The Ackerman Thrillers Boxset

by Ethan Cross

  Light blinded her. She held up an arm as her eyes adjusted. Instead of the man in the skull mask, a young woman about her age or a little older emerged angelically from the light. The angel laid a tray in front of her. It held a bowl of water, some wash cloths, and a pile of white silk, which looked to be some sort of house dress.

  As her vision cleared, Corin saw that the Angel had dark skin and curly black hair pulled up into a utilitarian bun. She wore a white dress and a pair of fuzzy brown house slippers. When the figure from the light spoke, she didn’t sound at all like an angel.

  Her voice was hoarse and dry, as if she had been screaming or crying or perhaps hadn’t spoken aloud in a long time.

  The woman standing over her said, “Wash up. Change your clothes.” Then the angelic figure turned to leave.

  Corin said, “Wait. Are you … Who are you?”

  The woman’s gaze fell to the floor. “Just get cleaned up, and then we’ll talk.”

  Watching her leave, Corin wasn’t sure how to react. She stared at the bowl of water and the clothes. When the woman left the cell, she neglected to shut the door. Corin twitched with anticipation. She waited a couple of seconds and then crawled over to the opening. She was growing accustomed to the pain of her broken shins.

  Corin peaked around the corner of the door. It opened into a concrete service corridor. Conduits and pipes ran along the ceiling. A single bare bulb lit the barren space that smelled of mold and rot. The dark-skinned woman in the white dress was ten feet down the concrete corridor, smoking a cigarette.

  Her dress shimmered in the sparse light. The woman shook her head and said, “Get yo ass cleaned up. I’ll bring down a wheel chair when you’re ready. You don’t want to hurt the baby crawling around on the damn floor.”

  30

  Marcus seethed when he saw that his old friend, Eddie Caruso, had sent a limo to pick them up, but refusing the ride would have drawn more attention than accepting it. He had noticed the curiosity in Maggie’s eyes when she learned that he had an old friend now involved in organized crime. An interrogation would be coming soon. She had a way of rooting out all of his insecurities and secrets and calling him out on them, and he definitely didn’t want Maggie digging into his relationship with Eddie Caruso.

  As they descended the escalators and saw the limo driver holding a sign for “Emma Williams,” he realized how difficult it was going to be to protect his secrets on this one. He closed his eyes and cringed as he motioned to the driver, hoping Maggie hadn’t seen the sign.

  “Who’s Emma Williams?”

  He rolled his eyes. “It’s a really bad joke.”

  “What does it mean? Is she an old girlfriend or something?”

  “Nothing like that. It’s my initials. M.A. Marcus A. Williams. M.A. Williams. Only pronounce it ‘em-ah.’ It’s pretty childish, but in Eddie’s defense, we were like ten when he came up with that.”

  “This was your friend who would call you by a girl’s name?”

  “It’s the kind of thing guys do.”

  She gave him a guys-are-stupid look but said nothing. He shook hands with the driver, a white man with a round face and the beginnings of a neck beard. The man’s suit was well tailored, neat, and unwrinkled. He analyzed the driver’s appearance, cataloging the visual data for further reference.

  He said, “We just need to grab our duffles,” and received a smile and a nod from the driver. Unfortunately, they had been forced to check their bags because of the weapons carried in each, but it was worth the extra time. He didn’t plan to visit Eddie Caruso unarmed.

  After they had retrieved their bags, the driver led them through the airport and outside to a long, black stretch limousine. As Maggie slipped inside, she said, “This Eddie must have been some friend. He sent a car for you and thirty of your closest friends. Did you travel with an entourage back in the day?”

  Marcus didn’t reply. He just fell into the seat beside her. She was already playing with buttons and digging through the liquor cabinets like a kid with a new toy. He wondered if she’d ever ridden in a limo before. She certainly hadn’t done so in the time he’d known her, and she’d never mentioned being a bridesmaid or attending prom or any other instance where limo rides were common. Being a solitary person himself, he had never noticed before, but in that moment, he realized he’d never heard Maggie mention any of her old friends. There were a few women they’d met on cases with whom Maggie kept in contact—such as Lisa Spinelli, the lead tech person from Foxbury Prison, and Eleanor Schofield, the former wife of a serial killer the Chicago Tribune had dubbed the Anarchist—but she’d never talked about anyone from her life before joining the SO.

  He felt a little hurt that she didn’t trust him with that part of herself, but then he felt a pang of guilt for always doing the same to her.

  As she poured a glass of champagne and flipped buttons that changed the pattern of the lighting in the vehicle’s interior, she said, “Tell me about Eddie.”

  Marcus felt like a swimmer who saw the shark fin heading his way but could do nothing to escape. Maggie was moving in for the kill. “What do you want to know?”

  She downed the champagne from her glass, pulled out a bottle of twenty-year-old scotch, and poured herself two fingers. “You’ve never mentioned him.”

  “He was my best friend in junior high. What was I supposed to say?”

  Maggie shrugged. “Guess I just have some tough memories from the last time someone from your past popped back into your life,” she said—referring to Dylan’s mother, Claire Cassidy, who had revealed that Marcus had a son.

  He hoped Eddie wouldn’t be divulging any such life-changing revelations. “I can make you a one-hundred-percent promise that Eddie did not have my baby.”

  She downed the scotch and said, “That’s hilarious. Who moved away? You or him? Which one of you moved away after junior high?”

  “Neither. Why do you ask?”

  “It seems strange to me that this guy was your best friend in junior high, and then your friendship was just over. If neither of you moved away, then why didn’t you remain friends?”

  Marcus considered his words carefully. His Brooklyn accent bubbled to the surface as he fought to stay calm. “Life happens. We drifted apart. His dad was a made man. Mine was an officer of the law. It was only a matter of time before the ways of the world stood in the way of friendship.”

  Refilling her scotch, she asked, “Did something happen?”

  “I’d rather not talk about this. Can we just drop it?”

  “Fine.”

  “There was some strange emphasis on that ‘fine.’”

  “I just wonder what secrets you’re keeping from me this time.”

  He shook his head and growled deep in his throat. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Fine.”

  “It’s not like you don’t have your fair share of secrets, darling.”

  Maggie took a long swig from her second glass of scotch. “Well, aren’t we a pair.”

  31

  The past…

  Every bedroom was a suite with its own sitting area and bathroom. And each bathroom had some crazy deal that shot water back up at you. It was like nothing Marcus had ever seen before. But that wasn’t the cool thing Junior wanted to show them.

  “You see the strip of color here in the marble,” Junior said, referring to a two inch line of emerald green which traced the walls. “If it’s green, that means you’re in an area of the house open to the public. If it’s red, then that means it’s restricted access.”

  “That’s so cool,” Eddie said.

  “It’s just something my Grandpa Angelo came up with. This was originally his house, before my pop inherited it.”

  Marcus said, “Your grandpa must’ve been some guy. I can’t imagine how much money it would take to build a house like this. What did your grandpa do for his job?”

  Eddie quickly said, “Don’t worry about him, Junior. He don’t know nothing.”

&
nbsp; “What did I say?” Marcus asked.

  Junior stepped up into Marcus’s face. The eighth-grader towered over him like Goliath to David. The older boy seemed to be challenging him for some reason, but Marcus couldn’t understand why. Still, he had learned early on that you never run from a fight and you never back down from a bully.

  He imagined that he was a stone gargoyle, the kind that stood watch on some of the older buildings. Nothing could hurt stone. And stone was neutral and unchanging. Marcus simply stared back at the older boy and stood his ground.

  Junior finally said, “My Grandpa Angelo was one of the greatest men who ever lived. He built this town. He was in the family business, little boy blue.”

  “Oh, I understand,” Marcus said, even though he really had no idea what that meant.

  Eddie acted differently around Junior. It was as if they had fallen into a strange hierarchy where Marcus answered to Eddie, and Eddie answered to Junior. He didn’t know who Junior answered to, but he was sure there was a bigger fish above him.

  “I need to know that you are cool, little boy blue,” Junior said. “Because I’m about to take you babies deep into the red zone.”

  Eddie seemed to be bubbling at the prospect, but Marcus was fine playing in the green area. Stepping forward, Eddie said, “He’s cool. Take a chill pill.”

  “If he sees something and squeals,” Junior said, “then it’s my ass. Which means it’s your ass. And your pop’s.”

  Eddie hesitated, apparently considering the consequences for the first time. After a few seconds of thought, he turned to Marcus and said, “I was thinking about that birthday cake. It’s going to be gone soon, and I really want a piece of that. Marcus, you fly down there and grab us three pieces, so we don’t miss out. Better yet, grab four, so you can have two for your trouble.”

  Junior seemed relieved, as if Marcus was a burden he was glad to be rid of.

  Marcus wanted to scream. His supposedly best friend had just stabbed him in the back. He wanted to explode. He wanted to flip over all the furniture in the hallway and ram his fist through the walls. He felt the anger rising up, the red creeping over his eyes, but outwardly he kept pretending that he was a stone gargoyle.

  He said, “Sure thing.” Then he headed back down the hall toward the stairs.

  Over his shoulder, he heard Eddie say, “I told you it was cool. That fat freak does whatever I say.”

  32

  Francis Ackerman checked the address a second time and then growled like a wolf about to strike. “I don’t understand this.”

  From the driver’s seat of the rented white Impala, Emily Morgan looked at the entrance of Oakbrook Cemetery and said, “I take it this is Unser telling us to drop dead.”

  Ackerman cracked his knuckles over and over. “My honor demands retribution to be swift and bloody.”

  “Don’t be silly. You don’t have any honor.”

  “Words hurt, and now is not the time to provoke me. This just doesn’t make sense. Feels like we’re missing something. Maybe he’s directing us to one of the current residents of the cemetery?”

  She shrugged. “It’s a big cemetery, and it’s raining. Do you really want to walk the rows, looking at headstones for clues?”

  “We wouldn’t even know what to look for. Why can’t people be more precise with their language? His instructions were so vague.”

  “I think we may have to accept that he was sending us a message to get lost. He may have sent us here just to waste our time.”

  Ackerman looked back on the encounter with Leland Unser inside the sparring ring. He said, “Unser would never have knowingly defied me.”

  “Really? He seemed pretty defiant to me.”

  “But I gave him the look.”

  “What look?”

  “The one that tells him if he challenges me then I’ll butcher him, his family, friends, his pets, and then everyone in his phone’s contact list.”

  Emily said, “That’s a pretty powerful look. Do you think something may have been lost in translation?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so you gave him ‘the look’ of murdering his whole family tree, but at any point did you ever intend to carry through with that implied threat? If he crossed you, did you intend to kill everyone in his phonebook?”

  “I suppose not, at least not right now, but maybe someday. We’re too busy at the moment for such distractions.”

  “And the old Ackerman? What would he have done?”

  “Are you saying that I’m going soft? Am I losing my edge?”

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it. You’re just becoming less of a monster and more of a human being.”

  He stared at the rows of gravestones beyond the wrought-iron fence. “But what if the monster is what we need? I was born to be a predator, and every moment of pain from then on has sharpened me to a razor’s edge. I can’t allow that edge to grow dull.”

  “Life has phases, Frank. To everything there is a season. Maybe it’s time to put the knife down.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It sounds like you want to put me out to pasture. Killing, fighting, hunting. It’s all I’ve ever known.”

  “Then maybe it’s time to learn something new.”

  33

  With Blake’s reluctant permission, Baxter had searched the whole condo for any clues or insights. In the bathroom, he found a high dosage of anti-depression medications in Corin’s name, but little else. She was clearly the dominant personality, but Baxter had the sense that she established her dominance passively, possibly through manipulation. The drawers in the bedroom were each labeled with his or her initials, and there was a small chalkboard on the bedroom wall beside the light switch. At the top, it said, “Blake’s List.” It then contained a chalk run-down of all their activities over the next few days and a task list for Blake on each. The dates were nearly two weeks past.

  The only room left to check was the spare bedroom. He wandered through it with a trained eye. The devil was always in the details, and the details often went overlooked.

  Finding nothing, he moved to the closet. As he parted the bi-fold doors, a dark shape shot toward him. He deflected the attack with a forearm and muttered a curse under his breath.

  Looking down at the object that had fallen on him, he said, “You always keep your ironing board in the closet of the spare bedroom?”

  “No, that is strange. Corin has a spot for it in the hall closet. She likes to iron while I watch TV.”

  “She doesn’t watch with you?”

  “Corin prefers books. If she picks out what we watch, it’s usually a boring documentary.”

  Baxter asked, “So did you or the police move the ironing board into here?”

  Blake shook his head. “I don’t use it, and the cops didn’t move anything. Corin must have stuck it in there.”

  “Seems rather peculiar, the way it fell out at us like that.”

  “I guess. She was probably in a hurry.”

  “When does she usually do her ironing?”

  “Like I said, while we watch TV.”

  “But does she ever use the ironing board in the morning before school, or does she press your Italian suit before you head to the club.”

  “No, I have it dry cleaned and pressed. And Corin always has everything ready and laid out for the next day. She seldom irons anything in the morning.”

  “So when was the last time she used it?”

  Blake paused to consider that. “Probably the night before she went missing.”

  “Probably?”

  Another pause. “Definitely. I watched the 49ers game, and she ironed a couple of outfits and then worked on homework.”

  “And what did she do with the board afterward?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I think I remember her putting it away in the hall closet. Where are you going with this?”

  Baxter shrugged. “Could be nothing, but it makes me wonder if the site of Corin’s abduction was actually here in the condo.�
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  “You mean that the person who took her moved the ironing board? Why would anyone do that?”

  “I don’t know, but the real question to ask is: Does her being abducted from here change things?” He checked the time and said, “I have another appointment, but I’ll be back in touch soon. Probably later this evening. You be around?”

  Tears forming in his eyes, Blake replied, “Anything you need. If there’s even a chance it could lead to Corin, I’ll do it. Whatever it is. I just need her back.”

  34

  Stefan Granger parked the Buick a block down from Haight and Ashbury. It was a nice day. Low 70s. Granger still wore jeans and a hoodie. The weather in San Francisco was always perfect for identity concealment. The sky had gone dark but a steady stream of people still flowed down the streets once walked by some of the most iconic musicians and activists in history.

  Granger had placed an antiviral mask over his face before leaving his apartment. He didn’t even want to be recognized while driving. From the visor, he grabbed his low-light glasses. They weren’t quite as effective as night vision, but they hid his eyes, and the large green goggles associated with night-vision technology could be a bit conspicuous. Still, in his profession, even the slightest edge over an opponent could make all the difference.

  The white antiviral mask he had chosen was a cross between one designed to collect dust, like a painter would wear, and one designed to protect from infection, like those worn by surgeons. It was the perfect tool for concealing his face. When the average person saw a man in a hoodie and a ski mask walking down the street, they immediately became suspicious. Fake beards and prosthetic noses and the like could be employed as camouflage, but the easiest option by far was to pretend he was merely another germaphobic or germ-infected citizen. People generally steered clear, and he could even wear such a mask while indoors.

  His gloves were the most popular brand, purchased from a chain store, and paid for in cash. While not as innocuous as the mask, the gloves were still not enough to make anyone suspicious.