The Origin of Dracula (3 page)

I focused on my surroundings, searching for a foothold on reality. But there was a creepy, ghostly veneer over everything—the kitchen walls, the stove, the cabinets. They didn’t look real; they appeared to be projections from some place beyond this world. This veneer was familiar. It was how the world had looked right after Lucy’s death. Everything outside of me had appeared ethereal and eerily phony. The only reality had been that I’d lost the love of my life.

This time, the only reality was the threat to my son’s life. But unlike after Lucy’s death, now there
was
something I could do about it. Death hadn’t come yet, and I had a chance to combat it before it did. To hell with the veneer. I’d ignore it. This wasn’t like last time. Death hadn’t won this round yet.

I needed to get to the nearest police precinct, present the letter, and confess to the secret I’d been keeping for twenty years. But I’d have to bring Nate with me.

A second later, I found myself walking into the living room, letter in hand, debating what to tell him. That debate was interrupted when a frightening image came to me: Dantès placing the letter in Nate’s backpack at school. My skin was damp with sweat, and the few clear thoughts I’d managed to string together started to unravel.

In the hallway to the den, I stopped and once again started breathing in and out slowly, hoping to abate my rush of panic. Dantès hadn’t harmed Nate. Not yet. And that led me to another rational thought: it was possible that a parent or a kid or a teacher at Nate’s school might’ve seen Dantès slipping the letter into Nate’s backpack. If so, the police would have a witness to question.

Before stepping into the den, I glanced down at the letter, and for the first time saw it as the police would: a piece of paper that didn’t come with proof that the threat was valid. The police would have to investigate before proceeding, and that would take time. Time I didn’t have. I had less than two days to save Nate: Friday, which was almost over, and Saturday.

And the clock was already ticking.

Getting the proof that the threat was real meant taking one trip before talking to the police. The trip Dantès had suggested in his letter. The trip he knew I’d have to take, as if he was one step ahead of me.
Check in with your partners in crime. You’ll find a connection that will serve as proof of the devastating damage I can wreak.

That meant visiting either Lee or Quincy or both—the only two people in the world I never wanted to see again. And what if Dantès’s proof was another unfathomable horror? What if he’d already extracted revenge by murdering one of their kids? But who knew if they even
had
kids? The fact was, I knew nothing about them.

After that fateful night at Cold Falls, the site of our transgression, we’d sworn never to see each other again. It was our way of forgetting. In retrospect, we’d have drifted apart anyway, but it wouldn’t have been as abrupt. Our decision to go our separate ways and not so much as even talk to each other had lasted to this day. It was one of the reasons why that night had become less real to me over the years, and more like a nightmare I couldn’t totally shake.

I stepped into the den, went over to my desk, and fired up my laptop. Tracking down Lee and Quincy seemed like an easy task, since every time I’d tried to find out what had become of a childhood friend, the Internet had lassoed them in fairly quickly.

Nate was glued to an animated Nickelodeon show and wasn’t paying attention to me at all. A few months ago, I’d started working in the den as a way of remaining physically close to him, so by now my presence had become part of the background for him.

He let out a deep belly laugh, full of delight. For me, those laughs were always a quick snapshot of what happiness sounded like, and I longed to be part of it. They were a reminder that our life could get back to some kind of normalcy.

But now Dantès had changed that.

It didn’t take me long to find out that Lee and Quincy had one thing in common. They didn’t have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles, or any other kind of Internet presence that Google could immediately find.

If I’d had the patience and focus to dig a little deeper, Google would’ve returned a hit on Quincy. A hit that would’ve verified that Dantès was playing a vicious game. But my focus was too scattered, so as soon as it became obvious that tracking down my partners in crime using Google searches was going to be tough, I pulled out my credit card and paid $14.99 to one of those despicable websites that sells personal information.

One minute later, I had both Lee’s and Quincy’s phone numbers and addresses.

Quincy lived in North Carolina, and Lee was local. Very local. Like me, he lived in Arlington. Both of us had settled down close to where we’d grown up. Still, based on the kind of kid Lee had been, I figured that talking to Quincy was the far wiser choice. But that reasoning lasted no longer than a second. Under the circumstances, it was critical to talk face to face, and there was no time to drive down to North Carolina. So Lee was my only option. Hopefully he’d changed over the years.

“Nate, we’re going out to dinner,” I said, keeping my voice calm. I’d pick something up for him on the way to Lee’s place.

“Great! Can I watch the rest of this before we go?”

I glanced at the clock on my computer screen. His show would be over in less than ten minutes, but every minute was critical. “If you want to go out, we have to go now.”

“Please.”

I stood up. “I don’t mind making dinner instead.”

“No—I want to go out!”

After Lucy’s death, I’d spoiled him by taking him out to dinner three or four times a week. That had stopped when the reality of our financial situation had come home to roost. But by that time, eating out had become one of his favorite activities. He had a list of preferred places: Paglia’s Pizza, Subway, Granny’s, Chipotle, and Le Petit Café.

“Then let’s go.” I grabbed the letter. “How about Subway?”

“Really?” He was now beaming. “Can I get chips?”

“Sure.”

He grabbed the remote and clicked off the TV.

In the foyer, I grabbed jackets for both of us. As I slid the letter into my jacket pocket, I glanced back at the living room. Everything was still coated with that ghostly veneer.

We picked up Subway sandwiches—an activity now ridiculously mundane compared to the real business at hand—and ten minutes later we were driving through one of the older neighborhoods in Arlington. Here, “bash and build” hadn’t totally taken over yet, so among the splashy new McMansions were a good mix of small houses, including Lee’s—a modest, red brick rambler.

I parked out front, then stared at his front door. Though he lived just a few miles away from me, it felt like I’d traveled halfway across the world. Or twenty years back in time.

I turned to Nate. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to talk to an old friend for a minute or two.” My plan was to stay on Lee’s doorstep so I could keep an eye on Nate. “You can eat in the car.”

“Really?”

“Yeah—just this one time.”

“Why?”

“It’s an early birthday present.”

Nate’s eyes widened as he unwrapped his sandwich. I never let him eat in the car, so this was another treat.

I climbed out, feeling for the letter in my pocket, and for the first time I realized my stupid mistake: the letter could have Dantès’s fingerprints on it, and I’d been handling it willy-nilly. Well, too late now, but I’d be more careful from here on in.

I hurried up Lee’s walkway, braced myself at the door, and pressed the doorbell. As three chimes rang inside, a new scenario hit me. What if Lee was behind the letter? What if he was Dantès? After all, only he, Quincy, and I knew about our secret, and if one of them was behind the letter, it had to be Lee. But why would he threaten Nate? Money was the only answer that came to mind. But if this was a shakedown, wouldn’t he have asked for money?

The front door swung open, revealing an unshaven man with pasty, lifeless skin, uncombed, wild hair, and bags under dead eyes. He was wearing a dirty white terry-cloth bathrobe, cinched around his waist. Though his disheveled appearance took me by surprise, there wasn’t any doubt that the man standing in front of me was Lee. The wiry teen was now as thick as a linebacker.

“Long time, no see,” I said, not sure how else to start.

“Get the hell out.” He started to swing the door closed.

My hand automatically whipped out and stopped the door. “Please, I need to talk to you for a minute. It’s important.”

“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.” He pushed on the door, but I held firm.

“Just give me a few seconds.”

“Don’t you remember the deal?” His tone was harsh. “We never see or talk to each other again. We didn’t say except for a few seconds.”

“Lee—I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t have to. Just hear me out.”

“Nope.” Again, he tried to push the door shut, but this time I pushed back hard—my desperation taking over—and the door opened far enough for me to catch a glimpse of the living room. Dirty dishes covered the coffee table. Crumpled shirts and pants covered the couch. And vases, stuffed with wilting flowers, covered the end tables and mantelpiece. It didn’t take a genius to see that Lee was in bad shape.

“What’s going on?” I blurted out. “Are you okay?”

“What’s going on? Karma’s a bitch—that’s what going on.” His dead eyes flashed with anger. “It took a hell of a long time to catch up, but it finally did.”

Had Dantès murdered his son or daughter? I glanced back at my car. Nate was munching on his sandwich.

“Is that your son?” Lee asked.

“Yeah—Lee, please tell me what’s going on?”

His body slumped and his anger dissipated. “My wife was—killed.”

“… Wow… I’m sorry…” I was overwhelmed with sympathy for him—the same crushing blow had felled me.

Then the coincidence of it all hit me. Our wives had both been killed.

“Now will you leave me alone?” he said. His body sagged even more, like a balloon that had just been deflated.

For the second time in less than an hour, my mind was reeling. It wasn’t karma that had killed his wife. It was Dantès.
This
was the proof of the damage he could wreak. My legs turned wobbly and my mouth went dry as another horrible possibility washed over me:

Had Dantès killed Lucy, too?

“My wife was killed, too,” I said, and let that hang there, letting him make the connection.

“What?” He stared at me for a full ten seconds without another word. Something was stirring in his dead eyes. Then: “You’re saying this was revenge for what we did—after twenty years.”

“Dantès.”

“What the hell is ‘Dantès’?”

“The king of revenge—from
The Count of Monte Cristo
.”

“Are you fucking crazy? You came over here to talk your brainy bullshit?”

I pulled the letter out, no longer worried about fingerprints. If Dantès was getting away with murder, he was also doing a damn fine job of cleaning up after himself. “Read this.”

“Why?”

I looked past him into his living room, at the signs that his life had been shattered. “I’m not saying it’s going to help, but things might make more sense.”

Lee hesitated for beat, then shook his head, as in
What difference is this going make?
, and took the letter. He unfolded it and started to read.

Was it possible that Dantès had murdered two people to make his point? Or had he murdered Lee’s wife just so I’d make the connection to Lucy? Either scenario proved that Dantès was cunning and ruthless. Nate had been handed a death sentence.

As Lee read the letter, the movie featuring Lucy’s death started playing in my head. I’d stopped it from playing three months ago and was proud of that. For a long while, it had been the only show in town. The film combined the facts from the police report with gruesome elements conjured up by my imagination, which in turn was fed by the many horror and supernatural books I’d read.

As the film unspooled, I watched it with fresh eyes. The anomalies in her murder were suddenly clues, indications that the killing hadn’t been random, just as Nate’s instincts had told him. Lucy had been targeted.

She had worked late that night. Other young attorneys at Brown & Butler often worked late, but she would stay much later than most. While the others tended to work late almost every day, staying until nine or ten, she’d put in her extra hours all at once, working until one or two in the morning a couple of nights a week. That was to make up for the other days when she left on time so she could spend her evenings with Nate.

That night she’d been the last to leave, which was usually the case on her late nights. She’d taken the elevator downstairs, walked past the security guard, then down the back corridor and out into the parking lot. I’d often wished that the guard had offered to escort her to her car.

Detective Wyler, the detective assigned to the case, had told me the killer was waiting for Lucy in the shadows, probably right up against the building. He’d wanted the keys to her Accord, which I later learned was the most stolen car in the U.S. That fact alone made the case open and shut. The killer’s motive was crystal clear, so everything else fell into place, regardless of the inconsistencies.

But now those inconsistencies made sense. They made
more
than sense. Those inconsistencies revealed what
really
happened that night.

From the evidence, it was clear that Lucy hadn’t struggled. And Detective Wyler said she’d made the right decision not to fight back. But the thief had decided to shoot her anyway. Wyler chalked this up to bad luck. Most car thieves don’t kill their victims.

But that hadn’t been the only inconsistency. This thief hadn’t even waited for Lucy to get to her car. He’d shot her in the head when she was still yards from the car. Detective Wyler said most car thieves waited until the victim unlocked the car and opened the door—but not this thief. The theory was that he was either impatient or an amateur, or both. That’s how Wyler explained this inconsistency away.

But now the way the tragedy had unfolded made sense. It hadn’t been a random and amateurish attempt to steal an Accord. It had been a targeted execution.