The Closer (11 page)

“I can’t do this, I can’t do this,” Jack said to himself. He was sitting in the alley beside the garage, staring at his hands. There was no blood on them, but they wouldn’t stop shaking.

Luis wouldn’t confess. He had begged and pleaded and cried, but he wouldn’t admit to anything beyond soliciting a hooker. He had talked about his children, and his pregnant wife. He had apologized for every bad thing he had ever done in his life, and asked God to forgive him.

Jack had done terrible things to him. He’d had to leave twice to throw up, the last time producing nothing but ten minutes of painful dry heaves—but he’d forced himself to return and continue.

After four hours, Luis changed his tune.

He was guilty, he sobbed. He’d done it all, everything Jack had accused him of. He would sign anything, say anything—but when Jack pressed him for details, Luis had none to give.

“Am I wrong?” Jack asked himself softly. “Am I wrong?”

The sun was starting to come up, a gray hazy glow in the east. The alley stank of garbage, but the wet, fresh scent of rain was there, too. A swirl of pink dots blew past him, early cherry blossoms from a backyard tree.

Jack thought about his son. He thought about being a father, and what a father does. And then he stood up and went back inside.

Luis. Or whatever your name is. No wallet, no registration papers in the car, no ID at all.

“I told you, I explained that. In case I got arrested, I didn’t want my family to find out.”

Smart. You have a little boy, right? Roberto.

“Yes, yes. He’s a good boy, he loves his father—”

Why? What do you do together?

“We, we do many things together. We go to movies, we go to the park and play soccer—”

Ah. He likes soccer. He must play on a team then, at school.

“Yes. I take him to practice, every Saturday—”

Never his mother. Only you.

“Always me. I love to see him play—”

Tell me about his first game. Against another team.

“What?”

How old was he? As a father, I’m sure you remember.

“Of course. He looked so handsome in his little uniform… oh, God…”

Go on.

“They lost. Four to one. He played so hard.”

I’m sure he did. How old was he?

“Seven.”

And the weather that day?

“Raining. Vancouver, it rains so much.”

Yes. And what was the name of his team?

“…I don’t remember.”

That’s all right. I’ll help you.

“No! No, it was—the Wolves. The Wolf cubs, all the parents called them that.”

No.

“Wh—what?”

No. They didn’t. The school league for seven-yearolds in Vancouver names their teams after the schools. There are no Wolves.

“I’m mistaken. What I meant—”

There is no Roberto. There is no Luis. There is only a stolen station wagon, a plausible cover story, and a
Baby on Board
sticker bought at a dollar store for color.

“No, no please, I swear to you—”

I know you now.

There is only one thing you will learn about me: I will not stop. When it gets bad, when it becomes so terrible that you pray for death, remember that one, simple fact:
I will never, ever stop.

Until I know everything…

It took three days.

VANCOUVER POLICE TRANSCRIPT
#332179,

“Roberto Luis Chavez,” Tape 7.

The other voice on the tape
is identified simply as “Unknown.”

They dumped the body at the same site Luis had left his kills, in the woods off the Sea-to-Sky highway. Jack duct-taped a Tupperware container holding seven ninety-minute tapes to his chest.

Nikki made the anonymous call to the police. Five minutes later they were on their way out of town.

They hit Des Moines next, where it took them just under a year to catch Duncan Shields. Jack stripped away his secrets in just under forty-eight hours; Shields gave up the location of nine bodies.

Back into Canada. In Calgary, Alberta, a cowboy-and-oil city that reminded Jack of Dallas, they snared Helmut Lansgaarden, a German immigrant with a taste for redheads and meat cleavers. They nailed him in seven months and Jack broke him in a day; they were getting better. For the first time, the Canadian and American authorities compared notes and realized what was going on. Someone found the story too good to keep to themselves, and the media got involved. By the time Nikki and Jack set up shop in Seattle, he had been officially christened.

The Closer was born.

INTERLUDE

Fiona’s Top Ten Halloween Costumes
(Worn by Her)

10.
Luke Skywalker.
It was a cheap store-bought costume, but I got to run around and whack people with a lightsaber.

9.
A Horse.
This one beats out Luke because I made it myself—okay, I had a lot of help from my teacher, but still—and because it was pathetic. I was going through my Ohmigawd-I-LOVE-Horses phase, and I somehow thought I could capture all the beauty and grace of Black Beauty in a costume. It looked ridiculous, I could hardly see, and all my friends laughed at me. So I kicked them.

8.
The Terminator.
I didn’t really pick this one and I was only two at the time, but I’ve seen pictures. My parents put me in this little leather jacket and shades and gave me a really butch haircut. I looked
dangerous.
According to my dad, it was also a pretty good description of what I was like at that age.

7.
Calvin.
I got a
Calvin and Hobbes
book when I was six, and I was hooked. I was so angry when I found out the newspaper strip was going to end that year. Calvin was the same age I was, and he was my hero. Uncle Rick made a full-size Hobbes for me to drag around, too.

6.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I was eight years old, and Buffy was the coolest girl alive. Also, I just wanted to dress like her.

5.
American Maid.
Uncle Rick told me about this cartoon called The Tick, which I thought was the funniest thing I’d ever seen—even though all my friends thought it was dumb. American Maid is a superhero who throws high-heels at bad guys. I beaned a lot of people that year.

4.
Arwen.
Lord of the Rings was my favorite movie at the time, and Liv Tyler was so gorgeous as the Elf Princess. I got my hair done the same way and made the dress myself. Uncle Rick said I looked beautiful.

3.
Dead Elvis.
Okay,
I
thought it was funny. I got to be a rock star (kind of) and a zombie at the same time. Plus, I could say things like, “Can I eat your brains? Thank you. Thank you verra much.”

2.
The Bunny Princess.
My first real costume, which I made when I was four. All I can really remember is that I was convinced that rabbits had magical powers, and I wanted to be a princess because everybody did what they said. The costume itself was some kind of tutu and a hat with bunny ears on it. There was also a magic carrot, which eventually transformed itself into a shriveled, rubbery stick with mold growing on it when I slept with it under my pillow for two months.

1. And Fiona’s number one costume of all time (so far):
Joan of Arc.
Which I did last year and most of my friends thought was lame, mainly because they didn’t know who she was. Well, she was an amazing woman who led whole armies and defied the church and was burned alive for her beliefs.

And Uncle Rick helped me make the costume.

Impaling worms to torture fish.

—George Colman the Younger,
Lady of the Wreck

Now.

“The Patron killed my family,” Jack said.

Nikki stared at him. Jack sat in the living room of the crappy little bungalow they’d rented, on a thrift-store couch that had come with the place; Nikki sat cross-legged on the floor. She’d just woken up and was dressed only in a T-shirt. An upended cardboard box between them served as a coffee table, the only light in the room coming from the screen of the laptop it held.

“You sure?” Nikki asked. From the tone of Jack’s voice, he could have been discussing something he saw on television.

“Yes. He kills those close to artists, and he likes to strike on holidays. He even made reference to me as one of his failures.”

Nikki shook her head. She still wasn’t fully awake, and this was a lot to absorb. “Jack—that’s great, isn’t it? I mean, this is the guy you really want, right? This is the guy you’ve been hunting for—”

“He doesn’t kill prostitutes,” Jack said.

“What? Hey, I don’t give a shit about that, I’ll still help you get him—”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, until now we’ve been hunting prostitute-killers because those are the ones we can catch. The monster who killed my family…I never thought we could get him. I thought he was beyond my reach.” Jack stared at the screen of the laptop without blinking.

Nikki looked around, grabbed her cigarettes from the arm of the couch. “You still want to go after him, right?”

He turned his head to look at her. She met his eyes, then quickly looked away.

“I have to be very careful,” Jack said. “I have to be
perfect.”

“You can do it,” she said softly.
“We
can do it.”

“I have to plan. We can’t just go after him first,” Jack said. “I’ll have to gain his trust—not as a new member of The Pack, but as their leader. I’ll have to convince him I’m Djinn-X.”

She shook out a smoke, put it in her mouth. Lit it, took a long drag and exhaled slowly. “Think you can pull it off?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “I’ve broken him. Passwords, encryption codes—Djinn-X gave it all up. He
wants
to help me—I’m the last person on earth he’s going to talk to, and he knows it.

“The Stalking Ground belongs to
me
now….”

Djinn-X Rant One Million and Twenty-Three: Irony? Yeah, sure.

Irony has ruined everything. And if I hear that fucking Alanis Morrisette song one more time, I’m going to hunt the bitch down and kill her with a curling iron. Wouldn’t
that
be fucking ironic.

There’s nothing pure anymore, nothing that’s just
itself.
Everything is just a riff on something that’s already been done. Every goddamn sitcom, pop song, buddy-cop movie video-game action-figure Saturday-morning cartoon spinoff is just a clone of an idea that’s been recycled a hundred times before. And we’re all so hip and cool and bored that the only way to make this stuff palatable is to mock it right out of the gate. Put out crap with “Crap!” stamped on it. Wink at the world— hey, everybody’s in on the joke, we all know what’s going on. We get all those in-jokes, all those little digs and pop-culture references. My Spanky-sense is tingling! Luke, I am your father-figure! Scotty, beat me up!

It’s all shit. Literally. The baby boomer culture ate all this stuff, digested it, and then crapped it all out again. We’re wallowing in the excrement of the last generation, and none of us cares.

And then there’s what I call the New Irony. Take an idea so bad, so tasteless, so kitschy, that it gets on the air through the shock value alone. Right off the bat the intelligentsia love it, because it’s so over-the-top it’s brilliant satire. It’s parody, it pokes fun at sacred cows through extreme exaggeration.

Problem is,
half of fucking America doesn’t get the joke.

Oh sure, they laugh along with everyone else—but for completely different reasons.
All in the Family
wasn’t a huge hit because people hated Archie Bunker’s racism—it was because they
loved
him for it. He said all those things everyone was thinking, but listen—there’s a laugh track! It’s okay that he’s a bigot, because it’s
funny!

Liberals patted themselves on the back. Conservatives just grinned. It’s all just a joke. We’re just kidding. Laughter’s always a
good
thing, right?

Hogan’s Heroes
taught us that Nazis are bumbling clowns.
M*A*S*H
gave us that wonderful combination of surgery, promiscuity, alcoholism and war. Women are emotional airheads, men are sex-obsessed pigs, everyone in power is a corrupt imbecile—media shoves those ideas down people’s throats twenty-four-seven, and it doesn’t matter if you laugh
at
it or
with
it because it’s
always there.
From the time your parents plunked you down in front of
Sesame Street
to when you fell asleep watching
Saturday Night Live,
it was always there.

When I was in school, there was a kid named Darryl. Darryl’s idea of a good time was to make fun of my sister, who was born mentally handicapped and with epilepsy. She died when she was six.

At the height of his wit, Darryl would suggest an incestuous relationship between us. But that’s okay, because
everyone laughed.

Right?

Jack’s quest had led him to the ultimate answer. Not just who had killed his family, but why.

Transformation.

The Patron had done it to change him, mold him into something more than he had been. He had plunged Jack’s soul into fire, burning away all that he loved, then hammered what was left into something harder, sharper, stronger.

No. Jack himself had done the last part—and what had emerged was not the artist the Patron had hoped for. Jack was a weapon now. A tool of destruction, not creation.

One that would destroy its own creator.

He explored the website carefully, deactivating all the hidden erase codes Djinn-X had warned him about. When he was done, he had full access to all Djinn-X’s data—but just as his prisoner had said, the webmaster knew no more about the rest of the Pack than what they had posted themselves. Even among themselves they were careful… but still, they were willing to reveal much to their own.

The identity of Deathkiss might still be useful, but the creator of The Pack would have more influence— and it had to be utterly convincing.

He would have to
become
Djinn-X.

In art school Jack had always been an excellent mimic, able to reproduce another artist’s style with ease—not just duplicating technique, but the artist’s approach to his subject. It was closer to acting than drawing, being able to dive into somebody else’s point of view and see through their eyes—but Jack had never dove into waters quite this deep.

Or this dark.

WHY I KILL

An Essay by Djinn-X

Jack had converted the basement of the bungalow into his interrogation room, using plywood, foam insulation and sheets of black polyurethane to turn it into a sealed, soundproof cube. Nikki rarely went down there, but now she stood at the base of the stairs, in front of the locked door.

Jack was upstairs, reviewing Djinn-X’s files. Usually at this point in the process, Nikki would be doing verification—checking dump sites or the killer’s house for evidence. Jack wouldn’t send her out until he was sure his subject wasn’t trying to set a trap or simply stalling for time.

This time, though, was different—Jack was doing all the checking via computer. But that wasn’t the only thing.

She unlocked the door and opened it.

Djinn-X was chained, naked, to a chrome-frame kitchen chair Jack had bolted to the floor. His wrists were manacled to a chain around his waist, his ankles to the chair itself. A child’s rubber ball with a rope punched through its middle functioned as a gag. The only light came from the open door; Djinn-X’s head jerked up as Nikki entered, his lidless eyes twitching as he tried to blink. Dried blood streaked his face like rust-colored mascara. He grunted frantically.

Nikki stepped inside. She turned on the lamp on the small table, then shut the door.

“So,” she said. “You kill boomers. That’s
fucked up,
you know?”

She sat down in the chair the Closer usually occupied.

“I mean, much as I hate the assholes we usually burn, at least I understand them. They get off on hurting women, it’s that simple. Most people like it a little rough now and then, but these guys are wired wrong—they have to take it too far. That’s sick, but I get it. You, though—you kill people because they’re a certain age? Maybe you’re just nuts….”

“Nnnn! Nnnn!”

“Yeah, yeah. Like I want to hear some fucked-up explanation about how aliens or Satan or your dead grandmother told you to do it. I don’t really care, okay? You did it, you told Jack where and how and when, and once we check a few things we’ll put you out of your fucking misery.”

His eyes were two bloodshot, quivering orbs. She looked away, then fumbled at her purse.

“All right, all right, just a second… here.” She pulled a bottle of Visine out of her purse.

“Tilt your head back …okay.” She put a few drops into each of his eyes. He grunted gratefully.

“Look, I want to ask you something,” Nikki said. “I’m not as good at that as Jack, but if you give me a straight answer, maybe I can do something for you. Send a last message to someone, maybe. Interested?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, like you’d say no. You better not lie to me, motherfucker.” She stood up, walked behind him and undid the gag.

He spat out the ball. “What if I do?” Djinn-X said. “What are you gonna do—
hurt
me?”

“I won’t do a thing. I’ll just tell Jack.”

He gave a weak little snort. “I don’t think so. Only reason you’re asking me and not him is you don’t want him to know. And I don’t know if I can betray my old buddy Jack like that….”

He started laughing, a choking, high-pitched kind of laughter on the edge of tears. It took all Nikki’s self- control not to scream at him to shut up.

After a minute he wound down to little gasps. “Sorry. Sorry,” he managed. “Go ahead. Ask your question.”

She stared at him for a second. “When Jack was… interrogating you. How was it affecting
him?”

He met her gaze unflinchingly. A grin slowly surfaced on his face. “I see. What you really mean is, did he
like
it?”

Nikki studied him impassively. She said nothing.

“You need to know just how far gone he is, don’t you? Whether or not you can still trust him. Man-oh-
man
. I can see how that might be kinda important to you….”

“Don’t fuck with me—”

“’Cause what if he turns out to be one of the bad guys, right? Maybe he’s ‘wired wrong’ too? Or maybe its just that
all
men are like that, deep down. Maybe you’ll wake up one night and find out you can’t move your arms or legs and there’s a bright light in your eyes and now it’s
your
turn to answer questions—”