Apex Predator (29 page)

On his end Loomis also got the unspoken message ‘We decided to wait to see what you were planning on doing,’ but he simply responded to what Grady actually said, “I think that was a good idea. I can imagine how busy the two of you are, and the last thing you need is to go chasing ghosts, especially when you know that eventually they will probably come to you. Goodbye, Robert, I’m sure we’ll speak again.”

This time Grady wasn’t snide when he said his goodbye, “See you later, Loomis. Good luck to you.”

After they hung up, Grady pulled out his Maker’s Mark and poured himself a drink, even though he’d just finished his breakfast coffee. He was sure that they’d speak again, he just didn’t know how long it would be before they did, but he definitely felt better about the wait. He picked up the phone, called Mark Mullins and let him off the hook as well. Their careers would not come to a sudden end after all.

Steven hung up on his end and let out a big breath. He had no intention of allowing Grady or Mullins to end their careers in order to bring him in. If he had read Grady correctly over the course of the case, which he felt he had, the man had gotten the message and would hold tight. Grady was an excellent detective and Steven knew one couldn’t become that without the ability to assess a situation and decide when it was prudent to just stay put. It was something that he himself had been trained to do and to which he’d adhered his entire life. Until now. Until this.

He was making his way back up to the house, up a trail on the opposite side of the mostly frozen pond. The sun was now in full morning glory, lighting up what was looking like a clear, gorgeous day. There were now more morning joggers and people walking their dogs, all of them nodding wordlessly as they ran or walked past him. His plan was now on more firm footing. He had made certain his family was covered and had also made sure that those that had helped him along the way, the General, Grady and Mullins, all of them, were also taken care of. Now he just needed to figure out his next tactical move. He knew what his overall objective was, he just didn’t know how to best accomplish it.

Things had become much clearer once he’d had the conversations he needed to have, so he reasoned that the answers would continue to become clearer as he proceeded to have some of the other conversations that he planned on having. By the time he got back to the house, now permeated with the smells of breakfast and the sounds of two children trying to get back to their lives, he had made the decisions he felt he could with the information he had.

When he walked through the door he found his wife, his children, his in-laws, all engaged in conversation, with Beth looking fresh and engaged and his children doing children things on a cold winter morning.

Steven let a smile spread across his face, what felt like the first real smile since this all began, and allowed himself to simply be a husband and a dad. He went straight to Beth and hugged her and kissed her cheek and allowed his children to run up to him and to hug him. He picked up Chris to spin him around. Steven Loomis allowed himself to just be a husband and a dad that beautiful morning, because he wasn’t sure when the next time would be that he’d be able to be those things or if he’d even be able to do those things once he did what he needed to do.

Drew was sitting in the middle of his new office. He was looking around, chuckling softly as he did so. It would indeed be a humorous sight if anyone were to come into his office as he stood there in contemplation. All the files from his office were contained in eight cardboard file boxes, which now sat on the massive mahogany desk in his office. He saw the wall-length file cabinets and calculated that his files would take up approximately one tenth of the cabinet’s capacity. His office was decorated in a muted and modern style that juxtaposed a law office feel and minimalist Scandinavian furnishings. He had to smile. Max had wanted to make sure the décor reflected power and influence, something the entire law offices did in spades, but that it reflected the personality of its new occupant as well.

The law offices of Corliss, Zeidler and Kirk occupied three whole floors of the building and those were huge, city-block-sized floors. Drew imagined that there were probably a total of 140 or 150 attorneys in the firm along with 8 or 10 junior partners and partners.

They took on almost all types of cases from maritime law to international copyright and patent cases to the area that Zeidler headed, criminal law and appeals from all over the country. A criminal case coming into the firm had to meet certain criteria. It had to be either extremely lucrative or high-profile, preferably both. Zeidler had clawed his way to the top and he never forgot where he came from, so the firm did its fair share of pro bono cases, especially high-profile pro bono cases.

Drew had spoken to his staff shortly after speaking to Zeidler. He had also spoken to his only associate explaining that he would now hold down the fort. Drew would continue to share the expenses and would continue to refer cases he was not able to handle. He wanted to make sure that he had an out if things didn’t work out with Zeidler, even though he’d told Max that wasn’t the case.

He had debated whether to take the offer or keep trying to grow his small practice and it had been a short debate. His office had been doing well, they were profitable and Willis had scored some serious credibility points over the past couple of years, getting some very favorable results on a number of difficult cases. Even so, he wanted more. It wasn’t about the money; it was about getting cases he could really sink his teeth into.

He seemed to have a knack for criminal law. His courtroom presence and his litigation skills were impeccable and he knew it. He had proved it more than once during some of the most serious cases he’d taken. He was able to take a seasoned vice detective and cut him to ribbons on cross-examination before the detective knew it was happening. He would lull him into complacency by asking questions that were well within the officer’s comfort zone. The detective would be confident, sure of his answers and thinking about lunch or an after-work drink. Willis would then slowly begin to trip him up with contradictions to previous testimony or to notes in the file or to testimony from other witnesses, and before the detective could regroup and qualify his answers it would be over. He’d done it more than once and had developed a reputation for being a ‘sneaky little bastard’ among the law enforcement officers he went up against.

Now he wanted to utilize those skills on more difficult cases, on cases where the stakes were high and his opposition was the best at what they did, and he knew that would not happen for some time if he remained a sole practitioner with a small firm. Cases like that did not just come in off the street.

Drew Willis was settling into his new office and imagining what it would be like to lead the defense on a high-profile case, not knowing that within less than 48 hours he would be presented with the highest-profile case of all.

Now back in New York, Steven Loomis had a clear and defined idea of what he wanted to accomplish. On his way in from his in-laws’ he had gone over the path that had brought him here, to this point. He’d recalled how he had known that he’d use whatever resources were at his disposal to look for Tracy when she’d gone missing. He remembered trying to come up with answers for what had happened to her, how he’d looked to science and forensic psychiatry, and the moment when everything he’d read about and researched had become a grim and shocking reality. After witnessing what he’d witnessed at the warehouse, two things became clear for Steven, Donald Riche was not a human being and nothing he’d seen in that warehouse, nothing he’d felt, spoke of a human mind, even a sick and depraved human mind. The scene spoke of something else, of something with high intelligence, focus and drive, of a predator that fed on human fear and suffering.

Loomis had been exposed to countless atrocities across many countries and had felt the despair and horror that war could bring, the sense of helplessness that death and loss brought to the loved ones of those lost. What he’d felt at that warehouse was nothing like that; it wasn’t like those scenes of destruction had been. No, what he’d felt at that warehouse was like he and the others there with him had uncovered the den of an unspeakable predator, of a force beyond what any of them had ever encountered. He saw and felt everything himself, but he also saw that the others there with him had also felt it and they had been overwhelmed by it.

By the time he’d left the warehouse, he understood what Tyrone Leonard had been talking about when he explained to him just how different the species he’d researched and named were from the human species, he understood why the man had been so certain about what he’d found.

That was the first thing he’d concluded. His next conclusion had been that Riche would never be punished for what he’d done. The justice system had been established and evolved over time with the idea that those that came before it were humans, humans that had committed horrible and senseless crimes, but humans nevertheless. Incarceration, however long, was meant to punish, to let those who committed crimes know how reprehensible their acts had been. Likewise, the death penalty was meant to show not only the perpetrator of the crime, but all those that were aware of it, that some crimes were unforgivable and that the only justice that was appropriate was to take the offender’s life. All of it was meant to rehabilitate or to punish or to deter others, but it was all designed with the expectation that it would be humans committing the crimes, humans receiving the punishment and humans being deterred from committing crimes.

Riche would not have ever believed that any punishment handed down to him was really a punishment at all. He would have believed that he was above it all, that all of it, the trial, the charges, the punishment, whether it was lifelong imprisonment or death, was meant to punish simple criminals, not him.

Steven had also known that Riche would continue to be what he was, a predator, no matter where he went. Even among others that had committed similar crimes, rapists and murderers, he would eventually grow to understand them, to understand how he might be able to use them to fulfill his own purposes. He’d also do it to those charged with looking over him, psychologists, officers, anyone in his circle of influence. It may have taken a long time, years perhaps, but he would have victimized, he would have preyed. He would do this because that is what his nature would call upon him to do. He would be no more able to keep himself from doing this than a tiger might be able to keep itself from preying on whatever prey it found itself surrounded by when it got hungry.

So Steven had decided almost immediately that whatever else happened, he would have to eliminate the threat, eliminate the predator that had taken his daughter from him. He had stopped to consider his decision, to make sure that he was not making it because of the pain and rage that he felt or because he wanted revenge. He knew that to make a decision based on such emotions would be a mistake, so he called upon years and years of training and experience to guide his thoughts and actions. He had enough introspection left in him to know that there would be no way to completely divorce his emotions from his actions, but he wanted to make sure it wasn’t emotions driving his decisions.

Those were the decisions that had brought him here, to where he was today. Now, with some time to reflect on everything that had happened, he had defined his ultimate objective: to let the world know about what he’d seen, what he’d experienced, about the science of the new species that had replaced humans at the top of the food chain. He had to make the world aware that every day, at school or at work or even under their own roof, there was a chance, a remote chance to be sure, but a chance nonetheless, that they were being hunted by something far more terrifying than any human, psychopath, sociopath or not, could ever be. He knew that was his ultimate goal, but he still did not know how it was that he would accomplish that.

He had an idea, but he wanted to make sure that it was the right thing to do, because once he did it there would be no turning back. He was on his way to speak to Leonard again and planned on speaking with Jim Scoma, the researcher out in California. He thought that, as had been the case before, his conversations with those that had researched the new species, people that were guided by science and did not have any moral or emotional agenda to drive their conclusions, would bring more clarity to the situation and would help guide his decisions.

He had called Leonard and asked to meet with him again, and after a short pause Leonard had agreed to meet with him. That pause had let Steven know that Leonard had put together who he was and why he’d wanted to learn more about his work. Steven wasn’t sure whether Leonard had put everything together and knew he’d had something to do with the shooting at the courthouse, but he knew the man was smart. Once Leonard knew that Steven was the father of one of the victims, it would not have been too difficult for him to imagine that he might have had something to do with Riche’s shooting, especially after their conversation. Even if the only thing that Leonard had figured out was that Steven was the father of one of the victims, he owed the man a visit.

The same graduate student that had brought him to Leonard’s door before was there to greet him. Leonard’s office door was open and when Steven knocked lightly on it he’d been in the middle of sorting out what looked to be test booklets.

He looked up from the small table and smiled, “Mr. Loomis, I have to say that I was surprised by your call. Please, come in.”

He moved the tests to another table and motioned for Steven to take a seat at the small table he was sitting at. There was no hesitation or fear in his demeanor, which told Steven that maybe he’d just figured out that he was the father of one of the victims and nothing more.

Steven shook the man’s hand and sat down across from him, “Professor, I wanted to speak with you again because I feel that I wasn’t completely forthright with you when we spoke before, and that’s not how I normally do things. I hope you can understand my reasons for holding back on sharing some information. It has been a difficult time for my family and me.”