David Hagberg - End Game

“No, it didn’t work for you in Milwaukee. The question on my mind is if they wanted you, why didn’t they stick around after killing your girlfriend?”

Schermerhorn looked away. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe they were sending you a message,” McGarvey said. “Not to talk to us.”

“But here I am,” he repeated, “so let’s get on with it.”

McGarvey had made sure they hadn’t been followed; nevertheless, Pete went ahead to make sure the apartment was clean before she phoned the all clear. Upstairs, she was waiting at the end of the short corridor, her pistol in hand. The door to her apartment was open.

“What about the other people in the building?” Schermerhorn asked.

“This is a singles’ place; everyone is at work,” Pete said.

“Did you check all the apartments in the building?”

“No.”

“Sloppiness like that might get you — maybe the both of you — killed one of these days. I suggest you tighten up your act. You have no idea who you’re up against this time.”

“This time?” McGarvey asked, once they were inside.

“I read your file, Mr. Director, or at least some of it — I suspect there’s more. You’ve been around, and you’ve survived. It’s the only reason I’m here for now and not long gone. But if you don’t watch your step with these people, you’ll be dead.” He glanced at Pete. “Both of you will be.”

He went to the window and looked down at the street and across to the apartment buildings.

“Do you want a beer?” Pete asked.

“No,” he said. He went to sit on the arm of the couch. “Not such a hot idea to drink when you’re on the run. Impairs the judgment.”

“Who’s after you?” McGarvey asked. “Let’s start there.”

“I don’t know. Could be Alex. She was capable of doing something like this. My girlfriend’s face was destroyed. Was it the same with the others?”

“Yes.”

“Then it could be her, or George. They were the hot item at the end. I was — we all were at one point or the other. But it didn’t take very long for me to figure out that being with her was a guaranteed one-way street straight to hell.”

“Do you have any idea where she is?”

“In the States somewhere. Probably back here in Washington by now, if it was her in Milwaukee.”

“Who else could have done this?” McGarvey asked.

“George? It could have been him, too — or the both of them together. They were certifiable. George would do something a little outrageous, and Alex would jump in and top him. Then he would try to top her, and it just kept going. Crazy shit, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. But they’re the last two.”

Schermerhorn laughed. “Don’t count on it. If it was the Israelis, then they have the entire Mossad or even Aman to draw from. And some of those people are seriously disturbed. Just like a lot of our people.”

“Israeli military intelligence?” Pete said.

“Yeah.”

“Why? What are they protecting after all this time? Was it something they buried in Iraq? We were told there was a cache you guys discovered in the hills above Kirkuk.”

“I don’t know for sure. Could have been them, could have been Saddam. Hell, it could even have been us or the Russians, or the North Koreans.”

“But you do know,” McGarvey said. “It was you who changed the fourth panel on Kryptos .”

“Insurance,” Schermerhorn said. “But you contacted me, and that means you haven’t decrypted it yet.”

The light x the confusion x the salvation…

When Alex Unroth was sixteen and a freshman at Pine View School for the Gifted just outside Sarasota, Florida, she was a slender attractive girl, short with beautiful dark eyes and silken black hair. The girls didn’t like her because she looked like an athlete — all lean muscle — though she never went out for sports. And the boys didn’t care for her because her breasts were too small and she was smarter than just about everyone in school.

Her stepfather, Leonard Unroth, was a drunk, and her mother laid around most days, reading movie magazines, eating candy and other sweets, and bitching about everything.

She remembered one night in particular, the start of her real education, when her stepfather came into her bedroom around two in the morning, pulled down the covers, pulled down her pajama bottoms, and began fondling her. She was a virgin, though she had begun masturbating and reading books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover two years earlier, so she understood all about sex. Especially its uses for control.

She touched his hand. “If Mom wakes up, she’ll hear us,” she whispered.

Leonard stopped for just an instant. “Fuck her,” he said, his breath from booze, cigarettes, and bad teeth nearly unendurable.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. You’ll take the fishing boat out, and I’ll come with you. I’ll tell Mom I’m going shopping with my friends.”

In the dim light filtering in from outside, she could see the confusion on his face. And suspicion.

“Some of the boys in school want to fuck me. But I don’t know how to do it, and I don’t want to make a fool of myself. You’ll teach me. But you’ll use a rubber.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Go ahead. And when you’re done, I’ll call the cops and you’ll end up doing jail time. It’ll have been the most expensive piece of ass you’ve ever had.”

He was stopped, directly over her.

“Either that, or we have a deal. Wait until tomorrow, and we’ll anchor someplace and you’ll teach me. It’ll be a deal we can both walk away from happy.”

Leonard backed off. “You’re a fucking whore,” he said.

“Not yet,” she’d replied.

The day was blazing hot and humid. Leonard found a relatively isolated spot to tuck in just north of the Holiday Inn near the airport. The boat was a battered old twenty-four-foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser, and belowdecks, with the hatch closed, the interior was like an oven.

Alex took off her clothes and lay down on the settee, spreading her legs for him.

It was only ten in the morning, but he was drunk on beer already. He pulled off his shorts and underwear, and spread her legs farther, pawing her with his calloused fingers.

She pulled a razor-sharp skinning knife from where she’d hidden it in the crack of the cushions and buried it to the hilt in his chest, directly into his heart. He gasped once and fell back on the cabin sole, dead almost immediately.

She checked the ports, but no one was around. For the next fifteen minutes she mutilated his body. Starting by cutting off his penis, she worked her way up to his neck, which she sliced from ear to ear, and then his face, which she skinned — cutting off his nose, his lips, his eyebrows, and his ears, leaving them lying in the incredible mess where she’d dropped them.

She drew water from the sink and washed her body, checking the long mirror on the back of the door into the tiny head to make sure she hadn’t cut herself. At that time she didn’t know all the details of forensic police work, but she didn’t want to leave any of her own blood behind in case she could be identified.

She’d brought a bikini, which she put on, and stuffed her clothes into a watertight plastic bag. Before she went out on deck and jumped overboard to swim ashore, she checked the portholes on both sides of the boat again to make sure no one was nearby to see her leave.

Onshore, she made her way across the rear property of the Holiday Inn, where behind a Dumpster she changed into a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. Then, stuffing the plastic bag into her purse, she walked around the long end of the hotel’s parking lot, unnoticed, and out onto Tamiami Trail and to the first bus stop.