Dark Places

Part IV: California Redux 18. A Letter From The Man

My second homecoming in the space of two weeks, and this one felt a lot better. I was unemployed, but this made me happy. It helped that I was financially secure for a good six months at least. I had a woman in my life again. OK, nothing had happened between us, and realistically probably nothing was going to happen, but the thought of soon seeing Talena again put a spring in my step. Most importantly, I had nearly died on this most recent trip and every sight, sound, smell, and experience resonated with a new you're-so-lucky-to-be-here-for-this sweetness. I wanted to skip down Haight Street telling everyone I passed "You're lucky to be alive! We're all so fucking lucky!" I highly recommend the feeling. Though I can't recommend what I went through in order to feel it.
   I ought to market this, I thought to myself. Near-death experiences, preferably in an exotic location and at the hands of a violent madman, culminating in a rescue by a beautiful woman, as a cure for depression. Form a company that specialized in setting this all up, like that Michael Douglas movie, The Game.
   Physically I was fine. The bruise behind my knee where Morgan had kicked me was an ugly purple colour but no longer hampered my mobility. Fighting the ocean had been exhausting, but marathon runners go through worse. The Annapurna Circuit had left me in the best shape of my life, and I was recovering in a hurry.
   The only fly in my ointment was my memory of what I had thought was my last moment. When I had cringed and whimpered like a whipped dog, instead of fighting, or at least standing coolly up to what I had thought would be the final stroke of Morgan's parang, using my last breath to spit in his face. All my life I'd thought of myself as — well, maybe not a hero, but at least somebody with backbone, with courage. I'd seen a lot of the world, gotten into a lot of dicey situations, and until now I'd felt I'd handled them with sangfroid. But that moment, when for the first time I had thought I wasn't just going to die, I was going to be killed, slaughtered like an animal… I'd crumbled. There was no other way to put it. I had been tested, and I was a coward. In a way it was that which had saved me, and that was something; I had recovered and escaped, and that was something; but still, every time I thought about that moment, I grunted and twitched with shame.
   Fortunately it was pretty easy not to think about it. Or to treat it like a bad dream. My week in Indonesia had been so sudden and brief and hyperintense it seemed to exist on a whole different level than all my other memories, to have been detached from the rest of my life, as if it somehow didn't really count.

* * *

   From Denpasar to Los Angeles I traveled not merely in space but also in time; I left Denpasar at 2:30 PM and got to L.A. at 12:45 PM on the same day. The miracle of time zones and the International Date Line. When I got back to my apartment it was only 3:00 and I felt drained. My system still hadn't adjusted to Indonesia time when I left, and here I was messing it up again. But I had a crepe and a double espresso at Crepes On Cole and went up to my apartment surfing on a caffeine high.
   My reflexive desire upon walking in was to check my e-mail, but my employers had repossessed my laptop, so I went to the Cole Valley Copy Shop to use their public terminals instead. Lots of email, most of it spam. I filtered it down to five messages I actually wanted to read; a FuckedCompany sporadic update, chatty e-mail updates from Rick and Michelle, news of a contract job from the only recruiter I trusted, and most interesting of all:

Date: 11/15 14:03 EDT
From: aturner@interpol.org
To: PaulWood@yahoo.com
Subject: Case file opened

Mr. Wood,

Your e-mail of 11/07 was forwarded to me as of 11/09 and I found it credible and deserving of further investigation. On 11/11 while researching our internal infobase I discovered a recently opened South African case file related to the same subject. I have been in contact with Renier de Vries of the Cape Town police, who is heading that investigation, and I understand that you indirectly prompted the opening of that case file as well.

We intend to actively pursue this case. I will be in California as of 11/17 and would very much like to interview you. Please advise me how to contact you and when/where would be convenient for an interview.

Thank you for your time and information.

Anita Turner
Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Interpol Liaison Officer

NOT PGP SIGNED
Because unencrypted electronic mail is an insecure medium, the integrity of this message cannot be guaranteed. Never e-mail classified or privileged information.

   "Hot damn," I breathed, rereading. It seemed that if you whacked at a hornet's nest hard enough and often enough they would eventually come out to see what it was that you were after. I sent back my phone number and let her know that I was available at her earliest convenience.
   I thought about investigating those cookie files, but I was tired, and to be honest I didn't really think they'd contain anything valuable, and without an income I didn't want to be paying eight bucks an hour to do research at this copy center. Instead I went home to sleep.
   My daytime exuberance counted for nothing. It was a long night, full of nightmares.

* * *

   I woke sometime around dawn, visions of Morgan Jackson's torture chamber dancing in my head. I felt far more tired than I had when I had gone to bed ten hours earlier. My whole body was encrusted with stale sweat, and I had a headache. A jet-lag hangover. One thing that didn't get better with experience.
   I looked out the window to a San Francisco streetscape so foggy it mighty have been part of a dream. I considered making myself coffee but decided shock treatment was necessary so I swigged a triple Glenfiddich. It ran down my throat like molten lava and, after I successfully fought a powerful wave of nausea, I started to feel better almost immediately. Kill or cure, that's my motto.
   I didn't want to stay in. Nor did I want to go out. There wasn't much open at this hour anyways. For all its Sin City Extraordinaire reputation the city had a shocking dearth of 24-hour establishments. The reputation wasn't totally unwarranted, there were probably drug-fuelled S&M avocado raves going on all over as I slouched on my couch, but as for a decent breakfast at an indecent hour, forget it. There was a diner down at Market and Castro, but that was some distance away, and I didn't relish the thought of the steep walk back up to Cole Valley.
   I wished I had a computer. Nothing like a dose of the Net to make an hour or two vanish away. But my damn company had taken my laptop away. At least they had done me the courtesy of laying me off while they were at it. I wondered how Rob McNeil was doing. I should give him a call. Though I expected he was as pleased as me by the development.
   Then I realized, I did have a computer. An old 250 MHz Pentium with 96 meg of RAM. Big box, not a laptop, tower configuration. Seemed like a screaming monster when I had bought it three and a half years ago, before I became such a hotshot coder that my employers supplied me with a new laptop twice yearly. Now it was so obsolete I had forgotten that I had it. Stored in the back of my closet.
   I unearthed it, reconstructed it on my desk, turned it on, watched the Windows 95 startup screen with something like fond nostalgia, logged in. Beautiful. Now all I had to do was connect to the Net. Unfortunately, I realized, I couldn't do that. I had long ago cut the phone company out of my life, as befitted a dinosaur monopoly of the previous century, and now had only a cable modem and a cell phone. Unfortunately I didn't have the drivers that would allow the computer to talk to the modem. I could get the drivers off the Internet… a nice Catch-22. Maybe I should just go buy a real computer today. But no, when income is zero, expenditures must be minimized.
   The phone rang. I looked up with genuine shock. It was just past seven A.M. Nobody calls anybody at that hour, not even telemarketers will stoop that low, not yet. I picked it up and said "Hello?" Dire thoughts of Morgan Jackson outside, of the first scene of Scream.
   "Balthazar Wood?" a female voice asked.
   "Who wants to know?"
   "This is Special Agent Turner. I'm a federal agent currently seconded to Interpol's NCB for the United States."
   "Oh." I shook my head to clear it and regretted my first response. Way to go, Paul, act in a suspicious manner when the FBI agent calls. "Yes. I received your e-mail."
   "I hope I didn't wake you up?"
   "No, I was up. What is it, ten o'clock on the east coast?"
   "I'm presently located in San Francisco," she said. Her voice ought to have been taped so that future generations would have a perfect definition of no-nonsense.
   So that's who calls at seven in the morning. Federal agents. "I see," I lied.
   "You said you'd be available for an interview at my convenience. Would that include oh-nine-hundred hours today?"
   I blinked, my mind briefly boggling at the thought that I was talking to a woman who actually used oh-nine-hundred in a non-ironic way, and then I said, "Sure."
   "Excellent. I'll be waiting in a room in City Hall." She gave a number and added, "You should probably get there early. The building can be hard to navigate."
   "I'll see what I can do," I said. "See you there."
   "Excellent," she said again, and hung up.
   I hurriedly showered and shaved and dressed in my job-interview suit, and caught the downtown-bound N-Judah at just the right time to be crushed by approximately nine hundred similarly dressed men and women who had managed to pack themselves into a streetcar that on paper fit sixty. When we stopped at Civic Center I realized at the last moment that this was my stop, I no longer went to my job at Montgomery. I made a few enemies getting out.
   City Hall was a labyrinth and I had forgotten my ball of twine. By the time I found the room it was ten past nine and I was sweating with frustration. I wished I had gotten my folder of evidence back from Talena to show this Turner woman. I was also very nervous. Contact with authority figures of any kind — the real authority figures, not bosses or tour guides, but the kind who carry guns — always makes me nervous. Even when I'm innocent or even, as in this case, when it's my complaint that brought them.
   Anita Turner was not the Scully-esque babe I had secretly been hoping for in the most juvenile corner of my mind. Fortysomething, fit but weathered, her face as wrinkled as crumpled newspaper. She sat on one side of a metal desk, facing the door. Two folding chairs faced her. One of them was occupied by Talena. I was surprised but pleased. I was extra pleased by the familiar-looking folder of papers that adorned the desk. There were two other things on the desk. One was one of those matte black speakerphones which look like some kind of cross between a marine subspecies and the facehugger from Alien. The other was an expensive digital audio recorder.
   "Mr. Wood," Agent Turner said. "Better late than never."
   "Sorry," I said, taking a seat as she leaned over and pressed RECORD. My nervousness doubled. It hadn't occurred to me that every stammer would be recorded for posterity.
   "My name is Anita Turner, special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, presently seconded to the Interpol liaison office," she said, and motioned to us.
   "Talena Radovich," Talena said without hesitation. "Web editor and roving reporter for Lonely Planet Publications."
   "Balthazar Wood," I said. I barely but successfully fought the urge to crack a joke such as "No-good bum with no fixed address," and instead added nothing at all.
   "In a little while I'm going to conference in Renier de Vries of the Cape Town Police Force," Agent Turner said. "Who I believe you have already met, Miss Radovich." Talena nodded. "But first I just want to establish the bare bones of the case. First of all, before we begin, would either of you like a beverage?"
   We shook our heads, although I rather wanted to ask for one. I'd already had a gargantuan coffee but liked the idea of Special Agent Anita Turner asking me whether I took milk or sugar while a recorder caught it all.
   "Excellent. We will be pleased to serve you lunch in a few hours."
   I thought: a few hours? Talena looked equally taken aback.
   "Now," Special Agent Turner began, "let us establish the background material… "
   And the inquisition began.

   When the inquisition ended four hours later it left me with a profound new respect for the FBI. I understood for the first time why interrogation was classified by many as a science. She had systematically drained me of every scrap of information I had, including many I had forgotten. She had methodically classified everything I said as corroborated fact, eyewitness evidence, extrapolation, or speculation (or, presumably, lies, although I hadn't told any of those, at least not knowingly.) She took names and contact details when available of everyone I knew even remotely connected with the case, and everywhere I had stayed in Nepal and Indonesia. She zeroed in on the slightest hesitation, the merest chink of guesswork or assumption, in anything Talena or I had said, and attacked until all it concealed was revealed to her searchlight mind. Even Renier de Vries had sounded impressed over the phone. For the most part he too had just answered Special Agent Turner's questions.
   When it was all over she gave us a curt thank-you and began packing her notes and recorder into a briefcase. Talena and I looked at one another and I said "Can you give us some idea of what happens next?"
   She looked at me as if amazed by my temerity, but she answered. "Eventually, if everything goes well, you we be called upon to repeat some of this in a court of law."
   "But… I mean, what are the chances of everything going well? Are you going to go out and arrest Morgan Jackson tomorrow, or is Scotland Yard going to get him when he gets back to Leeds, or… what?"
   "Frankly, Mr. Wood, I'm very reluctant to tell you anything at all about our investigatory process, given your well-documented history of running off half-cocked and nearly getting yourself killed."
   She looked at me, and she had a scary intense look, but I think I had one too.
   "Paul," Talena said, putting her hand on my arm, "I think we should go."
   I shrugged her hand away and leaned forward. "Because I don't think anyone's going to arrest him at all," I said. "I think all this information is going to go into your infobase, and Mr. de Vries is going to try to go after the other killer, the one who killed the South Africans. But I think we all know he's not going to get anywhere. And I think we all know that nobody's going to arrest Morgan Jackson."
   "Mr. Wood," Agent Turner said sharply, "your cynicism does you no credit."
   "So you think he's going to be arrested?"
   "I guarantee you that this case will be pursued with as much vigor as any other Interpol case I have ever seen."
   I laughed, putting as much contempt into my voice as I could, and sat back in my chair. "Now that is a very revealing answer."
   "Look, Mr. Wood," Agent Turner said, and she sounded almost conciliatory, "I want to stress that you have done the right thing. You've gone to the appropriate authorities, and I will be opening a real live wire of an investigation on this case. You can sit back. Morgan Jackson is no longer your problem and you should leave him alone."
   "You mean you can envision Morgan Jackson being arrested?"
   "I certainly can."
   "All right. Then I have two questions. In this pretty little vision you have, who is arresting him, and on what charge?"
   She didn't answer me, just looked back at me and gave a little shake of her head.
   "That's what I thought," I said. "This doesn't change anything. I don't know shit about international law, but I do know it's basically toothless."
   "I do know something about international law," Talena said suddenly, and I thought she was going to contradict me, "and you're so right. There are men walking around scot-free right now in the Balkans who are guilty of genocide and ordering mass rapes and the worst crimes imaginable, and the West could get a hundred people to testify against each one… and there they are. Walking around. Or, more likely, driving around, in their big fucking bulletproof Mercedes between their big fucking mansions."
   I sensed I had hit a hot button.
   "All right," Agent Turner said wearily. "All right. Mr. Wood, Miss Radovich, I hear your concerns, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't share some of them. No. We're not going after Morgan Jackson for the crimes he has committed. What we are going to do is keep a very close eye on him. One thing about serial killers is that you can be confident they will kill again. The next time he strikes, particularly if it's in a First World nation, I will do my best to ensure that somebody is waiting for him."
   Talena and I shouted at the same time:
   "The next time—!" from her.
   "First World nation—!" from me.
   We stopped when we heard we were interrupting each other and motioned to each other to go ahead. Eventually I convinced Talena to begin.
   "You're saying you're going to sit around and hope you catch him next time? That's your big fucking plan? We've told you that there's a madman wandering around the world killing people at random and all you can say is wait until we get lucky?" she demanded.
   "Miss Radovich, please be realistic —" Agent Turner said defensively.
   I interrupted. "Do you not fucking get it? He's not going to kill anybody in a First World nation! He's not going to do it because he's too fucking smart! He can kill all the victims he likes when he goes traveling, any shape or size or colour or creed he's in the fucking mood for! It's a fucking buffet out there! You wait for him to go after someone in New York or London and you'll be waiting forever!"
   "All right!" Agent Turner snapped. "All right! Shut the fuck up!"
   We shut the fuck up. It was like hearing a nun swear.
   "Okay," she said. She looked at the recorder and the phone, presumably to be sure that they were off. "Yeah. The truth is he's outsmarted the world. The truth is that unless he fucks up at a kill site there is shit-all we can do in terms of actually arresting him. What we could do is try to keep track of his movement between borders and inform the relevant authorities in his destinations."
   "Now you're talking," I said. "Why didn't you say so? That would make for some nice frontier justice. If he goes to Kenya just leak to Moi's Boys that he might be big trouble, and that nobody would make a big fuss if his remains turned up sealed in a forty-gallon oil drum, and they'll take care of the rest for us."
   "We could do that, but we're not going to," Agent Turner said.
   "What? Why?" Talena asked.
   "Because we're talking about Interpol, not some kind of Wild West sheriff," she said scathingly. "It's not something we do. It's not something we have the authority to do unless one of our member states has prima facie evidence to arrest the suspect on a charge, and even then only under certain very tightly restricted conditions which make it basically useless in this case, even if we did have evidence, which we do not. You're right, he's not going to be arrested. Not on what we have. We have no real evidence."
   "What do you want, a signed confession?" Talena asked. "And if we had one, would it make any real difference?"
   "Honestly?" she asked.
   "Honestly."
   "Probably not," she said. She gave us a defeated shrug. "But you never know. We still might get lucky."