Jason Pinter - The Mark

Loud voices rang in the hall outside, a commotion brewing. He heard Wendell’s edgy voice. Are you sure? Are you positive? Is that even possible?

Mauser cocked his head, tried to eavesdrop. He caught sporadic words, then turned to Denton, who was doing the same. After a few moments, Wendell marched back into the room, hands firmly on his hips. A balding techie stood next to him, eager, jittery. Wendell looked like a parent ready-and perversely thrilled-to deliver a scolding.

“Well, agents, you’ve officially hit the fucked-up jackpot,” Wendell said, a slight grin on his face. That grin, Mauser recognized, was pure schadenfreude. “Tony? Show ’em.”

Tony the techie handed a few pieces of fax paper to Denton and Mauser. It was a criminal profile, faxed over from the Department of Justice. Without reading it, Mauser said, “What is this?”

“We’ve got an ID on your mysterious assassin, the one with a fresh new bullet hole thanks to Jesse James here and his itchy trigger finger. We lifted full prints from the Davies girl’s desk. Frankly, it’s the only part of the night that’s not a complete disaster. No coincidence it’s my men who saved it from being just that.”

Tony said, “We pulled fresh latents and ran them through IAFIS.”

Joe nodded. IAFIS was short for the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a searchable database that contained records on over fifty-one million subjects. Until IAFIS became operational in 1999, it could take months to check fingerprints. Nowadays two hours was considered slow.

“They sent back a perfect match. Guy’s got a pretty impressive record. Not, you know, in a good way. No convictions, but he’s been questioned in a laundry list of crimes ranging from ‘sorry officer, won’t happen again’ to ‘I have a special spot reserved in hell.’ Our mysterious friend did time in juvenile hall for grand theft auto, but allegedly graduated to homicide by the ripe age of eighteen.”

“Allegedly,” Denton said. Wendell snorted.

“Yeah, right. Allegedly. Not just one, but four homicides to be exact. Every time he either had an alibi that held up, or the lead witness was found at the bottom of an elevator shaft. You get the idea.”

Mauser looked at the first page. A mug photo. He recognized it as the man Denton had shot, only this photo looked at least ten years old. The man’s hair was a little longer then, features softer. He was smiling, a big toothy grin. Confidence up the ass, like he didn’t have a care in the world, knew he was going to get off with a pat on the ass and a lollipop in his mouth.

The man they fought tonight had the same skin color, eye color, the same bone structure, but Joe could tell the man’s soul had been ravaged in the years since the mug shot was taken. This man was cold, unforgiving, devoid of confidence because confidence didn’t exist in his world. Someone had stuck a steel blade deep into the man’s heart and twisted it.

Mauser read the name on the profile.

Shelton Barnes.

Joe heard Denton emit a small gasp, his head shaking slightly. Wendell continued. “There’s an outstanding warrant for the arrest of Shelton Barnes from the murder of a teamster in Williamsburg. Guy was shot twice in the back of the head, then his eyes and teeth were removed. Fingers chopped off, never found. Poor bastard’s wife identified him from a scar on the inside of his thigh he got from scaling a chain-link fence as a kid.”

Mauser scanned the profile. How was Shelton Barnes connected to Henry Parker? And how did Barnes end up in St. Louis? The man was wanted for murder in an entirely different state, had evaded capture for ten years, then he suddenly turns up in the middle of their manhunt? It didn’t make sense.

“You’re missing the best part.” Wendell handed over another page with a grainy, poorly lit photo. Mauser looked at the gruesome picture, felt his body shiver, his stomach turn over. He took a deep breath. He looked at the photo of the charred, mutilated thing that used to be a man. The body was beyond unrecognizable, the skin having sloughed off, the bones chipped and brittle. It looked less like a skeleton than a piece of meat left too long on a grill. He heard Denton swallow. Mauser looked up, his mouth dry.

“I thought you said the guy Barnes killed in Williamsburg was shot to death,” Mauser said. “This guy looks like he got stuck in a deep fryer.”

Wendell shook his head, and suddenly Mauser understood.

“That’s not the man Shelton Barnes killed,” Wendell said, his voice even. “That is Shelton Barnes. According to the Department of Justice, Shelton Barnes and his pregnant wife died in a fire ten years ago. Looks like the only thing you two turned up tonight is a goddamn walking corpse.”

Paulina threw the copy down and eyed Wallace Langston. He picked it up, scanned it quickly and handed it back.

“I’m not going to run this.”

Paulina pursed her lips, that scowl she’d perfected over the years. The one that wordlessly said What’s the matter with you?

“Wally, forgive my insolence, but that’s bullshit. Every paper in this town is having a field day with us. Henry Parker is getting more ink than Blair and Frey combined. We’re talking murder, Wally. This isn’t some stupid plagiarism case we can ignore.”

“I know that.” Wallace looked and felt like hell. The last two days had been the longest of his professional life. He still couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to. Parker had such terrific potential. He was a reporter the Gazette could hang its hat on for decades. The talent and work ethic of a lion, the integrity of the very man he’d idolized. At least that’s what Wallace had thought. “But that editorial you wrote is pretty darn vicious. I know we need to report on the Parker search, but we don’t need to drive a stake in our own heart.”

“Our heart?” Paulina said, anger rising. “What heart? The kid is twenty-four years old. You know how many burnouts we’ve seen over the years? If Parker had never worked here, who would have known?”

“I would have,” Wallace said. “Jack would have.”

“Right…Jack.” Paulina’s voice quieted. “Funny, this whole thing started because of a story on Jack’s plate.”

“Don’t start, Paulina.”

“I’m just saying, guy’s old. Doesn’t have it all together. Who knows what his motives were for sending Henry into the field?”

“Right now I don’t know and I don’t care. But we’re going to handle this scandal like professionals. Period.”

She placed the editorial on Wallace’s desk again. “Then run my column. Be professional. Don’t avoid this. You talk about integrity? My article is the truth a lot of people are feeling. You can bury it, and admit that the Gazette takes shortcuts. Or you can print it. Let everyone know this paper isn’t afraid to hit hard.”

Wallace sighed. He read the piece again. Paulina had torn Henry Parker to pieces, and was now asking him to publicly scatter the ashes.

“Run it,” he said. “Tighten up the first graph. But it’ll be in the morning edition.”

Paulina smiled, thanked Wallace and left his office with an extra hop in her step.

When we’d reached the bottom of our bottomless cups of coffee and licked the last toast crumbs off the plate, Amanda and I left Ken’s offee Den and headed into the morning sunlight. David Morris’s Tundra was nowhere to be seen. After four hours of “Achy Breaky Heart,” I wasn’t too sad to see him go.

Studying the cars in the rest stop parking lot, I noticed that most had Illinois license plates. A few Missouris, one or two from Wisconsin. Before we went anywhere, I went back into the diner and grabbed a road map from a kiosk. On the back cover was an advertisement for a walking tour of the state’s capitol, Springfield. Inside were coupons for an upcoming Cubs game. Somehow, we’d ended up in Illinois.