Stolen (29 page)

I
paced around the apartment—nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Two agents from the FBI, both male and both with short hair, one who went by Robert and the other who went by Bob, sat at my kitchen table, playing cards. They’d been here for hours. One of them, Bob, the taller of the two, apparently was a technician of some sort, who would come in handy should the Fiend made contact. Takeout wrappers from D’Angelo’s and McDonald’s—theirs, not mine—filled my wastebasket to the brim. I couldn’t eat.

Once again I was back to the waiting game, which reminded me of the day—two lifetimes ago, it seemed—when Ruby and I sat nervously in Dr. Anna Lee’s medical office, waiting for our names to be called. Not our names, I remembered, but the Uretskys’ names—Elliot and Tanya, our stolen identities.

I had my phone plugged in and charged. I moved my desktop computer out of the bedroom and into the living room. The FBI wanted me to keep my remaining computer, hoping the Fiend would initiate another video chat. I prayed that he would, not so that Bob, the computer savvy FBI agent, could try to track him down—I knew he couldn’t—but so I could see Ruby again.

Ginger moved cautiously about the apartment. She wanted food. She wanted her head scratched. She wanted her belly rubbed. She had become extra needy, her way of expressing knowledge that something was wrong. I sat with her on the futon, consoling her, tapping my foot nervously.

And I waited . . . and waited. . . .

“Do you mind if I make some coffee?” Agent Robert asked.

“No,” I said.

Clegg called. “Just want to tell you we’re still working but got nothing to report,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

“I want to puke,” I said.

“Do it,” he said. “You’ll feel better. I’ll be in touch.”

He hung up before I could answer him.

I turned on the TV, flipped through the channels, and saw every news station reporting the latest breakthrough in the SHS Killer case.

They didn’t use the graphic from the
See Evil
game, just the logo from Sick World, the game’s producer. People who played the game were asked to call a special tip line splashed across the screen but weren’t given any specifics as to why. I wondered how many people would fess up to being avid gamers of the equivalent of torture porn. Then again, people plunked down a lot of money for films that were just as dark and twisted.

I did a bit of research simply for the want of some distraction. Ruby, that was all I could think about. Where was my wife? What was happening to her? I wanted her back with me like I wanted air. To me, there was no difference.

In my research explorations, I discovered that Sick World made a bunch of these games, but
See Evil
was by far their most popular. The head of Sick World was a twenty-nine-year-old California native named Peter Rosenheim. He had a Facebook page, set to private; a LinkedIn account, with fifty connections and no picture; and a Twitter feed with about a hundred tweets, all announcements for his games. A Google search didn’t turn up much on Rosenheim, but I figured he was an underground sort of guy, adept at communicating with his user base while keeping in the virtual shadows. We were both small-time game developers, but Rosenheim cultivated very a different sort of following from mine. Still, Elliot Uretsky played my game and his, so there was overlap. The Fiend could be a registered player of my game. In fact, he could be online playing it right now, using my servers and code for his enjoyment while holding my wife hostage.

Who would play these games? Why would they play them? I dug up an article in WebMD about the attraction of torture porn. I wanted to understand the Fiend better—figure out for myself why playing
See Evil
no longer satisfied his sick fantasies.

The article discussed something called the “horror paradox.” By our very nature, we’re programmed to want to experience only pleasant emotions. As it turns out, when tension and fear get built up and released—the climax when good triumphs over evil—the brain produces lots of those pleasure sensations, hence the paradox. But games like
See Evil
? Well, I just didn’t see anything pleasant or pleasing about it. Evil wins no matter what.

Maybe the Fiend played the game to cope with his own fears about violence but discovered within himself a hidden bloodlust. Or maybe he believed that he’d actually act out his fantasies, and hoped the game would serve as a release valve for his darkest impulses. Perhaps the game itself ignited a long-simmering sadistic streak—a deep desire for power and control. Whatever the cause, this psychopath had my wife, and I had just over eleven hours to get her back.

A vibration pulled me back to the moment.
My phone!
It had buzzed. I jumped up, grabbing it with fumbling hands. I took a look at the display screen. The two-word message sent my heart racing again.

Let’s chat.

A
gent Bob was doing something with my phone, but I didn’t care. I rushed to my workstation in the living room, knocking over a chair in the process. The mouse moved herky-jerky, imitating—in fact almost exaggerating—my shaky hand. Checking the admin e-mail queue for my
One World
game, I was not at all surprised to see an e-mail from Elliot Uretsky. He wasn’t speaking to me from beyond the grave. It was the Fiend, pretending to be someone he was not, just as I once had.

I clicked the link in Uretsky’s e-mail, knowing it would open one of those live video chat sessions. A Web browser did come up, with a view window showing only a black rectangle—a precursor, I supposed, to a two-way video conference. I wasn’t asked to provide a password, as I’d been the last time. I guessed the Fiend knew he was communicating with a trusted computer—the computer at the Harvard Street apartment.

Bob had his computer connected to mine, analyzing the data packets from my computer connection in real time. He was looking for the Fiend. The data he collected was being relayed back to a network operations center manned by scores of FBI agents. He sighed and groaned and threw a pen across the room; whatever he was doing, it wasn’t going to work.

Agent Bob grunted in disgust. “This guy is using a pool of anonymous proxy servers to keep hidden. Some of our tracking tools are being blocked by a firewall, too. He’s good. Damn, he’s good.”

Agent Robert was on the phone, I guess speaking with the FBI’s computer forensics operation center, while I watched the computer screen like it was a stove-top pot working toward a boil.

“We’ve got some early feedback on the text message he sent,” Agent Robert said to Agent Bob. “They think he’s using a burner phone.”

“Burner phone?” I said.

Agent Bob said, “Burner phones are prepaid cell phones, replaced frequently, sometimes weekly. That’s why we call them burners. Can we get a trace?”

Agent Robert dispelled the hope with a shake of his head. “We think it’s a no,” he said. “There’s a theory he’s sending text messages via a Google Voice account that he established using Tor or some other proxy server. We can’t trace that.”

In a flash, the black rectangle became an all-too-familiar basement setting. And there she was, Ruby, still tied to a chair, looking impossibly weak and frail. Her head lolled limply to one side; her eyes were open only a sliver. Her lips looked desert dry, cracked like scorched earth. Her skin was slack and sallow. Without the rise and fall of her chest from each tired breath, I’d have believed the worst.

“Ruby!” I shouted, dismayed that my voice failed to rouse her.

A figure entered the frame, and I prickled at the sight. Once again, the Fiend wore the mask of Mario, those cutout eyeholes a portal into a bone-chilling evil. I could see his mouth move, but couldn’t hear a word being said. Frantic, I hit the volume button on the keyboard, but the sound level was already maxed out. I kept hitting the volume button, anyway.

“I can’t hear you!” I shouted, pantomiming the message by pointing to my ear. “I can’t hear you!”

The Fiend eyed me with curiosity, head tilted slightly to show his confusion, his masked face moving closer to the camera. Then he pointed to his ear and shook his head. He couldn’t hear me, either!

“Volume! Volume!” I screamed.

We had a video connection, but something wasn’t right with the audio transmission.

“What’s going on?” I said to Agent Bob, pleading. “Why can’t he hear me?”

“There’s a problem translating digitally compressed data packets into audio sounds. I can’t tell you any more than that without a lot more analysis.”

I set my hands on the monitor, caressing the sickly image of Ruby. Agent Robert placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder, his touch comforting. The Fiend held up a finger to the camera—“One moment please,” the gesture conveyed. I watched as he stepped out of the frame and came back moments later, holding a marker and pad of paper. I saw him write something on the paper.

Behind him, Ruby sat slumped in the chair, her wrists bound to the armrests and her ankles secured as well. I was sure it wasn’t unintentional that the rope used to bind my wife could also be used to scale a mountain.

I kept my hand on the monitor, my finger tracing the contours of Ruby’s weary face
.
I wanted to embrace her, relieve her suffering, but my touch could not be felt any more than my words could be heard. A vast digital ocean that could not be crossed or navigated separated us.

The Fiend showed me his pad of paper.

Technical difficulties
, he wrote in a neat hand.

Another sheet of paper.

Another sheet of paper.

Another sheet of paper.

The video conference went to black, cut off with cruel abruptness.

For a while, I don’t know how long, I sat benumbed, staring wide-eyed at the black rectangle lodged in the center of a Web page, praying it would flicker back to life again, but knowing in my heart that it would not. I heard the agents Bob talking animatedly, reviewing data packets sniffed from the session, dissecting every nuance of my nightmare in real time. All I could do was to sit and stare, feeling ashamed of my powerlessness, again asking the universe to guide me out of my darkest hour.

That was when I knew I’d come full circle. Not that long ago I’d feared the love of my life was going to die. I had tasted the bitterness, the profound sorrow, witnessed the crumbling of the future we’d planned. I imagined my life after the inevitable and thought about all the holidays and birthdays that would come and go without my beloved. I had cried and hated myself because I wasn’t the one who was dying. I thought I’d found a way to save her, but I was right back where we started, only worse. This was my private hell, so I kept my thoughts to myself, speaking them only in my head, over and over again—a mantra of sorts.

I closed my eyes and opened my heart, asking of the universe with every fiber of my being, believing without a doubt that faith and clarity of vision would answer my wishes. I constructed a vision board in my mind. It looked just like the one Ruby had instructed me to build back when my depression lingered and my game needed a serious publicity boost. I envisioned a corkboard covered in purple fabric. On it, I imagined pictures of Ruby and me together. I filled our future with kids, laughter, and love. I said my affirmation over and over again, seeking strength from above.

At some point, my phone rang, not once but three times. I didn’t notice. I was too busy visioning. It was Agent Bob who tapped my shoulder to get my attention. I looked at the number and saw that Clegg was calling. I pressed to talk.

“We have a body,” he said.

C
legg and I followed Doctor William Cartwright, a skeletal man with stooped shoulders and a horseshoe of wispy brown hair, down a long corridor located somewhere in the basement of Harvard’s medical school. Cartwright seemed a bit too titillated by the large police presence accompanying us for my liking—Clegg’s, too, I could tell.

“The medical students aren’t always prepared for gross anatomy,” Cartwright said in a breathy voice. “Some of them find it horrific to see a dead person. Imagine that, doctors afraid of the dead.”

“Imagine that,” Clegg said. I could tell Clegg was annoyed, but Cartwright seemed oblivious.

“We’ll have to scramble to get a replacement cadaver, as we don’t keep a surplus of bodies,” Cartwright continued. “Fortunately, we’re still able to comply with Mrs. Grayson’s request.”

“Well, we’re awfully sorry for the inconvenience we’ve caused, Doctor, but I thought you might be glad to help save a woman’s life,” Clegg said.

Cartwright cleared his throat, fanning out his long, thin fingers and then closing them into a tightly balled fist, one finger at a time. “Well, I’m speaking without a filter,” he said. “I’m glad to be of help, though less pleased to be back here at midnight, Officer.”

“Detective,” Clegg said.

“Is the plan for us to receive the body after you . . . do what has to be done?”

“That’s the plan,” Clegg said. “The medical examiners will contact you when the body needs to come back.”

Cartwright said, “From what I understand of this plot, the body will need to be cremated as it will no longer be of use to our students.”

“Speaking of students, you know you can’t talk about this to anybody,” Clegg said. “It would be considered obstruction of justice.”

“Of course,” Cartwright said, somewhat indignantly. “I was well informed of my obligation on this sensitive matter. Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me.”

Cartwright nodded his good-bye and shuffled on ahead, moving quickly to catch up with the medical examiners wheeling the stretcher that would carry out Ruby’s only hope for survival.

“He’s trying to help us, David,” I said, wanting to settle him, though not at all surprised by Clegg’s harshness. When agitated, Clegg could be downright ornery, and we were all highly agitated. I, for one, was definitely ready to snap. But I dug deep, finding the strength to keep moving ahead, one foot in front of the other.

Chief Higgins wasn’t faring much better, at least according to Clegg. Apparently, even with the task force working nonstop and bulletins cast out to every law enforcement organization from here to Fresno, nobody had been able to locate Carl Swain or Edwin Valdez, aka the purse snatcher.

Clegg and I passed through a set of double doors that opened into a large room kept meat-locker cold. Racks of bagged bodies entombed in white plastic shells, four long rows worth, rested atop metal trays. Rollers beneath the trays made body retrieval easier. The overpowering smell of preservative, formaldehyde perhaps, hit me like a sucker punch, causing my eyes to water, my breath to quicken.

“Now, that’s a scent only a mortician could love,” Clegg said as we caught up with Cartwright at the end of a row of dead people.

“This is yours,” Cartwright said, rolling out the tray on which the cadaver rested. “We’re going to arrange for cremation, but you have instructed the widow that she’ll need to pick up the remains, have you not? We can’t ship human ashes, you know.”

“Yup, that’s all set. Thanks, Doc,” Clegg said. “We’ll take it from here.”

“Yes, I’m sure you will.”

Cartwright slunk out of view, and Clegg looked pleased.

“Why are you giving him such a hard time?” I asked. “He’s trying to help us.”

“That guy,” Clegg said, “didn’t want to give up this body. I had to go to the dean to get Cartwright to comply with Mrs. Grayson’s wishes. The dean, it turns out, was a lot more understanding.”

An ME unzipped the bag and nonchalantly pried open the sides like it was just another day at the office for him. It was time for me to do my job.

Someone had to make the call that the body would fool the Fiend. To my surprise, Higgins had asked Clegg to include me in this gruesome show-and-tell. The plan was mine to begin with, and it was my wife in jeopardy, so maybe that was why Higgins wanted my input. Maybe he worried a preserved body would look too different from a freshly killed one. Maybe he just knew that Clegg would bring me along regardless.

It looked like a wet and heavy cloth had been overlaid on an old and withered frame, but the counters were all there, the basic scaffolding of features that defined a face. He had caterpillar eyebrows, wisps of gray hair, and wrinkles that spoke of a long and fulfilling life. His arms were two twigs, chest sunken, a body ravaged not by disease, but by the aging process alone.

“Who is he?” I asked. “I need to know about him.”

“He’s an eighty-two-year-old retired pharmacist who wanted to donate his body to his alma mater. He was a pilot, a war vet, and from what I read in his file, an all-around nice fellow.”

“Was it hard to get the permission?”

“Not hard,” Clegg said. “We found the right person. There was a lot of paperwork to fax back and forth. Mrs. Grayson’s son helped her do it. It took a while, but we got it done.”

“Why’d she agree to do this?” I asked.

“The Graysons had a daughter,” Clegg said.

“Had?”

“Had, as in the daughter’s dead.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” I said in a respectful tone, as though expressing my condolences. “How did she die?”

“She was murdered,” Clegg said. “About twenty years ago. When we told the wife we needed to use her husband’s body, but we couldn’t say how or why—police business was all we could tell her—Mrs. Grayson wasn’t too keen on helping. Then we told her about Ruby, or more specifically that a young woman’s life might be saved, and she agreed to help, whatever it took. We had a lot of people making a lot of calls, John. For a while there, I didn’t think it was going to happen.”

I nodded, feeling a reverent appreciation for the Graysons’ sacrifice.

“What now?” I asked.

“Now you tell me if you think our killer is going to believe that you took out an old guy.”

“I think he’ll believe that the most,” I said. “I took a life at the end of a life. Yeah, this will work.”

“He looks a bit like a marinated olive to me,” Clegg said. “We’re going to need to get some blood to add a bit of realism here.”

“Will he be on the news?”

“Not his face, just a news report,” Clegg said.

“We’ll need proof.”

“The profilers at the FBI think he’s going to contact you after the news breaks. We’ll get you a video clip you can send him. That should work.”

I nodded.

“Okay,” Clegg said. “Then we’re a go. I’ll prep it.”

Without warning, Clegg hoisted up one of the man’s frail arms and splayed open the fingers of his bony hand. He reached into his back pocket with his free hand and removed a pair of spring-loaded pruning shears.

“I hope this works,” Clegg said, snipping off one of the man’s fingers as nonchalantly as an ME opening up a body bag.