Choice of Evil (26 page)

no

is what Xyla sent him.

W
hen you’re interrogating a suspect, you can sometimes get him to tell you the truth by letting him think you already know it. Did the killer really understand the “blowgun dart” message I’d sent him? Or was he playing me, waiting patiently?

And was he asking me about Mortay because he already knew the truth, testing to see how reliable my answer might be to something he
didn’t
know, down the line?

No way for me to even guess. But I knew this much: It was still Wesley, to him,
all
Wesley, somehow.

“
N
othing,” Hauser told me two days later.

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“I mean nothing. Zero. Zip.
Nada.
Not one case meets your search criteria. There were cases where a child disappeared. . . but no ransom demands. There were cases where there was ransom demanded and paid, and the child was later found. . . dead. But nothing along the lines you told me to look for.”

“Fuck!”

“You’re still on this, right?” Hauser asked.

“Yeah.”

“So I’m still in it if there’s something I can—”

“You have my word,” I told him, and hung up.

H
is next message just picked up from where the last one left off. I was as locked to it as if the previous one had still been on the screen, seamless.

     Children vary as widely as adults. Perhaps more so, as they are still in the process of formation, and their possibilities and potential have not yet adapted to the dictates of socioeconomic survival. This child, however, was different in a way I had not observed previously. Some children go almost mute with the trauma of separation, some are garrulous. But, always, they are intensely self-absorbed—understandable, I acknowledge, in the circumstances under which I come into contact with them—wondering “What is going to happen to me?” to the exclusion of all else. This child, however, expressed such an apparently genuine interest in the mechanics of my art that I found myself in discussions which had an eerie “peer” quality about them.
     [Of course, had she been older and more sophisticated, she would have concluded that discussing the specifics of my methodology with a person who could later describe same to the authorities would be counterindicated. Indeed, the fact that I remained unmasked throughout should have been sufficient to provide a clue as to each child’s fate. None seemed to notice. Or, perhaps, they were determined not to notice—I am not a psychologist.]
     But this child seemed utterly fascinated with the mechanics of kidnapping. And hers was not the gory fascination of a child, but the mature fascination of an interested adult. This was no difficult deduction on my part. Indeed, her first question was:
     “Aren’t you worried they could trace the ransom note?”
     I was temporarily taken aback by her question, but, rather than ensuring my silence, it seemed to almost compel me to disclosure. An egotistical desire to share my art, perhaps? I do not believe so. After all, that is the purpose of this journal.
     Still, I showed her how I used only electronic ransom notes. I tape complete television series—sit-coms are the best because they are more likely to possess the requisite longevity—in order to acquire a word bank. “All in the Family,” “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Brady Bunch” had sufficient running time to provide all I needed. Next, I use a digitizing apparatus to separate the individual words. The final edit assembles the note. The child had a little bit of difficulty following me—I realize that my vocabulary is occasionally excessive and that I tend toward the pedantic—but when I explained that my technique was the same as clipping words from newspapers and pasting them to paper, she grasped the principle perfectly. When I demonstrated—by forming the message “Angelique is a pretty girl” from “The Brady Bunch” (actually, the best source of girl’s names, for some reason unknown to me—I have never actually watched an episode) word bank—she clapped her hands.
     After she had something to eat—I let her choose from a variety of foodstuffs I had assembled. . . it reduces the feeling of powerlessness in the captive—I showed her that the messages were on micro-cassettes. All I had to do was dial the target’s home number and, when the phone was answered, play the tape. Good luck to the FBI and its so-called “voiceprints.”
     “My father has a. . . thing on his phone,” the child piped up. “They’ll know where you called from.”
     Was she mocking me? It didn’t seem so—her little face was serious. Almost. . . concerned.
     So I took out some more of my equipment and explained how a blue-box system worked. A telephone recognizes a hyper-specific series of electronic beeps. When I dial out using the box, it goes into an 800 loop—the best ones to use are those which have chronically heavy traffic. . . any of the conventional credit-card services will do—and re-emerges locally, so whatever rudimentary device of her father’s the child was referring to would only recognize the 800 number (which is based in a faraway state) if it recognized anything at all.
     “Are you going to call from here, then?” the child asked.
     I patiently explained that, while I could, indeed, call from the location in perfect safety, there was no phone installed. Sophisticated technology is a two-edged sword, and taking chances is for amateurs.
     “So you have to go out?” she asked.
     “Yes.”
     “Shouldn’t you take me with you?”
     “Why would I do that?”
     “So I couldn’t. . . escape.”
     I assured the child I was more than satisfied with the restraint system I had established, speaking to her as if she was a colleague in the enterprise rather than its victim. . . which seemed to best match her own affect. Obviously, I realized that she was attempting to beguile me into giving her an opportunity to attract attention once we were outside, but I was not angered. In fact, I had a sincere respect for her wit. And for her will to survive.
     Yet I did not tell her the entire truth. Once I have successfully completed the capture phase of my operation, it is vital to remain in the hideout until target-contact is established. The message had long since been recorded, and the central computer in my residence. . . [I must digress here: I work from home, in my perfectly legitimate occupation of independent computer consultant. My small, modest house is rather isolated from the neighbors by the landscaping and they all know my habit is to remain inside for literally weeks at a time, working on some complex computer problem. I earn a moderately respectable income yearly, and dutifully report it all. None of my neighbors have ever been inside my house, nor I in theirs. But even were they to inspect the premises, they would find nothing untoward. That is, unless they discovered the opening to the tunnel, which leads from my basement all the way through to a heavy stand of trees on a three-acre plot which all the neighbors fear will someday be sold to a developer. After all, it is owned by a corporation with precisely that stated purpose. Their petty suburbanite fears are groundless. I, in fact, own the land. Inside the house is my principal computer.]
     Let me resume: The principal computer is never disengaged. I can access it via telephone from anywhere in the world. A certain code will trigger its auto-dial feature and, after the appropriate loops, it will reach the target. As soon as the phone is picked up and voice recognition—any human voice—occurs, the previously recorded message will be played.
     So I will not actually leave the premises, just the basement. I use a portable phone to reach the computer. Even should the call be inadvertently intercepted—it is, after all, a radio transmission—it would not reveal anything but a series of connection-beeps. I make only one call per phone, and then discard it. After I reduce it to untraceable rubble, of course.
     There was no need to tell the child this. I have learned that children are especially sensitive to commitments. . . even those made by their captors. The promise to return, for example. One might imagine the children would be happy if I never returned. After all, they are incapable of seeing deeply into the future—very much instant-gratification creatures, indeed. So with a plentiful supply of food—including, of course, the sort of so-called “junk food” many children are not allowed by their parents—and toys and games, they would not worry about being rescued. Yes, they might easily become bored—that is always a concern. But you would surmise that the return of their captor would hardly be greeted with pleasure. Yet, surprisingly, that has not been my experience. Without exception, each child was absolutely overjoyed when I returned. It took me considerable time to synthesize this data. My conclusion was as stated: The keeping of promises is critically important to children.
     Therefore, I told the child I was going out to make the first call, but would return within two hours. I then simply went upstairs, dialed up my home-base computer, and waited patiently for the time to pass.

He finished the way I’d gotten used to by then—if I wanted to see the next installment, I had to pay up front. His question was a simple one this time:

>>Marco Interdonato. Wesley?<<

Marco Interdonato. Sure, I remembered that one. A spring-bomb in a public storage locker at La Guardia. Another of the killer’s tests? Trickier than before, maybe? That one was Wesley’s work. It was in the goodbye letter he’d left with me, the one where he took the weight for killing Mortay. And Train. And some other things I’d done. Maybe it convinced the cops. Maybe it didn’t. But it wasn’t something they ever leaked to the papers, so. . . It was like the blowgun-dart thing again. How the fuck could he
know
such things?

If I said Wesley’s name now, would I be ratting him out. . . or confirming he was dead? I figured the killer could have put it all together without any inside knowledge. Morales always said Wesley left his fingerprints all over every job, and he wasn’t talking forensics. That left only one way to play it:

yes

Xyla typed it in.

“
I
s there anything I could do to make you hot?” Nadine asked me. Her outfit didn’t go with the question—she was wearing a gray jersey workout suit, and her hair was dank with sweat, like she’d been pushing herself hard just before I’d come to her place.

“You mean
you
you?”

“That’s right.
Me
me.”

“And by ‘hot,’ you mean aroused?”

“Yes!” she snapped, impatient now.

“What difference would it make?” I asked her.

“I want to have sex with you.”

“Huh? From the minute I met you, all you’ve been telling me is how bad I want you, right? What a liar I am when I say I don’t. So. . . what is this, another stupid game? I fuck you, that proves I’m a liar? Look, all men are liars. I’m no exception. You already have all the answers, why don’t you just write ‘Burke’ on a vibrator and be done with it?”

“Why are you
like
this?” she demanded, stepping close to me. She smelled like a sweaty-sweet girl. No estrogen pheromones, just. . . girl-smell.

“Me? I’m not ‘like’ anything. I’m me.”

“And
you
. . . you
don’t
want to fuck me?”

“You know what? Sure. Who wouldn’t? You got all the stuff. But you don’t smell like pussy to me,” I said, hoping that going crude would end this game. . . whatever it was.

“Oh yes?” she asked, standing right against me. “What do I smell like?”

“Like a trap,” I told her.

She turned her back on me and walked a few feet away. Then she whirled around and stood looking at me for a few long seconds. And disappeared.

W
hen she came back, she was wearing a pair of loose wide-leg white cotton shorts and a pink T-shirt, barefoot, smelling of soap. She took the chair next to mine. Asked: “What did you mean?”

“About. . .?”

“Me smelling like a trap. What does that mean?”

“You got the information I wanted? The stuff you
said
you had to get me over here.”

“I have it,” she promised. “And you can have it. If you’ll just answer my question. Honestly. One time. Will you do that?”

I looked at her cobalt eyes until I was sure she was connected, deciding what to tell her. . . deciding it would be the truth. I wasn’t sure I needed anything more from her anyway. But I also sensed that she’d smell a lie this time. And that if she did, and it turned out that I
did
need her again, there’d be nobody home when I rang the bell.

“I think you’re crazy,” I told her, my voice low and carefully controlled. “I mean. . . clinically insane. Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me what the diagnosis is. But you’re. . . nuts. There’s something about you so. . . off, I don’t know what else to call it.”

“You mean, like some
Fatal Attraction
thing?”

“No. I mean something like you having AIDS and wanting to spread it around before your time is up.”

“
What?! You’re
the one who’s crazy. I never even heard—”

“—of what? Spare me. There’s been dozens of guys charged with murder for doing exactly that, and you know it. Or you’re out of touch.”

“Yes,” she almost snarled, “dozens of
men.
But you can’t name one woman who—”

“Sure I can. You’re talking percentages, that’s all. Like saying
most
child molesters are men. Or that most serial killers are. But not
all,
right? It’s bound to happen. A woman with your body. . . you could probably kill a few hundred while you still looked good. And who knows how many they’d spread it to. If—”

“Stop!
I do not have AIDS. Come on,” she said, standing up. “I know a clinic, a private one on East Eleventh. We’ll go together. You and me. Right now. Tell them we’re going to be married, and we want to exchange results, okay? You get mine, I get yours. You don’t have to give your name, just a code number. Fair enough?”

“Sit down,” I told her. “It was an example, that’s all. I didn’t say I smelled AIDS on you. I just said it was some kind of major-league craziness. . . and I gave you an example of that, okay?”

“I don’t have AIDS.”