Vengeance is Blind: Three Scott Drayco Short Mysteries (3 page)

The sergeant ushered Drayco into an
eight-by-ten room painted an appropriate icy white where an
occupant was waiting, wearing waist and ankle chains and handcuffed
to a metal table. “You know the drill,” the sergeant grunted,
nodding at the panic button located at eye level above the metal
chair where Drayco sat down.

The sergeant left, and the five-inch-thick
door thudded slowly behind him. The clang of the lock signaled
there was no longer an easy way to get in or out.

Drayco turned to get a good look at his
adversary. Wyse was near sixty, but his face was bereft of wrinkles
under closely cropped auburn hair with only a smattering of gray.
He could pass for a respectable corporate executive—if it weren’t
for the orange jumpsuit and the steel hardware holding him in
place.

Drayco stretched out his long legs, trying
to get as comfortable as he could, but it felt like the ambient
temperature had gone down ten degrees. Great. His fever must be
spiking. He straightened his shoulders and focused on the eyes of
the alleged serial killer.

The man’s overall appearance might be
unexceptional, but his eyes were not. Looking into them was like
shining a light into dark water and watching ordinary objects
twisted into distorted, colorless shapes.

Drayco shouldn’t have agreed to this
interview or whatever it was Wyse had engineered. But he couldn’t
turn down a chance of getting useful information for a conviction.
Or at least fill in a psychological profile. He focused on his own
breathing, slow, deep, steady.

Wyse, for his part, studied Drayco as a
technician would a lab rat—right before dissecting it. After two
minutes of the staring contest by Drayco’s estimate, a knowing
smile crept across Wyse’s face. “You’re not well, Scott.”

Drayco cleared his throat. “I’m well enough.
You wanted me, Wyse, here I am. Either talk or I head back to bed
with a couple of pills and a hot toddy, heavy on the bourbon.”

Without looking down at his hands, Wyse
traced concentric circles on the table with his finger, as much as
the handcuffs would allow. Small circles at first, expanding, then
small again. “You don’t know me, but I know you quite well. I’ve
been following your career for years. Fifteen years.”

A hollow burning settled in the pit of
Drayco’s stomach, and he didn’t think it was from the virus. “I
didn’t know I had a fan club. If you wanted my autograph, I would
have sent it along with the nice sergeant out there. You could hang
it on the wall in your cell. Free of charge.”

“I wouldn’t call it a fan club. After all,
you killed my son.”

That wasn’t the way Drayco remembered it.
Fifteen years ago, he was looking forward to a career as a concert
pianist, when his hand and arm were mangled during a violent
carjacking. But as Drayco discovered in his research this morning,
the punk who’d nearly killed Drayco during the crime, Martin
Hafften, was Wyse’s son.

“You’ve got it backwards, Wyse, don’t you
think?”

“Perhaps you didn’t kill him directly, but
your testimony put him away and he was murdered in a prison riot
one year later. He was only nineteen.”

Drayco shook his head. “If you want to blame
someone, blame the other inmates. Or Martin himself for his bad
choices.” Drayco narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps this is misdirected
blame? At the trial, the only mention of Martin’s biological
father—you—was that he’d run off and disappeared when the boy was
five. Hardly qualifies you for Father of the Year.”

Wyse’s enigmatic smile never faltered. “I
had to leave. It was for the best.”

“Whose? Yours or his?”

Defense evidence at the trial noted Martin’s
stepfather married the boy’s mother two months after Wyse vanished.
Perhaps there’d been an affair between the wife and Martin’s
stepfather? Or Wyse’s disappearance was based on something far
worse. With the formative pieces of a theory coalescing in the back
of his mind, Drayco blurted out, “Barry Favata.”

Wyse’s face registered no emotion. “What
about him?”

“One of your victims. After leaving a
nightclub, he was found dumped in an alley with evidence of being
sodomized before he was strangled. According to my FBI contacts,
the wire used to bind his hands and feet is the same type of string
harpists use.”

“So?”

Drayco pointed to Wyse’s hands, cuffed to
the table. “You have calluses on the pads of your fingers. Harpists
get such calluses.”

Wyse smiled. “While I appreciate the music
lesson, Scott—you don’t mind if I call you Scott, do you?—I have a
feeling such wire could be used for many things. Those FBI contacts
you mentioned have presumably found the harp in my house, but
again, hardly damning evidence. Just another point of connection I
have with you, Scott.”

Drayco eyed him warily. “I don’t play the
harp. Never have.”

“Ah, but you were a pianist, weren’t you?
The up-and-coming prodigy, New York Philharmonic at age twelve,
world travel, recordings. Until my son ended all of that by
destroying your music career and forcing you into law enforcement
instead. Tell me, Scott. How does it feel to have all of your hopes
and dreams dashed in mere seconds? By a ‘two-bit punk’, I believe
the prosecutor called my boy. Did it give you satisfaction to
testify against him, to put him away, send him to his death?”

Drayco hesitated. At the time, part of him
had felt anger, then relief. But satisfaction? He shook his head.
“What about you, Wyse—did you enjoy hurting those boys, feeling
them struggle for each breath as you wound the wire tightly around
their necks?”

Wyse stopped tracing his concentric circles
for a moment. “I imagine anyone labeled a serial killer might enjoy
the act of snuffing out a life or he wouldn’t do it to begin with.
Speaking hypothetically, of course.”

“The evidence against you is much more than
hypothetical. No doubt your attorney has gone over it.”

“You’re not going to spew forth hackneyed
detective clichés like ‘cooperate with us and it’ll go easier on
you’? I expected more from you, Scott.”

Drayco’s throat felt like sandpaper rubbed
into raw dust, and he stifled a cough. “Since we’re speaking
hypothetically, let me tell you a story. A story about a boy from
an all-American family in an ordinary small town. Sounds fairly
dull. Except as the child grows up, he becomes aware he has urges
not considered normal by society, an obsession with other boys. But
this boy grows up, tries to do the right thing by getting married
and having a child, only to realize it’s a sham and the urges never
went away. Unable to keep from acting on those impulses, worried
what he might do, he leaves his wife and son and disappears.
Without the anchor of home life, his urges become a compulsion.
Then the man kills his first victim, and finds the thrill becomes
an addiction demanding more thrills, more victims. What do you
think of my story so far, Wyse?”

Wyse’s hands lay still on the table. “It’s a
fascinating tale, Scott. But I don’t think I’d send it off to a
publisher any time soon.”

“The ending hasn’t been written yet but I
have a feeling it’s not far away.”

Wyse lurched in his chair, sending the
chains clanking as he leaned forward toward Drayco. In another
room, the watching police and FBI agents had probably jumped up,
too, ready to push their own panic button.

Wyse continued his unblinking stare into
Drayco’s eyes for a full minute. “I have a little tale for you,
too. A story of a boy whose mother abandoned him at age five,
leaving him, his sister and father to fend for themselves. This
woman had taught her son to play the piano and, perhaps, as a
desperate means of holding on to a piece of her, the boy pursued a
piano career. Until that career ended abruptly at age twenty-one.
Which makes a third way in which we’re linked, Scott. Your mother
left you when you were five and I abandoned my son when he was
five.”

For the moment, Drayco pushed aside
knowledge Wyse had checked into his background, uncovering
information not too many people knew. Where was it all going? Why
did Wyse feel such a need to connect with him, part taunting, part
reaching out?

“As a matter of fact,” Wyse continued, “My
son would be the same age you are now, mid-thirties. I wonder,
Scott—when your mother held you, did she realize she loved you too
much? Is that why she left? You’re such a pretty one, aren’t you?
I’ll bet you were a beautiful little boy, just like my Marty.”

Now they were getting down to the deep, dark
nitty-gritty, the heart of it all—what Drayco had intuited earlier,
the true reason for Wyse’s sudden disappearance from his son’s
life. Why he wouldn’t want to be around a “beautiful little boy.”
It wasn’t a nice thought, not at all.

Wyse was watching him differently now with
his wide, unblinking gray eyes. Drayco tried to mask his discomfort
at the close inspection. Just a gambit the man was using to unnerve
his opponent. As if the damn flu bug wasn’t already making Drayco
feel he’d been thrust through a warped Carollian looking glass.

“Do you know why I play the harp, Scott? I
love the feel of the cool strings vibrating against my skin. It’s a
very sensual experience from an instrument depicted as a tool of
angels. But perhaps I am an angel. The first book of Samuel in the
Bible says, ‘Let our lord now command thy servants to seek out a
man who is a cunning player on a harp. And it shall come to pass,
when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, he shall play with his
hand and thou shalt be well.’ So you see? I am the cunning player
on the harp. Making everything well.”

“I’d say you’re more of a modern-day
Orpheus, charming saints and devils alike with that harp playing of
yours.”

“It depends upon your definition of
charm.”

“To charm, as in being fascinating or
pleasing. Charming as in using personal wiles to gain influence.
Charming as in being able to lure young men like Barry Favata into
a false sense of security before leading them to their deaths.”

“Oh dear, now you are starting to sound like
clichéd Johnny one-note detectives. I’d much rather talk about you,
Scott.”

“Why? You’ve mentioned three nodes of
connection, music, abandonment and your son, whose death you blame
me for, but I still can’t see why you wanted me here. I doubt
you’re that lonely.”

“Lonely? I’m plenty happy inside my own
thoughts. I brought you here for absolution, my boy.”

“You’re admitting to the murders?”

“Not my absolution, Scott. Yours.”

Drayco had slumped down in his seat, but
hauled himself up straight again. “I’ll admit I’m no saint, Wyse,
but I don’t require absolution from a serial killer.”

“Alleged serial killer,” Wyse said, with a
smile. “I remember when you gave testimony at my son’s trial,
Scott. I was there in disguise watching the proceedings. You had
quite a presence for such a young man. Strapping, self-assured,
articulate. Most impressive. The type I would love to get to know
better. Yet part of me hated you, hated the part you were playing
in convicting my son.”

Wyse leaned forward a little more. “I’ve
thought of you every day since, Scott. I found myself scanning
crowds of people, looking for you.”

Drayco recalled the folder he’d seen earlier
showing pictures of the serial killer’s victims, including Barry
Favata. All of them were tall, with light blue eyes and dark hair.
All could pass for younger versions of Drayco. Wyse’s words might
be another chess gambit, the physical resemblance a red herring,
but why else would Wyse have asked to speak only to him?

“I find it hard to believe you’d go out of
your way to kill young men because they reminded you of me. That’s
giving me far too much credit for your own monstrous behavior.”

“We’re still very much in the realm of the
hypothetical, Scott. I think your constabulary friends who are
watching us right now are going to be terribly disappointed if
they’re expecting a confession. I hope they’re enjoying our
tête-a-tête
as much as I am.”

Drayco was certain there was absolutely
nothing about this man or this case his “constabulary friends” were
enjoying. Drayco was no stranger to crime and on a first-name basis
with the darkest demons of human behavior he’d crossed paths with
in his career. When he was in the FBI’s BAU, he’d developed some
profiles of killers like Wyse.

But none of that experience could soften the
blow of being the catalyst—the model—for a series of brutal
murders.

Drayco steeled his features despite the
beads of sweat forming on his face. He pulled his jacket tighter
around him. “Is your conscience trying to find a scapegoat? You
know what Gandhi said. ‘Cowards can never be moral.’”

“But what is morality? In some cultures
around the world, torture and cannibalism are considered moral.
Rape is considered
de rigeur
in others. Perhaps the person
who raped and murdered those young men is from such a place. Of
course, experts say rape isn’t about sex. It’s all about power or
revenge. People don’t rape those they admire.”

Wyse turned his palms upward. “I would never
hurt you personally, Scott. I need you too much.”

“Why?”

“You are my inspiration.” Wyse fell back
against his chair, a broad smile on his face.

His words were like scattered echoes in a
dense fog. Drayco held onto the arms of his chair for support as a
wave of lightheadedness hit him. Years ago, he’d played a concert
in some forgotten auditorium in the dead of winter with a
101-degree fever, puking his guts out during intermission. The show
must go on.

“You look comfortable, for an inmate chained
to a table. Since you’ve been trapped for years in a prison of your
own making, maybe this feels like home.”

Wyse rattled the chains around his feet,
“It’s like harp pedals. With those pedals, I can control pitches of
strings and change them to anything I wish.”