Andrew Vachss - Choice of Evil

no

is what Xyla sent him.

When you’re interrogating a suspect, you can sometimes get him to tell you the truth by letting him think you already know it. Did the killer really understand the “blowgun dart” message I’d sent him? Or was he playing me, waiting patiently?

And was he asking me about Mortay because he already knew the truth, testing to see how reliable my answer might be to something he didn’t know, down the line?

No way for me to even guess. But I knew this much: It was still Wesley, to him, all Wesley, somehow.

“Nothing,” Hauser told me two days later.

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“I mean nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not one case meets your search criteria. There were cases where a child disappeared. . . but no ransom demands. There were cases where there was ransom demanded and paid, and the child was later found. . . dead. But nothing along the lines you told me to look for.”

“Fuck!”

“You’re still on this, right?” Hauser asked.

“Yeah.”

“So I’m still in it if there’s something I can—”

“You have my word,” I told him, and hung up.

His next message just picked up from where the last one left off. I was as locked to it as if the previous one had still been on the screen, seamless.

Children vary as widely as adults. Perhaps more so, as they are still in the process of formation, and their possibilities and potential have not yet adapted to the dictates of socioeconomic survival. This child, however, was different in a way I had not observed previously. Some children go almost mute with the trauma of separation, some are garrulous. But, always, they are intensely self-absorbed—understandable, I acknowledge, in the circumstances under which I come into contact with them—wondering “What is going to happen to me?” to the exclusion of all else. This child, however, expressed such an apparently genuine interest in the mechanics of my art that I found myself in discussions which had an eerie “peer” quality about them.

[Of course, had she been older and more sophisticated, she would have concluded that discussing the specifics of my methodology with a person who could later describe same to the authorities would be counterindicated. Indeed, the fact that I remained unmasked throughout should have been sufficient to provide a clue as to each child’s fate. None seemed to notice. Or, perhaps, they were determined not to notice—I am not a psychologist.]

But this child seemed utterly fascinated with the mechanics of kidnapping. And hers was not the gory fascination of a child, but the mature fascination of an interested adult. This was no difficult deduction on my part. Indeed, her first question was:

“Aren’t you worried they could trace the ransom note?”

I was temporarily taken aback by her question, but, rather than ensuring my silence, it seemed to almost compel me to disclosure. An egotistical desire to share my art, perhaps? I do not believe so. After all, that is the purpose of this journal.

Still, I showed her how I used only electronic ransom notes. I tape complete television series—sit-coms are the best because they are more likely to possess the requisite longevity—in order to acquire a word bank. “All in the Family,” “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Brady Bunch” had sufficient running time to provide all I needed. Next, I use a digitizing apparatus to separate the individual words. The final edit assembles the note. The child had a little bit of difficulty following me—I realize that my vocabulary is occasionally excessive and that I tend toward the pedantic—but when I explained that my technique was the same as clipping words from newspapers and pasting them to paper, she grasped the principle perfectly. When I demonstrated—by forming the message “Angelique is a pretty girl” from “The Brady Bunch” (actually, the best source of girl’s names, for some reason unknown to me—I have never actually watched an episode) word bank—she clapped her hands.

After she had something to eat—I let her choose from a variety of foodstuffs I had assembled. . . it reduces the feeling of powerlessness in the captive—I showed her that the messages were on micro-cassettes. All I had to do was dial the target’s home number and, when the phone was answered, play the tape. Good luck to the FBI and its so-called “voiceprints.”

“My father has a. . . thing on his phone,” the child piped up. “They’ll know where you called from.”

Was she mocking me? It didn’t seem so—her little face was serious. Almost. . . concerned.

So I took out some more of my equipment and explained how a blue-box system worked. A telephone recognizes a hyper-specific series of electronic beeps. When I dial out using the box, it goes into an 800 loop—the best ones to use are those which have chronically heavy traffic. . . any of the conventional credit-card services will do—and re-emerges locally, so whatever rudimentary device of her father’s the child was referring to would only recognize the 800 number (which is based in a faraway state) if it recognized anything at all.

“Are you going to call from here, then?” the child asked.

I patiently explained that, while I could, indeed, call from the location in perfect safety, there was no phone installed. Sophisticated technology is a two-edged sword, and taking chances is for amateurs.

“So you have to go out?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t you take me with you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“So I couldn’t. . . escape.”

I assured the child I was more than satisfied with the restraint system I had established, speaking to her as if she was a colleague in the enterprise rather than its victim. . . which seemed to best match her own affect. Obviously, I realized that she was attempting to beguile me into giving her an opportunity to attract attention once we were outside, but I was not angered. In fact, I had a sincere respect for her wit. And for her will to survive.

Yet I did not tell her the entire truth. Once I have successfully completed the capture phase of my operation, it is vital to remain in the hideout until target-contact is established. The message had long since been recorded, and the central computer in my residence. . . [I must digress here: I work from home, in my perfectly legitimate occupation of independent computer consultant. My small, modest house is rather isolated from the neighbors by the landscaping and they all know my habit is to remain inside for literally weeks at a time, working on some complex computer problem. I earn a moderately respectable income yearly, and dutifully report it all. None of my neighbors have ever been inside my house, nor I in theirs. But even were they to inspect the premises, they would find nothing untoward. That is, unless they discovered the opening to the tunnel, which leads from my basement all the way through to a heavy stand of trees on a three-acre plot which all the neighbors fear will someday be sold to a developer. After all, it is owned by a corporation with precisely that stated purpose. Their petty suburbanite fears are groundless. I, in fact, own the land. Inside the house is my principal computer.]

Let me resume: The principal computer is never disengaged. I can access it via telephone from anywhere in the world. A certain code will trigger its auto-dial feature and, after the appropriate loops, it will reach the target. As soon as the phone is picked up and voice recognition—any human voice—occurs, the previously recorded message will be played.

So I will not actually leave the premises, just the basement. I use a portable phone to reach the computer. Even should the call be inadvertently intercepted—it is, after all, a radio transmission—it would not reveal anything but a series of connection-beeps. I make only one call per phone, and then discard it. After I reduce it to untraceable rubble, of course.