Side Effects: An FBI Psychological Thriller (5 page)

He exhaled, long and slow.

“Tree by tree, Tim,” I said. “We start looking at the forest and we go nuts; you know that.”

He nodded, keeping his gaze out the window. He handed the box of Cheez-Its back to me without looking.

“We caught a break today—” I gestured to all the bobbing flashlights in the distance. “Who knows what else they’ll find now?”

He let out another long sigh. “I just wanna know what this guy is all about. All I know is that we have six now.” He looked out his window again. His voice sounded detached, as though he wasn’t aware he was thinking aloud. “The time to catch a guy like this is the first one or two, when he’s still experimenting and unsure of himself, likely to be careless.
Six
now.”

“He’ll grow bolder,” I said. “His confidence will get the better of him; he’ll get reckless.”

“Maybe. But to go through the trouble to dump his victims up and down the entire east coast? To bury one? That’s not a Thomas Hays whoring it up for the world; it’s a guy who doesn’t want to get caught.” He sighed again. “A guy like that scares the hell out of me.”

The man.

The white man in the alley.

The man who said he was lost and needed help getting out of Trenton. It was coming back to him now…

Hal remembered getting into the car with the man. He remembered the man immediately handing over the wad of cash, thanking Hal repeatedly. He remembered the man offering Hal a swig from a half-empty pint of Jack, the man taking a swig first, silently assuring Hal it was safe.

His next memory was waking up here.

Hal stood. Something clanked at his feet. What the hell? He bent to inspect. A shackle was on his right ankle. The shackle was chained to one of four concrete walls. A strip of fluorescent light buzzed overhead, ugly in its effort at showcasing the room. Not that any other lighting might have done a better job; there was little to work with. The room was akin to a large jail cell. A solitary door, no bars like a cell, but what appeared to be steel, was directly ahead. To the left of the door was a small window. The shades were drawn.

Hal shuffled forward, the chain on his ankle clinking behind and then abruptly stopping his shuffle as it reached the end of its length. The door was still a good ten feet away. Hal bent and gripped the chain, giving it a strong tug to test its strength. He felt no give at all. He dropped the chain with a definitive clank and rubbed his aching head.

What in the hell?
Hal thought.
A thousand times, what in the holy hell?
“Hello!? Anyone there!?
Hello!?
”

A metallic clank from the steel door, followed by the sound of a heavy bolt sliding free. The door opened. The white man he’d offered to help entered, shutting the steel door behind him. The man was carrying a large burlap sack and smiling the same inappropriate smile he’d flashed when they’d met in the alley.

“Hi, Hal,” the man said. “How are you feeling?”

“My head hurts.”

“Yeah, I thought it might. Sorry about that.”

“What’d you do to me, man? Where am I? What the hell is this?”

The man chuckled and patted the air with a hand. “Slow down, Hal...just slow down.”

Hal bent and tugged at the chain on his ankle again, more an unspoken demand for an explanation than a means of escape.

“You’re not going anywhere, Hal. And to save your lungs the time and effort—” The man suddenly screamed, a powerful five second burst that reverberated throughout the room, punishing Hal’s head further still. The man then stopped and calmly continued with: “No one’s going to hear if you try and scream for help.”

Hal raised his chin, defiant. “I ain’t never screamed for nothing in my life.”

The man could scarcely contain his joy. He closed his eyes and tilted his head skyward with a breathless grin. Hal thought he looked like a man receiving oral sex from an invisible woman. For a brief moment, the image disturbed him more than his predicament.

The man lowered his head. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear that, Hal.” The man’s joy then slowly dissipated as he went on. “I had such a great one planned last night. I’d been working on it for some time.” He set the burlap sack to the floor and leaned against the steel door. “You know how many times I scouted that area?
Dozens
. Not a single soul each time.” He snorted. “Million to one those kids coming along when they did. Million to one.”

Hal remained silent. The man’s ramblings were a crazy man’s. And not the kind of crazy Hal had seen on the street over the years. This man was a whole different kind of nuts.

“No offense, but you were kind of a consolation prize, Hal,” the man went on. “I was going to try and make the best of it, but my hopes weren’t too high. However, what you said to me on the ride here—”

What I said on the ride here???

“—and what you said to me just now makes me think I might have something after all.”

“What did I say on the ride here?”

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

The man started to laugh. “I’m sorry, Hal, that was mean; I didn’t expect you to remember. That whiskey wasn’t exactly pure.”

“You
drank some,” Hal said.

“I
pretended
to drink some. Geez, come on, Hal. Not one for common sense, are you? No, I guess not…” The man started laughing again. “You wouldn’t be here if you were.”

“What do you want?” Hal asked.

The man’s laughing stopped. His smile dropped like a stone. “A real man has common sense.”

“Whatever you say.”

The man’s face remained grave. “So, you’ve never screamed from anything before, huh?”

“
No
. And I ain’t about to start now neither, boy.”

Light switch-quick the man’s grave expression became a smile again. He bent and opened the burlap sack, removing items and placing them on the floor. One of the items was a pair of handcuffs.

Hal spit and said, “Good luck gettin’ those on me, boy.”

“Oh, I don’t believe I’ll need luck.” The man removed the final item from the sack and placed it on the floor, the breathless, almost sexual grin once again emblazoned across his face, giddy for reward.

And Hal gave it to the man instantly. He couldn’t help it. The final item terrified him to his core.

“Maybe we should head on back,” he suggested. “See if you can’t find something else.”

I was propped up in bed, channel surfing and eating stale Wheat Thins. To say my motivation was on the low side would have been a gross understatement. “I think I got everything there was to get,” I said.

“How do you know? You said yourself you don’t know how the drug works. Maybe it gave you all it could for
that day
. Maybe if we head back now, recharged so to speak, you can find something new.”

I plucked a few Wheat Thins crumbs off my chest and nibbled on them. “I’m hardly recharged.”

He sounded annoyed. “What’s wrong with you? You losing steam already?”

“No—just exhausted. The drug causes major insomnia. Dr. Cole prescribed me Ambien to help, but the stuff makes me sleep cook. Yes, sleep cook. I woke up at the kitchen table with a bowl of mac and cheese in front of me.”

He laughed.

“It’s not funny, Tim. I could have burned the friggin’ house down.”

“Was it microwave?”

“Irrelevant. Point is I’m exhausted. I need to sleep if I’m going to be of any use to you.”

“Fine—get your sleep. Try Benadryl, it helps me. I’ll call you if I hear anything.”

I hung up without saying goodbye.

His reply was flat. “We got another one.”

“
It’s our guy. Victim has all the hallmarks. Local PD is doing their thing. Get some sleep; we’ll check it out first thing,”
he’d said.

I did manage to sleep. Some. No mac and cheese casualty this time so I suppose that was good. When Morris picked me up, he wore a face I didn’t approve of. It was the face of a man, not grim for what we were about to see, but eager for what we were about to see. A chance for more leads, at the expense of lives.

“Definitely our guy,” he’d said on the ride from Philly to Newark. “Everything matches.” He shot a quick but casual glance out the driver’s side window as though wishing the conversation immediately over. I caught it though. Morris was king bluffer with everyone but me.

“What?” I said.

He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke. “The body is badly burned.”

“
Burned?
”

“Yeah. But the cuffs are there; the extreme ligature marks are there; blunt force trauma…”

“Right palm?”

“We’ll see.”

“Burned,” I said again.

“Yeah—burying didn’t work, why not burn him this time?”

I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

“We were right,” I said. “He didn’t get what he wanted back in upstate Pennsylvania, so he went for another sooner than later.”

“Much sooner. It could explain why he set him on fire. Lighting a match is a hell of a lot quicker than digging a hole.”

I felt a flash of hope.

“Much sooner…” I repeated. “That means he might have screwed up.”

Morris knew what I meant, but he wanted to think out loud. He said, “What do you mean?”

“No planning on this one,” I said. “Much as it pains me to use your metaphor, he’s got blue balls and needs to get his rocks off quick.”

“Right. No more beauties to woo. It’s last call—gotta make do with what’s left.”

“Okay…”

“Our victim was opportunistic, not chosen,” he said. “That means someone might have seen.”

I nodded. “Good chance our bad guy left breadcrumbs he doesn’t know about.”

“Newark PD said the victim is homeless. Soup kitchen in Trenton confirmed this.”

“
Trenton
? That’s an hour south. How’d they put those pieces together so fast?”

“Same way everyone else does. Luck. The victim had been a regular face at the soup kitchen for years. Well liked. When he didn’t show for days, a volunteer at the kitchen—she was close to the guy; Hal was his name—started making a fuss and was eventually heard. No easy task when it comes to missing homeless. Maybe we should bring her on board.”

“And we’re sure it’s this Hal guy?”

Morris nodded. “Girl at the kitchen ID’d him this morning. Apparently it wasn’t easy for her.”

“It never is.”

“No, I meant because of the condition the guy was in. He
literally
wasn’t easy to identify.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

We rode in silence for a minute. I then said: “So the victim hunkered down in Trenton.”

“Apparently.”

“How’d he end up in Newark?”

“What our guy does requires privacy,” Morris said.

“So maybe he lives in Newark?”

“My gut says no. For this one he couldn’t take his sweet old time. I mean he
could
, but he couldn’t—know what I mean?”

“Not even a little.”

“Let me keep talking in metaphors.”

“Just do it.”

“His usual game is to find his date and bring her back to his place, so to speak. He was all set with the last one in upstate PA, but someone cock-blocks him.”

I stifled a smirk. Can’t encourage his speak, though it does help see the picture better sometimes, God help me. He continued.

“It’s late; he doesn’t have time to work on anyone else in particular. So he goes to a dive bar and starts looking for any hole with a heartbeat. He makes his catch but doesn’t have the time to take her back to his place for the privacy he wants. So he gets a room and does his absolute damnedest to make it feel like all the others.”

“But…?”

“But it doesn’t.” His entire face scrunched with uncertain thought. “That’s why he sets this one on fire.”

I frowned. “How does that work?”

“I don’t know. Maybe…” Another uncertain scrunch. “Maybe…” He smacked the steering wheel with the base of his palm.

“Is this going to be a regular thing?” I asked.

“What?”

“You getting all tantrumy when you don’t know what’s what? You were never like this before.”

He kept his eyes on the road and wouldn’t afford me a glance. “I’m not a
total
dick, Mags. You think I would have contacted you if I wasn’t desperate? Christ, your son died, your husband
just
died.”

“You don’t say.”

Local PD had found the body behind one of those wrong way doors when a few homeless hunkering down in the mill for the night had noticed the smell. Not an ugly smell, they’d said, but a pleasant smell. A desirable smell.

“It smelled like
what
?” Morris asked Detective Brown, the lead homicide detective in charge.

“Barbecue,” Detective Brown said. “Guys who found the body thought someone was grilling nearby—wandered on over to see if they were feeling generous.”

“Well this is a first for me,” Morris muttered.

“Not me,” Brown said with a little smile, perhaps relishing his chance to one up the sanctimonious Feds. “We found a guy cooked to a crisp in his tool shed a few years back. Meth lab fire. My wife and I were married in Maui, and the night before we had the rehearsal dinner at a luau. We got to eat one of those giant pigs roasted over a spit. I’m tellin’ ya, when they brought that guy’s body out of his shed, it smelled exactly like that damn pig.”