Side Effects: An FBI Psychological Thriller (14 page)

The blissful scent of teenage skin, yet to be damaged by life. It was maddening.

Todd pointed his index finger through the glass case. “Can’t go wrong with the D3200. I own it myself,” he lied.

The girl’s eyebrows rose when she settled on the price tag. “It’s expensive.”

Todd nodded. “It is, yes. I suppose the old saying is true; you get what you pay for.” He leaned in closer, smelled again. He all but shuddered. “But I can understand how things might be a little tight for someone your age—”
If there was ever a more fitting double-entendre, I don’t know it
,
he thought, barely suppressing a grin. “So, here’s what I’m willing to do. My boss is out to lunch. What do you say we make that price do a split?” The grin surfaced with a will of its own.

The girl looked confused. “What do you mean?”

Still grinning, Todd said: “What does that price sticker say?”

“Five hundred dollars.”

Todd leaned in further still, speaking in a provocative whisper now. “Suppose it reads two-fifty?”

“Can you do that?”

“I can keep a secret if you can.” He winked at her.

She smiled back, but it was noncommittal; she was clearly uncomfortable with the situation.

A man entered the store. He did not wait patiently behind the young girl but instead rushed towards her, stamping his place by her side.

Todd Harper recognized him instantly. The weird guy who said he played around in caves.

“He’s a coward!” the weird guy yelled. He faced the girl but his finger was thrusted at Todd. “He told me he was afraid of caves! He’s a coward!”

The young girl nearly tripped over her own feet in an attempt to back away.

“
Dude!
” Todd said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with
me
!? Nothing’s wrong with me!
You’re
the one who’s afraid! Something’s wrong with
you
!” Turning back towards the frightened girl now: “He’s not a real man! He’s a coward! A pathetic pussy coward!”

The young girl bolted for the exit and disappeared into the crowd that was now gathering.

“Listen, man,” Todd warned, “I’m only seconds away from calling the police on your ass.”

The man’s anger instantly dropped from his face; mentioning the police had obviously rattled him.

Todd used it. “That’s right, pal—the police!”

“
Pal?
”

Todd stuck out his chest, relishing the crowd that was accumulating by the second. “That’s right,
pal
—” he said again; the word clearly affected the weird guy as much as mentioning the police had. Maybe more so. “Get your ass out of here!”

The weird man spun and sprinted away, the crowd quickly separating for him as though his lunacy was contagious.

All eyes eventually fell back on Todd. He circled an index finger by the side of his head with animated eyes. “
Cuckoo…
” he sang to the crowd.

He got a few nervous laughs, not the least of them being his own.

This happened three times if I recall correctly. You’d think I’d never want to be within a ten-block radius of a hot dog ever again. Yet for some reason I craved one now that I was near a ballgame. A bizarre Pavlovian thing if there ever was one, I suppose.

“Good times,” Morris said to me after chasing his mega bite with a swig of Coke. “Brings me back.”

“You played baseball?” I asked.

He nodded while taking a second swig from his can. “Catcher. Tough as they came behind the plate.”

I rolled my eyes, though I didn’t doubt it. I teased Morris as often as possible—hairline; paunch that seemed to gain an inch with each passing year; woefully out of touch with current trends (though the unforgivable hours of the job often made us both guilty of that)—but make no mistake, Morris was tough as nails.

Still, I had my fun: “You ever play against men, or just boys like these?”

He threw me a look. “I was a boy myself at the time, genius. And yes, I did play against men. High school.”

“High school boys are men? That’s kind.”

“Maybe not up here—” He gestured to his head. “But they sure as hell got the bodies of men. Especially nowadays…” He waved a hand over the crowd of parents and the creepily vested interest they had in their children. “Wouldn’t be surprised if half these parents are slipping their kids a little something extra along with their Flintstone’s Chewable in the morning.”

Morris’ words registered deeper than I’m sure he intended. I thought of my middle brother John. John was the smallest of all three of my brothers. Not so much in height, but in bone structure. He was fine-boned, always getting injured during play. This bothered my father to no end. I can remember waking up one night because I’d heard something in our backyard. I looked out the window and found my father making John do pull-ups on our jungle gym in the dead of night. John had lost a wrestling match earlier that morning.

“You ready to share?” Morris said.

“Huh?” I snapped from my daze, thinking for a brief moment that he was asking me about John.

“You ready to share yet?” he asked again. “You get your thoughts in order?”

I sipped my iced tea and said, “I don’t have anything earth-shattering yet. If I was to share, it would insult you.”

“Are you fishing?”

“Huh?”

“For compliments?”

I frowned.

“Well then don’t make me tell you how valuable your insight is,” he said. “And don’t make me go back to Day 1 stuff about how nothing is insignificant.”

I groaned now. He was right—especially about how valuable my insight was, of course.

“All right,” I said. “Our guy’s need to exploit men’s fears is rooted in some serious insecurities about himself. The big tip for Erin the waitress at the coffee shop; the bragging about how brave he was; how Erin said he seemed more concerned that everyone around him was acknowledging his bravado as opposed to her. Deep down, the guy is a mess. He desperately wants to feel like a man, or what he perceives to be a man.”

“So he’s killing men to feel more like a man himself?”

“No, it’s not that simple. The killing part is immaterial; it’s not part of the fantasy. The excessive job he does…it appears to be the only time he loses control. I think when he bashes them, he’s bashing himself.”

Morris squinted as he processed everything. The little league game was suddenly miles away. “So, by terrifying them first, he reduces these men to reflections of himself.”

“Yes.”

“But if it ultimately enrages him, why does he continue to do it?”

“Maybe he’s trying to desensitize himself to it all. Or maybe he thinks it’ll be different each new time. I’m still fuzzy on this.”

“What aren’t you fuzzy on?” Morris said. “Tell me why he does what he does. Keep it simple.”

I took a deep breath, not really sure how my own words were going to come out. “I think our guy has some serious phobias of his own. I think it plagues him, makes him feel like less of a man. Perhaps he sought therapy, perhaps he didn’t, but ultimately there had to be some sort of trigger, something that led him down a dark path.”

“What was the trigger?”

“No idea. Anyway, he finds these men, finds their phobias—”

“How? How does he find them?”

“All sorts of ways. Support groups, internet chat rooms a la Douglas Caley, sheer happenstance, can I continue?”

Morris locked his lips with his thumb and index finger.

“He finds these men, finds their phobias, abducts them, and then torments them with those phobias. At first it is extremely cathartic for him—to watch other men cry and plead. He records it or photographs it so he can revert back to these keepsakes whenever he needs validation for what he perceives to be his own shortcomings.

“Before long, however, once those keepsakes have been recorded, the squirming, pleading man before him becomes a reflection of himself. It disgusts him, enrages him…” I shrugged. “So he destroys it.”

“Destroys himself,” he said.

“Only the part he hates.”

“What about the right palm?”

I sighed. “That I have absolutely no clue about.”

“You don’t want to even try?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“I’ll start then. The right palms are damaged, but not blatantly. Lab reports say the wounds are not cuts but more like punctures. Surrounding bruises on the palms propose the victims had something pressed into their hands until it damaged the flesh.”

“I’m well aware.”

“And you don’t have
any
theory?”

“I really don’t, Tim.”

“Well then
guess
!”

I recoiled as if he’d spat on me. My shock at his outburst must have been all over my face because he immediately hung his head and shook it.

“Ah shit…I’m sorry, Mags.”

I leaned back in and placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. On the surface was a guy enjoying a hot dog and a Coke at a ballgame, but underneath was a roiling pit of stress. To Morris’ great strength of character, this was easily forgotten; he could be affable even when he was moments away from a nervous breakdown.

Morris looked at me with tired eyes and nodded a thanks. I smiled back at him but he never saw it; his attention was towards a sudden commotion in the dugout. A boy was being chastised by his coach, and “chastised” was being friendly. The coach looked as if he was ready to belt the kid.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Morris didn’t answer, just kept his eyes on the scene below.

I tapped a woman in front of me on the shoulder. She turned.

“What’s going on?” I asked her.

The woman shook her head, a sympathetic look on her face. “Coach’s son,” was all she said.

“What’d he do?” I said.

The woman gave a helpless shrug. “Struck out.”

I turned back to the dugout. The boy had since taken his spot on the bench, slumped over, tears threatening, the other boys scooting away from him lest they catch their wrathful coach’s eye for daring to acknowledge the boy’s existence.

The coach was still purple with rage. He kicked at the fence and cast his son a final, deadly glare. The boy, still slumped, head down, didn’t dare meet his father’s gaze.

And then things got really bad.

The boy’s mother approached the bench to console her son.

The boy—no longer able to fight the actuality that he was indeed still a boy—turned and broke down into his mother’s arms. Coach-slash-father-slash-husband-slash-dickhead was on his way over, marching towards his wife and son with such ill intent in his gait it looked as if violence was inevitable.

Morris apparently felt the same way. He took the bleacher benches two at a time as he ran towards the impending scene.

Coach had reached his wife and son, began shouting abuse at both of them, the mother pulling her son in tight, shielding him from whatever was to come. This only incensed the boy’s father further; he reached forward and took hold of his son’s arm with both hands, yanking him from his mother’s embrace—

—just as Morris reached forward and ripped the father from his son, yanking him backwards and tossing him aside, the father stumbling back and tripping over his own feet, landing smack on his butt.

Embarrassment had the father scrambling back to his feet more than bravado did. He did not rush towards Morris as he had his wife and kid, but still approached, and none too pleased.

Morris need only point a threatening finger and state—not shout—a command to stop the man’s march cold. He did not even tell the man he was a federal agent, only: “You come one step closer and you’re taking a nap.”

The father grumbled and cursed and kicked up dirt, but did not dare take a step forward. Morris turned towards the mother and son, but they’d since headed towards the lot, likely heading home.

Morris turned back towards the coach whose coloring was just as purple as before, though I’d wager humiliation, not rage, was now the artist for this particular shade. Morris locked eyes with the man until the man was forced to look away, thoroughly defeated.

Morris soon joined me back on the bleachers, all eyes following him along the way. “Asshole,” he muttered as casually as a man disagreeing with something he saw on TV. He picked up his Coke, finished it in a gulp, and then looked at me. “Ready to go?”

Except Joe Pierce didn’t feel like a real man today.

He’d grown so much in the past year. Each new victim had been like scratching a fresh line on the wall above the old, measuring his growth as a parent would their child’s height. And he had grown. He
had
. His confidence often reached peaks he never thought possible. He’d spoken to attractive women without stammering. He’d made eye contact with men. He’d even made a joke in the break room at work that had everyone laughing. Jennings, Bennett, and Miller had been there. They laughed. He
was
growing, and fast, the gaps between lines on the wall becoming further and further apart.