Blood of My Blood (20 page)

MSNBC had already moved on from the Billy Dent story. Oh, sure, they ran a crawl in the lower third with occasional updates, but Doug Weathers didn’t think much of crawls. No context. No real opportunity to
expound
.

CNN was updating the story once an hour. Fox was doing the same, but had also announced a rushed-into-production hour-long special with the baroquely lurid title
Dent & Son: The Bloody Saga of Butcher Billy
.

Weathers had offered his expertise to all three, but they’d declined.

Well, screw them
, he thought, sitting on his sofa with a bowl of cereal in his lap. He had been glued to the TV since waking, occasionally dashing to the kitchen for a refill of the cereal bowl during commercials.

Weathers knew that he could do a better job than any of the press hacks in New York. Or any of the gibbering morons on TV. He was a
real
reporter. Old school. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty in pursuit of a story, and he didn’t care
whom he pissed off. When Billy Dent had been arrested years ago, Weathers didn’t hesitate to put himself right there in the story. And why not? He’d been covering the deaths of the two girls from the Nod whom Billy had killed from the get-go, keeping Sheriff Tanner’s feet held firmly to the fire. He fulminated from the front page of his paper, and when his editor claimed the story had “cooled” and moved updates below the fold and then inside, Weathers had fired up his old blog and started a series of scathing attacks on the Lobo’s Nod police force. He’d gotten the attention of the national media—
finally
—and become a darling of the major cable news networks.

But when Billy had been caught, all the attention had gone to Tanner, who prissily and steadfastly refused offers of interviews and book deals and all the other sundry trappings of fame. Suddenly, the man who’d kept the story alive and kicking and in the limelight was thrown over for the man who’d finally gotten off his fat ass and done his job at Weathers’s constant prodding.

It was more than insulting. More than infuriating.

It was
wrong
.

And no matter what he did, he couldn’t force himself back into the story.

He shook his head. He had to focus. He’d been trying everything for the past few years. But even Billy Dent’s sister had stonewalled him, speaking to him only through the closed door of the mother’s house. All she would tell him was that her nephew was in New York.

The CNN hourly update came up. Pictures of both Dents,
then a screen showing the various disguises Billy could be wearing. Weathers grimaced. They needed someone on who
knew
Billy. He knew a producer at CNN—Dhuti, her name was. Or Dharti. He couldn’t keep them straight. But he remembered that it started with
Dh
and that she’d worn a small ruby in her nose and had spoken with a delightfully unexpected southern accent. Pure Georgia, that one.

Would she return his call? He thought maybe she might. She’d been an assistant five years ago, and her work with Weathers had propelled her up the ladder to producer. She owed him one.

He fumbled with his phone to look up her number, but before he could scroll to the
D
s, the phone vibrated.

BLOCKED
.

“Yeah?” He wasn’t expecting any calls. He
deserved
them, but he wasn’t expecting them.

“Mr. Weathers? Mr. Douglas Weathers?”

It was a woman’s voice. Unconsciously, Weathers gathered his robe around himself, covering his nudity.

“Speaking.” Deep down, he knew that this would be a telemarketer. Or maybe another aggressive repo caller hired by his ex-wife.

But maybe it wasn’t.

“Mr. Weathers, I have an opportunity I’d like to offer you.”

“Oh?” Definitely telemarketer. Weathers was already refocused on the TV, where the NYPD’s disastrous press conference was being replayed.

“How would you like some exclusive information about Billy Dent?” the woman asked.

Doug Weathers stared at the TV. As though by magic, as she’d said the name, CNN had decided to flash another photo of the man himself.

Weathers cleared his throat. “
What
did you say?”

Doug Weathers belted his overcoat tightly and turned his collar up against the cold. He lingered near his car for a moment, gazing up the short driveway to a ramshackle old Victorian, shutter eyed and board mouthed. Shingles hung from the rooftop, and thick curlicues of paint peeled from the columns holding up the porch roof. The house couldn’t be described as on “the edge of town”—it was actually just past the town line, in what was technically unincorporated territory. County land, not town land. It sat roughly a football field’s length back from the main road, partly concealed by spindly white pines and near-dead American beeches.

The mailbox was rusted shut. The word
DAWES
could be made out in faint, sun-faded black paint.

The woman on the phone had given him explicit instructions—he was to tell no one about this visit. He would be allowed a notepad and pen, but no laptop or tape recorder. Yes, he could bring his cell phone, but it would be surrendered when he arrived and given back before he left.

“Who
are
you?” he’d asked. Natural question, even for someone who wasn’t a reporter. Weathers had had enough bad leads in his life to retain a healthy level of skepticism, especially in the face of an open treasure chest.

“Someone who knows Billy Dent very well,” the woman answered. “Maybe too well. Are you interested?”

He’d hesitated. Of course he’d hesitated. Crackpots and lunatics overflowed the world’s borders.

“Maybe you need proof of my bona fides?” she asked. “Let me give you a scoop: Billy Dent’s mother recently passed away at the hospital in Lobo’s Nod. Confirm with your sources, if you’d like. I’ll call back in ten minutes.”

The line went dead, and Weathers could almost hear a stopwatch’s rhythmic, near cricket-like clicks as he stabbed at his phone with a now-sweaty finger. He still had a source at the hospital—the perfect one, in fact. Dale Carbonaro, one of the attendants in the morgue. Dale had given Weathers access to the body of one of Billy’s victims from the Nod back in the day, allowing Weathers to scoop other news sources with illicit details held back by the cops.

“You on duty?” Weathers asked as soon as Dale answered his phone.

“Weathers? This you?” Dale hawked and spat. “You still owe me fifty bucks from last year. Slipping you the report on the Myerson chick.”

Myerson. Ellen. Or Helen. He couldn’t remember now. One of the Impressionist’s victims. He’d forgotten all about the money he owed Dale.

“Do I? I could have sworn I paid you.”

“You’ve been avoiding me for months, you prick. You know you owe me.”

“I need to know about a new body.”

“Screw you, Weathers.”

“Dent’s mother!” Weathers screamed into the phone.

The other end of the line was silent for so long that Weathers checked to make sure he was still connected. Sure enough.

“How did you know about that?” Dale asked in wonder. “Sheriff’s department has locked us down on that and we—”

“Thanks, Dale! Drinks on me soon!” He hung up and let the phone lie across his palms, the screen facing him.

What ensued were the slowest, most painful three and a half minutes of Doug Weathers’s life, but the phone finally vibrated again, and he had to force himself not to kiss it before answering.

“Do you believe me now?” No preamble.

“I do.”

“Are you ready to meet?”

“Absolutely.”

And so he had been given the name Jack Dawes and told to go where it led him. He begged for more information, but received none.

A quick check of the county property records had brought him here. A house so nondescript and decrepit that Weathers had probably driven past it a hundred times in the past six months and never once noticed it. Property owned for twenty-odd years by a Mr. Jack Dawes, though from the look of it, Mr. Dawes was no longer an upstanding member of the community.

Before Billy Dent had been unmasked as Green Jack and Satan’s Eye and the Artist and the others, he had masqueraded as a solid citizen. This looked like the kind of place
Billy Dent would go to hang out. A beer. A ball game. And maybe, just maybe, a bull session with his good buddy Jack Dawes, reliving murder and mayhem and torture and rape, the two of them howling over it like schoolboys zapping ants with a magnifying glass.

Had Dawes known what Dent was? Maybe even serial killers had best friends. Weathers didn’t know.

He grinned.

Sure, he didn’t know. But he would. Soon. That was his specialty. His gift.

He learned. Eventually, he learned everything.

He patted his pockets, feeling for his pad and pen. His cell was in one, and he was ready to surrender it. There was also a tape recorder in the other. He would pretend to forget it until the last minute and then hand it over sheepishly—“It’s just reflex; I take it everywhere.”—which would keep Jack Dawes or the mystery woman from looking for the second recorder, the tiny digital job he had tucked into his waistband.

No one told Doug Weathers when to go off the record.
Off the record
was for people who didn’t really want the story.

The steps to the porch didn’t so much creak as whine when he put his weight on them. The porch itself made dangerous cracking noises as he walked across it. A storm door was loose on its hinges, vibrating slightly in the cold January breeze. He wrestled it aside, fearing it would blow off entirely, then rapped at the front door with a rust-spotted knocker.

Waited.

Nothing.

He knocked again.

He shouted, “Hello!”

With a shrug, he tried the doorknob and it turned easily, more easily, perhaps, than it should have for such an old house.

“Ms. Dawes?” he asked, stepping inside. He didn’t know if she was a Mrs. or a Miss, so Ms. seemed safe. Not that it mattered to him. She could call herself empress for all he cared—as long as her information bore out. She could have been Jack Dawes’s mother, sister, wife, daughter.… Who knew?

“Ms. Dawes? It’s Doug Weathers.” He closed the door behind him. The corridor before him was lit by a Coleman lantern placed on the floor, about five feet from the entrance to the house. A set of surprisingly sturdy stairs ascended to his right, its terminus doused in murk. The hallway straight ahead shivered with shadows.

All in all, the house was neat and clean inside, if empty. Nothing on the walls. No knickknacks or furniture just inside the door. There was a layer of dust on the floor, disturbed into tracks, but no actual filth.

He took a step forward and almost jumped out of his own skin when the woman appeared before him, emerging—he realized with relief—from a side door on his left, just past the lantern.

“Mr. Weathers,” she said.

Weathers was in his late thirties and would stumble his way into the big four-oh soon enough, but he still thought of the woman—clearly in her forties—as “older,” and not
merely in the relative sense. Attractive, though. For an “older” woman. An easy smile. She was relaxed and glad to see him, which made him all the more certain he would be able to pull the tape recorder gambit on her. She was off guard.

His favorite kind of woman.

“Ms. Dawes.” He squared his shoulders and offered his hand. “Doug Weathers. Pleased to meet you.”

Still smiling, she declined his hand. “You followed the instructions?”

“Of course!” He produced the pad and pen, as well as his cell phone, which she took. It wasn’t his real cell phone, anyway—just a burner he used on occasion. His real cell was in the car. He wasn’t about to hand over something like that to a stranger.

“Oh, wait!” Feigning chagrin, he probed in the left-hand pocket of his jeans and came up with the old microcassette recorder he never used anymore. “I’m so sorry. I—”

She shrugged indulgently and held out her hand for it. “I’m sure you put it in your pocket reflexively. I understand. You can have it back when we’re done.”

Weathers bit at the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. At the small of his back, the digital recorder—voice activated—was already doing its job.

“This way,” she said, gesturing to the door she’d just come through. “He’s eager to speak with you.”

Weathers nodded politely to her and stepped through the entryway into what had once been, perhaps, a parlor or dayroom. It was just as barren as the hallway, though the dust on
the floor had been swept away. From the flickering lantern light out in the hall, he could barely make out a single piece of furniture—a chair, steeped in shadows.

“Hello,” Weathers said, and the man in the chair leaned forward.

“I just want you to know something, Dougie,” Billy Dent said. “This here what’s about to happen to you? It ain’t business at all. It’s entirely personal.”

Weathers didn’t think or gasp or stammer. He turned to run, but the woman was standing there. She was still smiling, and Weathers realized—to his gut-choking horror—that she was still very, very glad to see him.