The storm passes, he deflates. A hand comes up to his forehead. I recognize the short struggle. The same one I’d had just moments before. He is the boss. Time to be the boss.
“Let’s regroup while we’re waiting. Bring me up-to-date.”
I fill him in on the arrest of one half of the Jack Jr. duo. I recount the phone call from Elaina, the guy I killed in the parking lot. What happened at Alan’s.
“Where’s the guy you shot in the hand?”
“He’s here,” I say. “He’s in surgery too. They’re trying to reattach his fingers.”
“Fuck him,” AD Jones snarls.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Bonnie nodding in agreement. It dismays me.
“The other three?” he asks. “All deceased?”
“Yeah.”
“By who?”
Who killed them, he means. This will have to be accounted for at some point. Every bullet. “I killed the guy in the parking lot. Elaina shot one of the guys in her house. Alan and Callie killed the other guy, the one with the gun.”
AD Jones looks over at Elaina. His eyes have softened. “I’m sorry,” he says. Sorry you, a civilian, had to kill a man, he’s telling her. She understands.
“Thank you.”
“And we think these are all little Jack Jr. protégés?”
“There’s not much doubt of that, sir.”
“What about the suspect you caught tonight? This is one of them? For sure?”
“It’s not a hundred percent until either he or the evidence says he is, but—yeah…it fits.”
He nods in approval. “That’s good. Real good.” He’s quiet for a moment, mulling it all over. Looking at each of us. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “Listen. We’re all going to wait here and see if she comes out of this in one piece. We’re going to hope she does. When it’s over, whether she’s fine or not, we’re going to go back to work. Get mad first, get sad later.”
There are no words of dissent. All I see is a kind of grim resolution. He seems to see it too, because he nods. “Okay, then.”
Okeydoke artichoke, I think, another little hysterical bubble making it past my internal force fields. I feel unsteady and sit back down.
Someone’s cell phone is ringing. Everyone checks, and then I see Tommy putting his to his ear. I’d almost forgotten about him. He is the outsider, and he has pulled away from all of us, settling in to wait.
“Aguilera.” He frowns. “Who is this?”
I see a terrible calm come over him. There’s nothing relaxed about it, nothing relaxed at all. No, he wants to kill whoever is on the other end of that phone. He looks once at me. “Hang on for a moment.”
He walks over to me, holding one hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s him.”
I leap out of the hospital seat, followed by almost everyone else. The bubbles are gone, replaced by the bright white light of shock. “What? You mean Jack Jr.?” I feel as incredulous as I sound.
“Yep. He asked to talk to you.”
A zillion different thoughts shoot through my head. This is a complete break in his routine; it doesn’t make sense. “Any chance of a trace?” I’m asking Tommy as the resident expert on electronic surveillance.
“If it’s not set up already, no.”
I’m lost, for just a moment.
AD Jones sighs. “Talk to him, Smoky. Only thing you can do.”
I hold out my hand and take the phone. After a single deep breath to steady myself, I put it to my ear. “This is Smoky.”
“Special Agent Barrett! How are you?” He’s using some kind of electronic device to change and disguise his voice. It sounds like I’m having a conversation with a robot.
“What do you want?”
“I thought, just this once, that we should speak. If not face-to-face, well, phone-to-phone. E-mails and letters are so impersonal, don’t you think?”
“I think you’ve made this very personal, Jack. Plus you’re a fucking liar.”
He chuckles. The voice alteration makes it sound hideous. “You are talking about my little visitors, aren’t you? Well…it’s true. But it’s not a matter of lying. I just got—bored. In many ways, playing my little games with you and yours is as satisfying as my work upon my whores.”
I want to hurt him. To do something to break through that arrogant gloating. “Hey, Jack. Did you see my little spot on the news?”
A long silence. When he starts speaking again, I feel a kind of snarling satisfaction as I note that his voice has gone flat. “Yes, Smoky. I saw your lies.”
I laugh, a short, mocking bark. “Lies? Why the hell would I lie? You just don’t want to own up to it, fucker! That there is no ‘legacy,’ no Annie Chapman’s uterus, no sacred mission. You’re the liar, Jack. Your whole life is a lie! Jesus, you can’t even follow the Ripper’s MO! He killed whores, Jack, not cops. You can’t seem to decide which you want more. At least the Ripper picked a victim type and stuck with it! What’s the matter, can’t face the truth? Can’t face just how pathetic you are?”
I hear him breathing, hard, angry. Even this is modified; it sounds surreal.
“You still there, Jack?”
Another long pause, then—“Nice try, Smoky. Hurrah for you, and applause. Why would you lie? Why, for the simplest reason of all: psychological warfare. To destabilize me.” He pauses, and I can almost feel his rage. “I never said I was the Ripper, you silly bitch. I said I am descended from him. But I’ve evolved. I’m beyond him. Why do I hunt you and yours as much as I hunt the whores? Because I’m that good. Because I feel like it. For the same reason I amuse myself making my little acolytes. Because I can.”
For a moment, just for a moment, I come close to taunting him with the knowledge that we’ve captured his buddy. I manage to reel this impulse back.
“No, because you’re a fuckup, Jack. Evolved? I don’t think so. The original Ripper, he never got caught. But I’m going to catch you. Count on it.”
A long silence follows. When he starts speaking again, the rage is gone. His voice is calm. Back in control.
“Speaking of the whores—how is little Bonnie?”
I’m fighting for control. I need to keep him talking. I decide to try a different tack. I lower my voice, making it even, reasonable.
“Jack. Why don’t we stop pretending? You and I both know who it is you really want, right?”
He pauses. “And who would that be, Special Agent Barrett?”
“Me. You want me.”
AD Jones makes cutting motions across his throat. “No! Dammit, Smoky!”
I ignore him. “Am I right?”
He laughs again. “Smoky, Smoky, Smoky…” His voice is patronizing. “I want all of it, dear one. I want the whores, and I want you, and I want everyone that you love. Speaking of that—how is dear Callie? Is she going to survive?”
My rage flares up, hot and ready. “Fuck you!”
“You have one day,” he says, ignoring my anger. Dismissing it. “And then another whore dies. Oh, and you and yours can expect continued fun as well.”
I get the sense that he’s about to end the call. “Wait.”
“No, I don’t think so. I couldn’t resist, just this once, but this is a chancy way for us to communicate. For me, that is. Don’t expect it to happen again. The next time you hear my voice, it will be in person, and you’ll be screaming.” A short pause. “One other thing: If Agent Thorne does die, you might want to consider cremating her. Otherwise, I’ll be tempted to dig her up and…play with her. Just like I’ve done with sweet Rosa.”
He hangs up, leaving his words grating across my bones.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” James asks. The anger in his voice shocks me, and I am dumbfounded at it, here and now, in this place. I look at him and am stunned at the force of the rage I see in his eyes. He’s trembling. It’s coming off him in waves.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, incredulous.
“You just had to fucking taunt him, di
dn’t you? Couldn’t resist.” His words are swollen with venom. “He’s after us, and you had to piss him off even more, had to egg him on. What you always do. Tell us we’re fucking invincible and tell them the same thing, and it’s all bullshit.” He’s picking up his pace, the words tumbling out of him, inexorable.
All I can do is stare at him.
“What? You don’t remember? Don’t remember going on TV back when we were trying to catch Joseph Sands? Talking about how he was a pathetic limp dick, goading him, hoping he’d take the bait?” He pauses, eyes bright, snarling. “Well, he took it, didn’t he? He took it and he killed your family and he almost killed you, and now this psycho is hell-bent on doing the same thing to all of us—and you just won’t learn! Keenan and Shantz are dead—have you learned yet? Does Callie have to die for you to get it?” He leans into me. “That sometimes, when you play tough guy, other people die?” He pauses and I get the sense of a rubber band being pulled back before being snapped, the trembling silence that occurs just before a roar. He speaks into this silence. “Didn’t getting your husband and daughter killed teach you that lesson already?”
My mouth falls open at this, and in an instant I am poised to slap him. Not a light slap. A broad, full-body backhand across the face. Something to loosen his teeth and bloody his nose. I want to do it so bad I can taste it, like blood in my mouth. Two things stop me. One is the near-instantaneous flash of shame I see come into his eyes. The other is Bonnie. She’s standing next to James, tugging on his hand, hard.
“Wha-what is it?” he asks. He sounds as dazed as I feel.
She motions for him to kneel down next to her. I watch him do this, as my body shivers and trembles.
She slaps him for me, flat of her palm against his cheek. And although she’s only ten, and small for her age, the sound of the smack is like a whip crack in the waiting room.
James’s eyes widen in shock, his mouth forms an O, and he stumbles back, landing in a sitting position on the floor. My mouth falls open. Bonnie gives me a brief look, nods, and walks back over to sit next to Elaina.
Everyone is silent. I can feel their stillness and their dismay. James stands up slowly, hand to his cheek, eyes filled with shame and pain and wonder.
I want to say something, but once again, two things happen before I can. Callie’s daughter comes rushing through the door, and one very sweaty, exhausted surgeon appears as well. For a moment I’m torn between the two, but Marilyn solves this for me by moving toward the surgeon.
“First things first,” he says, his voice heavy and tired. “Agent Thorne is alive.”
“Thank God!” Elaina cries.
I want to stagger in relief, fall to my knees. But I don’t.
The surgeon holds up his hands for silence. “The bullet just missed her heart. And it stayed in one piece. But it did bounce around a little. It ended up near her upper left shoulder, after, I’m afraid, brushing past her spine.”
The temperature of the room seems to drop fifty degrees at the word spine.
“The spinal cord itself wasn’t cut. But it was bruised, and there is some swelling. There was also quite a bit of internal bleeding.”
“What’s the bottom line, Doc?” AD Jones asks.
“The bottom line is that she lost a lot of blood and sustained a lot of trauma. She’s still critical. She seems stable, but we’re not out of the woods.” He pauses, looks like he’s searching for a better way to put what he’s going to say next. “She could still die. Unlikely, but that’s not off the table yet.”
Marilyn asks the other question. The one we’re all terrified of. “And the spinal cord swelling…?”
“The best bet, in my opinion, is that she’ll be fine. The swelling should go down, with no lasting paralysis or damage. But…” He sighs. “We can’t be sure, not one hundred percent. There’s always the worst-case scenario of permanent paralysis.”
Marilyn’s hand flies to her mouth. Her eyes are all whites.
I speak into the silence. “Thanks, Doctor.”
He gives all of us a tired nod and walks off.
“Oh no, oh Jesus…” Marilyn moans. “Not now. I just got to meet her, I…”
And the tears start. I move to her and hug her tight as she begins to weep in earnest.
My own eyes are dry. I’m too busy bending, bending but not breaking.
48
WE’RE BACK IN the office, a battered bunch. Elaina and Bonnie are at my house, since Alan’s place has become a crime scene. Marilyn stayed at the hospital to wait for news of Callie. She wasn’t put off a bit by our leaving.
“Get him” was all she’d said.
James is standing, looking out the window. He won’t meet my eyes.
I want to go crawl into a hole, curl up, and sleep for a year. But I can’t do that.
“You know what the thing is about stress, James?” I say, musing.
He remains silent. I wait him out. “What?” he asks finally, still looking out the window.
“Stress creates little hairline fractures. They start small, and they spread, and then they get big, and eventually the result is that something shatters.” I keep my voice careful, nonaccusative. “Is that what you want, James? For me to shatter? To just break up and—blow away?”
His head whips around at this. “What? No. I—” He sounds like he’s strangling. “I just, with Callie…” He clenches his fists, unclenches them, takes a deep breath. Steadies himself. Now he looks at me directly. “I’m not afraid for myself, Smoky. I’m afraid for Callie. You understand?”
“Of course I do,” I reply in a soft voice. “I was afraid for my family too. Every day. I had nightmares about something happening to them exactly like what did happen.” I shrug. “But Matt told me the truth once. He said that I was doing what I loved. And he was right. I hate chasing these fuckers, but I love catching them, you know?”
He looks at me for a moment, then nods.
“And I thought a lot about exactly what you said in there, long before you said it. I agonized over it. Did Sands come after us, did he kill my family, because I goaded him? For a long time, I thought the answer was yes. But I realized later that that was bullshit. He came after us because I was coming after him. Because I do what I do. He was going to do it whether I talked trash about him or not. You follow?”
He doesn’t reply.
“The point, James, is that it doesn’t matter what I say or don’t say to Jack Jr. He is coming after us, period. We’re his prey now. You want to know his victim type?” I gesture around the room. “They’re all right here.”
He looks at me for a long time before responding. When he does, his response is to close his eyes once, and nod.
I smile. “Apology accepted,” I murmur.
He looks off for a moment, clears his throat. Everyone else has been silent and watching. Tense. It’s like we’re all on a hot plate, just waiting to pop and sizzle and burn. The fine machine that is my team is grinding its gears, ready to fracture and explode. I know the real source of this anger is Jack Jr. But I worry that we’re going to start taking that anger out on one another. I’ve always thought of myself as the spindle around which the spokes of the wheel turn. If I’m the spindle, Callie is the motion. The thing that makes the wheel move over whatever terrain, however rough. Her jibes and jokes, her teasing and relentless humor, it keeps us sane. Its absence is like the void of space, and we’re ready to fill that void by lunging for one another’s throats.
“You know what the first thing Callie ever said to me was?” I say without preamble. “She said, ‘Thank heavens! You’re not a midget, after all.’” I smile at the memory. “She told me that she’d heard I was four foot ten and just couldn’t get a picture of how tall that was in her mind. She kept imagining me as a dwarf.”
Alan laughs at this, a quiet, sad laugh. “You know what she said when she saw me? She said, ‘Oh dear, it’s a giant Negro!’”
“She did not!” I exclaim.
“She did, I
promise.”
We all stop talking as Alan’s cell phone rings, and watch as he answers it and listens. “Yeah. No kidding? Thanks, Gene.” He hangs up, looking at me. “The prints from our suspect in custody match the prints taken off the bed in Annie’s apartment. We also have some of his DNA for comparison—”
“How did we pull that off?” I interrupt.
“He cut his lip as a result of that mix-up you guys had taking him down. Barry offered him a handkerchief to clean himself up with.”
I smile, grim. “Smart.”
Alan leans forward, looking at me. “He’s one of the guys, Smoky. For sure, one hundred percent. Maybe not provable yet, but close enough. What do you want to do?”
They are all looking at me, the same question in their eyes. What do you want to do? The answer is simple.
We kill him and eat him? the dragon asks.
In a way, I think.
“One of us is going to do the interrogation of our lives and crack him wide, wide open, Alan.”
49
WE’RE STANDING IN the observation room with Barry, looking through the one-way glass at Robert Street. He’s seated at a table, cuffed at the wrists and ankles.
He’s nondescript, which surprises me on some level. He has brown hair, and a hard face made up of planes and edges. His eyes are hot and angry, while the rest of him is relaxed. He’s staring back at us through the mirror.
“Pretty cool cucumber,” Alan says. “We know anything about this guy yet?”
“Not much,” Barry says. “Name is Robert Street. Thirty-eight years old, single, never been married, no kids. Works as a martial-arts instructor in the Valley.” He looks at me, nodding to indicate my swollen lips. “But you already found that out.”
“Do you have an address on him yet?” I ask.
“Yeah. He lives in an apartment in Burbank. With the match to the prints found in your friend’s place, we’ll be able to get a warrant. I have someone on that now.”
“Who should do the interview?” Alan asks. “You said ‘one of us’—so who’s it going to be? You or me?”
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