Abandoned

CHAPTER THIRTY

Kirby comes into my office and takes a seat without being asked. She’s dressed in jeans, a white button-down shirt, and tennis shoes. She puts her feet up on the desk and smiles as she chews her gum.

“What’s up, boss woman?”

“I need the perspective of a professional.”

“Professional what?” she asks. I can’t tell if she’s teasing me. Kirby lives in a state of perpetual unconcern, and, as usual, the only hint of what lies inside her floats transiently through her eyes. A certain watchfulness. A certain deadness.

“Operative. Killer. Whatever.”

She grins. “Oh that. Sure, shoot.”

“We’re chasing a guy who could have had some training. It’s just a theory, but I’d appreciate your perspective.” A hint of interest. “Tell me about him.”

I brief her on Dali. Kirby is technically a civilian, but I imagine there are times in the past that she’s had a security clearance higher than anything I’ll ever see. She asks no questions throughout, just listens, intent. When I finish, she leans her head back and stares at the ceiling, chewing her gum.

“Well,” she says finally, “I’d agree with your assessment that he might have had training. Smooth abduction in an urban environment, batting a thousand on not getting caught or noticed?” She nods. “That’s some highly effective activity. You could learn stuff like that in the Special Forces branches, though it’s always possible that he went directly into the private sector, like I did.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re really funny about women in those branches of the military. It’s the law, boss woman. No fems allowed. But I knew what I wanted to do from an early age, and if you’re really extra-special motivated to get that kind of training—the kidnap and interrogate and kill kind of training—there are places you can find it, for a price.”

“Like?”

“Central and South America. The Middle East. Israel. Shucks, right here in the good old USA. The CIA has a program or two, but you have to be a little bit too true-blue for my tastes.”

“Let’s say he did go the military route. How long does that take?”

She considers it. “Minimum of four years after joining, as an average. You have to be Mr. Perfect Soldier, be in tip-top shape, and pass various and sundry physical and psychological tests. Even then there’s no guarantee of placement.”

“Which branch would be most likely to prepare you for abductions?”

“Who knows? The truth is, it could be any one of them, depending on how they’re tasked. Not to mention that someone in the Green Berets, for example, could always be cherry-picked for recruitment into the CIA.” She grins. “It’s all one big happy family in the end. Common goals and all that cool stuff.”

I think about everything she’s told me, factoring it in with my current picture of Dali.

“We know he’s been operating for at least fifteen years, probably longer,” I muse. “If he joined the military before he started his current ‘career,’ he’d be … what? Forty-five?”

“If he was lucky.”

“The question is, did he decide to get trained so he could become a criminal or did the idea come after his training?”

“From personal experience, people like Mr. Nut Job and me tend to know what we are from an early age.”

I cock my head at her. “You think you’re the same?”

“Pish. There’s no way he’s as good as me.”

I smile. “There’s more difference than that.”

“Maybe, maybe not. How are you so sure?”

“Two reasons. One, I trust you with my daughter. Two, you’d never do something like what was done to Heather Hollister, an innocent, a civilian, a mother. You have limits, Kirby.”

She assesses me with those oft-dead eyes. “Once, down in South America,” she says, her voice low and reasonable, a talking-about-the-weather voice, “the team I was a part of was captured by a group of paramilitaries. I’d been doing recon prior to the attack and capture, so they didn’t get me. One guy stayed behind to guard their rear.” A wink. “His mistake! I reached out and touched him, just like the old phone commercials. I needed him to tell me where they were, but, gee, he was against the idea, soooo … I pulled out his teeth with pliers until he changed his mind.” She grins, and I force myself not to recoil. I’m disturbed less by what she’s saying than by the lack of madness I see in her eyes. She’s lucid now, she was lucid then; Kirby is entirely present in everything she does.

“He was a tough one; he held out through ten teeth. Marathon Man in spades. He told me what I needed and then I put a bullet in his head.” Her gaze goes distant. “I caught up with them and found out that they’d executed the rest of my team.” She shrugs. “So I executed them too. All ten of them. It took me five days, tracking them through the jungle. Picking them off at night, catching some while they were taking a pee pee, others while they were sleeping. One of them was yanking his little pud when I crept up behind him. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. I let him finish and then I watched him beg and cry like a baby before I blew his brains out.”

She smiles, and it’s a normal Kirby-grin again. The blue eyes that had been so dead and empty just a second before sparkle with mischief.

I’ve sat in badly lit rooms looking across the table into the eyes of a man who strangled children in front of their mothers. I’ve watched psychotics have involuntary orgasms as they related the grimmest details of rape and murder to me. These people have a darkness to them, a terrible gravity that cannot be faked. Kirby is Kirby, I have no illusions about what she is, but I know what she is not.

I reach over and pat her cheek, once. “You may be twisted, beach bunny, but you’re not evil.”

A space of silence, a drop of time where, for just a split second, I think I see something akin to gratitude roll through her eyes. It’s there, maybe, then it’s gone. She grins and pretends to wipe sweat off her brow. “That’s a weight off my shoulders.” She stands up. “We done here, boss woman?”

“We’re done.”

“Catch you on the flip side,” and she’s gone, leaving something always strange but definitely not evil in her wake.

My cell phone rings.

“Barrett.”

“We got a bite,” Alan says.

“The guy’s screen name is Dali,” Alan says. “He approached Leo via private message.”

Dali types:

Do you hate your ex-wife?

It’s asked without preamble or introduction.

“What do I say?” Leo asks. His voice is low, hushed. I understand. Dali can’t hear us, but it’s a visceral thing.

“I don’t know,” Alan says. “Something’s off with this. It’s too soon. Smoky?”

Alan’s right. Everything that we’ve learned about Dali tells us that he’s careful, a planner, driven by pragmatic necessity, not desire. Leo’s been on this site for less than twenty-four hours. Why the rush?

“Maybe it was your story,” I say. “Hell. I don’t know. Take it slow. Answer him with a question.”

“Like what?”

“Trust your instincts,” Alan says. “Don’t sweat it, son. I’ll let you know if you start fucking up.”

There’s a beat of silence and then I hear Leo’s fingers, tapping the keys.

Why do you want to know?

Good choice, I think.

I’m a freer of men from the prisons of women. I’m trying to find out if you’re a man who wants to be freed.

How do you know I need to be?

I read your story. Very compelling. But there’s a big difference, a world of difference, between being trapped and wanting to be freed. It requires a decision.

What is this? A self-help deal? Are you going to tell me how to harness my inner happiness or something?

I’m just a problem-solver. Go on, humor me. Answer the question. Do you hate your ex-wife?

“Go for it,” Alan says. “But wait a few moments. Be hesitant before committing.”

Three or four seconds pass before Leo types his answer.

Yes.

Yes what?

Yes, I hate her.

Why?

You read my story. I think it’s pretty obvious.

The story is something you took time with, that you thought about before writing down. I want something more immediate. I’ve found that’s the quickest way to the truth. Let me ask again, and this time answer without thinking about it too much. Why do you hate your ex-wife?

Leo waits before responding, and then:

Because she ruined me.

“Good,” Alan encourages.

How did she do that? Explain what you mean by “ruin.”

“This isn’t as easy as I thought it would be,” Leo says.

“You’re doing fine,” I tell him. “Get into character and let yourself respond as Robert Long.

He begins:

Before she dumped me and killed my baby, I believed in love. It’s different now. I’ll never love freely like that again. I’ll always be suspicious. I’ll always be afraid to trust.

What was worse? Revoking her love without warning or aborting your unborn child?

Leo doesn’t hesitate.

There’s no way she could have ever really loved me and then have done what she did. You understand what I’m saying? It means that everything was a lie. Our love was a lie. That’s what hurts the most.

Thank you.

For what?

For being honest. It’s the reason I contacted you to begin with. That honesty. It resonated in the story that you posted.

I just wrote what I felt.

Let me ask you another question. Just a hypothetical. Consider it a form of fantasy.

Okay.

How would you benefit if your ex-wife was gone?

Gone? Gone how? You mean dead?

No, no. This isn’t literal. Just … gone. Aliens came down and sucked her up into a spaceship. How would you benefit from that, emotionally or otherwise?

Well … I guess I’d get our house, for one. We’re both still on the mortgage and title. That’s something.

What else?

“Take this very, very slow,” Alan cautions. “Don’t bring up the life insurance. Go to the emotional side now.”

Part of me thinks …

Leo waits a few beats, letting Dali nudge him for an answer.

What?

That I’d be relieved. Her being gone would be some kind of huge relief. We’re not together, but I know that she’s still out there, in the same city. As unlikely as it is, it’s still possible that I could run into her at the store or drive by her on the freeway. We’re not together, but I feel her presence. If she disappeared, I think a weight would come off me.

I understand. I promise you I do.

Yeah, well. That and five bucks will get me a latte at Starbucks.

You might be surprised.

By what?

By the solutions I can offer. But we’re not going to talk about all that right now. It’s too soon. Let me leave you with something small, something to show you that I’m for real and not just another lunatic on the Web.

Go ahead.

Don’t feel threatened by what I say next. I’m a friend, not an enemy, I promise.

Whatever you say, “friend.” LOL.

Here it is: I know who you are, Robert Long.

“Holy shit, that was fast,” Leo marvels. “How the hell did he do that?”

“Put that shock in writing, son, and see what jumps.”

What the fuck! Leo types: How the hell do you know who I am? I thought this was all anonymous!

It is, Robert, it is. No one else you’ve met or talked to here knows your name. I know because of who I am and what I do. Remember what I said before: I didn’t tell you this to threaten you. I offer it as proof, nothing more.

Proof of what?

Proof that, when I talk to you, I’m talking about the real world. We’re meeting in cyberspace. But when we talk in the future

The typing stalls, suddenly.

Dali?

Wait.

“What’s going on?” Alan mutters.

“Probably had to answer the phone or something,” Leo says.

I have to go. Dali finally types: Good-bye.

When can we talk again?

No reply.

Dali?

Dali’s screen name disappears.

“Damn,” Leo says. “He logged off.”

“Odd that he’d cut you off when he had you on the string,” I say.

“Maybe we caught a break,” Alan says. “Maybe one of his abductees broke out or something.”

“Interesting insight into how he cultivates his clients,” James murmurs from behind me. I jump in my chair, startled.

“Jesus, James! How long have you been watching?”

“I saw everything. He’s very smooth, very smart. You see what he was doing there? He feels out the potential client via hypotheticals. He’s careful not to talk about death or murder. It’s all just a dream, a ‘what if?’”

“Which lets him gauge where they’re at without alarming them.”

“It’s more than that. He sets himself up as the dominant personality in the relationship but in the role of a confidant. You can trust him and he has the answers. It makes it easier for him to manipulate them, later.”

“Slick,” Alan agrees. “Guy’s probably a great interrogator. He’s laying a lot of subtle groundwork.”

“Are we still worried that he reached out to me so quickly?” Leo asks.

“I don’t know,” Alan says. “Maybe he’s just trying to fill a quota. He lost Heather Hollister, so he needs some new meat, right?”

“Perhaps,” I allow. “But be careful, anyway. Let me know if he reinitiates contact.”

“You got it,” Alan says. The connection terminates.

I rotate my chair in James’s direction. “So? What do you think?”

“The profile is contradictory. A careful überpragmatist who suddenly changes what’s been a perfectly acceptable MO. He leaves us notes telling us he exists—a first—he lets Heather Hollister walk intact, possibly leaves a fingerprint on Dana Hollister’s body bag, and now jumps the gun with Leo.” He shakes his head. “Strange. It could simply be the crazy factor, but it’s troubling.”

“The crazy factor” is a term we coined locally. It refers to the inexplicable mistakes and aberrations from the expected norm that we so often see with serial offenders. There is the rapist who never fails to use a rubber until one day he doesn’t, the killer who always wears latex gloves but couldn’t keep himself from licking a victim’s thigh. Ask them why, and the answers won’t be based on anything sane. She was my first redhead, the rapist might say. All that red hair. I needed to feel it. For the murderer, perhaps something more obscure: I had to taste her to experience it fully. Smelling her just wasn’t enough of her life essence, you understand? We don’t understand, no one can. The crazy factor.

“It’s possible.”

“Let me add to your discomfort, honey-love,” Callie says from her desk.

“Great. What?”

“I ran the fingerprints recovered from the Los Angeles, Oregon, and Nevada cases against the unknown we found in the Dana Hollister case.”

“And?”

“They’re all from the same individual.”

“All four?”

“That’s right. The same unknown was present in each case.”

I stare at James and see my own confusion reflected back at me.

What the hell?

I throw up my hands. “Fine, then, let’s treat it like a gift. Widen the search. Interpol, any databases we can think of that might help. I heard whispers that the NSA has been building a ‘secret’ database of their own. Covert operatives in various countries.”

“Shot in the dark.”

Interpol’s database is so small that it generally returns an average of eighty percent in negative results, and the NSA tends to be pretty condescending to us, post 9/11 calls for cooperation notwithstanding.

“Still, try.”

“Fine,” Callie sniffs. “But it may take some time. I don’t have any friends there.”

“Imagine that,” James sneers.

“Speaking of the crazy factor,” I say, cutting off Callie’s planned retort, “James, let’s do a property search in Los Angeles, Portland, and Las Vegas. Confine it to commercial properties.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Anything with Dali in the name.”

James taps his upper lip with a finger, thoughtful. “I’ll do some research on Salvador Dali as well and look for any permutations. Names of paintings, things like that.” He frowns. “It’s going to take some time, and it’s likely to be pretty inexact. Not all records are computerized. The ones that are aren’t necessarily searchable. We might find nothing.”

“Or we might find something.”

The office door opens and AD Jones strides in.

“Upstairs, Smoky,” he says. “Now.”