Omorphi (2 page)

The
Diefthynsi Antimetópisis Eidikón Eglimáton Vías
insignia loudly and proudly displayed on the door of his white Citroën C4 paved the way for easy access to the estate. He peered up at the massive, four-story stone structure through his open window. “Looks like a damn castle,” he muttered to himself as the gates slowly opened.

“
Taxíarchos!
Taxíarchos!
DAEEB!
” his colonel shouted as he pulled into the cobblestone drive, the Citroën’s tires issuing a soft screech as he came to a halt.

“No need to tell them I’m here, Apostolos! They see the car!”

The man saluted crisply and apologized.

General Sotíras climbed out of the car and cursed the heat and humidity. He’d succeeded in perspiring through his second crisp white shirt of the day, and it was only one in the afternoon. “Get me the head paramedic!”

“No need, General Sotíras.” Colonel Apostolos gestured to the coroner’s van.

“
Skata
,” he swore softly as his heart sank. He had known it was only a matter of time before Vasilis Castlios killed someone. Again. “Sick” was a pathetic word for people like him.

G
ENERAL
S
OTÍRAS
took in the expansive fourth-floor room. It could have been a ballroom at one time, he supposed, with its marble floor, enormous fireplace, great arched windows, and balconies overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. He returned his attention to the crime scene before him. Some sort of macabre stone altar stood in the center of the room, rivulets of blood making slow, jagged treks down the side of it to puddle on the polished marble. The pooling crimson was losing its sheen as it cooled and dried black around the edges. He turned his attention to the two paramedics who worked frantically on the young man on the floor. Rather, boy. The emaciated kid was small, couldn’t be more than twelve. The general looked at Paulo, the third paramedic, who only shook his head in dismay.

“He’s alive!” the female paramedic shouted.

“Holy Mother of God! He’s back!” the male paramedic shouted.

Paulo added his aid. “Intubate him! Quickly, now!”

The female paramedic shouted triumphantly as she inserted the tube down the boy’s throat and forced air into his lungs with each compression of the Ambu bag. “He’s breathing!”

G
ENERAL
S
OTÍRAS
had always prided himself on his outward reserve, yet he couldn’t help but glare his hatred at Vasilis Spyros Kakios Castlios. Handcuffed and restrained by two of his best officers, Vasilis was nonetheless arrogant, defiant. The violent pedophile was the wealthiest man in Greece, and General Sotíras suspected he had more than half the police force and judges on the dole. Castlios’s repeated crimes seemed to magically drift off the radar of his superiors and Sotíras was always left to clean up the mess. He prayed this time would be different. He’d nearly killed a boy.

“I’ll have your job for this, Nicos,” Vasilis sneered as he fought his restraints.

The familiar address only served to further infuriate General Sotíras. “Take him.”

The two officers hauled a shouting Vasilis away. “I’ll have your job, Sotíras!”

T
HE
young man lay comatose, the rhythmic beep of the cardiac monitor droning his heartbeat on the air as General Sotíras looked down at him. The boy had quickly been dubbed “the boy who put Castlios away” by the media. The monitor skipped a beat every so often, reminding him that the kid’s heart was in bad shape. They had yet to identify him, and some insistent, faraway memory niggled at the back of the general’s mind like a rabid tapeworm. He could swear he’d seen the kid before but couldn’t place him.

“Ah, there you are, General.”

Nicos turned and shook hands with the doctor. “Dr. Jordanou, good to see you again. Will he live?”

Dr. Jordanou’s eyes filled with regret. “I’m sorry. I don’t have good news for you, General.”

“I need him alive.”

“General,” the doctor began, “
if
he lives, and
if
he wakes from the coma, and
if
he hasn’t suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen, he won’t be able to answer your questions. His larynx was crushed by the strangulation.”

General Sotíras rubbed his tired eyes with thumb and forefinger in frustration. Dr. Jordanou took him by the elbow and led him to a plastic chair across the room. “Sit, Nicos.”

Nicos didn’t flinch at the familiar address. Theodoros Jordanou had become a good friend over the years and worked wonders with victims of violent crimes.

Theo took the seat next to him. “You still believe Castlios killed his wife.”

It was a statement, not a question, but Nicos nodded anyway.

“And you still believe Castlios is responsible for the deaths of three boys.”

Again, a statement. “More. Seventeen young men and boys fitting his victim profile have disappeared over the past ten years.”

“Let’s assume the boy wakes and can communicate. Do you honestly expect it to make a difference? Men of Castlios’s wealth can always make things disappear.”

“After a showing of evidence, the high court allowed us to hold him until the boy wakes and can testify. It’s clear that he held the boy captive for some time. I’m speaking years! Years! There’s no telling how young the boy was when Castlios began abusing him!” His voice had risen to an unacceptable decibel in the quiet of the room, and he took deep breaths in an effort to calm down. “You should have seen that room, Theo, my God. In all my years in violent crime, I’ve never seen anything like that godforsaken torture chamber in the sky.”

Theo winced. “I’ve seen the wounds and scars. I can only imagine.”

“We haven’t been able to identify him. Can you pinpoint his age? I have the search criteria set at ten to fifteen years.”

Theo clucked his disagreement. “Despite his small size, he’s at least sixteen years old. More likely seventeen or eighteen. The maxillofacial surgeon’s report indicates that his wisdom teeth are in, though the upper ones have been extracted. They don’t appear until age seventeen or so.”

Nicos considered this for a long moment. “Strange for a street urchin to have had his wisdom teeth removed, isn’t it?”

“Mmm,” Theo agreed. “He’s also had a tonsillectomy, and there is evidence of a myringotomy. At some point in his past, this young man was well cared for.”

“Myringotomy?”

“Microscopic tubes in the eardrums. A very common procedure for young children with chronic ear infections.” Theo flipped through the medical chart, withdrew a small manila envelope, and handed it to Nicos. “Dental x-rays. Put a query out using his dental records.”

Nicos took the envelope and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’ll do that. I should have thought of it sooner.”

Theo rubbed his shoulder. “You look exhausted. I’ll give you something to help you sleep.”

Nicos nodded absently. “Do you have enough security?”

“Security, yes. Protection from the media, no. Some bastard snuck in here last night and took pictures of him. We had him hauled down to the precinct.”

Nicos stood wearily. “I’ll give you more men. ’Round the clock.”

The monitor skipped again, and a deathly silence hung in the air. Theo rose and went to check on the boy. His heart began again as Theo held a stethoscope to his chest.

“What’s wrong with his heart?”

“Starvation always weakens the heart.” Theo stroked the boy’s blond curls from his forehead. “He looks like an angel. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“The boy should look familiar to you.”

Nicos tore his eyes from the angelic visage to narrow on Theo. “How so?”

“If I hadn’t read the news reports myself and known that Castlios’s son died in that horrible car accident with his mother thirteen years ago, I’d swear it was him.”

Nicos looked down at the boy again. That was it. The overly ambitious tapeworm stilled in his mind. The kid didn’t just look like Castlios’s son. The kid looked
identical
to the five-year-old boy they’d pulled from the wreckage so long ago. It had been his first case involving Vasilis Castlios. The case that began the suspicion. The suspicion that had slowly burned into a gnawing hatred for Castlios in his gut over the years. “It can’t be. The boy died.”

“Of course it isn’t. Though, you must admit, this boy bears a striking resemblance to his son.”

Three months later….

UPSTATE NEW YORK, June, 2011

N
ERO
S
ANTINI
sat back in his leather judge’s chair and gazed out at the New York skyline from his thirtieth-floor window. They were having an unusually hot and humid June, but the sky was clear, and the late evening sunset was a fiery splash across the horizon. It shone with crimson, a neon blood-red, threaded with streaks of red-orange and yellow, as if a giant, ethereal hand had crushed and smeared the sun across the sky.

Managing his clients’ overseas legal affairs had him exhausted, and the global financial turmoil of late was only serving to drain him completely.

His second desk phone trilled quietly, the one that received international calls. His secretary had cleverly covered it in red tacky paper and labeled it the “bat phone.” Each line was assigned to a different country and labeled with “bat” in its respective language. His secretary was a loving woman with a warped sense of humor.
Rópalo
was trilling insistently. He looked at his watch. It was five fifteen in the morning in Greece. Frowning at the odd hour, he punched the button and answered, “Santini.”

“Aniketos Sotíras.”

Nero smiled. When he needed a Greek client vetted before rendering legal services, General Nicos Sotíras was more than happy to accommodate him. In the interest of international trade and promoting the welfare of their respective countries, of course. And for a not-so-modest fee, of course. They’d grown to respect one another over the years and enjoyed a congenial friendship. “Good morning, General. To what do I owe the honor of your call?”

Nero’s brow knitted, his frown deepening as he listened intently for no less than fifteen minutes as Nicos recited the events of the past three months and made his ultimate request.

“Nicos, this news is almost too difficult to believe.”

“No one is more surprised than I am.”

“Why hasn’t he testified?”

“The doctors tell me he’s too psychologically fragile, and if we push him, we could ruin the progress he’s made to date.”

“Why the States?”

“It’s where he wants to go. He believes the Americans are progressive with recovery from these things and… more accepting of gay people than our beloved country is. He also claims there is some rare facility in New York, in your area in fact, that can help him. I believe he said the name was Wellton or Wellington, something like this. Listen, Nero, I wouldn’t ask, but I know you know people, and I need to keep him safe. I know you can give him protection.”

Nero thought it rather resourceful of the young man to have found Wellington Ranch in upstate New York. “Castlios is dead. Why does he need protection?”

Nicos was quiet for a long moment before he answered. “The media have been rabid and unkind, to say the least, and… and there were multiple assailants, Nero. Powerful people. How do you say it in English? The top of the food chain?”

Nero gritted his teeth in disgust. “Is he a danger to himself? Suicidal?”

“The doctors tell me no.”

Nero nodded and then remembered Nicos couldn’t see him. “Let me make a call, and I’ll call you back. Stay in your chair.”

“
Efharistó
, thank you, Nero.”

“
Va bene
, Nicos,” Nero responded in his native Italian. “Okay.” He hung up and reached for the other phone. He punched in a number and waited for it to ring.

“Nero?”

“
Ciao
, Rob, how does it go?”

Dr. Roberto Villarreal smiled at Nero’s flubbing of “how goes it.” “It goes just fine. The kids are great, as always.”

“Rob, I have a special case, and I need to know if you can help.”

Rob listened for several minutes before answering. “I can house him, but doubt I can treat him, particularly given a language barrier.”

“He speaks English.”

“Though 30 percent of the world’s population speaks English, it doesn’t mean they can communicate effectively.”

“Rob, tell me, can you take him?”

“I specialize in
pediatric
psychiatry for abused male
children
.
Not
young adults.”

“I’m told he was held captive for so long he remains a child in many ways.”

“Nero,” Rob groaned. He could never
not
help an abused kid, and Nero knew it, particularly a kid who’d been as badly abused as this one, but this was outside of his professional box.

“It’s important.”

“I get that. Will you take a referral to another psychiatrist?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Three reasons. The boy knows about Wellington, he wants to go there, and I can protect him if he’s with you.”

“Why on earth does he need protection?”

“The media and, more importantly, all but one of his assailants remain at large. They’re powerful people who don’t want him to testify against them.”

Rob shook his head to himself. “You try my patience, Nero. Yeah, okay. When?”

“I’ll call you back.” Nero hung up and picked up the bat phone again.

“Sotíras!” Nicos barked into the phone.

“I have a doctor and a place for the boy at Wellington Ranch. When will you put him on the plane?”

“He put himself on a plane five hours ago. He lands in four hours thirty minutes.” Nicos spat his words.

“Where?” Nero demanded, now angry.

“JFK.”

“
Merda
, Nicos!”

“How was I to know he would put himself on a plane?”