Jack of Spades

by James Hankins

  Spader finished his beer and closed the photo album. He needed to get some sleep. He only hoped he’d be able to, that thoughts of Oscar Wagner wouldn’t keep him up all night. Or thoughts of Olivia. Or of Galaxo.

  Half an hour later he was on his way across town to the Green Hills to close the place down.

  EIGHTEEN

  When Leon Fratello walked up to his desk, Spader had been sitting there for a little over an hour, typing up some notes for his file, essentially killing time until he felt it wasn’t too early in the morning to call Matthew Finneran to ask whether he’d attended camp as a kid. He would have called when he first got to work, but decided to wait a couple of hours, considering that the guy was lying in a hospital bed having been beaten nearly to death recently. Fratello opened a small notebook.

  “When he was in high school,” Fratello said, “Jeffrey Golding worked for two summers as a counselor at a place called Camp Wiki-Wah-Nee in Westwood, Massachusetts. Sounds like an Indian name.”

  “Native American,” Spader corrected.

  “That’s what I said. Spoke with Lisbon’s ex this morning, too. She thinks her husband might have gone to camp a couple of summers as a kid. She wasn’t positive, though, and she couldn’t come up with a name of any particular camp.”

  “You run Camp Wiki-Wah-Nee by her?”

  “No, John, because I’m stupid and lazy. Course I did. She said it could have been Wiki-Wah-Nee, but she wasn’t within a mile of being sure. Wherever he went, he was there ten or twelve years or so before he ever met her, and those Indian names do kind of sound alike, so I don’t blame her.”

  “Native American.”

  “I said that. And remember, she wasn’t even positive he went to camp at all.”

  But he might have, Spader thought, and a familiar tingling tickled the back of his neck. He felt it when he thought things were starting to come together in a case. Maybe they were onto something here.

  “And Yasovich? You talk to his sister?”

  “Woke her up in Idaho this morning. She was groggy and, to tell you the truth, she didn’t sound all there anyway. Yasovich was in his early sixties. She sounded older than that.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said Yasovich never attended a camp. And he never owned one, worked at one, or volunteered at one.”

  The tingle was fading. Maybe not much of a lead after all. “How about Pendleton?”

  “Just got off the phone with him. Says he never went to camp. Couldn’t afford it.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah, John. I don’t think this helps us. We got one victim who was a camp counselor for a summer or two, another who may or may not have even gone to camp as a kid, and if he did, it may or may not have been the same camp as the first victim. Odds are, they didn’t go to the same one. I took a quick look online, just to see what’s out there, and there are several dozen camps for kids in Massachusetts alone. That’s not counting all the camps in bordering states within a reasonable driving distance.”

  “That many?”

  Fratello nodded. “And besides those two victims, only one of which we’re even sure had anything to do with camp, we got two other victims—thirtysomething years apart in age, by the way—who had nothing to do with camp at all. This just doesn’t sound like the connection we’re looking for.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But thanks for looking into it.”

  Damn.

  Spader spent the rest of the day working various aspects of the case. He checked in with each member of the task force, getting reports, making suggestions when he could. He updated the case file. He spoke with their profiler, Special Agent Dwight W. Daniels, told him a little about the latest attack and said he’d be sending a packet of information and photos soon so Daniels could determine what new insight the Finneran attack and the resulting crime scene could provide on the killer. Spader spent most of his time that day, though, just thinking, trying to come up with a new angle, something they’d missed, anything that might lead to something useful. And he tried not to think about Oscar Wagner. When six o’clock rolled around, he hadn’t come up with a damn thing. That called for a beer.

  Spader toyed with a round cardboard coaster, spinning it like a huge coin on Ian Carmichael’s beautiful mahogany bar. The Green Hills wasn’t very crowded this evening, but it was early yet. Still, Spader would have liked it even more serene at the moment. Most of the patrons scattered throughout the pub were keeping to themselves, downing a liquid dinner alone or drinking in quiet pairs. A few guys were swapping loud, bullshit stories of successes on the golf course and in the bedroom, and Spader decided to finish his Bud—he hadn’t been in the mood for Guinness—and make it his last one, just in case he felt that buzzing in his head and his blood started to roar a little and he did or said something stupid.

  He’d been going over Matthew Finneran’s story in his head and a suspicion was growing. Galaxo was full of shit. He just wasn’t sure yet how full of shit he was. He had to work that out. That was what he was doing at the Green Hills. After wolfing down some McCrap at the Golden Arches on the corner, he’d come here around eight and had been here for nearly three hours, thinking things through, which would have been easier but for the idiots two tables away. Though business wasn’t brisk tonight, meaning Ian Carmichael could have kept the beers coming round after round to their table, he was slow with his tap and, after a few attempts to speed up service after the last couple of rounds, the loudmouths left, grumbling, presumably to irritate customers at other drinking establishments. When they left an hour ago, Spader nodded at Carmichael, who was leaning on the far end of the bar. With his uncanny bartender’s intuition, he not only knew that Spader wanted to be left alone tonight, and so had kept a respectful distance without even a hint from Spader, but also had sensed that the cop was doing important thinking, the kind that would be more productive without a bunch of jerks nearby broadcasting their frat-quality repartee for anyone within earshot to enjoy. Carmichael nodded back at Spader and winked.

  Spader spun the cardboard coaster again and watched it rotate until it fell flat. As he’d recently told Dunbar, he did good thinking at the firing range. He also thought pretty well with a little alcohol in him. He figured it freed his mind a little, let it wander places it might not otherwise go. So he’d had several beers and let the alcohol flow through his brain, along with facts and images from the Galaxo case. Memories and photographs of the crime scenes, pictures of the victims’ faces and injuries. Facts they knew about each victim—age, neighborhood, occupation. What they knew of Galaxo’s MO, how different the last two crimes were. The choices he offered his victims, his changing his mind from time to time. The messages written in blood he’d left at the last two scenes. Special Agent Dwight W. Daniels’s profile of their suspect. The more he thought about it all, the more the pieces didn’t seem to fit together. Not the way he was looking at them, anyway. He needed to start over, look at the case with fresh eyes. He needed to see the photographs again. He needed to read his reports, his notes. But he wasn’t going to pull all that out of his briefcase there at the Green Hills, spread pictures of the victims out on the bar, so he decided to go home. With Budweiser, facts, and bloody images swirling in his mind like ingredients in a blender, Spader got up from his bar stool, only a tiny bit unsteadily, waved good-bye to big Ian Carmichael, and walked out into the night.

  The drive home, though uneventful, was pretty irresponsible. Spader wasn’t drunk, but he’d had too much to have climbed behind the wheel. This damned case was making him nuts, clouding his judgment. He had tunnel vision, and not from the alcohol. All that seemed to matter was catching Galaxo. That kind of intense focus in his work could help him put bad guys behind bars, but not if he wrapped his car around a telephone pole while driving under the influence.

  He left his car in the parking garage and took the stairs to his second-floor apartment. Inside, he locked the door behind him, engaging both deadbolts, and reached for the light swit
ch on the wall to his right. His hand was almost to the switch when information swam through the beer in his head and finally reached his brain, information that should have registered far more quickly. Someone was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, just four feet to his right. The living room he was standing in was dark, but there was a light on in the kitchen, throwing the figure in the doorway into dark silhouette. Spader could see immediately that the shape of the man’s head was all wrong—too wide at the cheeks, a hint of two knobs on the forehead—and the fact that Galaxo himself was standing just four feet away from him registered a moment later.

  “Hi,” Galaxo said, and the squeaky alien voice was every bit as chilling as Spader had imagined, every bit as creepy as the psycho’s victims said it was.

  Spader could have tried for his gun, but Galaxo was too close. If he had a weapon, Spader wouldn’t have time to draw his own. So he took the quickest action he could think of. He rushed the intruder, lowering his shoulder, ramming it into Galaxo’s midsection, the force of his attack sending them both into the kitchen. Spader drove Galaxo back and was gratified to hear a pained breath explode out of the bastard as they slammed into the refrigerator.

  “Goddamn it,” Galaxo said in a breathless voice, “don’t—”

  The body Spader had felt under Galaxo’s dark sweatshirt was hard and lean and Spader could take no chances. He was forty-one years old, and though he was still in shape, he wasn’t the physical specimen this lunatic seemed to be. He couldn’t give the asshole a moment to catch his breath. He straightened up, threw back his fist, and punched Galaxo square in the face. “Ah, fuck!” Galaxo cried and Spader hit him again. But he hesitated a fraction of a second too long before taking a third swing, giving Galaxo time to gather his strength. He shoved Spader away from him, hard, and the cop backpedaled into the kitchen table. His leg caught on a wooden chair—similar to the kind to which Galaxo had taped some of his victims before removing parts of their bodies—and he crashed gracelessly to the floor on his ass. He scrambled to get off the floor, feeling horribly exposed as he did, fearing that any moment Galaxo would strike with a stun gun or knife or maybe a handgun.

  But Spader made it to his feet. Galaxo hadn’t moved from his spot against the fridge. He appeared to be unarmed. He had a hand to his mask, his head tipped back. Spader unsnapped his holster and drew his Glock. He pointed it at Galaxo’s chest and the thought of just pulling the goddamned trigger flitted across his mind.

  “Don’t move a fucking muscle,” he said.

  “God, that hurt,” Galaxo said in that weird, high-pitched vibrato.

  “Get down on the ground, asshole. Hands behind your back.”

  Galaxo took his hand away from his face and looked at Spader.

  Spader said, “Do it or I swear to God I’ll put three into your chest.”

  Galaxo raised his hands quickly and said, “Jesus Christ, Dad, don’t shoot!”

  Spader blinked. Dad?

  “It’s me. David. Your son.” The voice sounded just like that fucking cartoon character. Spader felt sweat trickle down his right temple. “Dad, please put the gun down.”

  Spader watched Galaxo’s hands closely and listened for something in the voice, something of David. He just couldn’t hear anything. The voice-changing technology was just too good.

  “Jesus Christ, Dad, you gave me key to your apartment at the beginning of the summer, remember? I found this mask in the living room and put it on for the hell of it. I didn’t even hear you come in.”

  Spader thought he heard a small sound just then come from somewhere in the apartment. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard it. Was it David, struggling against bonds of duct tape, screaming for help into tape across his mouth? If so, that might explain how Galaxo knew about David’s key. But maybe Spader hadn’t heard anything at all.

  “I’m taking this mask off,” Galaxo said.

  “I said don’t move.” Another bead of sweat found its way into Spader’s eyes and he blinked it away.

  “Geez, Dad, don’t you know your own son?”

  Spader thought he heard something in the voice that time. An inflection of David’s, maybe. Just maybe. He started to lower his gun, keeping his eyes on Galaxo’s hands. Galaxo took a step forward and began to lower his arms. Spader jerked the gun back up and Galaxo’s hands shot back into the air. This time his left sleeve slipped down his wrist, exposing a band of silver, and Spader recognized the watch he’d given David two Christmases ago. It was David, after all. But wait. If Galaxo broke in and subdued David, he easily could have taken his watch. Shit.

  “What did I give you for your birthday this year?” Spader asked.

  “What? My birthday? You gave me a hundred-dollar check.”

  Spader lowered his gun, then holstered it. David reached up and pulled off the Galaxo mask. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead and blood ran from his nose. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  “David, I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “You throw a pretty good punch, Dad,” David said. He walked past his father, dropping the mask on the table as he left the kitchen. Spader followed him into the living room. He took a big breath and tried not to think about how close a call that had been, how that stupid mask almost made him shoot his own son.

  “David, I’m really sorry. I didn’t know you were here, and when I saw you in that mask…”

  “Yeah, I get it. I gotta go, though.”

  “Jesus, cut me some slack, will you? I’m trying to find a killer who wears that thing and I come home and find you in my kitchen with it on.”

  “Yeah, well, I saw it on the table and didn’t think it would hurt to try it on. Boy, was I wrong.”

  “David, the guy I’m after wears this mask. Not too bright, son.”

  “Good parenting, Dad. First punch me out, then insult me.”

  David wiped more blood from his nose and turned toward the door.

  “Wait,” Spader said, “you must have come to talk, right? Sit down. We’ll have a couple of beers.”

  “You got that bleary look in your eyes, like you already had a few. Maybe that’s why you almost shot me.”

  “David, come on, sit down. We’ll talk—”

  “Not really in the mood anymore. Some other time.”

  “At least let me clean you up.”

  David laughed cynically. “You want to take care of me now, Dad? That’s pretty funny.”

  He disengaged the deadbolts with two sharp clacks and left, pulling the door shut behind him. Spader almost went after him, but figured there wasn’t much point in it at that moment. Maybe he’d embarrassed his son by getting the better of him physically. Or maybe the kid was more scared than he let on—no one likes to have a gun pointed at him. Or maybe David’s feelings were hurt by the fact that his father didn’t recognize his own son’s voice, even behind the mask. Whatever his reason, David didn’t feel like talking now. And though Spader would have liked to have left things on a better note, the truth was that he didn’t feel like talking to David tonight either. All they would do was rehash the same arguments, neither understanding the other’s point of view. And, in the end, Spader wouldn’t change his mind and David wouldn’t forgive him for it. More importantly, though, Spader had some thinking to do about Galaxo.

  He sat at his kitchen table with his Galaxo file spread out around him—photos, notes, reports. He’d put on a pot of coffee—caffeinated, despite it being nearly two in the morning—and was into his second cup. He’d thought about what David had said, about the alcohol in him contributing to his actions earlier, when he’d attacked his son. He didn’t think so. He’d entered his apartment and saw the face of the man he’d been hunting for weeks—well, the mask, anyway—and he reacted as any cop would have. Still, David’s point was just concerning enough that Spader wasn’t in the mood for a beer. In fact, he’d have to give some serious thought to whether he should cut far back on his alcohol intake in general.

  He sipped his coffe
e and thought about the case. The jigsaw pieces weren’t fitting. So he turned some of them around, examined them from different angles, paying particular attention to some things that had been bothering him for a while now, nagging his subconscious from time to time. He took another sip of coffee, letting his eyes drift over the photos and documents spread out before him. After a while, a few little lightbulbs snapped on in his head—not blinding flashes, though, more like those little blinking Christmas tree bulbs. But it was a start.

  He rearranged the puzzle pieces in his head and eventually a startling picture began to emerge. In fact, it seemed impossible at first. But the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. It still seemed impossible, though. But if he could just get past that, he thought, he might be able to close this case.

  NINETEEN

  “Jesus Christ, John,” Dunbar said, his mouth full of hot dog. Spader was just waiting for bright-yellow mustard to drip on his friend’s white shirt. “First you throw Wagner at me, which was crazy enough, and now this?”

  “Okay,” Spader said, “Wagner didn’t pan out. I never said I was sure about it. I just said we should look into him.”

  “And now?”

  “I feel a lot more strongly about this.”

  “But Stanley Pendleton’s a cripple. He’s in a wheelchair, for crying out loud. In case you don’t recall, none of the witnesses mentioned Galaxo wheeling himself around as he cut them up.”

  They were walking off their lunch while they were eating it. It was humid and hot, close to ninety, and it was just past noon, and Spader couldn’t understand how Dunbar could eat a hot dog in this weather. What was worse, it was a 7-Eleven hot dog, the kind that spun on those rollers all day, looking slick and greasy. After Dunbar grabbed a Hostess Twinkie for dessert, they’d gone to Subway, where Spader got himself a tuna sandwich. Now they were walking along Washington Street, sticking to the shade wherever possible.