A Blood Thing

by James Hankins

Andrew smiled wanly. “This is all really bad, Jim.”

  “It’s not good, but you’ll get through it. You’re certainly not as bad as Barker.”

  “But I wasn’t supposed to just be ‘not as bad as Barker.’ I was supposed to be much better.”

  “You are. And they’ll remember that soon enough.”

  Andrew merely nodded—there wasn’t much he could say—then turned and headed toward his office.

  As he passed Peter’s desk, his assistant said, “Governor Barker left a message for you, sir.”

  “Sympathy or gloating?”

  “If I had to guess, gloating.”

  “If he calls back, tell him to go to hell.”

  “Will do,” Peter responded, though they both knew he couldn’t do that.

  Henry was waiting in Andrew’s office, staring out the big window at the gold dome of the State House. He turned when Andrew entered.

  “Sorry, big brother,” he said. “I screwed up bad.”

  “You were trying to protect Tyler, same as I’ve been doing. And you messed up, same as I’ve been doing.”

  “I think I may be going to prison, Andy.”

  Andrew, a former prosecutor, nodded. Henry was right. That was a real possibility, which was a terrible thing. Still, he said, “This is one mistake after a lot of good years. They’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You could always pardon me, of course.”

  He might have been joking. But maybe not. Andrew had crossed the line for his other brother. For Tyler, he had pardoned not one but two prisoners. Surely he would do it for Henry, too, right? The thing was, this was different. Tyler was innocent. He didn’t kill Sally Graham. Henry, on the other hand, had done exactly what he was accused of doing. But then, who was Andrew to judge? If it came to it, he honestly didn’t know what he would do if Henry were convicted of obstruction. He didn’t even want to think about that. So he said, “Haddonfield asked for the bag you took, I assume. Did you give it to him?”

  Henry hesitated, no doubt noticing Andrew’s dodge, then said, “I can’t.”

  “It’s nothing worse than they already have on Tyler. Just more of the same. If we ever find the son of a bitch behind all this and turn his recording over to the authorities, it won’t matter. So why not just cooperate and give it to them?”

  Henry hesitated. “Because I’m not a scuba diver.”

  Andrew dropped into the chair behind his desk and sighed. “You can’t tell me things like that, Henry. I’m the governor.”

  “Sorry. You asked.”

  Silence settled on the room like a fog. Henry turned back to the window, and Andrew placed his elbows on his desk, rested his head in his hands, and tried not to think about anything at all. A few long moments later, Henry said, “I’m not sure I’ll remember how not to be a cop.”

  Andrew paused before answering. “Hopefully, you won’t have to, Henry. You should hire a lawyer, though. Call Rachel Addison. She won’t be able to represent you—it would be a conflict—but I’m sure she can give you the name of someone good.”

  Henry held his gaze for a moment, then nodded, and Andrew wondered if his brother felt abandoned in that moment.

  Then, with false jocularity, Henry said, “Whoever it is had better be damn good. I’m too pretty to go to prison.”

  “That’s debatable,” Andrew said with a rueful smile, “but try to stop thinking like that.”

  “Easy for you to say. Listen, Molly called a little while ago. She thinks we should be together for dinner again tonight. You in?”

  “I’ll be there. I’ll see if Rebecca wants to come, too.” He figured that was a fifty-fifty proposition given the way she’d been feeling about everything lately. But they’d be okay in time, he knew. Probably not even too much time. “How about you? See you there?”

  “I’m not gonna turn down a home-cooked meal,” Henry said. “Who knows how many I have left? Soon it could be nothing but prison chow for me.”

  Andrew could manage only a forced, half-hearted chuckle before hanging up.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Wyatt Pickman sat at his kitchen table finishing an early dinner of exactly one-third of a pound of Prince spaghetti with precisely one-quarter cup of jarred Prego tomato and basil spaghetti sauce. It had to be Prince, of course, and it had to be Prego tomato and basil.

  The small television on the counter was tuned to an early evening news program. He smiled as he watched recorded footage from Andrew Kane’s afternoon press conference. The governor looked beleaguered. The poor man wasn’t yet aware of the trials and tribulations he still had to face. But he would be. And soon. Very soon.

  Pickman pushed his empty plate to the side and pulled his bible in front of him, opening it to the first tab of the index, labeled Contacts, where he found the number of the burner phone he’d had the second livery driver deliver to Kyle Lewis on the day he’d walked out of prison. He and Lewis had spoken only twice. During the first call, shortly after Lewis was released, he’d made sure that Lewis had received the cash Pickman had sent and had read the letter accompanying it. He had wanted to make sure Lewis understood his instructions. At the time, it had taken a few minutes for Pickman to convince the man that he had no intention of revealing his identity; nor was he ready to share with Lewis the reason he had facilitated the pardon.

  “I don’t get it, man,” Lewis had said. “Do we even know each other?”

  “We’ve never met,” Pickman had said into his voice changer. “But I need you for a job.”

  “Not that I’m complaining, not one bit, but why me? You had to get me pardoned. Wasn’t there nobody else who could do the job?”

  “Not like you,” Pickman had said. “It has to be you.”

  “And you can’t tell me what the job is?”

  “Soon. Until then, follow your instructions to the letter. I’ll call you when I need you.”

  “And there’s five G’s in it for me, like you said?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is it dangerous? ’Cuz if it’s dangerous, maybe I should get more money. Like, a bonus.”

  “I got you out of prison seven years early,” Pickman had said. “Consider that your bonus.”

  During their second conversation, the night before last, he’d called to make sure Lewis was still following his instructions, which the man promised he was.

  It was time for the third and final phone call. He turned off the television with a remote control, then dialed Lewis’s number. The man answered curtly. From the style of music playing on the TV in the background, along with the urgent grunting of at least two people, perhaps more, Pickman could guess what Lewis was watching.

  “The time has come,” Pickman said into his voice changer.

  “Damn, man, I’m still not used to the creepy voice.”

  “As soon as we end our call, change into the black pants and black shirt that were in the bag I had delivered to you. Then find a taxi—it’s easy in that part of town—and take it to a restaurant called Porta Bella’s. It’s not far from you. Once inside, move quickly because there are at least two people following you, and you absolutely must lose them.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Go immediately to the restroom and climb out through the window. That will put you in an alley. There’s a fire escape ladder on the side of the next building over. Climb to the roof—it’s only two stories—and hurry across and climb down the ladder into the alley on the other side . . . Are you getting all this?”

  “Bathroom, fire escape, cross the roof, next alley. Got it, man.”

  “In that next alley, enter the back door of a bar called Moonshine Eddie’s. They never lock it during business hours. That will bring you into the bar, back by the restrooms. Go through the bar and leave by the front door, then stand in the doorway of the stationery shop to your left. The doorway will be dark, so you will be in shadow. The entire procedure should take you no more than four and a half minutes. I’ll be watching the door to Moons
hine Eddie’s. When I see you, I’ll pull up in a four-door sedan and roll the back window down as a signal; then you’ll hurry into the back seat. Do you understand?”

  “Sure, boss.”

  “Are you certain? You’ll have four and a half minutes. You have to lose the men following you.”

  “Back door of Moonshine Eddie’s, out through the front, wait in the doorway to the left for you to pull up and roll down your window. Easy as pie.”

  To Pickman’s surprise, Lewis did indeed seem to understand his instructions.

  “Okay then,” he said. “I’ll see you shortly.”

  He ended the call and, still using his voice changer, placed another. Gabriel Torrance answered on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Checking your progress,” Pickman said. “We’re running out of time, like I told you.”

  “I’ve been doing nothing but search this place the last couple of days, like you told me to. I’m searching as we speak.”

  “And you still haven’t found it?”

  “Not yet. But I will tonight. There’s only one building left. I checked all the others carefully. This is the last one left. It has to be here. If I’m right, I’ll have it before morning. Hopefully, long before morning.”

  If Torrance was right, the job would be over tonight. If not, Pickman would resort to his contingency plan for the final task. He didn’t want to do it that way. His client had felt strongly that it should be done as planned, but if Torrance couldn’t find what he was searching for, there would be no choice.

  “Keep looking,” he said. “Call me when you find it.”

  He snapped his burner phone shut and turned his attention to his bible again. Under Part VIII, Section A, Subsection 1, he found the summary of the action that would take place shortly, though it had originally been scheduled for a week from tonight. At least today was Tuesday. It would have been more difficult if it had been another day. He read through the summary, studied his diagrams and sketches, and committed every fact and image to memory. Then he washed his plate, utensils, and drinking glass by hand, dried them, and put them into their respective cupboards and drawers. After that, he changed into dark pants and a dark shirt, then slipped his bible into a small black duffel bag, which contained everything else he would need for his encounter with Lewis. Then he retrieved a much larger duffel, which contained items he would need even later, and carried it all out to the car he had rented under a false name, using a fake ID and a credit card issued to that identity.

  Twenty-four minutes later, he was parked two doors down from Moonshine Eddie’s when Lewis exited the bar, looked both ways, then slipped into the shadows of the doorway to his left. Pickman scanned the street, saw no sign of a tail, and pulled up in front of the stationery store, lowering the rear window as he did. Lewis hurried into the back seat. Pickman calmly pulled away from the curb and headed down the street. Still no sign of a tail.

  It had gone perfectly, of course.

  “You the boss?” Lewis asked from the rear seat. “Or hired help like me?”

  “I’m the boss,” Pickman said.

  “Thought you might have one of those boxes in your throat, you know? Like, a permanent one. But you talk normal.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  “A private residence.”

  A glance in the rearview mirror. Still no one following.

  “To do what? Steal something?”

  “Possibly.”

  “We gonna hurt someone?”

  “Possibly.”

  Lewis paused. “I don’t wanna kill no one, man. It ain’t that I’m against it on principle, you know? But it’s riskier. I just got out. I don’t wanna go back in. But if I do gotta go back in, it ain’t gonna be for murder, you know?”

  “I promise you won’t have to kill anyone,” Pickman said. “And if you want out, I’ll pull over right now. You won’t get the five thousand dollars, of course.”

  “That’d be fair, I guess.”

  Pickman checked for a tail again and saw none. “And, of course, seeing as I got you out of prison specifically for this job, if you don’t want to do it, I guess you’ll have to go back in.”

  “Wait . . . what? You can do that?”

  “I got you out, didn’t I? That was hard. Getting you back in would be easy.”

  A sigh sounded from the back seat. “Okay, man, I’m game for whatever. I hope we’re not killing anyone, though. Like I said, it ain’t like I haven’t done it before, and I’ll do it again if I have to, but it’s better to avoid it if you can.”

  “Words to live by,” Pickman said.

  They rode for another ten minutes before Lewis got chatty. At first, he tried asking more questions about the job they were heading to—“whatever the hell it is,” he added more than once—and when he eventually realized that he wasn’t going to learn anything more, he shifted the conversation into idle talk. Prison life. How much better the food was on the outside. How many girls he was going to lay once this job was over. How hard it had been not picking up a prostitute as soon as he got out, but he’d remembered the instructions in the letter he’d been given, instructions forbidding him from breaking even the most minor law.

  Pickman tried to tune him out and let him talk himself dry, but he was apparently on something of a prison-release high and didn’t seem on the verge of slowing down anytime soon, so Pickman interrupted him midsentence, saying, “Ever heard of Bach?”

  “The songwriter?”

  “Sure, we’ll call him that. So, you’ve heard of him then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This one’s my favorite,” he said, turning on the in-dash CD player. The Art of Fugue, which was always set to repeat, began to play. The perfection of the music soothed him, and he didn’t hear another word from Lewis over the remaining twelve minutes of the ride to the town of Woodstock, if indeed the man even spoke again.

  Eventually, Pickman turned off the music and slowed down slightly as he passed a white clapboard-and-brick center-entrance Colonial. No lights were on in the house, as expected. Judge Jeffers attended a meeting of the local Rotary Club every Tuesday at 7:00 p.m.

  At the end of the block, he turned right and eased the car to a stop in a prechosen spot he had scouted months ago, one largely untouched by the light from the nearest streetlamp.

  He led Lewis through the shadows of big shade trees, along the rear edge of a spacious backyard, and onto Jeffers’s property. From one of his numerous reconnaissance trips, he knew the house had no home security system. One of the benefits—at least from the perspective of people up to no good—of living in a bucolic state like Vermont: folks could be conveniently, albeit naively, trusting.

  Pickman moved quickly to Jeffers’s back door, with Lewis right behind him. He reached into his duffel bag and removed a set of lock picks, with which he made short work of the lock in the doorknob. Then he slipped on a pair of black leather gloves.

  Once inside, he moved confidently through the dark house, remembering its layout from a prior visit. Also, less than two hours ago he had used the sketch he had made that night to refamiliarize himself with the floor plan.

  “Slow down,” Lewis whispered. “What, you can see in the dark, man?”

  “There’s no need to whisper. No one’s home.”

  “Then why don’t we turn on a light so I can see where the hell I’m going?”

  Pickman ignored the question. They entered the living room. “See that sofa over there?” he asked.

  “Barely. Can we at least open the curtains, let a little moonlight in?”

  “No. Have a seat on the sofa.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s your job at the moment. Have a seat.”

  “That’s it? Just sit on my ass?”

  “For now.”

  “I don’t get any of this. You get me out of Southern State, then have me wander around for days doing nothing. You have me pop into a few plac
es, but don’t tell me to do anything there.”

  “You did plenty,” Pickman said, thinking about what a good decoy Lewis had been, giving the Kanes someone to follow, something to worry about, when all along his only contribution to all of this was to be here tonight. Pickman could almost hear the Kanes frantically asking each other, Why did Lewis have to be out in two weeks? What’s going to happen in two weeks? He smiled to himself. He liked thinking about the people he controlled chasing their tails.

  “I just don’t get why I’m here, man,” Lewis said.

  “In case I need you.”

  Lewis stood in the dark and said nothing for a moment. Pickman imagined he could hear rusty gears turning in the man’s head.

  “Oh,” Lewis finally said, “I’m the muscle, right? In case things go south, like, the guy comes home or something.”

  “Sure,” Pickman said. “But no one’s home right now, so have a seat.”

  “Gotcha, man. Easy money.”

  “I have to go upstairs for a minute. Wait here.”

  Pickman entered the front hall, which was right off the living room, and ascended the stairs. In a nightstand drawer in the master bedroom, he found the judge’s .38 Special right where he’d first seen it. He checked to make sure the gun was loaded, then slipped it into his pocket.

  Back in the living room, he settled into a surprisingly comfortable upholstered side chair.

  “Now what?” Lewis asked.

  “We wait.” Pickman glanced at his watch. “We have less than twenty minutes, thirty at the most. Just relax. Close your eyes if you want.”

  “We’re waiting for the guy to come home? We want him to come home? What the hell?”

  Pickman didn’t bother to respond. A moment later, Lewis said, “Oh, I get it. He’s got info we need, like the combination to a safe or something, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Won’t he see our faces, though? I ain’t going back to prison.”

  Pickman sighed, opened his duffel, and removed a black ski mask, which he tossed across the room. Lewis caught it. “Oh, good, man. That makes more sense. Where’s yours?”

  “I’ll put it on when the time comes.”