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Eleven Years Later

FBI Agent Constantine Striker took a cigarette out and twirled it between his fingers. He’d been staring at his computer screen for the better part of an hour.

Why now? He wondered. After more than eleven years, why now?

Had the feature article on The Sandman come out on the ten-year anniversary of his capture or conviction, Con would have understood.

People liked whole numbers, one year, ten years, a decade, half-century, century. These were arbitrary, of course.

Personally, Con believed that there was only one difference between nine years and three-hundred-sixty-four days and ten years.

A single, shitty day.

Still, it made him wonder why eleven years and three months after The Sandman had been convicted—Con’s eyes flicked up to the article’s byline—Dwight Dozier felt like now was the right time to write an article about the convicted serial killer.

There was nothing special about the date nor the article; at least, Con didn’t think so. Dwight was critical of the way law enforcement had searched for the killer, citing several lapses in procedure that may have led to Matthew eluding capture. It was all retrospect and Con had heard it before.

Could they have done something different?

Sure.

Could they have found The Sandman after he’d only killed two, or three, or five victims?

Maybe.

But, even after all these years, Con had no definitive answers on what they could or should have done.

What was curiously left out of the article was Con’s own name.

And that was fine by him. If anything, he was glad, because people couldn’t seem to mention Con and The Sandman in the same sentence and not bring up Valerie.

The only bright spot of the article was that Dwight Dozier had proposed a new moniker for Matthew Nelson Neil: The Necro-Killer .

Con liked that.

He liked it because he knew that Matthew would hate it.

“Con, can I see you in my office for a moment?”

Con pulled his eyes away from his computer screen and craned his head over his shoulder.

Special Agent in Charge Marcus Allen stood in the doorway of his small office. Marcus was a tall man, six-four—a good two inches taller than Con himself—and considerably leaner. Con was by no means fat, but Marcus had a runner’s build.

There were rumors in the Orange County Field Office that Marcus ran at least ten miles every morning.

This in and of itself was enough for Con to dislike the man but it was far from the only reason.

Marcus was stubborn, full of himself, and did everything he could, throwing any and every one under the bus if it meant him moving up the food chain.

Again, more than enough reason to look at Marcus with spite.

But the real reason Con despised the man was because he forbade him from spending any working hours looking into his sister’s disappearance.

Fuck him , Con thought. Fuck this asshole.

He closed the browser and held up his cigarette.

“Just about to go for a smoke,” he said. “Can it wait?”

“Smoke after. I gotta talk to you about something.” Marcus nodded as the words came out of his mouth, which caused his ash gray hair to flop side-to-side.

Con hated Marcus’ hair, too. He kept his own hair, thick and dark, with a prominent widow’s peak, cut short.

Marcus’ was medium length and always appeared greasy.

Con grunted an affirmative, pushed his chair back, and followed the Agent in Charge into his office. Somehow, Marcus was already seated behind his desk. The man also pretended to be hard at work, engrossed in a stack of papers set out in front of him, a pen tapping the top page.

Everything was for show with this asshole.

“Sit.” Con reached for a chair, but Marcus changed his mind. “Close the door first.”

Con obliged the latter but elected to stand.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Marcus scratched something on the document in front of him, which appeared to be nothing more than a nonsensical scribble, before looking up.

“You’re getting a new partner today.”

Con felt his lips pull back in a sneer.

“I work better alone.”

Marcus glared at him.

“And what work would that be?” the man challenged.

Con felt the corner of his eyes tighten, the thick crow’s feet that had taken up residence there over the past few years turning his face into something reminiscent of a humanoid Shar Pei.

He was tempted to snap something back, but that was what Marcus wanted him to do. No, Con knew better.

He just stood there, hands at his sides, enjoying Marcus’ growing discomfort and annoyance that Con hadn’t taken the bait.

Was it his fault that the only cases Marcus let him work were more suited for a cop straight out of the academy?

Was it his fault that every partner he’d had since Tate Abernathy either quit or was fired in record time?

Naw, that sounded like a leadership problem.

And Marcus Allen was the all-mighty leader of this outfit.

At least in title.

The man would have found it difficult to lead an ant farm to a pile of honey.

“What’s the last big case you solved since The Sandman?” Marcus asked when he could no longer bear the silence.

You’re the one who assigns the cases, asshole. Why don’t you tell me?

Con folded his lips back and pressed them together tightly.

One thing his experience had taught him is that you could learn a lot more by just keeping your mouth shut and listening.

Too many of the new breed wanted to blab, thought that they were master interrogators, that they would ‘break’ a suspect, get them to confess.

That usually worked in the movies and perhaps because Orange County was so close to Hollywood, they just assumed that it would work here, too.

It didn’t.

You often divulged more information than you took in, which was never a good thing.

It was better to listen, to learn, and then adapt.

Every criminal he’d sat across from was a different breed. You needed to figure out what triggered them, and then, depending on the circumstances, whether or not you should pull that trigger.

Marcus Allen, evidently, had never mastered the skill of silence. He wanted Con to bitch and moan, to complain, run his mouth.

He wanted to anger Con.

He wanted, in a nutshell, for Con to do something that outweighed his notoriety so that the man could finally— finally —have cause to fire him.

Well, not today, Buck-o.

Con fiddled with his cigarette, making it dance across his knuckles.

“Your partner will be here in a few minutes,” Marcus informed him with an almost dejected sigh. “I don’t want this to be like the last one. You understand me?”

Con felt his upper lip twist and now the urge to speak became almost impossible to resist.

It’s my fault that the last partner you assigned to me had a porn addiction and was caught jerking off in the bathroom when he was supposed to be joining me on a raid? That’s my fault?

“What about a case? You have a case for us?” Con said at last.

Partner or not, he needed to work.

The idiom was traditionally stated as “leaving someone to their own devices”. In Con’s case, it was more aptly put as “leaving him to his own vices ”.

And that meant being trapped in his head, thinking about his sister.

Thinking about Valerie Striker.

The Necro-Killer.

Con smirked at this and Marcus misinterpreted the reaction.

“Do you—”

“I understand.”

Marcus Allen huffed as if Con had just requested an extended leave—no, the man would probably like that. Better yet, as if Con had just asked for a budget increase.

Oh, the shame.

A dozen full-time agents and half as many part-time agents to cover an area with a population of over three million people. Plus the fifteen or so million who visited that consumerist machine known as Disneyland.

To be fair, the OC Field Office would have more agents—except Con kept getting them fired.

But... c’mon, jerking off prior to a raid? There were ways of relieving stress and there were ways of relieving stress...

Marcus used his pen to push the pad of paper he’d been looking at when Con entered the office across the table.

Con begrudgingly grabbed the papers, jammed them in the empty folder he suspected they’d come from, and then left the office without another word.

He was immediately greeted by the largest smile he’d ever seen, complete with a significant gap between the two front teeth.

Please don’t let this be my new partner, Con thought. For the love of god.

“You must be Constantine Striker,” the man said in a southern drawl. He held out a fat hand. “My name’s Chris Hale. Looks like we’re going to be partners.”