Shadow of Perception (2 page)

A muffled scream poured from the surround sound of the office, amplifying the horror on the big screen TV. Hudson Patterson shifted in his chair when another wail tore through the room. “Snuff film?” he asked, keeping his gaze on the screen.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Ian Scott said in a flat tone. “Keep watching.”

Frowning, Hudson did as he’d been told, albeit reluctantly. What he’d started watching less than two minutes ago first reminded him of a low budget horror film. One of those slasher types with a psychotic villain who preyed on horny teenagers.
 

Only the man on the screen, strapped to a table in some sort of makeshift operating room, wasn’t a horny teenager. While his facial features were indiscernible due to the angle of the camera, he had enough silver and dark brown hair covering his chest, arms and legs to rival an old Grizzly.
 

Another man suddenly filled the TV. He wore hospital scrubs, cap and surgical mask. The mask had been graffitied with black marker, a bubbly smile and bucked teeth drawn across the front. The doctor’s hair color—not that Hudson truly believed the man was a doctor—was indeterminable thanks to the cap. His eyes blue, maybe gray and his skin bone white beneath the bright florescent light hanging over the operating table.
 

“As you know,” the doctor began in a mild, easygoing tone that Hudson suspected belied his true sentiments. “I’ll need to remove your chest hair before we proceed.”

The man on the table screamed and twisted, but both had been in vain. The duct tape pressed against his mouth kept his screams muted, and the series of restraints around his body kept him prone.

“There, there,” the doctor crooned as he slapped some sort of gooey substance on the man’s chest, then coated it with a couple of strips of cloth. “Quick and painless. I promise it’ll be like yanking off a Band-Aid.”

 
Before the man could protest, the doctor tore first one, then the other strip. The man’s flabby pectorals instantly dotted with beads of blood.
 

“See, told you it wouldn’t be so bad,” the doctor said as he placed two Ziploc bags on the man’s heaving, hairy stomach. “Now let’s move on to the fun stuff.”

“What’s in the bags?” Hudson asked, knowing Ian had already viewed the DVD.
 

“Maggots. I had to rewind several times to figure it out, and when I did...just watch.”

Hudson stole a glance at his boss, but then the doctor spoke and forced his attention back to the flat screen. He regretted looking the moment he did.
 

“Let me see,” the doctor said, waving a scalpel in the air. “Like I told you, I’ve never really done this, but how hard can it be? I guess if I just make an incision...here.”

The duct tape binding the man’s lips couldn’t drown out the agonizing pain ripping through him as the doctor proceeded. Blood oozed down the side of his body, pooling on the table and when the doctor raised the thick slab of tissue he’d cut, Hudson had to turn away.
 

“Christ Almighty.” He leaned forward and pressed his thumb and index finger to his eyes, wishing he could blot the image from his mind.
 

“It gets worse,” Ian said in a clinical tone that set Hudson on edge.

“If you’ve already seen the goddamn thing, just tell me the gory details instead of making me watch them. After spending a month on the job you had me working in Detroit, I’ve seen enough blood.”

“You’ve never seen anything like this, though.” Ian turned his head and gave him a thoughtful, almost pondering look before returning his gaze to the screen. “Then again, maybe you have.”
 

As founder and owner of the Chicago-based agency CORE (Criminal Observation Resolution Evidence) Ian Scott knew Hudson’s history, his time spent in the Marines and the declassified missions while he’d worked for the CIA. Not the assignments or unsanctioned activities that had remained buried or likely destroyed by his CIA handlers. Yet Ian’s cryptic remark made Hudson wonder where his boss’s knowledge about him stopped. It also brought back memories he’d thought he’d purged.
 

The room tilted as the torturous scene continued to play out on the flat screen. Screams filled the room and his head. His mind drifted. For a moment, the florescent light on the screen turned white-hot, blinding, glaring. He forced himself not to squint, forced his body to remain rigid and his heart rate level. They might be able to see the sweat, the blood coating his body, but he couldn’t allow them access to his mind. His fears. His—
 

A low, keening cry pierced his ears. Hudson blinked and brought the glass he’d been holding to his lips, forcing the memories that had nearly killed him from his mind and focusing on the TV. He wasn’t the one enduring the torture. The man on the screen played that role today, fighting against his bonds with each slice of the doctor’s scalpel.
 

In one gulp, he drank the whiskey Ian had given him when he’d first arrived. The burn along his throat knocked back the rising bile, until the doctor stuffed one of the bags beneath the man’s loose skin.

Hudson shoved off the chair, taking his glass with him. “Enough, dammit,” he said, and helped himself to Ian’s liquor cabinet.

“We’re almost to the end anyway,” Ian said. “Let me fast forward to...here.”

Fresh drink in hand, Hudson moved back to his seat and faced the flat screen again with disgust. For Ian, for the unwanted memories, for the psycho playing doctor.
 

The man on the table no longer fought, and Hudson suspected he’d likely passed out from the pain. His skin gleamed with sweat and blood beneath the florescent light. Only instead of gaping holes in his chest, his pectorals were now fat and plump. Crudely sewn, lumpy and...moving.

“Oh my God,” he said the moment a bubbly, bucked toothed smile filled the camera.

“Did I get your attention?” the doctor asked as he moved next to his patient. He gave one newly filled breast a Pillsbury Doughboy press. “Bet I finally got his.”
 

He drew closer to the camera again. “Now, I could go on like some bleeding heart with a cause, but I’ll spare you the agony. After what you’ve just viewed, I think that’s the least I can do. So here’s the bottom line, Eden.”

Hudson sat straighter and glanced at Ian. “Eden?”

“Eden Risk,” Ian said, and nodded back to the screen as the doctor continued.

Hudson hadn’t seen Eden Risk live and in person for over two years. Hearing her name, though, brought memories he didn’t mind. Her scent, her taste, the smoothness of her skin. Too bad he’d screwed things up with her. They might have had something good. If she hadn’t been so damned hardheaded and he hadn’t been such an ass.
 

“I’ve been planning this for a long time,” the doctor continued. “But I wasn’t sure how to get my message out there for the world to see. When I saw your investigative series on beauty pageant kids and their moms, I realized you understood a part of what I’ve been grappling with for too many years. Now I want you to be my voice. I want you to make sure this DVD is aired. If it’s not on tomorrow’s six o’clock news, plan on receiving another.”

He moved closer to the camera, close enough so that Hudson realized his eyes were blue, not gray, lined with crow’s feet and weariness. “I didn’t want to do this. I doubt I’ll ever sleep right. But they wouldn’t listen and they’ve left me no other choice. Last year over four hundred thousand women had breast implants. Fifteen years ago that number was only thirty thousand. What does that tell you? We are being poisoned by airbrushed images of magazine models. There’s no such thing as perfect, only perception. Isn’t that right, Eden?”
 

Hudson frowned and rubbed his temple. He didn’t understand what the doctor had meant. Eden was a beautiful woman. Perfect teeth, nose, eyes, hair. Her body could rival the models the nut job referred to. But what had he meant by “only perception?” Did this man know Eden? Did her perception of perfection somehow connect her to this man or even the one lying on the table with new breasts?
 

Pulling a syringe from a nearby table, the doctor looked to the man. “I need to tend to my patient now. Do as I’ve instructed.” He raised his arm as if to turn off the camera, then stopped. “Eden, take care of yourself,” he said, his eyes sincere, almost worried. “While I’ve been watching you, someone else has been, too.”

The flat screen went black.
 

Hudson stared at the darkened TV and wondered how Eden had managed to tangle herself in another bad situation. “I take it you got the DVD from Eden.”

Ian nodded.
 

“Okay. So what do you want from me?” He didn’t bother hiding the contempt from his voice. Ian had a reason for everything he did. He also knew about his blow-out with Eden Risk.

“Your thoughts.”

“My thoughts? Is that all?” he asked not believing Ian one bit. Ian had been behind the scenes when the FBI had begun its profiling unit. He didn’t need Hudson’s opinion, not on something like this.

“For now.”

“Okay.” He shrugged. “Guy’s a sick bastard. Uses torture to send a message rather than gain information. Reminds me of...” Reminded him of another sick bastard who had tried to do the same to him.

“Reminds you of?”

He ignored the prompt and continued. “I think he’s using this message he’s sending as an excuse for revenge.”

“Interesting. Why do you say that?”

“He said he’d been planning this. Then there’s the comment about the child beauty pageants. This is personal to him. And the guy on the table with the new…chest? I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a plastic surgeon. Maybe implants were his specialty.”

“Excellent,” Ian said with a smile. “My thoughts exactly.”

A throb built behind his eye. Releasing a frustrated sigh, he sagged in the chair. “If you already suspected as much, I’m gonna ask again. What do you want from me?”
 

“I want you to find him.” Ian pointed to the darkened TV. “And protect Eden.”

“I’m not a profiler, or criminalist or even an investigator. And I’m sure as hell not a babysitter. You’ve got plenty of those guys on the payroll to handle this.”

Ian stroked the side of his glass with a finger. “True. You hunt, you find, you capture. That’s your specialty. Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone else to cover this.”

“What about John? I heard he’s—”

“Busy at the moment.”

Hudson set his glass on the table beside him. He didn’t need the whiskey spiking his temper any higher. While he’d been stuck in Detroit, dealing with gangbangers with an affinity for slitting the throats of their enemies and prostituting kids, he’d learned some interesting gossip from CORE’s forensic computer analyst, Rachel Davis.
 

The eyes and ears of the company, Rachel had told him how John Kain had met and fallen for Ian’s daughter while working a case in Wisconsin. No one who’d worked for Ian even knew he’d had a daughter. From what Rachel had said, it appeared the daughter had had no idea Ian was her father. It all sounded like a shitty soap opera, and Hudson had let most of it in one ear and straight out the other.
 

“Busy my ass,” Hudson said. “I heard the whole story. Congratulations on being a father, by the way.”

Ian nodded, yet remained somber. “I know you’re not usually on the investigative end. But you did a lot of investigating with the CIA, and were very good at your job.”

“
Were
being the operative word.”

Ian shook his head. “Hunting and tracking criminals are just different facets of investigating and you know it.” When Ian appeared to realize he still hadn’t convinced him, he said, “Look, I need you on this. John’s working something else for me. Owen’s in California for at least another two weeks. Russo won’t be back from Texas until later next week.”

“So I get screwed babysitting.” Damn it. And to Eden Risk of all people.
 

“Investigating,” Ian corrected, then took a long gulp of his Scotch. After setting the glass aside he folded his hands. “I know you and Eden had a falling out a few years ago.”

“That’s putting it mildly.” She’d ripped his head off for outing her source, a source who had been under investigation by CORE as a serial rapist. A source that had been feeding her false information in order to make her his next victim. Even now his stomach seized and knotted when he thought of what could have happened had the bastard been given the opportunity to find himself alone with her.

Ian’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve known Eden for years. There’s been a few times when her investigative reporting skills, and even her sources, have helped CORE. I also know she’s not the easiest person to understand or even like. But you’ve watched the film, you’ve heard what the man said.” Ian’s voice rose with irritation. “She has one man sending her DVDs and allegedly another stalking her. Set your ego aside.”

Hudson ignored the jab and searched for another out. Not because he’d been reduced to babysitter, but because of the DVD. Like a divining rod, the film found a way to tap into memories he hadn’t thought of in nearly four years. “Let the Chicago PD handle this.”

“The instructions to stated no police.”