The Impaler

“That’s a load of crap. Your biggest fear is becoming a bureaucrat, a pencil pusher like me. You need your boots on the ground; would rather take orders and get things done than give them and lose touch with why you signed up with us in the first place. And that’s your problem. You’re too ob- sessed with your work; you’ve let it define who you are to the exclusion of everything else. It’s why I played the personal favor card with you, but that’s not why you agreed. No, only reason you took me up on my offer is because you know deep down you’ll be more of an asset here.”

Markham said nothing.

“We were lucky to have you in Tampa with Briggs. I think because you were already assigned there, you don’t believe we couldn’t have nabbed him without you.”

“I got lucky in Tampa.”

“Maybe,” said Gates. “But you didn’t get lucky in my class. Your paper, your application of that physics principle to behavioral science—what was it called again?”

“The superposition principle. Says that the net response at a given place and time caused by two or more stimuli is the sum of the responses that would have been caused by each stimulus individually.”

“Of course,” Gates said, arching his eyebrows again.

“It’s most often applied to wave theory,” Markham added. “Or in the case of my paper, to almost-plane waves converging diagonally in a body of water. More of a metaphor, really, if one were to apply it to both the predictability and unpredictability of human behavior in a linear system such as—”

“Over my head,” Gates said, waving him to stop. “I just remember it had something to do with the wakes of two ducks swimming side by side. How their waves would intersect and come out on the other side of each other unbroken. First time a trainee ever dumped something like that on my desk. Physics. And to think you were an English teacher before you joined us. History minor in college, too, from what I remember. Qualified under the Diversified Critical Skill. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen anymore.”

Markham shrugged. “You give me too much credit. I don’t quite understand the physics of it all, either. Was only a metaphor for gut instinct, that briefest of moments when the waves from the hunter and the hunted are one. It can’t be measured scientifically. At least I don’t think it can.”

“I still don’t get it. Only that what you’re saying makes perfect sense to me. It’s the same thing with Jackson Briggs in Tampa. I’m still not sure how you caught him. I just know that you did.”

“And the reason you’re here?” Markham asked. “That thin, oddly shaped little scratch near Donovan’s armpit?”

“That’s not the reason the Bureau initially got involved. Because of Donovan’s profile, because of his involvement with the FBI’s case against Ernesto Morales, when we got wind of Donovan’s murder, Charlotte sent Schaap to Raleigh.”

Gates reached into the inside pocket of his overcoat and handed Markham the first of two glossy photographs. Yes, Markham thought, Gates had been waiting to show him his aces all along.

“This first picture,” said Gates, “is a close-up of Donovan’s chest under normal light. You’ll notice the scratch on the right pectoral near the armpit is almost imperceptible in the photograph. Schaap bought into the dirty-lawyer idea at first, and thought the bleach from the Comet might yield some clues under the Wood’s lamp. He never expected to find this.”

Gates handed Markham the second photograph. It was a close-up of Donovan’s torso on the autopsy table. Under the ultraviolet light, Donovan’s skin looked bluish-purple. The writing was a faint, glowing pink: a series of neat lines running across his chest in what looked to Markham like hieroglyphics from a pharaoh’s tomb.

He felt his stomach tighten, his tongue go dry.

“According to Schaap,” Gates said, “the killer could’ve used a charred stick or something. Whatever he used, it was just a little too sharp when he started.”

“And even though the ash would’ve rinsed off much more easily than ink,” Markham said, studying the picture, “the stick and the properties of the ash could still damage the epidermis enough to react with the Comet and also remain invisible to the naked eye. Did they find any other chemical residue?”

“Other than the chloroform in Donovan’s nostrils, no. But Schaap has two running theories regarding the writing: the first, that the killer wrote on Donovan for some reason having nothing to do with the final display; the second, that the killer intentionally used the Comet to produce the effect you see before you.”

“That would mean he’s not trying to cover his tracks.”

“Well, not if you approach it from the angle that the writing was meant to be discovered by someone with a UV lamp.”

“And Rodriguez and Guerrera?” Markham asked. “State ME use UV on them?”

“No, not standard unless the murder is sexual in nature. Guerrera’s body was sent back to his family in Mexico, but we fast-tracked a court order for exhumation of Rodriguez. Family’s been notified, taking place as we speak. Kid’ll be shipped with Donovan to Quantico later today.”

“A possible message then,” Markham mumbled to himself. “But to whom?”

“The official autopsy report on Donovan won’t be issued for a while. But given the crossover on the case, until we can get a gag order, Schaap and the ME are going to delay submitting anything about the writing. His funeral has also been delayed while his body undergoes further analysis in our labs here.”

“And the writing?” Markham asked. “You’ve already sent the information to our language specialists?”

“Yes,” said Gates. “Report came back late last night. A single phrase written over and over in six ancient scripts: Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Babylonian Cuneiform, Egyptian, and Greek.”

“Nothing in Romanian?”

“No.”

“What does it mean?”

Gates motioned with his finger for Markham to turn over the photograph. He obliged, and felt his stomach go cold when he saw his boss’s handwriting on the back. It read simply:

I have returned

Chapter 3

Now he was the General.

Seated at the computer in his white robes, the General scrolled his mouse to the top of the Web page and hit the print button. An article from the Raleigh Sun about the murder of Randall Donovan— details still sketchy, appeared to be some kind of drug hit, investigation ongoing. Just as he expected. Everything part of the equation.

The General rose from his chair, tore off a piece of Scotch Tape from the roll on the workbench, and retrieved the article from the printer. The cellar felt cold to him this morning—colder than usual—and as he sauntered out of the workroom, he thought he could feel his nipples grow hard.

“I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heardme speak.

Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

The music in the background was much softer than it had been for Randall Donovan. “Dark in the Day” was the song—a Clone Six remake of the 1985 version by the one-hit won- der High Risk. The General had been only five years old when the original came out, but still he remembered it from the days before his mother died. There had been messages back then, too—keys to his understanding of the equation—but back then, through the ears of a child, the General had simply been too stupid to understand.

Now, however, the General understood the equation perfectly. The others were capable of understanding, too, but they needed to be reeducated, needed to hear the song over and over—old and new, old and new—to finally understand like he did.

“There were many who came before me, but now I’ve come at last,

From the past into the future, I’m standing at your door.”

The General entered the adjoining room—the reeducation chamber, he called it—and taped the article to the wall. He stood back and admired how it looked among the others—thousands of messages he’d printed from his computer or copied on the machine during his day-life.

All parts of the equation.