The Impaler

“‘Have to be more careful with the boy’s prompt,’ the old man says in his notes. ‘His mother took hers too literally. I didn’t think she’d remember, but at least we know the prompt worked.’ You ever hear of anything like this, Sam?”

“C’est mieux d’oublier,” Markham muttered, removing a newspaper article.

“What?”

“This clipping,” Markham said. “This one about the theft of the lion’s head from the taxidermy shop in Durham. It’s quite different from the other articles that were found on the cellar wall. The only one on which he wrote c’est mieux d’oublier.”

“He wrote that phrase in one of his grandfather’s notebooks, too. Translates as ‘It’s better to forget.’”

“Claude Lambert refers to a prompt in his notes but doesn’t say what it is specifically. I’m willing to bet we found it.”

“Then perhaps Lambert had some kind of suppressed memory of the sexual abuse by Ralston. Perhaps the identification with the god Nergal, the anagrams and whatnot, were simply the young man’s way of negotiating in his mind something that was too terrible to for him to remember; something that he might’ve been incapable of remembering because of the drugs, but that his subconscious nonetheless knew was there.”

Markham nodded and stared down at the article.

“It would make sense,” Gates said, leaning back in his chair. “If the psychoactive suggestion is something rare, something only the person in control knows, then there’s no risk of anyone else saying it. But to give a child that kind of drug repeatedly …”

“Hard to imagine the long-term effects on the brain. Then again, with Edmund Lambert, we don’t have to imagine. Delusions, hallucinations, some form of paranoid schizophrenia, perhaps. Classic symptoms.”

“Appears as though he thought the god Nergal was communicating with him everywhere. Everything had the potential to be a message, including that song and the play he was working on at Harriot. I saw the trap he designed for Macbeth—exactly the same design as his tattoo.”

“Everything connected. All part of the equation that proved he was Nergal’s chosen one.”

“Mix in a family history of mental illness and … well, life sure served this kid quite a cocktail.”

“And the bottle?” Markham asked. “The one they found with the notebooks under the floorboards labeled ‘medicine’?”

“Trace Evidence Unit found residue of the absinthe hybrid, but says the bottle hadn’t been opened in years. And we know Edmund Lambert never used drugs on any of his victims.”

“A souvenir, I’m willing to bet, that Lambert kept after the old man passed away. Part of the equation that needed solving. The letters on the bottle and in the anagrams. Lambert wrote them the same—dash-dash- dash.”

“Our labs corroborate Claude Lambert’s notes,” Gates said. “To a certain extent, that is. Everything is still being tested, but the preliminary report says that, with the right dosage, the old man’s absinthe-opium hybrid could possibly have an effect similar to Sodium Pentothal.”

“Truth serum?”

“Yes, but specifically with regard to how it’s administered to patients suffering from extreme psychological disorders. Has an almost hypnotic effect on them and opens their minds up to suggestion.”

Markham frowned and returned the article to the bulletin board—thrust his hands in his pockets and stared up at the scraps of paper. He appeared to Gates as if he were looking past them, through the wall and into the next room.

“Claude Lambert was married twice, you know,” Gates said. “The first time briefly, to a woman he brought back from France after the war. No children, but records indicate she died under suspicious circumstances. Alcohol poisoning was ultimately listed as the cause of death.”

“I’m willing to bet alcohol was only part of the formula,” Markham said. “A formula that the old man didn’t get right until he remarried and had children. And grandchildren, for that matter.”

“Edmund Lambert’s mother committed suicide when he was only five years old, but it was the boy who found her. She had a lot of problems as a child, James Lambert told us—cutting, self-abuse, and whatnot—but by all accounts she was a great mother until one day she just snapped. She hanged herself in the attic.”

“A lot of violence in that family,” Markham said.

“James Lambert said he only met his nephew a handful of times; said he didn’t regret killing the kid’s father and would do it all over again if given the chance. He also added that his father and Rally never laid a hand on him when he was a child.”

“The old man’s notes tell a different story.”

“Edmund Lambert’s contacts at Harriot, his fellow soldiers from the 101st are a dead end, too. All of them saying he seemed like a nice enough guy, but kept to himself mostly. Dedicated and loyal are two words that keep popping up.”

“Loyal’s a good way of putting it,” Markham said. “I’m willing to bet the same thing could be said about James Lambert. Loyal to his old man even now.”

“The Smith girl is our best shot, Sam, but we’ll never really know what made Edmund Lambert tick; how those drugs affected his mind, or to what extent some kind of underlying mental illness played a part. Most disturbing was his psychological profile from the Army. Nothing to indicate there was anything wrong with him. If we assume that it was Edmund Lambert who either found the ancient seal or played a part in its induction into the black market, maybe that was the final tick of the clock that set him off—the message for which he’d been waiting all along.”

Markham shrugged, and a heavy silence fell over the office as he stared up at the board.

“The superposition principle,” Gates said finally. “It’s eating away at you isn’t it? Still so many questions now that the Impaler’s dead. You never got entirely in his wake. Can’t see the messages, the equations from his point of view. Not all of them, anyway.”

“No. Not all of them.”

“But you saw enough to catch him, and that’s what matters.”

“Is it?”

“As far as we can tell, Edmund Lambert had been killing since late December, early January. Twelve victims in four months, including the two drifters we found buried behind the barn—the ones you said he used as his doorways. Andy Schaap, Cox, and the four he got with the car bomb were only icing on the cake for him.”

Markham was silent.

“I know how it looks,” Gates continued. “You flying in from Quantico and catching the Impaler in just over a week—”

“I didn’t catch anybody,” Markham said, turning. “It was Schaap who found Lambert, and Lambert found me. I got lucky the Smith girl showed up when she did. I’ve been getting lucky a lot lately. Lambert, Briggs—most of all, I’m lucky people don’t start seeing me for the fraud I really am.”

“Trust me,” Gates said, rising. “I understand how difficult it is to wrap your mind around the reasons why Schaap bit it and you didn’t. The same goes for the Cindy Smith factor. You saw what Lambert did to her. It was only a matter of time before he tore her to shreds. You saved that girl’s life, Sam, no matter how much you try to deny it because she saved yours.”

Markham narrowed his eyes at him.

“That’s right,” Gates said. “Schaap found Lambert and Lambert found you, but the fact that Schaap is dead doesn’t give you the right to feel sorry for yourself because you’re not. Nor does it make you any more of a fraud than it makes Schaap unlucky.”

Markham studied him. His boss was staring up at the clock above the door.

“You’re a good man, Sam,” Alan Gates said distantly. “You deserve to live. I suggest you remember that in the days ahead. To think otherwise will only drive you insane.”

Later that evening, Markham placed the thank-you card from Marla Rodriguez on his bureau—“I jumped for joy!” it read; a smiling, cartooned frog leaping from a lily pad.

He’d kept his promise—returned her computer to her family and bought the little girl her own laptop. He also showed her how to password-protect her startup so her brother Diego couldn’t use it. Marla had really appreciated