The Impaler (2 page)

“One … two … three …” he began, inhaling slowly between
each number as the chorus asked over and over: “
How could you think? How could you think?”

The walls were completely covered with newspaper and magazine clippings of various shapes and sizes—some with headlines and grainy photographs; others just shadowy scraps of paper. There were also some large numbers tacked to the wall directly ahead of him—
9:3
on one side of the door,
3:1
on the other. Donovan could see the numbers clearly. They had been all but burned onto his retinas. But during his days in the chair, he’d also discovered that he could read some of the articles if he focused long enough and blinked in time with the strobe—stuff about the war in Iraq; an archaeological find outside Baghdad; something about astrology and meteor showers. Sometimes the clippings rustled in the breeze from the open door—from the darkened hallway where yellow light often flashed—and Donovan sensed movement.

The chorus began to fade, the hammering stopped, and the songs transitioned again for what had to be
the millionth fucking time!
—the distorted synthesizer, the popitty-pop-pop of the electric drums threatening once more to drive him insane. Donovan lifted his head, wincing from the pain, and for a split second thought he saw light, a passing shadow outside the doorway.

“I know you’re there!” he shouted. The song’s intro was the quietest part; the best time, he’d learned, to call for the man in the ski mask. “Think about my kids, goddammit! They’re eight and six. Zach and Amber are their names. The best kids in the world. Zach plays baseball and Amber takes dancing lessons. We got her a tutu last Christmas. Jesus Christ, don’t do this to them!”

Like the Depeche Mode or New Order or whatever-the-fuck song it was
,
Randall Donovan had played this tune many times, but he hadn’t seen the man in the ski mask since about twenty versions of the song ago.

“Will you know him when he comes for you?” the man in the ski mask had asked.

“I already told you, yes,” Donovan whined. “You want me to say it, okay, yes, I understand my mission. The equation, the nine and the three as written in the stars—I get it! How many more fucking times can I say it, you son of a bitch?”

The man in the ski mask simply left him after that. Yes, that last time had to have been almost two hours ago now. And Donovan was running out of ideas. Sure, he’d already tried the tough-guy routine; tried the taunting and the name-calling and even thought for a moment about doing it all again. But then the hard-driving guitar of the cover version kicked in and he was silent—his throat dry, his voice hoarse, almost gone.

He closed his eyes and gave in to the music; had learned that it was better just to take it, to just let it pass through him rather than to try to block it out. He had slept little during his days in the chair, but he
had
slept. He would try again—would close his eyes and just focus on his breaths. And he was doing quite well—had succeeded in steadying his breathing by about the halfway point in the song—when suddenly the dentist’s chair tipped backwards.

Donovan let out a cry of surprise and opened his eyes, but the flash of the strobe blinded him momentarily.

Then he felt the seat cushion drop—felt it peel away from his sticky buttocks.

Donovan fought the pain at the base of his skull and raised his head just in time to catch the man in the ski mask tightening the straps around his legs, which were now raised and spread apart at right angles from his torso—just like his wife’s had been when she gave birth to Zach and Amber!

“What the fuck are you doing?” Donovan shrieked.

An icy chill hit his body, his muscles flash-frozen in terror. The man in the ski mask had stopped, stood gazing down at Donovan from between his legs. He now wore gloves and a sleeveless white robe cinched at the waist with a thick leather belt. Around his massive biceps were matching leather armbands, and the robe was open in a V that partially exposed his tattooed chest. Donovan couldn’t make out the tattoo, and was about to try reasoning with him again, when something else caught his eye.

The man’s white robe was spattered with blood.

Jesus Christ!
Donovan thought.
Whatever he’s about to do he’s done before!

The man in the ski mask disappeared through the darkened doorway.

“Please don’t do this!” Donovan called after him—cry-ing, his mind racing. “Please, God, seriously, I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll give you all my account numbers right now. My Bank of America PIN is the birthdays of my kids: five-two-three, six-two-eight. Zach is May twenty-third and Amber is June twenty-eighth. It’s the same for my credit cards, my ING account, Franklin Templeton and Vanguard and my—they’re all on the uptick! And we have a house out near Asheville, too. Zach and Amber, they—oh my God, my—
listen!
Can you hear me? You’ve got some big money coming if you play this right. I swear I’ll help you link all the accounts. Tell me how you want to do it. Blindfold me and take me to the bank. No! Just get me out of here and we can get on the computer and I’ll dump everything off to you! Set up an offshore account in a phony name. I know how to do all that. I’m not fucking with you. I mean it. I won’t even look at your—”

FACE!

In the pulse of the strobe the man returned—this time, without his ski mask.

Donovan gasped in horror.

The man’s face!—no, not a face, but a terrifying, gaping mouth with fangs as long as fingers. And his eyes—floating fierce with yellow fire as they flashed down at him like lasers between his legs. Donovan’s mind began to crack, began to scream that this couldn’t be happening.

“But I didn’t
do
anything!” he cried, the tears beginning to flow.

Then he saw the long wooden stake in the man’s right hand.

Donovan shrieked—struggled against his bonds and tried to move his hips—but the man only leveled the stake and ran him through.

The pain was excruciating, incomprehensible in its brutality, but Donovan was silent, his breath ripped from his lungs as the stake tore him apart inside.

Mercifully, in the
flash-flash-flash
of the strobe, Randall Donovan went insane—watched his own death through the eyes of a madman before the stake finally burst from his neck and drained his life onto the floor.

As always, Michelle sits gazing up at him from the bed—her eyes, the crystal of her wineglass sparkling in the candlelight.

“To us,” she toasts. “You, me, and baby make three.”

Strawberry Quik,
he thinks
. She always drinks strawberry Quik.

“What’s a good name for a strawberry?” she asks.

“I won’t let it happen,” he replies
.
“Not this time.”

But the voice comes anyway—out of sight, from behind. Just like it always does.

“How ’bout Elmer?” cackles the man in the closet. “Elmer Stokes is a good name for a strawberry.”

He tries to turn around, tries to cock his hands back à la Spiderman and shoot the webs from his wrists like he did the last time
,
but his muscles are slow and rubbery today, and the hulking, square-headed figure of Elmer Stokes glides right past him.

Pop-pop goes the gun—a silly pop that reminds him of bubble wrap—and then the blood begins to pour from his wife’s head.

Elmer Stokes laughs and disappears into the kitchen.

“You got anything to eat, Agent Dipshit?” he calls out of sight. “I got the munchies from smoking your wife!”

But he does not follow—knows from experience that it is better to stay with Michelle, to spend what little time he has left with her. He rushes to her side, takes her in his arms, and tries to plug up the bullet holes with the bouquet of pink tulips that had only moments ago been her glass of strawberry Quik.

It’s cold,
he thinks.
Her blood is always so cold.

“Cold like a shower to wake you up,” his wife spits through bloody lips.

And with a start Sam Markham opened his eyes—his lungs clawing at the darkness as the wave of despair washed over him. He swallowed hard, gritted his teeth, and pushed the pressure in his sinuses down to his stomach. And after a moment he felt his breathing level off, felt his heart rate slow and his face relax.

He rolled over and stared at the big orange numbers beside his bed—
5:11 … 5:12 … 5:13—
and when his mind had settled, he reached for the nightstand and checked the date on his BlackBerry.

Wednesday, April 5th,
he said to himself.
Almost two weeks since the last one.

He closed his eyes and made a mental note of it.

Later, just after dawn, he sat at the kitchen table watching the ducks dawdle around the pond. He crunched his Wheaties methodically, in time with the waddle of a fat one that was poking around in the reeds. He had many years ago given up analyzing the dream itself; stopped trying to understand exactly why sometimes he saved Michelle and sometimes he didn’t.

True, for a long time he hadn’t dreamed of her at all. Started
up again only after that nonsense in Tampa. No need to ask why. No need to worry. No, just as he had learned to do in another lifetime, if he absolutely
had
to dream of his dead wife, he preferred instead to control and catalog his feelings afterwards. Like a scientist.

Pensive,
he said to himself as the fat duck plopped into the pond and paddled away.
Buoyant? No. Treading water.

He gulped down the last of his milk and dropped the bowl in the sink; walked aimlessly from the kitchen and felt pleased for some reason with how spongy his running shoes felt on the hardwood floors of his new town house. He ended up in the living room, the boxes from Tampa and his ten years with the Bureau stacked before him like crowded gravestones. The move, the promotion to supervisory special agent at Quantico had been quick and painless, no attachments, no regrets—just the way he liked it.

Of course, his people would welcome him, would try to bond with him in subtle ways like inviting him to the occasional poker night or asking him to join their fantasy football league. And when he refused, like he always did, he knew what they would say about their new boss: at first, that he was arrogant and aloof, perhaps snobbish and condescending; then later, that he was simply reserved and private. But he also knew that, in time, his people would grow to respect him—would grow to admire his work ethic and eventually accept his desire for distance.

And for Sam Markham that was enough.

He scanned the boxes and quickly settled on one labeled MISC BEDROOM. If the Bureau was good at anything it was packing, he thought, admiring the organization and care with which they moved him from Tampa.

That’s because you’re a “special” special agent,
a voice said his head.
Not standard protocol for everybody. Just another carrot they dangled to get you back here.

Markham sliced open the MISC BEDROOM box with his
house key, unwrapped some newspaper, and found what he was looking for: a long, wooden plaque with neatly engraved letters that read:

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” Markham whispered.

Dante’s
Inferno
, Canto III, line 9. The warning posted over the gates of Hell. A student in his English class had made it for him in wood shop as a joke, and Markham had enthusiastically hung it above his classroom door. That had been over twelve years ago—on another planet, it seemed—and all at once he felt ashamed when he realized he could no longer remember the name of the student who made it for him.

As always, his first order of business was to hang the plaque above his bedroom door. There had been some women over the years who’d asked him about it; others who’d not even noticed it. He knew there’d be more of each variety here, but he also knew he wouldn’t reveal the plaque’s true meaning any sooner than he would reveal anything meaningful about himself.

When the plaque was straight and secure, he zipped up his hooded sweatshirt and began stretching his hamstrings. It was going to be a bit chilly, he could tell. That was good. He would shoot for six miles today—would follow the road out of the complex and up to the park just as the real estate lady had shown him on Monday.

Markham had just finished knotting his house key into the drawstring of his track pants, when suddenly a knock on his front door startled him. He glanced at his watch.

7:20? Who the hell could that be?

Peering through the peephole, he recognized the man in the gray overcoat immediately: Alan Gates, chief of Behavioral Analysis Unit 2 at Quantico.

His boss.

Markham opened the door.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“They found another body in Raleigh,” Gates said. “Male, spiked like the others, but forensics came across something interesting. It’s ours now.”

Markham was silent for a moment, then nodded and let him inside.

“How much do you know about the Rodriguez and Guer-rera murders?” Gates asked. The unit chief sat across from Markham at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of instant coffee and gazing out at the ducks.

“Not much,” Markham said. “Only what came across the Tampa wire back in February for the Gang Unit. MS-13, they seemed to think it was. The brutality of it, the victims being from the gang’s territory. Only reason they brought it to my attention was because of how they were killed. Morbid curiosity more than official business.”

“
Mara Salvatrucha,
” Gates said. “Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans mostly. Raleigh’s been having trouble with them these last couple of years, but the local homicide and gang units want to keep the media out of it. Don’t want to give them any more recognition than they’re already getting. That’s one of the reasons why the details of the lawyer’s murder were kept out of the papers—why the media has yet to make the connection to Rodriguez and Guerrera.”