The abandoned Red Bluff Trading Post rested twenty miles west from the town of Roanhorse and thirty miles north of the Grand Canyon Hotel and Casino, which had been erected along US 491—a lonely stretch of highway that the locals still referred to by its original name: Route 666. The trading post itself was a weather-beaten structure of faded red that had been out of business for a couple of years. The dilapidated building sat atop a small bluff with one road in and a shear drop off to its back, making it the ideal place to set up their temporary base of operations. The uranium mine where they had stashed the truck was only another fifteen minute drive up a mostly dirt road that led up into the hills.
Ackerman found Dr. Emily Morgan—the other member of their team, who had stayed behind to guard the prisoners—in the back room of the old trading post. The captives sat beyond her on a pinewood floor that was beginning to sag and rot. The place smelled of sweaty young men, rat excrement, and underneath it all, almost imperceptible, the metallic aroma of dried blood. Like a shark detecting a drop of blood in a vast ocean, he zeroed in on the tantalizing odor and felt the carnal desire of a predator to rend and tear flesh and taste blood on his tongue.
“Frank, are you okay? Hello?” Emily Morgan asked, apparently not for the first time.
“Sorry, just indulging a darkly sweet daydream.”
She gave him a questioning look, and he changed the subject. “I see the children are nestled snuggly in their beds with visions of my bone-handled bowie knife dancing in their thick heads.”
“You should write poetry,” she said, and he couldn’t decide if she was being sarcastic or merely recognizing that his genius should be shared with the world.
He replied, “Your superiors would never allow anyone to read it. And that’s another question. Any progress on the blogging issue?”
Emily stared at him with an unreadable expression across her exotic features, which were a result of her combined Asian and Irish heritage. She reminded Ackerman of a Siamese cat he had once seen in the home of a victim. It was the way he imagined a feline princess would move–confident but not boastful. Powerful. Graceful. But gentle. All at once. Her skin was flawless and smooth like a child’s, as if the harmful rays of the sun had never touched her skin.
She fascinated him. Something about her inner strength and calm demeanor. Sometimes he simply had no idea what she was thinking. And as a student of human nature, Emily was one of most intriguing subjects he had ever met. He had thought so ever since the moment he first met her on the day he murdered her husband.
She said, “I didn’t advise you to journal so that you could post it on the Internet to make money.”
During their last case, Ackerman had met a strange private detective who posted his ramblings on God and the Universe on the Internet and, by selling advertising space, generated a six figure income. He said, “They realize that I’m not being paid to be here, and it would be anonymous. That’s the beauty of the Internet.”
“They are fully aware of the concept. And the answer is still no.”
He scowled. Sometimes he wondered if the Shepherd Organization’s Director was the real villain they should be dispatching. “Please let them know that I’d like to file a formal complaint.”
She rolled her eyes but said, “Okay.”
A part of him loved cracking her stone demeanor. Having accomplished that mission, he turned his attention to the prisoners. The closest young man was Canyon’s son, Tobias. He had bandages over his forehead and arm. Unlike his father, the young Canyon’s face was the perfect color of wet clay and was unlined from the years. He looked nothing like his progenitor. Where John was tough and worn like old leather, Tobias was smooth and undamaged.
Emerging from the deep shadows in the back of the room, Thomas White—or at least Ackerman’s hallucination of him—said, “You know how you could find your little friend, Junior? Just cut off a significant piece of this one and deliver it to his father. Then you’ll get your answers. Perhaps a foot. Or if he has any tattoos, you could skin that portion of his body and deliver it to the old man like an offering of flesh.”
Turning back to Emily, Ackerman said, “Have you been able to reach Computer Man?”
“His name is Stan.”
“I know his name. I just don’t enjoy saying it. Besides, he likes it when I call him Computer Man.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“Well, I like it.”
“And that’s all that matters?”
“No, there are many factors beyond my personal tastes that ‘matter.’ For example, I need the Computer Man to find out everything he can about a Navajo Nation Police officer named Liana Nakai. Also, I’d like to know more about Captain Yazzie. Don’t recall hearing a first name.”
“Fine, if I’m able to reach Stan, then I’ll let him know. I’m not sure what it is, the canyons or hills or something, but even with our boosters, we can’t get any signal here. We may have to drive around to the other side of the mesa in order to get an outgoing connection. I wish we would have tracked down a satellite phone or something, but we’ve never had this problem in the past. The boosters for the cellular signals usually do the trick, even out in the middle of nowhere.”
“My sympathies. I’m sure it’s difficult for you being out of contact with your child. I know Marcus feels the same about Dylan, and he isn’t aware of this, but he grows increasingly cantankerous the longer he’s out of contact with the boy. As if he needs to see Dylan’s face and hear his voice to ensure that the child is growing to maturity.”
Emily’s expression was stone, but her eyes were bright and glistened with tears in the light of a battery-powered lantern that hung from the rafters of the back room.
He asked, “Did I say something wrong? I didn’t mean to cause you emotional distress.”
She said, “Do you miss your mother, Frank?”
The question jarred him to his core. Ackerman was a man who was seldom truly caught off guard, but her mention of his long dead mother took him completely by surprise. He replied, “I never really knew her. I only have a few vague recollections of the time before she fled with my unborn brother.”
Coming up behind Emily, Thomas White said, “She abandoned you, Francis. She cared enough about your brother to whisk him away to a better life, but not you. I think she sensed you were a monster from the very beginning.”
Ignoring his father’s spectral form as much as humanly possible, he concentrated on Emily as she said, “But when you look back on your childhood, do you mourn the loss of not having her there? Don’t you wish she had been?”
Thomas White snarled, “Tell her, Junior. Tell your little friend that your mother offered you up to me like a sacrificial lamb, just to save her own miserable skin. Tell Emily that you’ll never forgive your mother for choosing herself, and your brother, over you. Tell her your mother was a selfish bitch. Tell her!”
Laying a hand on Emily’s shoulder, Ackerman whispered, “My mother was a wonderful woman who did the best she could under impossible circumstances. I respect her for standing up to the…toxic black hole that is my father. Where is your daughter now?”
“With her grandparents.”
“Good people, obviously. They did an exceptional job raising you.”
“But I’m her mother. And I’m not there.”
“She knows you love her. Her development will not be stunted by your absence.”
“It’s not about that. Every second I miss with her is one I’ll never get back. Ashley is growing into a young woman, and I’m missing it. Out here in the desert babysitting thugs.”
“I trust you’re referring to the Canyon clan and not my brother and I. We could be characterized in many colorful ways, but ‘thugs’ would be a grand oversimplification. Besides, we need you here. Maggie needs you. I need you.”
She looked up into his eyes in a way that caused a warm feeling to course through his whole body. It felt good to be looked upon without contempt or fear or even reluctant acceptance.
He turned away, feeling immediately guilty.
Thomas White said, “Oh, I see. Maybe I won’t kill your brother first. Maybe, once I take control, I’ll spend some intimate moments with this lovely specimen. But wait a second… Aren’t you the real reason that poor Emily has been separated from her child. If you hadn’t come into her world, she’d still be living happily ever after in a beautiful Colorado home with Ashley and her state Trooper husband. What was his name, Junior? Ah, yes…Jim Morgan. You remember him, don’t you? You gutted him like the pig he was.”
Ackerman added, “I simply mean to say that you are one of the few people in the world, besides myself, whose competence I can rely upon.”
Wiping her eyes, she said, “Can you keep an eye on these five for a few minutes? Without maiming them any further? I need to use the outhouse.”
“I suppose I can restrain myself.”
Once Emily had exited the back door, Thomas White continued, “I can see why you like her. I’m a bit too old for such pursuits myself, but when I wear your skin, I have a feeling that I’ll be like a whole new man.”
Looking the subconscious projection of his father directly in his imaginary eyes, Ackerman said, “You will never ‘wear’ my skin, and you will never lay a hand upon Emily!”
Thomas White merely smiled, and Ackerman knew that he had just lost a small battle by rising to the antagonism of a hallucination. The more he acknowledged his father as real, the more real he became. Until one day, perhaps Thomas White would become strong enough to steal the reigns.
Ackerman vowed to never allow that to happen. If it came down to it, he would see to his own end.
Thomas White gestured to the prisoners, raising his eyebrows. Following his father’s gaze, Ackerman realized that he had forgotten about Tobias Canyon and his four comrades being with them in the room. The eyes of the young men stared back at him full of fearful questions. Namely, who in the hell was he talking to?
To the young captives, Ackerman said, “In case any of you were wondering, the voices in my head are telling me to kill you all. And then eat you. Or perhaps the other way around. I slowly devoured a person once in the past over the course of a few weeks. I found it to be a very sensual and intimate experience. With a little strategy, I was able to keep him alive for a downright disturbing length of time. But that individual was long past his prime. His meat wasn’t nearly as succulent and tender as I’m sure you four youngsters would be.”
The looks of fear that passed over the faces of the four prisoners filled Ackerman with another warm feeling, but this time, he didn’t feel guilty at all.