by Robert Pobi
“Deal. Bye, baby.”
He dropped the phone to the littered surface of the coffee table. Motes of dust sprouted, and Jake realized that if Miss Havisham had been a booze hound, she would have hit it off with his old man. As long as she was good at hiding under beds and locking doors when the wolfing hour took hold of her man.
He went up the center-strung staircase and as he climbed higher, he saw garbage strewn over the top of every piece of furniture in the main room, from empty soup cans and unread copies of Awake! magazine to the more esoteric stripped Barbie doll and an old oil filter. At the top of the stairs he paused, surveying a house that had looked so much larger when he was last here.
The light coming in through the big rectangles of glass that opened onto the Atlantic washed away a lot of sins, blanching dust and debris with a broad stroke of blue-white that made him squint. The Persian carpets, overlaid and crosshatched waffles of color, were plastered over with scraps of life like the rest of the house. Jake saw the charred footsteps his father had left in his Alzheimer’s dance, the winning combination in a Twister game for pyromaniacs, over by the sheet of plywood that replaced the one big pane. Jake unconsciously read their pattern, starting just left of the fireplace, sambaing a good four in front of the piano, then turning quickly right for five steps in a foxtrot, finally lurching left again, spinning in place for the finale, and crashing through the glass and out onto the deck where he had run for the pool, flopping in the sludge like a sick fish. With all the booze in his blood, it was a wonder he hadn’t simply detonated, sending the house up in one white-hot mushroom cloud.
Outside, through the plywood-interrupted view, he saw his father’s studio sitting at the edge of the property, overlooking the beach. The windows were dark, the shingles half gone, the remaining ones blackened and crooked—another component in the heavily stylized mental picture Jake was quickly constructing.
He thought about checking out the rest of the place, then realized that he wasn’t really interested. The dirt and utility knives had been enough. At least for now. He clomped back down the stairs, his harness boots thudding with each heavy step, and realized that he was more tired than he had admitted to Kay. He picked a stack of small canvases off the sofa and leaned them against the coffee table. They looked dark and bloody like the batch in kitchen drawer—gray, unsettling.
Jake took out his firearm, a big stainless Smith & Wesson M500, and slid it under the cushion at the head of the sofa. Then he took off his boots, swung his legs up onto the sofa, and was asleep before his body had warmed the leather that covered the pistol behind his skull.
The shrill chirp of his cell phone jarred him from his sleep and he snapped upright. “Jake Cole,” he said reflexively. His leather jacket was still on and he felt like his head was filled with hot soot. It was dark out and he checked his watch. Eleven thirteen.
“Special Agent Jake Cole?”
He took a deep breath and uh-huhed. Scratched the chunk of scar tissue at the base of his scalp.
“This is Sheriff Mike Hauser, Southampton SD. Got your number from the New York bureau office. Sorry to call at this hour but I got a problem and for some reason you’re five miles from where I need you.” The tone and word choice told Jake a lot about the man at the other end. Trim. Fifty. Flat-top. Sig Sauer P226 for a sidearm. American flag pin on his lapel. Ex-jock.
There was a pause and Jake realized that he was supposed to tell Sheriff Hauser that it was fine that he had called. That sure, he would listen. That, yessir, he was there to help. He reached under the cushion and slid the heavy revolver out. He checked the cylinder—a habit he had learned a long time ago—and tucked it into the pressure holster on his belt. All he said was, “How’d they die?”
The pause dragged out a little longer, and Jake recognized the pregnant silence of a man trying to build up courage. This silence told Jake a lot more about him. Hauser swallowed audibly, then said, “They were skinned.”
And the little current of emotion that he had refused to acknowledge a few hours ago came to the front of everything, blocking out the ocean and the moon beyond. It froze in his head and his blood pressure surged in one electromagnetic pulse that rattled his gray matter.
That old motherfucker fear was coming out to play.
3
Jacob Coleridge Jr.—now Jake Cole—downshifted from fourth gear into third and hit the gas. The 426 Hemi growled as the legion of water-cooled ponies dug into the asphalt and the ’68 Charger screeched through the corner, launching his pack of cigarettes across the dashboard. As he cleared the apex of the curve, the lights swung out over the shoulder and lit up one of the drift fences stretched across the beach that bordered the highway. There was a bright blue strobe of fence and sand and a brief glimpse of the Atlantic beyond, then the long expanse of his hood was through the corner and he was barreling up 27, almost due east, on his way to see the dead.
It was a weeknight and there was no traffic on the Montauk Highway. The gentle slalom of road brought Jake back to his sixteenth summer, driving up to Billy Spencer’s place in Billy’s ancient Corvette after their shift at the Montauk Yacht Club, pockets filled with two- and three-dollar tips that added up to just enough money to last the weekend. They’d rip up the coast with the torn canvas top folded down, listening to The Clash and smoking weed.
The windows were open and the cool night air buffeted the cabin. The wind that had been chopping up the surf had died down and all that was left was a strong thrum of air that pulsed along the coast like a heartbeat, pumping fresh air in from the ocean. Something metal in the back seat clinked rhythmically, probably the buckle on Jeremy’s baby seat, but the sound was muted by the static of the moment.
Jake was trying to get into character. He did this every time he went to work—every time, in fact, he was forced to face the dead, the mutilated, and the dishonored that made up his clientele.
It was an armoring process, only it was internal. Unlike most of the men he worked with in the bureau, the immediate threat was not to his body. As the first man on the scene of some of the most violent murders on the planet, Jake was continually at risk of being damaged by flak from the bloody human sculpture he decoded. Instead of a Kevlar vest and a riot helmet, he protected himself with a carefully tailored personality shield positioned to prevent the soft parts of his psyche from being damaged. Before Jake walked onto a murder scene, he wrapped parts of himself up and put them away in a secure area of his mind so they wouldn’t be part of a process that both repulsed and fascinated him. And when it was over, when he walked out of work, he was able to function without tension rot getting to him. At least that was the theory.
Lately, getting into the zone took a little force, and tonight the switch-line in his head that he depended on to let him go from a full stop to a full go seemed to be misfiring. With anyone else he would have understood it. Empathized with it. But he didn’t allow these things for himself. He couldn’t. He resented the image of his father, sedated in his hospital bed, contaminating his thoughts; he needed that space right now.
When he thought about it, it wasn’t just his father—it was the entire act of being here. Being back here. Stepping into the house. Seeing that goddamned cracked ashtray with the glued bit still sitting on the floor. Stepping over and around those grim little canvases that a once-great painter had scabbed together during a redline descent into madness. Smelling the ocean. Driving the Montauk Highway. Thinking about Spencer and the old Corvette. The sod in the fridge. The algae-infested pool. All of it.
Jake took a breath and pushed the extra mental inventory aside and concentrated on getting into the zone. He focused on his driving, on the road opening up in the bright glare of the headlights, and on keeping the car between the lines on the pavement. He punched the gas, double-clutched up into fourth, and felt a batch of mice let loose in his stomach as the car crested a small hill on the road that wove up the coast like a black serpent. His body strained against the seat belt as the Dodge pe
aked, then dropped down into a trough on the snake’s back, pushing him into the leather. He hammered down on the gas and the car lurched forward in a high-pitched wail that converted petroleum into momentum.
A few minutes later he spotted the Christmas-tree pulse of emergency lights up ahead, off the road and partially obscured by the dark teeth of tree trunks. He didn’t ease off the gas until he was a hundred yards from the gate, then rapidly downshifted from fourth to second. He hit the brakes and fishtailed into the entrance, the seat belt digging into his hips, the Hemi angry at the loss of juice to its heart.
Two imposing stone pillars that supported massive wrought-iron gates flanked the driveway. A pair of Southampton black-and-whites guarded the opening, a visual opera of sharp red, white, and blue flashes. Jake swung the Charger through the gate and stopped short as one of the uniformed officers scrambled up to his window, a Maglite hanging loosely from his hand.
Knowing cop protocol, he didn’t bother to look up—an eyeful of flashlight beam could set off one of his headaches.
“You Special Agent Cole?” the unseen officer shimmering at the edge of his peripheral vision asked and Jake’s software pulled up an image to go with the voice. When the beam of the flashlight was off his face he looked up.
“Spencer?” he said, and felt the corners of his mouth curl up with the closest thing to a smile he was capable of when on the job.
The cop took a step back and the flat expression on his face evened out into a question mark that flashed in the cruiser lights. “It’s Officer William Spencer.” And with his last name, the tone dropped off as he recognized Jake in the pulsing blue and red.
“Jakey? What the actual fuck!” The cop’s face switched to smile mode and it was a lot friendlier, even in the alternating Christmas glimmer of the roof rack. His eyes slid over Jake and his mouth managed a pretty good smile, which even after all this time surprised Jake because he had knocked half of it out back in second grade. Spencer swung the flashlight in the car, then over the baby seat in the back.
Jake stopped the emotions he knew he would not be using in the next little while and held up his badge. “Your sheriff sounded pretty grim on the phone fifteen minutes ago.”
Spencer ignored him. “You back about your old man?” Then, after nodding of course to himself, said, “What’s with the name?”
Jake drew in a chestful of sea air and let it settle to the bottom of his lungs. This is what he hated about coming back. They asked about his past. “The name Jacob Coleridge was more of an obstacle than a blessing out in the world.” Being the son of the famous painter had come with its own kind of baggage, none of it good. Except maybe the art-school groupies who had slept with him as a way to somehow absorb some good old famous DNA, even if it was once-removed.
Spencer’s smile short-circuited and he nodded like he understood. “You’re the guy Hauser called?” It was worded as a question but meant as a statement.
Jake nodded and stared up at the former oyster-shucker. In the blaring lights of the cruisers his eyes still flashed blue and red, ornaments that couldn’t make up their minds. “I’d hate to be you,” Spencer said.
The pulsing eyes were a little unsettling and Jake turned his focus onto the glowing slant of the roof just over the slight hill of the drive; it was an old Long Island landscaping habit to keep the house hidden from the road with a berm. He watched the slate roof lit up by the lights of the emergency vehicles he knew were encamped in the drive, fanned out in varying degrees of importance. “Where have you put the media?” Jake knew that with the storm rolling in, every national news program would have its people out stalking the coast for impending disaster stories. And they wouldn’t miss a double homicide, no matter how deep the local police tried to bury it.
Spencer shook his head. “No media. Sheriff hasn’t called anyone and I don’t think he’s going to.”
Jake put that down on the list after American lapel pin.
Officer William Spencer tapped his sidearm with the lens of the big flashlight. “Cameraman tries to get in there, I have a trespasser on the premises.”
Jake shook his head. “No, Billy, you don’t. You come get me. We clear?”
Spencer let the question rattle around in the silence for a few seconds before he said, “Sure. Yeah.”
“The media is going to be important with this investigation. We want them working with us, not against us. They show up, you come get me.”
Spencer smiled, and they were good again. “You were called for a reason.”
“I’ve done this before. The bureau was requested by the local SD and the New York office knew I was staying out at the house. I guess the powers-that-be thought I needed to be here.” He turned back to Spencer, whose flashing-ornament eyeballs had somehow become less disturbing. “Just a lucky coincidence, I guess.”
“You’re a smart guy, Jake. At least you used to be.” Spencer’s mouth opened up and his teeth began to flash along with his eyes in the glare of the cruiser. “No such thing as coincidence.” His mouth pursed up and he looked down, as if he was embarrassed. “You know that.”
Jake hated platitudes and clichés, but something about the way Spencer said it raised a flag somewhere in his head. “Drop by,” he said, and roared off down the driveway.
4
Unlike the Wyeth clan, the next generation of the Coleridge bloodline couldn’t draw a stick figure without fucking it up. Jake was, however, able to do some remarkable things inside his skull. His one true talent—even greater than his father’s gift—was the ability to paint the final moments of people’s lives. And this uncanny and often frightening gift made Jake Cole very good at hunting monsters.
The people he worked with thought of it as an esoteric art form, some sort of weird channeling from places best left alone—deranged, psychotic, tortured places. Jake found the nuances in what made individual crime scenes unique. And in this uniqueness he decoded the stylistic fingerprint—the murderer’s signature. Once this signature was committed to memory, he would recognize it on sight. In the real world art market, if applied to paintings, a gift like his would have been worth millions of dollars a year in the economy of the business. In the search for killers, it was priceless.
He walked through the high arched doorway, intricately carved in a French motif. The house immediately spoke to him. Of wealth. Education. Breeding. Death. And…and? And something else Jake couldn’t quite nail. He had never been here before—he had eidetic memory for surroundings and had no recall of the property—but back, buried behind the personality traits of the home, there was something he knew. A distant chatter that he could not quite recognize.
Sheriff Hauser looked exactly like the mental portrait that Jake had painted in his skull, right down to the American flag pin in his lapel. He stood an easy six three in his engineer boots, weighed in at a healthy two-forty, and had the prerequisite flat-top and bland good looks of his ilk. Although now, standing in the beach house of dead people he had promised to protect and serve, with two bloody skinned human bodies splattered all over the floor, Jake saw stress vibrating beneath the sheriff’s composure. The tight lines of concern looked like fissures in a garden statue that had been left to the elements for too long. Without knowing how he knew, Jake was sure the man had played football; there was something in the way he moved his shoulders, the way he swiveled his head, that said quarterback. But for all his presence, Jake knew that it wouldn’t take much to put a few holes in Hauser’s thin skin of togetherness, and he’d have to go outside to throw up.
Jake pushed into a conversation the sheriff was having with a spacesuited photographer from the Medical Examiner’s Office.
“Sheriff Hauser? Jake Cole.” Jake extended his hand.
Hauser didn’t take it, but looked Jake over. His mouth tightened a little and Jake wondered if he had met another tight-assed small-town sheriff who would end up being his own worst enemy on the case. Hauser surprised him. “Cole? Sure. Sorry. I…” He let it trail of
f and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m not firing on all eight right now. I guess that’s the last thing I should be saying to the FBI, huh?”
“I appreciate the honesty.” He looked over Hauser’s shoulder, at the bedroom door thrown wide, the interior of the chamber lit up in space whites from the utility lights. He told himself to wait another minute, until after Hauser was up to speed on his new PR function. “What are you doing about media?” he asked, skipping small talk.
Hauser shook his head. “No media.”
“Half the news crews in the country are within fifty miles of here. Official FBI policy is to work with the media. Establish a relationship and you’ll be surprised how the news can do more good than bad.”
Hauser pulled off his rubber glove and massaged his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “I don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing.”
Jake gave the sheriff a thirty-second talk on putting together an effective media plan that would be a useful tool in the investigation. He suggested Hauser as the public information officer—as far as PIOs went, Jake thought the man would present well on camera. After his quick lecture and promises of help, Jake pointed at the bright rectangle of utility lights and excused himself.
He slid past Hauser and walked to the door, pushing two of the sheriff’s people out of the way as he moved. No one protested or said a word when Jake was on site—something about him told people to get out of his way.
He saw them on the floor and his brain did what it did, the computational software automatically gathering details and comparing them against the vast databank in his mental vault. The noise in the room stopped. The people moving behind him disappeared. And there was no light save for the harsh truth of halogen on the dead. He stood there for a few seconds that could have been minutes or hours or days and inventoried everything he saw in a mental data download.
Immediately—quicker than immediately if that was at all possible—he knew. Knew. With a certainty that was as inexplicable as what he did.