Icarus. (46 page)

And he was fucking them all now, one at a time. And yet all together. How could that be? But it was. Steady, hard, rhythmic fucking. The Rookie. So beautiful, so gentle. The Entertainer. Grinning at him, a knife in one hand, a long needle sticking out of her arm. The Mortician, her long nails scratching his back, ripping his flesh. Samsonite. Her sharp teeth biting his neck, then his shoulder, before she exploded in a burst of red and he began screaming again. And even Emma! Sexy, delicious Emma from long ago. But then Caroline was back… perfect Caroline. Calming him down. Loving him. Making him safe…

He wanted to say to her, I can't be safe. I've almost done it, I think I've found them all, but there's one missing. No one's safe until we find her! They were missing the Murderess. Where was the Murderess? Why couldn't he find the Murderess?

More red. Oh, God, it was impossible, how could there be more red? But there was. Caroline disappeared, submerged in a river of red. A red rolling river…

And Kid's voice. How could it be Kid's voice? Saying: Say when it hurts… Say when it hurts…

Even more red… Even more pain…

Naked.

Fucking.

All of them.

Alone. Together.

Red red red red.

Say when it hurts.

When… Jack screamed… When when when when when when when! Please, God, it hurts… Oh… my… God… It huuuuuurrrrrrtttttsssssss…

It took him several seconds to realize that he was awake. His mouth was dry and nasty. It felt as if he had eaten a bucket of sand. His tongue was coated with a hard, rough crust and when he tried to clear his throat it came out like a croak, like he hadn't spoken in years and years and his throat had stopped working.

Jack was disoriented. He had no idea how long he'd been dreaming or what time it was now and instinctively he went to look at his watch. But he couldn't. His left hand was handcuffed to the bedpost at the top left of the bed. Not yet comprehending where he was or what had happened, he yanked his hand but he couldn't get free. He yanked again, harder, and the pain of the cuff cutting into his wrist brought reality back to him in small drips: finding Samsonite, going to her apartment, talking, drinking, the hallucinogenic drug that had been slipped into his wine. He didn't know exactly what had happened after that, but flashes of it slipped in and out of his brain, and with them came anger and confusion and humiliation and, he couldn't deny it, excitement.

He yanked his hand again; it did no good. But his hard pull twisted his body over and Jack suddenly realized he was not in bed alone. He twisted his head to look to his right. Samsonite was next to him. Naked and still sleeping. Enraged, he shoved her with his right hand, pushed her hard in the back, but she didn't wake. He went to push her again, overcome by anger, but as his hand touched her spine, he saw that on the sheet by her lower back was a red stain. He could see her legs now, and they, too, were splashed with red. Jack looked down at his own naked body and realized that he, too, was stained. His chest, one arm, a thigh was splotched with thick, red blood.

He wanted to yell at her, to scream, "Wake up, you crazy bitch!" but there was no point because when he grabbed her shoulder and turned her body toward him he saw the river of blood covering her neck and breasts. He saw the slash marks, the deep stab wounds. Saw that she'd been gutted, her stomach slit wide open.

He yanked his arm as hard as he could and the bed rattled noisily, but Jack couldn't free himself. The handcuff cut into his wrist as he pulled again, grunting. He was starting to panic, in bed with a corpse, covered in her blood, but he forced himself to be calm. He could not afford to lose it, not now, so he told himself he'd been around many dead bodies before. Not human bodies but he'd seen a lot of blood and torn flesh, that's all this was, and there was nothing to be done about it now, and he made himself close his eyes and take a deep breath and think. Think…

Jack examined the bedpost. He stopped pulling and turned so he could put both hands on the knob at the top. He gripped it tightly and yanked upward. Straining, he felt something give. He took another deep breath, got another grip on the post, and pulled again. And again. He thought maybe the give had been his imagination but he shook that thought away and forced himself up onto his knees now, using them to dig into the mattress and give him more leverage. He forced himself to lift up as hard as he could. His jaw clenched and his entire body was as taut as it could be and this time, yes, definitely, he felt something move. One more tug, it moved again, and then a frantic pull and he was free, the metal post flying out of its socket. Jack tumbled out of the bed and, still scrambling on the floor, slid the cuff down and off the bottom part of the post. It dangled from his wrist as he ran to the phone…

Dead. No, not dead. Cut. The phone line had been cut, he could see the splayed cord sticking out of the baseboard.

Shaking, his breath coming in short, emphatic bursts, he spotted his pants lying crumpled in the middle of the floor, pulled them on, searched the pockets for his cell phone but, no, he realized he'd left it at home, he'd forgotten to take it when he went to pick up Grace. He saw his shirt, torn, ripped down the front, but he put it on and, not bothering with his shoes or socks, he ran to the front door, out into the hallway, down the steps, practically leaping from landing to landing, and out the front door. He was on the street now, still running. Ahead at the corner he saw a telephone.

He ran past a parked car and, as he did, he saw the front windshield explode. He stumbled and then there was a second explosion. Behind him, a storefront window had shattered into thousands of pieces. Jack's first thought was that the apocalypse had come. The world was blowing itself up. Madness had won out and destruction was complete. And then he realized it was nothing so overwhelming. It was much more banal and much, much more dangerous.

Someone was shooting at him.

What the hell was happening!

What the hell was going on!

Another window burst behind him and Jack dove for safety behind a parked car. An alarm went off, the noise echoing up and down the street. He heard footsteps. Running. And then the only sound was the blare of the alarm. Jack stayed on the ground, panting. When he finally raised his head, he saw a cop car pulling up and jerking to a stop. Two uniformed policemen ran out, their guns drawn. One took off down the street in the direction of the footsteps. The other stood over Jack, pointing the pistol straight down at him. The cop was telling him not to move, not to move one fucking inch or he'd get a bullet in his head.

Jack was only too glad not to move anymore.

He glanced down, saw the blood that still covered his body, stared back up at the cop and hoped that his eyes conveyed his fear and his innocence, and then Jack didn't move again until the second cop returned, panting, shaking his head to show he'd found nothing. By that time another cop car had pulled up and Sergeant Patience McCoy hopped out, mad as hell, Jack presumed, because she was probably missing breakfast with her husband.

– "-"-"THEY WERE STANDING in the shabby, puke-green hallway outside Samsonite's apartment. A locksmith was busy working to get Jack out of the handcuffs that still dangled from his wrist. Cops were going through the bedroom, examining the body and going over every inch of the place. It did not take long to establish that Samsonite had been stabbed fourteen times or that the murder weapon was not in the apartment or anywhere in the vicinity on the street. They had people going through garbage cans and searching in alleys but no one seemed particularly hopeful that anything would turn up.

McCoy had retrieved Jack's socks and shoes, which he'd put on, and in the trunk of her car she'd found a blanket, which, although it was quite warm outside, she'd put around his shoulders. The sergeant didn't say a word, just waited until the cuffs were off and the locksmith was heading downstairs. Then she nodded and said, "Let's start at the very beginning, and you tell me everything, only this time I'll believe you. And then we'll see if we can catch this crazy motherfucker."

Jack nodded and forced himself to remember every single detail he could. McCoy had also managed to get some hot coffee, which he sipped gratefully as he talked. He went through it all, from the first moment Kid showed up in his living room, through all the conversations about his team, every detail Jack could dredge up. He told McCoy all of it: about Kid's funeral and how, after that, he'd tracked down the Mortician. He explained what happened in Kid's apartment, and later at the Migliarinis' funeral home. He told her about talking to Bryan, which led him to Kim. How he'd found the Entertainer, and exactly what had happened the night of her murder, and how next he found the Rookie. At that point, he said, "I guess you know about her, though, she's the one who called you." When McCoy looked confused, he said, "She called you, right? When I didn't show up. In fact, if I wanted to be picky I'd ask what the hell took you so long." When McCoy finally told him she didn't have any idea what he was talking about, Jack shook his head, as if he were talking to somebody who didn't understand English, and said, "Grace Childress. The Rookie. She was with me at the gambling club. I told her to call you if I didn't check in with her in two hours. That was, what, four, five hours ago now, and you just got here, so-"

"Nobody called in for you," McCoy said.

"Of course she did," Jack told the sergeant. "She had to."

"I'm here because while somebody was shooting at you on the street, the guy in that apartment there" – McCoy jerked her head across the hallway – "came outside to go to work and saw this shit in here." Now her head nodded at Samsonite's blood-soaked apartment. "Somebody else reported the shots and we had a car in the vicinity."

"She had to have called you," Jack said. "I don't understand."

"I don't understand either," McCoy told him. "But I think you'd better give me her address and phone number."

"There's a reason she didn't call," Jack insisted. "She didn't do this. It's not possible."

"There's a lot of things I didn't think were possible just a few days ago," McCoy said, shaking her head. "So just give me the info. I want to find her immediately. Because if she's not the killer then there's a pretty good chance whoever is is gonna try to turn her into another corpse."

Jack nodded, solemnly repeated Grace's name, and gave McCoy the address. He couldn't remember her phone number but she told him not to worry about that, they could find it. She excused herself, disappeared for a moment into the apartment, and Jack could hear her give the information to one of the cops. Moments later, they both emerged. McCoy stopped to stay with Jack; the other cop kept going down the stairs.

"He'll find her," McCoy said. "One way or the other." She saw him stare after the cop who'd just left and she knew Jack wanted to go, too, to check on the woman he called the Rookie, but she told him to keep talking, to tell the rest of his story. "It's the only way we're going to finish this," she urged. "The most helpful thing you can do now is talk."

So Jack kept talking. He backtracked, told her everything he could remember about the Team. About Kid's world and his Slashes. She asked to hear more about Grace and he said that he thought she'd become the new Destination and he told her about Kid's romantic notion that Rome was a destination. He told her about the Mistake, a woman from Kid's past who'd appeared again, and how Kid had seemed shaken by both the past relationship and the current one. He told her about the break-in at his apartment, then worked his way back to Samsonite, told McCoy about finding her at the after-hours club and recounted how he went to her apartment, the things he'd learned about her – her stealing money from the club, Kid loaning her the five thousand dollars he'd borrowed from the Entertainer. It was a jumble of information to him now, hard to sort through, especially as new flashes began to come back to him: the things Samsonite told him she'd learned from Kid.

I know all about you, she'd said to Jack. Your stupid red-meat crematorium. Your fantasy apartment…

He told McCoy how he began to feel dizzy. At first he'd thought it was exhaustion, then the stifling atmosphere of the tenement apartment. Only as he stumbled did he begin to realize that he'd been drugged.

… The whaddyacallit, the balcony that you're terrified of…

He told McCoy what she'd said about the drugs: I know why you're here. I know what you want me to say. I figured it out, too. But when he came to buy the fucking acid, I didn't know what it was for. I didn't know what he was going to do with it…

"What did she figure out?" McCoy asked.

"I don't know. I think she meant she figured out who killed Kid."

"How come everyone seems to have figured it out except us, goddamnit? And who came to buy the acid? Kid?"

"That's what it sounded like," Jack said. "But I don't know for sure. I don't know anything for sure."

There was more but Jack couldn't dredge it out of his memory. His body was giving out now and his brain was not far behind. McCoy saw him fade and she told him he'd done more than enough, that she'd give him a ride home.

I'm missing something, Jack thought. What the hell am I missing?

In the ride uptown, McCoy tried to make sense of what he'd told her but she wasn't having much better luck than he was. "We'll check into Kid's background," she told him. "See if we can dig up anything from his past that might help. Get his college records, even high school. I'll go talk to Ms. Migliarini again, too."

"I think she's the one," Jack said.

"No. I don't think so," McCoy told him. "I'm certainly going to discuss that possibility with her. But there's one thing that doesn't fit."

"What's that?"

"Why would she let you live? If there's one thing your Mortician knows, it's not to be careless or sentimental. If it's her or somebody who works for her, it doesn't add up. You're the one who confronted her in the first place. You're the only one who's put the various pieces together. You're the one who tracked down all the other women – and let's assume that whoever it is we're looking for killed those women because they knew something, because they could've led us to where we want to go. Well, the person who's got the best chance of leading – you – was right there for the taking. Doesn't make sense. Especially for someone like little Eva. Why kill Samsonite and leave you there to keep hunting?"