The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (7 page)

The trial didn’t start until Kimberlain’s two-month stay in the hospital had ended. He emerged still in a neck collar, part of a kidney ruined, with a staple in his shoulder and a pin in his wrist. All told there had been four operations, with another two in the offing. The Ferryman took the stand and eyed Winston Peet the whole time he spoke; Peet was chained and under armed guard even in the closed courtroom.

Kimberlain testified as an expert witness that Peet was the most malevolent criminal he had ever encountered, his capacity for violence exceeded only by his willingness to commit it. His testimony mesmerized the court but did nothing to sway the judge. The judgment of the court was that Winston Peet was totally incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and he was sentenced to The Locks until such time as he was deemed fit to stand trial again or reenter society a cured man. One day Winston Peet could conceivably be released, and the Ferryman knew the killing would start again. But they would never catch Peet again because he wouldn’t let himself be caught as he had before, and it would be Kimberlain’s fault because he hadn’t shot him.

And now, three years later, he found himself facing the monster again from six feet away.

“I’ve been expecting you, Ferryman,” Peet said. “You’ve come about the murders.”

Chapter 6

“I KNEW THE LETTERS
would draw you here,” Peet said. “I knew you couldn’t turn your back.”

Kimberlain wondered how David Kamanski might have accepted the news that he had actually done his research into Turan and Rand after Peet’s letters had called attention to their killings. The giant had sensed something in the murders before anyone else. Perhaps Peet was sensitive to the trail of another so much like himself. Or perhaps he was jealous and desperately wanted the perpetrator to be found. Why else would he have contacted Kimberlain?

“There’s been another murder,” the Ferryman said.

“I know. Jordan Lime. The details were sketchy.”

“A step beyond the others. I want to know what you think about this. I want you to tell me where you think I should look.”

“What’s the weather like outside?” Peet asked suddenly.

“Cold and snowing.”

“First snow of the season?”

“Maybe.”

“Rebirth, Ferryman. Virgin white coating a land in need of renewal.”

Peet rose to his feet. He was naked to the waist and wore khaki pants that barely touched his sandaled feet. His huge muscles rippled with every breath, fleshy bands pulsing even through his neck. Kimberlain couldn’t help but gawk. Memory didn’t do the monster justice.

“I believe that men lie in wait of similar renewal, Ferryman.”

“Dr. Vogelhut seems to think you’re well on your way to yours.”

“He is easily fooled.”

“And is that what you’re doing to him?”

“Only in letting him believe his therapy is to blame for my renewal.” There was a pause in which Peet eyed Kimberlain with naked intensity. “It was you, Ferryman, back there in that town. That was where
my
rebirth started.” He looked over at the huge stack of coverless philosophy books against the back wall. “My friend Nietzsche wrote that a man has much to learn from his enemies. You didn’t kill me in Kansas. I found that interesting.”

“We all make mistakes.”

“I won’t praise you for your compassion, since I know that had nothing to do with it. The trophy was more meaningful when brought in alive. Killing me would have reduced the pleasure of your victory, so you spared my life. It was then that I realized we were the same, you and I.”

“Your wounds must have made you delirious.”

“Denials are pointless. Your soul is no stranger to me. But still I found the fact that you spared my life upsetting. New thoughts were spurred. I began to see that fate had spared me for a reason.”

Peet held his eyes closed as if meditating, and Kimberlain used the time to gaze around his cell. Everything was neat, ordered, precise. A plastic sink and toilet, a one-piece cot lacking springs, and piles of books, with Nietzsche on top. Nearer the bed were stacks and stacks of newspapers, piled so precisely they seemed unread. So that’s how he came to know about the murders, Kimberlain realized, and then turned his thoughts to the array of potential weapons the madman had assembled. Even newsprint, peeled off by fingernails and properly aged, made a volatile poison. And what of the pens with which he had written the letters? They were of the felt-tip variety and thus less dangerous, but with Peet the element of danger could never be ruled out.

“Is it one man behind the killings or more than one?” the Ferryman asked him.

Winston Peet’s eyes opened again. “It is one man
and
more than one.”

“Is that a riddle?”

“It’s no ordinary killer you’re after.”

“Then who might it be?”

“I’ve been studying the cases. I read the papers avidly, Ferryman, always in search of a man whose own skills rival mine.”

“Does this one make you jealous?”

“Hardly.”

“Any ideas?”

Peet considered the question only briefly. “Dreighton Quail, perhaps.”

“The Dutchman’s dead.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Then he’s not dead.”

“You’re not helping.”

“As I said in the letters, to be of service I require your help first.”

“Excuse me?”

Peet stepped closer to the bars. The armed guards six feet on either side of the Ferryman clutched their rifles tighter. The giant slid his hands up the steel. “Why don’t you step in here with me?”

“Because I’m too old to spend another three months in the hospital.”

“You still have pain?”

Kimberlain didn’t bother saying he did.

“I as well.” Peet indicated the jagged scar that cut diagonally across his collarbone and stretched toward his bulging neck. His hands squeezed the bars tighter. “I could rip these out quite easily, you know. I’d be on you before they could shoot, and force you to finish the job you started all those years ago. But I won’t, Ferryman, because I’m not the same man anymore. My soul is like the earth’s: reborn.”

“We were talking about the murders.”

“I still am. Between good and evil actions there is no difference in kind, but mostly one of degree. The standard is constantly changing.”

“No standard gives you the right to kill seventeen people.”

“Each man has as much right as he has power. Would you not admit to killing more than seventeen yourself?”

Kimberlain didn’t respond.

“Was it any more right for you? Or wrong? I think not. The deed is not judged in its own context, it
is
its own context. The beast in us wants to be lied to, and judgments form these lies. But my renewal began when I stopped judging myself or letting myself be judged. Was your killing any more justified because it was for a cause? I see in your soul much of what I see in my own. I see both of us striving to provide balance for our actions. We are held prisoners in a moral cell of our own making, and its bars are much stronger than the ones I’m holding now.”

“So you’ve seen the light. Is that it?”

“We both have. But you are free to seek your renewal, while mine must remain a state of mind rather than being. My renewal has cast me as the master of myself. My mind has sharpened. I was punished for my crimes, and now I am being punished for my desires. He who deviates from the traditional falls victim to the extraordinary; he who remains in the traditional becomes its slave.”

“Nothing human is worthy of being taken very seriously, Peet.”

The giant smiled for the first time. “Plato. I’m impressed, Ferryman. But the man who has overcome his passions has entered into possession of the most fertile ground for ripening thoughts. These killings are a sign.”

“Sign of what?”

“That the time for my reentry into the world has come. You can’t win alone this time. You are fighting forces you cannot possibly comprehend.”

“I don’t believe in monsters, Peet.” And, eyeing him tightly, “Not anymore.”

“Not monsters, Ferryman, causes.”

“A cause didn’t mutilate Jordan Lime.”

“But it unleashed the energy which did. Raw and untempered.”

“One man and more than one,” muttered Kimberlain, repeating Peet’s earlier words.

“The force behind what you are pursuing cannot be adequately measured. Alone you’re no match for it.” Peet’s tone became almost pleading. “Release me from this prison so that I may purge my final demons and conquer the enemy by your side.”

“I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to.”

“Then why did you come here, Ferryman? Was it to question me about the murders, or was it for a different reason? Have you avoided the mirror for so long that you needed to see what your reflection looked like? Have you lost touch with the side of you I represent?”

Kimberlain held the giant’s stare while he backed away. “Have a great life in there, Peet.”

“That which does not kill me, Ferryman, makes me stronger.”

Before leaving The Locks, Kimberlain received a message that Captain Seven wanted very much to see him at the Lime estate. He was glad for that, as much as anything because it took his mind off his strangely unsettling encounter with Peet. During the boat ride back to the mainland and the long drive south, he searched for reasons to hate the man who had almost killed him, but his search came up empty. He wanted to feel as he had in the courtroom when he testified, wanted to feel as he had when the judge announced the sentence and his first thought had been to grab one of the guard’s guns and pull the trigger, as he should have in Medicine Lodge. Today, though, he could find no hate in him for Peet. He wondered if indeed this was a different man from the one he had captured, and if so, how different might he himself have become without realizing it?

Back in Greenwich, Kimberlain found Captain Seven seated in the middle of the Lime mansion’s huge center staircase. He had just started munching on a collection of salad greens packed into a pita pocket. A bottle of natural soda stood by his side.

“Woulda brought one for you if I’d known you were gonna join me,” said Seven.

“Some startling revelations would more than make up for it.”

“If you’re talking about what went down here, I’m not ready yet. Close, but not quite. By the way, think you might be able to get your friend Herman off my back?”

“Herm
es
, not Herm
an
. As in the messenger of the gods.”

“I don’t give a fuck if he runs Western Union, he’s a royal pain in the ass. I work a certain way. Make sure he knows that.”

“I’ll make the point again. I assume your computer turned up some insightful info.”

The captain nodded. “Had a good day. Your three victims were connected all right—through the military.”

“Sounds like too easy a connection for the traditional authorities to have missed.”

“Not when you consider the dumb asses never read between the lines.” Seven continued from memory, as if reading the material straight off his computer monitor. Alfalfa sprouts slid from the corners of his mouth. “Benjamin Turan’s plastic steel will soon revolutionize missile production. Its composition has been estimated to quicken delivery time by up to fifty percent and set radar back fifty years. Adam Rand’s discovery of that hypersensitive transmission will similarly revolutionize tanks and other direct-drive battle vehicles. Speed can be increased on the order of sixty percent.” Captain Seven took another hefty bite from his pita pocket and spoke on through chews. “Jordan Lime’s transistor coupling which resists burnout will soon be state of the art when it comes to weapons systems. It eliminates breakdowns and renders such systems safe from the electromagnetic pulse caused by the detonation of nuclear weapons in outer space. Might not be the most colorful of the three, but it’s the one I’d wager Washington is hottest for.”

“Any of this public?”

“Not on any file the normal mind can access.”

“So our boy is knocking off the heads of companies who’ve recently closed or are about to close major deals with the military,” Kimberlain concluded.

Seven nodded. “Focusing on state-of-the-art discoveries and futuristic technology. Like I said, in none of the cases is the product even close to being on the market yet, so whoever our killer is, he must have a hell of a pipeline. This is strictly deeply buried stuff.”

“How many victims, Captain?”

“Ah, I was hoping you’d raise that issue. At least eleven in addition to the three we know about in the past eighteen months, all industrialists with some kind of military connections eliminated as follows: two shootings, one stabbing, three car accidents, one accidental poisoning, two killed in the process of a robbery, one executed by a terrorist group after being taken hostage, and one who didn’t make it through routine surgery.”

“Then it’s escalating,” Kimberlain said. “The killings are becoming more complex, more technologically oriented. Our boy has faced increased security as he’s gone on and has overcome it with ease. He’s loving this, Captain, I can feel it. What about the next victim I asked you to pin down?”

“Found maybe three hundred potentials, keying off variables pulled from the pattern. I was able to eliminate two hundred and fifty pretty easily and then ran probability factors on those remaining.”

“Who drew the highest?”

“Chick named Lisa Eiseman, president and chairman of the board of TLP Industries, based in Atlanta.”

“TLP Industries. Don’t they make—”

“Yup,” broke in Captain Seven. “Toys. Pioneers and holders of the patent on the interactive memory chip. Made a fortune with their line of the Powerized Officers of War—the POW! dolls.”

“Dolls?”

The captain nodded. “So to speak. TLP’s specialty is toy soldiers.”

Chapter 7

THE PHOTO SHOP
was located on Georgetown’s M Street, three blocks from the Four Seasons Hotel. Squeezed between an ice cream shop and a record store, it looked innocuous, right down to the bold sign assuring customers of same-day service on their color prints. On this day, though, the
CLOSED
sign dangled from the window a full hour before the shop’s advertised seven
P.M.
closing.