Bloodman

by Robert Pobi

  “Andy was a soft, decent guy—at least to me. My dad called him the bitch but he made me feel pretty good for a few hours.” He paused, and felt his smile turn a little brittle. “My old man called the cake tasty crap art.” He shrugged. “Which was kind of a compliment coming from him.”

  “See, Jake? That’s a fucking cool story. Remember what we learned in AA? Take the good out of a situation—not the bad.” She kissed his neck, then moved around so her mouth was inches from his. “Was that so hard?”

  And all at once he remembered why he loved her so much; she pulled the good out of him, helped him reach in and find the stuff he thought was lost for ever. “Stop pissing me off,” he said, then laughed. “No, it wasn’t. Fuck. Thanks.”

  Kay laughed, too, and pushed her breasts together, forming a deep crease in her wife-beater. “Here, you can stare at my cans. I know it gives you some kind of a perverse thrill. Go ahead, pay your respects.”

  Jake eyed Jeremy out of the corner of his eye, zooming his fire truck through the air like a red machine of destruction, and when he was sure the boy wasn’t looking, kissed each of her breasts, making a loud MWAH! sound as he did. “Lady, if you had a dollar for all the respect I have heaped on these, you’d be a rich woman,” he said.

  “Um, first off, it wasn’t exactly your respect that you were heaping on them.”

  “All right…all right…Mrs. Potty Mouth, there’s no winning with you.”

  “Hey, I thought letting you heap your…um, respect, on my cans was letting you win. Evidently I have been using the wrong philosophy.” She smiled, leaned over, and kissed him. “Are you going to help me get that rolling barricade away from the door upstairs or do I call Ready Demolition from Tucson?”

  Jake thought about Dr. Sobel’s questions at the hospital. Anything out of the ordinary at your father’s house, Mr. Cole? Hell, no. Except for maybe the Alamo barricade. Oh, and the trash piled up to the rafters. Other than that, the place is as normal as a Seth Morgan novel. “Why not?” He began to push her off.

  She searched his face. “Did your father always drink like this?” she asked, sweeping her hand around the room, her raised arm lifting her breast.

  “Pretty much.” Jake closed his eyes, dropped his head back on the sofa. “When I was a kid, it just seemed to be fuel for work. He’d booze and play music and people would always be swinging by and he’d work and the paintings just seemed to magically roll out of the studio. Sometimes he slept out there. Sometimes I’d go in at bedtime to say goodnight and he’d be starting something, just lines and maybe a background layout penciled onto a big canvas. The next day, when I went in to say good morning, it would be done, some great big sweeping allegorical tragedy, only the tragedy turned out to be him, and the paintings were just incidental.”

  “Don’t say that.” She punched his arm. “I don’t know your father, Jake—you barely talk about him—but he gave me the best thing in my life.” She leaned over, planted her cool lips on his forehead and kissed him. “You don’t have to babysit us, you know. If you need to be at the police station, I think we can handle it. What kind of trouble could me and Jeremy get into at a beach house?”

  “I only have you for one more day and I want to make it count.” And with that his Spidey sense started tingling. He turned to the porch. “Where’s Jeremy?”

  Kay turned with him, following the concern in Jake’s voice. “He’s right—”

  But he wasn’t.

  He was gone.

  Jake sprang to his feet, spilling Kay in a tangle of arms and legs. “Where the fuck is he?”

  Jake ran for the deck.

  23

  Jake’s head automatically swiveled to the pool as he ran across the deck. The algae was undisturbed and still, the line of sludge that rimmed the concrete a straight demarcation around the perimeter.

  Jake saw Jeremy from the top of the steps to the beach. He was at the water’s edge, staring out at the ocean. His arms were crossed over his chest as if pondering some important moral question, his body unmoving.

  Jake thudded down the ancient weathered planks and raced across the sand. He scooped Jeremy up. “What are you doing out here, Moriarty?” He tried not to sound angry but what he really wanted to keep buried was the panic.

  Jeremy tried to squirm out of Jake’s grip with the guttural grunts he reserved for times when language was just too civil for the things he needed to say.

  “What is it?” Jake swung his son around. “You’re not supposed to leave our sight. You know that, kiddo.”

  Kay came down the steps and ran over. “What the hell is he doing down here?”

  Jake shrugged. “He’s being pissy. You ask him.”

  Jeremy gave a final squirm and fell limp. When he seemed to be in control of himself, Jake lowered him to the sand.

  “What’s wrong?” Kay asked, squatting down on her boots.

  Jeremy pointed off into the distance, to the horizon, to the edge of the world.

  “What?” Kay asked.

  Jake turned to the horizon, scoured the skyline. Then back to Jeremy, examining his face for clues. Then out at the ocean again. “What is it?”

  “Elmo!” Jeremy screeched, a voice filled with rage.

  And then Jake saw it. Rolling lazily on the deep swell, the red-orange figure of Elmo, face down, spread-eagled in the water. The tide was coming in, not going out, and Elmo was a good 150 feet from shore. Jake held up his hand and felt the steady wind that was pushing straight in at the shore.

  Watching Elmo spin lazily in the swell, Kay asked, “How the hell did he—?” And she stopped, because she realized that there was no answer to the question.

  The Sesame Street critter bobbed on the waves for a few seconds like a drowning victim. He inched closer, but it would take time for him to close the distance to shore and he’d be lucky if he wasn’t pulled under by the waves breaking on the beach. It didn’t take a physicist to understand that Jeremy could not have gotten him out there; Jake knew even he couldn’t throw him that far, headwind or not.

  “How did Elmo get out there, Moriarty?”

  Jeremy pretended not to hear for a few seconds. Then he realized that his parents were smart enough to know that Elmo hadn’t swum out there on his own. “He took him.” The boy stood on his toes, his eyes searching for his little red friend. “Carried him into the water, Daddy.”

  Jake felt the skin tighten around his bones. “Who did, son?”

  “The man.” He looked up, smiled brightly. “Your friend.”

  Jake looked into his son’s face, searching for…what? “My friend? Which friend?”

  Jeremy looked like he realized that he might be in trouble. He lifted his face to Kay, searching for a cue. Kay nodded. “It’s okay, son. Tell Daddy.”

  “He said he was your friend, Daddy. He said he played games with you and your mommy when you were little. And that now he wants to play games with me. He wants to be my friend, too.”

  Kay’s features were white now, brittle. “What is he talking about?”

  Jake was frozen in place. He tried to shrug, to shake his head—all that came out was a single sentence. “What was his name?”

  Jeremy stared out at Elmo lolling on the waves like an orange patch of carpet, well beyond the heft of human strength. “The man. He lives in the floor.” The boy kept his eyes locked on Elmo, waiting for him to come in from his swim. He shrugged and his little T-shirt rose up, exposing a big white tummy with a perfect dent of a bellybutton, like a well-grown albino grapefruit. “You know, the man in the floor—he’s your buddy. He said so. He said he’s your Buddy-Man.”

  Jake looked over at his wife and saw her bottom lip trembling a little. “Jeremy,” she said, maybe a little too harsh.

  Recognizing the tone, the boy looked up at her.

  “You don’t go anywhere without Mommy or Daddy, okay? We’ve talked about this. There are bad people out there. Mean people.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “Not the man in the f
loor. He’s Daddy’s buddy. He said so.” He pointed at the ocean. “Like teaching Elmo to swim.”

  Jake turned back to the water. Out beyond the surf line, Elmo still spun facedown in the swell, a few bits of seaweed now clinging to his furry orange ass. He didn’t look like he was swimming. He looked dead.

  “The next time he comes to play, you tell Daddy,” Kay said.

  Out past the surf line, the swell capped and Elmo was driven down into the black Atlantic.

  24

  On the way in from a trip to the medical examiner’s office, Hauser stopped at his receptionist’s desk. She was busy putting office supplies into Ziploc bags—her idea of preparing for the storm.

  “I need you to get on the phone to the FBI office we went through last night—the one that gave us Jake Cole. I want to speak to this witch doctor’s supervisor or boss or whatever his superior is called. I want him on the phone and I want it done in the next three minutes.”

  The phone was buzzing by the time he sat down behind his massive slab of oak. “Hauser here.”

  “Sheriff, this is Field Operations Manager Matthew Carradine—Jake Cole’s handler. What can I do for you?”

  Handler? What kind of a word was that? Then Hauser remembered Jake’s 3-D crime scene party trick and decided that maybe he was looking at a circus act.

  Hauser didn’t start by telling Carradine that he was glad the guy had called back—that would be too much of an aw-shucks way to start a conversation. “Who is Jake Cole?”

  “I don’t understand the question, Sheriff Hauser.”

  He could have pointed out the tattoos or the clothing or the spooky crime scene Ouija show but all of that was secondary. “Jake Cole creeps me out.”

  Carradine let out a low little rumble that sounded like it had weight to it. It was an irritated, bored sound that said Go away. Maybe it worked with people who hadn’t seen de-epithelialized children, Hauser thought bitterly.

  “Can you be specific, Sheriff?” Meaning, It’s none of your business.

  “Yes, Carradine, I can. What—specifically—does he do? And by that I mean beyond walking through a crime scene with that glazed expression on his face and giving me instructions on how to set up a media plan.”

  “The FBI is not in the habit of handing out private details pertaining to our personnel.”

  “Mr. Carradine, I am not some lost fuckstick local sheriff who can’t find his cock with both hands. If I am going to work a double homicide with a man, I need to know a little about him.”

  Carradine was silent on the other end, probably thinking things through, Hauser realized.

  It took him ten seconds to begin speaking. “First off, if you want to know about Jake Cole, you’ll have to ask him. But I’ll tell you what, Sheriff Hauser, I am going to share a little information with you because you can’t afford the luxury of mistrust on this one. You don’t have the time. Of all the police departments in the United States investigating a homicide right now, yours is the luckiest. If Cole’s father wasn’t going through what he is, I’d have Jake out of there so fast you’d think he was a dream. I am not denigrating your situation—I’ve read the file and you have a real problem on your hands—but Jake has other cases that are a lot more pressing than yours.”

  “What’s more pressing than a mother and her baby skinned alive?” Hauser asked, reminding himself out loud what was at the center of this whole thing.

  “Try nine little boys who have disappeared over the past month and whose parents have been receiving their heads in the mail a few days later—collect. With nails pounded into them. Pre-mortem.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yes. Jesus. Look, I understand that Jake Cole does not fit the bureau profile that we have set for ourselves and I’d be lying if I said that you were the first law-enforcement officer to field a call like this. It’s obvious to all parties that Jake’s left of center of our phenotype. He works autonomously for us and we are privileged to have him—you are privileged to have him.” He paused again, as if he was deciding how much to open up to Hauser. “Jake has a rare ability.”

  “Is he some sort of a psychic?”

  Hauser was surprised to hear Carradine laugh, a hearty roar that echoed for a few seconds. “Sheriff, we are good at what we do because of science. Because of protocols we have developed. Because we understand that data supports data and that the eventual outcome is a solution. Not because of some boojie-woojie evil eye. Again, I’d be lying if I told you that you were the first person who had asked me that, but as a lawman you should know better. There are no mediums. No psychics. No people who speak to the dead. That’s all unsupported unscientific wishful thinking.

  “In simple terms, Jake is the most pragmatic problem solver I have ever seen. First off, he has eidetic memory—I mean complete photographic recall. He walks through a room once and he can recall the tiniest detail, as if he has a digital recorder in his head. It’s a little disconcerting because it’s very uncommon. It’s also remarkable. Jake would be the first to tell you about it if you bothered to ask.”

  Hauser felt himself drop the classification of Jake as some kind of circus freak to little more than a stupid human trick. “It’s not some weird I-see-dead-people thing?”

  Carradine let a little chuckle roll out again. “No, Sheriff, it’s just a very keen power of observation. And if his calm gets to you, please remember that he sees the worst of humanity all the time. It takes a lot to get him flustered.”

  Hauser remembered Jake in the ME’s subterranean room, caressing Madame X’s peeled foot.

  “Have I answered your questions?” The tone told Hauser that his five minutes were over.

  Hauser realized that in a way he now knew less about Jake Cole than before he had made the call. “I guess so,” he said, then added a tired “Thank you,” and hung up.

  25

  Jake crouched in front of the master bedroom pocket door. He had managed to spread it a few more inches, and the opening was almost large enough for Kay to squeeze her nearly diminutive body through. She stood in front of him, her arm and shoulder already through the crack. From his vantage point, her crotch was in his face and he felt himself staring at the tight V of her jean shorts instead of concentrating on getting the door open.

  “Can you get that out of my face?” he said between clenched teeth and gave the door another tug. It moved slowly in, as if the pocket were filled with tightly packed sand.

  “What?”

  “That,” he said, nodding at her crotch.

  “My vagina?”

  “I can’t open this door and stare at your camel toe at the same time. It’s too distracting.”

  “Camel toe? I have a camel toe? I thought current nomenclature was cooch. When did we go to camel toe?”

  “When you put those shorts on.” Jake rolled his eyes. “Now cut it out.”

  “Oh, all right.” She squatted down beside him, resting the part of her ass that was hanging out of her shorts on the heels of her boots again. “This better?” she craned her neck theatrically, to see if anything was popping out. “No fur.”

  Jake shook his head sadly. “Jesus, where did I find you?” he asked rhetorically.

  “AA—us good ones all hang out at AA meetings. We get to meet the cool guys there. The guys who have no jobs, no friends, no self-esteem. Or if they do have jobs, they’re like really creepy jobs that don’t make them happy.” That had been six-plus years now. Before, in the language of their relationship. Before they had fallen in love or had Jeremy or had found the feeling of safety neither had ever experienced but both had recognized on sight. “And in exchange these guys get hot musician babes with no jobs, no self-esteem, and big juicy camel toes.” She leaned forward and kissed him. “Now open this fucking door, Houdini, we need a place to sleep and if we have to crash in the living room, you won’t get to put anything in my warm parts tonight.” Her freckled face scrunched up. “Clear?”

  Jake nodded. “I’m working on it, okay?”<
br />
  Another good tug and it opened enough for Kay to squeeze through.

  “Lucky you,” she said. “You’re gonna get some lovin’ later.”

  Jake stood up without brushing the dust bunnies off of his jeans. His peripheral vision stayed on Jeremy engineering the death of more imaginary two-inch motorists. “I’m glad he doesn’t pay attention to your mouth.”

  Kay managed to squeeze through the crack by putting her hands over her head and sliding sideways. Her breasts made a scraping sound on the wood when they popped through. She flipped a switch and a single table lamp on the floor in the corner sputtered to yellow, feeble life.

  “Oh, hey. Here’s why you couldn’t budge the door.”

  There was a soft clack and she slid the door back, a two-foot screwdriver in her hand. “Your dad drove this through the wall, into the door.”

  Jake rolled the door closed again, and saw the crude hole whittled into it.

  “How did he get out, though?”

  Kay looked at the doorway, the hole in the wall, the screwdriver, and did some rough calculating. “He could have reached through and locked it from the outside. You’d have to know where this was to get to it but if you’ve got long arms…”

  A heavy chest of drawers blocked the opening and Jake slid over the top. The room, like the rest of the house, was cluttered, although this one felt more like a lair. The bed didn’t look filthy but the sheets were crumpled and knotted on top of the mattress in the shape of a human nest. Clothes—mostly his father’s standard work outfit of jeans and white T-shirts—were strewn about. There were empty scotch bottles, cracker boxes, and anchovy tins in the way of garbage. And, of course, a few dozen yellow plastic utility knives.

  “This isn’t good,” Kay said in a long, low whisper.

  “Let’s jimmy the locks on my old room and my mother’s office.”

  His mother’s office was a static photo of what it had been all those years ago—exactly as it had been when Jake left—exactly as it had been for the five years previous to that. More than thirty years of closed air and dust and sadness. His own room was sparse and bare, as if no one had ever lived there at all.