Killer (22 page)

He returned to his cab and cut his hair short, then pulled on the new clothes. Then he waited and watched for three days and three nights before leaving the cab again. He learned that the charges were dropped against Rhodes, and he was released. There was no mention of his Angels—nothing at all about West Virginia, St. Stephen, or Pasadena. Nothing at all. Rhodes had been released because the bartender at the dive vouched for his whereabouts. And Rhodes had either forgotten about Temescal and the Angels or he had kept quiet about them.

He moved on, still heading north. He wanted to get as close as possible to the border.

Two weeks later, in Seattle, he bought two fake passports from a Mexican forger—one U.S., the other Canadian—and two new commercial truck driver’s licenses to match the passports. They were good forgeries and they weren’t cheap. His savings were almost gone. He had to pay a thousand dollars for the documents’ fresh fingerprints alone—provided unwillingly and unknowingly by a crackhead the Mexican inducted when he found him passed out in a doorway on Seattle’s skid row.

The business with the fingerprints reminded him about wiping down the writer’s car, and it worried him. What if he had missed a print? He had no fingerprints on record, but if someone in the bar remembered him and the police matched a print to a glass in the bar…

He consulted the medical journals online. While researching the side effects of various drugs on memory, he had come across a drug called Capacetabine, used in chemotherapy, which had the unusual side effect of causing the skin of the fingertips to peel away, eventually leaving the patient with no fingerprints at all. He found the drug, available on a Russian pharmaceutical site, and had a large supply sent to a post office box he rented in Tacoma. He began taking the drug, titrating the dose carefully, taking it with the synthetic steroid Dexamethasone to combat the nausea, and when he noticed the skin on his fingertips beginning to peel, he started looking for work. The Capacetabine also thinned his hair, but that was a bonus. No prints, no hair. He was being born anew.

It took him six weeks to find work. There were jobs available but he avoided any routes that would take him to California. Eventually he got a route—short hauls around the Northwest—delivering tool and die equipment to lumber mills.

After a few months, his worries began to ease. He kept constant vigilance on the news reports from Los Angeles, Missouri, West Virginia, and New Jersey. There was nothing to concern him. He settled into a routine, driving his route, sleeping in his cab. The more time passed, the more he began to feel at ease. The gray, wet Northwestern weather had a calming effect on him. The steady rains and the low, leaden clouds were like a cloak. He felt secure, as if a blanket were pulled over him, providing cover.

The memories of his conversations with Rhodes had also eased the pressure, and the migraines stopped. He no longer needed painkillers or booze, and he was able to find release once more as he lay in his secret room with his pictures and his Angels. He sold his van and waited before buying a new one. The time would come, but he felt no urgency, even when he encountered women who would be fine candidates for transformation. The time would come. He drove his rig, kept his head down, and waited.

And then, in a bookstore one drizzly afternoon in Seattle, he was perusing the true-crime section and he wandered into the mystery titles and he saw it.

Featured on a cardboard stand, was the book called
Killer.

From the author Jack Rhodes.

His heart leapt. His first impulse was to leave the store, the city, the country…. But he couldn’t resist it. Hands trembling with fear and anticipation, he picked up a copy and began to read.

* * *

He lay in his secret room that night, reading and re-reading the book. After his fourth reading he closed the book and held it to his chest and closed his eyes.

Dizzy, reeling, ineffable bliss. More than a miracle. More than he had ever dreamed, even in his grandest fantasies.

He had found his St. Paul.

And the more he read it, the more he was pleased. Rhodes, the drunken writer, the damaged, beaten, grief-wallowing burnout; Rhodes, drugged and half-conscious, had risen from his anesthetized torpor—risen above it, like Saul had risen above his sinful life of persecution, and told his story. And in the most clever twist, he had done so as if it were fiction. He had changed just enough of the facts to protect him—he changed names, places—meaningless details, for the most part. But he got the story right; he captured its essence, and kept his killer nameless, faceless, and without identity. He had protected him even as he exalted him to millions. A number one bestseller. Millions.

Best of all, on the back cover, was the promise of another book, another story about him.

He lay there in the dark, in the secret room, and he let the waves of blissful grandeur wash over him. He could not imagine any other human being had ever felt more powerful, or more fulfilled.

He took out all three of his Angels and they sang to him all night, they sang in his dreams, and took him beyond any of the special places he had missed for so long, the places he had longed for for so very long.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Jesus just left Chicago and he’s bound for New Orleans,

Well now Jesus just left Chicago and he’s bound for New Orleans.

Workin’ from one end to the other and all points in between…

The slow thrum of the bass and the smoky blues guitar.

Shrrick…shrrick…

The sharp sound keeping time with the throbbing Texas shuffle…

Dave and I are both sitting on the little mound of dirt in the small plateau overlooking Temescal Canyon Park.

Shrrick…shrrick…

Dave slides the blade of the knife against the small whetstone in his hand, in time with the music…

How can I hear the music up here, in the canyon? It is loud, thumping in my chest…

“So what do you think of Dave’s Hit List?,” Dave says.

“Wat list?” I ask, stupid with drink.

He gives his low, mirthless laugh.

“See, that’s another thing I like about you, Doc. You listen, you pay attention. But you don’t remember a goddamned thing.”

Shrrick…shrrick… I watch him sharpen the knife as I take another pull from the bottle of Jack.

“Those four pretty little pieces I told you about. Dave’s Greatest Hits.”

Shrrick…shrrick…

I don’t remember, but I listen.

“Three of those four pretty little pieces are already in pieces—and they aren’t very pretty pieces,” he says, and I can hear the smile without seeing it.

Shrrick…shrrick… He sharpens the ten-inch knife with a serrated top and black rubber handle.

I drink again—and suddenly flash on a memory of his pictures as he laid them on the table at McDougal’s…that’s where the music is from…the jukebox…?

And now somehow we are back in the booth at McDougal’s. He lays the pictures out and I hear him smile.

“It’s been fun telling you my stories, Doc. I’m gonna have to leave soon. What do you think? Good stuff, huh?”

“Yeah. Good stories,” I mumble around my glass, barely able to keep my head up or my eyes open.

“Yeah, good stories,” he looks down at the pictures. “Good times,” he takes the picture of Beverly Grace off the table.

“Three down, one to go,” he says.

Shrrick…shrrick…to the beat of the music.

* * *

You might not see him in person but he’ll see you just the same,

You might not see him in person but he’ll see you just the same.

You don’t have to worry ‘cause takin’ care of business is his name.

The dream about
Dave
goes away but the music continues. And the sound of the knife on the whetstone…
shrrick…shrrick
…in time with the slow Texas shuffle is still loud in my ears.

This is no dream,
I realize as my head begins to throb and I smell the stale cigarette smoke and feel something cold and hard against my left wrist and I open my eyes and there he is.

Dave
.

Standing over me, sharpening the knife casually, the long chain swaying from his hip.

“What’s up, Doc?” he says in his low, sonorous voice, the sound of a smile behind it.

Jesus God…what is happening…?
I blink my eyes, trying to clear my head, and I feel something warm running down the back of my neck and realize I am sitting on the floor of my bedroom and I move to touch the back of my throbbing head but my left hand is handcuffed to a steel conduit behind me.

“I’m sorry I had to put you down there on the floor but it got a little more crowded in here than I planned on,” Dave says, moving aside so I can see, behind him in the dim light, Nicki and Laurie Vonn, tied to my kitchen chairs with nylon rope, back to back, each with a swatch of duct tape over their mouths. Nicki’s eyes flash wide with panic at me. The front of Laurie Vonn’s blouse is covered with blood from a cut at her throat, but she is alive. She looks at me with the mindless terror of a dying animal in her eyes.

Dave leans over and looks into my eyes and I smell his stale cigarette smoke and see myself reflected in his rectangular glasses, reversed, twice.

“Do you know that Paul never met Jesus?” he asks me.

I stare at him, still trying to gather my wits.

“Never met him. Paul spent half his life persecuting Christians, and the other half spreading the gospel to the world,” he says. “How does it feel?” he asks me.

“How does what feel?” I say.

“To see me again,” he says. “To meet the man you’ve immortalized.”

A hundred responses ping-pong around in my throbbing head, but none of them are right.

“Kind of overwhelming, isn’t it?” he says.

“Yes.”

He smiles at me. He looks—and sounds—different from my distorted memories. He is slight and pale, his hair thinner, and he speaks with quiet confidence and intelligence, rather than a trucker’s swaggering drawl, as I remember.

“I found my favorite song in your CD collection,” Dave says, tucking the whetstone into his jacket pocket. He waits for the end of the verse, then arches his back and throws his head back and bellows along with the song, suddenly transforming back into the redneck trucker I met in Pasadena so long ago.

“AHH TAKE ME WITH YOU, JESUS!”

He looks back down at me, grinning now, his eyes alight, and I see the full madness of the man—madness in full bloom before me. In an instant he had changed his voice, his expression, everything. I look up at him, astonished; afraid to move or respond.

“We have a lot of catching up to do, but first we have some business to take care of. You really made me proud. Or, I should say, I’m proud of you. The way you told my stories to the world. Very clever. You didn’t get every little detail right, but hey, you were completely fucked up at the time. I’m surprised you remembered as much as you did. Guess I made an impression on you, huh?”

I nod.

“I liked you for that, I really did,” Dave says to me. “You were happy just to listen to somebody else so you didn’t have to think about
her
, weren’t you?”

I nod, watching the knife in his hand. I feel around the back of my waistband but the Ruger is gone.
Think...

“Did you believe me when I told you my stories and showed you my pictures?”

I shake my head. “No. I thought they were just…stories…”

“Really? Even with all those details….the way you described the pictures…everything you put in your books?”

I nod, feeling the cuff around my wrist. It’s just loose enough to move my wrist around and slide it down to the knuckle of my thumb. I look around me—
a weapon…a tool…anything…

“What about the presents I left you, Jack?” he asks.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

He looks at me with that penetrating look, and again I hold his gaze.

Then he straightens up and looks around the cabin. “You did pretty good for yourself, remembering my stories.”

“I didn’t think I was remembering. I thought I was making it all up.”

“Really?” He looks at me for a long time, standing stock still, his eyes invisible in the darkness behind his rectangular glasses. “You never lied to me before,” he says.

He waits, watching to see my reaction. I hold his gaze steadily.

“But now it’s all fucked up,” he says. “Now they’re saying YOU did those things, which cuts me out of the picture. And you DON’T CUT ME OUT OF THE PICTURE, JACK.”

“I know that now.” My eyes darting around the room.
Think think think…

He reaches for a book that is on the top of my dresser. When he leans past Laurie she closes her eyes and makes a terrified noise. He turns the book over—the most recent paperback of
Killer Unbound.
He reads the promotional copy aloud from the back of the book
.

“Coming soon—the exciting fourth book in the bestselling
KILLER
series—
Killer Unmasked—
in which author Jack Rhodes will reveal the true identity of Killer once and for all.” He looks at me. “Is that what you were planning to do? Tell the world who I am?”

“No, I thought I made you up…I didn’t think you were real.”

“You know I’m real now, don’t you?”

I nod, watching him tap the blade of the knife against his thigh. I can see my bookcase in the office, through the doorway and across the hall…
The Dangerous Summer
is still there
…did they search and find the gun? How thoroughly did they search?
I can see into the bathroom. The plumber’s tape is still intact around the drain trap under the sink…
FBI didn’t take the traps apart yet…maybe they only had time to do a cursory search—