 Amazon Kindle Best Seller. He was born and raised in the Seattle area, and now lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He welcomes your feedback. You can email him at:
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many, many thanks to Holly Pemberton, Mickey Meece, Philip Imber, Paige Rivas, Jamie Mingus, and Ellen Nason. This story would never have made it to print without their invaluable help.
Chasing the Monkey King Page 31
