Jack of Spades

by James Hankins

  Spader heard faint footsteps again, moving away from him, then they were lost to his ears. Either they were too far away or Pendleton and Olivia had stopped. Spader looked around. The floor was broken into several different areas, separated by walls and doorways. Pendleton could be anywhere. He could move into a corner, do something terrible to Olivia—something disfiguring, something horribly painful and horribly permanent, maybe something fatal—with a quick flick or two of a knife before Spader got anywhere near him. But Spader remembered the specific tortures Pendleton had devised for each of his victims and was betting on the fact that he had something particular in mind for Olivia. This was, after all, his final act. He’d want it to be just right. Spader figured he’d try either to get to a room where he could lock himself in and do what he wanted with Olivia before anyone could get to him, or he’d try to take Spader out so he’d have more time with her. If he was smart, he wouldn’t try to go toe-to-toe with Spader, who was trained for this kind of thing. But Pendleton was desperate and probably not thinking entirely clearly. How he’d try to play it was a toss-up.

  Where the hell were the local cops, by the way? Spader already knew they were responding to bogus calls—maybe shots fired in various locations by Pendleton as he sped toward the library, as well emergency calls for help Pendleton himself had almost certainly made. He probably used his own cell phone and then Olivia’s so the dispatcher would see that the calls came from different phones. But when would the cops realize the emergencies weren’t real?

  Spader was about to call Beverly dispatch again, tell the dispatcher that he saw Galaxo standing in the middle of the library atop a mound of headless bodies with a bloody chain saw in his hand, anything to get them there faster, when he heard a whisper from somewhere to his right, a footstep on carpet. He whirled and clicked on his flashlight and its beam split the dark. Galaxo stood revealed in its light, forty feet away, beside a long line of bookshelves. His fucking yellow mask grinning, its eyes catching the light, sparkling emerald green, twinkling merrily like that stupid goddamned alien’s eyes on TV. Olivia was standing in front of him, silver-gray tape covering her mouth, Pendleton’s left arm encircling her neck. His right hand held a gun to her temple. He was dragging her backward. Spader raised his gun.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Galaxo squeaked.

  Spader couldn’t risk a shot. “You’re going to die,” he said.

  “Who isn’t?”

  He turned the gun on Spader and started squeezing off shots. Spader flung himself to the floor behind a book cart and heard another two bullets thud into the books waiting to be reshelved in the morning. Sounded like a few weren’t going back on the shelves any time soon. Spader waited a moment, then leaned to his left, around the cart, and felt another bullet sizzle past his head at the same time he heard the crack of Pendleton’s gun again. Spader snapped his head back. Shit!

  “Olivia?” he called. “You okay?”

  He thought he might have heard a faint grunt.

  “She’s not ignoring you, Spader,” came the high-pitched vibrato reply. Galaxo was speaking quietly, trying not to give away his location. “I’m sure she’d answer if she still had a tongue.”

  Lying motherfucker. Still, Spader’s heart beat faster. He wiped sweat from his forehead. It must have been eighty degrees outside, despite the late hour, with ninety-percent humidity. The air inside the library was stifling. Musty old books. Air conditioner turned off. A drop of sweat rolled down his cheek.

  He hated the thought of Olivia in Pendleton’s hands, the same hands that had committed the atrocities he was responsible for. He wanted to simply break from cover, make a mad rush toward where he thought Galaxo was, flashlight off, just charge into the darkness, counting on Pendleton to miss with a panicked shot and counting on his own reflexes and skill to use that shot to pinpoint the fucker’s location and shoot him down. But it was too risky. Pendleton might still be using Olivia as a shield. Or a lucky shot could take Spader down and maybe out, which would leave Olivia at his mercy until the locals finally arrived, whenever the hell that would be. Or Pendleton could simply put a bullet in Olivia’s brain.

  Before Spader could do anything, he had to get out from behind the book cart. He was just readying himself for a dash to new cover when he heard a sound from some distance away, a jangle of metal, like a ring full of keys clinking together. They shook. Then shook again. A pause, then they jangled once again, louder this time, almost desperately, if that was possible. Sounded to Spader like Pendleton had reached a door he mistakenly thought he had a key for.

  Spader dashed from the book cart to the safety of a bookshelf. He noticed that he’d reached a corner of the library. Walls to his left and right and a wall at the far end. The only open end was where Spader was standing. If Pendleton was indeed in this area and couldn’t get through the door at the other end of it, then he was trapped.

  “Sounds like you hit a dead end,” Spader called into the darkness.

  The keys rattled off a metal bookshelf and fell with an anticlimactically small sound to the thin carpet. Pendleton had thrown them.

  “Nowhere to go, Stanley,” Spader said, “except the jail or the morgue. It’s finally your turn to choose.”

  Galaxo’s strange voice oozed out of the shadows in little more than a mechanical whisper, still trying not to give himself away. “I choose the morgue then, for both Olivia and me.”

  Spader surveyed this corner of the library. It was a rectangular space, maybe sixty feet by thirty, with Spader standing at one of the shorter ends. A big skylight stretched across the entire area, allowing pale moonlight to filter down. Spader could see row after row of bookshelves bisected by a central aisle. There was also an aisle running between the side walls and the ends of the bookshelves. The shelves were laid out kind of like the way pews are arranged in a church: stretching away from him was shelf after shelf, each creating a twelve-foot-long corridor between them, one to the left of the central aisle, one to the right, a corridor he’d have to pass as he walked toward the other end of the area. Galaxo could be hiding in any of those corridors.

  He probably had his gun to Olivia’s head so she wouldn’t grunt or stamp her foot and betray their location. Or he’d chloroformed her by now and was holding her in front of him, waiting for Spader to give him a clear shot. The one thing Spader knew for sure was that Pendleton couldn’t move fast enough to make a run for it. He’d never slip past Spader to the relative safety of other areas of the library. No, he was cornered and now it was either him or Spader. And cornered animals were the fiercest. Especially those with knives and a hostage. Spader needed to keep him talking, distract him from hurting Olivia while maybe giving Spader a chance to sneak up on him.

  “Look, Stanley,” Spader said. “You’ve obviously been making a statement these past few weeks. But I’m still not quite getting it. No one is. Not the public and certainly not your victims. How about filling me in?”

  Galaxo’s creepy fucking whisper crawled from the darkness again. “You’re taking a big chance with Olivia here, Spader. She may have suffered badly, but she’s alive. You want to keep her that way, back out of here, go across the library to the windows on the far side so I can see you. Once you’re gone, I’ll let her go. You go your way, I’ll go mine.”

  Pendleton was lying, Spader knew. He wanted Spader out of the way so he could have more time with Olivia, more time to do whatever it was he planned to do to her.

  “Still there, Spader?” Galaxo whispered. “Guess you don’t care for this lovely little thing after all.”

  His damned whisper made it difficult to pinpoint his location. And all the books were deadening the sound. He could have been anywhere. Five rows away or two, hiding on the left side of the room or the right. Spader said nothing. He eased over to the left-hand wall, readied himself, then spun and shined his flashlight beam the length of the wall, past the rows of shelves. No one. He moved toward the center aisle, hurried across it, his beam illuminating nothing but the
door at the far end as he did, and made his way to the right-hand wall. He peered around and shined his light the length of the area again. Again, no one.

  So Galaxo was in one of the short, twelve-foot rows. Spader estimated maybe nine or ten rows of shelves on each side of the room. Meaning Galaxo had something like twenty different places he could hide.

  “Come on, Stanley, what’s this all about, exactly? You want me to know. You know you do. You want everyone to know. So just tell me. What did all these people do to you?”

  Spader looked at the shelf nearest him, hoping to be able to see over the books on a shelf, into the next row. Unfortunately, the shelves had back walls. All he could do was move from one row to the next until he found Pendleton, who had a gun and his ex-wife, who had position and knowledge of the terrain, who was desperate and crazy and certainly knew that his life was over. He was either about to die or about to begin a lifetime of incarceration. He had nothing more to lose, which wasn’t good for Olivia. Just when Spader was certain Galaxo planned to stay silent, the creepy voice drifted in a whisper from the shadows.

  “All they did to me, Spader, was ruin my life.”

  “How?” Spader slipped around one end of the first row of shelves and trained his flashlight and gun along the row. Nothing but books.

  A moment of silence, then a robotic wheeze that must have been a sigh, then, “I was eight years old. At summer camp, as you know. We were in the woods. The counselors left us alone. Lovely Olivia here was nowhere in sight, and the others, Jeff Golding and Alison Greenwell, had disappeared.”

  Alison Greenwell? Spader thought. Who the hell’s Alison Greenwell?

  Galaxo was still talking. “Just me and some of the kids were left. We were fooling around in a little clearing, by a little gorge. A stream ran by at the bottom. It was pretty. One of the kids found a fallen tree stretching across the gorge. And Mike Yasovich, one of the bigger boys, a real show-off, walked across the tree and back again. I was scared just watching him.”

  Spader kept moving. He slid as silently as he could to the next row, which was also empty. Then his foot scraped on the carpet.

  “Keep coming, Spader,” Galaxo whispered. “While you do, I’m going to slice open pretty Olivia’s cheek.” A pause, then, “There, all done. Might as well do the other cheek while I’m waiting for you. Or, of course, you could turn around get the fuck out of here. Maybe save your ex-wife’s life.”

  Spader peered down the next row. Nothing but books.

  “No?” Galaxo said quietly. “Okay, then, here goes the other cheek. Ah…that looks better. Symmetrical now, both cheeks flayed open.”

  Spader still couldn’t tell where Pendleton was. Even ignoring the distortion caused by the mask, Pendleton’s voice was different than he remembered it from his interviews with the man. Even laced with obscenities, his speech was a touch more refined, his grammar and diction a little better. Spader realized his aw-shucks style had been nothing but an act.

  Spader made his way past the third row. A small tearing sound, fabric being cut, carried through the darkness.

  “I just opened her femoral artery, Spader,” Galaxo said. “Slit open her lovely thigh, right up near her goodies. The blood’s really pumping here, Detective. You should probably go get her some help.”

  Spader tried to block out Pendleton’s words. The fourth row was empty. He dragged his forearm across his face, wiping away the sweat. Because Pendleton couldn’t know from which end Spader would approach his row when he finally reached it, or whether he’d come up the center aisle, the bastard was probably in the middle of one of the rows. The question was, which row? And which side of the room, for that matter?

  “What happened after Mike Yasovich crossed the tree, Stanley?”

  Spader heard faint robotic breaths, then, “He started daring us all to try it. And the other kids, stupid fucking kids, they did it. Mike was a leader. The girls liked him and the boys wanted to be like him, so when he pushed, they went. Fucking sheep.”

  “And then you tried it?”

  “Fuck no. I ran to find our counselors, the ones who were supposed to be watching us. The ones who were supposed to keep us from doing stupid, dangerous things like that. I figured they’d tell us to stop, that they’d be mad and take us back to camp. Only when I found Jeff and Alison in the woods, she’s kneeling in front of him and…his thing…is in her mouth. She’s giving him a blowjob, for Chrissake, while kids are trying to kill themselves on that stupid log. I didn’t know what she was doing then, but I knew later. And when Jeff opens his eyes and sees me, he yells at me to get back with the others.”

  Spader noticed that Pendleton had slipped into present tense. Part of his mind was back in that clearing, which was good. It kept that part out of the present, out of this library, and away from Olivia.

  Spader kept moving, slowly, silently. He decided to vary his approach to each aisle in case Pendleton was trying to track his movements. If he kept walking up any of the aisles, the asshole might be able to simply lean around the bookshelf and start firing. So Spader approached one row from the left end, another from the center aisle, then maybe the left end again, then maybe he’d creep to the far side of the room and sneak around from the right.

  He stepped quietly. The thin carpet masked his footfalls. Of course, it would do the same for Pendleton’s.

  Spader cleared the fifth row.

  “So I go back to the fallen tree,” Pendleton said quietly. “And everyone had gone across and back. Everyone but me. Even Maddy Wollner went and she’s a girl. So they all start in on me, trying to get me to go across. Well, Mike and Pete and Maddy do. Matt Finneran just stands there, watching. They’re merciless. They call me names. Chicken and pussy and fag. The worst is fucking Mike Yasovich. If he’ll just stop, they all will. I know it.”

  Spader moved to the sixth row, which was empty, too. Just three more rows, he now saw. He slipped toward the center aisle and peered around the corner. No one.

  “So I cut out his tongue.”

  Pendleton was conflating the past and the present now. He was also confusing his victims. Mike Yasovich had died years ago in a car accident. But Pendleton needed his revenge. So he took it symbolically, using the boy’s father as a surrogate victim, cutting out his tongue because he couldn’t cut out Mike’s.

  Spader hurried, as quietly as he could, to the other end of the row. He peered around the end, saw no one, then looked into the seventh row. Again, no one. “And Matthew Finneran?” he asked, speaking quietly.

  “Asshole,” Pendleton hissed. “They’re bullying me, all of them now, except Matt. He’s just standing there. He’s not defending me, he’s not telling them to shut up. No, he’s just watching. So I cut out his eyes.”

  Spader crept between the books. He was nearing the other end when Pendleton continued in his hoarse whisper, “So finally I can’t take it anymore, can’t take their teasing. I’m crying now. Those assholes make me cry, goddamn it. So I start to go across that stupid tree.” Pendleton’s speech had changed. Sometimes he spoke with the grammar and vocabulary of an adult, sometimes with that of an eight-year-old kid. “I’m three, maybe four steps out, and my foot slips. And I fall. And now I’m hanging on, looking down at the stream way below. And I look up and see Maddy. She’s the closest one to me. She’s right fucking there! So I reach up for her, thinking she’ll hold out her hand. If she does, I’ll be safe. I know I will. But she doesn’t, the little bitch. Her stupid hands just hang there.”

  So more than two decades later he tried to saw off those hands. Spader reached the aisle in the middle of the row. He wanted to keep Pendleton talking but didn’t want to betray how far he’d gotten, how close he must be to Pendleton. Fortunately, Stanley was too far along in his story to stop whispering it now.

  “So I look over at Pete, Pete Lisbon, and I tell him to run for help, to go find the counselors. And does he? Nope. The jerk just stands there. Doesn’t move his feet one inch. So I cut them off. He deserved it. Th
ey all did.”

  Spader was getting close. He had to be. Only a couple of rows left. Still, was Pendleton in the next row or the last one? Was he on the right side or the left?

  “Just like Olivia here.” He didn’t whisper that time. He spoke clearly, in that chilling, alien voice. “She deserved everything I’ve already done to her, everything I’m about to do.” Pendleton was suddenly back in the moment now, Spader knew, which wasn’t good for Olivia, or for Spader. One way or another, things were about to come to an end.

  Spader slid with his back against the bookshelf, ready to lean into the left-hand side of the next row, when movement flashed from the right set of shelves, maybe seven feet away from him—a blur of black clothing, a streak of yellow, coming straight for him.

  With his senses on high alert, with the adrenaline pumping through him, Spader experienced a time slow-down, like he’d experienced two years ago in Eddie Rivers’s apartment. His eyes had time to see what was coming, his brain time to register it.

  Galaxo was charging from concealment, his yellow mask grinning, a weapon of some kind in his hand. Spader trained his own weapon on Galaxo as the bastard kept coming, stumbling almost on awkwardly moving legs. Just four feet away now. In that surreal moment, Spader felt in total control. A dozen thoughts shot through his mind at once, yet he processed them all. The piece of shit was in his sights, the sick fuck who’d tortured and killed innocent people, who’d assaulted David and done God only knew what to Olivia, who’d indirectly led to the death of Oscar Wagner. He was rushing Spader, and Spader could end all of this right now. He was an expert shot with excellent reflexes. He had his gun pointed at Galaxo’s right shoulder. He could pull the trigger and take him down, all but ensuring he’d survive to face trial—a trial where some past procedural mistake, or some highly skilled defense attorney, or perhaps a misguided jury might prevent justice from being done. Or he could move the barrel a few inches to the right and take a center shot. Maybe the fucker would live, maybe not. Or, finally, he could do what he’d failed to do two years ago. He could move his aim a little higher and to the right, take a head shot, and end this. He could make the shot. He had no doubt about it. But in doing so he’d cross a line, the kind a person should hope to be forced to cross once in a lifetime, at most.