"Quickly," Henry told them. "We have to get down to the river and help Abraham with Lewis."
vvvv
Katherine Willoughby, still in a mostly unresponsive state - more to her own choosing - was handed off to two Transit Authority uni's with instructions to transport her ASAP to the nearest hospital's ER, then down to the 11th to be held for questioning. Reece promised to check back later with them. The small group then rushed to the spot near the East River where Henry had been arrested many times in the past; and each of his colleagues now understood why.
Mike, Reece, and Lucas rolled up in one car and Jo and Henry in another. The cars came to an abrupt halt where Abe was parked and they immediately piled out, Henry leading the way. Still unsure of Lewis' sincerity about being a changed man, his anxiety level was raised a bit to see him damp, shivering, and bewildered looking in the back seat of Abe's car.
"Took you long enough," Abe greeted them impatiently. "Was all I could do to keep him from bolting."
"Sorry, Abraham," Henry told him. "Even with sirens, this is still New York City traffic." Abe nodded, shrugging.
"He seems to have calmed down a bit, though," Abe told him. Looking over his shoulder at the others with their eyes as big as saucers and their mouths agape to see an alive, breathing Lewis Farber, he leaned in toward Henry and whispered, "It's always hardest the first time."
Henry understood. It was hardest on anyone the first time seeing a person die, vanish, and turn up alive and well somewhere else. Worst magic trick an ordinary man would be made to endure, Henry thought. Although he was sure that others might think it was 'cool' like Lucas; or that it was a blessing like Jo. He didn't know why he felt she would characterize his condition as such but he was sure that she would have something good to say about it. Like Father Sullivan had. Like Abigail had.
"What do we do with him?" Abe whispered to Henry, indicating Lewis in the back seat of the car.
"We ... tend to him, I suppose," Henry replied uncertainly. "What other choice do we have?" he asked in response to Abe's frown of skepticism and surprise. "Can't just leave him to his own devices after so soon regaining, I believe, his full memory."
"What? Take him home and tuck him in bed?!" Abe asked, gruffing it out in a louder whisper.
"Who better to take care of him right now?" Henry countered.
"So you trust this guy now?" Abe asked, frowning. When Henry didn't immediately reply, he let out an exasperated, "Da-aad!"
"Abraham!" Henry warned him, placing his hand on his shoulder and bracing himself for the reactions of the others.
"Wha - did I hear right?" Mike asked, staring and blinking at the two men. "You're ... you're his Dad?" Henry inhaled deeply and slowly exhaled, reluctantly nodding his head. Not out of shame but out of concern for the man whose sensibilities had already been stretched beyond normal limits when he'd witnessed Lewis' death and disappearance.
"That - is - " Reece began before being cut off by Lucas.
" - sooooo cool!" Lucas finished for her, grinning wildly. "Really, really cool!"
"I was going to say ... well, actually, I don't know what to say." She blinked her eyes rapidly and shook her head as the impact of the truth of their father-son relationship hit her. Early in the NYPD's dealings with Dr. Morgan, she'd wondered if the two men weren't actually a secretly-married couple. 'Will wonders never cease,' she marveled to herself.
Jo just smiled at the two of them and winked at Abe, who smilingly shrugged.
Mike was still in mini-meltdown mode. He was doing his best to keep up with this fast-moving, ever-arcing detour from the reality he'd always known.
"You okay, Mike?" Reece asked. She realized that he was having a harder time than even she was, getting a mental grasp on things.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm ... I'm gettin' there," he replied breathlessly. His and everyone else's attention once again turned to Lewis.
Acutely aware of the multiple sets of curious eyes focused upon him, he rolled down the car window and rather timidly said, "Hello, again."
vvvv
Dr. Katherine Willoughby lay with her eyes closed but hardly resting in a hospital bed in Cubicle 17 of New York Hospital's ER. She was hooked up to an IV unit that pumped pain medication into her through a vein on the back of her left hand. A nurse had just left her bedside after wrapping a blood pressure cuff around her upper left arm which periodically tightened and slowly loosened, feeding the results of her varying blood pressure levels onto the connected machine's display. She fingered the bandage on the side of her head over her left eye and was reminded of the woman responsible for giving her that injury: Det. Jo Martinez. She then rubbed her wrist that was cuffed to the railing on the left side of her bed and was reminded of the other woman responsible for ordering her to be arrested: Lt. Joanna Reece. Willoughby mentally spat at the thought of them while turning the events that had occurred earlier that day on the abandoned subway platform over and over in her mind.
Everything had gone all wrong, all wrong because of him: Henry Morgan. Adam's nearly 30-year obsession with him had prevented her, she felt, from getting Adam to reach his full potential as an Immortal; an Invincible Man. Up until he'd found the ME, Adam was the only one of his kind that she'd ever come across. Together they could have ruled the world. Or one big, significant corner of it with their growing number of loyal minions. Without Adam, she feared the entire network of ne'er-do-wells would collapse. And after all of her hard work convincing those same misguided souls to follow him and do whatever he bid them to with the promise of immortality dangled like a carrot before each of them. Of course, it was an empty promise that neither she nor Adam could ever fulfill but they needn't have known that. If only he had listened to her and abandoned seeking a relationship with Morgan, who had continually rebuffed him. Especially after he'd learned the real circumstances surrounding Abigail's death and Adam's part in it back in 1985.
In Willoughby's own twisted mind, an alive Abigail would have served them both better as leverage to be used against Morgan. As long as her life hung in the balance, then, and only then, would Morgan have agreed to any sort of relationship with Adam since that's what Adam wanted. And she had to admit that it would have been a bit more fun to have two Immortals under her control. But she believed that Adam was really the better specimen. He had lived so much longer than Morgan; endured so much more hardship, pain, and loss than the junior Immortal had. An unbearably heavy amount of rage, disdain, cynicism, and hopelessness had whittled his tender emotions down to almost nothing. Almost. She mentally scoffed at learning of his promise to Morgan not to harm a hair on his son's, Abraham's, head because of what the Nazis had put both of them through while at Auschwitz in the 1940's. That bit of humanity peaking out of his soul after so many years had troubled her. However, his confrontation with Morgan that fateful day on the abandoned subway platform when he'd shot him with his own weapon had restored her faith in his maniacal dark side. But Morgan had surprised them both when he'd immobilized Adam by jabbing that empty syringe into his brain stem. Neither she nor Adam had expected the usually unaggressive Immortal to be so cunning and resourceful. That unexpected little move of his had set both of them back for months.
Adam had ignored her repeated warnings that it was useless to involve the other Immortal in their lives. She believed that Morgan would never understand what she and Adam were trying to build on this rotten earth. And his name, Adam. A name that she'd proudly bestowed upon him and one which he'd gladly and proudly embraced for, most likely, he had been "here since the beginning". The demented female doctor had not had as much fun manipulating anyone's mind since the Zodiac killer who'd terrorized Northern California in the late 1960's to early 1970's. Willoughby took great pride in the fact that his reign of terror was usually compared to that of Jack the Ripper's in 1880's London. And, like the Ripper, her Zodiac killer's identity remained a mystery to this day.
Her own reign of terror, of sorts, had begun at the age of eight in 1924 during yet another brutal beating from her abusive, puritanical stepfather while her mother watched but did nothing to help her. He had repeatedly justified the beatings as a way to "release the hold of evil on the cursed child".
The anger had built up inside over time and had finally burst from her in the form of her manipulating the stepfather's mind into murdering her mother and then himself. To outsiders, it looked as though her stepfather had strangled her mother and then, siezed by grief, taken his own life by plunging a butcher knife into his heart. It was the perfect crime. No one ever suspected that an innocent-looking eight-year-old girl was actually behind it.
The "gift" of this mind control ability had at first both surprised and frightened her. Gradually, she began to take great satisfaction in it. The gift could be used against almost anyone she chose although some were easier to control than others. And there were a great many that she could not - like Martinez, Reece, or Morgan - no matter how hard she tried. It seemed that sane individuals with a strong sense of worth could resist any type of control she attempted to exert over them. Only the weak-minded, the weak-hearted, the mentally and emotionally unstable ones were receptive to her control.
Even so, over the next few years, she realized that her "gift" also allowed her to claim the remaining years of her victims' lives if they died while under her control and add those years to her own lifespan. The added years, however, had a strange effect on her aging in that it slowed it down considerably. As a result, she began to find it necessary to move every seven or eight years, change her identity, and sometimes her profession. By the time she met Adam in 1998, her gift had lost most of its luster. Boredom had set in to the extent that she either entertained herself by simply reading the minds of others or randomly controlling them to end their lives just for the fun of claiming the remainder of whatever years they had left.
He'd been working as a cab driver and had picked her up more than once from a behavioral health clinic she worked at on the city's lower east side. His out-dated style of clothing with its somber colors and the black, leather gloves had piqued her curiosity. He wasn't very talkative but still managed to demonstrate that he possessed extensive knowledge of many things. A growing curiosity gradually overtook her boredom with life and she decided to read his mind, just for the fun of it. What she discovered was something extraordinary. His thoughts, his memories had taken her back centuries before her long-ago birth year of 1916. From that moment on, she had needled her way into his mind and taken up residence there. It hadn't been as easy to manipulate him like she had the others. But he was so much more interesting than anyone else she had ever met!
Willoughby had pushed and prodded until his darker emotions had risen to the fore, flourishing into ever-increasing mayhem under her unique tutelage. Something else unexpected began to evolve between the two differently-typed Immortals. Long-forgotten, pent-up emotions had begun to stir inside her. Something akin to ... love ... ? At least, a semblance of it since she had never experienced it herself; not even with her own mother. Perhaps with her real father, who had died suddenly when she was barely two years old. Faint memories of strong, male hands embracing her, of loving kisses planted gently on her forehead, of being cuddled against the scratchy stiffness of a wool suit. Was that her father? The memories were faint but had soothed her tired brain and fed her longings more than once when she'd thought it was best to throw in the towel and seek a permanent end to her long, unfulfilled life. But being close to Adam ... those long-ago feelings had gradually bloomed once again, clouding her judgment where he was concerned. He was more ... special to her. She'd given him more free rein than anyone else even though she knew it was dangerous. It was dangerous for her to have felt these things ... to feel these things for him.
When they'd first met, he still had more than 15 years ahead of him in his quest to find the other Immortal, Henry Morgan. It might have taken him longer if she hadn't introduced him to the new technology of computers and social media. But the closer he'd come to finding the man, the more she'd dreaded what would happen when he did. Her worst fears were realized earlier that day and possibly even earlier, when Adam had survived his locked-in condition believing that he actually was Lewis Farber. A man now possessing an surprisingly sound mind who bore no ill will toward anyone anymore. Exactly the kind of mind she had never been able to control. He was a good man now. Just like Morgan. Adam was gone; for all intents and purposes - dead.
Willoughby opened her eyes when she heard the swoosh of the curtain and someone entering the small cubby-hole of a room. It was a young doctor in grayish-blue scrubs holding a clipboard in one of his hands. She briefly saw a uniformed officer standing guard in the hallway on the other side of the curtain. The doctor approached with a polite greeting and friendly smile. Whatever it was he was telling her was inconsequential. She had to plan her escape. Her work in mind control must continue, she reasoned. And prison had never held any fascination for her other than farming various parolees and escapees for potential minions for Adam and her. But Adam now believed he was Lewis Farber so he was of no use to her anymore. Morgan would never do, either. She had never been able to penetrate his mind because he was too much of boy scout. He still chose to walk with the mortals as if he were one of them. As if he could once again become one of them. Another lost soul had to be found. For right now, though, this young doctor who was battling a secret opioid addiction and on the verge of losing his job would have to do.
vvvv
Two weeks later ...
Despite Henry's and Abe's generous offer of hosting him at their place until he felt he could cope more with the weight of his memories, Lewis had insisted that he would be fine on his own. He had, however, visited the two men a few times over those two weeks as Henry and he had pooled their information with each other in an attempt to answer some mutual, burning questions. But one of the most obvious questions that had come up was why hadn't he been arrested for any of his past aggressions?
Across town in the 11th Precinct, Lt. Reece was agonizing over that same question. Arrest Farber, charge him with God only knows how many crimes stretching back to … God only knows when! Crimes that Lewis claimed had been committed when the persona of Adam had control of him. She closed her eyes and sighed, her head bowed, her hand on her forehead. Mike's voice broke into her harried thoughts and she looked up at him.
"I vote we let the guy go," he said, shaking his head.
"Just … let him waltz off into the sunset after all the damage he's done to Henry and his late wife and all those other people he named?" Reece asked, incredulous. However, she had to admit that there were no clear cut answers in this extraordinary instance. An Immortal man who most likely could never successfully be prosecuted or kept imprisoned. Execution would never work because he'd always come back to life. Execute him over and over? For how long? Right, she told herself, imagining a newly-formed Execute and Retrieval Squad. "This decision is way above my pay grade," she added, wearily.
"From what he told us, all those people were murderers themselves," Mike said. "Except for Henry's wife, Abigail; but he didn't actually kill her," he quickly pointed out.
"Mike, he kidnapped her," Jo recounted to him. "Frightened her into protecting Belinda Smoot from him and then drove her to suicide when she thought she had to protect Henry and Abe from him."
"When he was Adam," Mike reminded her. "Or - when Adam was in control." He sighed and added, "Look, Jo, I'm no psychiatrist and I don't pretend to understand one tenth of any of that kind of stuff. But I have seen more than one cold-blooded killer. They have no soul. Their eyes are empty of any humanity. No soul. No remorse. This guy, Farber, is either the best I've ever seen at lying or he's the real deal. Inside, he's not Adam anymore. Besides," he offered, "we train the spotlight on him and we run the risk of exposing Henry's secret. And I care more about Henry." He settled back in his chair and looked at Reece again. "I say we cut Farber loose."
Jo carefully considered Mike's words. She wasn't sure how to proceed with any charges against Farber, either. But he was a confessed criminal. Surely, the NYPD wasn't going to just let him go on his merry way because he had allegedly committed all those crimes when he was Adam but was 'nice' now as Lewis Farber. She wasn't a psychiatrist or psychologist, either, but she wasn't altogether sure if he was telling the truth about all of that split personality stuff.
"How would we even do this?" Mike asked, raising his voice in frustration. "Do you wanna try to explain all of this, any of this to the DA?" When both women frowned but failed to reply, he nodded. "We let him go," he repeated. "He's a professed vigilante but he did us a favor taking all of those freaks out of circulation. Some we suspected and a lot of others that we didn't even know about. Raj Patel and Richard Smight were responsible for more than 15 murders between them. We don't know how many because the body count is still rising." He sighed, grimly viewing their options.
"I say we allow the guy to quietly leave town." He looked up at Jo and Reece. "Pronto."
"In other words, we dump him off into someone else's jurisdiction?" Reece asked. That was something she couldn't allow to have happen. "No one is above the law, Detective. We bring him in and let the DA do their thing," she stated grimly. "At the end of the day, we're sworn to uphold the law. He broke it - many, many times - so it's our job to do our part and arrest him."
"What's that going to mean for Henry? Or Abe, for that matter?" Jo asked, worried. Farber under the spotlight would inevitably mean exposure for Henry and Abe. How in the world would they be able to cope with things if the shroud of mystery surrounding the two men, especially Henry, was snatched away completely? If it became necessary for them to flee their lives in New York and hide somewhere else, she wasn't sure if following them would be helpful. It could mean never seeing either of them again and that was totally unacceptable to her. "They haven't done anything. Heck, he even victimized Henry for several months when he stalked him a couple of years ago."
"I know, Detective," Reece replied, sighing and closing her eyes. She opened them and looked from one to the other of them and said, "Up until the day of that re-enactment, I was willing to cover up as much as possible in order to deflect attention away from Dr. Morgan. Things got … weird real quick," she said with bugged eyes and shake of her head. "But, frankly, letting a confessed criminal go free versus the truth about the doctor's long life being exposed?" She looked apologetically at Jo. "I have to go for us doing our job." She turned her attention to Mike. "We're sworn to uphold the law, Detectives. As much as it pains me to do so, Dr. Farber should be taken into custody. His claim of having committed the crimes while controlled by another personality are of no consequence. The wheels of justice must still turn."
She began to touch the items on her desk in an unconscious but characteristically familiar manner that signaled the meeting was over. Both detectives stood up and prepared to leave her office.
"Okay, uh, we'll go pick him up now," Mike said, gloom clouding his face.
"Doesn't have to be now, Detective," Reece slowly replied, busying herself with the contents of an open file.
Jo and Mike frowned at each other and looked back at their superior. "When?" Jo asked.
Reece shrugged, raising her eyebrows. "Depends on how soon we can build a case against him." She closed the file and her eyes met theirs again. "All of that takes time. Sometimes justice takes years; decades. We don't want a rush to judgment, now do we?"
With a growing realization and fighting against their own smiles, they nodded in agreement and exited her office.
"So, whaddaya think?" Mike asked Jo as they stood near their respective desks.
"That it's not even lunch time and I need a drink," she replied.
Mike totally agreed with her but they both knew that that was not permitted until they were off duty. "Well ... how 'bout joining me in a coffee instead? My treat." She smiled and nodded and they left the precinct for a much-needed break. Any kind of break.
vvvv
wiki/Zodiac_Killer
wiki/Jack_the_Ripper
