Jumper: Griffin's Story (26 page)

"Oh," I said quietly to myself, "I really think you
do"
This time I jabbed him in the right buttock with the shock stick. He dropped to the side and yelled.

I crouched down about five feet away. "I'm not the police. I'm not
constrained
by your rules of evidence and prisoner treatment." He was watching me and twitching. I swayed to one side and his eyes followed me. "Of course,
you
don't seem that constrained by the rules, either. I almost believed you about the national security thing."

He snarled.

"I don't even care about you. I don't know if they told you they'd be trying to knife me or not. But I want to know what they told you. How they contacted you. If–no–
how
they wanted you to contact them if I showed up again."

I played with the black cylinder, passing it from hand to hand. "Why don't you just tell me? You do, and it checks out, I'll let you go."

He swore at me in Spanish so I switched to that.

"Este es tu momento de la verdad, Roberto.
Literally. Your moment of truth. They didn't quite get me, but they killed someone else two days ago and I'm not happy about that. You can probably tell. Not only can I do this–"

I feinted toward his leg with the cylinder and he cried out, "Stop!"

I rocked back on my heels. "But I can also give information to the FBI about your involvement in that murder. They cut his throat while his hands were tied behind his back. And then there's the INS–they'd probably like to know that you've been taking bribes from the people who killed six of theirs."

I sort of smiled but I could feel the wrongness of it, like fingers tugging my features around. "I'm not sure you'd see trial."

Now
this,
where the physical stuff didn't seem to be getting through, actually seemed to work.

"It's on my phone. In my contacts. There's a number labeled
saltador\
But that's all I know, I swear!"

I laughed out loud.
Saltador
is Spanish for vaulter or jumper.

I left him there while I checked for a signal. I got one at the Texaco petrol station out on Old 80, barely. I jumped to the ridgetop where I used to meet Sam and Consuelo and found that it was closer to the cell tower, three bars on the signal–strength indicator.

Vigil was standing when I got back but looking around, confused. The sun was high overhead and he wasn't sure which direction was which. I threw his wallet to him, high, and as he jumped up into the air to grab it, I jumped him and spilled him onto the ridgetop.

"Hey!" he yelled. "I told you what you wanted to know!"

I said soothingly, "Yes, you did. But did you want me to shock you again, to get you here? That was the alternative."

I took the shock stick out of my pocket again. "Now. All I want you to do is tell them that you convinced me they were following you, that you're on
my
side, and I've agreed to another meeting out at Sam Coulton's place. Uh, nobody's moved in there, have they?"

"Hell no. Eight people died there. The cousin who ended up with it wants to sell but nobody is interested."

"Okay. Tell them it's set for three o'clock."

He looked at his watch. "That'll only give them an hour to get out there."

"So it will." I flipped open his phone and found the entry and dialed it.

He did it as I'd told him and, after he told them when and where, he said, "So, I'll see you–" He tilted the phone in his hand and stared at it. "They hung up."

I held my hand out for the phone.

His fingers closed around it and I lifted the shock tube.

"Hey, it's my phone."

"Sure," I said.

He relaxed and I jumped, only two feet to the side, and kicked the phone out of his hand. It really flew, high, higher, and came down in the brush thirty feet away.

He was clutching his hand to his chest and swearing. I walked over, picked up a fist–sized rock, and hit the phone three times.

I set his gun and ammunition and the Mace and handcuffs on the fragments of plastic and circuit board. "See the highway?" I said pointing at the distant gray line.

He held up his good hand and flipped me the bird.

"I bet you can walk it in about two hours."

I jumped away.

I was on my back, under Sam's couch, my nose just clearing the cotton batten and steel leaf springs. If I'd been one inch thicker, it wouldn't have worked.

I heard their footsteps first, but just barely. Didn't hear a car so I presumed they'd parked their vehicle somewhere off the road, out of earshot. They came sooner that I expected, but I'd been there for thirty minutes and was reasonably confident that they hadn't felt me arrive.

Not unless they'd been camping within range.

The door was locked but they opened it. Didn't know if they had a key or if they'd picked it but they didn't force it– that would've given the game away.

They checked the house carefully, though, opening closets and cabinets, peeking up into the attic crawlspace. I'd been planning on waiting up there, myself, but it was like an oven so I'd checked the couch on a whim.

Fortunately, they didn't.

"What about the grounds? He could be out there."

Young voice, American English, nervous, it seemed.

"Relax," said the other, older, more confident. There was something faintly European in his accent. A trace of Scandinavian–like a young Max von Sydow. "If he's already here he'll still have to show himself when Vigil arrives."

"Kemp should be here."

"We kill jumpers. We're not jumpers ourselves! How's he supposed to get here from
New Jersey
in time?"

"I'd just feel better. He's had more experience, right? With grown jumpers? All I've ever dealt with are the kids."

"Well, yes–only Roland's group has more experience."

"Christ.
Roland.
Now that's one scary paladin."

The older man breathed out sharply, an exasperated sound. "Go watch out the back but be careful. Don't show yourself. Don't scare him off. He could approach on foot, but don't forget he knows this house. He could jump in. This one ... if we get him, well, it will reflect well on us. Roland has been reading the reports and he's not pleased."

I barely heard the footsteps as the other man moved off.

I'd give them that–they were stealthy bastards.

Only two of them. Only two of them in the area, then. They'd have sent more if there'd been more. I just had that feeling.

All I've ever dealt with are the kids.
Huh. I remembered the man in the car, back in Lechlade, when I was five. I remembered
the
night when I was nine. Go after 'em when they're young enough and they're
easy.

All right, fuckers, time to pick on someone your
own
size.

By rolling my head to the side I could see under the skirting at the base of the couch. Across the carpet I could just see partway up his boots, brown, soft soled, back near the hallway, where he could look out both the front windows and also step back out of sight when someone showed up.

I didn't change posture as I jumped, staying down on the floor, jabbing the shock stick up into the back of his thigh. He got off a shot but was unable to aim, and the cables and spikes smashed one of the front windows as he fell over. For good measure I jabbed him again in the side, then, hearing footsteps, I jumped away, to the old stable across the graveled front yard.

He didn't use the door–he jumped out through the smashed window, then rolled sideways across the porch to his feet. He charged across the yard like a winger heading out of the scrum for the goal, changing directions randomly to avoid the opposing players. He had one of those guns, the spike and cable projectors, a hand on the handle and the other cradling the barrel.

I timed him, though, and on his next change of direction, I jumped, jabbing with the shock stick.

His foot caught me in the stomach and I was still rising in the air when I jumped away.

I came down in the
Empty Quarter
, stunned, unable to move. I was trying to inhale but it wasn't working. I jabbed at my diaphragm with my fingers and then it caught, like a motor, and my first breath turned into a raging, hacking cough.

Damn, he's fast.

He reminded me of the brown belt who'd taken first at
Birmingham
. I looked around for the shock stick but it was gone, probably lying on the ground back at Sam's place.

I jumped to the Hole, still coughing, intending to get the spike gun, the one I'd taken from Mateo in La Crucecita, but I saw the baseball bat instead.

Right.

I jumped back to the living room. The first man was still down, but he was fumbling with the gun–he'd opened the breech and was pulling out the spent cartridge. An unfired one lay on his stomach, ready to be inserted.

I took one sideways step and smashed the gun away with the bat, swinging up, underhanded. The gun smashed against the far wall but he never stopped moving and suddenly there was a knife in his hand, like it'd sprouted there.

I brought the bat back down on the return swing, smashing into his extended hand. The knife stuck in the floor, quivering, and he yelled.

The yell did it. I'd heard that yell before.

He'd been there,
that
night.

I'd shot him with the paintball gun in the bollocks twice and I'd hit him multiple times in the face with the barrel of the gun. I could see faint scars.

I backhanded him in the face with the bat. Junior was at the door, the gun rising. I remembered what Dad had told me so long ago:
Don't let anyone even
point
a weapon at you.

I jumped to the porch, behind him, but this time I was expecting the foot that lashed out toward me and I twisted aside as I brought the bat down on the back of his extended knee.

I heard something pop in the joint and he screamed, but he still tried to turn, to bring the gun to bear through the doorway, but the bat got there first, smashing the barrel up and back and ... it went off.

Both spikes came up through his jaw, one ripping through the carotid artery on his left side, spraying blood as he fell back. His legs spasmed once, twice, and he lay still.

I felt my stomach heave and I knew I was going to be sick, but then, halfway off the porch, hunched over, I stopped myself. I straightened up and took two deep breaths through my nose, then turned around and made myself look.

He bled quite a lot. Sam's heir, the distant cousin, had put new carpet in. He wasn't going to be happy.

I jumped past the body and the spreading stain.

The older man, the one who'd been there
that
night, wasn't breathing. A trickle of blood ran out of one ear. His eyes were wide and staring and one pupil was noticeably larger than the other.

"Good." I said it aloud and it echoed in the room, louder than I expected, and harsher.

I swam at the beach in
Oaxaca
, Bahia Chacacual, fighting higher surf than usual. There must've been a storm farther south, down
Guatemala
way, to send these swells north. I found myself rubbing my face under the water and realized I was still trying to get the blood off.

If it's not off now, it's not coming off. Get over it.

I body–surfed back to shore and jumped up into the jungle where my showers were. It was all too easy to remember E.V. standing here, slippery, warm, and naked, and I cut the shower short.

Her coat still lay at the foot of the bed.

I jumped into
New York City
at rush hour and rode the train down to
Trenton
, walking through the streets with all the commuters. Mr. Kelson's body was lying in state at the Gruerio Funeral Home until the services on Saturday. My plan was to leave the coat and let her discover it but when the attendant ushered me into the chapel, she was sitting there.

The attendant stepped back outside and I went up to the front row and sat on the far end of the bench. The casket was open but I had no desire to view the departed.

"I brought your coat."

She was looking at me, her eyes wide, the comers of her mouth hooked down.

"Won't they come back? Won't they know you're here?"

I shrugged. "I took the train. I'll leave on the train. I won't jump from anywhere near here. Unless I
have
to."

She turned away and covered her face with both hands. I kept expecting her to say something, but she didn't.

"You could've trusted me," I finally said. "The result would've been almost exactly the same. Only we–"

She didn't respond. After a moment I got up and walked to the door.

That's when she said, "I'm glad you brought the coat. It was
his."
She jerked her head toward the casket. "He never gave it to me but I started wearing it when it no longer dragged on the floor. And he never said a word."

I took a wandering route back to the station, looping east, far from her house, and took the train to
Philadelphia
.

When it clanked passed Croydon, I jumped away to the Hole.

On the train, people all around, I'd pushed forward, numb.

Now I couldn't even move. I stood hunched over, between the table and the bed, my mouth half open. I was standing with my back to the plywood gallery.

Oh.

I made myself turn, walk forward, and sit on the edge of the bed.

The light was already on so E.V.'s face, as I'd sketched it in Regent's Park, was there, relaxed, innocent–unmarred, unmarked by tragedy, by horror. The shape of her collarbone, the dip of the sweater's neckline, the tracery of lace at the edge of her bra, the outline of her breasts.

And her eyes.

Those eyes would never look at me like that again.

I tore it into pieces and then I tore those pieces and then I tore those pieces. I ended up with a pile of coin–sized scraps on the table, flecks of art stock. My traitor hands started sorting them, looking for fragments that matched, like a jigsaw puzzle.