Evolution

Chapter 1

Detective Jameson Raver

The man polished the gleaming surface of his bar in Tombstone with a studious air, one that left me feeling like we were being ignored completely in favor of wood that already gleamed like gold.

So our chemical analysis of the substance in the bottle indicated that the whiskey was rye, and not commercially produced, Gage continued. He was apparently oblivious to our subject's lack of interest in the question. Sheriff Trujillo up in Tucson—

Finally, something snagged the man's attention. He dropped his spotless tan polishing cloth onto the bar and looked up at Gage. "Owen sent you down here?"

Gage nodded. He seemed to recall that a while back, someone was producing such a product, a rotgut whiskey that he sold down here as a tourist type gimmick. You know, buy the old style of whiskey that the Earps drank in Tombstone or some such.

The man chuckled softly. So naturally, you decided to visit a saloon in Tombstone. His head wagged back and forth. That old son of a gun. How is Owen doing these days?

He's still a bigot, I piped up from my perch on one of the barstools. Is that a trait the two of you share?

Our disinterested bartender sighed and resumed the polish job. He's not a bigot young man. He's old. He never adapted to certain things like the notion that the law is flexible enough that folks don't need to heed the officers charged with enforcing it. Then again, if that makes him a bigot, so be it. I guess I'm a bigot too. I think a man ought to do what he's told to do and that being a criminal of a certain stripe doesn't exempt him from the consequences of failing to obey.

Was Trujillo sending us on a goose chase about this homebrew? Gage asked. Since you seem to have such a healthy respect for following the law, sir, I'm asking you to cooperate.

Gage reached over and plucked the chamois from his hand. At least do me the courtesy of pretending like you're listening and engaged in this conversation.

We don't sell booze by the bottle, souvenir or otherwise, he said. There's a liquor store up the street that probably used to stock what you're looking for. The old timer who produced it died a long time ago. I doubt anybody working there now remembers the whiskey or its maker. He hasn't been around for more than ten years.

Did you know his name? Gage asked.

The bartender shook his head. Not his real name anyway. Folks just called him Cappy. I think he was an Air Force something or other at one point. Very regimented guy as I recall.

I leaned forward. Oh? How so?

The man shrugged and held out his hand to Gage. Once he had his polishing cloth in hand again, he started speaking. He came around a lot in the eighties. Always had a little boy with him. The kid was pretty wild at first, running around, tearing through the street with his little cap gun. He couldn't have been more than five or six years old. Well, maybe he was older, but small for his age. I just always figured him younger based on how immature he was. Talked funny, you see.

Baby talk funny or speech impediment funny? I asked.

Huh. Well, now that you put it that way, it might've been the latter. I just figured he was some immature kid. Cappy would haul him in; make him toe the line and all that. The kid didn't seem to mind. He seemed to worship the old man.

Did you know Cappy's last name? Gage asked. Anything else you can tell us that might help track down his real identity, or the boy he had with him.

Well, the boy I can do one better on. He told me his name was Frank James and that he was here to rob the stagecoach, the older man chuckled. He was a little pistol that's for sure. But the old man did call him Frankie. Yeah. Frankie. That's what he called him. Frankie and Cappy. Odd.

Did the little boy call him Cappy? Gage asked.

Nope.

Did you ever hear the boy address the old man by a name? he pressed. Please, sir, this is important.

He called him Bumps. He shrugged and grinned at Gage sheepishly. I thought it was baby talk, you know. Short for gramps, or some perversion of it. He seemed about the right age to be Cappy's grandson.

So he was an older gentleman when he first showed up? Gage asked.

Thirty years ago, or there about, he nodded. I'd say the guy was probably mid fifties. Seemed ancient to me at the time. With a sigh, he seemed to lose himself in the reflection of his face in the polished wood.

This old tourist trap belonged to my father, his father before him. Family lore says we showed up in Tombstone when the town was still booming and never quite managed to get out after the silver mines were depleted. I must've been…oh, I don't know, mid-teens when Cappy came in here trying to sell his liquor to my father. I wasn't paying attention to much more than how I'd go off to college in Phoenix one day and never come back here.

Yet… Gage left the comment unfinished.

Yet here I still am, and here I will likely die. I told you, we never sold Cappy's rotgut. Dad did buy a case off him that day and used it to stock that wall behind me.

My eyes snapped into focus on the bar that now displayed nothing but modern liquor bottles spiked with professional pour spouts. He followed my gaze.

Sorry to disappoint you, agent.

Detective, I corrected him automatically. What happened to that case of liquor?

His eyes darkened with some distant clouds, lips tightened into a moue of unpleasant memory.

I don't know why it clicked in my head. It just did. I knew. I pulled out the photo of O'Banion and stared at it for a moment. A man came in here, what, about a decade ago? Nasty fellow. Demanded that case of liquor, didn't he?

Those eyes widened. How could you possibly— the question aborted on a gasp when I held up O'Banion's photo.

He look familiar?

God!

His name, sir, was Hank O'Banion. He was a cold-blooded serial killer. Don't worry. He's dead now, and I doubt he'll come back as a ghost for payback if you tell us what happened the day he came in and rounded up what was probably the last of a dwindling stock of Cappy's rotgut.

He… the heavy click of his Adam's apple echoed in the room. "He was the most disgusting human being I ever met in my life. Dad had just retired and turned the place over to me to run, and this filthy, smelly giant strolls in here one afternoon and asks where I kept the whores.

"At first, I thought he was joking. Ha-ha, you know, Tombstone was once as infamous for legal prostitution as it was for shootouts and murder. But he wasn't kidding. I sobered quick-like and told him we didn't have whores in Tombstone anymore.

"That was when he pulled out this enormous knife. Christ, I'll never forget that thing. It was the kind you could tell was sharp just by the glint of light off the blade. It had this pointed tip on it, and the back of the knife had teeth, like a saw blade.

See that mark on the wall over there? he asked, pointing a tremulous finger over his shoulder. We thought about new wallpaper, but Dad insisted we leave it, that it added character to the place and to the whole Tombstone lore.

Gage and I followed the path he illuminated to about a two-inch gash in the wall, approximately an eighth of an inch wide.

He threw that knife at my wall. Damn near took some hair and skin off my scalp at the same time. He wanted to know where I got the whiskey on the shelf. I told him. He said he wanted it, and that I was going to give it to him, or he'd crawl over the bar and…and…

Do something particularly vile to you with his knife? Gage offered.

The man nodded. I boxed it up and gave it to him.

Why did you act like you had no idea what we were talking about when we first came in here? Gage scowled. Did you miss the part that I'm a federal agent?

"You said you were looking for a bar that sold it. We never did. All I had on hand was that case my dad bought as some gimmick to amuse the tourists…and well, make the regulars groan. It was a big joke. The guy's whiskey tasted like kerosene anyway." The bartender clamped his mouth shut.

"You tried some of it?" Gage asked.

I was sixteen maybe, when Cappy came in here peddling his wares. What do you think? My friends and I made off with a bottle of it. We couldn't even finish a shot each it was so awful.

What did you do with the bottle? I asked. Did you keep it?

Why does it matter either way? he asked. If the freak who stole all the stock in town—

Wait a minute. Are you implying that he stole this whiskey from more than just your bar?

And restaurant, he muttered. But yeah, there were businesses who'd bought it and sold it to tourists on occasion for years. Cappy would come to town with it once a year, usually in the springtime. He had a still somewhere in New Mexico, some place up in the mountains I think. He'd live up there alone all year, make his stock and then deliver it all over the southwest, but mostly to us, I think. The tourists loved it. Hell, we still get people from time to time that visited before Cappy disappeared asking if we still sell bottles of Cappy's Finest.

When did the little boy stop coming with his Bumps? Gage asked.

Our reluctant witness shrugged. "He was older I guess. Try to remember here, that I did go away to college—in Tucson not Phoenix—so I wasn't here for several years of Cappy's deliveries. Last I remember, he was probably fourteen or so."

What did he look like? Gage had his phone out, fingers poised to make a call.

I don't know. He looked small for his age. I remember him telling me he was fourteen though.

And did he still talk funny?

Curt nod. Like I said, I figured there was something wrong with him. Still that kind of girly, baby voice.

I frowned. Girly baby voice?

Hell, if it wasn't for the little bit of blonde peach fuzz on his upper lip, I'd have thought he might be a girl. He was pretty like that, in a common sort of way. He just wasn't real masculine.

Did you ever see him again after that? Gage asked.

The bartender shook his head. No, I didn't. I was twenty-four at the time, pissed because I was still in Tombstone, still working in Dad's bar and restaurant. I'd gone off to college to get an education to free myself, but Dad insisted I come back here and pay off my college debt by working for him.

You could've done that from anywhere, I said. Part of you didn't want to leave.

"No, I really did want out. I knew what he was doing. He paid my way through college and then promptly shackled me to this place, knowing full well that even if he retired and I took over ownership, I'd never be able to sell. Have you noticed? Tombstone's not exactly a boomtown anymore. We've got a population of thirteen hundred and change. We're a nice stop before tourists cross the border for their little I went to Mexico on a shoestring budget trips to Naco or Nogales."

When O'Banion liberated the rest of Cappy's rotgut ten years ago, Gage asked, was he alone?

At first, yeah, he said. But some other dude came in after the wall knifing and told him they needed to leave. The big, stinky guy tossed one of the bottles to his…companion I guess, and asked him what he thought.

What did the man do? I asked.

"Popped the cork with his teeth and guzzled down half the bottle on the spot. He turned around and left. That's when the brute asked me if there were any other places in town that had it. He said, and I'll never forget it, because it still gives me chills, my partner's got a weak stomach for the work we do. I figure the rotgut might put some hair on his chest and help his little raisins grow into real balls. Then he laughed and punched me in the face. He said if I reported him to the cops, that a river of blood would flow through Tombstone, and mine would be the first.

I know I should've called the cops, but he scared the hell out of me. There was something in his eyes…something that told me he meant what he said, that he'd find away to kill everybody in town. He shuddered.

And this happened ten years ago, Gage confirmed.

He nodded. Almost to the day. At first, I thought it was some sort of hazing, you know, April fools or something. He was serious.

Did you get a good look at his partner? I asked.

"Not really. I mean, he was skinny and small compared to the bruiser. He had really long black hair and was dressed all in black. I remember that all that black made him look really pale, like milky white pale. I thought Goth, but he didn't have eye makeup, lipstick or painted nails."

What about his face? I asked.

The bartender shook his head. He wasn't close enough. Frankly, I was too freaked out by his hulking pal.

Let's get back to little Frankie at age fourteen, Gage said. Do you think you'd remember what he looked like?

Sure, he nodded. Like I said, I'd seen him plenty of times over the years. While he outgrew the baby face, he was still recognizable as the same boy when I saw him last.

If I get a sketch artist out here, do you think you could describe him well enough that we could get a picture?

Ah, I don't know about that. I mean, he was sort of…

What? I prompted. He was sort of what?

Very painfully average. Mostly, I remember that his nose was small and straight, his eyes were kind of blue but not really remarkably blue. I guess I thought they looked a little diseased.

I could see Gage's frustration mounting. It was typically at this level that he started kicking things. I intervened.

Diseased like cataracts?

The man snapped his fingers. Yeah! Just like that. They were sort of dull, um, like a white film over the blue. It made him look creepy.

Hair color? Gage asked.

Blonde. Not sandy blond, but white, which seemed weird on a little kid. It was a buzz cut, like military short. Other than his remarkably straight, narrow nose, and the creepy eyes, nothing jumped out at me. He could've had the face of one of those store mannequins he was so plain. But not ugly either.

Was there anything else unusual that you noticed about him? Gage asked.

He was really skinny and had these sort of gangly arms and legs. I remembered that he couldn't carry the liquor Cappy brought without help.

One other thing. The place Cappy had where he brewed his whiskey—

Distilled, the bartender corrected.

Whatever. Would it happened to have been somewhere in the region of Silver City, New Mexico?

The flash of memory in the man's eyes was almost electrical. Yeah, he said. I think it was. That kid, he asked me if I liked his shoes.

And that made you remember Silver City? I asked.

He rolled his eyes at me. No, the kid said that was where he got them. I remember the shoes, a sweet pair of brand new '97 Air Jordans. You got any idea how expensive those things were? A buck fifty was a lot to pay for shoes back then.

A buck fifty is a hundred and fifty, I said to Gage.

Now he rolled his eyes at me. I wasn't ten years old in 1997, Jay. I know what a buck fifty means.

I smirked. Just making sure.

"About that bottle you and your buddies liberated when you were sixteen. I don't suppose you kept it stashed anywhere, did you? I mean, I'm relatively sure we've found the guy who distilled the stuff since O'Banion recognized it, but you know how pesky the legal system is. Unless we can match a known sample of that whiskey with what we collected from the Tucson crime scene…perhaps you heard about it. The guy slaughtered on a golf course?"

Our spirits vendor paled. That was the hulk? he stammered.

No, it was his unremarkable partner that nobody can seem to recall any distinctive features to describe, myself included, Gage said bitterly. Little did you know, but O'Banion was the known demon who darkened your doorway that day ten years ago. His partner, the quiet guy, he was—and is—the real thing that goes bump in the night.

Uh…let me call my wife, he mumbled. I think I've still got it stashed in the back of the liquor cabinet.

While he drifted away to make the phone call, I looked at Gage.

What? he snapped.

Don't you think it's odd that all these people who've seen Castillo, I mean, come face to face with him, still can't accurately describe what he looks like?

We know what he looked like at age fourteen, Gage muttered. "Frankie. Isn't that the name you thought you heard him give Myrtle Saing before he slaughtered her?"

Yeah, it was. I hadn't made that connection when our reluctantly cooperative bartender talked about meeting the boy at age six.

The thing that gets me, is that he sounded like a normal kid, you know? I could picture it in my mind. Him tearing up and down the boardwalk with his little cap gun, maybe wearing one of those old cowboy hats with the string cinch on it, playing Wild West in the street while his gramps sold rotgut whiskey.

People aren't born bad, I said. Certainly you realize that even O'Banion would've probably grown to be a very different person had he been loved and nurtured when he was born. He wasn't, and what filled the vacuum was very ugly and perverted, a child's misconception of love.

So what turned Castillo? Gage turned his back toward the bar and leaned against it, his elbow smearing the high polished surface.

Castillo? the bartender interrupted, though he stared at the offending limb mussing up all of his hard work. That's Spanish you know.

Gee, yeah, I think we figured that out, Gage said.

"No, I mean it's Spanish. It means…Castle."

And?

The sound of footsteps clomping on a stairwell behind the bar drew our attention. Look for yourselves, he said.

His wife appeared with a half-full bottle of whiskey.

Gage and I stared at the label in disbelief. Emblazoned across the watermark were the words:

Cappy's Finest

Genuine 1881 Rye Whiskey

No, the remarkable feature was the watermark itself—a large what seemed to be Bavarian castle faintly visible on the label's face.

Castle. Castillo, Gage barely breathed the two words. It's him, Jay. Castillo, this is who he is. It's been staring us right in the face the whole time.

The bartender's wife said, That'll be thirty-seven-fifty if you're taking the bottle.

"Ma'am, the FBI does not pay for evidence collected in a criminal investigation."

Her husband flushed. Sorry. Kerri, get back upstairs.

What? It's a collector's item, she protested.

Go now.

Gage slid his business card across the bar. You think of anything else, I don't care how minor you might think it is, I want you to call me immediately. And if I were you, I wouldn't advertise this conversation at all. I have pretty good reason to believe that little Frankie with his cap gun playing in the street grew up to be none other than the Night Lotus serial killer.

It wasn't the earth-shattering, case-cracking lead I'd hoped for, but it was still probably the first gigantic step forward we'd taken in the investigation.

Chapter 2

Special Agent Gage Briarwood

We sped along the I-10 toward Phoenix, to the lab that could analyze the properties of the whiskey and confirm what Jay and I already knew. It would match the bottle we'd discovered with Castillo's grim message from months ago when he slashed Brick Newburgh's wrists and let him die right in front of us.

Castle, Jay said for about the fiftieth time. What do you think it means, Gage? Could it be possible that this is his real name? Frankie Castle.

I burst out laughing, so hard I finally had to slow down and wipe my eyes. For a guy who seems to think I need to be schooled on pop culture references, you sure are clueless.

I am? he asked.

"Yes, Jay, you are. Frankie Castle? As in Frank Castle?"

His only reply was a blank stare.

"Jesus, didn't you read comics when you were a kid? Frank Castle is a Marvel Comics character, also known as the Punisher. You know, big ol' skull on his super hero costume, though technically, the Punisher was an anti-hero.

See, the story goes, the Punisher was a military man. His wife and kids got murdered, so he went on a vigilante killing spree and slaughtered the lot of the people responsible for his pain. He was a master of stealth techniques, martial arts, guerilla warfare, torture… my voice slowly died.

Shit.

You got that right, I said. You don't think that's how this creep fancies himself, do you?

Only if Frank Castle of comic book fame got paid to take out other people's enemies.

No, he didn't, but from the psychological perspective, think about it, Jay. We've got some geeky loner boy, possibly being raised by his grandfather—

If the bartender was right.

If he had a genuine speech impediment, he'd probably have been picked on like crazy as a kid. Maybe that's how he and O'Banion hooked up to begin with. Being an outcast, someone mocked and ridiculed for things that were truly no fault of his own was certainly something that O'Banion would've understood. No matter what he did, it was the wrong thing with his worthless mother, and no different when he got to school. Like he was some sort of wild animal instead of a little boy, and nobody scooped him up and showed him a better way, at least not until it was probably too late. I'm pretty sure by the time he got to Kevin Holmes, he was a budding sociopath anyway.

Psychopath, Jay muttered. A sociopath can at least mimic normal behavior.

So maybe Castillo was the sociopath of the pair. He learned to mimic, and became the de facto caretaker of O'Banion.

Then I was right all along. They found each other through Kevin Holmes.

Probably. I mean, that scenario makes the most sense. O'Banion didn't stick around any other foster home long enough to bond with anybody. Think about this, Jay. He's the sociopath…yeah… I think you're really onto something big here.

Care to bounce this idea off me now, or do you need to get authorization from Glen Harvey first?

I smirked. No, I don't need permission. Here's what I was thinking. You'd imagine somebody like Castillo would stick out like a sore thumb, right? I mean the stuff he's done, the ways he's killed people, the amusement and pleasure he finds taunting us and proving he's the smartest little nut job in all the land, you'd think people would see him coming from a mile away. Hell, ten miles away.

"But he's a true sociopath. People do know him. They might find him a little odd."

Maybe they assume he's got a very mild, and high functioning case of something like Asperger's, I added.

He has a life outside the duo of Castillo and O'Banion. He has a real life, Gage. I doubt that would include an actual job where he punches a time clock. No way on that one. Castillo hates anything he perceives as confining or restricting him in any way.

I snorted, Hell, in this day and age, a lot of people work from home. Maybe he pretends that's what he does, but in reality, his job—which no doubt his circle of acquaintances would know about—takes him on the road. A consultant maybe, something like that. Hell, people probably envy his profession. They don't realize he's living off money earned by killing people.

Maybe, but I don't know, Jay said. "I wouldn't say he has a circle of acquaintances at least. There are people who know him, but I doubt anybody has really spent any time with him beyond his superficial façade. I think it's more likely that he takes his mimicking to an extreme. You know…the postman knows him, or the guy in the meat department at the grocery store, maybe even a host in a local restaurant. He exchanges vague pleasantries. They might even ask him to join them for the neighborhood Super Bowl party or something.

He'll agree of course, out of forced expectation and to keep up appearances, but I'd wager he seldom participates in anything outside his little sphere of sociopathic function. To do so would risk exposure of his pathology. So something always comes up, but not anything that would make people suspect he's avoiding them. I'd bet he does the faux social niceness very well, you know, a personal call to convey his regret with business taking him away, something exotic and enviable.

Ted Bundy was a sociopath, I said.

Yeah, and look how long he got away with his crimes. Didn't they suspect he started killing at a very young age? Jay asked.

True enough. He confessed to thirty between the years of 1974 and 1978, though nobody knows for sure how many he really killed or when the first one happened. There are some disturbing parallels between Bundy and O'Banion, if I think about it, I said. Bundy grew up thinking his mother was his sister, and while that doesn't seem like a glaring similarity—

The relationship to bad parenting is, Jay concluded quickly. So the question is, who was Castillo's bad parent? He was pretty young tagging along after grandpa after all.

Sorta makes you wonder. Maybe the old guy died and that's how Castillo landed in the system.

By the age of fourteen, all of those sociopathic traits would've been fixed, Gage. If he encountered O'Banion in foster care, it would've been before grandpa was the primary caregiver.

Okay, that's a valid observation. How about this? Castillo's only tether to normalcy was grandpa, right?

"If you call someone whose claim to fame is distilling his own rotgut rye and peddling it across the Southwest normalcy, then fine, I follow."

I chuckled. Still, more normalcy than you'd find with parents who obviously weren't fit enough to take care of the kid. Didn't the bartender say that Bumps lived in Silver City?

The mountains near Silver City, Jay said. Remember, he was the mountain man.

Right. Right. But if Castillo and O'Banion met through foster care, it would've had to happen in Las Cruces. If Castillo's little sociopathic personality was already formed by the time O'Banion killed his mother and went on the lam, and presuming that they're about the same age, they would've had to connect during the time that Castillo was still spending time with his Bumps.

"They would've had to connect during the time that O'Banion actually stayed in foster care, Jay corrected. I don't buy that Castle or Castillo is his real surname, Gage. We've exhausted every name