Remote (3 page)

The Stalking Ground itself sat within the computer tower beside Jack’s desk.  It held no secrets for him; Djinn-X had given him the access codes to each and every encrypted file, and Jack had read them all.  The sheer amount of evil contained within them was staggering; from graphic descriptions of murder and dismemberment to a list of body dump sites swapped between members like trading cards, from long rants against their victims to cold, calculated methods of hunting and killing prey, the Stalking Ground probably held more insight into the minds of human predators than anything else in existence.  Jack planned to donate the entire thing to a criminal psychology institute when he was done with it.

But not just yet.

He sat down and turned the thing on, the first time he’d done so in a week.  When it had run through its start-up protocols and connected itself to the web, it told Jack there was a message waiting for him.

The heading sent a cold shock through Jack.

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

He opened it, hoping it was a bluff. 

It wasn’t.

No, I don’t know your real name, nor do I care.  What I do know is that you are not Djinn-X, the original webmaster of this site.  I believe that he is dead, as are more than one of his acolytes. 

You’re the Closer.  You’re the one that killed them. 

Please believe me when I say I hold you in the highest regard in respect to this fact.  I am not here seeking vengeance, nor do I have any interest in reporting your actions to the police.  This is, I suppose, a fan letter, though one I hope you consider to be from a peer as opposed to simply an admirer. 

Let’s get the hero-worship aspect out of the way first, shall we?  Deducing the presence of an online community of serial killers took a great deal of intelligence, but devising a way to isolate and kill them was true genius.  Though I came to the same conclusion about the probable existence of a site such as this, it took months of exhaustive searching to find it.  Even then, just as I was preparing to try to infiltrate it, it abruptly became inaccessible. 

By that point, I knew what had happened, of course.  You had gotten to them first.

I bear no grudge for this.  In fact, the reason I was searching for this site in the first place was, I admit, simply to impress you.  I thought I could offer it to you as an audition of sorts, a means of proving myself.  The fact that you got here first means I have much to learn. 

But still, it does solve one problem handily, that of finding a means to communicate with you directly.  As you might have gleaned, I’ve been following your career avidly for some time—but short of pinning a note to the back of a psychopath, I wasn’t really sure how to contact you.  Now we have a safe venue to converse.

In case it’s not already clear, I both understand and agree with what you do.   You rid the world of infections, of diseases that walk on two legs.  You take tremendous personal risks to make the world a safer, better place, with the full knowledge that the only acknowledgment you are ever likely to receive is to die in prison or by the hand of a monster.  The dedication and nobility you show is amazing; I salute you, sir.

And I want to help.

The message was unsigned, but it had been sent from the e-dress [email protected].  Jack stared at it for a long time before he put his hands on the keyboard and composed a reply.

Remote: I don’t know you and you don’t know me.  Anybody can be anyone online: killer, cop, or conman, there’s no way to tell.  Nothing you’ve said suggests anything more than a series of guesses connected by circumstantial evidence.  Maybe you’re who you say you are, maybe not.  The same goes for me.  Either way, you’re going to have to do better if you want this conversation to go anywhere.

He hesitated before sending it off.  Remote’s email sounded exactly like the kind of thing a cop would use in a sting operation, and there was more than enough evidence on the Stalking Ground itself to put Jack behind bars.  The website was supposedly untraceable, but Jack wasn’t the one who’d set it up, and he couldn’t exactly ask the one who had. 

He hit
send
, anyway.  Thinking back on it later, he really wasn’t sure why he had—but he kept remembering something Djinn-X had said while Jack was interrogating him.  

Everybody needs their tribe, man.  I knew mine was out there—all I had to do was find them.

Had somebody else just found Jack?

***

The reply came back sooner than he’d expected, no more than twenty minutes later.  Jack activated the site’s chat function so they could send instant messages back and forth.

You’re right to be suspicious.  After all, you must have deceived the genuine members of this site, so I could certainly be trying to deceive you.  I take no offense.

Now, as to the matter of authenticity: I surmise the members of this site all had to do something to prove their bona fides, and it’s not hard to guess what that something must have been.  Our problem is thornier, because we do not kill indiscriminately. 

Yes, I said “we”.  I am not without my own successes.

However, I think you’ll find that we have very different approaches.  While your methods have become the fodder of tabloid speculation, mine are subtler; in fact, what I do is virtually invisible.  I take no credit for my results—not publicly—but they are indisputable, nonetheless.

I induce others to kill for me, from a distance.  Mind control is a much more efficient tool than torture, don’t you think?

Jack let out a deep breath he hadn’t even been aware he’d been holding in.  “Just another crazy,” he muttered to himself.  He felt almost—what? 

Disappointed?

I suppose it would be.  How exactly do you accomplish this? 

Jack resisted the urge to tack on a list of possible methods—telepathy? Hypnosis ray?  Implanted behavior chips in the brain?—because he wanted to gauge just how crazy his admirer was.  The response surprised him.

I don’t want to give away all my secrets at once.  But, as you said, on the Internet one can claim virtually anything—so I’ll give you what you want.  Hard evidence.

There’s a lawyer in the San Francisco Bay area named Vaughn Rycroft.  He’s well-known, if not well-respected; one of his clients is a gang called the Black Triangle.  They specialize in human trafficking, bringing young women from Eastern Bloc countries to the US and making them pay the freight by working as prostitutes in their new home.  Mr. Rycroft is fully aware of these activities.

In three days he will kill the leader of the Black Triangle and several of his top lieutenants, though there will be no evidence to prove this.  Then we’ll talk again . . .

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

From the
Oregonian
, November 21, front page:

PORTLAND—a prominent local lawyer narrowly escaped death in a hail of gunfire yesterday afternoon, as several members of the Black Triangle gang were targeted for execution on the top level of a parking garage.

“I heard the gunshots.” Trent Walters, the attendant for the garage where the shooting took place, was on duty at the time.  “Nobody came out the front, not in a car, but they could have took off through the stairwell.  There’s a security camera in there, but it’s busted.”

Three men are dead: Vasily Cherchenko, Andor Pohznoi, and Leonid Krasnov.  Cherchenko was the purported head of the Black Triangle, while Pohznoi and Krasnov were two of his upper-echelon soldiers.

Vaughn Rycroft, the only survivor of the attack, is resting in the hospital under police guard.  He was apparently meeting with members of the gang in his capacity as their legal representative.  His injuries, while serious, are reported to not be life-threatening.  Police won’t say if they have any suspects yet, but the detective in charge of the case, Sgt. Lawrence St. Collins, did admit the members of the gang “didn’t have any shortage of enemies.”  The investigation is ongoing.

Jack read the article again, start to finish.  “What the
hell
?” he muttered.

Nikki, sitting across from Jack at the breakfast table, sighed.  “Yeah.  I thought he was full of crap, too.”  She blew on her mug of coffee.    “I mean, that mind control stuff is obviously bullshit, but he showed some balls taking on the Black Triangle like that.”

Jack shook his head and tossed the paper onto the table.  He looked out the window at the gray Vancouver sky, clouds threatening rain later in the day.  “That’s not what he said he was going to do.  He claimed Rycroft was going to be the triggerman, but there wouldn’t be any evidence to prove it afterward.  What I just read doesn’t contradict that.”

“Doesn’t prove it, either.  I mean, Rycroft would have had to shoot himself, then gotten rid of the gun afterward.”

“Or the story is a plant.  In which case the police and the press are involved and this is an elaborate sting.”

“So the cops have found the Stalking Ground?  Could be.”  Nikki took a long sip of coffee, considering it.  “Doesn’t make sense, though.  If they were going after the Closer, they wouldn’t bait the hook with some kind of psychic bullshit--they’d just pose as another serial, maybe offer some forensic photos as street cred.  What this Remote guy is saying—“  She shook her head.  “Know what?  It doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean?”

“If he’s a fake, we stay the hell away from him.  If he’s for real—”  She shrugged and stood up.  “Then more power to him.  Mind control or machine gun, I don’t really care--those Black Triangle guys were major assholes.  Whether Remote actually got their own scumbag lawyer to off three of them or whether he did it himself, good for him.  Either way, he’s not someone we need to get close to.”

Nikki headed off to have a shower.  Jack stayed at the kitchen table, thinking. 

***

Remote: I take it you’ve seen the results of my work?

Jack: I have.  How did you do it?

Remote: All in good time.  Do you believe me now?

Jack: I’m not convinced.  A single event could have another explanation—inside information, for instance.  You could have shot those gang members yourself.

Remote: But I didn’t.  Vaughn Rycroft did.  He did so because I told him to—and he wasn’t the first.

Jack lifted his hands from the keyboard and crossed his arms.  “Have you, now?” he said softly.  He thought he knew what was coming.  He’d done a little research on schizophrenia, and what Remote was claiming was actually fairly common—the delusion that events far away were being influenced by a person’s thoughts.  People who suffered from the condition often cited news articles as evidence, as if the fact that an event occurred proved they had caused it. 

Jack: I’d like some details.

Remote: I thought you might.  I’m sending you a file—feel free to run it through any sort of filter you like; it contains no virus or tracking application.

The file wasn’t large, nor did it trigger any of the Stalking Ground’s safety features.  When Jack opened it, he found it was mainly text. 

He started reading.

***

I believe in the greater good.

For me, that is a very simple equation: whatever benefits the majority is, by definition, the greater good.  I do my best to be impartial, though the very nature of my work demands a certain amount of subjectivity; I pass judgment on whether people should live or die, after all.

My process goes like this: first, I consider possible targets.  These are people who, ultimately, make the world a worse place to live in.  Sociopathic personalities are my preference, though I’m understandably limited in my selection by accessibility.  A head of state—even if he’s demonstrated a predilection for genocide—is generally out of my reach. 

But that still leaves a wide field to choose from.  Those who profit from the misery of others are sadly not hard to find.  Professional criminals, corrupt officials, the cruel, the greedy and the uncaring—they are far too widespread and far too numerous.

I do extensive research before I select a candidate.  My first was a politician by the name of Michael Henshaw, the Mayor of a small city in Arkansas.  Henshaw was widely known as being corrupt—he’d been investigated for fraud more than once, but nothing had ever stuck.  A witness in one of the pending cases had died in a mysterious house fire, while another had simply vanished. 

Henshaw had made a great deal of his money by foreclosing on failed mortgages.  When tallying the number of lives destroyed—by both his business dealings and personal involvement—I thought he would make an excellent first subject. 

Then, of course, I had to choose my weapon.

I settled upon Kipling Abernathy, the owner/operator of the local garage that serviced Henshaw’s vehicle.  I induced him to tamper with both the brakes and airbag on said vehicle, for Arkansas is hilly and Henshaw liked to drive fast.  He was dead within the week, victim of a fatal “accident”.

Jack opened a new window and Googled “Michael Henshaw”.  He found several articles on the Mayor, including his obituary, and read them all before returning to the Remote file.