The Watcher in the Wall (16 page)

The kid still didn’t reply, but the revolver wavered.

“So, listen,” Gruber told him. “I do my thing, tape it, sell it to my guy. He sends me the money, we settle up. I do the first kid on Friday, that’s half your money right there. A couple more days, maybe, for the second kid, then my debt’s repaid, you go home happy. Sound good?”

The thug stayed quiet. Still hadn’t lowered his big-ass gun. Seemed to be mulling it over, disgust and impatience written all over his face.

“It’s a good freaking deal,” Gruber told him. “Do you want your money, or no?”

>>>

Donovan stared at Gruber.
Felt the weight of the Smith & Wesson in his hand and ached to pull the trigger. Kids, he was talking about. Projects. Footage. Call it what you want, he was talking about sending two kids to their grave, selling the tapes. The thought made Donovan’s stomach recoil.

Bring back our money, or leave this dude in the ground.

Rodney had been clear: no coming home until the job was done.
Not unless you want to sweep floors your whole life.

This was a solution, messed-up as it was. It would mean babysitting this freak until Friday, at the bare minimum, but it would settle the debt, and that’s what Rodney had sent him to do.

Settle the debt.

Donovan straightened. He lowered the gun. “Friday,” he said. “But if you fuck with me, dude, you’ll be dead by the weekend.” He surveyed the mess. “Y’all got anything to eat in here, or what?”

<
60
>

Something was itching
in the back of Kirk Stevens’s mind.

Stevens and Windermere had returned to Louisville. Traded the rental car for a couple of desks at the regional office on the east side of town. They’d connected with a local agent named Wheeler, a fair-skinned, middle-aged guy who didn’t say much, but who’d hooked them up with computers and a secure link back to Mathers in Minneapolis. They’d settled into their new digs, pored over what they knew. Racked their brains for another lead on Randall Gruber.

They hadn’t made much progress yet. But there was something bothering Stevens, some kind of clue he was missing.

He’d combed through the Death Wish forums when Andrea had first brought him the case, figured he should get a read on just what kind of people frequented the site. Realized pretty quick that most of the users weren’t in any obvious danger—more hobbyists than bona
fide suicide risks. Some of them had been active for four or five years on the boards, had written tens of thousands of posts on the subject. They were experts, sure, but in a field where the only true experts were dead.

But some of the users clearly needed help. Stevens had read through a handful of sad stories—
Wife left me and I have nothing left
, or
The bank’s coming to foreclose in the morning
, or
Just got the test results; the doctor couldn’t look me in the eye
—and felt a growing numbness in his chest.

He’d read a post by a paraplegic, a young man in Tallahassee who’d paralyzed himself diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool. The man wrote that he’d had enough of being useless. He was sick of watching able-bodied people do the things he used to do, the things he couldn’t anymore.

I’ll go insane if I keep on like this,
he wrote
. I can’t come to grips with my injury, and it’s eating me up inside.

Stevens had reached for the phone, ready to call Tallahassee, the local law enforcement, get this kid on their radar. Happened to scroll down the page as he was dialing, realized the guy had already gone and done it. Too late.

He’d stopped reading the forums pretty quick after that. Figured, there were thirty-five thousand suicide victims in the country every year; he’d drive himself crazy trying to save them all. Figured this was triage, and at that moment, saving Ashley Frey was about the only thing that mattered.

Of course, that was when Ashley Frey was a person of interest, another potential suicide victim. Not a predator.

Stevens fired up the Death Wish forums again. He wasn’t looking for victims this time, or hobbyists. He was looking for a third brand of user he’d discovered in his reading, the creeps who filled the comment boxes
underneath the sad stories, urging the miserable to go ahead and kill themselves already. They were the fetishists who lurked around the forums in hopes that they could witness death like spectators, and it was here, Stevens hoped, that he would pick up the trail to Randall Gruber.

•   •   •

The breakthrough came in an older post, dated a few months previous. A middle-aged man, a drug addict.
Lonely and tired of failing at life,
he wrote. The fetishists jumped all over him.

Stevens followed the thread, read thirty or forty responses, from fetishists and sympathizers alike. Felt his Spidey sense start to tingle as he kept reading, knew he was on the right path, even if he didn’t know yet what he was aiming to find.

Just go ahead and do it,
one of the fetishists had written.
Head on the train tracks. Don’t forget to bring a GoPro.

That malignant brand of human was nicknamed DeathAngel, and seemed to be a fixture on the site. Stevens made a note of his profile and kept reading down the thread.

The original poster—a man named N33dlep0int—had stayed tuned in to the thread for about a week. Then, abruptly, and in the middle of an argument about technique by a couple of spectators, he’d cut in:

I’m going to do it. Enough bullshit. Chicagoland, watch the news tonight. And sorry about your commute.

There was a slew of replies underneath, either words of encouragement or pleas to reconsider. But N33dlep0int hadn’t replied, not to anyone. On page four of the thread, DeathAngel posted a link.

I think this was our boy,
he wrote.
Click through. Some news footage, but nothing juicy.

It was a link to a news article, some Chicago-area site. “Commuters Delayed by Suicide on the BNSF Line.” Details were sketchy, just a video clip of a reporter in front of a Metra train.

“Witnesses say the man threw himself in front of the five forty-five out of Union Station,” the reporter said. “Commuter trains were halted as much as an hour, causing no shortage of headaches to those trying to get home.”

Trying to find something better,
DeathAngel wrote.
Hoping for amateur footage or, if not, a security camera.

Keep us posted,
someone else replied.
Would love to see a better angle of this.

But the thread petered out about a month after the original post, three weeks after N33dlep0int’s real-life identity, one Roger Graham, had jumped in front of the train.

No luck,
DeathAngel wrote.
I’ve contacted all my sources, and nobody has anything. Guess we’re going to have to make do with our imaginations, kiddos.

Thank God,
Stevens thought. He clicked through to DeathAngel’s profile, found a history of all the posts he’d made on the site. At the top of the page, he found what he was looking for. Another thread with a tragic end:
TEEN
SUICIDE IN MINNESOTA
.

Got the hookup on some sweet webcam footage,
DeathAngel wrote.
Subscription required, but well worth the price.

He’d attached a link. Stevens clicked it, waited as his browser loaded up the page, feeling his stomach start to churn, knowing this was Adrian Miller, knowing he couldn’t unsee what he was about to watch.

But the link only brought Stevens to a password-protect screen. No
decoration, no website name, just a black background and a couple of white boxes,
USERNAME
and
PASSWORD
.

Stevens stared at the screen. Felt his cop instincts humming like a live wire, knew this was the right track. Someone was selling footage of Adrian Miller’s death. Somewhere through this portal, Stevens knew, there was a way to find Randall Gruber.

All he needed was to know how to crack it.

<
61
>

Madison’s phone buzzed
just as first period ended. A text message from Brandon.
Hey. You around?

Just got out of class,
she wrote back, dodging people in the hall as she typed.
What’s up?

She was almost at her locker when her phone buzzed again. Only, this time it kept buzzing. Was he actually
calling
her?

She ducked into an alcove. Composed herself as the phone kept vibrating in her hand, tried to calm down, get a grip. She accepted the call. “Hello?”

A pause that seemed to stretch forever. Then: “Madison?”

It was
him
. Madison felt an electric current jolt through her body. “Hey,” she said. “Hi. You actually
called
. Is it as bad as you thought it would be?”

Brandon laughed, a fast, nervous laugh. “It’s pretty bad,” he said. “I’m kind of freaking out right now. I told you I speak pretty funny.”

“You don’t have to be scared,” she told him. “I don’t care. It’s just nice to hear that you’re, like, a real person.”

His voice
was
kind of funny. A little hint of a lisp, just something a bit off. Of course he didn’t want to call her. People probably gave him all kinds of shit every time he opened his mouth.

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” he said. “I feel like we really have a connection. Like we’re really ready to do something huge together.”

Madison held the phone to her ear, surveyed the hallway. Kids at their lockers, laughing, texting, shooting mean looks her way. Nudging each other and whispering, giggling.

That’s the girl. That’s Rudolph. What a loser.

Screw you,
she thought.
Screw all of you. I’m talking to my boyfriend and he’s a real person and he’s cute and awesome, and we’re going to leave you all in this shithole and do amazing things together, just watch.

“So let’s do it,” she said. “Let’s run away, just the two of us, Thelma and Louise, or whatever.”

She waited for Brandon to reply. He didn’t. “We could move to California or something,” she said. “Or, hell, Canada. Or Europe, or Thailand, or wherever you want. We can leave our shitty lives and be together forever, just the two of us.”

There was another pause, long enough that Madison wondered if the call had dropped. Realized, no, that Brandon just wasn’t answering.

“Or, you know, whatever,” she said, hating how desperate and lonely and lame she sounded. “It was just a suggestion, you know? What were
you
thinking?”

She heard him inhale. “I was thinking about the plan,” he told her. “What we always talk about doing. I’m thinking that now is the time.”

“I thought we talked about being together,” she said. “I just feel like everything would be okay if we could just hang out together.”

“We will be together,” Brandon told her. “After we’re dead, we’ll be immortal. They’ll never say my name without saying yours, too.”

“Well, yeah,” Madison said. “But who says we have to be dead? I just want to get out of here. And don’t you want to see what it’s like to be face-to-face? To, like, actually have a conversation together?

“Come on,” she said. “What do you say? Who cares about suicide? Let’s just freaking bail.”

Another agonizing silence. Then: “I can’t do it,” Brandon said. “I can’t see you. I’m sorry.”

“Why not?”

“I’m just . . . I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve,” he said, and the lisp was back, a stutter. “I’m afraid I’ll see you and I won’t want to go through with it anymore.”

Madison felt a little thrill. The hint of a smile. “And what’s so bad about that?”

“I don’t want to live,” Brandon said. “I just want to die, Madison. I thought you were coming with me. I thought we were in this together.”

The smile faded, fast. “We are,” Madison told him. “You and me, together, nobody else. I just . . . thought it would be nice to spend some time with you first, is all.”

“We’ll have all the time in the world,” Brandon said. “Once we’re both dead, Madison, we’ll have nothing but time.”

Kids were dispersing from the hall headed for second period. Madison stood in the alcove and watched them go, imagined Brandon’s face in the pictures he’d sent her, those sad, lonely eyes. Wondered why he couldn’t just want to live with her, just run away together.

Wondered why she wasn’t good enough to convince him life didn’t have to be so bad.

“I need you, Madison,” he said. “I can’t do this much longer. Are you with me, or not?”

The bell rang. She was officially late, but who cared? This call was more important. And if she answered wrong, Madison knew that Brandon would hang up the phone and disappear from her life and probably go off and do something awful. She couldn’t have that.

So she lied. “I’m with you,” she told him. “You and me, forever.”

<
62
>

Gruber turned off
the voice distorter and put down the phone, satisfied with himself. Madison was invested, her escape fantasies deflected. She would follow him to the grave and believe it was romance. All things considered, Gruber figured he’d done pretty well, especially when he factored in the sketched-out kid with a
Dirty Harry
revolver listening in to the whole spiel from the couch.

“You have to develop a rapport with them,” Gruber told the kid. “It’s
a fine line. They have to get to know you, trust you, but there’s gotta be a reason they can’t be
with
you, you know? Otherwise . . .” He laughed, gestured to himself. “Well, I mean, the gig would be up pretty quickly, right?”

The kid looked at the burger he was holding. Grimaced, and put it back in the bag. “Yeah,” he said. “I get it, man.”

The kid’s name was Donovan. Whether that was a first name or a last, Gruber couldn’t be sure, but he’d listened in on the guy’s phone call last night, to his boss or whoever. Made sure he was explaining the situation properly, the two prospects. Gruber figured he would have to put the screws to SevenBot a little bit, hold out for more money up front, but he knew the Dylan Price footage would be worth the investment. And DarlingMadison would be even better.