My tone was no more inviting than my words. She stopped her approach.
“I’m leaving you a peace offering,” she said. She took an envelope out of her purse and dropped it on the table, then retreated to the door.
“Go ahead and hate me, Mike,” she said. “I just want you to know I’m really not like that. I’m not.”
Then she was gone.
Of course she wasn’t really like that, I thought. Not until the next time she stood to gain by it.
Inside the envelope was a copy of the Teacher’s original e-mail to her.
And on the bottom, he’d left her a Yahoo Instant Messaging ID where he could be contacted: TEECH1.
Through my clenched teeth, I called Calvin a bitch for not giving me this right away. Peace offering, my ass. Then I sat at my desk and tried to decide what to do with it.
Setting up a trace was difficult and complicated. In order to get the Internet company to assist, court orders would first have to be procured, and even then it could turn out that the message could have come from a public library or a college.
I made up my mind that we didn’t have time for that, and took a stab in the dark. Quickly, I created a Yahoo Instant Messaging ID for myself.
Then I sent a message to the Teacher.
MIKE10: Got your mission statement.
What happened next blew me away. After only a brief pause, an answer came back.
TEECH1: What did U think?
It was him!
MIKE10: Very interesting. Could we meet?
TEECH1: U R a cop aren’t U?
I debated lying, then decided against it. Treating the guy like he was stupid wouldn’t get us anywhere.
MIKE10: Yes. I’m a detective with the NYPD.
TEECH1: I didn’t mean to kill those cops, Mike. I like cops. They R among the few left in this world who actually believe in good and evil. But I needed to escape. What I’m doing is bigger even than the lives of 2 good people.
MIKE10: Maybe I could help U get your message across.
TEECH1: I’m doing just fine, Mike. Death and murder get people’s rapt attention. Their ears R perking up BIGTIME.
Chapter 44
Hovering tensely over my keyboard, I tried a different tack.
MIKE10: Maybe if U talked to someone U could work out your problem in a different way.
TEECH1: Don’t even go there. I don’t have problems. I solve them. People think they can keep on screwing others with impunity. Why? Because they have money. Money is scrap paper with a number written on it. It doesn’t make U immune to your human responsibilities.
MIKE10: The clerk and the maitre d and the stewardess didn’t have money. Something else about them must have bothered U. I really do want to understand U, so please tell me. Why did U murder them?
TEECH1: Murder?
MIKE10: U R the same person who shot those people?
TEECH1: Of course. I only object to the word. Murder implies that those animals I wiped out were human beings. Their families should say a prayer and thank me for emancipating those pathetic slugs from the ignoble slavery that was their existence.
Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.
MIKE10: R U doing God’s work?
TEECH1: Sometimes I think so. I can’t claim to know how God intercedes in the world. But it could be through me. Why not?
Teacher? The only class this guy could teach was how to be nuts.
MIKE10: I can’t believe that God would want U to kill people.
TEECH1: He works in mysterious ways.
MIKE10: What R U going to do next?
TEECH1: YR. IDTS. Wouldn’t U like to know. Now I said it to those cops, and I’ll say it to U. Stay out of my way. I know U think U need to catch me, but I’d take a real serious re-eval on that if I were U, Bennett. Because if U or NE1 else gets between me and what needs 2B done, I swear to Almighty God I’ll kill U B4 U get a chance to blink.
Christ on a bike, he knew who I was! He must have figured it out from the Times article. Why hadn’t Calvin just printed my home address while she was at it?
MIKE10: Guess I’ll have to take my chances.
TEECH1: That’s a dangerous way to think, Bennett. That’s what those two in the train car thought. Right before I erased them from existence. When is my mission statement going out?
I passed my hands through my hair, forcing my distraught brain to think fast. Getting his message to the world was obviously very important to him. Maybe we could use that to gain some leverage or draw him out.
MIKE10: We can’t let that happen. Not until we get something in return.
TEECH1: How about I’ll let U live. That’s my final offer.
I’d been holding back my anger pretty well, but at last it jumped ahead of me. I was sick of this smug, cop-killing piece of crap. Before I could stop myself, I engaged in a slight episode of IM rage.
MIKE10: In that case instead of going on the front page, your manifesto of nonsense is going in my circular file. U catching my drift, U deluded freak?
TEECH1: U just cost another citizen his life, cop. I’ll kill two people a day if that message doesn’t go out. U don’t have the slightest conception of who U R messing with. My message will reach the world if it has to be written in your blood. TTYL. YFA!
I sat there staring at the screen. TTYL stood for “talk to you later,” I knew. I did have four preteens. But what was YFA? You something something.
Then I got it.
I turned and stared at the crosshairs over the Teacher’s face up on the wall, imagining my finger squeezing the trigger.
Yeah. Right back at you, Teech.
Part Three. Life Lessons
Chapter 45
Sitting in the quiet of his apartment’s shaded living room, the Teacher chucked his Treo across to the couch, and knocked back the last of the Daumas.
He grinned as a ball of sweet fire softly exploded in his stomach. He flipped on the TV set and channel surfed. Not only NY1, but the national networks were all over the hotel and subway shootings.
The people on the street looked solemn, downright paranoid. God, this was fun, he thought. Fucking with their heads was so addictive. He started laughing when a very concerned-looking cop was interviewed. Was that MIKE10? The asshole who just so lamely tried to get him to stop?
He held his sides as the hilarity of it all suddenly overwhelmed him. Tears actually came out of his eyes.
“Better than Disney World on the Fourth of July,” he said to the screen as he wiped at a joyful tear.
He clicked off the set with the remote and extended the recliner all the way back, thinking about the Frenchwoman he’d killed. She’d been even more attractive than a fashion model – curvier, less plastic, with an air of real sophistication. She’d virtually lit up the room with her sexuality and femininity.
Now she was as dead as the guys in the Pyramids. As dead as the dark side of the moon. Dead and gone forever and ever, amen.
It served her perfectly goddamn right, her and all the rest who thought they could skate through this life on their looks and bank accounts. Pride goeth before the fall. Make that the trigger pull in this case.
Deluded freak? he thought, recalling the cop’s text message as he closed his eyes. Now, now. Wasn’t that a tad harsh?
After all, one man’s deluded freak was another’s avenging dispenser of justice – swift, final, and complete.
Chapter 46
The eleven P.M. news carried wall-to-wall coverage of the shootings. Both reporters and anchors seemed quite critical of the way the NYPD was handling the case. ABC actually interviewed people on the street about whether they thought the cops were doing enough.