The Black Chronicle (19 page)

Government buildings all have a distinct smell, Jeremy pondered, stepping off the elevator on to the fifth floor of the Los Angeles FBI head quarters. New carpet and... was it hand sanitizer?

              He still didn't quite know how he felt about all this. It seemed only a few days ago- it
was
only a few days ago, he was resigned to never deal with this kind of work again. And now here he was, back in the government’s cold bureaucratic embrace. And while of course the circumstances were extreme, the ease in which he found himself back into the fold made him believe that perhaps he had been fooling himself all along. That perhaps it's true that just because we are done with the past, it doesn't mean the past is done with us.

              En route to meet Costa he discovered a small staff kitchen and poured himself a coffee. A quick survey of the counter top and fridge failed to turn up any cream, only powdered milk. The U.S. defence budget was only seven hundred billion a year after all.

              Costa and his team were already waiting when he reached the debrief room assigned to the Mister task force.

              “Come on in,” Costa said to Jeremy when he entered the room. “Gentlemen, this is Dr. Jeremy Foster. He's coming on board as a special adviser. He's an ex company man, who doesn't know he's
still
a company man.” Costa joked but nobody laughed.

              “Hey,” Jeremy said and smiled to the three men sitting across from him and who comprised the core of the task force.

              “Dr. Foster” Costa continued, “worked a couple years in the BSU and VICAP. Mathews here is with VICAP but I believe you were there before his time Foster.”

              Mathews was a tall lean man in his mid to late thirties. His brown hair buzzed down military style. His eyes were sharp and his smile, Jeremy instinctively felt, disingenuous. Jeremy knew from the contacts he still held in the clandestine services that the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program had recently begun to churn out a stable of elite agents.  Not that they were exactly the farm team during his tenure. But whereas his generation had been recruited or accepted based on a specialized expertise, Psychology, forensic science, what have you, they had begun to take a more obtuse strategy with their agents. This new breed by mandatory scored in the upper percentiles of all aspect of criminal investigation. Intelligence, criminology, analysis, forensic psychology and field work.

              “Pleased to meet you Agent Mathews,” Jeremy said, shaking his hand and taking a seat at one of the small tables.    

              “With us today, is also Agent Green,” Costa said motioning to a large man who had the look more of a SWAT captain than an investigator. “Green is a former LAPD homicide detective, now also with the ViCAP And you already know Agent Moramarco.”

              Moramarco was Jeremy's primary contact on the Matherport case. He was a capable man. A thinker not a talker. Still waters and all that.

              “As you all know, Dr. Foster was instrumental in getting Matherport to divulge the location of several of his victims graves, post incarceration. You might even be aware he wrote a book about it. Un-dramatically entitled, Making Friends With the Devil. Makes for a great stocking stuffer.”

              Funny joke Jeremy thought, but again nobody laughed.

              “I'll keep it brief. These agents are the point men on the team. As you know, we are throwing a lot of resources at this thing. We have over a hundred and fifty agents working on this case in one form or another. Not to mention support and investigation efforts from state. We are pulling every violent offender who even closely resembles the profile and is currently not incarcerated. It's one of the largest investigatory undertakings in the history of the U.S government. The proper channels and liaisons from other agencies can all be explained to you by myself or these men, who, in all probability you will get to know very well unless of course, we catch this guy sooner than later at which point we can all go on vacation or have lobotomies or drink ourselves into forgetfulness.”

              “Jeremy was contacted last week by a relative of an abductee previously unknown to us. He can explain the situation better then I can.”

              “Yes,” Jeremy said, straightening out his tie, turning to the team. “I was contacted by a Mary Stien through my private practice. She had become aware of my involvement with the Matherport case.”

              “How?” Mathews interrupted.

              “She had read an article I wrote for Rolling Stone magazine regarded the case.” Jeremy explained, feeling a little embarrassed for reasons he didn't have the time to pinpoint.

              Costa reached into his laptop bag, and pulled out a copy of the issue and flopped it down on the table.

              “Has anyone
not
read it?” Costa asked.

              Jeremy could tell from their faces that they all had. These boys were thorough. That was good.

              “She posed as a potential client,” Jeremy continued. “Only after feeling she could trust me, or maybe realizing she had no choice, she told me about her niece, Cindy.”

              “Same last name?” Moramarco asked.

              “No, Stein, is a stage name. She's an actor.”

              “Never heard of her,” Moramarco shot back.

              “Yeah, she's a actress in horror movies. Slashers. Stuff like that,” Green piped in from under his classic cop moustache. “She does low budget B movies mostly. Attack of the Killer tomatoes type of stuff. She's kind of a big deal in that industry. But I think it's a big fish in a small pond kind of thing.” Green must have been able to read the subtle surprise on the other men's faces because he added, “my kid took special effects in school. He's obsessed with that kind of shit. He had a Mary Stien Calendar in his room for years.”

              “Do we have the niece's last name?” Maramarco still wanted to know.

              Costa leafed through some papers and said, “yeah. Summers.”

              Everyone jotted down the name.

              “Mrs. Stien was contacted by Mister on August fifth with a video of her niece, bound and gagged, being tortured. Has everyone seen the video?” Costa asked and grimaces all around indicated, yes.

              “Do we know when and where she was taken?” Green asked.

              “The family filled out a missing persons report August second. She had gone to work that day, a clothing store in Fairfield mall. Never came home.” Costa said.

              “I take it Miss. Stien is a looker?” Mathews asked turning to Jeremy.

              “She's an attractive woman, yes.”

              “So maybe our guy has got himself a crush. This could be the big break. We sit on the woman, wait and see if he comes around.”

              “Well we are definitely going to do that,” Costa agreed. “We have already arranged for an agent to be put in undercover at the concierge desk of her condo.”

              “It certainly seems that he does feel some sort of obligation or concern for Miss. Stien,” Jeremy said. “Promising to enlighten her or
set her free.”

             
“Maybe this is part of his M.O.” Green said. “In the video he warned her not to go to the police or he was going to hurt her niece. Maybe he sends videos like this to all the relatives of the ones he abducts. Maybe, they had all been too scared to come forward with it till now.”

              “Okay, Green and Mathews, coordinate a team to interview all the victims’ relatives again, starting with the ones who had been abducted.”

              “Foster what do you make of the profile of the victims?”

              “Well, that's the baffling part. Most serial killers’ victims have something in common. Race, hair colour, sex, age. There are no patterns I can see in this case. I will say though, that nobody kills arbitrarily. Not even psychopaths. The way he dresses up, the Mister persona. It's all, highly,
highly
ritualized. The costume says to me that he sees himself in some sort of mythological way. As cosmically important. The murders are tied to that delusion somehow and as such, it is very unlikely he just chooses his marks at random. There
is
a connection here. We just don't see it yet.”

              “Maybe he sees himself as death personified,” Mathews said. “Death is a faceless monster, who takes who he will when he will. It would be hard to be more important or mythological than being the very personification of death itself.”

              Jeremy began to play with is bottom lip as he does when in deep thought.

              “Yeah, could be,” he agreed. “But keeping with that metaphor, a faceless death wouldn't then send video's to the police and victims relatives. Death doesn't seek recognition, or have opinions, or complex belief systems, like Mister has demonstrated, it just is.”

              “In any event,” Costa said, “A random faceless death profile, isn't going to lead us to diddly shit. He's not faceless, he's a man. He has a favourite food, a favourite song. He has relatives and a personality.”

              “Wait. What about the girl’s parents? Are they aware of where she is?”

              Costa and Jeremy exchanged a sullen look.

              “Not yet,” Costa said. “We are meeting with the Summers tonight to inform them. Green and Mathews, get on those interviews. Agent Moramarco, I want you to have all the Fairfield mall security footage from August second, reviewed duplicated for our archives. Also find out what her exact path to and from work is, and find any traffic camera footage you can for it. I want to know the exact time she was unaccounted for. Foster, I will have all the relevant case materials boxed for you so you can get up to speed. Any questions? No. Okay, let's get to it then.”

              Simon kicked a tiny rock down the sidewalk, stopping to retrieve it off someone’s lawn or the street if it went off course. The game was to kick it as many sidewalk squares as he could before it veered off. The record so far was four. Unfortunately Johnny took the bus home and so he had to play by himself, but hopefully he would be allowed to walk home next year and he would have someone to share his little game with. But when he thought about it, he probably couldn't even compete with Johnny anyways because he was so good at sports and games. Way better than him. Still, maybe if he had someone to walk with after school it would take his mind off what the the real reason was for playing the rock game on the way home: To make the walk longer. He always took the long way, up and around Chester Street and even though he always dragged his feet the walk could never be long enough because at the end of it was home... and his father.

              Things weren't always like this. There was a time when his father wasn't mean to him...Or at least he thought he could remember a time like that. But Simon understood it must have been his fault somehow. Why else did the kids at school pick on him so much? And now his dad too. He couldn't help it. He said stupid things. So stupid he didn't even know he was being stupid so he just tried to only talk when absolutely necessary. At least when he was writing he could say whatever he wanted without anyone making fun of him or bullying him.

              As soon as he got home and took off his shoes and back pack, he could tell something was wrong. His father sat in a chair, staring out the window. He didn't move when Simon came in, he didn't even seem to notice. And even stranger than that, he didn't have a beer in his hand. The house was quiet, much more quiet than it usually was. Usually when he came in his mom had the radio on, or the TV but the house was so silent it made Simon instantly very sad for reasons he didn't understand.

              “Oh hey, Simon,” His dad turned to him and said. The way he said that was very... Simon wasn't sure what. Weird somehow. Friendly, like the way people are supposed to great each other but his father never spoke in that tone. And he never said his name. It was always 'boy' and 'Goddmmit you little shit.'

              “Where's Mom?”

              “She's gone,”

              “Gone?”

              “Yeah... she's uh... she's gone to the store.”

              Simon sat down and said “Oh...” but for some reason he didn't believe him. His father just went back to staring out the window again and it got so uncomfortable that Simon had to get up and go to his room just to be able to breath. Once in his room Simon found himself staring out the window too. His window faced the front of the house and Simon sat there for who knows how long waiting to see his mother when she came home. He waited and waited and waited and waited. Finally he went back down stairs and his dad was still just sitting there in the living room, only this time he was in a different chair staring at the floor and he still wasn't drinking and that was when Simon knew for sure something  very, very bad had happened.

              He walked into the basement half expecting to find his mother beaten and dead in the corner. His dad had taken to bullying her around too and she was so small and even though she was a mom really she was just a girl and Simon feared that one day his dad would hurt her for real. But the basement was empty. A pile of laundry waiting to be washed was stacked against the machine and Simon stood there and stared at it for a moment. It reminded him of her. She was always doing laundry it seemed, folding and ironing and sorting the whites from the darks. The pile sat there sadly, missing her like he missed her. Where was she?

              He went back up stairs and after working up the nerve asked his father:

              “Where's mom?”

              “Go brush your teeth. It's bed time.”

              “But we didn't even have diner yet.”

              “Oh,” he said and led Simon into the kitchen where he proceeding to make him two Bologna and cheese sandwiches and poured him a glass of milk. Jacob sat down across the small rickety table from Simon and watched as he timidly nibbled at one of the sandwiches. There was a look on his face that Simon had never seen before. Like he was stuck in a day dream. A sad one. He almost wished he was being grumpy and mean like usual because at least then he would know how to respond.

              The sandwich was kind of dry. Mom always used mustard, she knew mustard was his favourite and always put on extra. He got up and went to the fridge to retrieve the yellow French's bottle. The fridge was, as always, stocked with beer and Simon thought maybe one would cheer up his father, or if not cheer him up at least make him normal again.

              “You want a beer Dad?” He asked still staring in to the cold contents of the ice box. Then his father made a sound which caused his heart to sink into his feet. It was like a gasp, and then there was another and Simon realized with utter terror that he was crying. Him. His dad, the biggest, meanest guy in the whole world. Crying! He didn't want to turn around and see that. All he wanted to do was run. Run right out the door into the coolness of the night air and hide in the shadows and not learn the truth of where his mother was or what happened to her. But he couldn't. He had nowhere else to go.

              He slowly turned to face his father who was crying into his big hairy hands. His muscular back raised and dropped with each sob and before long Simon felt the urge to cry come over him too. He almost went to his father and hugged him, but just couldn't bring himself to do it. Simon reasoned he must be very embarrassed and that's why he was covering his face with his hands, so he just left him there and want to his room and stared out the window some more. He imagined his mother coming around the corner with an arm full of groceries and that funny tight lipped smile of hers and he tried to imagine how that would feel inside to see her there.

The next day his father didn't wake him for school. It was nearly ten o'clock when he finally climbed out of bed and went downstairs still dressed in the clothes he wore the day before. He found his father sitting on the couch, just sitting there, not doing anything.

              “You're up,” He said. Simon nodded, and wanted to ask if mom came home but he already knew the answer. “Go get some cereal,” his dad said and he did as he was told.

              Once he had slurped the last sugary mouthful of milk from his bowel of Sugar Crisp his father came into the kitchen.

              “Get your shoes on,” he said. “We have to go somewhere.”

              Simon allowed himself a brief moment of hope that maybe they were going to get his mother from wherever she was but his father still looked very sad and Simon had to admit that probably wasn't the case.

              Simon fidgeted in his seat next to his dad in his old green Buick as they drove for what felt like all day. He wanted to ask where they were going but decided that knowing or not didn't make a difference at all. They were going to where they were going and he would know where they were once they were there.

              Finally, late in the afternoon they came to a church in a small town and it was none too soon because Simon had to pee like nobody's business. His dad pulled the car up along the curb around the corner from the church and parked. He reached into the back seat and grabbed Simon's backpack.

              “Here,” he said and handed it to him.

              “What's this?” Simon asked feeling the weight of it. It was stuffed with things now but when he brought it home from school the day before it just had a couple of his notepads in it and a half eaten sandwich from lunch.

              “Don't worry about that right now. Listen. Head on inside. I will be right in.”

              “In the church?”

              “Yeah. In the church. I will be right in.”

              “Okay dad,” he said and climbed out. He walked up the steps to the church which Simon had to admit was kind of scary looking.

              “Simon,” his father called to him through the window.

              “Yeah Dad?”

              “Nothing... head on it.”

              Simon entered the church but it was so dark and creepy inside that he didn't like being in it by himself so after a moment he came to wait on the steps for his dad. His was temporarily blinded from coming back out into the light. Just as he eyes adjusted and he could see clearly again he saw his dad's green Buick make a u-turn on the street and drive away. Simon thought he must be going to park and when ten minutes passed he thought that he must have gone to the store for cigarettes or something and when thirty minutes passed he thought maybe he got a flat tire. By the time an hour and a half passed he didn't know what to think.

The sky was starting to get all glowy and red, the way it does on summer nights when it feels like the day will never end. Like it was so bright and sunny outside that the night couldn't touch the world, and it was going to be like that forever. Warm and hot and perfect. But reds slowly turned to purples and Simon's little shadow sitting next to him on the steps to the church began to shrink along with his hope that his father was going to come around the corner any moment, panting and out of breath, explaining he was in a car accident or got lost and how sorry he was.            

              Before that happened though an old priest came out onto the step and saw him sitting there. Simon looked at him with eyes full of questions and tears and the priest slowly nodded his head like he wasn't surprised at all to find a boy on the step. 

              “How long have you been sitting there?” The old priest asked .

              Simon wasn't sure, so he just said, “A long time.”

              “Where are you parents?”

              “I don't know... I'm here with my dad. He... he went somewhere. I don't know where.”

              Then the priest sighed, looked at the backpack at Simon's feet then looked up to the sky as if maybe God was going to tell him where father was.

              “Well, you better come on in.” he said.

              Simon did not want to go back into the church. It scared him. But what scared him even more was the thought of having to stay by himself outside all night, in who knows where. He slowly got up and followed the priest into the building.

              “What is this place?” Simon asked, feeling it was only polite to make conversation.                

              The priest stopped and placed his hand on Simon's shoulder and said, “This is an orphanage.”