Story Excerpt

Sin Eaters
by Mark W. Tiedemann

Pollard listened for the signal that the tactical units were in place. The van around him felt close, as if every molecule had paused in sympathetic imitation of all the held breaths. He stared at the array of screens displaying the exits from the three-story mass of dingy brick. Color was muted in the early morning overcast.

Movement snagged his attention on the top left-hand screen. A pale cat, emerging from behind a discarded door, searched its surroundings, obviously sensing the threat gathering around its home. It darted off, and Pollard returned to the other screens.

“All units in position,” came the tinny whisper in his earpiece.

Pollard tensed. After ten days of one of the hardest investigations—desperate hunt, more accurately—he had ever conducted, the end was contained in his next command. The seconds passed, and he realized he was savoring it. Things might yet go wrong, the victims could be dead, the perpetrator might have left the house before everyone was in position, so many small oversights piled up to bring about a bad result. But for now none of that was real. No realer than the success that was just as, if not more, likely.

“Will you penetrate yourself?”

Pollard winced. Time lurched into forward motion again. He glanced around at the Cassine standing near the exit. It regarded him from eyes too-perfectly human, slightly larger than natural, a deep blue, set in an oval face equally sculpted to an ideal of human beauty. Pollard had been in their company now for over two weeks and still was not used to their appearance.

Not their natural forms, of course, but the shells they had built to interact with humans. The ambassador appeared as a five-foot-ten-inch athletic man of thirty, slightly bronzed, blemish-free skin, with a head of matte-black hair. Not Olympian, Pollard had decided, but the possible reality on which an Olympian might be imagined. Disconcerting. He assumed their unmasked form to be close to how they appeared, treating the shell like an environment suit, but he did not know. It was just as likely the being within was a boneless mass of tissue with no discernible shape. If their intention was to smooth relations by presenting a familiar image, it failed for Pollard, who saw only cosmetics and masks. He did not like being manipulated.

“After they secure the premises,” he said, turning back to the screens. He switched on his mic. “Proceed.”

Will you penetrate yourself, he thought. Better ways to say that. . . .

Pollard leaned forward, as did the other two agents beside him. Abruptly, the screens showed men in black military gear rushing the several doors and windows of the house. Two windows were broken and flashbangs tossed in, followed immediately by teargas grenades, and then they were in. Over the speakers came the sounds of many men moving swiftly through the building.

“Down on the floor! Down on the floor!”

More rushing, doors banging open.

Finally. “We have them, Agent Pollard. Alive.”

Pollard stood, checked his weapon, and left the surveillance van.

The interior of the house smelled musty, even through the lingering stench of the teargas, still air too long in the dark. The windows had been covered by an assortment of throw rugs. The living room appeared to be in the midst of a renovation—two walls recently painted a bright yellow, a new sofa still in its plastic wrapper, boxes of electronic gear stacked in a corner, a full set of new bookcases, all empty—but the rest seemed amber-locked in the 1940s, dark wood, linoleum and hardwood floors, old two-button light switches.

Few of the lights worked.

“Downstairs, sir,” a sergeant told him, indicating a basement door.

At the bottom of the narrow steps was a space divided up by two-by-fours and sheet rock into discreet rooms. Bundles of cable stretched across the low ceiling between the compartments. Everything was brightly lit with brand new LED panels.

In one room he found a daybed with a nightstand and a small refrigerator. The next room was filled with computers and monitors, a startling display of tech.

The largest room held the children.

The tactical people had draped blankets over them, but that did nothing to damp the stench. They would need baths. Or would they just receive new shells? For a moment, he was confused by his own reaction. They looked up at him, both with those slightly large, too-human eyes, and even through the smears of what he assumed were feces Pollard reacted to their perfection. This time it made him angry, that someone would mar such beauty. Their hands had been broken; chafing from manacles ringed their ankles; they shivered and stared at him with . . .

Patience. They waited. Pollard saw no fear, no recrimination, no anguish, just polite anticipation, waiting for what came next.

A pair of thin mattresses lay on the floor, soiled. Buckets stood around the room, though they appeared empty. A set of manacles hung from the ceiling, and there was a chair with restraints next to a table.

Pollard stepped up to the children, reached slowly down to the nearest, and moved the blanket aside. Gouges ran down its chest and stomach beneath the filth. The wounds were dark blue-gray. He glanced across the mattresses but saw nothing resembling bloodstains. He looked at the wounds and wondered where the shell ended and the actual body began. Maybe what he saw had been an attempt to cut through and remove the shells, but he had no idea how these things worked. There had been suggestions that they were inextricably part of their shells, that functionally there was no difference, but then . . .

Distantly, he felt the stirring of a long-forgotten gag reflex, working like a worm behind his diaphragm, teasing his esophagus. He turned away and stepped out of the room.

“Where?” he asked the first agent he saw.

“Second floor.”

He passed the medical team on his way up and told them to get them checked, secured, and out of here as quickly as possible. Jarish, the Cassine ambassador, followed them. Doubtless the scientists would love to quarantine and examine them more closely, but Jarish would never permit it. The Cassine had long since convinced health department officials that there was no possibility of contamination, and the State Department had signed off on their assurance, so the visitors could move freely among people.

Not so freely anymore, though . . . not after this . . .

He pulled out his phone and punched his home. After four rings, the answering machine picked up with its perfunctory “We’re not here, leave a message.”

“It’s me,” he said, a tightness in his chest. “Just wanted to let you know, it’s over. We found them; we got the guy. Talk to you later.”

In one of the bedrooms four agents had the perp, handcuffed and seated cross-legged on the floor. He hunched forward and kept his gaze about the level of Pollard’s knees. He wore a gray T-shirt and khaki dockers and at the moment was shoeless.

“Has he been read his rights?” Pollard said.

“Thought you would prefer to do that yourself, sir,” one of the agents—Camilla Something, they had worked together before—said.

“Michael Albertson,” Pollard said, “you are under arrest for the kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture of two citizens of the Cassine Endarchy in violation of interstellar treaty and the laws of the United States. You have the right to remain silent—”

“I didn’t!” Albertson said, still not looking up. “You can’t kidnap what isn’t there! At best you can charge me with theft, but there has to be a person there to be kidnapped. And there isn’t.”

Pollard waited for more, but Albertson resumed his silence. Pollard caught Camilla’s amused look and gave a slight shake of his head, then resumed reading the man his rights. When he finished, he ordered him taken in.

He went through the rest of the house. Most of the rooms were empty. Preliminary investigation showed Albertson had purchased it fourteen months ago, but it looked more like he had just moved in. A couple of the rooms showed signs that he had begun electrical upgrades and renovations, but had abandoned them unfinished. The whole place felt incomplete, unresolved.

Pollard returned to the basement. A pair of technicians were working on the electronics.

“Any idea what he was doing with this?” Pollard asked his friend Carson.

Carson, a hacker-turned-IT-resource, waved a hand at the array. “He was tapped into way more than he should’ve been. This guy had some serious chops.”

“What was he surveying?”

“Everything to do with the Cassine. It’ll take me a while to condense it down to a report, but from the look of it he has a hard drive filled with everything we know—and by that I mean the definitive ‘we’—everything we know about our visitors. Serious obsession here.”

“All right, let me know as soon as you have something that might fit into a final report.”

Carson raised a thumb and resumed his examination.

The forensics people were flowing into the building now, and Pollard made his way outside. He knew better than to get in their way. Back in the surveillance van, he called his boss, Director Hargill. She came on the center screen.

“Agent Pollard,” she said. “I understand you have good news.”

“Yes, sir. We have secured the Cassine abductees, arrested the perpetrator, and we’re now securing the building. Our people are going through it now.”

“So was he just a nutjob or is there something more serious we need be concerned with?”

“So far it appears he was working alone, but I’d wait till the information team finishes going through his hard drives.”

“Very well. Good job, Vincent. Keep me posted.”

The screen blanked and Pollard leaned back. Good job . . .

“What will happen now?”

Pollard had not heard the Cassine ambassador enter the van. “Hm? With Albertson? He’ll be interrogated, processed, and held for trial. After the trial, he’ll be imprisoned for a term decided by a judge.”

“And what will be done with him?”

Pollard had found conversing with the Cassine a challenge. He had quickly realized that they used language with more precision than most people. It paid to listen carefully and weigh your answers before responding. But they also seemed to define their words differently. They seemed at the same time more literal and symbolic.

“With Albertson himself? As in his physical and mental self? Nothing. Prison.”

“What is then resolved?”

“Not my area of expertise. You should talk with a jurist or legal scholar.”

“But you are the hunter.”

“And my part in this is now finished.”

The Cassine frowned. Startled, Pollard tried to recall if he had ever seen a frown on one before. Or a smile, for that matter. They usually wore a pleasant expression that looked more inquisitive than polite.

I will be so glad not to have to work with them after this. . . .

“Shouldn’t you be seeing to your children, Ambassador? I’m sure they’d be glad to see you.”

“They have seen me. I will be tending to our gladness later.” He—it, in appearance male, but Pollard suspected that was only for human benefit—stood, still frowning. “I am not satisfied. The question is not answered. Thank you for your excellent services, Agent Pollard.”

The ambassador opened the rear of the van and left.

What the hell. . . .

Pollard twisted the gold band on his left ring finger, going over the operation. Have I done enough? He looked at the ring and considered removing it. Hon? Is this sufficient? He sighed and left it on his finger.

 

Will you penetrate yourself?

The phrase kept running through his mind when he stopped thinking about his job.

Pollard stopped by Lee Fong’s for carryout for two on the way home. He set the bag down on the table just inside his door and took off his jacket, then shrugged out of the shoulder holster. Few agents wore a rig like this anymore, but Pollard had always liked the feel of it, the Glock tucked under his left arm, instead of digging into his back every time he sat down. He carried the holster and food into his apartment. He stopped by the answering machine just at the threshold of the living room. The light blinked. He rolled up the holster and set it down beside the phone, then touched the playback.

The first message was a reminder from his dentist about his appointment in the morning. The second, a robot call cut off in mid-pitch by the machine. Then: “It’s me. Just wanted to let you know, it’s over. We found them; we got the guy. Talk to you later.”

He did not hear the next two and had to replay them. Both were from Carson, asking him to call.

He opened the brown bag on the coffee table and took out the containers of food and thought, I need to stop doing that. He pushed the shrimp lo-mein to the far end of the table and added a small container of rice. He paused before sliding the ring off his finger and setting it on the table between his order and the other. He went to the kitchen and brought back a plate, utensils, and a glass of water, sat down and began ladling noodles and beef and stir-fried vegetables onto his plate. The aroma flooded his sinuses and within moments he was wiping his eyes, pretending to himself it was the spices.

He grabbed the remote and aimed it at the TV. The news spilled across the screen, something about a series of shootings in L.A. attributed to Geosupremists. The story ended, and he was looking at the house where they had found the Cassine children. He left the sound off and ate listlessly, watching for a time, then started switching channels.

He settled on a nature program, serene vistas, beautiful clouds, and close-ups of various animals in their habitats. He left the sound off and let it play while he finished his dinner. It soon became apparent that the program centered on a wolf pack. Pollard shoved his plate aside and lay back on the sofa with his wine as they launched into a hunting segment.

He was on his second glass when the doorbell rang. Pollard put the ring back on and went to the door.

Carson stood on the threshold, a medium pizza in his left hand.

“I already had Chinese,” Pollard said, letting the technician in.

“Yeah, and I’m sure you got that shrimp stuff,” Carson said, hoisting the pizza a few inches. “I called, did you get my messages?”

“I wanted to eat first.”

Carson set the pizza box down beside the unopened order of Chinese and went into the kitchen. Pollard sat down, listening to the sounds of Carson rummaging in the refrigerator.

“It’ll take a couple days to sort through it all,” Carson said, returning with a bottle, “but I did an overview already, and lemme tell you, this guy was jacked into some high level shit.”

“Like what?”

“Get this. He had a direct feed into the Cassine embassy.” Carson opened the box and released the smell of sausage, bacon, and mozzarella.

“How did he manage that?”

“Don’t know.” Carson lifted a wedge from the box and took a bite. His words came muffled around the food. “I’m running sniffers to find the pathways, but . . .” He swallowed. “I also found links into NSA and secret service databases. Those are easier to do, but not so easy to mask, which he did. Guy was a pro.”

“None of that came up in his profile.”

Carson leaned back to dig in his front pants pocket and handed a thumb drive to Pollard. “I’ll let you know what I find from the sniffers, but that I thought you’d want to see. It’s a download of his sessions with the Cassine kids.”

“Sessions.”

“You know, what he did to them.”

Pollard held the drive between thumb and middle finger, almost at arm’s length. “Why would I need to see this? You should turn this over to Justice so they can prepare their case.”

“Oh, they already have it. But I thought you should see it. Trust me, it’s not what you think.”

Pollard set it on the corner of the table.

Carson asked, “You doing okay?”

“Sure.”

“Really? Did you leave another message for her?”

Pollard started cleaning up the remains of his dinner, a sullen knot tightening in his chest and stomach.

Will you penetrate yourself?

Carson had finished half his pizza by the time Pollard came back into the room with the wine bottle. Carson crouched by the AV rack, inserting the thumb drive.

“What are you doing?”

“You gotta see this.” Carson retreated to the sofa and grabbed the remote.

Before Pollard could say anything, the screen filled with an image of the two Cassine children, huddled together on the bare mattresses in the basement of Albertson’s house. They still wore their clothes—loose shirts and pants the color of dark mustard with pale blue filigree in patterns vaguely reminiscent of art nouveau. Pollard had been told they were based more on fractal progressions; no one had yet been able to tell if they were informational or just decorative—and they still appeared clean. They gazed up at someone off-camera, both pairs of too-large eyes fixed, unblinking, displaying nothing more than mild curiosity.

The scene changed abruptly. They were naked now. Another shift. They were wet, water dripping off them. The next scene their skin showed signs of filth. Suddenly in the following scene someone else was there, Albertson, Pollard assumed, kicking them. Then he was shoving them apart and flailing at them with what looked like an old razor strop. When it finished, the children rejoined each other on the single mattress.

Over the next several minutes, Pollard watched a series of clips of the torture, culminating finally with Albertson holding each of them down and slicing at them with a heavy-bladed knife.

The wounds were recorded in close-up. As they watched, the injuries closed, sealed up, and after a few minutes it seemed as if they had never been. No scarring, no discoloration of the skin, just smooth surface. There were several scenes of such fast healing. One showed Albertson’s fingers trying to hold the wound open. Within the tissue showed pale gray and stippled. But Pollard had seen the wounds . . .

Then he saw them, the scarring. It emerged gradually as the torture continued, as if whatever healing mechanism had been at work was being exhausted. No blood, at least not liquid. A dark powder spilled from the wounds, like graphite.

“Turn that off,” Pollard said.

Carson aimed the remote and the television blanked. Pollard paced around the room, heart racing, until he calmed down.

“What the hell?” he said. “That’s . . .”

“Pretty weird, huh?” Carson said around a mouthful of pizza.

“Is there any audio?” Pollard asked.

“Yeah, but I didn’t have time to grab it. I listened to a little. Sounded clinical, like he was a researcher conducting an experiment.”

“He kept saying they weren’t human, which, naturally, but . . .”

Almost nothing was known about Cassine physiology. Pollard was not surprised—how might a case be made to obtain that kind of information?—but seeing this he wished more pressure had been brought to bear to learn more. He wondered briefly if Albertson had been motivated by that same frustration.

“Nothing makes sense with this guy,” Pollard said. “No history of pedophilia, no history of violence. Married for fourteen years.”

“What happened to his wife?”

Pollard’s throat tightened and for a moment he felt the onset of panic. He closed his eyes and pushed past and answered. “She died. Cancer.”

“Oh. Well, that could fuck you up.”

“Really?” He opened his eyes. “You think so?”

“Hey . . .”

“What about the Cassine? Do you think maybe they’re now fucked up?”

Pollard was breathing hard now and Carson was frowning, looking worried. All at once the anger drained out of him and he sat down, hard, staring at nothing, the first annoying patches of embarrassment causing discomfort.

“Sorry.”

“It’s been a year and a half,” Pollard said, twisting the ring on his finger. “You’d think . . . Christ.”

He closed his eyes, which never helped because his backbrain kept offering up scenes of the carnage, and he felt trapped in the theater, unable to leave even to go to the bathroom. Why did it have to be knives? He tried to remember the burn victim he had worked four months ago. Someone had poured gasoline on him when he had been passed out drunk in his Lexus and lit him up. If he had not been an aide to a senator it would have remained with the local cops, but instead Pollard got called in. Somehow the poor guy had lived three days afterward.

Pollard worked the case, found the jealous husband whose wife the aide had been seeing, made the arrest, and two months later testified for the prosecution. Not once had his calm failed. He had gazed upon the seared flesh of the victim and felt nothing but the resolve he had always used to see a case through, just like it had always been before Alicia.

He had worked over a dozen cases since coming back early from compassionate leave and none of them had bothered him. Till this one. The knives. He saw the sliced Cassine and Alicia’s body filled his memory. Beatings, gunshots, one strangling, and a poisoning, all without a hint of trauma, and now . . .

“You want I should leave?”

Pollard opened his eyes. Carson had closed the pizza box and perched on the edge of the sofa, hands loosely folded.

“Maybe,” Pollard said. He rubbed his face then looked at the blank screen. “So any idea what happened there?”

“Nope. Like they were made of sponge . . . or something.”

Pollard poured himself more wine, not looking at Carson.

“Well, look,” Carson said, standing, “I’ll leave this with you. If I find anything else interesting . . .”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah.”

Pollard knew Carson wanted to say more, but knowing what had never been in his skill set. It was one of the reasons Pollard always liked him—the lack of sentimental mouth noise intended to mimic genuine concern. Carson did care, Pollard knew that. For the first three months after Alicia, Carson had been over almost every night. Pizza, Asian, sometimes gyros, and movies and shop talk. He had been an anchor, keeping Pollard away from the dangerous shoals of final solutions for pain too big to even feel in any meaningful way. “You’re gonna be okay” was as close as Carson ever came to expressing sympathy.

“See you tomorrow, then?” Pollard said.

“Sure. Maybe late.”

Carson nodded and without another word left.

Near midnight, Pollard switched on the TV and started replaying the file.