CHAPTER 36

IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST VISIT TO THE REDEEMER’S LAW PROJECT, YOU ARE COMING INTO THE STORY ALREADY IN PROGRESS. YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE WILL BE FAR LESS CONFUSING IF YOU USE THE CHAPTER INDEX ON THE RIGHT TO GO BACK TO THE INTRODUCTION. OR AT LEAST TO THE PROLOGUE.

CHAPTER 36

Fields wasn’t there when Simon got back. Probably off getting food or something. Simon stamped his feet on the front porch and wiped them on a bristly rubber mat before he came inside. Brenda sat on the couch, reading a Joe Lansdale book, and looked up as he opened the door. She said, “Well?”

Not hi. Not hello. Not how are you. Just well? Simon felt annoyed and frustrated, but when he tried to think more about it his head went sort of funny and he couldn’t quite put a finger on why, so instead he decided to concentrate on the task at hand.

“Kid Creepy had it right on. I watched Sinclair get out of his car. Groovy old Monte Carlo. Got the tag right here.” He handed her the notebook, then went to the kitchen for a drink. She got up off the couch and followed him. “Another little tidbit for you, too. He’s got himself a girlfriend, looks like.”

“Oh really.” Simon glanced at Brenda, saw the cogs and wheels turning. Brenda craved information, craved secrets. “Tell me about her.”

He shrugged. “Just some little nigger bitch, looked like she’s abou—”

Simon’s whole head snapped around with the force of the backhand. He turned back toward Brenda, and she did it again, harder the second time.

“Don’t you ever,” she growled, “ever let me hear you use that word again.”

Simon’s face crawled with the change, back and forth. Finally he settled on human, rubbed his jaw and said, “Touch a nerve, did I?”

# # #

She glared at him, breathing hard, while the crude, time-distorted sing-song of dozens of children echoed inside her. Nigger nigger nigger, Brenda is a nigger, nigger nigger nigger...

She wanted to kill them all. She wanted to kill Simon.

With a snarl she slapped one open hand onto Simon’s forehead and pushed him backward into the kitchen wall. The scent flowed off her in a rushing chemical wave, and as she funneled it all into him his eyes glazed over and his jaw went slack.

“Forget we talked about this,” she said, low and dangerous. “But do not, ever, in your entire life, use the word ‘nigger’ again. Got that?”

He nodded numbly.

“Good. Now I’ve got some information to gather. Get out of my sight.”

# # #

Matt felt as if he’d been out of the country for the last several days.

Sitting in the periodicals section of the Atlanta Fulton Public Library, he surrounded himself with newspapers and magazines, each of them, in one form or another, featuring the masked vigilante commonly called “Redeemer.”

He found the very first article to mention him, dated August 31, and recognized it as the one he’d seen on the sidewalk bench, the first day he met Diedra. That one didn’t try to give him a name, but “Redeemer” popped up soon enough. As near as he could tell it was originated by a newspaper reporter named Darius Clay, and subsequently picked up on in an editorial in the same paper. After that it swiftly gained acceptance until it replaced the other names that had tentatively been put forward, such as “the Hood” and “the Man in Black.”

Then came the magazines. Aside from the 9/11 attacks, Matt couldn’t remember anything taking over the American media this fast and with this much ferocity. He’d only been truly active for, as Sheree Baker had said, a little over a week, but in that period he had made the cover of both Newsweek and Time, as well as numerous smaller publications. Each of them had only artists’ renditions of him, except for Time, which featured a stylized, solid black head-and-shoulders silhouette on the cover, with a large red question mark where his nose would have been.

He found one of the renditions particularly striking. It depicted a man in a skin-tight black costume, a pair of nunchaku in one hand and a huge semi-automatic pistol in the other. Various spots of white appeared on the costume: on his gloves, his belt, and in a bizarre design covering the left breast of the shirt. A ragged, splintery cross rested there, and an evil-looking skull adorned the center of it. The vertical bar of the cross dropped in a straight line, past the belt, ran down the length of his thigh and angled around the calf. Matt found that puzzling, but he knew how people could invent details, especially in the dark.

A locally published glossy magazine contained a transcript of a debate which had taken place on—he couldn’t believe this—the Good Morning Sheree show. Apparently the program normally ran very light fare, as he’d thought, but the dialogue between a columnist named Thatcher and, there he was again, Darius Clay, had served to focus the city’s opinions after it was re-broadcast several times. By bizarre default, Good Morning Sheree grew into Atlanta’s most common forum for expressing its feelings on the Redeemer’s activities.

The articles grew in frequency with each passing day. Even in just the few days he’d been common knowledge, he’d achieved the status of cultural icon, for good or bad. He was convinced of that when he found an advertisement for the upcoming Redeemer comic book, due out in November from Whoppo Comics.

The artist who’d composed the comic book ad had obviously seen the earlier cross-and-skull drawing; the design was there, though the comic book version of Redeemer also wore about sixty pounds of plate metal armor and hefted an implausibly huge gun. Matt grinned in spite of himself.

The Redeemer buzz took a sharp turn for the serious after Nathan Pittman was shot. News of the shooting itself started out as small potatoes: lower-middle-class teenager shot during convenience store hold-up, in critical condition. Then the connection between Nathan’s actions and the masked vigilante got out, and his story jumped to the front page and went out over the wire. When the Chronicle got pictures of Nathan’s room, well on its way to being wallpapered with clippings about the Redeemer, the entire nation learned the circumstances overnight.

A good two hours of Redeemer-related reading made Matt’s head begin to spin. Eventually, after about twenty minutes spent assimilating it all, three distinct things occupied his mind. The first was the image of Tom and Amanda Pittman, and the grief they felt because of what had happened to their son.

The second was guilt.

The third was an enormous sense of indignation.

Sides were taken, yes, but if what he’d read in the past couple of hours was any indication, most of the people who voiced opinions didn’t care for what he was doing. Words kept cropping up such as irresponsible and hurtful. Twice he was called a negative role model. Then, in the pieces published after Nathan Pittman was shot, the voices which had in the past been wary and suspicious bared their teeth and went after him with gusto.

“Of course the Redeemer is to blame for Nathan Pittman’s injury,” proclaimed a noted televangelist. “What else can we expect when our children are bombarded with such images? What else can happen when an uncaring urban terrorist stares back from every television screen? The media is at fault, but even more so is the terrible individual himself, who deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law.”

More and more, the testimonies of those the Redeemer had helped seemed either to be swept under the media carpet or flattened by the outraged, attacking public. In every instance, those who spoke out against him were parents. The Redeemer got Nathan Pittman shot! Catch him and lock him up before he hurts some other innocent child! Catch him and lock him up before he hurts my child!

At the other end of the spectrum were the twelve- to twenty-four-year-olds, particularly the teenage boys, who couldn’t seem to get enough of him. One kid from Nashville, Tennessee had appointed himself president of the fast-growing Redeemer Fan Club, and had already circulated the first edition of a monthly newsletter.

In Entertainment Weekly he read about the Redeemer Updates on MTV, and in Premiere discovered that James Cameron was talking to Paramount about a film.

Merchandise began flooding the market in record time, unimpeded by copyrights or the need to gain permission: posters, T-shirts, hats, and websites by the thousand. Matt’s knowledge of the Internet was limited at best, but he understood what it meant when he read that there were already nineteen “Official Redeemer Home Pages.”

Interviews taken with people stopped randomly on the street ranged from bitter hatred to mooning adoration. He hadn’t quite caught on with the teenage girls yet, he noted wryly. Probably because of the mask. They expected Quasimodo beneath it. But that didn’t stop the females college-age and older, many of whom apparently found his air of mystery intriguing. He saw a picture of a grinning college co-ed holding up a pair of Redeemer boxer shorts.

The positive press still didn’t outweigh the negative. He couldn’t get Amanda Pittman’s voice out of his head. “Bastard. Lock that bastard up.”

Eventually Matt slung his raincoat over one shoulder and walked slowly to the exit, staring absently into space.

He didn’t notice the stocky man in the sweat shirt, jeans, and Atlanta Braves baseball cap watching him from a far corner.

# # #

After Matt had gone through one of the six glass doors at the main entrance and started down the marble stairs, the man in the cap made his way over to the table Matt had vacated. He stared down at all the magazines and papers for a moment, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a small memo pad and a mechanical pencil. He clicked the lead out, scratched down a few notes and slipped it back out of sight.

Hands in his jeans pockets, Zach Feygen nodded politely at a periodicals clerk on his way out the door.

# # #

Back at the LaCroix, Matt trudged down the hallway, past the office door, to the elevator, which he rode by himself up to his floor. He didn’t see anyone else as he unlocked his apartment and went inside.

Barely aware of his surroundings, Matt went straight to the empty utility closet, stepped inside, and three seconds later stepped out into the basement. He slept there that night, stretched out on top of a sleeping bag thrown over an inflatable mattress.

At thirteen minutes after two Matt woke and lay motionless, staring at the ceiling. He let the night vision come to him, and moved his eyes slowly over every crack and crevice and irregularity in the poured-concrete-and-steel-beam ceiling. Eventually he rolled off the mattress and padded across the smooth, cool floor to the Vylar suit, which hung on its rack and waited for him. He tugged the rack over next to his work table and reached through the darkness, up to his bedroom. Icy air flooded around him. When he pulled his hand back, he held a brush and a tube of white acrylic paint.

With a somewhat sardonic smile Matt stared at the suit and unscrewed the cap from the tube.

# # #

Earlier that night, but several hours after he left the library, Zach Feygen groaned and rolled his shoulders as Heather worked on his back. He did that partly because it felt good, and partly because he knew Heather liked to see his muscles flex under his skin. He still ragged himself from time to time for robbing the cradle—Heather was a good seven years his junior—but damned if she didn’t have herself together better than anybody else he’d been out with in the last three years.

The sheets always smelled like her now. He liked that.

Feygen’s eyelids were heavy, and felt as though they were lined with gravel. He was immensely tired, and knew he ought to be dropping off to sleep any second now.

Any second now.

But it wouldn’t happen. Not with his insides as twisted up as they were. Not with what he’d found out today.

“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” Heather asked, reading his mind. She worked her hands up both sides of his spine, kneaded the heavy muscles.

“I can’t get it out of my head. Him, the case, the whole thing. The way he stood there, downstairs, and talked to us. Plus...”

She waited. “...Plus? Plus what?”

Feygen sighed and rolled over, looked up at her. If anything could begin to take his mind off work, Heather certainly could.

She knelt beside him on the bed, wearing only a pair of filmy French-cut panties, and he reached up to run his fingers along the skin of her side, then across one tiny breast. “You’re like a work of art,” he said, softly. She smiled and took his hand, nibbled on the fingertips.

“Most of the time that would work,” she said. “But this time I’m not going to let you distract me, ‘cause I can tell, you’ve really got something to say. About him. So out with it.”

Feygen frowned, but he laced his thick fingers through her slim, delicate ones and decided to talk.

“I think I know who the guy is.”

Heather’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah?”

“The guy’s father—he’s dead now, died a little over eleven years ago—he was a magician, like Copperfield, or David Blaine, only not as big.”

She frowned and made him feel very old by asking, “Who’s Copperfield?”

“Oof. Doesn’t matter. Never mind. But this guy, the father, played a lot at this one place, used to be a really fancy venue. And that’s the place where the Redeemer first showed up. So I looked at the original blueprints for it, and there’s this part of it... It’s got to be him. The guy I’ve been following, it’s got to be him in the suit and the mask. I’ve got no proof, but I’ve got more than enough for a search warrant.”

She slid one hand over his chest. “So...you’re going to bust him?”

Instead of answering, Feygen turned, still holding her hand, and pulled her down behind him in a spoon. She melded into the curves of his back and legs and kissed the back of his neck.

“What he’s doing is illegal. I can’t even count all the laws he’s broken. I’ve got to bring him in. He’s a vigilante, dammit. He’s a criminal.”

Heather took a breath as if to speak, and Feygen thought he knew what she was thinking. If not for that vigilante, there’d be no more Zach Feygen, would there?

“We both know what he’s doing is illegal,” Heather finally said softly, just beside Feygen’s ear. “But is it wrong?”

He pulled her tighter to him and shut his eyes.


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