by Robert Pobi
When they got back to the room, Jacob was pulling at the bandaged clubs with his teeth, like a dog getting the stuffing out of an old cushion. Tufts of gauze peppered his beard and chest as he gnawed at them. He made hungry sounds as he tore at the white cloth.
“Mr. Coleridge, let me help you with that.” Nurse Look-alike came forward, and produced a needle from her pocket.
“What the fuck is THAT?” Jacob asked, trying to back up in the bed, away from the syringe.
“Don’t worry, it’s not for you.”
“The fuck it isn’t! Get away from me with that. You’re not sticking that in—”
Nurse Rachael jabbed the needle into the IV tube and depressed the plunger.
Jacob’s eyes unfocused, his mouth closed, and it was as if someone had drawn all the frustration from his body with a magnet. His muscles went slack, he sank back into the pillow, and closed his eyes. Then his chest expanded with a single deep breath, seemed to hold it, and his head fell to one side.
Jake turned to the nurse. “Thank y—”
It was in that hang time between the two words of gratitude that Jacob Coleridge bolted upright in the bed. The metal frame jolted the nightstand, sending Finch’s flowers to the floor in a high-pitched collision of lead crystal and linoleum. The vase shattered, and shards of glass and lilies bowled across the floor.
Spittle and gauze flecked Jacob’s lips. He looked at his son, at the nurse, and at his hands. Then he let out a shrill scream that rattled the windows, spraying chewed bandage, saliva, and frustration across his chest. He lifted one of the torn nubs at the end of his wrist, pointed it at his son, and bellowed. “You can’t keep him away! He’ll find you! Run!”
Then he fell back as if someone had pulled his plug.
And was silent.
15
The preliminary press conference had gone well but the feeling that it was only the first of many quashed any momentary elation Hauser felt coming on. The storm was bad enough but somehow the specter of the double homicide was more threatening in a not so abstract way. Dennison at the NHC had done a good job of scaring him but somehow Jake Cole and his traveling road show of death had managed to eclipse even Dylan; the next few days would be an entry for the memoirs.
In his brief respite between the press release of the murders and a general meeting of his staff about the coming storm—which the sheriff had been nice enough to open up to the media in part of that give-and-take Jake had spoken of—he decided to go through the Mia Coleridge file.
The box smelled of basement and the first file was a once-bright red that had faded to pale salmon—a capital crime file. He placed the old manila folder down on the sparse top of his desk, peeled back the cover, and began reading.
The pages had become brittle and the staples had rusted, leaving dark red marks everywhere, like iron nails in a ship’s hull. By nature Hauser was a patient man, and this quality had always worked for him within the framework of his occupation; he began on page one and went through the file slowly and methodically, not bothering with notes or any sort of an effort to memorize facts. He simply wanted to find out anything he could about Jake Cole so he could get a feeling for a man he was forced to work with. Hauser had learned a long time ago that it wasn’t what he didn’t know that could hurt him, but rather what he knew for sure that just wasn’t so. It was an old logic—delivered in an almost obsolete vernacular—but it had served him well in his twenty-plus years in the department. He had very little in the way of disposable time but figured that a fifteen-minute trek into the history of the FBI consultant was worth the investment if he was going to hand over the keys to the kingdom.
He began with background notes that the officer on duty had taken the time to write out by hand—Hauser recognized the slow, careful script of someone who was bad with a pen and only took notes by hand because it was easier than using a typewriter (the not-so-distant ancestor of the keyboard), a condition he could empathize with because he shared it. A lot of the younger men on the force, the ones who had been born into the digital age, had no problem with the keyboard but Hauser wrote his reports out longhand and he recognized the fear of technology in the script before him.
It was a familiar handwriting, penciled in by his predecessor, Sheriff Jack Bishop. Hauser knew Bishop had been a good cop and a solid man when needed. Hauser also knew that three days after Bishop’s retirement, he had gone out to the garage, jammed a double-barrel twelve-gauge into his mouth, and painted the rafters with his brains. No one talked about it but they all knew why. A few of the old-timers, the ones who had given everything up for the job—their families, their dreams, their lives—realized that after the badge was retired and the sidearm was put in the safe, there really wasn’t much to look forward to. After all, when you had sacrificed everything for the job, what did you have when it was gone? It was a story Hauser had heard about more cops than he wanted to think about. And part of him felt smugly superior because he knew it would never happen to him. As much as he loved the job, he loved his wife more, his daughter more. And there was plenty of bird hunting and fishing still to do. Maybe even a cottage to build. Something upstate on a little lake where the musky fishing was good and the summers weren’t packed with weekend assholes who had more money than brains. Maybe that place where they had vacationed that last summer before Erin had gone off to Vassar; Lake Caldasac—you could buy a cottage on the water for thirty grand. And the fish were monsters.
The file was neatly stacked, like it hadn’t been rifled through as much as a murder case should be. Homicides were rare in his jurisdiction but not as rare as he would have liked. There were a few each year, usually chalked up to a drunken brawl that got out of hand or a domestic dispute that went supernova after too much yelling and not enough talking. The usual result was that someone with a surprised look on their face ended up on one of Dr. Reagan’s tables.
But this was a thing of legend. He had heard that during every cop’s lifetime there was a single case that eclipsed all others. Made a man want to leave the job. Maybe hang sheetrock. Even without the benefit of hindsight, Hauser knew that this would be his.
Hauser read Bishop’s notes before he went to the photographs he felt sticking out of the folder with the edge of his finger. Bishop had started with the basics, first-impression kind of things. Sex: female. Age: unknown. Height: approximately five foot three. Hair color: unknown. Race: unknown. Eyes: brown. Clothing: non-applicable. Back then, before they had started using DNA as an identification tool, they had relied on dental records—a slow and often worthless process. But Hauser checked a note that Bishop had come back and scrawled into the margin ten hours after the cover page had been time-stamped, stating that they had a positive dental match for Mia Coleridge. Hauser shook his head and snorted at that; today, when they were lucky, DNA took seventy-two hours to get sequenced, two weeks when they weren’t. But back then it had been real footwork and human ingenuity—not computers—to keep the whole thing rolling forward.
Hauser went down the sheet, the details puzzling him at first. A few lines in he began to recognize words, phrases, and he started to form an ugly picture in his head. After the end of the first page he stopped, flipped through a few more sheets, and went to the photographs of the crime scene.
He had known what he was going to see before he pulled it out—Bishop had been precise in that particular way cops had. But there was no way to bolster himself against something like this. Not unless he was some kind of a monster. He picked up the photograph and felt the air lock in his chest, felt the blood stop pumping in his veins, felt his cardiac pistons seize in one massive system reset.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, not meaning to. He stared at the image for a few seconds, the black-and-white doing little to stave off the nausea he felt stirring his empty stomach. Then he dropped the old photo to the desk and let out a low moan.
Staring up at him from thirty-three years ago was Mia Coleridge, body twisted in rigor mortis, teeth brittle whi
te shards amid her bloody face. There was no expression on her visage except for the primitive animal snarl of pain. Other than that, you could barely tell you were looking at a human being, let alone a woman.
Mia Coleridge had been skinned alive.
16
Jake sat in his car under a tree in the hospital parking lot for ten minutes, trying to talk himself into heading east on 27 and not stopping until he was home with Kay and Jeremy. He listened to the radio for a few minutes, hoping that the chatter about the storm would take his mind off of what had happened in his father’s room upstairs. But the radio anchor very quickly began to annoy him with his very un-Cronkite-esque fear rhetoric and pseudo-factoids. Jake shut off the radio with an angry, “Oh, fuck off!”
Jake didn’t have a mountain of available time—not now, not ever—but he needed to clear his head. And he needed to get some work done. Only that had become more difficult the past little while, hadn’t it? The invasive process of turning secrets of the murdered over in his mind so many times that they became worn and polished from examination had started to become commonplace. Maybe he had turned into a ghoul, just like the people he hunted. After all, what did he like about the job? It was the subtleties, the nuances, that separated these monsters. The little signatory differences. The way one held a knife, the way another only bit down with the left side of his jaw. It was in these weird little psychosis-fueled details that their personalities began to shine. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to see these things. Like Hauser rushing out of Reagan’s lab today, maybe Jake needed to find a little of his lost humanity. It was as if he had a keyring in his pocket, only most of the keys just opened ugly places that he had to stop visiting because they were starting to feel too much like home. Kay had been telling him to quit for a while now. A year. And she was right. Hell, she was more than right, she was justified. He had agreed. Promised. All that was left to do was to tell Carradine. Yet he somehow hadn’t. Why?
Which is probably why he had come up here to deal with his father and the mausoleum of scotch and cigarettes and demented, black canvases. It was with a heavy, foul-tasting twinge that he realized that all the things that had gone on between him and his father were of no value any more. Not to him. Not to his father. And certainly not toward gaining any sort of closure. The door had slammed shut when the first threads of his father’s mind had begun to unravel.
What was he going to do? He needed help. Kay would be here this afternoon. But he needed a different kind of help than she could offer, as much as she’d try. He needed someone with a little distance. Someone who wouldn’t care if this was easy or tough on him. Someone pragmatic. Someone who could handle his old man. Problem was, with the exception of his gallery owner, Jacob had successfully driven everyone who had ever cared about him away. Every friend. Every publicist. Every—
Jake pulled his iPhone out and thumbed through the menu. It took a few seconds to find the number, but it was there, three months back. He sat there, the windows open, his thumb poised above the send button. Would Frank care enough to come or had Jacob burned that bridge as well?
He pressed send.
There was the sound of computer chatter, a low throaty whisper of static that sounded like the voice of the Devil played at seventy-eight RPM, followed by a series of clicks that Jake knew were satellite connections being made. It took almost half a minute until the phone at the other end began ringing, a series of double chirps that sounded strange, foreign. After fifteen or sixteen rings, a voice that belonged in a public service announcement against the dangers of smoking answered, “Frank Coleridge.”
“Frank, it’s Jake.”
Frank didn’t prod Jake with phony cheer, he simply took another drag on the cigarette that Jake knew was plugged into his face and said in that singularly unique voice, “What do you need, Jakey?”
“It’s Pop.”
“The—” there was a rasping sound, like someone tearing a dry leaf in half, as Frank took in a lungful of smoke—“fire?”
“You heard?”
“Yeah. Found a note on my door this morning. Neighbor left it.”
Jake rolled his eyes and remembered the nine sacks of mail at the hospital; it was amazing how the fame monster affected people.
Frank continued. “I’ve been out—” another long pull on the cigarette—“hunting. Just got back to the cabin.”
Jake scrolled through his mental filing cabinet for a second, trying to align Frank’s statement with his knowledge of state regulations. “What’s in season in September?”
Frank let out a dark arid laugh. “Nothin’s in season, Jakey. Had a bear kill a foal. Tracked him to high country. Old sumbitch with a bad leg. Only thing he could kill would have been that foal. Maybe a human child. Had to get him before that started happening. I was gone four days.”
“What did you get him with?”
Frank responded with a low laugh. “Lead poisoning. How’d your old man set himself on fire?”
“From what they know, he had oil paint all over his hands. Maybe he was lighting a smoke, maybe he was trying to throw another log on the fire.”
“He torched bad?” This was followed by another tearing leaf.
“His hands are gone. Lost three fingers and they’re not sure if he’ll be able to keep the rest. He was flailing around and ran through one of the plate-glass windows. Cut himself pretty bad.”
Frank whistled. “Without his hands, without his painting, the best thing that could have happened to your old man would have been if a big sliver of glass would have taken his head off. Without painting, not much of Jacob Coleridge is left. And what is, is pretty broken.”
“Frank, I could use your help. I need someone who’s honest. Someone I can trust. Someone who’s pragmatic.”
There was another pause as Frank took in some smoke, coughed one short rattle, and said, “Who says you can trust me? It’s not like your old man and I got along all that well.”
Jake closed his eyes, and dropped his head back onto the leather seat. It was a good question. It was more than good—it was valid. “Frank, cut the shit. I trust you and I don’t trust anyone. I need to deal with Dad’s life and with what’s happened to him. You wouldn’t believe how he’s been living.”
“Worse than before?”
“I found keys, paperbacks, and sod in the fridge. The house is an ashtray. There are empty bottles all over the place. The rooms are crammed with crap. Some of them are locked and I haven’t been able to get them open. The studio is bolted shut. There is a barricade in the bedroom.” Then he just stopped. If that hadn’t painted reason enough, nothing would. Besides, he hated feeling like he was asking for something almost as much as having no one else to ask.
“You have anyone else helping you out?”
“Kay is supposed to come up from the city but with this storm heading our way, I wouldn’t be surprised if she stayed in New York.”
“What kind of storm?” The question was calm, serious, and showed that Frank was obviously dragging his ass in the television-watching department.
“Category Five Cape Verde. They’re advising evacuation at this point. I wouldn’t be surprised if it came to a forced evacuation.”
Frank whistled and even that sound was dry, brittle. “Another Express.” The New England hurricane of 1938 had gone down in the books as the Long Island Express. “Stock up on water and batteries. Or better yet, get out, Jakey. Get your dad airlifted if you have to. Get him on an ambulance. Go home until this blows over.”
Jake wanted to listen to Frank, but the monkey in the wrench was the woman and child skinned up the beach. He had to be here. It wasn’t a question of choice. “I can’t, Frank. There’s other stuff I got going on.”
Frank’s voice grew distant, flat. “Work?”
“Yeah, work.” It happened again, he wanted to add.
“If you stay, put a survival kit together. Something that will keep you hydrated and fed and maybe even dry for a week if things get as bad as Kat
rina. The one thing on your side is that you are above sea level. Put a bag together. Handgun with extra ammunition. Seal a bunch of toilet paper in Ziplocs—nothing worse than wiping your ass with a sock. Good solid knife. A Ka-Bar or dive knife. Something you can use for a tool. Antiseptic ointment. Sutures. Gum.”
Jake closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and tried not to be dismissive. Frank was a pragmatic man, which is why Jake needed his help.
Frank had never been married but had always carried on long—and more or less monogamous—relationships with very distinctive women his entire adult life. Some younger, some older, some wealthier, some not. And the relationships had all seemed solid, pleasant. But the inevitable announcement would come that she had left during the night. A brief period of a little too much booze and not enough self-control would follow, and soon another striking woman would begin appearing at his side. Not long after Mia’s murder, Frank had moved away from Long Island. To hunt more. Spend more time with Nature. But Jake knew that he had moved to get away from the memories of all the good that had once been here. He had ended up in the Blue Hills of Kentucky.
Since the brothers were no longer talking, Jake had lost touch with his uncle and things had stayed broken until all those years later when Jake woke up in a quarter inch of cold shitty water on the kitchen floor. He had somehow found Frank. And asked for help.
Jake never forgot that Frank had saved his life. And he was so unused to asking anyone for help that he felt guilty about asking for it now. “This is Long Island, not Zimbabwe.” There was a fondness in his voice that he didn’t have for his own father. He spoke to his uncle a few times a year, mostly when the job was getting to him and he needed to get an outside perspective on the world. Jake had an enormous amount of respect for the man. “I’m a shooter, not a shootee.”
Frank laughed and it sounded like a diesel engine turning over. “Still, get yourself some supplies. You’re a smart boy, Jakey, always have been.” His laugh rattled to a stop. “Although I guess calling a forty-five-year-old man a boy is kind of an insult but when you’re as old as I am, anyone who doesn’t have to tape his balls up so they don’t swing into his knees is a kid.”