Forgive Me, Alex (5 page)

I followed
the devil
from the courthouse to his destination, so perfectly natural that I might have guessed it. Where else would Mitchell Norton go after getting out of prison but back home? His father, who'd referred to Mitchell as his "bad seed" during the trial those many years ago, died of a massive stroke shortly thereafter.

I can't imagine that Mitchell grieved.

Dear old Mom, however, never gave up on her boy, and is now doing what Mom's do: welcoming back her baby in need. Never mind that her baby is a forty-three-year-old one-time serial killer. Mitchell's brother, Tommy, a hulking brute of a man with the intellectual capacity of the average ten-year-old, is probably pleased as well.

I must often fight against nagging guilt, having played my own role in their melancholy existence. I secretly check in on them from time to time, although I don't know why in hell I should blame myself; Mitchell's actions, not mine, drove them to this place in their lives. Still, they strike me as decent, salt-of-the-earth people, in no way similar to the family monster.

They deserve better. Mrs. Norton has maintained a relatively menial job since the death of her husband. Even Tommy, with his considerable limitations, holds down a job most of the time, performing whatever simple manual labor he can find. I can hardly fault him for being thrilled at the return of his big brother, or his mom for doing her part.

Yet I fear for them, certain there will be another sad price to pay for their affiliation with Mitchell Norton—son, brother,
the devil
.

I remain down the road from their place and watch from my van for a short time. I mustn't call attention to myself, and theirs being an older and less densely populated neighborhood—a rare enough thing in Algonquin—someone seated in a van for hours on end might cause concern. If they agonize over the darkened windshield and the blacked-out windows, they might even call the local authorities.

I must avoid the cops at all costs. Time to go.

The devil's
unlikely to go anywhere tonight—at least, anywhere he'll cause trouble. It's his first day out of captivity, and as I learned long ago, Mitchell Norton's not
that
stupid.

***

Few things beat the simple pleasure of a comfortable stool at the bar in Murphy's Irish Pub, home of the world's best corned-beef sandwich. That's according to one of the world's foremost experts on corned-beef sandwiches—me! I wash it down with a velvety Guinness stout that goes down like the class slut on prom night. Nice and easy.

That may be a bad sign. My nerves, honed to a jagged edge, rifle me into a whirl of doubt and uncertainty. What the hell, perhaps a few more of these lovelies will help. I drain the glass in a power chug and prepare to order another, but someone behind me beats me to the punch.

"Bartender," she says, "you'd better get this guy another one. He might need a few more before the night is out."

I fidget with my empty glass and stare at the bar; no need to look at her. A wisp of lilac combines with her distinctive New England voice, eliciting instant recognition. The memories flood back as the bar jockey drifts in our direction.

"And you'd better get the lady a single malt scotch, neat," I say.

I avoid eye contact as we reminisce in silence, but I can feel her gaze all over me, like spiders crawling in search of a juicy spot to bite. My damned left foot bounces as if it has a life of its own. Ditto my fingers, drumming an indeterminate tune on the bar.

What is she doing here? And what in hell am I supposed to say to her? Shit! I feel like I'm sixteen again.

The bartender arrives with a new round of liquid courage. Just in time.

I keep my head down and my eyes on the beer. "Hello, Linda, or would you prefer Special Agent Monroe?"

"Hey, it's just we two charter members of the Lonely Hearts Club here."

Her distinctive laugh, a raucous, no-holds-barred blast, conjures pleasant memories—her sense of humor, her keen intellect and insight, her passion. We have
history
.

Most recently, we crossed paths in the pursuit of our common interests, hers strictly legal and sanctioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, mine outside the law and capable of landing me in a six-by-eight box of concrete and steel bars.

I believe she knows enough about me to understand, though she has never spoken of it.

Halfway through my second glass of Guinness, my courage restored, I straighten up and look at her. She wears the same dark blonde hair and suffers the same perpetual slight blush. I stir in my seat. I swear those intense green eyes, like a fluttering lure drawing me to the hook, could flash through any man's defenses like lightning through rain.

Although some might not consider her a knockout, I'm sure they would nonetheless desire to sleep with her. This assumes they're men with the necessary motivations—a pulse, for example—or women who prefer a soft, sensitive touch.

Heat rushes to my face and I take a deep breath to dowse the flame.
I hope to hell she can't see that.
"How did you find me?"

She raises one eyebrow as if to say,
I don't need to answer that, do I?

She answers anyway. "You think you're that big a mystery? Where else would you be—where else
could
you be—on the day they released Mitchell Norton? And Algonquin, Illinois, isn't exactly a metropolis."

It might be funny if it weren't so... not funny. I force a smile and nod.

She huffs and shakes her head. "Can you believe they released that
monster
?"

It's a rhetorical question.

I stare again at the sandy foam hovering over my mahogany beer. "I don't know if I properly thanked you the last time we saw each other. You could have gotten me into some real hot water, had you chosen to."

"Oh, but I did!" She pauses, apparently waiting for some response. "Don't tell me you forgot that hot shower! That would destroy my ego."

The tilt of her head, the crook of her smile, the glint of secret thrill in her eye: they tell the whole story. Oh yes, I remember that shower, and the sofa, and the bed, and the shower again. It's hard to believe Linda was forty-two and I was thirty-two. We were like teenagers.

She was mulling over a marriage proposal at the time, from some stiff congressional aide in Washington DC. She appeared entirely unenthusiastic about it three years ago.

I smile and nod in response. "I suppose you're a respectable married woman now."

She sips her drink and expels a soft sigh. "I decided to keep my freedom a little longer. Besides, in my job, with its long hours and extended absences, it would be only a matter of time before
he
cheated on me too."

The not-so-veiled reference to her first husband doesn't make her sad, exactly, though I find it difficult to read her.

"Why bother? Besides...." She pauses for a gulp of her drink. "This way I can be one of the guys—sleep around a little."

"I suppose you do that often." I think I already know the answer.

She lowers her voice and laces it with irony. "You bet. In fact, the last time was a mere three years ago."

Those clever, teasing eyes sparkle and—

I almost choke on my beer.
Three years? How in God's name is that possible?

She might look better at forty-five than she did at twenty-eight, the
first
time we met. She exudes a certain confidence, a maturity, and shows only a couple lines around those devastating eyes that entice above the rim of her glass. The lilac of her perfume mingles with the coconut of her shampoo in an invisible cloud of delicious splendor. She possesses a certain something, the hard-to-define quality that makes one
sexy
.

She simply arouses.

In California three years ago, we pursued the same monster: Ronald Allen Stegman, serial killer. When we first crossed paths, Linda thought I might somehow be involved with Stegman. She couldn't understand why I was there.

Then he took her.

To abduct a federal agent was stupidity writ large, even for a sociopath like Stegman. When I found him—when I killed him—he was preparing to slice and dice Linda alive, the better to cook her in his sick stew.

She agreed to my one request as payment for saving her life, and we staged it to look as if
she'd
killed him after escaping, wiping out any traces of my involvement. She alone knew the truth. It may have advanced her career, or at least have compensated for her abduction, and it kept me out of the proverbial hot water.

When we saw each other at the hotel bar the next evening, we had some drinks and, as Humphrey Bogart might have said in an old movie, one thing led to another. We could barely keep our hands off each other long enough to get up to her room. We devoured one another, each yearning for the contact, the release that might rescue us from the terrible world we'd recently visited. Mutually convenient and anxious to escape our gruesome reality, we dove into a single night of carnal pleasure.

Neither of us had expected anything more, but it may have affected us at a deeper level than we'd anticipated.

I push the point further. "Dare I ask what brings you to sleepy little Algonquin?"

Both her expression and her voice are pure deadpan. "I'm on vacation."

"You're on vacation in Algonquin, Illinois? Let me guess: Newark was closed for repairs, and you couldn't get a room in Toledo."

She shrugs, drains her glass and motions to the bartender for another. Unspoken warnings buzz in my brain as silence lays over this, our third encounter.

The first occurred seventeen years ago, when I was a young man of eighteen desperate to make sense of the ungodly times. Linda was fresh out of the FBI academy with her Ph.D. in criminal psychology, assigned to a team from their Behavioral Science unit at Quantico, where she now runs a team of her own. The second time was in California—the pursuit of Stegman.

And now? That's simple enough. She's here to stop me from killing Mitchell Norton.

I again spent the afternoon driving around town in search of that fuckin' Tony's invisible car. I thought it was gray or some shade of blue, a big four-door, a late 60's or early 70's model, but after a week of useless searching, I weren't certain of a goddamn thing anymore.

Algonquin was a small town and I should have spotted it by now. Maybe the driver didn't live here. I needed to look in Lake-in-the-Hills, Carpentersville and Dundee, all small enough towns. I'd find that car eventually. Then it would be only a matter of time before I found the blessed angel of my dreams.

My nightmares full of pain and agony, of torture and death, occurred less frequently now that I spent so much time thinking of my vision of beauty in yellow. My headaches weren't nearly as bad as before. Nice to get through the day without taking twenty aspirin, which helped my head but tore the shit outta my stomach. That Diana weren't just the object of my desires; she was like medicine, an angel of mercy.

I still saw her in my mind's eye, and I could see her chariot too. I'd recognize it when I saw it. I had to find it.

Fuck a rubber duck, I
must
find it.

I grabbed some lunch from The Dairy Hut, and sat in my van in the parking lot while I scarfed down my burger and fries. Classical music, which I'd thought was for pussies until recently, soothed me. I observed people walkin' in and out of the fast-food place. I dug people-watching—always had—but I did it now with what the Reaper called "serious intent."

He said I could no longer watch people "without thought or purpose." I must observe their look, their walk, their demeanor. I imagined them as our subjects and wondered what terrible agony they might suffer. The
voice
commanded it.

They participated in the cruel games of my nightmares, where they endured the demon's cutting and gouging, ripping and burning. The mere thought of that dastardly fucker terrified me, let alone the actual sight of the shit he did.

At least, he used to terrify me. Lately, I'd found it easier, even interesting, to watch the sick fucker.

Like last night.

***

The torrential sweat pours off my brow and the salt from it burns my already bloodshot eyes. The intense heat in this place sucks the breath right out of me and crushes me with fatigue. I finally brave opening my eyes on this nightmare journey, and the terrifying visions of my mind are no longer mere visions.

They're alive.

The demon below me dispenses terror, agony and death. These ain't no kids' games. The reaper insists there is "a particular artistry to torture." He calls himself an "artisan."

Strapped to a table before this artisan is a young man, about twenty, and the Reaper has broken all his fingers and toes and stripped the flesh right off them. Fuck a rubber duck! He cut the kid's ears and nose clean off, and his face is a mush of tissue and gore. His shattered kneecaps, exposed through torn flesh, burst into spider-webbed cracks. He soaks in the gut-wrenching stink of his own filthy fluids—blood, puke, piss and shit.

It's fuckin' fascinating! The artisan carves a patchwork design into the boy's abdomen with a serrated knife. The kid screams with eyes closed in clenched agony. This lasts for several minutes until his eyelids pop open and his face goes blank.

"Look at his face," the Reaper says. "Note his eyes—disillusioned, despairing, dead."

"It's unbelievable," I say.

"Not at all. Why did life abandon him? Were the physical injuries that severe? Was the sheer pain and terror unendurable? Was the price of continued life unattainable?"

I have to think about it for a few seconds. "Maybe death offered the only solution, the only way that fuckin' wimp could escape."

"You're learning."

The kid's face remains suspended in perpetual, agonizing terror. The Reaper looks back and forth between the boy and me, and he flares his wicked, joyful grin. I think he admires his own performance.

Why shouldn't he?

***

I shivered against the memory and wiped sweat from my face. Although unthinkable weeks before, I now considered the possibility of committing those horrible deeds. It was hard to fuckin' believe, but I could become an artisan of torture. My nightmare host might have been the Grim Reaper himself, speaking to me in that
voice
like a freight train bellowing its warning—the voice of power. It demanded of me something terrible.

I didn't know why he wanted these things, beyond at least the simple pleasure of them, or why he wanted
me
to do them. Not that it fuckin' mattered. He commanded it. He showed me a new way, gave me a new opportunity and new challenges. I'd damn well better succeed at those new tasks as artisan, or he'd subject me to them as victim. After everything I'd seen that monster do to his subjects, there weren't no fuckin' way I was gonna end up on one of those tables. I'd fuck a rubber duck before I'd have let that happen.

I didn't have no choice. It was outta my hands.

My mental fog cleared and I glanced around the parking lot. A woman, probably in her mid-thirties, carried a tray of milkshakes toward her car.

I whispered, "Hoo-wee, baby! You're built like a brick shit-house."

I popped a hard-on and my whole body tingled. "I wonder where she lives."

Nice choice,
the Reaper said,
but you're not quite ready.

I nodded, accepting his guidance, and tried to chase away another looming headache by cranking up the volume of the radio. Classical music formed a symphony that rattled the windows of my van.

I drove for nowhere in particular, searching for an escape—or an angel of mercy.