Remote (4 page)

My next subject was Jordan Eisenberg, a multiple rapist in North Dakota that the prosecutor was only able to convict on one count; after serving less than four months, he was released due to overcrowded prison conditions.  Most people seemed to have forgotten all about him, but I hadn’t.  I chose a clerk at the local supermarket Eisenberg was known to frequent, and provided said clerk with a poison derived from Cortinarius orellanus, a widespread mushroom.  The active toxin, orellanin, is not only powerful but slow-acting; symptoms can take anywhere from three days to two weeks to manifest, making it quite difficult to pinpoint the method of introduction.  It causes irreversible damage to the liver and kidneys, resulting initially in jaundice, dizziness, weakness, and nausea; this progresses to an increased heart-rate, vomiting, blood in the urine, convulsions, coma, and death.

Being familiar with Mr. Eisenberg’s purchases, the clerk was able to substitute a doctored bottle of wine for the one Eisenberg thought he was buying.  While the death was in fact ruled a homicide, no one ever connected the clerk with the murder. 

Jack went back to the Internet and performed another search.  When he returned to reading the file, his face was grim.

Perhaps one of my proudest moments was the culmination of my Howard Grothan project.  Grothan worked for the tobacco industry as a lobbyist, trying to convince Senators and Congressmen that it was really in their constituents’ best interests to ignore all that talk about cancer and concentrate on the financial benefits a large corporation brings to the table.  And, of course, to the campaign chest.

One of those benefits—for Mr. Grothan, anyway—was a personal assistant by the name of Travis Narville.  Travis was, essentially, already a drone—he did everything for Grothan except tuck him in at night.  He was, of course, also intimately aware of the details of how Grothan operated; of all my drones, he was probably the most culpable as far as his target’s crimes went.

He also had the most access.  I toyed with a variety of options, but in the end gave in to the lure of poetic justice.  While I couldn’t actually arrange for Mr. Grothan to die of cancer, I could kill him with smoke inhalation.

I arranged for him to be heavily sedated first, and spent a fair bit of time carefully designing the “accidental” fire that I had Travis set.  It produced a fairly impressive blaze in the townhouse Grothan resided in, but only the one building was damaged.  Travis, so far as I know, was never even a suspect in the arson investigation.

And then there was my latest target, Okay Hampton; I trust I don’t have to tell you who he was.  My instrument in that case was a dentist named Rosalee Klein, who killed the erstwhile wrestler by asphyxiating him with nitrous oxide.  A simple error on her part—or so it appeared to the rest of the world.  A world that now has one less monster in it.

Jack finished the file and shut off the computer.  Then he went to find Nikki.

***

He found her in the gym they’d set up in the basement, working out.  She was on her back bench-pressing weights, her skin already covered with a sheen of sweat. 

“So far, I’m still not—uh!--seeing a problem,” she said through gritted teeth.  “You said it yourself.  He’s—uh!--probably just taking credit for—uh!—accidents.”

“I don’t think so.  I did a little digging, and every death Remote listed is being investigated as suspicious.  The mechanic he mentioned has been charged with criminal negligence.”

“So?  That—uh!—doesn’t mean Remote’s responsible.” 

“No, but the facts line up.  The police didn’t charge the mechanic with homicide because they couldn’t find a motive—he had no reason to kill Henshaw.  The police in North Dakota did find the poison in the wine that killed the rapist, but they haven’t charged anyone either—the clerk apparently had no connection to his victim other than the fact that he sold him groceries on a regular basis.  Even the Hampton case—nobody’s willing to believe a successful Beverly Hills dentist would kill one of her clients just because she disagreed with a jury.”

Nikki finished her last rep and set the bar back in place on the supports over her head.  She sat up, breathing heavily but evenly.  “Jack.  You want to know what one of the simplest cons is?  Guy gets a letter in the mail, telling him which sports team is going to win a game.  Team wins.  Guy gets another letter picking another team in another game.  Same thing, the team wins.  After three or four letters—every one accurate--the guy gets one asking for money for the next pick.  He pays it.  Team loses.  Know how it works?”

“Yeah.  Statistics.  The scammer sends out a couple dozen letters to a bunch of different people in the first batch, half picking one team, half the other.  He only sends follow-up letters to the ones that got the winning pick, and does the same thing again. The pool of possible suckers gets divided in half each time, until there’s only one or two shmucks who think they’ve got a line on a sure thing. “

She picked up a towel from the floor, slung it around her neck.  “That’s right.  And in the good old US of A, there’s one big-ass pool of statistics to draw on.  So this guy found a few newspaper stories that fit his parameters?  So what?  Doesn’t mean he has magic mind-bending powers.”

“No, it doesn’t.  But that’s not the part that’s bothering me.”  Jack sat down on the weight bench beside her.  “The crash that killed that Mayor in Arkansas?  He wasn’t the only one.  His wife and two kids were in the car.  And the pick-up they slammed into was being driven by a couple in their sixties.  The only that survived was one of the kids, and he’ll be an orphan in a wheelchair for life.”

Nikki met Jack’s eyes.  She didn’t say anything.

“The rapist that was poisoned?  He shared that bottle of wine with his date.  She died, too.”

“People die, Jack.  Doesn’t mean this guy is responsible.”

“I know.  But I can’t just walk away, either.  Not until I know for sure.”

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Malcolm Tanner hummed along with the Beatles as he drove down the narrow confines of the logging road, the SUV’s four wheel drive and heavy-duty suspension handling the deep ruts and steep incline easily.  The mix he was listening to was one he’d made himself; “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” finished and “Mack the Knife” began.

The trees crowded in on either side, dense green rainforest growth now white with snow.  Tanner was very much an urbanite—the SUV was primarily a status symbol—but he had to admit he was enjoying these little treks into the woods.  Even the chilly November temperatures didn’t dampen his enthusiasm; he just kept the heater in the cab cranked along with the music. 

He checked the GPS tracker on the dash again to make sure he was still heading in the right direction.  It showed his target was around a hundred yards to the east, and the logging road at this point was running north/south. 
Probably about as close as I’m going to get,
he thought, and brought the SUV to a halt. 

He unplugged the GPS unit and took it with him, flipping up the hood of his coat as he got out of the truck.  It wasn’t that cold, but Tanner disliked being even a little chilly.  The coat was a Mountain Equipment Co-op jacket made of Gore-Tex and specifically designed for the Northwest’s damp climate; it was brand-new, as were the Timberland hiking boots on his feet. 

He followed the signal through the undergrowth, his footsteps crunching on the unblemished snow.  It was mid-afternoon, but not much light filtered down though the pines from the overcast sky.

He found what he was looking for snagged near the top of a tree.  Fortunately, the trees in this part of the forest had already been logged some time ago; most were no more than twenty feet tall, with branches that were spaced close enough together to make them easy to climb.  It took him no more than a few minutes to scramble two-thirds of the way up the narrow trunk, after which he used an extendable reaching tool tipped with a metal claw to grab the black plastic garbage bag dangling from the end of a branch.   A few limp-looking, half-deflated black balloons bobbed from a length of fishing line attached to it.

Back on the ground, he cut open the bag with a small knife. When he was satisfied its payload was intact, he took it back to the SUV and threw it in the back, then started looking for a place to turn around.

***

Remote: Hello, Closer.

Jack: Hello, Remote.  I’ve been looking over that file you sent.

Remote: You have questions, I’m sure.

Jack: I do.  If you can control people’s minds, why not just have your targets eliminate themselves?

Remote: There are certain physical limitations to what I can accomplish, as well as practical and philosophical considerations.  Leaving pragmatism aside for the moment, let me address the deeper issues.

For one thing, don’t you find a certain aptness in evil being extinguished by those who profit from it?

Jack: I suppose you could look at it that way—at least in the lawyer’s case.  But a mechanic?  A dentist?  Those are innocents.

Remote: Are you familiar with the phrase, “All evil needs to do to succeed is for good men to do nothing”?  Those who service people they know to be evil—whether working on their vehicles or their teeth—are their silent accomplices.  They should, at the very least, shun such people.  They lose their innocence by not doing so.

Jack: Which justifies you using them as an instrument of vengeance.

Remote: Vengeance?  No, Closer.  That’s not my motivation at all—and neither, I suspect, is it yours.  I operate on a much more objective level; which brings us back, inevitably, to pragmatism. 

What I do is driven by logic.  The world is a mad, chaotic place, and I seek to decrease that insanity by removing human predators.  Eliminate a source of pain and you eliminate much of the pain itself.  Not all, of course—but that’s your area of expertise, not mine. 

Jack: You see what you do as necessary.

Remote: My motives are not entirely pure—I enjoy my chosen profession, I admit.  But yes, I believe I do fulfill a needed role in society.  Do you watch hockey?

Jack: I’m not much for team sports.

Remote: I ask because there’s a very similar role filled by certain hockey players; you’ll find them on every team in the NHL.  They call them “enforcers”. 

They are, more or less, thugs.  It is their job to intimidate the more skilled players on opposing teams, and to mete out retribution if their own teammates are attacked.  Their rank is utterly unofficial, and the combat they engage in has no written rules.  They are—by the standards of their own sport—essentially professional criminals.  And how do the authorities that oversee this sport react?

They do nothing.  Because one very simple fact prevents them from attempting to eliminate or even control such behavior:  the fans don’t want them to.   The enforcer fills a particular social niche that his society demands, one that has evolved out of necessity.  He may not receive the accolades a star player does, but he does his job.

As do I.

Jack leaned back, studied the screen.  “Sure,” he said softly.  “And if someone happens to get caught in the crossfire—a wife, a kid, a bystander—you just chalk it up to collateral damage, right?  It all comes down to numbers with you.”

Jack: We have very different approaches. How do you envision us working together?

Remote: I’m glad you asked.  It brings us back to the question of self-termination you brought up before.

I’ve been considering the idea of suicide bombers for some time.  I’ve rejected it until now for several reasons, one of which is the obvious political connotations; the last thing I want is my anonymity breached by an intensive investigation by Homeland Security.

But wouldn’t it be a wonderful way to dispose of one of your subjects when you were done with him?  A fitting end for a monster—using it to destroy another of its kind as its final act.

Jack blinked.  For a moment, the idea almost seemed to make sense. . . he shook his head.  “Yeah, sure,” he muttered.  “Strap a bomb to an unstable psychopath I’ve just tortured and aim him at another psycho.  No way that could go wrong . . .”

Jack: Intriguing.  But you still haven’t provided me with details on how you operate in the first place; I’m going to need some specifics if we’re going to go any further.  Or don’t you trust me?

He held his breath, waiting for the reply.  It seemed to take longer to arrive than the others.

Remote: Of course I trust you, Closer.  You and I both do what we do for the betterment of Mankind.  And here’s how I attain my goals. . .

***

Tanner had recently acquired a cabin in the woods—sadly, it wasn’t in the same direction as where the balloons came down.  It took him another two hours to get there, but the SUV was big and comfortable, with an excellent sound system.  If he had someone else to handle the driving he could even relax in the back and watch the flip-down TV screen, maybe enjoy some
batsu gemu
DVDS.  But of course, that was impossible; he knew how to make people do all sorts of things, but a personal chauffeur was an indulgence he couldn’t allow himself.