by Jon Land
“I had the covers removed. From the paperbacks as well.”
“What else does he read besides philosophy?”
Dr. Vogelhut, keeper of The Locks, settled back in his chair. “Martial arts, specifically a form called aikido.”
“A bit too nonviolent for him.”
“I told you he’d changed. He practices the moves day and night.”
“You can’t practice aikido alone.”
“Peet does.”
Vogelhut led Kimberlain to the isolated wing where Peet had been kept these last three years. He opened the door with his own key but stopped short of following him in.
“Don’t you want to observe the momentous occasion firsthand, Doctor?”
Vogelhut shook his head. “It would be best for his therapy for the two of you to converse alone. Besides, I’ll examine the tapes later.”
“I’ll send him your regards,” Kimberlain said, and the door closed, sending an echo through the hallway beyond.
The first pair of guards, armed with automatic rifles, stood just ahead of him. One led Kimberlain down the hallway toward the single lit cell where another pair of guards stood six feet away on either side. Kimberlain felt his heart thumping as he drew closer, the memory of pain rising in the tissues of the scars left from their one previous encounter. When he reached the cell, he found the huge, bald figure sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking strangely calm and placid.
“Hello, Ferryman,” said Winston Peet.
Kimberlain loathed dwelling on the specifics of their one and only meeting, either in his own mind or aloud to others. For three years he had done his best to forget it, but the frequent nights when the pain woke him from sleep made this impossible.
Eight murders had been committed before any pattern was discerned, and another seven before Kamanski, then of the FBI, called in the Ferryman. There could have been more—dozens more—but Kamanski and others involved doubted it because the killer seemed to enjoy having others critique his handiwork. All the bodies had been found with their heads missing, ripped from the torsos by hand, following death by strangulation. Impossible strength was clearly involved. Don’t look for a man, the advice went, look for a monster.
The Ferryman went looking for a monster. The methodology indicated that whoever it was wanted to be caught, or at least challenged. He was leaving an easy-to-follow trail, fifteen murders in fifteen different states, no pattern in the victims other than the condition their corpses were found in. But Kimberlain knew there had to be more clues because the killer would have wanted to leave more. He could almost feel him out there laughing, thinking, I’m giving you everything you need to catch me, and this is the best you can come up with?
Murder number sixteen took place while the Ferryman was on the case. He and Kamanski spent long hours before a map of the U.S. on which sixteen numbered flag pins indicated the spots where bodies had been found. The apparent randomness was striking, though Kimberlain knew this had to be because they were looking in the wrong direction. Poring through the piles of information in the victims’ files accomplished nothing. Computers came up empty because the data didn’t suggest any logical conclusions.
The frustration of digging so deep suggested to Kimberlain that perhaps they had neglected the clues that were on the surface. He went back to the files, made copious notes, and after a solid day found the answer: each killing had taken place in the previous victim’s birthplace. The first had been killed in Boston—the Ferryman guessed that was where the killer was from. That victim’s birthplace was Gilford, New Hampshire; the victim there was born in White Plains, New York. And so it went, with no state ever repeated. The killer was plainly in need of a pattern, a purpose, anything to string his acts together. And the most terrifying ramification of this was that, obviously, significant research went into his selections. After all, no victim could be chosen until it was ascertained that a birth state would not be repeated as a result.
The sixteenth victim was born in the town of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, and, not surprisingly, the killer had not paid that state a visit yet. The Ferryman knew a full mobilization, at least a publicized one, might force his man deeper into the shadows. On the other hand, he felt that a challenge to the killer would provide his best chance for confronting and stopping him. He had his own picture leaked to the news services, a clear shot of the specialist who had been brought in to take up the hunt. The killer would see the picture and not be able to resist going for number seventeen, if for no other reason than to prove himself superior.
Medicine Lodge was a small town, with one thousand people for each of its two square miles. Kimberlain convinced Kamanski to limit their work to surveillance until a positive identification was obtained. By him. It was similarly agreed that the latest discovery would be held back from the people of Medicine Lodge, in effect making the entire town the bait, a decision that would ultimately force Kamanski from his job.
The Ferryman showed just enough of himself in town to be sure the killer would see him. The madman was present all right; there was no mistaking that feeling. He knew the man had arrived just as surely as he knew none of Kamanski’s surveillance would pick him up. Kimberlain sat in the town’s single bar from five o’clock on, listening to Kamanski’s team issuing their reports from various sectors and wondering how it would be when the inevitable confrontation occurred. Halfway into the night, the waitress became his only company. She was a pert and pretty brunette, maybe twenty years old, with a knockout figure. Kimberlain nursed club sodas as if they were thirty-dollar shots of the finest cognac, and every ten minutes or so the waitress would appear to ask if he wanted another. Sometimes he said yes just to have reason to tip her. All the time he listened to Kamanski in the walkie-talkie set on the bar.
Kimberlain never really had a concrete reason to suspect something was wrong. In the end it was his watch that told him. Eighteen minutes had passed since the waitress’s last appearance from the kitchen, and she hadn’t once gone that long between tips.
Oh, Christ.
In that moment the Ferryman knew the killer had taken his challenge to heart. He also knew he should have anticipated that the man would do it just this way. He was so agitated he punched the wrong button on his walkie-talkie and jammed it in the receive mode.
With no time to lose fretting over that, Kimberlain leaped over the bar and crashed through the kitchen doors. He saw him standing there in the bright light; huge, without question the biggest man he had ever seen. Kimberlain had met plenty of giants in his time, either abnormally tall or abnormally well muscled, but he had never laid eyes on a creature who was so much of both.
The bald monster grinned and slid the pretty waitress’s head across the floor toward the Ferryman’s feet. The rest made history of a sort, lasting exactly the fifty-seven seconds it took for Kamanski and his men to be attracted to the sounds of a struggle.
The Ferryman’s first thought was to go for his gun, but the monster was upon him in one swift lunge, and he abandoned the notion in favor of striking a blow hard and fast. He tried for the throat, but the monster snatched his hand out of midair and twisted it violently away. Kimberlain went with the move, into it in fact, but the giant was ahead of him again, pulling with a savage motion that dislocated Kimberlain’s right shoulder with a sickening pop.
The Ferryman tried for his gun then, but just as he pulled it free, a huge blur whipped against his wrist and the weapon was gone. The giant smiled and tightened his grasp. Kimberlain understood what the monster was fighting for. If he killed the Ferryman, he would surely be the greatest killer alive.
Kimberlain felt the monster’s hands going for his neck. They clamped on. This was the way the monster dismembered his victims; he tore their heads off when he had killed them.
But this time the victim was still alive.
The monster started to twist, and the Ferryman saved himself by turning his whole body with the move. The giant had great strength and relied on it totally. But
great strength is at its best when it meets resistance, and Kimberlain’s motion offered none. He ducked when he felt the grip slacken slightly, and then he was free, backing off.
The monster gazed at him, puzzled yet almost happy; the level of this challenge pleased him. Kimberlain sidestepped and nearly slipped in a pool of the waitress’s blood. A few feet in front of him was her headless corpse. The top of his head clanged against hanging pots and pans, and the monster’s face was temporarily swallowed by them as he stalked forward.
Kimberlain’s ruined shoulder was really throbbing now. He thought of going for his pistol, but where was it? There was no time to look. He felt behind him and realized he had backed himself against the kitchen stove. Next to it was a coffee station where a pair of pots simmered.
The monster chose that moment to lunge, the same moment Ferryman reached behind him and grasped the handle of one of the pots. He felt a hand like a knife pierce his kidney, and the pain blinded him as he started the pot forward. At first he had planned to hurl the boiling contents into the monster’s face, but he was too close for that now and opted instead to crash the glass pot against the huge bald dome.
The monster howled in pain, flapping at his ravaged skin and scorched eyes. His next wild motion stripped a dozen pots and pans from their hooks. Kimberlain saw the opening and seized it, kicking out once, twice.
In the midst of the second kick, his eyes locked on the pistol near the dishwasher, and without thinking he stooped to reach for it. The monster whirled in the same direction and lashed a blow to his wrist that shattered bone. He managed to evade the next blow by backpedaling agilely, but with one wrist ruined and the opposite shoulder dangling, his best chance was that Kamanski would appear to save him.
The monster knew he had him then. What he didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that the Ferryman had been trained to use pain, to make it work for him when there was nothing else left. The monster was going to try for his neck again; he counted on that, because it would bring his adversary close.
The giant’s hands came up boldly for his neck, and Kimberlain felt himself locked in an iron grasp. He backed up to a rack of meat cleavers and felt for one blindly before snatching hold with his right hand. The monster had already started to twist, and it was difficult to say where at that point the pain was greater for Kimberlain. Before it could grow any worse, he swung the cleaver forward with a shrill scream.
The monster wailed horribly, then staggered about, trying to free the cleaver from its position between his collarbone and neck. Blood pumped fiercely from the wound, but the Ferryman knew he was still dangerous, a wounded animal.
Using his own pain as a source of strength, Kimberlain feigned going for the pistol that was now halfway between them. The monster managed to work the cleaver free with a throaty scream and had no choice now but to try to cut Kimberlain off from the gun. The Ferryman had anticipated the reaction perfectly. His arms were useless now, but he still had his legs. He unleashed a vicious onslaught of kicks that reduced the giant to a gasping pulp on the blood-wet kitchen floor. The monster made one last effort at Kimberlain, but the Ferryman’s reserves carried him to the gun and then to a moderately safe distance from the bleeding animal.
Kimberlain got the gun up but didn’t fire as he heard Kamanski’s men charge through the entrance to the bar.
Fire, he told himself.
Shoot me, the monster’s sagging eyes seemed to beg.
The Ferryman held the gun rigid, and then Kamanski was by his side. His men circled the giant, their pistols and rifles ready as though he were a wild beast finally cornered in the jungle.
The trial didn’t start until Kimberlain’s two-month stay in the hospital had ended. He emerged still in a neck collar, part of a kidney ruined, with a staple in his shoulder and a pin in his wrist. All told there had been four operations, with another two in the offing. The Ferryman took the stand and eyed Winston Peet the whole time he spoke; Peet was chained and under armed guard even in the closed courtroom.
Kimberlain testified as an expert witness that Peet was the most malevolent criminal he had ever encountered, his capacity for violence exceeded only by his willingness to commit it. His testimony mesmerized the court but did nothing to sway the judge. The judgment of the court was that Winston Peet was totally incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and he was sentenced to The Locks until such time as he was deemed fit to stand trial again or reenter society a cured man. One day Winston Peet could conceivably be released, and the Ferryman knew the killing would start again. But they would never catch Peet again because he wouldn’t let himself be caught as he had before, and it would be Kimberlain’s fault because he hadn’t shot him.
And now, three years later, he found himself facing the monster again from six feet away.
“I’ve been expecting you, Ferryman,” Peet said. “You’ve come about the murders.”
Chapter 6
“I KNEW THE LETTERS would draw you here,” Peet said. “I knew you couldn’t turn your back.”
Kimberlain wondered how David Kamanski might have accepted the news that he had actually done his research into Turan and Rand after Peet’s letters had called attention to their killings. The giant had sensed something in the murders before anyone else. Perhaps Peet was sensitive to the trail of another so much like himself. Or perhaps he was jealous and desperately wanted the perpetrator to be found. Why else would he have contacted Kimberlain?
“There’s been another murder,” the Ferryman said.
“I know. Jordan Lime. The details were sketchy.”
“A step beyond the others. I want to know what you think about this. I want you to tell me where you think I should look.”
“What’s the weather like outside?” Peet asked suddenly.
“Cold and snowing.”
“First snow of the season?”
“Maybe.”
“Rebirth, Ferryman. Virgin white coating a land in need of renewal.”
Peet rose to his feet. He was naked to the waist and wore khaki pants that barely touched his sandaled feet. His huge muscles rippled with every breath, fleshy bands pulsing even through his neck. Kimberlain couldn’t help but gawk. Memory didn’t do the monster justice.
“I believe that men lie in wait of similar renewal, Ferryman.”
“Dr. Vogelhut seems to think you’re well on your way to yours.”
“He is easily fooled.”
“And is that what you’re doing to him?”
“Only in letting him believe his therapy is to blame for my renewal.” There was a pause in which Peet eyed Kimberlain with naked intensity. “It was you, Ferryman, back there in that town. That was where my rebirth started.” He looked over at the huge stack of coverless philosophy books against the back wall. “My friend Nietzsche wrote that a man has much to learn from his enemies. You didn’t kill me in Kansas. I found that interesting.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“I won’t praise you for your compassion, since I know that had nothing to do with it. The trophy was more meaningful when brought in alive. Killing me would have reduced the pleasure of your victory, so you spared my life. It was then that I realized we were the same, you and I.”
“Your wounds must have made you delirious.”
“Denials are pointless. Your soul is no stranger to me. But still I found the fact that you spared my life upsetting. New thoughts were spurred. I began to see that fate had spared me for a reason.”
Peet held his eyes closed as if meditating, and Kimberlain used the time to gaze around his cell. Everything was neat, ordered, precise. A plastic sink and toilet, a one-piece cot lacking springs, and piles of books, with Nietzsche on top. Nearer the bed were stacks and stacks of newspapers, piled so precisely they seemed unread. So that’s how he came to know about the murders, Kimberlain realized, and then turned his thoughts to the array of potential weapons the madman had assembled. Even newsprint, peeled off by fingernails and properly aged, m
ade a volatile poison. And what of the pens with which he had written the letters? They were of the felt-tip variety and thus less dangerous, but with Peet the element of danger could never be ruled out.
“Is it one man behind the killings or more than one?” the Ferryman asked him.
Winston Peet’s eyes opened again. “It is one man and more than one.”
“Is that a riddle?”
“It’s no ordinary killer you’re after.”
“Then who might it be?”
“I’ve been studying the cases. I read the papers avidly, Ferryman, always in search of a man whose own skills rival mine.”
“Does this one make you jealous?”
“Hardly.”
“Any ideas?”
Peet considered the question only briefly. “Dreighton Quail, perhaps.”
“The Dutchman’s dead.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Then he’s not dead.”
“You’re not helping.”
“As I said in the letters, to be of service I require your help first.”
“Excuse me?”
Peet stepped closer to the bars. The armed guards six feet on either side of the Ferryman clutched their rifles tighter. The giant slid his hands up the steel. “Why don’t you step in here with me?”
“Because I’m too old to spend another three months in the hospital.”
“You still have pain?”
Kimberlain didn’t bother saying he did.
“I as well.” Peet indicated the jagged scar that cut diagonally across his collarbone and stretched toward his bulging neck. His hands squeezed the bars tighter. “I could rip these out quite easily, you know. I’d be on you before they could shoot, and force you to finish the job you started all those years ago. But I won’t, Ferryman, because I’m not the same man anymore. My soul is like the earth’s: reborn.”
“We were talking about the murders.”
“I still am. Between good and evil actions there is no difference in kind, but mostly one of degree. The standard is constantly changing.”