Evil Like Me Read online

  Cottam stood tall studying Wilcox. The slender, black man had paid his dues. He survived the streets of Memphis as a beat cop for twenty-five years. The only reason he came inside was because the city mayor begged him after Director Collin Wade took a bullet that left him a paraplegic. Cottam did it more for Wade than the mayor.

  “What do we know about the shooting and dead man in the boat?” I understand you were on the phone with Detective Baily when he got shot.”

  Wilcox wrestled with a dozen loose ends he would not share with the director. From experience, he knew too much information shared too early screwed up things. The brass always thought they knew best. They always knew the least.

  “I talked to Strider, Broken Bow Chief of Police. He identified the dead guy in the boat as Buford Jackson, a PhD in psychology, nickname Bone. What’s his connection?”

  “Childhood friend of Keller. Baily got names of four. Now they’re all dead. The other three died in the last six months, all suspicious circumstances.”

  “You think Hunter Keller is killing these people?”

  “Don’t know. It is possible he’s erasing his history for some reason, or something bigger is going on. First thing, I need forensics on Bone Jackson and Detective Baily. I want the ballistics. Keller was in the boat. I need to know if he shot Baily and Jackson. I need to know soon.”

  “They found another body at a cabin up the river,” Cottam said.

  “I know. The guy was naked. No ID. I’m sure he’s related.”

  “I’ll make some calls,” Cottam said. “You and Dr. Petty need to go to Broken Bow for the autopsy and crime scene. McCurtain County has a coroner, not a forensic pathologist. I’ll synchronize with Strider. I’ll make sure they don’t mess with the bodies.”

  Cottam had information he knew Wilcox did not. How Wilcox reacted would decide if he was pulled off the case. “Strider shared information they’re keeping under their hat,” he said. Wilcox looked up for the first time. “Strider said the boat was Swiss cheese. Your theory that Keller is the shooter would be wrong. It appears the three were running. Looks like all were targeted. Give yourself some room on this, detective.”

  “Interesting information, but it doesn’t change much for me right now. I don’t know anything about those bullet holes. They could be real. They could be old. And they could be staged. I need a closer look. Keller’s a smart guy. Jackson took one in the chest and Baily took one in the head. I find it odd and suspicious that Keller was the only one to get away.”

  Cottam smiled, more like a father than the director of the Memphis police department. “Looks to me like this Keller fellow is the reason they were hunted.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Wilcox muttered as he flicked his cigarette over a shrub.

  “It’s possible Hunter Keller was captured, the other two left for dead. All I’m saying is to keep an open mind, detective. Don’t make this personal.”

  Cottam put his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I am very close to pulling you off the case. If I sense you are losing control, you are done. Do you understand me, detective?”

  Wilcox got the message. And it mattered because he knew Cottam was right. It was personal. Ever since he heard Keller’s name and the shot in the phone, he wanted to kill the man in the hoodie.

  “Yes, sir. This is not personal.”

  “Your visit to Broken Bow will give us more answers. God knows we need them.” Cottam backed off the sidewalk and punched numbers on his cell. Wilcox lit his last cigarette and watched another ambulance pull up and another crowd of paramedics push another bloody gurney through the glass doors.

  “Can you leave in an hour? Dr. Petty’s good to go. Chief Strider’s on board. The MPD chopper will take you to Broken Bow, ETA sundown.”

  “I keep a toothbrush and extra pair of underwear in my glove,” Wilcox said.

  The glass doors opened and a white coat walked up with a scowl. “I’m Dr. Mathews. You must be Detective Wilcox and Director Cottam.” They swallowed hard and both nodded. Was there a chance? Can there be one miracle?

  “I’ve never seen an injury this bad,” the doctor said.

  Wilcox shook his head denying the information he most feared. Fire filled his eyes as his shoulders cramped and fists tightened. I will find you, Keller.

  Dr. Mathew’s continued. “An injury this bad that one would survive.”

  “Survive?” Wilcox asked. “Are you saying Baily can survive a bullet to his head?”

  “Yes. Mr. Baily is going to survive, but.”

  “Here we go. I get it. ‘But’ he will never know what the hell’s goin’ on,” Wilcox scoffed.

  “Not a true statement. There’s no reason why Mr. Baily cannot recover fully. There are numerous cases when damage to the frontal lobe is overcome. His wound is significant but isolated. I expect functions controlled in that area will relocate to other parts of the brain. This is not an unusual experience.”

  “This is better news than expected,” Cottam said.

  “Can I talk to him?” Wilcox asked.

  “Not for a while. He’s in a drug-induced coma until brain swelling goes down and vitals stabilize. In about a week we might be able to bring him out of that coma. It can take another week or so before Mr. Baily can speak.”

  “You are sure he will recover?” Wilcox asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Will he lose anything?” Cottam asked.

  “He will experience loss of memory. Some loss will be temporary and some permanent. His muscle coordination will be impaired for weeks or months. His speech could come back right away, or he could struggle. We’ll know more after we wake him up.”

  As Dr. Mathews departed Cottam patted Wilcox’s shoulder. “We got some good news for a change. Now, get to your chopper and find out who did this. We’ll take good care of Baily.”

  Sixteen

  “In hell, the Devil is God.”

  Kedar Joshi

  *

  Who would agree to meet a killer in a cemetery at midnight?

  The streetlights on South Lamar were sparse, and most were dysfunctional. Roger Tinley sat at a table in the backroom of an abandoned gas station where the only light for blocks hung at the end of a grimy, dust covered cord inches above his head.

  He lived in the boarded-up structure behind the six-foot chain-linked fence. One cold February night after a heavy snow he found a loose board. When he climbed inside and discovered MLG&W had failed to disconnect the service, he thought he had died and gone to heaven. The one night of refuge from the elements turned into a nine-month abode—his longest yet.

  “It comes from the Latin word ‘occultus’. It means clandestine, a hidden secret, knowledge of something unmeasurable.” Roger pushed back from the table and scratched the side of his belly. He had a rash from sleeping on the floor. The cold cement by the small heater had sucked up decades of gas spills and oil. The cardboard used for bedding made for a bad barrier.

  Hayes coughed up something and spit in the cup he always kept handy. After a few more hacks he focused on Tinley’s words. “I don’t believe in the occult stuff.”

  “There’s been widespread belief in ghosts throughout history. You need to catch up.”

  “I may be a bum now, but I do have some education. Those misty, airy things floating around make no damn sense to me—deceased souls stuck down here and all. It’s crazy if you ask me.”

  “We’ve known each other a while now. I told you I see things I can’t explain. Just because you don’t, doesn’t make it’s a bunch of hooey.” Roger pulled a beer from a crumpled bag and popped it open. “You want one?”

  “Nope. Had enough.” William Hayes—a tall, stringy man in an orange jumpsuit—managed to keep most of his wiry hair in his knit cap an inch above his tiny, black eyes and bushy brows. The one-time respected college professor had his breakdown fourteen years ago. He checked out. Now the streets of Memphis were home and Tinsley his only connection to the real world, the one he feared beyond wor
ds.

  “You don’t need to meet with the man you told me about. I don’t like him. He sounds evil.”

  Tinsley smiled and looked up at the rusted metal girders covered in cobwebs. “I think he’s a demon, too. But I’m tired of running.” This place isn’t even fit for insects, He thought. I haven’t even seen a lousy rodent around here.

  “He can’t find you. The call was to a phone booth on Perkins a couple miles from here.”

  “He knew my location, William. He can find me.”

  “He saw you sitting on the curb there one day, got the number, and called.”

  “I don’t think so. He’s like I used to be. He can find me.”

  “We are bums. Nobody cares about us. No offense, but you’re not important to anybody.” Hayes wobbled to his feet and ambled past his bed of folded cardboard. He got to a corner, unzipped, and peed.

  Tinsley took a gulp of beer and looked back at the matted webs thinking about his life and the turns it took. “I never should have answered the newspaper ad in Phoenix. I’ll never forget April 23, 1973, the day my life changed forever.”

  Hayes returned to the table and stood with his mouth open and zipper down. His perpetual look of confusion hid his substantial intellect. “What’d the government call you guys?”

  “We were psychics. They gave us the name ‘remote viewer’. They wanted to give it more credibility to justify the research project and to get funding.”

  “That’s right. You were a bunch of clairvoyants, mind readers. What could you do?”

  “I could see things without being there. Some of us could see the future. Not me. I signed up because I had some psychic abilities—not many. I thought I could do somethin’ positive with it. The government paid well and took good care of us for a while.”

  “I still don’t get why that program went south.”

  “All governments are sneaky, William. They do a lot of things and don’t tell anybody. I don’t know why they got to lie to people all the time. They contracted with a bunch of us and started testing. Never told us a thing—zero feedback. They bounced us around too. We were the property of the DIA, the military, and the CIA at different times. I never understood why they moved us around.”

  “How do you know they kept things from you?”

  “Are you kidding? We’re psychics. We knew what they were doing and their plans. A bunch of us didn’t like it and got the hell out of there.”

  “What didn’t you like about it beside secrets and no feedback?”

  “We were used, like other covert weapon systems. They took better care of their U-2s and SR-71 aircraft. They never treated us like people with lives.”

  “So remote viewing worked?”

  “Most of the time,” Roger said as he looked at the broken professor sitting across from him. He answered the questions because it felt good to talk about the things bouncing around his head for the last thirty-five years.

  “We were tested all the time.”

  “What kind of testing?”

  Roger leaned back in his chair and traveled back decades. “They asked me things like what’s in a box. Then they’d ask where they hid the box. I always got it right. Then they would put people in rooms and ask more questions.”

  “They wanted you to name the people in the room?” William asked.

  “Yes, and sometimes we didn’t know the people. They asked us to describe how they were dressed and what they were talking about. Later they had us locate people in various cities and do it all over again.” Roger blinked back into the room. “Sometimes I wondered if they wanted to be able to find people to hurt them.”

  Hayes ignored the comment. “Were you any good?”

  “I’m pretty sure I nailed it most of the time. I don’t know for sure because we didn’t get feedback. They said feedback interfered with our psychic skills. It affected judgment and therefore interfered with our psychic sensitivity.”

  “Made you second-guess yourselves?”

  “They treated us more like lab rats than people. Hundreds of self-proclaimed psychics from all over the country applied in the ’70s. Only twenty-three got contracts.”

  “I don’t think you’re a hunted man, Roger. You haven’t done anything to anybody. And you’ve been out of the program a long time—you said 1984.”

  “It wasn’t like quitting a job. I had to run away—escape. I left in the middle of the night like the others. I know they’ve been looking for me ever since. They look at us like we’re a secret weapon available to the enemy. Every bone in my body told me to disappear.”

  Tinsley chugged the rest of his beer and pulled the string on the dangling lightbulb. The two sat in the weak glow of the portable heater. “I know who’s huntin’ me,” he mumbled. “I’m just not sure why. My psychic abilities are not what they used to be.”

  “Maybe you can’t read it because it’s just your imagination. You’re paranoid like me.”

  “No it’s real. Some of the remote viewers I knew are dead now. I did some research.”

  “People die all the time, Roger.”

  “I knew cities where they lived. I went to the library and looked up obituaries. Found seven. They all died violent deaths, William. No witnesses.”

  “Like how?”

  “Two drowned in the Mississippi River. Nobody knows how they got there. Three others committed suicide—I knew them, William. They were normal people with good families.”

  “We talk about killing ourselves all the time. Suicide’s more prevalent than people think.”

  “Two died recently with their families, single car accidents, no witnesses. I thought it odd there were no investigations. Both cars burned to cinders.”

  “That’s terrible, but bad things do happen. Seven out of twenty-three over thirty-five years is not that strange.”

  “How often do cars explode, William? How many times have you seen a car engulfed in flames? Families do not run off quiet roads after Saturday movie matinees. And seven is all I could find. I know others have disappeared. I think someone’s killing remote viewers.”

  In the soft glow William Hayes stared at the wall and watched his demons dance. The chat conjured up some of his most paralyzing memories. If he did not regain control soon, he would wake up in a week in a fetal position in a hospital bed.

  “Let’s leave Memphis tonight. We can catch a boxcar to New Orleans.”

  “I’m tired of running. I’m tired of living in dumpy places eating tuna fish and drinking warm beer. I need to go meet this guy and find out what it’s all about. He wants to discuss the Stargate Project. He said he’d pay me a thousand dollars for my time. I’m going.”

  “Okay. You go and talk and get some money. Then let’s get out of Memphis. I’m going with you tonight. Two is better than one. I’ll take my tire iron.”

  Roger smiled. He could not talk William out of going. Roger knew more about this night than he would share. He knew it was time.

  This is how it ends for both of us, William. It just is …

  *

  Elmwood Cemetery was a mile from the abandoned gas station. They left at nine o’clock with more than enough time to walk to the west side of the historic property and make a midnight meeting. Roger had a way onto the grounds after hours—a hole in the fence on Neptune by Provine Avenue. He often slept at the old cemetery on warm summer nights. The manicured grass on the grave sites felt like an expensive, sponge mattress, and the place was quiet and safe after dark. The only visitors in a cemetery at night are the ghost hunters. When they came, Roger had his fun.

  The small stone house on the southwest corner of the grounds was surrounded by tall oak trees. Roger was standing in the shadows twenty minutes before Cankor was scheduled to arrive.

  Cankor said he was retired military and claimed to be an original government remote viewer. He told Roger he had lost confidence in the program years ago. Now he was connecting with other RVs to share information. It seems most RVs were in hiding. Cankor also claimed
the meeting in the cemetery at midnight was for their privacy.

  Kneeling next to a large tombstone a hundred feet away, William and his tire iron waited in another shadow. He did not have psychic skills, and could not feel any presence. Unfortunately William did not see the man in the flat-brimmed hat standing behind him like another gothic stone monument. Roger felt a presence but did not hear his friend’s neck snap like a small twig.

  “I did not expect you to come tonight, Mr. Tinsley.” The words seeped from the inky shadows and hung in the air around the stone house.

  William searched for the source of the words. “Is that you, Mr. Cankor?” On his last word his heart seemed to crawl into his throat and beat. He gagged. Are you doing this to me? We don’t need to …

  “Your skills are weak, Mr. Tinsley. I’m disappointed in you. The alcohol and your lack of discipline have taken their toll. You should have been more careful with your gifts.”

  “How do you know the condition of my gift?” He spun around searching for Major Cankor.

  “You ask what you should already know. Regardless of your below average state, you pose a risk. I’m certain you have known for a long time that this day would come.”

  “No! Please let me live,” he begged. He turned to the line of headstones where William Hayes was waiting with his tire iron.

  Cankor cackled. “Your friend is dead. Surely you at least know that.”

  There was nothing left to do but run. Roger backed away from the voice drifting from the wavering shadows of the cemetery. He ran from Cankor and the stark images of his impending death.

  Cankor walked. Tinsley stopped among the tombstones lost in another night breeze. Dead leaves lifted off the thin layer of snow. Before they settled, Roger was holding his aching head and gasping for air. His eyes had begun to swell and his face twisted and mouth stretched. His teeth bled as the unbearable terror grew inside him.

  It only took a couple minutes. Roger Tinsley’s heart stopped and he joined his friend on the frozen turf of the Elmwood Cemetery.

  Cankor brushed ice crystals from his sleeves and adjusted his hat. Who would agree to meet with me in a cemetery at midnight … ?