Twist (Book 1): The Abnorm Chronicles-Twist (15 page)

Chapter
36

Thumper woke to a pounding headache. He had plenty of experience with hangovers, but this was more than that. “What the hell?”

B
leary-eyed he looked around the room, not recognizing anything. The room was dark, stuffy, and it didn’t smell like his place at all. He knew the certain vibe of his own home, and this wasn’t it.

He struggled to pull
together memories of the previous night. He remembered meeting someone at the bar, someone who met his eyes, let him buy her a drink, responded to his come-ons so that they escalated in short order without the long and tedious pickup dance. This woman knew
how
to be picked up, and the deal was sealed as soon as she started talking kinky, bondage, rough stuff.

That’s when the memories got fuzzy around the edges. M
aybe they had gone back to her place? Must have.

He had been pretty drunk
but, hey, that’s what Saturday nights were for. Now some of the details started to sharpen. Yeah, they came here, started to get going. A few more drinks, straight whiskey—Thumper was an experienced drinker, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten blind, memory-loss drunk. He hoped they’d at least had the promised sex. Damn, but what was the point if he couldn’t remember it?

He rubbed his head. No, this didn’t feel like a hangover.
Not at all.
The bitch drugged me!

“Hey!” he yelled, but the room was silent. He seemed to be the only one there.

He sat up in the dimness, struggled to throw off the sheets. He was naked. Well, at least they had gotten that far. Then he saw the fur-covered handcuffs locked to the bedposts and felt a chill. She could have slipped him a roofie, chained him up, tortured him like some sick Mrs. Hannibal Lecter.

He lurched off the bed, groped along the walls until he found the light switch. With a sigh of relief, h
e spotted his clothes crumpled in the corner. As he pulled on his jeans, he checked his pockets, found the wallet—still full of cash (well, not full, but with the couple of bills he expected).

“
What the hell? Bitch, you didn’t need to drug me to have a good time.”

Grumbling to himself and trying to
bluster his way through the uneasy feeling, Thumper pulled on his shirt, grabbed his jacket, then headed to the bathroom. His scalp hurt, and he rubbed his fingers along it, looking in the mirror. It felt as if she’d yanked out a handful of hair by the roots. Otherwise, he looked red-eyed, rumpled, hungover—since it was Sunday morning, he knew he’d blend right in with plenty of others.

“Hey!” he yelled again. He didn’t remember her name, maybe
hadn’t even known it in the first place. She had just left him alone—after drugging him.

He peed in her toilet, intentionally splashing the rim and then leaving the seat up as a petty vengeance. He didn’t bother flushing.

But Thumper was just getting up to speed. He felt taken advantage of, tricked. No bitch did that to him.

He
took his time trashing her place, leaving his mark, so she would remember him. He smashed a few breakable things against the wall, but since he was an experienced drunkard and thug, he was careful not to throw anything hard enough to make the neighbors call the cops. Soon enough, he ran out of steam and ran out of interest.

Once he was done, he stood by the front door,
looked at the damage, and . realized he had to get out of here. If he waited for the bitch to come back, he would probably take her to pieces, too. She deserved that, but he couldn’t risk it. And if she came back, saw what he had done, she would scream and cause a scene, call the cops herself. She could sure as hell prove that he had wrecked her place, but how could he prove that she’d drugged him? Creepy twisted bitch.

Thumper had already done a nickel between two stretches at
Cañon City, both for aggravated assault. He didn’t want to add another to his rap sheet. Three timers got the shit treatment.

Chances were
that she didn’t know his name either. Better just to get out of here, disappear, head back home, and spend the afternoon watching the Broncos on TV. That’s what Sundays were for.

He kicked
a hole in the drywall to vent one last bit of frustration, then stormed out. As his final victory, he didn’t just leave her door unlocked, but wide open.

Chapter 37

Adam pushed his perception, his avatar experience from life to life, stripping each one of details and moving on. The process was easy now—or at least much easier than it had been.

Now, his assimilative vision extended six blocks in any given direction. The farther he got from direct line of sight, the more distorted the sounds and colors became, but he could still put it all together.

His gift had learned how to pick up minute cues, from reading lips to noticing vibrations and separating out only the sounds he wanted to hear. But his gift could reconstruct only so much, especially in the
raucous everyday background noise of the city.

Rodriguez stood next to him, watching. “It’s incredible, man—what you can do.”

Adam shook his head. “It’s a balance. Blind people have an improved sense of hearing and smell. You have legs and arms you can use, while I have this gift.” He remembered the article Ingrid had given him, the assessment of the Brilliant phenomenon: “It was as though evolution was were maintaining equilibrium, giving here, taking there.”

Rodriguez glanced over at him. “But your disability isn’t a compensation for your gift—you weren’t always like this. I thought you were injured on deployment? You’d have these skills even if you had the use of your arms and legs.” His expression grew more serious. “It just matters to you more now.”

Adam tapped a fingertip against the glass. “Oh, I had the gift before. That’s what put me in such high demand. Special Ops used it, and I was very good at my job.”

Rodriguez considered. “Intel? You’d make a hell of a spy.”

“Sniper,” Adam admitted, and the detective fell silent. “With my particular skill set, that’s why I was in Special Ops. Thanks to that gift, I was sent on my mission, where I got wounded. So, if you connect the dots, my gift is why I’m in this chair. It’s an amazing ability, don’t get me wrong, but it took a price from me. Maybe I subconsciously resented it . . . for a long time.”

Rodriguez nodded. “Yeah I get it. My brother’s got a lot of resentment, too, and he’s not even a Brilliant.” The detective pressed a pair of binoculars against his eyes, scanning the street scene below, but Adam knew that even his magnified vision would be the
merest shadow of what Adam could see. “All right, where are we hitting next? Show me.”

Adam grinned with anticipation. “Let’s try three blocks north, two blocks east.”

“I think I’ve got a clear line of sight.”

The spectral Adam jumped between spots until he had a view back on his own apartment. “All right, I am looking back at us from the corner. How close in can you get?”

Rodriguez adjusted the binoculars. “Reasonably close.”

“You see the pizza joint?”

“Yeah.”

“Blue newspaper dispenser in front of the pizza joint.”

“Yeah.” Rodriguez panned the binoculars, fiddling with the focus knobs as he tried to zoom on the newspapers.

“Check it out.” Adam read the headline aloud.

Rodriguez put the binoculars down. “Just so incredible.”

For the first time in a very long time, Adam felt appreciated and comfortable to have someone else around him.

Chapter 38

As Cooper again sat in the conference room, staring at the crime boards with the new pieces of data tagged in place, Jones slammed the door open and strode in with results in one hand and coffee in the other. “Caught you dozing. I promise, man, this is worth waking up for.”

“
I’ve decided it’s never good when you wake me up, Jones. Is it a break in the case?”

The
detective was grinning, full of himself as he set the coffee in front of Cooper. “A break in the case? Man, this practically
makes
our case.” He dropped the file folder in front of him. “We got a hit on CODIS. Your Director did us a solid and got the DNA results right away, pattern match and ID print from the follicles found in the wig disguise.”

Cooper
flipped open the folder and glanced through the documents, paused at the photo taken from the police database. Jones didn’t wait to deliver his news. “I’m a big enough man not to say ‘I told you so,’ but our perp is a
male
. Based on his past performance in life, this guy is no Brilliant, not by a long shot. Comes from the low-wattage end of the lightbulb factory.”

Cooper blinked.
That didn’t make sense. It was too far outside the pattern, but the DNA match left little room for doubt. “Okay . . . I didn’t see that one coming.”

Jones
tapped the papers, the mug shot. “Wilfred Eugene Lawrence, aka Thumper. We’ve got a current address, as well as a full description. We’ve put a BOLO on the wire, but if you want to make a house call, Agent Cooper, how would you like to join me in apprehending your very first serial killer?”

Chapter
39

The VA Hospital’s crowded intake room had a wait time of four to five hours. As if they were part of a psych study, patients cycled through the personal stages of acceptance, boredom, impatience, frustration, sometimes even anger. They couldn’t do anything about the situation. Once one person got processed, the queue filled up again, over and over, endless.

Selene
glanced at the scrawled handwriting on the form and keyed in the information as quickly as possible. Her job was the least important thing in the world to her right now, but it was an important part of the overall tapestry of her goals. She had to do her tasks, remain invisible, draw no attention—all in order to keep doing what she needed to do.

As if the pressure of
so many waiting people was not enough, her boss, Mr. Glover, came up behind her, arms crossed and impatient, but in a different and edgier way than the other frustrated people in the waiting area. “Almost done, sir,” she said.

Glover
kept watching her, and she could sense he was displeased about something. No, “displeased” was far too small a word. Her scalp began to crawl under his gaze.

With a chill, she suddenly wondered,
Did that nosy Dr. Wolverton file a notice after all? Did she put me on Mr. Glover’s radar?
If the therapist had documented her suspicions of abuse, the VA had to take it seriously, by law. They would dig even deeper into Selene’s business.
Christ! Why couldn’t all these worthless people mind their own business?
Couldn’t they see she was doing good work?

Keying in the last strokes,
Selene forced herself to be calm, a good little worker bee. She hit “Enter,” pushed aside the intake papers, and slid the “Closed” placard in front of her computer—to the consternation of those waiting in the reception area.

Early on, as a means of self-preservation in front of her father, Selene
had learned how to force a convincing smile, and she did so now as she swiveled her chair. “Yes, Mr. Glover?” She didn’t meet his eye, stared at his tie instead, a navy-blue one with gray chevrons.

He stood uncomfortably close.
“Selene, I need you to come to my office. Now.”

She looked meaningfully at the crowded reception area.
“Can it wait until my break? We are kind of busy.”

He scowled
, and his scowl of disapproval made Selene sick. Too many memories, and she clamped down on her reaction. When her father looked like that, he was a ticking time bomb.

Glover
was in his late forties and pudgy, with thinning hair that failed to cover his scalp despite its best efforts. He perspired constantly, as if his body thought Denver was a humid tropical rainforest. He had always made her skin crawl, made her want to be somewhere else. If she went into his office, and he closed the door, she would be disgustingly close to him. But she didn’t have a choice in the matter.

She followed him
out of her cubicle and through a set of security doors away from the intake reception area. One wall of Glover’s office was covered in mirrored glass, facing outward so that the people could not see him watching. In place of the usual motivational posters that bosses tended to prefer, Glover filled the available wall space with framed hospital guidelines and procedures. Each frame hung perfectly parallel to floor and ceiling. Papers were neatly stacked and stashed in file shelves, not scattered across the desk.

Selene
fought to keep a haughty sneer from her face. She knew she was better than him, no matter what reprimand he was about to hand over. Had she done something wrong at work, or was he really investigating the bruises? She tugged on her sleeves. This man wouldn’t want to hear the real explanation. Domestic abuse was probably easier for him to deal with than rough bondage sex.

She sat in
the uncomfortable plastic chair as far from her boss as possible. “Did I do something wrong, Mr. Glover?” Nobody ever got called to his office to receive praise.

Before taking his seat, Glover scanned
the pending folders in the stack of shelves on his desk, then selected the one he needed. Without hurrying, as if he had taken management classes from former-Nazi interrogators, he pulled out a file, placed it on the desktop.

Of course, he couldn’t
just come out and say what he needed. He was a bully at heart who preferred to abuse the small powers he possessed. Selene waited him out, all too familiar with the tactic.

He rotated the file
so it faced her, then he opened the cover. “Can you explain these to me, Nurse Cook?”

Selene
leaned forward, read the contents. She really had no idea what he was showing her. The folder contained a series of time- and date-stamped transcripts, notations of when certain records had been accessed. “I don’t know. Intake logs, I assume?”

“Yes, logs. Note the terminal ID.
Each record was accessed from your computer terminal.” A brick began to form in Selene’s stomach. “None of these patients came in on the days that you pulled these files. You went hunting for these particular patients at some other time. Furthermore”—with a sweaty hand, he slid aside the top paper to reveal the second sheet, which showed another series of cryptic times and dates—“notice that the times correspond on the printer in the intake reception area.”

Selene
was listening to him, but her eye was on his finger. The man was so sweaty that he had already left a damp stain on the paper. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”

The disgusting
finger jabbed at the printout. “I am wondering if you could shed some light for me, Nurse Cook. Why did you pull these particular files of patients who were long since registered and no longer your concern, and why did you print them on these times and dates?” He stared at her.

Who did this man think he was, a mafia accountant?
In order to dodge his gaze, she jerked her eyes back down to the paper. She looked at the patterns, seeing the perfect columns, the matching connections. She cleared her throat. “I do hundreds of forms every day, so I don’t remember these particular ones. Is there some problem?”

Glover leaned back, linking his hands across his stomach.
“None of those people were here in the hospital. They have records at the VA, but haven’t come in for medical treatment recently. No other department has them registered.” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure there isn’t something you want to tell me?”

Selene
gritted her teeth. The passive-aggressive manipulation disgusted her. Her father had used the same technique as a weapon in his arsenal to prove that she didn’t have any worth.
Are you sure there isn’t something you want to tell me?
Just fishing for a confession. The words echoed through her mind. She realized that her disgust with Glover was distracting her from the issue at hand. She had been caught—but did he know
why
she’d accessed those records? She didn’t know what to do or say. But he didn’t know either. That was her best defense.

“
I really have no idea, sir.” She sat meekly in the chair. “If they weren’t intakes, then I couldn’t tell you. I’m awfully busy all day long, and we exchange terminals when we need to. Maybe someone else used my station.”

H
e looked smug, and she realized she had just stepped into a trap. “I’m sorry, Nurse Cook, but that’s just not the case. Thinking that a sweet little employee like you would not possibly be pulling patient files and printing them for herself—I went and checked the video footage. As you see, we have the precise time and date.” When he leaned closer, she could smell his sweat. If she was the one being interrogated, why was he perspiring so heavily? “It was you Nurse Cook, on each of these occasions. Now, why did you pull and print those particular files?”

Selene
began to realize that her protestations of innocence were not going to work. “I don’t remember doing it, sir. I’m . . . sorry.”

Glover stared at her, pondering. With a sigh
, as if his decision pained him, he closed the file folder. “Then I’m sorry, Nurse Cook. I’m going to have to suspend you for the time being, without pay, pending further review.”

Trying not to cry, she
lurched up from her chair, but Glover’s voice was sharp. “No, take a seat.”

“
I’m sorry, sir? I thought you said I was suspended.”

“
You’re going to have to wait here for security to escort you out of the building. I am bringing this to HR, who will put together an administrative inquiry and review your case. I’m very sorry”—no, he wasn’t!—“there is nothing I can do about that.”

As she sat numb in the uncomfortable chair,
Selene stared at her feet. Though he did not seem sincere in any way, she could hear the truth in his words, his accusations. He had caught her stealing patient files and then lying about it.

Glover
knew that she was worthless, and she would only be buying time if she pretended to be ignorant. Once an inquiry was made, he would be able to have her arrested. Someone would put together the names on the files with the murder victims. Glover was too stupid, or too oblivious, to do that for himself. They would lock her away like an animal, her work unfinished. A failure.

Worthless.

After an uncomfortable fifteen minutes trapped like squirming prey in Glover’s office, VA security finally arrived and took her away. One small blessing, at least: they did not take her along the direct route to the parking garage past the intake reception area. Instead, they walked the back halls and quietly deposited her at her car. Then the uniformed guards just left.

Selene collapsed
in the safety and sanctity of her own space. She heaved a sigh, and tears started dripping down her cheeks. How could she have made such a mistake? Only a freak would have been able to put together subtle details like that, the faintest residual patterns. How had she gotten caught?

It didn
’t matter now. Before long, someone would notice that those VA files all belonged to military veterans who had been classified as Twists. And that all four murder victims were among them, as part of a much larger hunting list.

Selene
had to use what time she had left.

Firing up the ignition, she pulled out of the parking space and left the
VA behind.