Choice of Evil

say anything.

Neither did I. Nadine had stopped twitching. A heavy, thick smell came off her. Not fear, something I couldn’t put a name to.

I concentrated on my breathing.

Time passed.

“Why did you search for me originally?” he finally asked.

“A group of gay people wanted to protect you. They were afraid you’d be captured. They wanted me to find you, get you out of the country to someplace safe.”

“Ah. You understand that—”

“You can leave whenever you want?” I cut in deliberately, trying to shift his balance, even if only a little bit. “And that this was never about fag-bashing?”

“Correct. On both counts.”

“You had a long rest,” I told him.

“A. . . rest? No. Not a rest. I went. . . quiescent. Once I had mastered my art, there was no. . . challenge.”

“You were always above us, huh?”

“I am above you, Mr. Burke. In all ways.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking of his velociraptor icon. And the killing claw. “So far above you couldn’t get your ear to the ground, much less down into the whisper-stream. But it wasn’t until you did that you learned the truth.”

“Your. . . idiolect is unfamiliar to me.”

“You were the greatest kidnapper ever,” I said quietly. “Perfect.”

“I was,” he acknowledged, accepting his due.

“You mastered that art,” I told him, shifting my gears, trying to jam his. “And you switched to another. I never did get that last piece.”

“Piece?”

“Of your journal. That was your last kidnapping, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you switched to homicide?”

“Assassination,” he corrected me. “Yes.”

“Your journal was ambiguous,” I said. “What was the new art? Killing mobsters? Killing incest fathers? Killing child molesters? What?”

“Ah. Because the first target fit all those criteria?”

“Yeah.”

“The target was pedophiles,” he said. “From the very beginning.”

“But you. . . practiced on. . . what?”

“Anyone,” he said. Dry ice.

“Sure. And when you were ready, that’s when you switched from your private journal to the letters to the newspapers. And it almost worked.”

“Almost? Please, Mr. Burke, don’t be ludicrous. I am universally acknowledged as the—”

“Not in the whisper-stream,” I chopped him off. “You got a higher body count. . . maybe. . . than Wesley, but so what? Every single one of his hits was bought and paid for. Someone else picked the target. Down here, there’s talk of a guy called the Trustee. Supposed to be managing a fortune some old gay guy left. . . for killing fag-bashers. And word is, this Trustee got to Wesley. And all this work, it’s his, not yours.”

“Where is this mythical ‘down here’ of yours?”—the machine not altering the sneer in his voice.

“You like ‘grapevine’ better? It doesn’t matter. Back alleys, prison tiers, waterfront bars. Crimeville, understand? Not for citizens. That’s where Wesley lives. You say his name there, people tremble. He starts his walk, somebody’s gonna die. Everybody knows.”

“Wesley is dead,” he said, repeating my line now.

“To who?” I challenged him. “He went out the way he wanted. But maybe he went someplace else. Some say he never really left. That he had some tunnel under the school, or that it was a remote-control robot’s voice the cops heard or. . . whatever. You know how people talk. You’ve got a way out of here. Who’s to say Wesley didn’t?”

“Yes. But the circumstances are—”

“And others, they say he came back.”

“From the dead?” The voice dripped sarcasm.

“Yeah. You never heard about ‘Reaching Back’ either, huh? You’re so far above us, you can’t see down through the clouds. Wesley’s alive. He can’t die. And I know that’s what you want.”

“What I want?”

“Why else all this? I’m no threat to you. You don’t bite on that Internet bait, you’re well away. Vanished. Like you did before.

“But you figured the only true test of art is immortality. Like a statue or a painting or a book that people still look at hundreds of years after it’s done, right? Your art. . . it dies with you. I don’t know how old you are, but you are going to die. And all your little ‘journals’ will end up as some cheap paperback book. There’s only one way for you to get where you want to go. And that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? You need me to set up some more hits. As Wesley’s ‘agent,’ right? That makes him alive. And that makes you him.”

There was such silence I could hear heartbeats. A slow, steady thump. I was so calm I was almost comatose. Once you’re over the line, the tension stops. Maybe it was Nadine’s heart I heard. I never looked her way.

“Yes,” he finally said.

I waited. It wasn’t time yet. He wasn’t. . . exposed enough for my one strike.

“How would it work?” he finally asked me.

“There’s people I could talk to. See in person. They know me and Wesley were. . . They know I can reach him. I was—”

“You were the original suspect when my most recent. . . artistry started,” he cut in. “Why was that?”

It wasn’t time to fire yet, but I cocked the hammer. “One of the people that was killed in the drive-by. She was my woman.”

“Ah. And the police thought you were seeking revenge.”

“Yes.”

“That is your reputation. Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“And when did you decipher the coding?”

“Later on,” I said. “You needed a way to justify killing a whole lot of people quickly. So the body counts would put you up there with Wesley. But you didn’t want the police making connections—you wanted to spell it out for us. And you wanted some way to say Wesley was alive too. I don’t know how you found out that Gutterball wanted —”

“He was not. . . discreet about it. I happened to access an individual he had attempted to. . . retain for that purpose.”

“And then all it took was a phone call? And some meeting in the shadows?”

“Yes. He. . . quite readily accepted that he was speaking to. . .”

“Wesley.”

“Yes.”

“So you resurrected Wesley and kicked off the killings at the same time. It was. . . brilliant. No way the cops ever make that connection. Only problem is, it trapped you too.”

“What does that mean? I am hardly the one trapped here.”

“Listen to what you just said.” I spoke quietly, willing him closer. “You couldn’t have imitated Wesley’s voice. You never heard it. Nobody’s ever really heard it. So how come Gutterball went for the whole thing unless he already believed Wesley was alive? It’s like I told you, pal. Wesley can’t die. Not down here, he can’t.”