Ten: A Lincoln Polk Thriller

By Rowan Hodge

Entertainment turns to horror across a long frozen winter.

Ten episodes in ten cities.

A new live-play detective show is sweeping the nation a ratings sensation where terrible crimes play out on stage for audiences to solve. But someone else knows the script and is shadowing the show as it traverses the United States. While home viewers countdown ten fictional murder mysteries from their living rooms, the cross-country killer is collecting gruesome keepsakes.

When the FBI identifies a pattern involving three horrific crimes in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, Special Agent Lincoln Polk is assigned the case. This chase will push him to breaking point, testing loyalties and stirring memories buried in the past.

Strap yourself in for an unrelenting rollercoaster ride through ten weeks of hell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Aug 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482824322

Rowan Hodge

About the author Rowan Hodge is a gyrocopter pilot and author who likes to plant trees. He was born and raised in North Queensland and earned business and law degrees from the Queensland University of Technology. He has lived in New Zealand, Argentina, Australia, France and Belgium. Rowan resides in Brisbane with his wife, Greta, and their two children. This book was written in Cyprus, Belgium, Israel, New Caledonia, Australia, New Zealand, The United States and the United Arab Emirates.

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Copyright © 2014 by Rowan Hodge.

ISBN:          Hardcover          978-1-4828-2431-5

                   Softcover            978-1-4828-2430-8

                   eBook                 978-1-4828-2432-2

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CONTENTS

THE PRELUDE

THE FIRST

THE SECOND

THE THIRD

THE FOURTH

THE FIFTH

THE SIXTH

THE SEVENTH

THE EIGHTH

THE NINTH

THE TENTH

THE CODA

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For Chan, Clarry and Mort

APRIL 12      HOUSTON, TEXAS

He checked the power once more. Then the little backup generator. He patted the wide lid of the white top-load freezer, mumbled a few private words to himself, switched out the light, pulled down the roller shutter and walked out of the storage warehouse the way he’d come.

MAY 31      LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

‘Roll credits’ Charlie punched the ‘full stop’ button with a force and finality derived from pure satisfaction.

He breathed in deeply and held it. He nodded at the screen, clicked the ‘SAVE’ icon, and let out a long slow breath. His shoulders and wrists ached from cramp. He reached for his coffee cup subconsciously with his left hand. Without taking his eyes off the screen, he raised the mug to his lips and took a sip. He was suddenly snapped out of his trance by the foul cold dregs that filled his mouth. He spat the sludge back into his cup and looked at his surroundings.

His desk was a mess at the center of which were two dominant items - his laptop and an ashtray so full of butts it resembled a porcupine. He toyed with the zippo lighter in his left hand – his favorite earthly thing. The lighter was silver with the image of an Indian chief set into its side. In any other context he’d have seen it as a cheesy souvenir-shop piece of junk, but it was a gift from his father who gave it to him as a joke years ago. He flipped it open and lit another cigarette, then snapped it closed with a satisfying ‘clink’. He drew deeply on the cigarette then arched his back to stretch, tilting his head back to face the ceiling. He held his arms held out stiffly to his sides and exhaled a plume of smoke straight upwards. It hung in the air and then swirled in the warm evening breeze drafting through the window.

His nose was sore from the weight of his new glasses. But fuck it, he’d committed to them when he bought them; he’d just need to get used to them.

He clicked the ‘save’ button again to be sure. Then he reached into his left desk draw and pulled out a bottle of scotch and a tumbler. He poured himself a hefty measure, and raised it to his nose to smell. After a quick sniff of the rich malty essence, he exhaled out his mouth. His breath blew back up to his nose off the surface of the golden liquid and reminded him how long he’d been at that desk, and how revolting his breath was.

He clicked print, and his little laser printer went to work quietly sliding out page after page of his work. It was a work that delved deeply into cruelty, death and deceit. He’d been writing for years, bits and pieces here and there. He’d written other things, including a book of poetry that was never published. But this piece here - building slowly in the catch tray under the printer - this was his master opus. Ten episodes of high quality original screen plays that would take the classic whodunit into a whole new interactive television format. Reality TV would break new ground.

The pages in the tray ruffled in the breeze. Charlie reached out to close the window a little more. It was a nice night – not quite as hot as the last couple of weeks, but the wind was building now and the air felt a little heavier. He sensed a storm coming.

He stood and scratched his chin. Then he picked up the remote for the little old CD player. He hit ‘play’ and the familiar soulful voice of John Lee Hooker filled the small room with a tale of some woman who was just no damn good.

Charlie turned to look out the window. A tired old swimming pool, long since drained and abandoned accompanied a courtyard sporting only one broken plastic deck chair. Surrounding the pool area were two levels of other apartments just like his. This place must have been pretty hip in the sixties when it was built, but now it showed every one of the fifty years since. Even the remaining token palm tree looked sick, like a stick of celery left too long in the fridge. He thought how different this must be to the way people pictured their idealistic new future life in California when they decided to migrate west. The complex itself wasn’t in such a bad area, but no amount of repainting would cover the cracks in the walls, and no amount of spin from any real estate agent would convince a buyer that this place was good for anything but total demolition. Charlie took a sip from his tumbler and felt the familiar twin sensations of burning and warmth wash over his body as he swallowed the scotch into his stomach. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and his chin itched as it sometimes did.

In the half light of the late dusk, he caught his reflection in the window before him. The faint tinting together with the last light of day outside showed his image more like a carbon copy than a mirror. He looked at the outline cast by his mess of dark curly hair. ‘Nice fro’ he said to himself with a grin. As the words left his mouth it occurred to him, it was the first time he’d spoken a word in days.

Charlie looked back over his shoulder and saw that the printer was stopped, and the red light was flashing. He took out the printed sheets, still warm from the toner drum, and loaded another half a ream of paper into the feeder tray. He pressed the ‘go’ button, and it resumed its cool steady rhythm.

For a short while the sound of the printer was in sync with the rhythm of the music. Then the CD started to skip.

JUNE 21      NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

Charlie could not bear the waiting. He’d worn his only suit, and it not only looked cheap and poorly pressed, but it somehow managed to look wrong. He felt like an imposter. It was as if anyone who saw him would know that he never wore a suit, and he didn’t belong in one whether he owned it or not.

There were two other people in the waiting room. One was an older guy who wore reading glasses and looked so comfortable Charlie wondered if he was actually waiting to see somebody, or if perhaps he was the company president. The bastard not only looked right in his suit, he even managed to make his glasses look good because he wore them so well. Charlie watched him for a moment. How was it that some guys always look like they’ve just been to the barber? He bet this guy looked like that every day of his damn life.

The other person waiting was a young Asian guy with colorful tattoos all over his forearms. He hadn’t even bothered to wear a suit and he looked nearly as comfortable as the other prick. The dude was there already when Charlie arrived, and since then he’d picked up a couple of magazines from the coffee table, flicked through them, and then cast them back down. Now he took a sketch book from his backpack and proceeded to draw something with a lead pencil. Charlie tried to casually get a look at what he was drawing but he couldn’t get enough angle from where he stood. From the way the Asian guy was directing his attention, it looked like he might be sketching the receptionist – a rather severe round-shouldered battle-axe with her hair in a grey bun and the shriveled-up thin yellow lips of a lifelong smoker.

Charlie was thinking about smoking. He was thinking about it a lot. About how he should try to quit again. But that just made him long for a cigarette right now. Too wired to stay seated as he’d been directed, Charlie was now standing, shifting from foot to foot nervously beside the water cooler. He subconsciously turned his zippo lighter over and over in his sweaty little palm, and looked up at the clock above the doorway.

It has to be here! He thought to himself. It has to be Silver Productions! God please let this happen! He had a good feeling. Everything would come together here. He just had to get through this meeting.

‘Charles Gillespie?!’ called the receptionist into the waiting room.

‘That’s me. Charlie. My friends call me Charlie.’

‘Mister Silver will see you now Mister Gillespie.’

He ignored her rebuff, and walked past her in his usual short sharp strides. He pushed in the heavy oak door and stepped inside. There seated behind the wide mahogany desk was legendary television Producer Alan Silver. Charlie stifled a physical reaction to seeing the man in the flesh. Silver’s very light grey suit and matching locks fit his name to a tee. Another serious looking dark-featured man sat straight-backed in an armchair. He was the youngest person in the room, and with his grave expression and rigid deportment he had the air of a man who’d never known laughter. Finally, perched on the edge of a sofa was a third much older man with a florid bulbous nose who could politely be described as portly. Charlie wondered whether perhaps the big guy was on the edge of the sofa because if he were to sit all the way back he’d risk sinking too far in and he’d need serious help to get up again. He was wearing a three piece navy blue chalk stripe suit with a flamboyant red cravat and matching handkerchief in his breast pocket.

Gillespie scratched his chin and sub-consciously let out a sigh at finally being in the room. It released none of the tension in his shoulders. Silver moved around his desk and extended his hand, ‘Charles Gillespie, do come in. Allow me to make some introductions. I’m Alan Silver…’ he said. Charlie noticed that whenever Alan Silver blinked his eyes they rolled to the left, and then came back to straight ahead as his eyelids flicked back open.

‘Mister Silver, of course I know who you are.’ Charlie shook his hand vigorously and immediately realized how damp his grip must feel. He pulled his hand away and tried to discretely wipe it on his trouser leg as Silver continued.

‘And over here is Jeff Murray from legal…’ Charlie shook his hand and felt instant disapproval from the younger man’s dark direct gaze.

‘Mister Gillespie…’ said the younger man unsmilingly. Jesus who died, Chuckles? Gillespie thought. The lawyer’s somber countenance was somehow emphasized by one slightly disfigured eyebrow. Gillespie tried not to stare, but he couldn’t help it. It looked like Murray might have fallen victim to some sort of burn as a child. It didn’t help him look warm and cheerful. Nor did his eyes, which were as black and dull as coking coal.

‘Pleasure, Mister Murray…’ Charlie said.

‘And this porky fellow over here is Harold Caine…’

‘Oh do fuck off Alan – you could lose a few pounds yourself. Hello Charles, pleasure to meet you,’ he said in an accent that had once been more English but was now somewhere halfway across the Atlantic. Regardless of the geography, there was also an unmistakable pinch of aristocracy which tended to make all of his words sound refined, but also slightly camp. He gave a warm smile while he clasped Charlie’s hand in his two pudgy mitts.

‘Hello Mister Caine.’

‘Please, let’s stop with all this formality. Call me Harold.’

‘And call me Alan,’ said Alan Silver.

Charlie said, ‘I prefer Charlie to Charles.’

Alan said, ‘Right then, Charlie it is.’ He blinked - his eyes darting away and back.

Charlie waited a pause to allow the younger man to offer a less formal protocol. But Murray just sat there like an Easter Island statue.

Silver continued, ‘Have a seat please, Charlie.’

There were two seating places available, a hard backed chair beside the lawyer, Murray, or he could join Harold Caine on the sofa. Charlie sat on the sofa. Alan Silver returned behind his desk and lowered himself into a very comfortable looking leather chair. That was when Charlie noticed his own screen play on the desk. The paper was worn at the edges and there were numerous yellow post-it notes poking out throughout the stack. On the front page he saw squiggles, ticks and circles together with comments in blue and red pen. Seemingly each was in different handwriting. Silver saw him looking, and took the lead, ‘A very nice piece of work here Charlie. Very nice indeed.’ Caine nodded and patted Charlie on the leg like a grandfather might a grandson. ‘Sharp dialogue. Great scenarios. Some good twists.’ He paused and looked at Caine, who nodded back to him with little more than a slow blink of his eyelids, ‘Charlie, we think this could work for us.’ Charlie realized he’d been holding his breath, and he released it now as quietly as he could, which turned out to be rather loud. Silver continued, ‘We’d like to buy it, and we’d like you on board as an Assistant Director, with Harold here directing and overseeing the production – particularly the technical elements.’

‘Alan,’ said Charlie, with another loud exhale. A little color appearing once again in his cheeks now, ‘I can’t tell you how much I…’

‘Charlie, the script is great. There are a couple of scenes our readers have suggested tweaking for their cinematic value, but the plots, the characters, and most of the dialogue will remain largely unchanged. In our world that is pretty rare. We’d even like to keep the name, ‘TEN’ – marketing thinks it can work in very well with a countdown theme, despite the whole Bo Derek connection – that movie was decades ago.’

‘Oh my God… Alan this is fantastic!’

‘Yes Charlie, it really is. As the author, we’ll pay you fifty thousand dollars per episode. As the creator, we’ll also pay an escalating bonus if ratings hit certain ratchets. Jeff here has a contract proposal for you. Do you have your own lawyer retained?’

‘Sure,’ Charlie embellished. He considered trying to negotiate the price, but who was he kidding. First, it was more money than he’d ever seen, and second, he wouldn’t have a clue what the work was worth. For all he knew Silver was either being far too generous or he was robbing him blind. So better to just shut the fuck up and nod like a simpleton. He already had exactly what he wanted. Jeff Murray handed a wad of legal forms to Charlie nearly as thick as the screen plays sitting on Alan’s desk.

Silver went on, ‘Take those to your lawyer, and get back to us as soon as you possibly can. I’ve discussed the project with some networks and I think we can close on a programming gap late in the year, so we’ll need to move fast if we want to get this thing off the ground. What we want to talk about today is format. We saw your proposal but we want to hear it from you. Tell us again how you see the home viewers being involved.’

Charlie’s head was spinning but he was on much more familiar ground now, ‘OK. Basically, this is a ‘whodunit’ series as you know. Except here the mystery plays out on the small screen with a murder, an investigation, and then nothing. At the end of the hour long program, the program switches to a live studio with an audience, then the host plays a handful of clips from the episode, and then challenges the home viewers to vote on-line and by sms on who they think is the killer with prizes etcetera. Then follows a very long ad break – say ten minutes - with lots of teasers including short clips from the episode. All the while there is a permanent countdown in the bottom corner of the screen. Then the host is back on, telling viewers the voting time has finished. He then introduces the resolution of the crime which then plays out live on stage in the studio for around twelve minutes, culminating in the killer being revealed. Then cut back to the host for a wrap up and the announcement of the audience winners. All done in around ninety minutes including ad space – basically like a regular feature film.’

‘I love it. I fucking love it!’ said Silver banging his fist down on the table. ‘Have you timed these scripts?’

‘Not accurately of course, you’d need a troupe of actors for that, but I’ve done read-throughs on most and they are workable in the time frame. More importantly the format of each episode is about the same. So if you can get it right once, you can kinda’ copy-paste for the others, right?’

‘We. Charlie. You said ‘if you can’. You need to start thinking ‘we can’.’ Charlie blushed with pure glee. ‘Harold, I need you to take a look at this and get back to me on ad space and timings,’ Silver said pointing to Harold Caine.

Caine replied, ‘Can do. I don’t anticipate much of a challenge there.’ He said smiling paternally at Charlie. ‘Most of the scenes are short, so placing the ad breaks will be simple enough.’

Alan Silver blinked a couple of his odd blinks and leaned back in his chair. He stared into nowhere in particular as he thought it through. ‘The bloggers are going to love it. They’ll all stouch it out for supremacy – maybe we could use that somehow.’ He scribbled a note on the top corner of the script on his desk, then continued speaking to nobody in particular as he played the idea out in his head, ‘They’ll pick the shit out of each episode. This could really get a cult following on top of the main stream… Harold, it probably skews a little to the male audiences. Will we keep female viewers watching for ten weeks?’

Caine replied, ‘Most crime shows are focused on crimes against women. In this series it’s the opposite for ten weeks which will be somewhat different. Also, because the acting roles are relatively small, and the locations change cities every week, we can count on good local engagement if we spread the locations well and shoot in real city settings. I see the prospect of some very big cameos here for A-listers who want to have fun doing some TV without learning a lot of lines or committing to a whole season. The right celebs will attract female viewers.’

Charlie picked up the thread of the idea, ‘In addition to any celebrities, why not hold open auditions for some minor roles in the towns where we film also?’

‘We could get an extra two episodes out of the auditions… I love it! It’s a bit ‘Idol’ but I love it!’ Silver said. He looked back down at the script and then at the lawyer, Murray, and back again. ‘Charlie, confidentiality will be key here since this is a mystery series and there are prizes on the line.’ He looked at Murray again, and then back at Charlie, ‘How many people have seen this script?’

‘Only me and my brother – he helped me proof it – and whoever you have showed it to.’

‘We’ve locked it down tight. Only two readers have been over it besides me and Harold, and they have both worked here for over ten years.’

Jeff Murray chimed in, ‘They’re both on confidentiality agreements with hefty penalty clauses. We’ll need the same for you and your brother. There’s one for you in the papers I’ve given you, Mister Gillespie.’ He reached into his briefcase and retrieved another stapled contract, ‘Here’s one for your brother also.’

‘OK.’ Charlie felt the heft of the paperwork in his lap. There had to be ten pounds of paper. ‘What do we do next?’ asked Charlie.

Harold Caine replied, ‘Next Charlie, m’ boy, the fun starts. We want this thing on air by the last week of October. For now, we’ll start story-boarding your screen play with a production team to decide how to shoot this thing and we’ll start casting for the talent. Our set and camera prod teams will start scouting locations also. Meanwhile Alan here will do his thing with the marketing guys to prep this with the networks, sponsorship partners, website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and anything else the kids are into these days, and of course, paid product placements.’

‘This could franchise Harold. We should alert the sales guys in the global team for cable and international,’ said Silver.

Charlie couldn’t believe his ears. It was all moving along even better than he’d hoped.

THE PRELUDE

I adjust the iPod earpiece in my ears as I read the review I’ve downloaded.

‘Beethoven’s music has edges and a charge of nervous explosiveness. There’s not only the feeling that anything can happen, including the opposite of what has gone before, but that what does happen is extraordinarily right.’

I press to skip the rest of the commentary and start the symphony.

WASHINGTON, DC

Lincoln Polk looked down at his watch to check the time and then he looked back up at the door in front of him. He had his compulsory post-trauma psych session due to start with some Agency specialist. Beyond his physical recuperation, he also needed to show he was mentally ready to recommence active field duties. He didn’t know much about Doctor Arnold. He pictured him as some sort of late middle-aged, balding, cardigan-wearing pipe-smoking Freud freak.

Polk knocked on the door, and heard the muffled sounds of someone on the other side.

A voice came from a foot lower than his own, ‘Hello, you must be Lincoln…’

Polk looked down, ‘Ah,’ He stood a little dumbfounded by the sight of her. Jesus! She was small, but not disproportionately so. She was athletic looking, but not muscled. Kind of curvy. Her hair was brown. Her skin was smooth as cream. Not a lot of makeup. She was confident definitely. Perhaps thirty-five? Professional. Feminine. He mumbled, ‘Yes, I’m ah, Special Agent Lincoln Polk.’

‘Tracey Arnold,’ she said thrusting forth a small hand which was dwarfed inside his big clumsy one, ‘Call me Tracey, and please come inside, Lincoln.’

Polk was deeply uncomfortable all of a sudden. He hadn’t expected Doctor Arnold to be a woman, let alone a stunner like this. The attraction he felt immediately was overwhelming. He felt like a damn pimple-faced teenager. He moved towards a couch as close to the door as possible, like it was a life raft and he was being forced to swim in choppy water.

He cleared his throat, ‘So… I need you to sign some sort of certificate to say I’m ready for active duty again, Doctor…?’

‘We’ll get to that,’ she said looking at him with a pinch more eye contact than was comfortable for him. ‘How’s that arm?’

Polk looked down at his arm sitting in its cotton sling. It was his left arm and he was left handed. Without its full utility, he felt like a clumsy gimp. ‘It’s the shoulder actually. It’s not so bad, I guess… on the mend.’

‘Come on and have a seat. Let’s talk a little…’

‘What should we talk about?’ he asked.

‘An excellent question,’ she sighed and opened a folder on the armrest of her own armchair, ‘I see here you’ve done quite a bit of psych study yourself… why don’t you tell me…?’

‘Ah, yeah…’ he cleared his throat which sounded too loud to his own ears. ‘I ah, I was told I’d have to complete a mandatory series of psych assessments as part of my rehab…’

‘Oh, I see, you just need to tick the box, so to speak…’

‘So to speak…’ his skin flushed as soon as the words left his mouth. Christ, did he just insult her?

Rather than seeming offended, her affect was a trace of amusement, ‘Well, I hate to disappoint, but that isn’t really my brief here…’ she looked up into his eyes again and garnished her next comment with a cheeky smile, ‘and besides, I don’t work like that, Lincoln.’ Polk smiled back but it came off as an awkward half expression leaving him wishing she would look back at her notes so he could reset his features into something less idiotic. ‘So I suppose,’ she continued, ‘we should probably get some ground rules set down up front…’ she flipped the folder closed and moved it from the armrest to a side table where she sat it down before turning her attention away from it and directly back to him. ‘The first thing we should be clear on is content and findings.’ Polk looked blankly at her. She went on, ‘The content of what’s said here will remain in strict confidence.’

‘Like a lawyer and a client?’

‘Lawyer-client, doctor-patient… exactly…’ Polk didn’t like being called a patient, but he supposed he was here talking to a doctor, so there wasn’t much he could do about that.

‘OK,’ he said.

‘…However, the findings will be shared.’

Polk went to fold his right arm under his left but the sling got in the way leaving him in a clumsy tangle. While he worked that out he chided himself for displaying such blatantly defensive body language to a trained professional. He tried to get back to the subject matter, ‘What do you mean by findings, exactly?’

‘The subject matter of our discussions – the specifics – will be confidential… but my recommendations to Deputy Director Bauner will be on record.’

‘Like me being fit for field duty again?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Right, then this should be a pretty short session…’

‘How do you figure that, Lincoln?’ there was that subtle smile again.

‘Well, I’m still getting some pain in my shoulder from the gunshot, but my rehab’s going well and it won’t be long now until I’m a hundred percent again.’

‘You must know that your physical rehabilitation isn’t the reason you’re sitting here with me, Lincoln.’

‘Sure, but I figured…’

‘…You figure I could just tick the box…?’ He avoided her challenging eyes. That was exactly what he wanted her to do. ‘You must know, Lincoln, that with an Agent-involved fatal shooting, there are very likely to be psychological consequences for all parties involved.’ He watched her eyes drift towards the file on the side table briefly, before returning to look straight at him again. He couldn’t read her look, but he thought there was something there like sympathy. He felt deeply uncomfortable. She continued, ‘So we’ll run a series of weekly sessions. In these sessions, we’ll talk about anything that’s on your mind, and in particular the events in Wyoming culminating in the fatal shooting incident. So,’ she said, ‘Why don’t you start by telling me what happened in Wyoming.’

‘I guessed you’d bring that up,’ Polk said lightly. ‘Couldn’t we just sign off and move on, Doc?’

She didn’t respond. She waited him out instead.

Polk said, ‘OK, fine. What do you want to know?’

‘Everything.’

‘You’ve got the file there. Why not just read it?’

‘I’ve read it, Lincoln. But these are just words on a page.’

‘I’m not such a great storyteller, y’know.’

‘I don’t want a story. I want to know about Beartrap Meadow. I want to know about Doctor Randolph Parkinson…’ He tried to wait her out this time.

It didn’t work. Doctor Tracy Arnold just sat there. Not smiling. Not frowning. She just looked at him. He shifted in his seat. She’s wasted questioning FBI agents with that look… She should be interrogating criminals, Polk thought.

He took a deep breath, blinked a slow blink and he was transported back six months to a cold leafy track worn through the woods nearly two thousand miles away.

Tiny pollens filled the air that night, dancing and darting here and there on the gentle gusts and eddies in the late spring sky. It was dusk, and the dark pointed mountains lay on the horizon like the scaly armored silhouettes of a dozen sleeping dinosaurs.

The air was sweetly scented by the oils of the birch and eucalypts whose needles and leaves swayed and whispered their soft song. They were accompanied by a cacophony of crickets and cicadas, chirping and clicking. Frogs beneath logs croaked their approval of the rising humidity in the forest that night. And from the dark canvas of the heavens, the stars shone brightly, their blinking eyes twinkling as they watched over Wyoming’s tree-filled theatre in Beartrap Meadow.

Squirrels scurried. Clouds of gnats drifted among the trunks, their irregular collective shapes shifting in pulsing silvery orbs by the light of the full moon. Hunting.

Polk could see himself there. He remembered his pulse thudding a steady metronome in his temples. He felt a light perspiration on his palms wrapped around the steering wheel.

‘I was with Sommers.’ he said.

‘Your partner, Special Agent Clinton Sommers…?’

‘That’s right. The FBI was called in when local law enforcement noticed a pattern of missing boys across a state line. Our subsequent hunt for the subject lasted over six weeks, and crossed into four neighboring states.’

‘That much I have here in the file. Take me back to that night… you were in the car with Sommers…?’

‘That’s right. We drove out to Parkinson’s house in the forest.’

‘Were you scared?’

‘Scared?’ Polk thought about it a moment. He pictured himself there in the car by the dim light in the cabin. He imagined looking across at Sommers in the seat beside him. He saw no fear in his partner’s expression. If anything it was more like excitement. ‘Not really scared so much as amped. We both were I guess. I don’t know if you ever met Clinton Sommers… nothing rattles that guy.’

‘OK.’

‘At a time like that, the chase is almost over. We both felt it that night.’ He swallowed and started again, ‘…Time like that in an investigation, under all the nerves is the anticipation. It’s a buzz.’

‘OK. What happened? You arrived at the property…?’ she prompted.

Polk pulled up the car a hundred yards from the end of a long gravel driveway. This was the isolated home of Doctor Randolph Parkinson MD. The Doctor abducted six-to-eight-year-old boys. He then performed complete genital castrations on them before strangling them and dumping their naked young bodies all over Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, and South Dakota. Thirteen juvenile victims had been found so far. And if their information was right, they were going to find Parkinson in this house in the woods outside Beartrap Meadow now with Cody Phillips. The Phillips boy would be victim number fourteen. He’d been abducted from outside the Eastridge Shopping mall, fifteen miles away in the town of Casper. It’d been eighteen hours since he was taken.

Polk closed his eyes for another long blink. He was back there that humid night all those months ago. He saw himself with his partner at the trunk of the car strapping on Kevlar vests, ‘Sommers took the bitch… ah, sorry, that’s the shotgun – that’s what we call it – the shotgun - sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ She said, ‘Keep going. Whose idea was it to breach the house?’

‘Back-up from the local cops was on the way, but with the abduction of a child, time’s everything… We’d been teamed up a long time by then. Partners develop a sort of extra sense for one another after a while. I don’t remember it as one of us deciding and telling the other. I guess I was the SAC, that’s Special Agent in Charge…’

‘Got it.’

‘Right… I was the SAC, but it was really just that we both knew we were going in and it didn’t need saying. Know what I mean?’

‘I think so. What about your planning?’

Polk’s skin flushed a little at having to make an excuse. ‘It probably sounds childish, but we just took turns. I’d been first through the door the time before – on a case in New Mexico – so it was Sommers’ turn. Apart from that, our plan was to professionally clear the house until we found the subject, with the primary objective of securing the safety of the hostage.’

‘You’ve just started talking like you’re reading from a field manual. Do you realize that?’

‘I guess in this job, some of the things we do are intuitive; some are a mix of art and science; but many of the base skills are executed by the book – the training kicks in and you do it the way you’ve done it in a hundred drills and a dozen real world scenarios.’

‘Kind of automatic?’

‘Kind of.’

‘So the decision to hit the house straight away was a joint one. And it was Sommers’ who would go in first simply because it was his turn…’

‘Right, it was Sommers’ turn.’ Polk pictured the two of them there that night, all those months ago.

They crept up onto the front porch. They were especially careful to place their steps close to the sides of the long timber balcony to minimize the chance of a squeaky board giving them away. They crouched on either side of the door, ready to strike. Polk had his side arm drawn. He carried a SIG Sauer P229 nine millimeter with two spare fifteen-round clips in his belt pouch. He remembered moving his finger from alongside the trigger guard to inside. He applied gentle pressure on the trigger and took a deep breath. Like an omen, a slightly cooler breeze drifted along the porch and filled Polk’s nose with the fresh leaf-litter smells of the forest at rest. He felt the microscopic prickling sensation as a perspiration broke out on his back. ‘We held position beside the door for about thirty seconds listening for sounds from inside.’ In his mind’s eye he could see Sommers again now. He had the bitch poised pointing diagonally upwards in front of his torso.

They heard the hoot of an owl out there in the woods, on the hunt - just like them. It was like a cue to go.

Another nod, then Sommers stood, crept back four steps and crouched, compressing his powerful leg muscles like iron coils and leaning his weight forward the maximize the short run-up. Polk quickly swung the thin screen door open and his partner charged forward striking his huge boot hard into the door right beside the handle. The frame and mechanism smashed to pieces under the onslaught with a crunch that shook the whole porch… ‘Sommers kicked the door in and then, BOOM!’ Polk said.

He sat in silence looking at something miles away and months ago. The sound of Tracey Arnold’s voice brought him back.

‘The front door was rigged as a booby trap?’

‘That’s right.’ The deafening blast was accompanied by a flash of light flaring out of the door. The shot hit Sommers and sent him eight feet back, flat on his back. Arms spread wide. Motionless. In the moonlight, blood showed on his face like a flick of dull black paint. ‘Most people have never heard a shotgun blast. Those who have were usually wearing ear protection, or they were a safe distance away, or they were standing well behind the discharge.’ Polk said. ‘I can tell you it sounds a whole lot more enormous when you’re ten feet away and twenty degrees to one side of the target. I never heard anything that loud. And the impact on Sommers… Jesus…’ Polk saw himself there still crouched, his ears ringing, frozen, looking in horror at the still figure of his partner lying there, bloody and completely still on the porch. He felt a wave of nausea wash over him as a surge of adrenaline coursed through his veins. He could not risk moving over to Sommers from his position. If that cannon fired again, he wouldn’t have any cover to protect him.

‘So what did you do?’

‘I started overthinking it. But then I realized I was overthinking it. If speed’d been important before, I figured it’d be doubly so now we’d lost the element of surprise.’

‘So, what’d you do?’

‘I guess, a time like that, you sort of have to let your instinct take over and hope your training will carry you. That’s what I did. There was a hostage in there and we’d already breached the perimeter. It wasn’t the time to hang back and wait.’ He’d charged through the door on a sharp diagonal angle diving behind a couch and then sweeping his gun in fast crisp movements to all corners in search of any other surprises. A one-man breach is an extremely different thing to a two man assault. He immediately wished he’d had Sommers’ shotgun.

‘OK so you’re inside. Then what?’

‘Once I’d cleared the front room, I wanted to go straight back out to check on Sommers. But, situation like that, you can’t just hit pause, y’know. I had to go on.’ He remembered the house that night. His eyes started to adjust to the dark, aided by some muted moonlight filtering through the windows from the east. He listened as hard as he could, but his ears were ringing from the blast and inside the house even the noises of the forest were dulled. The one thing he could hear as a vibration through his jawbone was the sound of his own breathing. The booby trap was a simple enough set-up with a shotgun sitting wedged into the cushions of an armchair and secured in place by a few yards of duct tape. The chair was positioned facing the door and wired up with a pulley to both of the triggers. It looked like only one barrel fired. He hoped so for Sommers’ sake, but in any case, the total silence extended outside to the porch as well. He’d strained to hear anything at all but so far as he could tell… nothing. ‘So I moved further into the house and commenced the search.’

Polk hustled room by room clearing each space on the ground floor of the big house stepping carefully and rolling on the balls of his feet to reduce the noise he was making. He might have forfeited the element of surprise, but it was a big house and he figured if Parkinson was in there, it was best to keep his own location as concealed as possible. He was slinking down a hallway when he heard the muffled cry of the boy below. He moved as fast and quietly as he could to the top of the basement stairs. The door was ajar. He’d pushed it slowly hoping it wouldn’t have a squeaky hinge.

Looking back now he remembered taking a deep breath before he crept slowly down. Step-by-step. Before he reached halfway he realized he was still holding that same breath.

The boy’s whimpering was clearer now. In the sallow sounds Polk heard notes of misery and pain.

As he turned the corner, he looked out into the brightly lit white-tiled room.

What happened next would live with him forever.

A small timer chimed. Polk snapped out of his memory.

Tracey Arnold swatted the ‘OFF’ button on the timer. Saved by the bell. For the briefest moment she looked like a child upset to find that their bedtime arrived before the end of their favorite storybook.

Polk stood up before she could object. He shook her soft little hand in his much bigger, much rougher one. Then he turned and started heading for the door. She said to his back, ‘Today’s was a short first session. Starting next week we’ll work to a full time slot, OK?’

‘Fine,’ he said, his hand on the doorknob. She asked him, ‘How are you sleeping, Lincoln?’

He was taken off balance, and he replied before he could concoct a stronger response, ‘Not much.’ He wanted to explain away his response, but he also wanted to get the hell out of there. He hesitated a moment, then said, ‘‘Til next time.’

As he turned to walk off down the hall she said to his back, ‘I want to hear all about it, Lincoln Polk.’

THE FIRST

‘The first of Beethoven’s symphonies emphasizes the fragmentary and nervous currents running through his body of work. One is left with the feeling that through the sense of chaos and unbearable tension - something is germinating. Something big. It sounds lively. It sounds very lively.’

OCTOBER 27      CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

By 10am the morning sun still hadn’t broken through the grey clouds. Sinuous smog stubbornly resisted the sputtering wind that swished and swirled erratically. Along the streets of suburban Chicago dry fallen leaves blew about the bitumen with a scratching sound. The last birds of the season were disappearing, particularly here near the airport where less fauna ventured even in the spring. The occasional Halloween pumpkin adorned a porch. There were gaudy orange novelty-store spider-webs and laughing plastic skeletons that bounced and waved in the breeze lending a macabre atmosphere to a miserable day.

The silence was broken intermittently by the sudden roar of mighty jet engines churning the air into spirals of misty condensate as they took off and landed mere blocks away.

A dog was barking. Something small. Perhaps some sort of a terrier or a Chihuahua yapping its little head off.

The paint on the worn timber letterboxes was cracked and curled. Their collective disrepair provided a micro summary of the whole neighborhood’s slow slide into neglect.

There was a heavy chill in the damp air. Winter was early this year.

The music programmer at the jazz radio station played ‘Autumn Leaves’:

…the falling leaves drift by the window,

the autumn leaves of red and gold…

Tibor Tomic is in there. I can see the lights from the TV flickering in ever changing colors behind the curtain in the front living room. I’ll bet he’s sitting down watching some shitty show on his shitty little TV in his shitty little house, in this shitty suburb in the west of Chicago. Who the fuck would want to live here? I like Chicago, but here, less than a mile from O’Hare international airport, and under the flight path of jumbo jets screaming their violent earth-shaking cry overhead every couple minutes.

What a life?

What’s left of it anyhoo. Mister Tibor Tomic is about to have his life abbreviated.

Here I am in my brown van with my brown UPS uniform neatly pressed. I look in the mirror and catch sight of myself. The moustache is ridiculous! An enormous handlebar - so thick and bushy that somebody could hardly see anything else if they looked my way. The name stitched on my left breast reads, ‘Norm’. I smirk, and reach my hand up to caress the rough raised row of lettering. It feels right. It all started with a call out to a house twenty-five years ago.

It’s been twenty-five years since you parked a van just like mine across the street from a house – on the other side of town. Imagine a kid seeing that van as he walks to the school bus that morning.

‘TT Electrical Contracting – The Bright Spark’

His van was white, and a little banged up, but the kid remembers thinking as the driver sprung out, that TT was one handsome sonofabitch. He had straight blond hair, short at the back and sides and, on top, bouncing and blowing in the wind like the star of a shampoo ad. He had smooth tanned skin and bright blue eyes. He was just opening the slide door on the side of his van and reaching in to gather his tools, as the kid jumped on the bus with the other children.

That was the last time the kid saw Mister Tomic but he heard his parents arguing about him plenty, until finally one night his mother packed a bag and walked straight out the front door to a waiting taxi – never to be seen again.

You should’ve known your selfish urges would break up a happy family, Mister Tomic. But you probably never thought Norm’s son would make a list of the people who wronged him.

That list is like my ‘to do’ list now. And you’re first up, Mister Tomic.

The pain in that kid’s heart was so deep and enduring on many days he felt it like a burning ember in his chest.

Well it’s time for you to feel a slow burn now Mister Tomic. Let me spring out of my van, open the slide door and grab my own electrician’s tools. I slip on my leather gloves.

I check that everything’s in the brown cardboard box. Then I close it up with the roll of UPS tape I lifted from the freight terminal depot at the airport an hour ago. It’s a bit fiddly with the gloves on but I’m in no hurry. I place the portable credit card machine on top of the box. It doesn’t even work, but it is just a prop after all.

Perfect.

I pull the short wooden club out of the other box in the back and tuck it down my left sock at the back the way I’ve practiced in front of the mirror.

I take a deep breath and visualize my actions for the hundredth time. Hand over the box first, while he reaches out to take it, hand over the card machine with the right hand before he has a chance to say a word. Strike out hard with the left.

I turn around and jog up to the house.

Knock knock. My heart is racing again. This is at. No turning back now.

I pull my hat a little lower over my forehead. I take two deep breaths. Knock knock. ‘Mister Tomic!?’ I call out in my practiced nasal voice.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Mister Tomic?’

‘Yeah, so?’ I hear the door lock unlatching. Good.

‘UPS Mister Tomic?’ The door cracks open but suddenly stops at the limit of the safety chain.

Fuck!

Improvise…

‘I didn’t order nothin…’’ I see his blue eyes assessing me. Those beautiful blue eyes.

‘Hey I just make the deliveries, Mister. I don’t know what you got here, but its heavy’ I heft the box up a little higher so he can see it.

‘Just set it down there on the porch’.

I put it down to the right of the doorway to keep him looking away from my left leg. ‘OK, but I gotta get a signature on the machine here Mister Tomic’. I hold the machine up a little higher towards the crack to show it won’t fit through the space. He hesitates and then closes the door and slides the chain off its latch. When he opens the door I see him standing there in a blue bathrobe over pajamas and I try to wind back the years to imagine the life that’s changed him so much. His blond hair is white now, and he’s got deep lines in his once swarthy complexion. His muscular arms are just beefy now, his chest has slipped to his waist, and he is around fifty pounds overweight.

I hold the machine up to his left to draw his eyes away from my own left hand. He reaches out to grab it, and I hold it forward slightly to push him back into the entranceway. He takes it in his hand as I put my right foot up on the doorway between his legs. I crouch my knees ever so slightly the way I’ve practiced, and I swing the club up hard into his into his beautiful right eye which is suddenly opened in shock.

TCHOCK!

Perfect.

He groans and falls back as I pick up my box, step inside and draw the door closed.

‘You’re not such a bright spark after all, are you, TT?’

OCTOBER 29      WASHINGTON, DC

This would be the first time Polk fired his P229 since the fire fight in the basement in Wyoming. His Bureau appointed shrink, Doctor Tracey Arnold, warned him that he might expect some odd feelings when he held a gun again. In this state of mind he watched as Sommers checked, loaded and fired off a magazine of rounds from his own side arm. An old tattoo on Sommers’ bicep showed a shield bearing an eagle holding the earth in its talons, and a banner reading Semper Fidelis – evidence of Sommers time spent in the US Marine corps up until two thousand three. The faded dark green ink of the tattoo twisted like a flag in the wind as the muscles rippled beneath the skin. Polk looked at the lateral scar on Sommers’ neck from Wyoming. One wayward speck of shot strayed from the cluster which thumped into his partner’s torso. It sliced a straight line skin-deep across his neck. Just a fraction of an inch closer and Sommers would have bled to death right there on the porch that night.

As usual Sommers’ shots were fast and deliberate but not particularly accurate, even at relatively short range of fifteen to twenty yards. Between them, Polk was the better marksman, and Sommers was the muscle. Seeing how poorly Sommers grouped his shots filled Polk with confidence. He unholstered his own piece now. He was further reassured to feel none of the hesitation Doctor Arnold foretold. He ejected the magazine and inspected it, then slid it home with a click. He then adjusted his ear protection and looked up at the target with his gun comfortably in his natural left hand and his right hand cradling the weight at the base of the grip.

He took aim at the target which was a paper bad-guy at twenty yards. His hand was a little sweaty but he put that down to being excited to get back in the saddle. He took a slow breath and released it as he widened his stance slightly. Then three things happened in the space of an instant. First, Sommers tried to get his attention by tapping him solidly on his bad shoulder with his giant hand to tell him to lower his tinted eye-protection glasses Polk sitting on his forehead. Second, at the same moment that Polk felt the pressure on his shoulder joint, and while looking at the target, he had a flashback to the basement with Doctor Randolph Parkinson firing wildly at him. In a reflex he couldn’t later explain, his body twisted defensively. As he shied he brought his right hand away from where it supported the gun. Finally, in the jerky response he grabbed at the hair trigger. The shot ricocheted wildly off the ceiling three lanes over and the gun kicked free of his wet hand. The black and silver piece cartwheeled back through the air and the base of the grip slugged him with a clunk square in his right eye.

The range supervisor hit a hazard light straight away and the range fell into silence as each of the agents made safe their firearms and stepped back to look at what all the fuss was about.

There sitting on his butt was Special Agent Lincoln Polk with a purple bruise fast closing over his right eye. Sommers retrieved Polk’s gun. He carefully checked the SIG’s decocking mechanism, then he started laughing his ass off. As the other agents gathered around and helped him to his feet, Polk had no choice but to laugh too.

THAT EVENING      CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

The clouds parted for a moment revealing the slim crescent of moon one might see on an Arab country’s flag. Then they closed over again like the silhouettes of stage curtains plunging a theatre into darkness.

The crickets were loud tonight. It must have been the humidity. The air was gusty and the shadows cast by the trees in the street lights swept back and forth along the footpaths like black brooms brushing their own fallen leaves into haphazard heaps here and there.

There in suburbia the rhythms were regular - with one exciting exception. The neighborhood kids were trying on their Halloween costumes for the night after next. They were making suggestions to their friends and parents on how to improve them, to make them scarier or bloodier.

The last pumpkins were being carved out and set on window sills to dry. Now their dinners had been had, and the young children were in their beds, but in the living rooms, the TVs were still on.

SAME NIGHT      CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Charlie walked down the hallway with purpose. With his short legs, when he walked anywhere, he often looked like he was in a hurry, but today there was a forward lean in his posture and a tension in his small round shoulders that built in recent weeks as this years-long project was now coming to a head.

‘Helena, where’s Cath? I need her to redo the make-up on Greg – he’s too orange in the lights. And get Sally in here. Sally?! Sal you need to adjust the lights on the library set. I need it darker in the corner near the reading chair.’

This was it. The first episode! The live-to-air production would air in an hour from now. It was rare that an unpiloted production would go live to air as the first show in a series, but Charlie and Harold had insisted through the months of planning and network negotiations that an uninterrupted ten-show live season was the only way this concept could work.

They’d scored big. Alan Silver called in some favors to get some local Chicago celebrities to come in to star in the episode including Gary Sinise, Frances McDormand and John Cusack.

He’d dreamed of this day for such a long time there was a surreal sense of déjà vu for him now as he walked through actions he’d imagined so many times. He felt the flush in his face and the pounding in his temples of a soldier about to spring out of a trench and charge an enemy machine gun. Glory or failure. There would be no third possibility with live TV.

He brushed his curly dark brown hair out of his eyes and adjusted his heavy black rimmed glasses as he darted around the studio with his run sheet and script scrolled in his left hand. In truth, both documents were redundant – he’d written, rewritten, and memorized every word on the pages over six years. So consumed had he become by the project, he could have just as effectively conducted this orchestra of actors and technicians with his eyes shut.

He pickup his cell phone from his pocket and punched in a number from speed dial.

OCTOBER 30      NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

NY Times Page 31 Entertainment

TEN *****

Staff writer, Jeannie Prokowska

Those of us who like their crime programming on television have received a pleasant surprise last night when the first episode of the interactive whodunit ‘TEN’ aired and was very well received by its live studio audience.

The premise of the show is a variation on the theme of the TV crime mystery where the audience watches a one-hour recorded segment revealing the crime and the clues during the investigation. The home and studio audiences then try to solve the mystery before the cast reveal the resolution in a short live play shot in-studio. Each of the episodes including the studio shooting will be in a different US city, featuring a mix of established stars and locals in the cast.

The program producers claim to be very pleased with the huge numbers they have pulled for the first episode, which is estimated to have attracted over seven million viewers last night.

The writing of newcomer Charles Gillespie is fresh and captivating with a great twist in the first Chicago episode last night. While very graphic and perhaps a little too macabre for some – like a gruesome electrocution scene last night - many crime addicts across America seem to like the confronting violence, and this show is certainly not pulling any punches.

Veteran Producer Harold Caine has said of his latest program, ‘Shooting a whole new episode including a live component in a different city each week will be a huge logistical challenge for the crew, and as we found last night it is an equally great challenge for the cast who have had only hours to learn the dialogue ready to play out the live resolution segments – but our audience is already telling us they love the fresh approach including seeing their city and local celebrities on stage. All of that said, what has really broken the mold with this show is the interactive element.’

The casting of the episodes has generated huge interest also. Silver Productions spokesman Alan Silver announced today the next round of open auditions will tomorrow be held here in New York to cast for five roles ranging from the victim to a private investigator in the next episode to start filming next week. Rumors abound as to which celebrities will appear in the next episode after the surprise appearance by Gary Sinise who played a prime suspect in the first episode. Sources close to the show have suggested other A-listers such as Jennifer Garner and Paul Giamatti may already be in discussions with the show’s producers.

‘We’ve been very lucky to find such intense interest from celebrities who have approached us to appear in various roles during the future filming in their home cities. Even for roles entailing relatively short screen time, we’ve had some of the biggest names in Hollywood come forward interested in taking part. I think they recognize the originality of the program. This is a chance to be part of a historic television event and they want to get on board. Because of the short live component it’s also a chance to tread the boards for actors who might otherwise not have a chance to do much live theatre, and definitely not with such enormous audience numbers as we had last night.’

For this reporter, I’ll be joining a swell of viewers counting down the days until