by Sean Platt
“I’ve got a lead on something big, something I can’t talk about yet, but I swear I’ll give you first dibs if it pans out. But I won’t have anything unless I can get in and talk to a patient there.”
“Did you already try?”
“No, but someone I know did. They’re not letting anyone but family talk to this guy, and unfortunately, he doesn’t have family, at least that I know of.”
“Who’s the guy?”
Brent paused. This was where Lara would either tell him to fuck off, say that she wasn’t getting involved, or sign up immediately. Not only did Lara know the patient, she had been the first to interview him after the shootings.
“Roman Rosetti,” Brent said, bracing for impact.
For a moment, Lara was silent. When she spoke her voice had shifted to serious. “What’s this about, Brent?”
“I can’t really say, not yet.”
“Bullshit, Brent. It’s not like you’re asking me to set up an interview with the school janitor. You want my help to see Roman Rosetti, I need to know what in the hell is happening.”
Brent sighed, looking at the computer screen and the work he was in no rush to return to — another meaningless SEO article on some shitty product some company was hawking to people wanting to get rich on the Internet. He knew he could trust Lara with anything, but couldn’t be certain he could tell her the truth about what happened on Oct. 15 — not without her thinking he’d lost his fucking mind.
But if he was going to expose Black Island at some point, he had to tell someone who could help him. Right now, Lara was probably the only person who had the cache to tell the story.
“OK,” Brent said, “but you have to hear me out before thinking I belong in a padded cell beside Rosetti. And you can’t tell Jack.”
He knew Lara hated Jack as much as he did, though for different reasons, since Jack hadn’t stolen Lara’s wife, but rather screwed her on a story that went south and nearly got her fired.
“Fuck him,” she said. “Whatcha got?”
“It’s a story I’d rather tell in person,” Brent said. He needed to see Lara’s face in order to know how he should proceed, and just how much to tell her. He was more persuasive in person than on the phone. And something told him he’d need his every drop of persuasion to win her over. “Can we meet somewhere today?”
“I’ve got some interviews this morning and a staff meeting in the afternoon. How about after work? Say, 7, my place? You remember where I live?”
“You’re still in the same apartment?” he asked. He’d hung out with her a few times back when he first started at the paper and she was showing him the ropes. They were good friends, and might have been more if he hadn’t been married to Gina. He always felt like Lara had nursed a small crush on him, but never once acted on it, even after his divorce.
“Same place,” she said. “See you at 7?”
“See you then,” Brent said hanging up the phone, feeling a lot closer to something big, and in no mood to write his damned articles.
Twenty-One
Michael Blackmore
New Jersey
September 2013
Mike sat at the table across from Margie, chewing through yet another silent dinner.
As he sliced into his steak and stared at the pink juices spilling across the white plate and into the potatoes, he wondered how many more dinners they’d sit through until finally deciding to kill the charade their marriage had become.
He glanced up at Margie and noticed she was staring to her left and out their front window. He wondered if she was staring at the tire swing dangling from the maple’s lowest branch. While it wasn’t the same tire that they’d once pushed Amber from — in what seemed like another lifetime ago — the new rope and tire hung from the same branch on the same tree, making it too easy to flash back on happier times.
Times before long, silent dinners.
“So, how’s Gail?” he said, asking about Margie’s friend that she’d gone to lunch with earlier.
“OK,” Marge said, looking at Mike, or through him, then down at her plate. “How’s the book?”
“Going slow,” he said, though saying he was slow was like saying a 30-year-old Lincoln got shitty mileage. Mike was stalled, and couldn’t find his story. He was on the sixth book in his Detective Jacob Solomon series, and was running close to his deadline. He wasn’t even halfway through. While he’d earned some grace with the publisher because of strong sales and a core audience eager for the next book, this was the second time Mike had found himself running late on a book. The last one was 19 days behind deadline, and the publisher gave him hellfire, talking about shelf space they’d lose, author interviews lined up that they’d need to reschedule, and advertisements they’d have to scratch.
In actuality, the publisher didn’t cancel a thing. They’d designed the schedule with some cushion, telling Mike the manuscript was needed three weeks earlier than their hard deadline. So, Mike probably had an extra two or three weeks beyond the month he thought he had left now. Still, he didn’t want to push things to the last minute, or piss off his publisher. His numbers were good, but publishers were under their own stress, trying to stay relevant in the era of e-books. He’d already seen a few mid-list authors get dropped by the same publisher.
“I’m sure you’ll pick up your pace,” Margie said, not asking for details on the book, why he was going slow, or if maybe he wanted to run some ideas by her. Once upon a time, she was his biggest fan and eager to read every story he had to tell. Those days were dead. Now she wanted nothing to do with his violent books.
“There’s enough real bad things in the world without wanting to read made-up tragedies,” Margie had said a few months earlier when Mike tried to bounce an idea off her.
He couldn’t argue with her reasoning. Even though she never saw the crime scene photos, or had to identify Amber’s dismembered body, she had been devastated by their daughter’s murder. Amber’s passing had also been the death of her happiness, and their marriage.
He sipped his wine and stared out the window, following Margie’s attention: the tree and the tire swing, spinning in the cool evening breeze, as if a ghost were riding.
After dinner, Mike helped with the dishes, thanked Margie for making a delicious meal, then kissed her on the cheek. She smiled, sighing as she rubbed her temples and announced yet another migraine. “I’m going to go lay down, do you mind?”
“Go ahead, Honey,” he said, kissing her on the head this time. Truth was, Mike was perfectly happy to spend the night without sitting like a zombie in front of the TV watching mindless sitcoms for two to three hours until Margie was finally ready to start hugging the pillows. While the sitcoms gave her comfort, reminders of happier times with fictional happy families and friends, they did nothing for Mike, but remind him how much time was slipping away night after night. Every moment wasted in front of the TV was another he wasn’t doing what he knew he needed to do.
As bad as he felt thinking of it this way, Margie’s headaches were often gifts to him — treasures of time which ushered his work forward, albeit slowly. However, the definition of “work” had changed in the past few months.
While Mike started out most nights attempting to write something, he often surrendered after a half hour or so, eager for a return to his search. He was obsessed with finding Amber’s killer; with no leads, Amber had become just another cold case that would never be solved, at least not by the cops. The only way the killer would ever see justice was if Mike nabbed the bastard himself. He wasn’t looking for the sort of justice you found in a courthouse, either. No, this would be a father’s justice — the only kind that could ever fill the void left by Amber’s death.
Through his law enforcement contacts and private investigators he’d hired since Amber’s death, Mike had built up a profile of the killer, and had even linked two other murders to the same man, even if the police had shit.
Usually, when Amber came up with friends and family, p
eople expressed surprise that the cops weren’t any closer to finding her killer. Having been a cop himself, Mike was anything but shocked. People carried the odd notion that the police and FBI had these massive databases tracking every murder, linking similar crimes and searching for patterns. It might be like that on TV and in the movies, but in reality, agencies were fractured, databases limited by budget cuts, and law enforcement crippled by disparate systems from one department to another. And then, of course, you had ego and politics, both of which undermined any efforts to share information in a better or more logical way.
Crimes were usually solved despite technology, and by officers who put in long hours, often off the clock, working cases until they were closed. While his former colleagues had put in the hours following Amber’s death, eventually they had to move on.
Mike was bitter at first, pissed that nobody seemed to care as much as he did, but then he saw it as the blessing it was: If nobody else was looking for her murderer, perhaps he could find the man first. And if Mike killed the man, there was a greater chance he’d get away with it if nobody knew who he was, let alone his connection to Amber’s death.
Mike opened his e-mail and saw a daily report from Franklin Weatherly, one of the private eyes working for him, compiling information he found on police websites, public information searches, and in newspapers around the country.
Most days, Weatherly had little to offer, but today’s report featured a subject line that immediately jolted Mike to sitting: Sexual Predator Found Murdered, Drawings in Victim’s Blood Discovered on Body.
Mike read the file — details of an open case from two months before, about a man named Hank Carol in Fairfield, Colorado — a sexual predator who was found in the woods, beheaded, his head placed between his legs. Doodles covered his body: Pervert, Pedo, and Short Eyes.
The use of the term “short eyes” led police to believe the man had been killed by someone who’d spent time in prison. Carol had spent three years in prison for sexually assaulting a child and got out early for “good behavior,” so there was a good chance he’d made an enemy on the inside who found him on the outside — or had someone else find him on the outside — and exacted revenge. Another suspect in the case, though only briefly, was a woman, Mary Olson, who had filed a report against the man after Carol had approached her daughter at a bus stop a month prior. Since the pervert had done nothing illegal, and technically didn’t violate terms of his parole, the cops couldn’t do anything except tell Mary to file a restraining order against the man so he wouldn’t come near the child. Mike wondered why the man had no stipulations in place already not to go near children.
Why force someone to file a restraining order just to keep him from their kids?
Mrs. Olson was cleared, though, since she had an alibi and the cops didn’t like her for the crime. If it was hard to find the dedication or resources to solve murders of innocents, you could bet your last dollar most cops weren’t about to put in overtime trying to solve a child molester’s murder. With no other leads, the cops dropped the investigation. Mike was damned sure they hadn’t looked for other crimes that involved a beheading and drawings on the vic’s body.
If this is my guy, why did he target a pedophile?
Did they meet in jail?
Mike sighed, cracked his knuckles, and leaned in closer to the monitor.
Is this my killer?
The only way he’d find out: visiting the only lead he had, Mrs. Mary Olson.
Twenty-Two
Boricio Wolfe
The women talked for seven fucking years.
Boricio wouldn’t have minded since he liked all three of the women making the hotel room smell so purty, but he was still waiting for alone time with Rose, which got him wanting the Olsons to get started on a good night’s sleep in the adjoining room. Mary was so exhausted and sick with worry, her bloodshot eyes looked like they were about to roll from her haggard face.
“You should get to bed,” Boricio suggested, both because he ached to see Mary so tired, driving 15-plus hours was murder, and because if Mary went then Paola would follow, and with Mary Kate and Ashley out of their room, Boricio could put his pecker someplace cozy.
“You’re right,” Mary stretched herself to standing, yawning on the way. “I do need rest.” She turned to Paola and held out her hand.
Paola took her mom by the wrist and lowered her limb. “Not yet, I’m not really tired. I think I’ll stay up and talk to Boricio and Rose for a while.”
Mary’s disappointment was red on her face, Boricio’s felt blue. “You sure?” she asked.
Paola shrugged. “This new body agrees with me, I guess. I feel like I could run a mile. Besides, I slept in the car.”
“OK,” Mary turned to Boricio and Rose. “Well then, I guess it’s good night.”
They each swapped an adios, then Mary disappeared and left Boricio with one more body to empty from the room before he could bump fuzzies with his Morning Rose.
“So, is this your first time in California?” Rose asked, delaying Boricio’s pleasure.
Paola nodded. “Yeah, we were always going to come out ‘someday,’ back before … everything. Even after Mom and Dad split, we all said that we would come out to Disneyland together one day, but that never happened.”
“What do you think of the Golden State so far?” Rose asked.
Paola shrugged. “Not much to think, yet. This is the only place we’ve been so far. Mom drove so fast I barely saw anything outside the window. And we only stopped three times for gas and to pee. I guess I’ll know better tomorrow.” She paused, then added, “Is this your first time here?”
Rose nodded. “Yes. Not exactly my scene, but I’m excited about how everything’s going so far. We’ve already been here longer than expected, though, and I hate that we’re still by the airport, but I don’t want to change, I just want to go home.”
“How much longer are you staying?”
“Until sometime next week. There are a few things we have to settle and sign and all that not-too-fun stuff, and I do want to stay long enough to see you get in The Capacitor.” Rose looked over at Boricio then back to Paola. “I know he doesn’t buy into it, but you’ll see. I bet it fixes you without you having to look for Luca.”
Worry flickered across Paola’s too-grownup face. “I hope so,” she said, swallowing. “I think I made a big mistake … going to the hospital like I did.”
“You’ll be fine,” Rose reassured her, patting the top of her hands. “I’m sure Veronica can get us in to see Marina, and I’m sure Marina will take great care of you once we do.”
“If not, I’ll turn her face to marmalade.” Boricio was surprised he said it, so were the girls.
Rose said, “Boricio!”
Paola laughed.
Rose turned from Boricio back to Paola and took her gently by the hand. “Sorry about that, Sweetie. He’s certainly incorrigible, but we both know Boricio would never hurt a fly.”
Paola’s eyes widened with surprise. Fortunately, Rose’s were cast down as she stood from the couch.
“Be right back,” Rose said. “I’ve gotta use the ladies’ room.”
Silence hung until the bathroom door closed. Boricio scooted from his chair to Paola and said, “Ixnay on the urdermay,” in a hushed but urgent whisper.
“You mean she doesn’t know?”
“What the hell do you think I’m gonna say? That woman in there loves Boricio like you wouldn’t believe, and that’s keeping me stitched in ways Luca couldn’t fix. You think I’m gonna piss it to the wind? No way,” Boricio shook his head, knowing his face was uncharacteristic with worry. It had never occurred to him that either Mary or Paola might threaten his beans. “What am I supposed to say, ‘Hey, my sweet Morning Rose, while you pick the petals from that daisy and recite today’s ‘He loves me, he loves me nots,’ I should probably let you know I used to be a serial killer.”
“Boricio!”
Boricio growled in a whisper,
“Well, I’m sorry, Kitty Cat, but you can’t expect me to say shit about dick, if it’ll make my lady leave screaming.”
“You’ve gotta tell her,” Paola said. “Secrets that big have a way of coming out, eventually. At least if you tell her, you’re revealing the secret on your terms and giving yourself a chance that everything will work out.”
“Really?” Boricio said, smiling. “Did you tell Mommy Dearest about your little phone call to me? You tell her how you asked me if I could ‘take care’ of that perverted peckerhead since you were afraid that Mary Mary So Contrary was gonna do something to get the Olsons in trouble?”
“No,” Paola shot back, and scooted forward on her seat toward Boricio. “And don’t you dare, either.”
Boricio zipped his lips and hurled an invisible key through the window. “Hell, I won’t say shit, but I thought you just said secrets were for spilling. Goose and gander ain’t swimming together, eh?”
Boricio grinned as Paola’s brow furrowed in frustration: cute when pissed.
The toilet flushed.
Paola’s frown got worse, she looked like she might cry. Boricio realized that while the girl looked like an adult, and an awful lot like Mary — who could give shit as well as she could take it — Paola wasn’t as tough, at least not yet. She was still a kitty cat, like Luca had been.
“I’m just fucking with you,” he whispered as Rose headed back over to the couch from the bathroom. “Three can keep a secret, if two are dead, or one’s Boricio. I won’t say shit.”
“OK,” Paola said, laughing as Rose sat beside Boricio.
“OK, what?” Rose asked.
“I was telling Paola to pound stones on anyone looking her way, cross-eyed, funny or otherwise. She was always pretty, but a girl, now she’ll be whistling Dixie whether she means to or not, and that might give some ungentlemanly fellows the wrong error in judgment. I’m saying our girl here, in her mama’s body, needs to be ready to jab.”
