“Please, mister …”
Jack’s fear and his anger were twinned wires, one blue and one red, burning through the inside of his skull. He could smell Buster’s Kools and had a fleeting image of the fat man in his undershirt Jack had seen on his way to prison, watching TV in a shabby small-town room, and then Claire Torinetti standing in the doorway of her husband’s house with the light shining through her robe. Penn State was crawling forward, leaving a green trail—please mister please.
Hell, thought Jack, watching him, he was only a child. The kid has his whole life in front of him. Think what he would do with it.
“Hey kid.”
“Yes sir?” His voice was thin and high.
“Suddenly things went terribly wrong, didn’t they? How are you handling this? Is it a disappointment? Are you finding it necessary to rethink your position?”
“Please … what are you gonna do?”
“Well … what would you do? Say we trade places, I’m down there, you up here with the gun. What would you do then?”
“Man … I’d let you go. I swear it. I never meant for anybody to get bad hurt. I just wanted the money. Please.”
“You know, kid, I have to say, I don’t find your answer persuasive. I think you’re not being candid with me. You promise never to call anybody a faggot again?”
“I do, sir. I swear, sir. Please, sir—just let—”
“On your honor? Blood of the Holy Virgin?”
Jack figured Penn State had no idea who the Virgin Mary was or what her blood had to do with his life. At that point, the kid began to babble and the squeaky rasp of his voice, high, whining, pleading, was painful to hear. Jack shifted his position, thought about it, then he squeezed the trigger, the pistol boomed in his hand, Penn State’s skull bounced once. A neat round black hole had appeared in the back of his head, the skin peeling back from the muzzle blast, bits of pink bone showing, and a sudden pool of bright blue blood—reddening as the air touched it—came oiling out from under the boy’s face and spread across the stony floor. All Jack could hear was his own breathing—short sharp gasps. He watched his hand moving downward—the skin on the back of it stained with green paint—watched from deep inside his own skull as he moved the weapon—and put two more carefully considered rounds in the center of the kid’s spine, right between the shoulder blades, precisely between Penn and State. Each time the pistol went off, the parking garage rang like a big iron bell. Each time a round punched into the kid, the band of fear clamped around Jack’s chest seemed to ease up a little more. After the third shot Jack’s ears were buzzing and his hearing had gone. He was inside a cone of silence. He was calm. The fear was gone. It was like he had sailed out of a tropical storm and into a sunlit lagoon lined with palm trees and white sand.
He stood up, stepped away from the body, and pulled in a long ragged breath. The air was rich, layered with strong smells: gunpowder, spilled paint, blood, dust. His breath in his lungs was like a strong wind in tall grass, hissing and rolling. His mouth was parched. He looked down again. My goodness, Penn State was a mess. Just look at you. Jack shook his head, sighed deeply again, rolled the tension out of his neck and shoulders, walked back over to where Knicks Jacket was lying spread-eagled in the paint pool, a thin sheet of blood running from his broken nose, staining his teeth red.
The kid must have heard—or felt—him walk over, because he opened his eyes, blinked twice, as Jack leaned down over him. What do I do with you? he wondered, pressed the pistol into the kid’s forehead, and shot him twice just above the place where his thick eyebrows knitted together. The holes were tiny and black but the force of the muzzle blast ripped the pink skin open all around them in a ragged shape that reminded Jack of a starfish. He found Tank Boy lying on his side in the center of a small lake of green paint and his own blood, his eyes wide open, staring at a point on the floor about ten feet away. Blood was running down his face from a terrible crushed-in wound over his left temple. The blood had not mixed with the green paint—oil and water, Jack realized—but had threaded a complex channel through it so it looked like a bright red river against a flat green forest. Jack thought of the Amazon at a fiery red sunset and liked the image very much. He found it … painterly. He had always liked watercolors. Maybe he should try his hand someday. After things settled down. He could use a hobby. Jack squatted beside the kid, looked into his eyes, saw the pupils narrowing.
“Hey there, tiger. Still with us? How you doing?”
Tank Boy’s lips moved. He was staring up at Jack, eyes huge now. He was trying to speak. His left arm was caught under his body, his hand projecting out from under him, blue-white, tubular as sausage meat, veined pink on the palm. Breath from his mouth made a tiny ripple of waves on the slick surface of the paint. They moved out and settled into a delicate fan of shining green curves. Jack reached out, gently patted the kid on his shoulder, feeling the landslide of thick muscle, and the rubbery flesh over it, put the Glock up against the kid’s cheek, listened as Tank Boy’s breath started to rasp out in puffy little gasps, pressed the muzzle in tight, braced his arm, turned his face slightly to the right, but not so far that he wasn’t still making good eye contact with the kid, and fired twice.
He sat back on his heels, studied the effect, and decided that firing into the soft fleshy tissue of a man’s cheek produced a much different pattern than firing into a thin layer of skin stretched over the skull. For one thing, there was the interplay with the molars. You didn’t get that with a skull shot.
He had to go back to the Wal-Mart and buy another can of paint, but since he had discovered $976 dollars in grubby bills rolled up in an inside pocket of the dead boy’s Knicks jacket along with a plastic bag stuffed full of rock cocaine, he decided to treat himself to some new T-shirts, three black, two white, along with a new pair of jeans, a summer-weight jacket, a pair of olive green slacks and also new Top-Siders, and some necessary toiletries. He remembered to get some groceries and a tool set and some turpentine and a handheld CB radio and a cheap cell phone that came with a prepaid calling card. There were many excellent bargains at Wal-Mart and Jack was gratified to see how far his hard-earned money could take him in such a fine store. America was truly a wonderful country. On the way out he walked through the crowded parking lot and used his brand-new multitool with the screwdriver head to pop the plate off a garbage truck he found parked behind the store. The big orange truck was covered with dust and looked like it might stay there for a long while before anyone noticed a missing plate. Although it was a long way back to the parking garage and he had a lot to carry, he enjoyed the walk very much and found the weather very pleasant. He did see a few cop cars, but he felt quite invisible walking along the four-lane road in the company of so many fellow shoppers out and about on this lovely June day.
It took him another hour, but he finally managed to put a complete and convincing coat of green paint on the van. It was slow work, but he wanted it to look just right. Now and then he’d step back and see how it was going, and once he asked the boys what they thought of his work, but they just lay there and showed no interest in anything he was doing. Typical teens, he decided. Ignore them.
It was late afternoon by the time he screwed the borrowed plate onto the transport van and tossed the government tags through the window and into a Dumpster next to a section of plaster tailings. They landed with a clatter and slid sideways under a nail-studded section of particleboard. He threw his jeans and the stained white tee down a fifty-foot-deep construction tube and dropped his boots in after them. He regretted having to throw away the boots, but he figured Dan Post was still making them. Jack then used the turpentine to clean himself up as much as possible, changed into the olive-drab slacks, and put on a black T-shirt and his new Top-Siders—no socks, thank you—splashed on some Eau Sauvage—very lime and quite refreshing—climbed into the van, fired it up, and rolled slowly down the exit ramp and far away from Penn State and his little dead friends.
Out in the busy traf
fic he found an FM station that played soft jazz, turned it up high enough to hear it through the ringing in his ears. Small-arms fire in a tight space did that to your ears. The van had a police radio too, and Jack clicked the selector switch through several channels until the LED display read Info State City. He heard a dispatcher discussing a car theft out at someplace called Laurel Run and a state trooper logging on to respond. So far nothing about him. Jack set the volume low, opened a cold bottle of spring water, and drank half of it at one go. Buster had left a package of Kools in a shelf under the dash. Jack took one out, lit it up, and rolled the window down. The day was cooler now, and the leafy suburban avenues he was soon driving through were fragrant with the smell of cut grass and flowers and backyard barbecues.
He took a two-lane blacktop numbered 309 north out of Hazleton and hit Interstate 80 a half hour later. Interstate 80 goes west through Chicago and Omaha and Cheyenne all the way to Sacramento, and it goes east to the George Washington Bridge and New York City. West was the famous sundown road, and perhaps Mexico beyond it. East was back into the shit and maybe find out who put him there. With a little luck, maybe kill him before the ATF got to him. After that … well, forget that. There was no after.
Jack went east.
PART THREE
HOME IS THE HUNTER …
SATURDAY, JUNE 24
JAY RATS UNIT 552
INTERSTATE 81 AT DELANO CROSSING
EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA
1900 HOURS
Nicky was sound asleep in the backseat and Casey’s mind was on her mother when Dexter’s cell phone started to beep. Dexter fished it out of his pocket, thumbed the send button.
“Zarnas.”
“Sergeant Zarnas?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“This is Derry Flynn. With the ATF. I said I’d call?”
“I remember. What’s up?”
“What’s your twenty?”
“About a mile out of Delano on Eighty-one.”
“You anywhere near a mobile display terminal?”
“Got an MDT right in front of me.”
“Hazleton.”
“Hazleton? What about—”
The line was dead. Dexter put the cell phone down, looked across at Casey Spandau.
“Log us onto NCIC, Casey? See if there are any hits with the word Hazleton in them.”
“Proper name? A person?”
“I don’t know. All the guy said was Hazleton.”
Nicky, awake now, leaned forward.
“The map shows a town called Hazleton. It’s right on Highway Eighty-one, maybe thirty miles north of here.”
“Okay. Try that, Casey.”
Casey punched in her access code and the computer screen flashed on, a string of luminous numbers and letters showing various law enforcement databases.
EPIC MIRAC NADDIS
NESPIN / WSIN / MAGLOCEN /
RMIN / MOCIC / ROCIC
VICAP INTERPOL FINEST CATCH CPIC NCIC 2000
Casey tabbed over to NCIC 2000, hit enter, found a search bar, and typed in Hazleton. The LCD screen flickered and a paragraph in yellow letters scrolled across the bright blue screen:
NCIC DATA FILE INCIDENT EXTRACT HAZLETON PA
Hazleton PD report triple homicide gang-related three male victims location Ticknor Auto Park 11356 Appalachian Way beaten with iron bars and shot with nine-millimeter pistol close range. Witness describes possible white male answers description Vermillion, Jack, fugitive, notify USMS or ATF advise if contact. Investigation ongoing. ATF notification attending at scene ETA 1830 hours.
Casey read the extract out loud.
“Okay,” said Dexter. “That’s gotta be it.”
“Who logged this on NCIC?” asked Nicky. “Usually these reports are a day late. What’s the reporting code say?”
Casey checked the bottom of the screen.
“DOJ logged it. I mean, it was logged on a DOJ machine.”
“Your guy Flynn?” Nicky asked Dexter.
“I guess so. Sit back, Nicky. We’re gonna fly.”
Dexter hit the grill flashers and floored the unit, accelerated around a slow-moving Greyhound, and powered into a long straightaway. Big blue mountains crowded the northern horizon line. The countryside was green and rolling. The heat was strong enough to make it seem that pools of water covered the highway in the shimmering distance. Casey turned the cooling up. The car settled into the passing lane at 120 and they blew by a stream of cars.
Six minutes later they were on the outskirts of Hazleton. Four minutes after that, they pulled up in front of Ticknor’s Auto Park.
“I guess this is it,” said Nicky.
“No shit,” said Casey.
The three-floor garage building was almost completely surrounded by official vehicles, including Hazleton PD cars and two Jeep Cherokees with Pennsylvania State Police logos on the doors, a tan Caprice, three EMS trucks with their strobes pulsing, and about fifty cops holding back a crowd of citizens massed in front of a crime-scene-tape barrier. Dexter blipped the siren twice and a startled female state trooper who had been holding up a hand to stop their car stepped around to the window, took off her Stetson, and leaned down to look into the car. She was ruddy and young and had the bluest eyes Nicky had ever seen and a bronze tan. Her voice was flat and nasal and held a midwestern snap. Her ID read Salt.
“Who’re you? Jesus or the ATF?”
Dexter showed them his gold sergeant’s shield.
“Neither. NYPD. Where’s the ATF team?”
“Not here yet. They’re coming in on a chopper. Supposed to be here any minute. We’re just holding the crime scene. Who the hell’re we, right? What’s the NYPD doing all the way out here?”
“Chasing a man. We think this is connected. Can we go in?”
She shrugged, stood up, keyed her portable.
“Captain Billy, this is Pepper, down at the ramp. I got three NYPD here, long way from home. They wanna come up.”
They heard a garbled burst of static and talk, but Pepper seemed to understand it. She keyed the radio off and stepped back.
“You go ahead. Park it on the second floor and walk up. The third floor’s the crime scene. Captain Billy’s the whip hand up there. Looks like a bald cranky parrot. You’ll know him when you see him. Am I ever gonna know what this is all about?”
Dexter laughed.
“Your name really Pepper Salt?”
“No. It’s Sandy.”
“Sandy? Sandy Salt? Not really?”
“Yeah. My father’s an idiot. So of course they call me Pepper. It’s what passes for smarts around here. Your name really Dexter?”
“Yeah. They call me Lefty.”
“Very funny. Dexter. Sinister. Right. Left. I get it. You make sure I find out what’s going on, hah? They never tell me anything.”
“I’ll see you do.”
They rolled up the entrance ramp and past a barricade of uniformed cops who watched as they went by with frowning faces and their hands on their service Smiths. Casey got most of their attention. She figured there weren’t very many black female detectives in the State Police and said so. Nicky, a state cop himself, knew better but kept his mouth shut. They parked the Lincoln on the second level and walked up the dusty concrete ramp to the third floor. The sun was low in the sky and soft yellow shafts of light streamed in through the grillwork. The air smelled of dust and turpentine. And something worse.
A short man in a black three-piece suit, a white shirt with a high stiff collar, a narrow red tie, and thick black brogues was waiting for them at the top of the ramp, legs apart, braced, silhouetted against the setting sun. He had a corona of frizzy white hair and thin gray metal glasses. His face was leathery and his mouth a hard line, his eyes little nailheads, his handshake a sharp snap-and-release, his skin dry and rough.
“I’m Captain Billy Frick. Pepper says you’re NYPD? What the hell you three doing here?”
Dexter, who had the rank, did the talking.
“Vermillion. Jack. I know the pecker-head.”
“The NCIC hit said a witness made an ID?”
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