J.A. Konrath / Jack Kilborn Trilogy - Three Scary Thriller Novels (Origin, The List, Haunted House)

by J. A. Konrath

  Tom plugged a pen drive into his USB port—he’d copied Jessup’s My Documents folder—and waded through spreadsheets, games, tax figures, and letters concerning library business. It took almost an hour and the remainder of the coffee before he found something interesting. A word processing file, BERT.DOC. It had no address heading, and was dated nine days ago.

  Bert—

  Looking forward to meeting you, to see if you live up to your many pictures. I realize it must be a shock, and even with the proof in the articles and in our birth certificates, you must still harbor some doubt. Besides the question of how, there are also many whys. Perhaps we can figure these out together, as well as find the others.

  I’m enclosing a copy of a photo of you I recently found. Call me when you’ve made travel arrangements.

  All best,

  T. Jessup

  Tom read it again, trying to find the hidden meaning. Was Bert a pen pal? Someone famous? Or had Jessup managed to find another person with a tattoo on their heel?

  He printed the letter and logged onto the Internet. First stop, the Yellow Pages. It only took a few minutes to locate a Mrs. Emilia Jessup in Des Moines. He jotted down her number and called. Busy. Tom then accessed the CPD database and found out Jessup had no criminal record or outstanding warrants. Nor was there mention of him in the Chicago Tribune archives. He searched USENET, but Jessup’s name and signature weren’t on any of the big message boards. Google yielded nada. He tried to access Jessup’s email account, but didn’t have the password to get in from this terminal.

  Switching tactics, Tom went to ViCAP—the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program run by the Feebies. Because the crime scene report wasn’t finished yet, he couldn’t fill out the long questionnaire to add Jessup’s murder to the database. But he did go surfing.

  Under a search for DECAPITATION, he found no less than seven hundred entries spanning the last fifty years. That was a lot of people losing their heads. TATTOOS OF NUMBERS gave him more than eight thousand hits. He combined the two for his next search, and added CAUCASIAN MALE UNDER 35.

  Fifteen hits. They detailed some pretty horrible crimes, but none of them seemed related to Jessup. He refined his tattoo search to SINGLE DIGIT NUMBER TATTOO LEFT FOOT, and got a hit.

  The crime took place last year in Tennessee. A twenty-nine-year-old Caucasian male by the name of Robert Mitchell had been found in the woods outside of Nashville. He’d been stripped naked and impaled upon a ten foot wooden pole. It had pierced his rectum and eventually exited through his mouth. The coroner theorized it took Mitchell a while to die.

  He’d slid down the length of the stake an inch at a time. By the time it ruptured something vital, Mitchell may have been hanging there for over ten hours.

  The pictures made Tom wince.

  There were no witnesses, no suspects, and very little evidence. The investigation had been extensive and taken hundreds of man hours, but not a single lead panned out. Tom read on, and felt the coffee roil in his gut. Besides being well liked in the community, Mitchell had been a cop. He also had a one inch blue number on his left heel. There was a jpg attachment of the ink, and Tom clicked on it to enlarge.

  A number 2. Done in the same style as his and Jessup’s. Tom checked Mitchell’s birth date and discovered Robert was only eight days younger than he was. Tom’s mouth became very dry. He reached to pour more coffee, but the pot was empty.

  Tom tried Emilia Jessup in Des Moines again. Still busy. He went back into the suitcase. Jessup’s credit card statements showed no unusual purchases. The last few months of cancelled checks were all for food or utilities. There was an address book, but no one inside named Bert.

  Jessup’s phone company was local, one Tom had dealt with many times, but they still required a warrant to release phone records. Tom filled out the paperwork to set the wheels in motion, but it would take a few hours to get a list of all of Jessup’s calls.

  Unfortunately, Jessup didn’t have a caller ID at his apartment. Strangely, he didn’t have an answering machine either. Tom didn’t know one single person who didn’t own an answering machine, unless…

  “Unless they have voice mail.”

  He searched the suitcase for previous phone bills and found one from last month. There was a charge for voice mail, but it didn’t give Jessup’s PIN. That was probably listed on Jessup’s very first phone bill, when he was assigned the line. Tom had only brought along the bills from the last few months—he hadn’t thought there would be a need to bring every single statement.

  So it was back to Jessup’s apartment. He wanted to check the vic’s email anyway, and if he hurried he could make it back before noon and grab a bite. He called Roy.

  “Anything?” he asked his partner.

  “Office in order. No known enemies. You?”

  “I gotta run back to the scene, check his voice mail. We can compare notes over lunch.”

  “Meet you back at the district. I’m almost done here.”

  The day hadn’t gotten any warmer, and the freezing drizzle had formed slush on his windshield. Tom climbed into his Mustang and stepped on a CD case that had fallen next to the gas pedal. Sting’s latest album, unopened. His ex-girlfriend had given it to him, months ago, at around the same time his car stereo stopped working. He tossed it in the back seat.

  Tom took Addison to Lake Shore Drive, south towards downtown. To his left, Tom could make out large ice patches on Lake Michigan. Ahead in the distance, the twin antennas of the giant John Hancock Building blinked in unison. Rush hour was in full force. Tom hit the siren, forging a winding path through traffic. One of the perks of being a cop. He exited on North Avenue and parked in front of a fire hydrant—another perk. The neighborhood consisted of upper middle class apartments, most of them recent college grads, all within crawling distance to the city’s major hub of bars and clubs on Rush and Division. Tom walked to Jessup’s residence and let himself into the lobby door with the key supplied by the superintendent.

  The building was newly remodeled, brightly lit, secure. Jessup’s door was taped off with yellow crime scene ribbon. Tom ducked under it and entered, turning on the lights.

  The lounger that the body was taped to had been removed, taken to the lab to search for trace evidence. No one had been in yet to clean up, and the large brown blood stains on the carpet had grown funky. Tom went to the stereo, which was speckled white with fingerprint dust, and turned it on. A CD loaded automatically. Even someone as classically inept as Tom recognized Beethoven’s Fifth. He lowered the volume and let it play.

  Jessup’s collection of old phone bills was in a file cabinet, and Tom searched until he found one with the voice mail personal identification number on it. Then he picked up the phone and pressed the keys to access the messages. There was only one.

  “Hi, Thomas, it’s Bert. The convention is running all week, and I have to man the table every day until eight. But I’m free all day Saturday, then I have to go back to Milwaukee. Can we get together then? You’ve got my number at the hotel. Call me later.”

  A robotic voice indicated the call had taken place yesterday afternoon at two-fifteen. Tom played it again, listening closely. It was a man, Midwest accent, a somewhat nasally voice. He didn’t sound threatening or imposing. His manner was friendly, albeit harried. There was noise in the background. Tom repeated the message once more, trying to make out the sounds behind Bert’s voice. It was the murmur of a large group of people. No street sounds, so they had to be inside. Bert had probably called from the convention he mentioned.

  Tom closed his eyes, trying to pick up any key word in the background that would indicate what kind of convention it was. No luck. He pressed the star button on the phone to save the message, then sat back down on the kitchen chair. At any given time, there were more than two dozen conventions in the Chicagoland area. And hundreds of hotels. Bert mentioned that Jessup had his number. Would he have written it down somewhere?

  There was no scratch pad by the phone. Tom
hit the redial button on the receiver and got a local pizza shop. He went back to the second phone in the bedroom, but it didn’t have a redial button. Punching *69 didn’t work either. He would have to wait for the phone records to find out where Bert was staying.

  Moving on, Tom booted up the computer and was able to access Jessup’s email. Most of it was spam, with a few letters concerning the library. Tom was reading about the budget for a remodeling job when he heard movement behind him.

  As a rookie, though he’d never admit it to anyone, Tom used to practice quick draws in front of a mirror. He got to be pretty fast. After being promoted to Detective, his hip holster disappeared and was replaced by the shoulder rig he now wore. Again, in the privacy of his apartment, he practiced drawing his gun from the new holster until he was just as fast.

  So without even thinking, Tom’s hand reached into his jacket and tugged at his 9mm Model 17 Glock pistol, eighteen rounds with the first already chambered. He was quick.

  The intruder was quicker. A muscular arm snaked across Tom’s chest and yanked him backward. Tom was violently flipped over the intruder’s hip, chair and all, and he landed hard on his shoulders. His grip still solid, Tom cleared leather on his holster and aimed the weapon upward. A boot dug into his armpit and two strong hands locked on the gun, twisting it out of his fist. It was tossed aside.

  Tom’s vision stopped spinning and he focused on the man standing over him. Short, extremely so, but built like a tank on steroids. He had a crew cut and a blond Fu Manchu mustache. A chest-sized tattoo of a samurai was visible through his tight white T-shirt.

  “Hi, Tom.” The man’s foot shifted from Tom’s armpit to his neck. He stepped down hard enough to cut off oxygen. Tom twisted and yanked at the leg, but couldn’t get free. It was like wrestling with a tree trunk. His lungs began to burn, and he could feel his face become bright red.

  “So you wound up being a pig. A shitty one. Jessup put up a better fight than you.”

  The man smiled, his mouth a dungeon of gray teeth. Three were missing, and one protruding incisor was capped in gold. It caught the light and twinkled at him.

  Tom was big but limber. Grunting with effort, he brought up his long leg, aiming for the gold. The man turned in time, but still received a nasty kick to the side of the face. He stumbled back, and Tom scrambled to his hands and knees, sucking in air. He did a quick scan of the floor for his gun, and not seeing it, launched himself at the smaller man.

  Tom’s charge was met with a solid right to the jaw. It was the hardest punch Tom had ever taken, and his knees melted as if made of butter. As Tom fell, his attacker completed a tight reverse-kick that connected with his chest. Tom landed on his side, unable to draw a breath. It felt like someone had parked a car on his ribcage.

  His attacker wiped some blood from his mouth and snarled. He reached inside his long coat at hip level. With a simple, swift motion he withdrew an honest-to-God samurai sword. Tom tried to get up but he still couldn’t breathe. He’d landed hard, and along with the pain in his chest and jaw, his nervous system sent him notice that he’d somehow hurt his ass. He felt for it, found he was sitting on something hard. His Glock.

  The surprise must have shown on his face, because the man was out the door before he could bring the gun around.

  Tom sat there for ten full minutes, his breath slowly returning, the Glock held in a shaky hand. When he finally felt strong enough to stand up, the world was still wobbly and his stomach churned as if he’d eaten a nest of weasels. He managed to get to the bathroom before he was sick.

  Then he drank some water out of the faucet and called it in.

  Roy came into the hospital room just as the doctor was putting the final stitch inside Tom’s cheek.

  “Ouch. Probably don’t want this coffee, huh?”

  Tom gave Roy a slight shake of his head. It was a gourmet brand too. His partner set it down on a tray, next to a pile of bloody cotton balls.

  “While some guy was doing a Jackie Chan on your face, I gave Jessup’s mom a call. You ready for this to get weirder?”

  Tom made an affirmative sound around the doctor’s fingers.

  “The vic was adopted. Mrs. Jessup had some female problem, couldn’t have kids. She and her husband were on waiting lists at adoption agencies. But here’s the deal—some strange man just showed up out of the blue and dropped a baby off at their house, complete with birth certificates and fifty grand in cash.”

  Tom raised an eyebrow. Roy continued.

  “She doesn’t know who he was, or why he did it. Never heard from the guy again. But she doesn’t think it ended there. She thinks her son was being watched, all while he was growing up.”

  The doctor finished the knot and cut the thread. Tom thanked him and touched the side of his face, still numb.

  “What do you mean, watched?”

  “She said once, when Jessup was about four, he was playing in the backyard and she ran inside to get the phone. When she came out, he was lying on the ground, some guy leaning over him. She yelled at the guy, he took off. Her kid was soaking wet, coughing up water. Jessup had wandered into the woods and fell in a pond. The guy had given him CPR, saved his life. But here’s the thing—there wasn’t another house around for almost a mile. So that guy shouldn’t have been there.”

  “Maybe he was hiking. Or a hunter.”

  “Dressed in a suit, in the middle of the woods? She said there were other times too. She’d see some person watching Jessup play in the park, then a few weeks later see the same person.”

  Tom mulled it over, wondering how much Jessup’s story mirrored his own. Had this same mystery stranger also given his parents fifty K?

  “Roy, there’s something you should know.”

  He told his partner about his tattoo, and his adoption, and also about the cop in Tennessee who’d been impaled.

  “And I just remembered something else. My parents used to joke that I had a guardian angel watching over me. I got into a bike accident when I was a kid—broke my leg in an empty warehouse. Bad break, I passed out. No one knew I was there, but somehow I woke up in the hospital. The doctors said some man took me there, gave my phone number, and left.”

  “This is some seriously weird shit.”

  “Did you get anything else from Jessup’s mother?”

  “I got a name. When the mystery guy dropped off Jessup, he also left birth certificates, already filled out. Not only the state one, but the one the hospital issued. Doctor in charge was a guy named Harold Harper, out of Rush-Presbyterian. Paper trail ends in New Mexico. I’ve got some guys working on it. What’s up with your foot?”

  Tom’s shoe was off. It was setting on the cot in a plastic baggie.

  “The guy who attacked me admitted to killing Jessup. I kicked him in the face. We get a DNA match off the blood on the shoe, case is closed.”

  “So you gonna walk around with one shoe?”

  Tom tossed Roy his car keys.

  “My gym bag is in the trunk. I’m parked in Emergency. Be a dear, would you?”

  His sneakers retrieved, Tom signed his release and tailgated Roy back to the district. He wished he’d asked his parents more questions about his adoption when they were still alive, but it hadn’t mattered at the time. Why question a perfect family? Tom’s mother had been a saint, always loving and supportive. His dad, a Chicago Alderman, had been one of the best men Tom had ever known. Tom couldn’t have picked better parents.

  After dropping off the shoe at the lab, Tom and Roy hit the computer. It took Tom fifteen minutes to feed in details about his attacker, and the computer took .04 seconds to spit out an answer.

  Arthur Kilpatrick. He had a rap sheet that read like Felony’s Greatest Hits; assault, arson, burglary, rape, attempted murder. Two stretches in prison, and a current warrant out for his arrest. He’d seriously injured eleven people in a bar fight. Tom read the number again. Eleven. This was one major bad ass.

  “Click under distinguishing marks.”


  Tom did, and discovered that among Kilpatrick’s many tattoos was a blue number 9… on the bottom of his left heel. He was eleven days older than Tom.

  “Shit keeps getting weirder and weirder.”

  Tom agreed. If Rod Serling had chosen that moment to walk out of the closet, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “So why did this guy return to the crime scene, Tommy? You think he left something there?”

  “We searched every inch of that place. What could he have been looking for?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t looking for anything. Maybe he was there because you were there.”

  Tom blinked. “He came there to kill me?”

  “We got two bodies, Jessup and that southern cop, both with number tatts. Kilpatrick has a tatt, and you have a tatt.”

  “But how did he know I was there?”

  “Could have followed you.”

  “It was rush hour. I used my siren to weave through traffic. No one could have followed me.”

  “Staked the place out?”

  “Two entrances, front and back. Can’t watch both at once.”

  Tom rubbed his chin, some of the feeling returning. Was there any way he could have alerted Kilpatrick to his arrival at the apartment? A sensor, a phone tap, a silent alarm…

  “When I first got there, I turned on the stereo.”

  Roy raised his eyebrows. “And he heard it? You think the place was bugged?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Tom searched through his desk until he found the Foxhound, a souvenir from his days in Vice. It was a small silver box the size of a pager. The device scanned radio waves between fifty megahertz and three gigahertz, almost every available frequency.