A Blood Thing

by James Hankins

  “Governor Kane,” Baskin continued, “this is your second pardon this month after never granting one before. Is it possible that you’re looking at prisoners in a different light now that your brother is facing first-degree murder charges?”

  Andrew’s steps slowed for a moment before resuming their brisk pace. Over his shoulder, he said, “My press secretary has already released a statement. Please refer to that. Thank you.”

  “Governor, do you—”

  The governor slipped into the back seat of a black SUV and pulled the door shut behind him, the vehicle’s dark-tinted windows causing him to disappear completely from view. As the SUV pulled away, the footage cut back to a static shot of Baskin standing in front of Southern State Correctional, microphone in hand.

  “Though the press release the governor referred to is sparse on justification, it is apparently the only official word the public will receive on the pardon of Kyle Lewis. Reporting from Southern State Correctional Facility, this is Angela—”

  Using his remote control, Henry changed the channel, landing on another news station, where the florid, doughy face of ex–Vermont Governor Jackpot Barker suddenly filled the screen, clearly in mid pontification. “Worse than anything I ever did, I can tell you that. I never pardoned anyone like Kyle Lewis. The man’s a violent career criminal. And this right after pardoning the first guy not long ago, whatever his name was. It’s like pardoning prisoners is our governor’s new hobby. Or is it a side job? A source of a little extra income, maybe? What could Governor Kane be thinking?”

  The dislike Henry had always had for Barker suddenly blossomed into disgust and hatred.

  “And please notice,” Barker blathered on, “that I’m not even bringing up the governor’s brother, the one who killed that girl. That young man isn’t right in the head, and maybe that’s why he killed her, but I’m not going to bring that up. That’s not what we’re talking about right now.”

  How had this man ever been elected governor?

  “No, we’re talking about the current governor’s injudicious use of his pardon power. And did I read that he’s going after our guns now? He’s drafting legislation to go after our guns? For the love of God, what won’t that man do?” With a smile, he added, “I bet you folks are missing old John Barker right about now, am I right?”

  When Barker winked at the camera, Henry turned off the TV and reached for his cell phone. He almost dialed Andy’s number, but he’d already spoken with his older brother twice today and there was nothing new to discuss. Andy was having a rough day, and there wasn’t anything Henry could say to change that. It was after 10:30 p.m.; by now, he’d be home with Rebecca, who could do far more than Henry could to take his mind off things—assuming everything was okay between them. There was an obvious strain there lately, though it seemed minor enough that Henry wasn’t worried for his brother . . . not about his marriage, at least.

  Instead, Henry called Dave Junior, which he never really liked to do because the man sounded so much like his late father. Henry apologized for calling late and asked how the day’s surveillance of Kyle Lewis was going.

  “As you requested, I’ve got my four best guys assigned to Lewis, in two-man shifts, each with their own vehicles. Also as requested, I’ve still got two guys on Torrance. Those guys are a little greener, but they’re good.”

  “Anything happening?” Henry asked.

  “My guys reported in less than two hours ago, right on schedule. Lewis had a pizza delivered to the motel where he’s staying.”

  “Did your guys figure out how he paid for his room?”

  “Cash. It’s not the kind of place where you need a credit card.”

  No card to trace then.

  “What about the driver of the car that picked him up?” Henry asked.

  “It was a livery service.”

  “I don’t suppose the driver was named Larry Aronson.”

  “Aronson? Who’s he?”

  “He’s the one who picked Torrance up from prison.”

  “No, this was someone named Pawlik Mazur.” He spelled it out.

  “I assume you guys talked to him.”

  “Of course.” Then he told Henry essentially the same story that Henry had gotten from Aronson about showing up to pick up a fare and instead finding a bag, and $500, and a note promising $500 more if he picked up a prisoner being released from Southern State Correctional and drove him where the note instructed.

  Henry thought he knew the answer to the question he was about to ask, but he asked it anyway. “He tell you what was in the bag he gave Lewis?”

  “Besides the envelope—which he said was thick enough to contain some decent cash—there was a cell phone and some clothes. That’s it.”

  As expected. “So he’s done nothing but order a pizza so far?”

  “So far. He was behind bars for a few years, so I’m guessing he’s also ordered porn by now on the motel TV, but we can’t confirm that. We don’t even want to.”

  “What about Torrance?”

  “He spent the day the same way he’s been spending all his days—just wandering around. He’s aimless. Eats in restaurants sometimes, orders in other times. My guy got excited this morning when he took a cab to Brattleboro, but he did the same thing there. Wandered the streets, ate at McDonald’s, sat on a bench for a while before taking a cab back to the Holiday Inn in Springfield. The guys watching him want hazard pay, say they’re gonna be bored to death.”

  “Stay on him. Lewis and him both. And tell whoever’s on Lewis tomorrow that if they see someone they don’t recognize tailing him not to get excited, because it’ll be me. Give them my description. In fact, give me your guys’ cell numbers, and I’ll talk to them myself. I want to be able to check in with them directly from time to time anyway.”

  Dave Junior read off the phone numbers, which Henry wrote down.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll call them in the morning. Everyone has to stay sharp. We expect Lewis to do something within the next two weeks.”

  “Yeah? What’s he gonna do?”

  “No idea. Thanks, Dave.”

  He ended the call, then went to bed, where he stared at the ceiling for hours before finally falling asleep shortly before dawn.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Shortly before noon on the fourth day after Kyle Lewis walked out of Southern State Correctional, Wyatt Pickman stared into the soldier’s face and knew something was terribly wrong. He was supposed to have blue eyes—he was sure of it—but this soldier’s eyes were brown. How could that have happened?

  These days, only about 17 percent of people born in the United States had blue eyes, but during the American Civil War about half did. Pickman knew this because he’d researched it. So of the 3,244 model soldiers on the expansive battlefield in Pickman’s living room, 1,622 should have blue eyes.

  He’d planned it all out ahead of time, of course. He always planned everything out. Before placing his first soldier on the battlefield more than a year ago, he’d painted all 3,244 of them, making certain to maintain the proper percentages of blue uniforms to gray uniforms, brown to blond to red hair, brown eyes to blue eyes—all according to statistics and historical records.

  And this soldier’s eyes should have been blue. He closed his eyes a moment and concentrated, just to be certain . . . and yes, the Confederate soldier kneeling at the end of the split-rail fence was supposed to have blue eyes. That had been his plan. But this soldier’s eyes were brown. They were . . . wrong.

  While biding his time as the Kane job glided along without a hitch, Pickman had allowed himself several days of solid distraction from his work, time during which he could focus on his hobby. For four days, he’d become almost completely lost in time, transported back to September 17, 1862, and he’d been enjoying himself.

  Until this. How the hell had this happened?

  While he was pondering that question, his cell phone dinged, signaling that a notification had arrived. He had set several alerts on hi
s personal smartphone, which would notify him when certain names or phrases were mentioned on the Internet.

  He looked at the phone’s screen and saw a link to an online local news article about Vermont Superior Court Judge Morgan Jeffers, the subject of one of Pickman’s alerts. He frowned and clinked on the link, which brought him to the article. Skimming, he read that Jeffers, a widower who was retiring after almost forty years on the bench, was not stepping down so he could live out his remaining days fishing for trout on Golden Pond or wherever, as everyone had thought, but because he was suffering from stomach cancer that had been discovered far too late. The article closed by paying lip service to everything the people of Vermont owed to the good judge for his decades of public service.

  Pickman clenched his teeth, the muscles in his jaw bunching.

  Stomach cancer? How the hell could he have foreseen that?

  Who knew how long the old judge had left now?

  Weeks? Days? Hours?

  Pickman’s mind sped through the intricacies of his grand plan—events, reactions, cause, effect, timing . . .

  He hurried from the living room and down the basement stairs into his war room. He stared at the mosaic on the wall. An article about Jeffers over there. A string . . . another string . . . Tyler Kane . . . Kyle Lewis . . .

  He dropped into his desk chair and pulled his bible in front of him. He scanned the tabs, flipped to Part VI, Section H, Subsection 2 and began to skim, turning the first page quickly, then the second, then flipping back again. Then he sat back and tried to take calming breaths.

  A fly in the ointment.

  A wrench in the gears.

  Whatever the phrase, Jeffers’s stomach cancer was a real headache to Pickman. It didn’t change the plan exactly. No, it fell short of that, thank God, because Pickman was loath to change his plans once they were finalized and put into motion.

  But it required revision of a sort . . . not a change, but a revision. And not of the plan itself, but of the timeline. Things had to speed up. Because Jeffers had a part to play, and he couldn’t be allowed to die before he played it. And because he could die any day now, apparently, the plan had to be accelerated.

  Pickman was unhappy about this, but at least the plan remained intact. He didn’t know what he would have done otherwise.

  He closed his bible, and his eyes fell on a small object on the desk beside it. The brown-eyed Confederate soldier whose eyes should have been blue. He must have brought it down with him without thinking.

  He carried the soldier back up to the living room and surveyed the battlefield he had so faithfully re-created. He looked down at the defective soldier in his hand. Then back up at the soldiers dotting the landscape, each painted almost a year ago before a single shrub, tree, or structure had been added, using tiny brushes, sometimes the tips of toothpicks for the most delicate work, like the eyes. And he had carefully counted how many he would paint of each soldier—1,914 for the Union, representing the 59 percent of soldiers who had fought for the North in the battle that day, and 1,330 for the Confederacy, making up the remaining 41 percent. He’d painted the correct percentage with the historically correct color of hair and eyes . . . or at least he thought he had.

  But now this . . .

  What to do? He could repaint this one soldier’s eyes, of course, but if his eyes were wrong, then how many others could be, as well? He never seriously considered ignoring the problem, of course, despite how minuscule the pinpricks of color representing eyes on the one-eighth-inch-tall soldier’s face were. He couldn’t possibly do that. They were wrong, and he’d always know that.

  His own eyes swept across the vast battlefield, almost 90 percent complete, the work of countless hours over the past year and a quarter, a project that had filled nearly every hour he hadn’t spent sleeping, eating, or planning and executing the Kane job. Notebooks full of research. Thousands of soldiers. Thousands of tiny eyes. How many eyes were wrong? How many didn’t conform to his plan? And if a soldier’s eyes were wrong, could one of the uniforms be wrong, too? Or could there be an extra man on horseback? Or too many men near the Dunker Church? One too few crossing the stone bridge over Antietam Creek? Not enough wagons? Too many wagons?

  His mind was awhirl.

  First, Jeffers’s stomach cancer. Now this catastrophe.

  He couldn’t possibly re-count the eye colors of all the soldiers now. The battlefield was too large; he couldn’t see the faces of the tiny figures near the center of the board.

  But he couldn’t live with the possibility that the scene was historically inaccurate. That he’d failed to execute his plan properly.

  He took a deep breath, then another. Then a third. He closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts. Then he opened his eyes, reached out, and flipped the nearest four-by-four-foot section of the diorama into the air, watching it crash against the wall, scattering the figures that hadn’t yet been glued into place. Soldiers, horses, and trees clattered to the hardwood and slid across the floor.

  Pickman moved to the section to his left—which he had completed but not yet secured to the sawhorse foundation—gripped it by its edges, lifted it, and sent it spinning like an oversize square Frisbee across the diorama, where it plowed through the battlefield like the hand of God—or perhaps the scythe of Death—mowing down soldiers and horses, felling trees, and razing buildings. In ten seconds, he had destroyed a third of the project, nearly half a year’s work. Over the next few minutes, he destroyed the rest. In the morning, he would use a circular saw to dismantle the boards and their foundation. He would fill trash bags with thousands and thousands of pieces of set decoration.

  But he would retain his binders full of notes, his painstaking research. Because soon he would start the same project all over again. From the very beginning. And next time, he’d get it right. Next time, he’d be sure to follow his plan more carefully.

  But at this point, he knew, all of that would have to wait. Because Judge Jeffers’s goddamn cancer had forced him to start the final phase of the plan immediately.

  It was almost over. The job was nearly finished. Yet, at the same time, there was so much left to be done to bring things to a close.

  Without a glance at the destruction he had wrought in his living room, he headed back down to his war room to start the beginning of the end.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  In the four days since Kyle Lewis had walked out of prison with a full governor’s pardon, Andrew had tried to dodge questions and controversy and focus on his job. It wasn’t easy. The press sliced away at him. Jackpot Barker took every opportunity to step in front of a camera and rub salt in the wounds. In his interactions with everyone from individuals to the media, Andrew’s opinions and motives seemed to be questioned in numerous subtle ways—sidelong glances and veiled comments—and he knew his popularity and power were eroding fast, like the face of a hill in a California mudslide.

  Still, he carried out his duties as well and as faithfully as he could and waited . . . waited for Kyle Lewis to do whatever the hell he was planning to do.

  The blackmailer wasn’t answering Andrew’s calls lately. He’d made it clear that he had no intention of meeting his end of the bargain until the two-week period he had insisted on expired—if even then. Andrew had no choice but to continue waiting . . . and hoping that whatever Lewis was going to do, it didn’t involve hurting or, God forbid, killing anyone. Andrew could handle it if this was about money, or even drugs, but not if it came down to murder. Henry’s detectives were following Lewis night and day. They were good men who’d all once been good cops. They’d been instructed not to let Lewis hurt anyone. So if it looked like Lewis was even thinking of crossing that line, they’d know when, and exactly how, to step in to stop him.

  At least that was what Andrew told himself every night as he tried to fall asleep.

  If Lewis had evil on his mind, though, he was taking his time getting around to it. According to Henry, he hadn’t broken a single law. The private det
ectives following him hadn’t witnessed any evidence of it; nor had Henry during the sporadic hours he’d joined the surveillance team.

  That wasn’t to say that Lewis hadn’t visited some of Vermont’s seedier locations. Henry had related that the ex-con had visited a bar in Winooski yesterday that had a back room known to both law enforcement personnel and the criminal set as the place to go if you wanted the best untraceable firearms in Vermont. And the day before, he had eaten at Greenland Terrace, a restaurant in Burlington owned by Stanley Bolton, a guy with an arrest record as long as Lewis’s but with the money to afford a better lawyer. He’d served two and a half years for fraud twenty years ago and, despite several arrests since, had never spent another day behind bars. He was thought to be the brains and bankroll behind numerous crimes—relatively small jobs, perpetrated by others who would give a hefty percentage to Bolton if successful—but the authorities had never gotten anything close to reliable evidence against him. He wasn’t a major player, though, so nobody got too worked up about the fact that no one could pin anything on him. And there didn’t seem to be a previous connection between Lewis and him—and Henry assured Andrew that he had looked hard for one—so there was no reason to suspect that Bolton had engineered Lewis’s pardon. But still, Lewis’s eating in Bolton’s establishment was interesting.

  Either that, or it was a red herring. Something to distract. It was impossible to tell.

  The fact that Lewis hadn’t done anything illegal seemed to be making Henry nuts. And, Andrew had to admit, it was driving him a little insane, too . . . as was Henry and his twice daily phone calls to report next to nothing. Molly claimed to be going a bit crazy, too, just waiting. Only Tyler, confident that his day in court would end with a declaration of his innocence, seemed not to be too tense.