by Shawn Ryan
"That's great," Jason said. "Maybe somebody saw the car while it was parked on the side of the road."
"We can hope," Bibb said.
Jason hung up and told Badger the new information.
"It's a start," Badger said.
Captain Silverman, his face flinty and hard, opened their door. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
"I've been on the phone all day with county commissioners, reporters, worried PTA members, school officials, everybody but the goddammed dog catcher," he said wearily. "And if Anson Quintard has called once, he's called a dozen times. I hope to hell you guys have some good news for me."
"Not much," Badger said, telling Silverman what the lab reported,
"That's pretty lame," Silverman said.
Jason was leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling with his fingers locked behind his head.
"Captain, unless we get a lucky break—I mean something that helps us nail a suspect—we're going to be up to our necks in dead children," he finally said. "This guy is just warming up.
"In a perverted sort of way, maybe that'll be good," Jason continued with a grimace. "If he does a lot of them, it means he can't plan as meticulously. He'll be bound to make a mistake somewhere."
"Yeah, but how many kids are we going to lose before he does?" Silverman asked.
"A lot, I'm afraid," Jason sighed. "A whole fucking lot."
The door opened and Norman Bibb walked in. His face was pale and drawn and he glanced around the room as though he were looking at the walking dead.
"What is it, Norm?" Captain Silverman said.
"Uh, I've got something here for Jazz," he said, holding up a piece of paper in his hands. "Something we just got back a few minutes ago, after I talked to you."
"And?" Jason said.
"Um, you know we took prints off that stuffed frog we found. You know, standard procedure to find out who's been handling it."
"So?"
"So we only found one set of prints on it, Jazz. We ran them through CAL-ID and nothing came out, so on a hunch, I ran them down the list of kids' fingerprints we have from mall and school sign-ups and stuff like that."
"Goddammit, Norm, tell us what you've got!" Badger said, his patience gone.
"Okay, okay," Bibb said, swallowing hard. He turned to face Jason.
"The prints were your daughter's, Jazz."
Chapter 11
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Feeling, as Badger put it, "shot at and missed, shit at and hit," Jason arrived home a little before midnight. With no sleep in almost two days, his body functioned on a combination of untapped reserves and innumerable cups of coffee.
He hadn't eaten and still didn't feel much like it, but knew he needed something, so he stopped by the grocery store on the way home. He unloaded the bologna, bread, mayonnaise, and mustard from his one bag and placed them on the counter. Smearing large amounts of mayo and mustard on the bread, he made two sandwiches, adding two slices of bologna to each. Pulling a glass from the cabinet, he filled it with ice and reached into one of the grocery sacks for a bottle of Coke.
Carrying the glass in his left hand and the sandwiches in the palm of his right, he walked into the living room and plopped down hard on the couch, ignoring the squeal of badly treated springs. Setting the sandwiches on the couch arm he grabbed the remote control off the cushion and turned on the twenty-five-inch Sony color TV nestled across the room. He wasn't planning on watching anything in particular, he had too much to think about for that, he just wanted some background noise.
Hunger, however, overtook his need to think and he wolfed the sandwiches, washing them down with swigs of Coke. He knew he hadn't eaten in a while, but was surprised at how he practically inhaled the food. He thought about making another sandwich, but it was almost one and he decided against it.
After turning off the TV, he stopped by the kitchen, he refilled his glass with Coke, then went to his bedroom. He put the glass on the nightstand, making sure to use a National Geographic for a coaster so there'd be no rings, and sat down on the bed to take off his shoes. Once again, his eyes drifted to the photo of Sarah and Claire at the beach.
Oh God, what was going on with this case? he wondered.
There was no doubt that the frog was his daughter's. Even if he wasn't sure upon seeing it, the fingerprints proved it beyond doubt. Still, Bibb had noted that it was extremely unusual for fingerprints to remain intact for eighteen months, since they are based on body oils and moisture, which evaporate in time. But the prints were there and there was no doubt they were Claire's, so Bibb attributed the whole thing to a fluke of the frog being buried underground in a sealed, watertight casket. There was no other rational explanation, he said.
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
"Oh fuck you, Sherlock," he said out loud. "Get out of my head."
The question now was: How had the son-of-a-bitch killer gotten the frog? Her grave was undisturbed. Could the bastard have done that neat a job getting in and out? At first he thought the toy might have been taken from Claire's coffin before she was buried, but a call to the funeral home dispelled those thoughts. The funeral director, Mr. Dollorand, said he personally oversaw the funeral and would swear in court that the toy had been inside the casket.
That left the first premise, but the thought of some maniac rooting around in his daughter's casket almost made the sandwiches come up. I have to catch this killer, he thought. I have to. If only for my own sanity, if only to find out who and why. If only for Claire.
It didn't help that Claire Medlocke died when she was only a couple of years younger than Amanda and Matthew.
It was Halloween. Sarah and Claire were on their way to a school play in which Claire was to be the star attraction, a witch intent on spoiling Halloween for the other children.
Despite the thrill of the evening's thespian challenge, seven-year-old Claire was more afraid she wouldn't finish in time for trick-or-treats.
"Honey, you'll be out of there by six-thirty," Sarah told her. "Daddy and I will take you trick-or-treating right after. You won't even have to change your costume."
Jason was supposed to meet them at home, then drive them to the school. But a late-breaking batch of paperwork—Captain Silverman wanted those reports now, by God—delayed him. He called Sarah and told her he'd meet them at the play.
The drunk crossed the center line only half a mile from the school entrance, smashing headfirst into the Chevy Nova carrying Sarah and Claire. In a terrible irony, neither Claire nor Sarah was killed instantly, but the drunk was, leaving Jason with no place to aim his anger. "At least if the bastard had lived," Jason kept saying, "I could have made sure he spent the rest of his life rotting in some jail cell."
Sarah died within twenty-four hours of the wreck, never regaining consciousness. Police at the scene said she must have flung herself across Claire at the last second, hoping to lessen the blow to her.
Claire lingered horribly in the intensive care unit for ten days, coming in and out of a coma. Even when she was conscious, the extent of her injuries forced doctors to keep her heavily sedated. They didn't expect her to survive, but neither did they want her to suffer.
Jason almost lost his mind. He wanted to talk to his baby girl, to say goodbye, although he never thought about it in those exact terms. He only knew he had lost his wife; why must he lose his daughter, too? But he couldn't stand to see her suffer, so he went along with doctor's orders. He never spoke to her again.
Sarah's parents flew in from Texas. Jason's father flew down from Boston. All three spent hours each day trying to make Jason eat and rest. He refused, eating twice and sleeping a total often hours in a week.
On the eighth day, Stephen sat down beside his son on the orange Naugahyde-and-chrome sofa in the hospital's waiting room. Jason's eyes seemed nonexistent, having sunk into the blue-black depths of the sockets. His hair was unwashed and uncombed. He had changed cloth
es once in the eight days. He smelled like hell.
"Jason, you've gotta go home. You need sleep," his father said for maybe the hundredth time. "You'll die if you don't," he added for the first.
No response.
"Please listen to me. It's not your fault," Stephen continued. "There's nothing you could've done. If you had been with them, you'd only be dead, too."
"I wish I was."
"No, you don't. You think you do now, but you won't later. Trust me, I know. Your life is not over."
"Dad, I've just lost my whole family. How the fuck do you expect me to feel? Happy? Like a million bucks? Like dancing?"
The words stung Stephen in their intensity, but his only response was a quick blinking of his eyes and a deep breath.
"Jason, I was only six years older than you are when your mother died. Believe me, I know how you feel."
Jason looked up, his eyes swimming in agony. It took him several seconds to speak.
"I'm sorry, Dad," he finally said. "I know that. It's just that I… I don't know… I can't think straight. I feel like my whole life has been swept away by a giant hand. And I don't understand why. There's nothing left. I just want to be left alone."
"Sorry. I can't do that. And neither can anyone else who loves you. You're tired, beat. You can't carry the weight of the world on your shoulders any longer. Let me take some. I'll stay here while you get some sleep. Go home. There's nothing you can do anymore."
Jason said nothing. He wrung his hands and looked out the window at the dark gray clouds of November. Frost glistened along the windows' edges as winter approached with solemn assurance. Yet the gloominess of the day was light compared to Jason's despair. Tears welled up in his eyes, then spilled forth onto his cheeks.
"I can't," he said. "Suppose Claire wakes up and wants to see me? Suppose she… she…" But he couldn't bring himself to say the word. "Oh God, Dad, I don't know what I'm going to do," he said as he hunched over, racked with soul-jarring sobs.
A shuddering heave shook Jason's body as he sat on his bed eighteen months later. He took a gulp of Coke to loosen his throat.
God, I'm still not sure how I made it, he thought. Hell, I'm still not sure I have made it. I may lose it at any second.
Despite the bleakness of the memory, Jason felt his chest filling with warmth as he recalled his father's kind, loving presence that day in the hospital.
Thank God for Dad. I'd have been a rubber room resident for sure if not for him.
He remembered his father leaning over and hugging his shoulders as he cried in the hospital. Cradled in his father's arms, Jason felt a sense of serenity washing over him as his father stroked his hair. Just the memory was comforting.
I guess that's when I fell asleep, Jason thought. Weird, though. I was tired, but I sure wasn't sleepy. I didn't think I'd ever sleep again.
With perfect clarity, Jason recalled his father's hand slowly moving across his forehead and a comforting glow spreading over his body like a warm washcloth in a loving hand. He suddenly realized it was similar to the tingling he experienced when his emotions ran high, a bit more soothing but essentially the same.
He tried to pursue the memory further, but the screen went blank, clicking off as if someone had thrown a switch. Jason figured that must have been when he fell asleep. A nagging question tugged at the corners of his mind, then disappeared.
"Well," he said, shaking his head. "I may not have been tired then, but I sure am now."
Standing up, he shed his clothes in a pile by the bed then flicked off the nightstand light. He lay on top of the sheet, the covers remaining at his feet. The strenuous day caught up with him quickly and Jason felt his eyelids turn leaden. As he drifted to sleep, one last thought entered his mind: What did Dad do to me that day? Then sleep enveloped him.
The red digital readout of his alarm clock read three o'clock when Jason sat upright in bed, gasping for breath. Sweat flowed off his body in streams, soaking the sheet. His hair was glued to his head in a soaked mop. Although his eyes were closed, he shook his head back and forth, as if he were walking through a wall of cobwebs.
With a small cry, he flung himself forward, landing on his hands and knees on the mattress. Sitting up straight, he threw his hands out, crossing his arms in front of his face as though warding off an attacker. Terror passed over his face and he threw himself backward, a muted scream leaving his lips as he tumbled off the bed, cracking his head on the baseboard of the wall.
His eyes sprang open, clear and bright. He looked at his legs, his heels still on the mattress, then glanced around.
"Damn," he said. "Damn, damn, damn. What a dream."
He couldn't remember all of it, just terrifying glimpses. Blood, fire, faces, screams. It was jumbled, didn't make any sense. Even as he drew his heels off the bed, the dream was fading. By the time he got to the bathroom, it was gone.
Sleepily, he stood over the toilet and peed, then turned to the sink to splash some water on his blushing, sweaty face. Droplets dripping off his nose, he grabbed a nearby hand towel and, dabbing at the wetness, cast his eyes on the mirror before him.
Deep in the mirror's recesses, a small green glow appeared. Jason first thought it was the reflection of something behind him and whirled around. Only the white shower curtain stared back at him. When he turned back to the mirror, the viridian glow was bigger.
No, not bigger. Closer.
He stepped away from the mirror and the glow picked up speed, coming toward him in a streamlined jet. Jason stood mesmerized for a moment, wondering if he still was dreaming, then decided he didn't want to find out one way or the other. Spinning on his heels, he started to run. Too late. The glow erupted from the mirror, spewing a vast cloud that swallowed Jason and stopped him in his tracks.
From inside the cloud, Jason saw everything through a diseased greenish hue. The white porcelain of the toilet, sink, and bathtub resembled yellow-green jade. The tile floor looked as if someone had coated it with vomit. The sick discoloration made him feel ill.
Prickling in his fingertips made him glance down and a cry of shock rose in his throat His fingertips were absorbing the emerald cloud.
As the glow moved under his fingernails and into his hands, he could see the blood vessels beneath the skin take on an iridescent green. Holding his arms outstretched, he watched as the green flowed op his forearms and past his elbows. He grasped his right shoulder with his left hand, trying to stem the flow, but the sickening greenness moved as if his hand weren't there.
He suddenly realized it was aiming for his brain. And he couldn't stop it. He stood still, fearfully waiting for the green-tinted blood to reach its destination. There was no doubt when it did.
A rush of visions erupted in his head, collapsing him to his hands and knees. His mind's eye was drenched in an onslaught of horrid pictures. Blood, fire, faces, screams.
He shook his head to rid it of the images. No use. He closed his eyes, threw his bands up and covered them with his palms, but the parade of horror continued. He opened his eyes and the visions remained. His whole existence revolved around the world within his mind.
There were vast fires, screaming people trapped inside. No, not just trapped, put there on purpose. To burn, to die, to repent. Skin charred, then was peeled back with iron hooks to reveal fresh, sensitive muscle. Howls rent the air.
He saw chunks of iron, spikes jutting on four sides, shoved into people's mouths. Confess, demon, confess. Spikes thrust through the roof of the mouth and into the blood-rich, tender tissue of the brain. The demon died, his guilt assured. Or the demon lived, his guilt assured.
Jason saw hundreds, thousands, of people dying. On the rack, joints popping as they stretched beyond their breaking point; in the pillories, cat-o'-nine-tails lashing their backs, blood splashing the grinning face of the whip wielder. Innocent people were swept up in mob rule, carried away by fear and hate.
The images abruptly changed and individual faces flew by, each unknown, yet each fam
iliar. Men, all men. Many were dressed in ancient clothes: tricornered hats, powdered wigs, high-necked blouses. Some faces were peaceful, others screamed in agony.
Who are these people? What do they mean to me?
The images changed again, combined into one. The familiar faces were in the flames, in the iron devices, on the racks, and in the pillories. Tortured. Racked with agony. Dying. The pain scorched into Jason's body, shredding his nerves. It was hideous, horrible, yet a sense of unendurable sadness washed over him. What did they do?
He flung his arms upward, crossing them in front of his face to ward off the horror. An anguish-filled scream burst from his mouth as he threw himself backward to get away, to hide, to leave this pain-drenched place. His head cracked against the side of the tub and he collapsed to the floor.
He awoke on the floor of his bedroom, the back of his head aching where it had just hit the baseboard. His heels rested on the mattress. He wondered how long he had been there and looked at his alarm clock. The time read three o'clock.
"Damn," he said. "Damn, damn, damn. What a dream."
Hadn't he just said that? It sounded awfully familiar.
Lowering his legs from the bed, he slowly picked himself up off the floor and sat down on the edge of the mattress. The memories of the dream already were fading, in fact, he could barely remember anything. Just something about the color green and then it was gone, leaving him with the feeling he'd missed something important.
Except for the nasty goose egg swelling on the base of his head, he felt okay. But the throb already moving into his skull warned him to have an aspirin bottle close at hand tomorrow.
He thought he might have to pee, but there was no urge so he climbed back into bed and pulled the sheet up to his waist. He wiggled around on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position, but finally gave up. Closing his eyes, he felt himself drifting off almost immediately. But he felt strange, restless, uneasy.