Forgive Me: A Xanadu Marx Thriller Read online

  “Sounds good to me,” said Scott.

  “I just have one question,” said Crystal.

  Scott glared Why? at his wife.

  Crystal glared Because! at her husband.

  Scott backed down. He knew enough not to argue with Because!

  She asked Wilkerson her question: “Why did the Serendipity Group target you?”

  “I told you. Because they’re lunatics.”

  “No, you said they went after people who ‘victimized.’ Why did they think you victimized this guy?”

  “Because they’re lunatics.” His smile was a smear of paste. “Why? Did he say something?”

  “He said you were a thief. He was going to chop off your hands with a saw. Except they weren’t your hands. They were my husband’s hands. And that’s the other part I don’t understand.”

  “Oh?” Wilkerson unscrewed the sound suppressor and pocketed it. “How so?”

  “You knew he was coming here. Why not just wait in the other room? Why go through the trouble of stealing a uniform and pretending to be room service? He was in here for a while by the time you showed up. Scott and I could have been dead by the time you arrived.”

  “I came here as fast as I could. And do you see the uniform I snagged? I haven’t worn anything this ill fitting since I was going through puberty. I look like I’m still going through puberty. Check out these cuffs. They’re practically up to my elbows.”

  Now Scott, finally on board with Crystal’s reasoning, chimed in, “You’re missing the point. We could have been dead.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “Here’s what I think,” said Crystal. “I think you sent us up here to be your bait but you didn’t know how many people would actually be coming to get us and you didn’t know if they’d have knives or guns—”

  “—or saws—”

  “—or saws. I think when you came up here and you knocked on the door, you weren’t sure what you were going to find. So you gave yourself an out. If the door opened and there were seven ninjas in here, you could have just walked away. You’re wearing a uniform. They wouldn’t risk killing someone who might be missed. I think what that guy said about you is true. You’re nothing but a thief.”

  Wilkerson’s smile didn’t falter. “So you don’t want to stay at the Shangri-La?”

  “Well…” said Scott.

  “No,” said Crystal. “Thank you.”

  “Wow.” Wilkerson sighed, tucked the gun into the back of his slacks, and shook his head. “I might be a thief, but you’re just stupid. No, worse than stupid. Naive. You think I’m the bad guy? Do I look like a lunatic with a hacksaw? Do I look like a—”

  Knock, knock, knock.

  “Oh for the love of God,” muttered Scott.

  But Wilkerson was already making his way to the door. “Relax. It’s just our alibi. The TV, remember? Whoever is here to complain will confirm our TV is on too loud and any possibility of actual gunshots will be ohwhatthefuck!”

  Because he had a hacksaw embedded in his right calf.

  Because the itty-bitty psycho was still alive. Well, alive enough.

  Alive enough for revenge.

  Wilkerson bent down to remove the hacksaw. The movement must have thrown him off-balance. He tumbled forward.

  Whereupon the itty-bitty psycho removed the hacksaw.

  Repositioned it along Wilkerson’s throat.

  The itty-bitty psycho died before he could finish the job, though a half-finished decapitation did the job just the same.

  Chapter 5

  For the fourth time in forty minutes, a police officer came to take their statement.

  Scott and Crystal were seated on the bed. This way they wouldn’t be obstructing while the crime scene was photographed, detailed, and marked. This way too they could have a wall between them and the dead bodies.

  Out of sight, out of mind, right?

  Not always, no.

  It didn’t help that police officers were continuing to ask them the same questions over and over again. They’d say what happened, from the moment they arrived in the lobby to the moment their next-door neighbors, an elderly couple named Friedrich and Alice Van Dyke, knocked on their door to get them for the love of God to turn down the volume on their TV. They relayed what was said by the French-speaking intruder. They relayed what was said by Wilkerson. They relayed the name of the movie.

  And then the police officer would thank them for their time, tell them to remain in the bedroom, and leave.

  And, two minutes later, another police officer would enter and repeat the exact same process.

  “Look,” said Scott to the fourth cop, an unfortunate fellow damned with both a comb-over and a wart-encrusted cheek. “I know you’re just trying to do what you need to do, but we already told all this to the other guys.”

  The cop nodded, spat out his gum into a receptacle by the vanity, and took out his handheld recorder. “Let’s start at the beginning.”

  “How about we start at the middle this time just to change things up?”

  If the cop had a sense of humor, he didn’t show it. Perhaps he didn’t like having to do this at 2 A.M. Poor fellow. Scott and Crystal didn’t like having to do this at 2 A.M. either. Through it all, they squeezed each other’s hands to remind themselves of themselves.

  Finally, the cop left. They fell back on the bed and harmonized groans. The mattress was so comfortable and they were so exhausted that they quite easily could have fallen asleep, even with all the ruckus in the other room, had a fifth cop not poked his head in at that moment and said, “Oh hi, do you—uh—do you have a minute?”

  Or maybe he wasn’t a cop. He wasn’t in uniform, unless a raggedy blue button-down and a pair of jeans now constituted a uniform in Atlanta. On his head was a UGA Bulldogs cap. On his feet were a pair of tan loafers that looked like they’d been chewed up by a pack of bulldogs. He had dark skin, dark eyes, and two cups of dark coffee.

  He handed the cups to Scott and Crystal.

  “I didn’t know what you wanted in them, so I didn’t have them put anything, but I can go get you some sugar or cream or whatever,” he said, “if you want. There’s probably some in the, you know, kitchen.”

  Neither of them were big coffee drinkers, so they just took what they were given with silent apathy.

  “Anyway, I’m Detective Konquist. I got some cards somewhere…” He patted himself down for a few seconds. “They must be in my other pants. Don’t you hate that? You put on one pair of pants because it’s cleaner than your other pair of pants except you leave all your important stuff in the other pair of pants. It’s a metaphor for something. So. You’re Scott and Crystal.”

  They nodded.

  “First off, if no one’s said this yet, let me be the first to apologize for forcing you to sit through all this procedure. If you ask me, it’s unfair. We’re the ones who are on the clock. You’re the ones who have just been through a trauma. I say—let you rest! It’s not like you’re going to develop amnesia between now and tomorrow morning. But my captain loves eyewitness testimony and the fresher the better, although between you and me, that’s a load of bunk. Eyewitness testimony is the least reliable evidence in all cases. Why? Because we’re just people! We make mistakes. We don’t do it intentionally, but we do it. For example, my associates were supposed to sequester the two of you in separate rooms so that you couldn’t unintentionally collaborate on your stories, but here you are, together. Mistake! But that’s not your mistake. You two did nothing wrong. You know that, right?”

  They nodded. None of the other cops had gone so far as to actually say it, and it was nice to hear, but they knew—mostly—that none of this was their fault. Although if they hadn’t agreed to switch rooms…

  “They tell me you’re on your honeymoon. They tell me you’re going to Paris. I had to go to Paris once. My nephew was getting married. My brother’s kid. Why he couldn’t get married in the United States is beyond me, but I guess that’s all the rage now, the
se destination weddings. It’s a nice city. Not my cup of tea, but I don’t speak French and I hate cheese. Are either of you hungry? I can ask someone to get you a sandwich. It’s no trouble.”

  They were both starving. Nevertheless, they both shook their heads. They sipped their coffee.

  Detective Konquist scratched himself behind the ear. “OK. So. I’m not going to ask you to regurgitate all those details you gave the other guys. I’m not going to waste your time. There is a discrepancy, though, between what you’ve said and what we’ve found, and I just wanted to address that, here and now, and get that cleared away. Oh crap. I think my driver’s license is in my other pants. I think I drove here without a license.”

  “What’s the discrepancy?” asked Scott.

  “It’s about this list.” Konquist patted himself down again, this time in search of his license. “You know, the list? The yellow slip of paper with the list of names?”

  “He said they were the other targets.”

  “He being Phillip Wilkerson?”

  “Yeah. He said he was given the list and that’s how he knew he was in danger.”

  “From the Serendipity Group?”

  “Right.”

  “And you saw this list?”

  “Briefly, yeah.”

  “And what other names were on this list?”

  “Most of them were crossed off,” Crystal said. “But his name wasn’t crossed off and there was another name below his.”

  “Do you remember that other name?”

  “I’ve been trying…I only looked at it for a second.”

  “Do you remember any of the other names?”

  “No.”

  “And you saw Wilkerson put the slip of paper back in his pocket?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember which pocket?”

  “His left, I think?”

  “See, that’s the discrepancy. We searched his pockets. All his pockets. Then we searched underneath the furniture. Then we took apart the furniture. Then we searched underneath the rug. We searched the two of you when we first got here. We searched this room while you were in the other room. We searched the trash. We—”

  Konquist bent down suddenly and stared into the contents of the receptacle by the vanity.

  “Whose gum is this?”

  “The last cop who came in here before you spat it out before he asked us for our statements.”

  “See? This is what I’m saying. We do what we call an itemization and it stands to reason that nobody’s supposed to add anything to a crime scene and now there’s a wad of gum in the trash and the lab boys will process it and everyone will wonder whose DNA it is and maybe there’s another person involved except it’s just Henry being a moron. No, that’s not true. Henry’s not a moron. He’s a good cop. Everybody makes mistakes. Hmm. Wouldn’t it have been something if the gum was wrapped up in a yellow slip of paper?”

  “I’m sorry we can’t be more help,” said Scott.

  “Oh, you’ve been plenty of help. Plenty of help. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get you resituated so you can at least get half a good night’s sleep. Got to be awake for Paris! Oh, except, crap, that’s the other thing I need to tell you. You can’t go to Paris.”

  Crystal felt her heart do a double take. “Excuse me?”

  “We need you to stay local. Just for the next seventy-two hours. In case we have any other questions.”

  “Three days…?”

  “Hey, it’s not my call. If it were up to me, I’d put you on that plane right now. But you’re the only witnesses to a double homicide and we’ve got to follow procedure. But look, we can pay to put you up. I mean, it won’t be here. But it’ll have a bed and a roof. Just call the number on my card tomorrow when you need to relocate.”

  “You didn’t give us a card.”

  “Crap. How about we exchange phone numbers instead? That’ll work.”

  They exchanged phone numbers. Then Detective Konquist instructed a pair of uniforms to escort Scott and Crystal to another room in the hotel. Naturally, the room they were given was the room they had originally been assigned at the front desk. As for a good night’s sleep, well, despite their best efforts, best intentions, and best wishes, Scott and Crystal spent the remainder of that evening caught in the realm of semiconsciousness.

  Around 4 A.M., Crystal muttered, “Paris isn’t real.”

  Scott didn’t reply. He was beginning to believe she was right.

  Around 6 A.M., the airline shuttle bus pulled up in front of the hotel. The several dozen passengers piled inside, excited that they would finally be on their way across the pond. Nobody commented about the two empty seats.

  Around 7 A.M., Scott and Crystal sleepwalked down to the lobby for the continental breakfast. All anyone could talk about was the police presence. Speculation abounded. One table of middle-aged guests, all dressed for a day at the golf course, was convinced—convinced—that the authorities had broken up a high-class prostitution ring. Another couple around Scott and Crystal’s age wondered if drugs were involved. This was, after all, Atlanta, they reasoned. In fact, the only table not abuzz with gossip belonged to Scott and Crystal, who ate their scrambled eggs and drank their fresh-squeezed OJ in sullen silence.

  Around 8 A.M., Scott and Crystal sleepwalked back to the elevator and up to their room. It was halfway up the elevator shaft that Crystal suddenly stomped her right foot and cried out, “I’ve got it!”

  Scott glanced down at his wife. “What do you got?”

  “The last name on the list of targets! I couldn’t remember it and it just came to me. I’m so tired that I don’t think I can clearly recite the alphabet right now, but I know who the next target is.”

  “So what’s their name?”

  “Xanadu Marx.”

  Chapter 6

  The Death House reeked of disinfectant, as if the guards had baptized its cinder-block walls with ammonia in preparation for tonight’s event. Xanadu Marx, the tallest and grumpiest of the twenty attendees whom the guards were leading down this short beige corridor, coughed into her fist and then rubbed at her eyes. If they were half as bloodshot as they felt, they would soon be leaking red.

  “Normally, we’d just bring you in through the other door,” said the guard, “but there’s something wrong with one of its hinges. The other door leads direct to where y’all will be sitting. We’re almost there.”

  None of them appeared to be in a rush. Apparently toxic exposure to ammonia fumes wasn’t enough to kick this group past the speed of a tortoise. At least Hayley, with her personal oxygen tank in tow, had an excuse for her slow pace. The rest of these people were just rubberneckers.

  “Having a good time yet?” Xanadu muttered to Hayley.

  The nineteen-year-old replied with a glare. “What is wrong with you?”

  “The science is inconclusive.”

  The guard stopped in front of a metal door that he unlocked with one of the keys on his belt. On the other side of the door was a cement room with three rows of wooden pews and, at the back, another door striped over with duct tape. The attendees filled the back two rows first and then the front row. No one told them to do that.

  Xana and Hayley, bringing up the rear, got to have front-row seats.

  They were now facing a blue curtain. On the other side of the curtain would be a bay window. On the other side of the window would be a room that was utterly featureless but for a gurney. What color sheets would be on the gurney? Would there be one pillow or two? In her nearly thirty years with the FBI, Xana had never felt the compulsion to attend an execution. Not once. And she certainly wouldn’t have attended this one had Hayley not expressed curiosity.

  Oh children and their curiosity.

  On the drive down here from the city, Hayley had been visibly nervous, so much so that she almost swerved off the road a few times, and Xana had said to her in as maternal a tone as she could deliver, “We can turn around.”

  The sun had long since dipped below
the horizon and the stars, so well hidden by the light pollution of the city, had begun to button the sky. On either side of the interstate was, well, nothing. Nothing at all. As the saying went: Once you leave Atlanta, you enter Georgia.

  “It’s not that I’m having second thoughts,” said Hayley. “It’s just…I don’t want them to think we’re, you know, impostors.”

  “We have permission to be there, just like everyone else.”

  “Yeah, except everyone else is going to be, like, family and friends of the victims. We’re just…interested bystanders.”

  “You’re an interested bystander. I’m an apathetic onlooker with nothing better to do on a Tuesday night.”

  “You’re not really apathetic,” Hayley responded. “Nobody’s apathetic about capital punishment.”

  “I am. I honestly could not care less.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I open my mouth and the words come out.”

  Hayley sighed until she wheezed. “So you’re telling me that you have an opinion about everything in the world—and you do, because I’ve heard them—loudly—you have an opinion about everything in the world except the death penalty.”

  “It’s not a debate. The death penalty exists. It has since the first syllable of recorded time and it will until the last of us gets melted down by the sun. Society exists for one reason and one reason alone: to perpetuate itself. In the name of self-preservation, the most civilized cultures in the world have ostracized and butchered without hesitation. And I’m not just talking about Socrates and Jesus. You know what the most popular form of capital punishment is?”

  “Death by rant?”

  “Ha. No. War is the most popular form of capital punishment. State sanctioned and government issued. Abolish war, and then maybe I’ll start to give a rat’s ass about the death penalty, but until then, thanks but no thanks.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You asked.”

  “I know,” replied Hayley. “The mistake was mine.”

  But at least her nervousness had abated.

  Nevertheless, Hayley’s nervousness returned once they were all seated in the observation room. Her fingers danced to and fro along the length of plastic tubing currently resting on her lap. The other attendees had already given her nasal cannula the requisite side-stare. Normally, she took such looks in stride—years of such ogling had inured her, it was perhaps the only thing left in the world to which she was inured—but tonight, already plagued with nascent impostor syndrome, tonight she felt their gazes and took it as judgment and her throat shrank and her gasps of air trebled in speed and the neurons in her brain tingled from this sudden glut of oxygen, tingled and numbed and clouded her eyesight and chilled her extremities and—