by Ethan Cross
“Daddy,” his five-year-old, Melanie, said. “We need to pray first.”
“Of course, dear. Would you lead us, please?”
They joined hands, and in a tiny high-pitched voice, Melanie said, “Thank you for the world so sweet. Thank you for the food we eat. Thank you for the birds that sing. Thank you, God, for everything.” She pronounced the th sound as just t, making “thank” into “tank” and “everything” into “every ting”.
Schofield barely noticed. His mind had traveled back in time to prayers that he had recited during his childhood. The prayers had been taught to him by a man he knew only as The Prophet while he’d been living in the commune of a satanic cult known as the Disciples of Anarchy.
He thought of the other children within the cult.
He thought of their screams. He thought of them burning alive.
“Daddy?” Melanie said.
He snapped back to the present and said, “Yes, honey?”
“I need the syrup.”
“Sure, babe.” He slid the bottle toward her and leaned over to kiss her on the top of the head. She smiled up at him. Her two front teeth were missing. He smiled back at his beautiful little girl and thought of how much he loved his wife and kids. Although he could rarely feel joy, he could feel other things such as love, loyalty, and attachment. It would hurt them terribly to discover how much of a monster he truly was, but he only wanted to make them happy and feel happiness himself. Visions of his children spitting on him and calling him a freak cascaded before his eyes. He imagined their angelic faces curled into snarls as they stoned him to death.
Schofield thought of Jessie Olague burning and bleeding to death during the previous evening, and he knew that he would deserve such a fate. He had earned every stone.
20
As Allen Brubaker approached the door to the hotel room and raised his hand to knock, he noticed a tiny device mounted at about knee height on the wall of the niche holding the door frame. The device resembled a circular Band-Aid and blended well with the cream color of the hallway walls. It would have been invisible to the untrained eye, but Allen’s were well-trained, at least when he wore his glasses. The little Band-Aid was actually a motion detector that sent an SMS text message to a cell phone or computer if the field around the door was broken. He imagined that Marcus had investigated the typical hours of the housekeeping staff so that he could ignore the maid’s attempts at cleaning the room. A do-not-disturb sign also hung around the door handle.
The kid was really getting paranoid, even for Marcus.
Allen shook his head and again raised his hand to knock, but his fist never reached the door. A voice at his back startled him as it said, “Who goes there?”
He raised his hands and turned slowly. “I am nothing, but truth is everything.”
“Put your hands down. You’re embarrassing yourself.” Marcus smiled. “So who said that, Professor? Quote from Shakespeare?”
Allen—a history and literature aficionado—replied, “Actually, it was Abraham Lincoln.”
“I think I’ve heard of him. Beard, big hat.”
Allen chuckled and gave Marcus a slap on the back. “That’s the fellow.” He had accompanied Marcus during his first few months as a Shepherd, and they had grown quite close. He had become accustomed to Marcus’s smart-ass comments and impressed by his skills as an investigator. But the kid still had a lot to learn. “Are you going to invite me in?”
“We’re over here, Professor.” Marcus pointed to the adjacent room. “That room’s just a decoy. I got that one under my name and put this one under Henry Jones, Jr.”
Good lord, Allen thought again. The kid really is getting paranoid.
As he stepped through the entryway into the adjacent room, he greeted Andrew and admired their accommodations. It was a two-room suite with a front room containing a pull-out couch, two chairs, a mini-fridge, and a flat-screen television. But the boys had shoved the cabinet containing the flat-screen TV into the corner against the wall and replaced it with a state-of-the-art touchscreen display board. Marcus had talked to him about getting one of these shortly after joining the group. The screen was a foldable paper-thin active-matrix organic LED display mounted on a pair of glass shields and silicone rubber—which was a hyper-elastic material that could endure a huge strain from stretching. The technology had been first developed by Samsung but was still in the prototype stages. Allen knew the Director had connections through DARPA—the DOD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—but he had never seen the need to use such technologies in his investigations.
“What happened to my old corkboard?”
Marcus shrugged. “I had Stan burn it. Welcome to the future, Professor.”
Allen let a low growl escape from the back of his throat but then said, “Show me what you have so far.”
“Well, you’ve read the files, so you’re up to speed on most of it. But a few things have been bothering me. First of all, how does the killer know for sure that the victims are sleeping when he enters the house? This guy is a calculator, not a fighter. I just don’t see how he’s never had any kind of a struggle. Second, why does he take them one night and kill them the next?”
Andrew said, “Maybe he wants to keep them for a while, like a collector. He gets off on possessing them, controlling them.”
Marcus chewed on his lower lip as his eyes scanned the various pieces of evidence listed on the display board. His hand reached up and repositioned a couple of the items. “Maybe.”
Andrew rolled his eyes. “Whenever you say maybe, you really mean I don’t think so.”
Marcus nodded. “Maybe.”
Andrew looked to Allen for support, but he just grinned. It was good to see that not everything had changed in his absence.
Marcus continued. “Something else. The eyes. Why does he need their eyes to be held open? He makes it so that it’s impossible for them to look away.”
“Because he wants them to watch, to see him. Could be that he feels it’s the only time when anyone actually sees him for who he truly is.”
Marcus gave Andrew a large lopsided grin. “Maybe.”
Andrew’s eyes shot daggers in return.
“Marcus, what do you think about the satanic-ritual connection?” Allen said.
“Despite public perception, there are almost no cases of people being murdered in actual satanic rituals. Of course there are the rare delusional individuals who claim that the devil made them commit murder, but that’s really no different from saying that your dog or Elvis made you do it. It’s just another delusion. Still, it’s not outside the realm of possibility for it to be a true satanic cult. But even if there is a cult connection, judging by the consistency of the crime scenes, handwriting analysis on the symbols, and footprints found at the scenes, it’s safe to say that we’re dealing with one offender actually committing the crimes. I had Stan working on the cult angle.”
Marcus tapped an icon in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, and a window containing a circular loading symbol expanded from the bottom of the display. After a few seconds, Stan’s face appeared. “Go for Kung-Fu Master Stan.”
“What have you found on the cult connection?”
“The symbols don’t match anything I could find, and there’s no documented ritual that the killer is following.”
“What about the Circle A?”
“Right. It’s the symbol for anarchy, which earned the killer his nickname in the press after some cop must have leaked a photo of the calling card. The flatfoot probably took the wife and kids to St. Lucia or Aspen or maybe Disney with the money he got from that one. Or maybe the mistress. Ran off with her. That makes for a much better story.”
“Let’s stay on task here, Stan.”
“Gotcha, boss. When I dug deeper, I found a source that says the Circle A can represent the Antichrist as the ultimate bringer of anarchy and the apocalypse.”
Marcus stopped him there. “Okay, I want you to hack into the d
atabase of every hospital, psychologist, and therapist in the Chicago area and find any references to the Circle A or anyone believing themselves to be the Antichrist or doing the work of the Antichrist. Also, check for any connections between the Circle A and any satanic groups or individuals. Then I want you to find me an insider who would be willing to talk with us. Someone with their finger on the pulse of the subculture.”
Stan was quiet for a moment. The picture of him on the screen blinked rapidly, and his face scrunched up. “Boss, do you have any idea how many psychologists and therapists there must be in the Chicago area?”
Marcus didn’t hesitate. He crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Two thousand, four hundred and ninety.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“It was on the stats sheets that I had you prepare for me.”
“But how could you possibly remember that?”
Marcus thought about it for a moment. “I actually don’t memorize the numbers. I take a mental snapshot of each page and then store the image away in my head. Then I can refer back to it as needed. Just like storing digital pictures in a folder on a computer.”
“Scientists should study your brain, boss.”
“They wouldn’t like what they’d find there.” Marcus glanced at the time on his phone. “Okay, Stan, you’ve got some work to do, and we’re heading out to a briefing with the Jackson’s Grove PD.”
Stan gave a sarcastic little salute and then killed the connection.
Allen said, “We’re going to a briefing?”
Marcus rearranged some of the pieces of evidence on the screen again, and Andrew said, “Yeah, an FBI agent named Vasques invited us last night.”
“The Director told me you had a bit of a run-in with the Bureau.”
“You could say that. Her and Marcus really hit it off.”
Marcus’s gaze didn’t leave the board, and he didn’t rise to the bait. “None of the actual murders have crossed state lines, and they’ve all occurred within the same jurisdiction. Typically, the scenes of killings and dump sites for serial murderers follow consistent spatial patterns, although those patterns are different for each offender. They each have a comfort zone, just like any of us, that surrounds their home base, usually where they live or work. But, statistically, their comfort zones also grow over time as they hone their craft. Not this guy. He’s stretched to all corners of this jurisdiction, but has never left it. Makes me wonder if he’s doing it on purpose for some reason. It also means that the FBI has no real jurisdiction on this case.”
Allen snapped his fingers, and the boys turned to him. He wagged a finger at them. “Vasques. I knew that name sounded familiar. Two detectives named Vasques and Belacourt were the leads on the case when we worked it during the last series of murders.”
Andrew said, “But we never actually got involved with the police during that case. We didn’t start working it until the very last, right before those five women went missing and the killer went dark. By then it was too late to accomplish much.”
“I never met them, but I make it a point to do some background work on the lead detectives in any case that I’m working on. Vasques was a good cop. His work was solid. I actually called in about six months after the case went cold to see if they’d come up with any new leads. I discovered that he’d been killed in a fire. The Anarchist was the last case he worked.”
“That makes sense,” Marcus said. “It seemed to me like our Vasques might have had a personal connection to the case. I think she’s suspicious of our involvement. And she had a bit of a stick up her ass.”
Andrew stared in disbelief at Marcus. “Are you serious? It’s no wonder she’s suspicious of us. You were being a complete jerk to her.”
“I was not.”
“Yes, you were.”
Allen raised both hands to stop them. “Boys, it doesn’t matter now. Let’s just stay out of her way and keep a low profile.”
Andrew chuckled. “That’s not one of Marcus’s strong points.”
Marcus pointed a finger at Andrew and said, “Watch yourself. You’re starting to piss me off with all that. I can play nice as well as anybody.”
Andrew shook his head. “Okay. Whatever.”
Marcus checked the time on his phone again. “We better get going. We don’t want to be late for the briefing.”
21
“Where’s your brother? We need to get going,” Harrison Schofield said to his oldest daughter, Alison.
“I think he’s in the backyard.”
Schofield held up the boy’s Spider-Man backpack. “He may need this.”
Alison sighed with frustration and said, “I can’t take care of everything, Dad.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Easy, teenager. I mean you no harm.”
She stuck out her tongue, and he gave her a little wink. “Hey, Dad. Are you going to see Grandma today?”
A flash of shame passed over him, and he felt his stomach churn into knots as he thought of his mother. Still, no matter what she had done, no matter the pain she had caused, she was the woman that had given birth to him. A part of him loved her despite it all. Another part hated her and could never forgive her. “Why do you ask?”
“I heard you and Mom talking about it. I was … well, just wondering if maybe I could come along. I’m old enough to handle it.”
“Honey, I don’t think I’m old enough to handle it. But I tell you what, we’ll see how she’s doing today. If it goes well, you can come on the next trip.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He finished making lunch for the two younger kids—peanut butter and jelly and apple slices for Melanie and a ham-and-cheese Lunchable for Ben—and packed them into their Dora the Explorer and X-Men lunch boxes. Alison, unlike her siblings, was too cool to bring cold lunch.
As he hurried the girls out the door to the backyard, he heard his son laughing. But a jolt of fear shot through him when he heard a man’s voice. He rushed forward and rounded the corner. He found them standing in the open patch of grass that spanned the distance between his home and that of his neighbor. Ben stood in the snow, wearing a puffy blue coat. A football flew from his right hand. It sailed through the air and was snatched down by an old man with long white hair and a close-cropped white beard.
Ben noticed him and said, “Dad, Mr. O’Malley came over to play catch with me.”
Schofield’s next-door neighbor tossed the ball back to Ben and said, “The boy’s got a wicked arm, Harrison.” O’Malley’s words flowed out in a thick Irish brogue. “He’ll be playing in the NBA before we know it.”
Ben laughed, his head tipping back as his little body shook with delight. “That’s basketball, Mr. O’Malley. Football is the NFL.”
O’Malley laughed with the boy, and Schofield felt a stab of jealousy and anger at how naturally and easily their laughter blended together, like two old friends sharing a joke at his expense. O’Malley said, “Sorry about that, my boy. The only sport I keep up with is soccer. But I did play rugby when I was at University.”
“I play soccer, but I’ve never even heard of rug bees.”
“Oh, it’s a splendid game. I’ll teach it to you when the weather’s better.”
“Did you hear that, Dad? Mr. O’Malley’s going to teach me how to play rug bees.”
Schofield patted his son on the head and said, “That’s great, Ben. But we need to get to school, and Mr. O’Malley’s a busy man.” As he spoke, he tripped over some of the words and tried not to make eye contact with his neighbor.
Ben waved at the white-haired old man as he headed for the garage. “Bye, Mr. O’Malley. Have a good day.”
“You too, my boy.”
Schofield seethed with rage at the old man’s intrusion into his life, his time with the kids, but he kept the feelings bottled deep inside. He turned without a word and started after his son. At his back, the old man said, “Harrison, I wanted to thank you for loaning me that snow-blower contraption.”
> Schofield raised a hand in acknowledgment but didn’t turn. He hated the old man. Hated the sound of his voice. That ridiculous accent.
The old man continued. “I’m done with it now, so I’ll just be sticking it back in your garage.”
Schofield wheeled around. “Fine, just leave it outside the door.”
“Oh, this is a good neighborhood, but it could still get stolen if it’s just sitting out like that. Maybe I’ll ask Ben to help me with it when he gets home from school. He’s a good kid. He likes to help.”
“No, we’re … busy. The garage is fine.” Schofield quickly shuffled off to join the kids before the old man could hit him with anything else.
He could see through the window in the garage door that the kids were already piled into the Camry. Each breath he took was quick and shaky, and his hands trembled in the cold. He placed a palm on the side of the garage to steady himself. He felt queasy.
He hated that old man. Even the sound of his voice made Schofield cringe. Most of all, he hated that the old man had a habit of injecting himself into his family’s lives. He thought that perhaps, one day, he’d have the courage to do something about it.
22
The Jackson’s Grove Police Department was a one-story red-brick structure surrounded by bare trees and bordered by a large swath of undeveloped land. Ackerman watched Marcus and the others pull off Route 50 and into the parking lot of the small police precinct. An enormous radio tower jutted into the air over the building, and the lobby and entranceway running through the center of the structure was encased all in glass on its front and ceiling. It reminded him more of something you’d see at a shopping mall. A blue and beige sign announced Jackson’s Grove Village Center. Squad cars lined the parking lot.
As he drove past, the killer thought of how destiny, by the hand of some higher power, had led him to this place. He had once believed that everyone was just wandering through the darkness alone. No God, no devil, just men. He had thought of human beings as nothing more than animals that had deluded themselves with the concepts of religion and life after death.
