Simple Simon (11 page)

But the damn arm. As the police photographer’s strobe pulsed, Cabral stared at the limb from his vantage point aside the queen bed in room 1312 of the downtown Seattle Hilton. It was the only one of the four limbs not bound, and it was twisted around at least once, wrinkling the skin and underlying tissue near the shoulder. The distorted hand at its end was shoved into the bloody cavity opened across the sternum, as if reaching in for something.

“Three stooges,” Cabral said aloud, drawing the attention of his partner, Zack Norris, scratching notes a few feet behind.

“Huh?”

Cabral turned back to Norris. “The arm. Moe used to grab Curly’s arm and twist in around and around until it would look like that, you figured.”

“I thought he twisted Shemp’s arm,” the photographer interjected.

Cabral thought. “Coulda been Shemp, I guess.”

Norris put his notebook away. “You ever see one like this?”

“Nope.”

An evidence technician exited the bathroom, stepping over a pronounced blood trail. Norris looked his way and asked, “You find the dick?”

The evidence technician shook his head and held up a clear bag that contained bloody towels. “Just these. Someone cleaned up. Showered and all. Even dried their hair. Long and black.”

“Have the toilet pulled and the plumbing checked,” Cabral directed. “It could be stuck in the pipes.”

Norris came around the bed, his eyes sweeping the walls spattered with red, marveling at the amount of blood both there and on the bedding. “The mattress acted like a sponge.”

Cabral nodded and thought quietly to himself as the photographer burned through two more rolls. “Zack, does this look like some fun gone bad?”

“It looks like something
bad
gone bad.”

Rage, mutilation, revelry in the corpse, positioning of the body after death (
God, please, after death
, Cabral hoped). It was a textbook serial murder, the most important word being ‘serial’ in this case. “This wasn’t their first time.”

“Nope,” Norris agreed, pulling his notebook again, ready for his partner’s direction.

“Run the method through NCIC,” Cabral instructed as he bent forward to examine the feet. The toenails were gone. “Be real specific.”

Norris made a few notations. He would take care of the paperwork and fax the request to the National Crime Information Center as soon as they got back to the office. And considering the nature of the homicide, it was likely there’d be a quick ‘hit’ if any at all. Some killers left their signatures at crime scenes, and some crime scenes were signatures in themselves. Norris was betting on the latter.

“Give me that desk receipt,” Cabral said, and Norris fished it out of a pocket and handed it over.

“Susan Pu,” Cabral said, reading from the credit card impression.

“Long black hair,” Norris offered.

Cabral passed the receipt back, impatience welling. “Go do the NCIC paperwork now.”

“Right now?”

Cabral looked at the body. “Yep.”

The Fixmeister

Sixty feet below the Headquarters-Operations Building of the National Security Agency, in an office lost amidst a vast subterranean labyrinth, a man who did not exist sat before several computer terminals and schemed as the need arose. That was his job.

Those few who had access to him called him Rothchild.

He was a man of unimpressive features, slightly below average in height, slightly above in weight, and somewhere shy of forty in years. His thinning hair was a dark brown, and he favored gray slacks and button-up long sleeve shirts, but no tie. Ties were out. He had nightmares about being hanged from a creaking gallows while magpies stared at his swinging body. The thought of anything looped around his neck brought on cold sweats. Yes, ties were definitely out.

He had no driver’s license, no social security card, no recorded fingerprints, no information of any kind pertaining to him stored anywhere in any file cabinet or electronic databank. No pictures, no birth certificate, no medical or dental records. He was not married, had no children, subscribed to no magazines or newspapers, did not enter the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. Once each month an envelope with 200 fifty dollar bills was delivered to his office. His ‘salary’. If he needed more, he knew how to get it. He lived in a modest apartment for which he paid the rent in money orders each month. Gas and electricity were paid for by the landlord.

He did have a phone, but not from traditional sources.

Rothchild had not ‘been’ anything traditional for seven years. Not since G. Nicholas Kudrow had had him killed.

Of course death, like existence, was little more than the manipulation of information. One could become dead at any time and continue breathing. It was simply a matter of ability, and, sometimes, resources. Death certificates could appear from laser printers and be affixed with official signatures that would never be questioned. Accident reports in the computer system of a large police department could be ‘corrected’. Rothchild, in his previous life, had once gone boating on the Chesapeake and never returned. Lost at sea, another inexperienced sailor swallowed by the waters. That was what the records said, and records didn’t lie.

And so Rothchild was now just Rothchild, either last name or first, employee of no agency, department, or entity. Rothchild existed as vapor, and performed as a tool, taken out when something needed fixing. And something again needed fixing.

There was no knock before the door opened. Kudrow entered quickly, with some haste Rothchild noted, and planted himself a few feet away, hands folded behind his back. The room was dim, the light of the displays washing it a pale blue and bringing a near black tint to the Deputy Director of COMSEC-Z’s glasses. Rothchild sipped from a can of Pepsi and swiveled his chair toward Kudrow.

“It’s Jefferson, isn’t it?” Rothchild asked with full confidence that he was right.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” Kudrow said, his voice controlled to the point of flatness. Rothchild was the only man he feared.

Rothchild grinned and whipped his eyes briefly at one of the displays. “The President did her doggie style last night. Wanna see?”

Kudrow shook his head. The Secret Service might have looked politely away, but not Rothchild. That he could look at all was no mystery. Wires especially were not mysterious. If something, be it an innocent phone call or the most intimate of digitized video imagery, traveled over a wire, or as a radio signal between stations, anywhere on the planet, Rothchild could intercept it. Uncle Sam had made sure that he could without even knowing that he was. Only KIWI vexed Rothchild, a small favor Kudrow was grateful for.

“You know, her body came back real fine after that baby,” Rothchild commented, wanting Kudrow, the ever faithful husband and father, to just sneak a peek, just one peek, so that he might seem human. But the offer found no takers. Rothchild cocked his head with mild regret, set the Pepsi aside, and pointed himself back to his main display. “So, what do we need to do with Special Agent Art Jefferson?”

Kudrow stepped behind Rothchild as his fingers began to work the keyboard. Information, the basics at first, concerning Art Jefferson scrolled on the screen. “He needs to be separated from a young man.”

“Simon Lynch,” Rothchild said. “Autistic. You know, I met an autistic guy once in a class. The prof brought him in. He could play the piano, the sax, French horn, violin. You name it, he could play it. But he never finished a song. Just couldn’t do it. Vivaldi or ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ Couldn’t finish. Strangest damn thing. That and the way his tongue hung out of his mouth like some limp dog dick.”

“What can you do with Jefferson?” Kudrow asked, forcing away the mental image generated by Rothchild’s crass description.

“I only have the basics so far,” Rothchild explained, his eyes darting left and right over the data draining down the screen. “Phone numbers, medical history, bank balances, blah blah blah. I’ll need more to work something up.”

“When?”

Rothchild thought, squinting at the screen, the data reflected as bright raindrops on his glassy blue eyes. “I’ll let you know.”

“It needs to happen soon.”

Rothchild looked up at Kudrow, the big man, the powerful man, and smiled. “I’ll let you know.”

Kudrow turned away first, and swore he could feel Rothchild’s eyes on his back even when the door had closed behind and he was walking down the hall.

Mr. Tag and the Red Rocker

Six people stood some distance from the gravesite, five of them watching as two men with shovels began heaping dirt into the twin rectangles cut in the grass. Simon Lynch was the only not to look, his attention snatched by the squared-off peaks of the Chicago skyline.

Art, one arm around Anne while both eyes kept watch over Simon, asked her, “What’s he doing?”

Both Anne and Chas Ohlmeyer looked, and smiled in knowing unison. Simon’s head was cocked sideways, his eyes peering through blonde strands, his posture otherwise remarkably steady, no rocking and arms folded across his chest.

“Something’s caught his fancy,” Anne said.

Nita Ohlmeyer leaned close to Anne. “Maybe a squirrel. In the trees.”

Art’s face traversed several emotions as he watched, something that was not lost on Chas Ohlmeyer. “Why don’t you go ask him?”

“Me?” Art reacted. “He doesn’t respond to me.”

“Hogwash,” Anne said quietly, then in almost a whisper, “I saw you. Remember?”

A few seconds drifted by until Art gave in—to his own urge as much as Chas’s suggestion—and went to Simon.

Reverend Charles Lewis, his heart heavy for the boy after speaking over his parents’ caskets, watched with some measure of satisfaction. “I’d say Simon Lynch is lucky to have you and Art, Anne. It was more than decent of you to arrange this.”

“They had no family,” Anne said. “They didn’t go to church.” She glanced off toward Simon, then came back to the pastor of the church she and Art had started attending soon after arriving in Chicago. “People don’t come into this world alone. They shouldn’t leave it that way.”

Ohlmeyer caught Anne’s eye with a familiar tilt of his head. “You paid for this, didn’t you?”

Anne said nothing, and that was enough of a confirmation for Ohlmeyer. He touched Anne’s back gently, then walked off toward the cars with his wife.

“Anne, if there is anything more you need…” Lewis hugged her, then he, too, was gone, leaving Anne almost alone, grave diggers to her rear, Art and Simon to her front, tiny against the downtown skyline.

She stood where she was, leaving them be.

“Do you like the buildings?” Art asked, his hands loose in his pockets, one fiddling with change and the other trying not to do so with the house keys.

“Black is up,” Simon said, then he squatted low and cocked his head as close the ground as he could to get the lowest possible vantage point. “Up more.”

Art’s eyes shifted curiously from Simon, to the skyline, and back again several times before the meaning behind the words became clear. “The tower, you mean. The tall black building?”

“Up, up, UP!” Simon shouted, giddiness flavoring the exclamation.

Art chuckled and gave the Sears Tower a good once over. “Yeah, she’s up there. You’re right about that.”

One of Simon’s hands reached toward the black monolith, and a single finger poked at it, stabbing into the air, trying to touch it. Hunched to the ground as he was, the child-like pleasure in the effort was obvious.

But sadness surrounded Simon like an aura, touching those who were his link to the horrid reality that had become his. Art, closest at the moment, was caught in the pull of the emotions. After a moment he could take no more. Damned if he was going to cry again, funeral or no funeral.

He put his hand out and said, “Simon, time to go home.”

Simon rose almost too quickly, and Art had to steady him, grabbing his hand firmly. Then the mild green eyes came up, and danced around the knot in Art’s tie. “Two five six four Vincent. A blue house. Mommy has hot chocolate.”

Art said nothing, knowing there was nothing to say, then led Simon back to Anne, who took his other hand. They walked to the car together.

*  *  *

A half hour later, slowed in Monday traffic heading north from the city on the Edens Expressway, Art Jefferson yawned deeply.

“You’ve got to get some more sleep,” Anne said, knowing she should have made the statement inclusive of herself. The nights had been extremely rough on them both. But Art, he had to get up every morning and put in a full day at the office. Anne felt quite guilty that Chas had been so generous with the university’s leave policy. Guilty, but still thankful. “Worrying about him falling asleep won’t do either of you any good.”

Art tapped the Volvo’s brakes and forced an easy breath as a car on his ass came
very
close.

“You had the same dream last night,” Anne probed. “Didn’t you?”

Art glanced low in the rearview. Simon was staring off toward a refrigerated truck, shiny white, passing on the left. “Not with him around.”

“What can be so bad about a dream that—”

“Anne…” Art gave her
that
look, and she understood. She was pressing, being ‘earnest’ as she would put it. “Anyway, you’re right. There’s got to be some way to get him to go to sleep before three in the morning.”

Her hand found his knee and rubbed reassuringly. “We’ll find it.”

The wave of cars ahead sped up, and the refrigerated truck moved right, taking a space that had opened in front of the Volvo. Art shook his head, adding a breathy sigh when he saw the small inspection door, about as big as a license plate, flapping freely open in one of the truck’s twin rear doors. “A lot of ice cream is going to waste.”

Anne nodded. “I could use a sundae.”

“Me, too,” Art agreed, but his thoughts swerved back to more important matters with little hesitation. “I guess it’s hard knowing only one place for sixteen years and then out of nowhere you’re in some stranger’s house. Especially for him.”