Russell Andrews - Hades

"Can I call you back?" Justin said. "I'm in the middle of dinner."

He got the answer he was expecting.

"I think your dinner's over," Billy DiPezio said. "Wrap the rest of it up to go."

"What's going on?"

"I'll pick you up in fifteen minutes. I'll tell you on the way."

"On the way where?" Justin asked.

"Drogin's lot," Billy said.

Billy DiPezio pulled his new Mercedes inside the wire mesh fence that surrounded the several acres of overgrown property known as Drogin's lot. As they stepped out of the car, Justin noticed that the night sky was particularly dark. There were few stars and the moon was hidden by fast-moving clouds. He was surprised to find that it was nearly nine-thirty. The slivers of moonlight that reached the ground gave the property an ominous feel. Not just the property, Justin thought. The world.

They were met by an FBI agent who didn't bother to introduce himself but led them toward two other agents. One of those agents was Norman Korkes, the agent whose jaw Justin had dislocated earlier that day. Agent Korkes nodded curtly at Justin but didn't speak. It was the other agent who spoke, after Billy introduced him as having just flown in from Washington, D.C.

"It's not a nice sight," Special Agent Zach Fletcher said.

Justin nodded but said nothing. Then he was led over to where Wanda Chinkle's body lay. She was unclothed and her skin was covered with severe bruises. Her chest and stomach were covered in swirls of blood, as were her right hand and her left shoulder. Justin inhaled quickly and deeply. His exhale was slow and uneven.

"You saw her earlier today," Agent Fletcher said.

Justin nodded again. He still wasn't quite ready or able to talk.

"What were you meeting about?"

"Do we have to have this conversation right here?" Justin finally said, looking down at Wanda's still form.

"Unfortunately we do," Agent Fletcher said. "At least for the moment. Look at the markings on her body."

The unnamed agent flicked on a flashlight and fixed the beam on Wanda. Justin let his eyes focus on her now. He had never seen Wanda naked when she was alive, and it seemed particularly obscene to have her exposed this way in death. He forced himself to survey her entire body until it began to seem less a real person than an inanimate object-the same mental exercise he used every time he covered a homicide. He was able to study her with a slightly clinical eye now, and Justin saw that what, at first glance, he'd taken to be smears of blood on her breasts, stomach, and one arm were, in fact, words. The writing was difficult to make out-the letters were not very clear, the blood had dripped and coagulated and mixed with dirt, and the writing was anything but smooth-but he could finally make out what it said. And when he had, he looked up at Agent Fletcher in disbelief.

"How do you read that?" Fletcher asked.

"Who wrote this?" Justin asked.

"We think she did. Look by her hand."

The flashlight beam moved several inches over and Justin saw a jagged piece of broken glass in the ground by Wanda's right hand.

"There're plenty of broken bottles and cans scattered throughout the whole lot. It looks as if, right before she died, she used that piece of glass to cut herself and do the best she could to write this message on the only canvas she had available."

"Her own body. Using her own blood."

Fletcher nodded. "Must have been pretty important to her." Then he said again, "Tell me what you read."

"It looks like 'JW,'" Justin said. "Then it looks like the word 'payback.'" "Payback" had been written in a combination of capital and small letters. Wanda had left out the c. "The next word looks like 'Hades.' Then 'Ali.'" "Hades" was also spelled using a combination of capital and small letters. "Ali" was straightforward. The A was capitalized. The l was just a straight line. The i was also a straight line, but smaller. It tailed off from the first two letters. It looked as if it was the last thing Wanda had managed to write. Justin repeated the whole thing aloud: "JW, Payback, Hades, Ali."

"Yup. That's what I see, too," Fletcher said. "You know what it means?"

Justin was still looking down at the body. He didn't look back up at Agent Fletcher. "Maybe," he said. "At least some of it. JW are my initials. She knew she didn't have a lot of time, so it could just be a shortened version of my name."

"We agree. That's why you're here. How about 'payback'?"

Now Justin looked up. "It's part of what we talked about earlier. When I met her in her car. She owed me something. At least I thought so. We talked about what the appropriate form of payback would be."

"Payback on whose end?"

"On hers."

"How about on yours?"

Justin shook his head in quiet disbelief. "You think I killed her? As payback? That's what you think this means?"

"You want to convince me otherwise?"

"Can I?" Justin asked.

"What was the topic of conversation when you met with her today?"

Justin decided there was no point in holding back. There were too many things he didn't understand about the murders of Evan Harmon and Ronald LaSalle and now of Wanda Chinkle and how they were connected. He wasn't really worried about FBI suspicion of his involvement. That would take care of itself. He wanted to know what the hell was going on. And the only way to begin to get any answers was to speak on the level.

"I came up here at the request of my father and my sister-in-law, Victoria LaSalle," Justin said. "I'm sure you know why."

"Her husband's murder. What was she expecting you to do?"

"I don't know. Basically, find out what happened."

"And what have you found out?"

"So far, not a thing," Justin said. "I've just begun talking to people. Before Billy picked me up, I was at Ronald LaSalle's office, talking to the people who worked for him."

"Looking for something in particular?"

"Looking for absolutely anything that I could tie together. Just throwing a lot of shit against the wall and seeing if anything'll stick."

"What did Wanda tell you about the murder?"

"Nothing. In fact, she went out of her way to tell me nothing. She wanted to meet with me to tell me to stay away from the investigation."

"Why?"

Justin sighed. "For my own good."

Fletcher looked at him curiously.

"Look," Justin said. "We had a complicated relationship. We were friends, but we also had our differences. Sometimes our goals were not exactly in sync."

"You blamed her for the time you spend at Guantanamo last year."

"I didn't blame her," Justin said. "I knew she'd allowed it. Possibly even manipulated things so it would happen."

"And you didn't like that."

"No, I didn't. Would you?"

"So you killed her as payback."

"I told you. 'Payback' refers to our conversation today. She thought she was doing me a favor by warning me off Ronald LaSalle's murder." Again, Justin decided there was no point in holding back. Agent Fletcher had the look of someone well aware of what was going on around him. "And not just LaSalle. I'm involved in investigating the murder of Evan Harmon down in Long Island."

"You're involved in more than the investigation from what I hear."

"Whoever you're hearing that from doesn't know what he's talking about. Wanda knew the truth. She was telling me to back off that one as well."

"Because they're connected?"

"She wouldn't say. But it seems like a logical conclusion."

"And what was your response to her payback?"

"I told her it wasn't even close."

"Not good enough?"

"That's right."

"So you don't think she was pointing the finger at you?"

"I know she wasn't. I think she was trying to finish the job she started this afternoon." He looked down at her body. "What she did to herself isn't about me, it's a message for me."