A Blood Thing

by James Hankins

  “Okay, so he’s destroying Andrew’s career and mine. But he killed Judge Jeffers, Mr. Austin. What about that?”

  Austin shrugged. “I read yesterday that he’s dying of cancer, and dying soon. Maybe the only way to punish him was to kill him sooner. Like I said, I left all that up to him. I never knew any of the details. Just wired him all the money Clifton Barnes ever sent me, every penny of it. Three hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. Waited for almost a year. I thought maybe I’d been ripped off. But then a few weeks ago . . . things started happening.”

  “You keep talking about the guy you hired,” Henry said, getting to the meat of it now, what he needed to know for Tyler’s sake. “Who is he? How do we find him?”

  “You can’t. He’s just someone I found on the Internet. I did a lot of research on the computer. I wasn’t any good at it at first, but I got better. Eventually, I found a thing called a darknet or something. You can hire people to do anything. Everything’s in some sort of code. We emailed back and forth, but nothing’s traceable. I couldn’t tell you who he is if I wanted to.”

  Henry knew what Austin was talking about, the kinds of websites where almost anything illegal could be bought and sold, all communications were encrypted, and payment was often made in bitcoin. Online retail sites where the likes of drug dealers, human traffickers, arms dealers, and hit men sold their goods and services. If that was how Austin had hired the man behind everything, it was a devastating blow to their chances of finding him, especially if he was true to his word and considered the job finished. If he was ready to disappear, he had a very good chance of doing so successfully.

  “Who’s next on your hit list?” Egan asked. “Where’s he going next?”

  Austin closed his eyes and said nothing. Egan didn’t know what Henry knew, that their mystery caller had said he was ready to ride off into the sunset.

  “It’s only gonna get worse for you, Mr. Austin,” Egan said, “if someone else gets hurt. If there’s another name on your list.”

  Austin said nothing.

  “Or what about someone who’s not even on your list getting hurt or killed?” Egan pressed. “You really wanna see another innocent person end up dead as collateral damage?”

  Austin merely shrugged, indifferent to the deaths he had paid for, as well as the ones the killer had thrown in for free.

  Henry almost—almost—wished he could be as indifferent to the death of Dave Bingham, which Henry had caused. It would have saved him from countless hours of mental torture and a thousand sleepless nights.

  Then again, he knew he didn’t deserve to be spared that.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Pickman truly hated the thought of improvisation. Hated to consider deviating from his well-laid plans. But it wasn’t like he hadn’t already had to make sacrifices tonight. And the opportunity presenting itself at that moment . . . well, it was so tempting.

  He weighed his options. He could forge ahead as planned, or he could do this one thing first, then get right back on track.

  And this one thing could be very helpful. He doubted anyone would believe Tyler Kane when they caught him, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that the idiot had seen Pickman’s face. If there was even the smallest chance Tyler could get someone to listen to him, and he could describe Pickman, then, hell . . . maybe Pickman could actually be in danger. Unlikely, yes, but conceivable.

  The solution? Make sure Tyler wasn’t arrested. If he was found, better he be killed than brought in. There was no way Pickman could guarantee that, but it was possible to make it a smidge more likely, to make Tyler seem even more dangerous than he was already considered to be. And Pickman could accomplish that while also making him reviled by law enforcement personnel. With any luck, some cowboy cop would decide to spare the state the expense of a trial.

  His mind made up, Pickman turned right at the next the corner, pulled to a stop at the curb, and hurried on foot back to where he’d passed a cop car parked in the mouth of an alley, the cruiser facing out into the street, the officer behind the wheel, drinking coffee.

  Pickman’s eyes quickly scanned the street in both directions. It was quiet, as so many Vermont streets were at that time of night. Not a soul in sight when he approached the alley and walked in—staggered, really, as though drunk—right past the cruiser, even bumping into it clumsily as he passed. Deeper in the shadows, a few feet behind the car, he stumbled to his left until he hit a brick wall, where he remained leaning, as though collecting himself. If the cop was watching, which Pickman was certain he would be, he would think Pickman was either drunk or injured.

  As expected, he heard the car door open.

  “You okay?” the cop asked. He had the voice of a young man.

  Footsteps approached less warily than Pickman considered wise under the circumstances.

  He turned his head and saw the cop getting closer. Young and clean, new to the uniform. Probably had a pretty wife at home, maybe a baby, too.

  In his pocket, Pickman gripped the knife he’d used to frame Tyler Kane—the one with the notched tip and the slightly twisted blade—and, when the cop was close enough, he spun and jabbed the weapon into the man’s chest, toward the upper right. The cop went down, and Pickman landed on top of him, pinning his arms with his knees.

  “What’s your call sign?” Pickman asked.

  The cop groaned through gritted teeth.

  “You reach for your gun, I’ll cut your throat,” Pickman said. “Now give me your call sign. I won’t ask again.”

  The cop told him, then Pickman stabbed him again in the chest, toward the upper left this time. Then, without a word, he got up onto one knee, jammed the knife into the cop’s belly, and drew it from one side to the other in a curving slice.

  “Smile,” he whispered as the cop bled out.

  Pickman looked down at the clothes he was wearing. Blood. Damn. Well, what had he expected? Some would transfer to the interior of the car he was driving, too, but of course, he’d rented it under a false identity, and it was unlikely it could be traced back to him. He had a change of clothes in the trunk, but he would save them until after he finished what he’d set out from his house to do.

  He left the cop lying in a spreading pool of blood and hurried back to the cruiser. He radioed in, gave the call sign that had been the cop’s final utterance, and said in a voice a little higher than his own, more like the cop’s, “Just saw a man enter an alley on Logan Street, near the Dunkin’ Donuts. Fits Tyler Kane’s description.”

  Without waiting for a response, he hurried from the alley and down to the corner half a block away, then trotted to his car. Within seconds, he was under way and back on course.

  He felt energized. He had deviated from the plan and found it exciting. His heart thundered. Though there had been no one on the street when he’d entered the alley, it had been possible that someone could have driven by, seen activity in the shadows, and decided to investigate. He’d had no idea whether he would be discovered right in the middle of committing murder. Yet he’d followed his instincts, let his gut lead him despite the uncertainty, despite the lack of planning. He had acted spontaneously, a spur-of-the-moment decision to kill, and had pulled it off. And in so doing, he may have lessened Tyler Kane’s chances of being taken in alive.

  When this was all over, when this job was complete, Pickman might have to consider allowing himself a little room for improvisation on future assignments. This little detour had been exhilarating.

  He had settled in behind the wheel, driving well within the speed limit to avoid unwanted attention, when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID, and his heart quickened. It had to be good news. After their conversation a few hours ago, Gabriel Torrance would have no other reason to call him.

  “Yes?” Pickman said into the voice changer.

  “I found it,” Torrance said.

  Pickman chuckled . . . laughed, actually, something he hadn’t done for weeks, probably, maybe as long as a month. He coul
dn’t help it. Despite a small bump in the road earlier, things were going his way again. He’d allowed himself to kill that cop minutes ago, an act that was both useful to his plan and a revelation with respect to the way it made him feel, and now this . . . the last piece of the puzzle but for what had just become the final task, which Pickman was on his way now to complete. He had hoped that Torrance would have been successful before now, but he’d understood that it would take time. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the man had taken another week, actually. Or, quite possibly, failed entirely.

  “I did nothing but search the projects for the past three days,” Torrance said, “like you told me to do, but there was a lot of ground to cover.”

  Apparently, Kevin Austin hadn’t wanted anyone to go looking for the gun and put his father in danger, so almost in passing, he’d given Torrance only a very general description of the weapon’s hiding place.

  “You can tell me now,” Pickman said. “Where was it?”

  “Kevin said he hid it in a wall behind a recessed radiator.”

  “If you knew that, why did it take so long to find it?”

  “He said he was pretty high when he hid it. He’d gone to the projects looking for drugs, and he found them. So he was high to start with when he saw Zachary Barnes, a guy he knew, head into one of the buildings. He followed. The next thing he knew, someone was dead and Barnes was running away, so Kevin ran, too. Ran and hid. When he thought the coast was clear, he came out again. That’s when he found the gun. He panicked and ran into one of the buildings with it, ran up some stairs, and hid the gun in an abandoned apartment. He never knew which building it was, though, just that it wasn’t the one the guy was killed in. Couldn’t remember the apartment number. Or even exactly what floor it was on. All he knew was that it was on the second or third floor.”

  Pickman quickly did the math. Two possible floors, sixteen apartments to a floor, made thirty-two apartments per building to search, and six possible buildings—after subtracting the one where the murder took place—made 192 apartments to explore. Several rooms in each apartment. Maybe even more than one radiator per room. That left a whole lot of searching to be done.

  It didn’t matter, though. What mattered was that they had the weapon now, which would be tied to the murder of Dave Bingham, and which likely still held Zachary Barnes’s fingerprints on it. The gun should be enough to land Barnes in prison, which was part of what Kevin Austin’s father had paid Pickman to make happen. But if the gun itself wasn’t enough to put Barnes away, Pickman had a contingency plan, as always, to ensure that result—a plan in the form of additional evidence he had manufactured and would make sure came to light at the proper moment. But he doubted that would be necessary.

  There was just one thing left for Pickman to do then before he would consider the job he’d been paid to perform to be complete. Though deviations had uncharacteristically been required, he had executed his plan nearly—very nearly—flawlessly.

  As expected.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Andrew and Molly had moved to a cast-iron verdigris bench in the shadow of an ancient oak tree. Their mother had sat there in the early evenings decades ago and read stories to her children, not far away from the house from which a dead body had been removed tonight. Molly appeared lost in thought. Moments ago, Andrew called Rebecca to give her a quick update; she had wanted to meet him here, but he’d asked her to stay home in case Tyler showed up there. Now he sat in silence, waiting for Detective Ramsey to return, praying that Henry would call soon to tell him that his lead had been solid, that he had found the man behind all of this.

  Beside him, Molly said in a quiet voice, “I shouldn’t have talked her into staying.”

  “It’s not your fault, Molly.”

  “She wanted to leave. I know she did. And I wouldn’t let her. She stayed because she trusted me.”

  “No, she stayed because she trusted Tyler. She believed in his innocence and knew he’d never hurt her. And she was right. He never would have. The blackmailer . . . the murderer . . . killed her. Her death isn’t on you.”

  Before she could reply, her cell phone rang. She dug it out of her back pocket, looked at the caller ID, and frowned.

  “Hello?”

  A second later, her eyes grew wide. She glanced quickly toward the house, toward the members of law enforcement buzzing around it, and said into the phone, quietly, “Tyler? Are you okay? Where are you?”

  Andrew’s eyes widened. Tyler?

  She listened for a moment, then said, “That was really smart, Tyler, but listen to me. You need to come home . . . I know you didn’t . . . We all know you didn’t . . . Well, no, the cops don’t know that, but if you come home we can—”

  Andrew was growing anxious listening only to Molly’s half of the conversation.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Oh, that’s horrible . . . A white suit? . . . No, Tyler, don’t hang up . . . You have to come home. It’s dangerous for you out there . . . What? God, Tyler, that’s not true. Why would you think that? . . . It’s just not true, I swear it . . . Please, Tyler, you have to—”

  Andrew saw a tear in her eye. She slipped her phone into her pocket, saying, “He hung up.”

  “Where is he? What did he say?”

  “He borrowed someone’s cell phone outside a bar.”

  “What bar?” Andrew asked.

  “He wouldn’t say. He was leaving there anyway.”

  “I hope like hell he wasn’t recognized.”

  “Me, too. He said he didn’t kill Julie. A man in a white suit did.”

  “Same as in the video you saw.”

  “And the bastard told him that everyone already thought he was a murderer, and now they’d be sure of it, so he should just run away. Even told him the family would be better off without him.”

  “That son of a bitch.”

  “He told Tyler to come with him, that he’d give him a place to stay.”

  “Thank God Tyler was too smart for that. He’s lucky as hell he got away. He wouldn’t say where he is? Where he plans to go?”

  “No, just that he’s going somewhere he’ll be safe.”

  “He say anything else that can help us find him? Anything at all?”

  “Just that he thinks the killer was right, that we’d be better off without him, so he’s not coming home. I’m supposed to tell you and Henry, and Rebecca, too, that he loves us, because he’s not going to call again. He sounded really scared. I’m scared, Andy.”

  “Me, too. If only we had some idea . . .” He trailed off, seeing the faraway look that had suddenly taken hold of his sister’s eyes. “Molly?”

  “Shh. I’m thinking.” As difficult as it was, he remained quiet until she turned to him abruptly, her eyes diamond bright, and said, “I know where he is. Or where he’s going, if he’s not there yet.”

  “You do?”

  “And there’s a bar not far from there. Pete’s Place or something. If he ran through the woods, it wouldn’t take him long to get where I think he’s headed.”

  “And where’s that?”

  She told him.

  “I think you’re right, Molly.”

  “I’m gonna go to him. Right now. I’ll talk him into coming back with me.”

  “Whoa, hang on. Shouldn’t we just tell Ramsey where to find him?”

  “Absolutely not. He could panic. He must be scared out of his mind. What if he sees them coming and runs? They could shoot him, Andy. No, I have to get to him first.”

  He thought a moment. She was right, of course. “When you find him, tell him that the man who killed Julie is wrong. That we never wanted him to leave. That we aren’t better off without him. That he has to come back with you and—”

  “I know what to tell him, Andy. And I think he’ll listen to me. He usually does.”

  Andrew nodded. “Hurry up then, before Ramsey comes back. And be careful, Molly.”

  She looked at the policemen standing at the end of her drivew
ay. “Will they let me leave?”

  “I don’t know.” He paused, thinking. “Sneak out the side gate, and go to the black SUV behind my car. My security guy’s in there. I’ll text him and tell him to take you wherever you want to go.”

  “He’s a state trooper, right? What if Tyler sees him and gets scared off? If I lose him, who knows if we’ll find him again. And we have to find him before the police do.”

  “I’ll tell Mike to hang back. Now go.”

  Molly nodded, then slipped off through the shadows. Andrew sent his text to Mike, and a few moments later, he heard an engine start and saw the lights of the black SUV snap on. The vehicle pulled away, Mike giving a wave out his open window to the cop at the end of the driveway as he passed. The tinted rear windows were closed.

  Andrew sat back down on the bench feeling utterly impotent. Henry was off following whatever lead he thought he had on this. Molly was racing off to find Tyler before the cops did. And Andrew just sat there waiting for Ramsey . . . who was suddenly striding across the lawn, his body language screaming bloody murder.

  “Governor Kane,” he said, his anger almost a physical thing. “I just got word that your brother killed someone else a few minutes ago. A Bennington Police officer, less than a year on the job. Carved him up the same way he did the others.”

  Oh, God . . .

  “That wasn’t Tyler, Detective.”

  “Bullshit. All your talk about how good a guy he is, how innocent he is. Nothing but bullshit. Sir.” He looked puzzled for a moment. “Where’s Ms. Kane?”

  Andrew thought quickly. “You said you were done with her, Detective. She went to stay with a friend.”

  Ramsey cut his eyes toward the street. “Isn’t that her Land Rover?”

  “She’s understandably upset, so I had my security guy drive her.”