Stirred (7 page)

“About two years. Mind if I borrow your cell phone?”

Little weird, but whatever. “Um, sure.”

Marquette dug his HTC Thunderbolt out of his pocket, handed it over.

“Thinking about getting one?” he asked.

“No, I don’t like the Droid operating system. More of an iPhone guy myself.”

Siders’s window hummed down halfway, Marquette watching in astonishment as he tossed the phone outside and then held the button to scroll the window back up into the door.

“Why the hell did you do that?” Marquette said.

Siders’s black eyes remained hidden behind a pair of shades.

He stared straight ahead through the glass and drove on without speaking.

“Stop the car. I want out.”

Marquette reached down to unbuckle his seatbelt and found no button. Just a smooth, square face of metal, inset with what appeared to be a hole for a small-gauge Allen wrench. And the belt remained tight when he tugged on it, no play at all.

He glanced at the door—no handle, no mechanism for lowering the window.

The blast of fear hit him like a freight train.

He turned and looked at Siders.

“What do you want with me?”

“Let’s just say, I love your name.”

The man shot him a quick, smirking glance, and Marquette noticed for the first time the black curtain that separated the two front seats from the rear of the van.

“Curious to know what’s back there?” Siders asked. “Go ahead. Have a look.”

Marquette swept the curtain back as Siders flicked a button in the ceiling.

A dome light illuminated the back of the van under a hard, clinical glare.

Dark windows.

No carpeting.

The ceiling and the sidewalls had been reinforced with black soundproofing foam.

In the center of the white metal floor, he spotted a drain capped with a large, rubber plug.

Along the driver’s-side wall, a tool cabinet had been bolted into the floor, holding shelves of surgical tools—forceps, saws, scalpels, steel retractors, clamps.

He looked back at Siders.

“You’re him, aren’t you? The man who hung that woman off the railroad bridge.”

Siders smiled. “You saw that, huh?”

“That was you?”

“That was all me.”

Marquette squirmed in his seat, attempting to slide out of the lap belt.

“Don’t do that,” Siders warned.

Marquette cocked his left arm back and punched the passenger’s-side window, crying out as his hand bounced off, leaving a blood smear across the glass.

Siders began to laugh.

Through the fear, Marquette managed to blurt, “I can take you to an ATM right now.”

“Yeah? What’s your daily limit?”

“Two thousand. And I won’t tell a soul, I swear to God.”

Marquette knew his knuckles were broken, but he scarcely felt the pain. The overriding sensation was a tightness like a dumbbell sitting on his sternum, turning each breath into a quick, shallow gasp that was making him dizzier and more lightheaded by the moment.

“I have a family. A wife…” Tears beginning to sheet over his eyes. “A daughter.”

“Good for you. Will they miss you?”

“Very much.”

Siders gave him a sideways glance. “It’s a good thing to be missed, don’t you think?”

“Please.”

“Don’t you beg me. That’s the only warning you’ll get. And don’t try to hit me.” Siders showed him the pistol in his left hand.

Marquette looked out his window, saw that they were heading south on Lakeshore Drive. A few strands of sunlight had finally broken through the cloud deck, slanting down into the surface of the lake. Subjected to the onslaught of the sun, it didn’t even resemble water. More like a field of shimmering jewels.

They skirted Solider Field.

Traffic was light.

Marquette considered his life. He had family, friends. His feelings for them were pure, but nothing extraordinary. Nothing about his life was extraordinary. He’d spent endless hours at a liberal arts college, teaching uncaring teenagers who needed the credit to graduate, and in his spare time he’d studied the writings of people who had died hundreds of years ago.

Still, it was
his
life. Marquette had lived it as best as he could. Made some mistakes, had a few regrets, but there were still things he wanted to do. Stand in a castle in Scotland. Swim with dolphins. And though it was cliché, he’d always planned to get around to skydiving someday.

But now, all he wanted was to see his family. One last time.

“Can I call my wife?” His lower lip quivered, the tears starting to come. “Tell her goodbye?”

“No.”

Siders parked near Adler Planetarium and killed the engine. The sun coming through the windshield made it tough to see anything.

“There is some good news here,” Siders said.

“What?”

“All those scary-looking tools you saw back there? That’s postmortem entertainment.”

“What are you talking about?” He was having a hard time following, his thoughts coming at him in fractured streams of fear and sorrow and regret.

“You’re getting off easy is what I’m saying. See this?” Siders held up a cheap-looking paperback book with a garish cover. The title was
The Killer and His Weapon
. “The girl on the bridge? She became intimately familiar with another book by the same author. Ever read him?”

Marquette squinted at the writer’s name. “Andrew Z. Thomas? No, no I haven’t.”

Siders smiled. “Trust me. This one will
really
get under your skin. Look here.”

Marquette looked at the man’s other hand, saw he was holding a syringe.

“What’s that?”

“One hundred milliequivalents of potassium chloride. It’s the final stage of state-sponsored lethal injections.”

Marquette looked at the needle. At the clear liquid in the cylindrical tube.

“What does it do?” he asked.

“Stops your heart.”

“How long does it…” He couldn’t get the words out.

“To die? Between two and ten minutes.”

“Does it hurt?”

“I’m not going to lie to you. Having your heart stop hurts. But not nearly as much as what’s behind the black curtain.”

This conversation had gone from surreal to positively insane. “Will…will I be conscious after my heart stops?”

“I don’t know, brother. That’s part of the mystery of what lies beyond, that you’re on the verge of knowing. It’s kind of exciting, actually.”

Marquette looked out over the harbor, the skyline standing indistinct in the haze.

“I’m not ready,” he said.

His heart beating so fast.

“No one’s ever ready,” the man said. “I could’ve done this anywhere, you know. Figured you loved this city. That you’d want to go sitting back, staring at the skyline across the water.”

“I haven’t talked to my daughter in two years. A stupid fight.”

“Most fights are.”

“Do you…have family?”

“Not for a long, long time.”

“I need to apologize to her.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Marquette turned away from the window.

“I’ll let you call her.”

“You’re serious?”

The man pulled an iPhone out of an inner pocket in his jacket, glanced at it. “Sure, we’ve still got a little time. And a friend of mine once told me that murder shouldn’t be without its little courtesies. What’s her number?”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you.” He had to think for a moment, years since he’d dialed it.

As the man punched it in, he prayed for the first time in ages.

Prayed her number hadn’t changed. Prayed she’d answer.

The man held up the iPhone screen, her number displayed.

“You understand what the purpose of this call is
not
, correct?”

“Yes.”

“If you try to save yourself, give away our location, anything like that…”

“I understand. Completely.”

The man pressed the green call button and handed him the phone.

“One minute.”

It rang.

Twice.

Three times.

On the fourth, he heard his daughter’s voice, and he had to fight with every atom of his being not to break down.

“Hello?”

“Carly?”

“Dad?”

“Baby.”

Figured she could hear the tears in his voice, but he didn’t care.

“Why are you calling? Is Mom okay?”

“She’s fine.” He turned away from the man who was going to murder him and leaned into the tinted glass. “I’m sorry, Carly. For everything. You are my—”

“Dad, I’m kind of in the middle of something…could I give you a call back in—”

“Listen to me. Please. I was wrong, Carly. So wrong.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No. No. Carly, you are my princess. You always have been, and I love you beyond words. Do you hear me?”

On the other end of the line…silence.

“Carly?”

“I hear you. Dad, is everything okay?”

“Yes. I just…” He shut his eyes, tears streaming down his face. “I need you to know how I feel about you. How I’ve always felt. Those summers up in Wisconsin with you and your mother on Lake Rooney…best times of my life. I would give all the treasure in the world to go back there for a single day. I’m so proud of you, Carly.”

Now, he could hear her crying.

“Ten seconds,” the man said.

“I have to go now, sweetheart.”

“I want to see you, Dad. I’ll be in Chicago week after next.”

“I’d like that very much. I’m sorry, Carly. I’m so sorry.”

“Dad, are you sure everything’s—”

He felt the phone get snatched away from his ear.

Marquette wiped his eyes, stared for a moment across the harbor.

When he looked back at the man, he said, “I should’ve done that a long time ago.”

“But you did it. There were people in my life, now long since gone, that I can never have a conversation like that with. Count yourself lucky.”

But Marquette didn’t feel lucky. He felt devastated.

“It’s time, Reggie. Roll up the sleeve of your left arm.”

Marquette’s fingers trembled so badly that he fumbled with the button on his cuff for thirty seconds before he got it undone.

“Are you strictly a scholar or is there some real belief behind your work?” the man asked as Marquette slowly rolled up the sleeve of the cream button-down shirt his wife had given him the Christmas before last.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ve studied quite a bit of Dante’s masterpiece myself. It fascinates me. I have a question for you.”

“Yes?”

“To which circle of hell will you be taken?”

Marquette stared into the man’s black eyes—such terrifying emptiness.

“The fifth circle.”

“Anger?”

“It’s the root of all my failings.”

“You’re a very honest man, Reggie.”

The rolled sleeve was above his elbow now, and the man said, “That’s fine. Turn your arm over. Let me see your veins.”

Marquette hesitated, but only for a second.

“Are you feeling the urge to resist?”

“Of course I am. This is my life you’re taking.”

“I understand that as long as you understand what’s behind the black curtain. If you want to go out screaming and in agony, the option is there.”

“I don’t want that.”

The man with long, black hair held the syringe, his finger on the plunger, and moved it toward the pale underside of Marquette’s forearm.

“Try to keep it steady.”

Marquette grabbed his wrist to keep his arm from shaking, watched the needle enter a periwinkle vein with a stinging pinch.

“Speedy travels, brother,” the man said, and his thumb depressed the plunger.

When he’d shot the full load into Marquette’s system, he tugged out the needle and leaned back in his seat.

Marquette sat with his palms on his knees.

Waiting.

Heart racing.

Lines of icy sweat trilling down his sides.

He didn’t feel anything yet.

Out the window, he saw a couple in their thirties walking along the shore with two small children.

An old man sitting on a bench twenty yards away, smoking a cigar.

A half-mile out—a sailboat gliding shoreward.

He whispered the names of his wife and his daughter, and then it hit him—like someone had dangled his beating heart over the fast lane of an interstate and a sixteen-wheeler had slammed through it at full throttle.

He heard himself gasp.

The pain of molten rock being pouring into his chest cavity. He had a faint understanding that he was thrashing about in the front passenger seat of the van, eyes bugging out, and then he was still, crumpled against the door and staring out the window one last time, the world turning into a negative of itself.

He wasn’t moving, couldn’t move, not even to close his eyes, and he thought,
I’m going to die with them open
, and he stared at the familiar profile of the Hancock Building, five miles away, until it ceased to mean a thing.

• • •

Wikipedia Entry for Andrew Z. Thomas

Andrew Ziegler Thomas
(born November 1, 1961) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, true crime, and thriller fiction, and a suspected serial killer. His stories have sold more than 30 million copies and have been adapted into feature films, television movies, and comic books.

Early Life

Thomas was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1961 to James and Jeanette Thomas, along with his fraternal twin brother, Orson. His father, who worked in a textile factory, died of lung cancer in 1973, when Thomas was eleven.

Education and Early Career

Thomas attended Appalachian State University with his brother beginning in 1980. He graduated with a BA in English in 1984. Orson Thomas left during their junior year for unknown reasons.

1980s Work

After finishing college in 1984, Thomas began submitting short stories to horror and suspense magazines. His first short story, “An Ocean of Pain,” was published in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s
December 1986 issue. At this time, Thomas had already begun work on his first novel,
The Killer and His Weapon
, a story about a man coming to terms with his homicidal instincts. With that novel, he landed renowned literary agent Cynthia Mathis, who still handles rights to his work.
The Killer and His Weapon
was published in 1988. Although not a critical success, it sold over 100,000 copies in hardcover and 500,000 copies in paperback, big numbers for a first horror novel containing depictions of graphic violence.