Bloodman

by Robert Pobi

  Hauser pursed his lips. “So what’s next?”

  “I go home. That’s where this started, that’s where it’s going to end. I don’t know how I know, but I do. He’s going to come looking for me. He has to.”

  The door flew open and Wohl burst in. “Special Agent Cole, we got a satellite link. I don’t know why—the storm’s not getting any better—but it’s up. I don’t know for how long.”

  Jake reached for his laptop on the table beside Hasselhoff’s bloody face grinning up from the evidence bag. “I need a few minutes for this.”

  Wohl shrugged. “You can have all the time you want but when it comes to the satellite, that’s up to Mother Nature.”

  Jake followed Wohl and Hauser closed up the rear. Frank opted to stay in the interrogation room now that he had someplace to smoke.

  The communications room was pretty much what Jake expected: a pair of dispatch transmitters—a hot unit and a backup—blinking like pachinko machines; three computer terminals equipped with enormous monitors for tracking cell phone and handheld calls; and an assortment of server towers and network hubs, all running off the backup generator.

  Jake sat down and the communications officer, Mary Skillen, nodded a hello. “We’ve had a connection for one minute, thirty-one…thirty-two…thirty-three seconds. It ain’t gonna be here forever.” There was a FireWire cable and a computer printout in her hand. “Here’s the system access code. Get your mail out as fast as you can.”

  Like theatrical punctuation in a high school play, the lights dimmed and Jake heard the three officers hold their communal breath. Jake ignored the brown-out, connected the MacBook, and hooked up to the server. He was past hoping for anything and running on autopilot at this point.

  Skillen’s eyes were glued to the network monitor. “You’re on, Special Agent Cole.”

  Jake brought up the FBI mail service and uploaded the video he had taken—half with Kay, half with Spencer. The status bar began an agonizingly slow crawl across the bottom of the screen.

  “You really think that this is a portrait of the killer, Jake?” Hauser asked from the doorway.

  Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s another dead end. But Dad went through a lot of trouble—a lot of mental gymnastics—to do this. And I can’t believe it was simply the artist in him talking. He was trying to tell me something. With that portrait he arranged in the carpets, with the painting he did in his own blood, with the Chuck Close he chopped the eyes out of. They were all messages—hints—that I had to look at things from a different perspective. From his perspective.”

  “Your dad gave you a lot of credit,” Hauser said slowly.

  Jake hadn’t thought about it in those terms but when Hauser laid it out like that, he realized that the man was right; this was not the kind of Easter-egg hunt that most people would be able to follow. The old man had put a lot of trust into him.

  He sat watching the status bar, feeling like time was running in reverse. Then it hit 3 percent…3.5 percent.

  The only noise was the rage of the storm outside, now at its zenith, and Hauser was waiting for the eye to pass over, giving them a few hours of much-needed time to recharge their batteries. Then the weather would descend back into biblical tragedy and Act II would rip over Long Island, tying up loose ends, finishing any manmade buildings that had had the audacity to remain standing. If they were lucky, they’d all be here when this was over.

  But the word lucky was slowly being purged from Hauser’s lexicon. He had seen a string of bad luck before—the time his knee had been crushed on the football field had been a study in the butterfly effect gone wrong—but this thing with Jake and the Bloodman had crossed bad luck the moment his mother had been killed all those years ago. As far as the sheriff was concerned, this was more of a curse.

  And he knew that curses have a way of finishing things off on their own terms.

  71

  Frank and Jake headed east on 27, toward the point, sticking to the empty oncoming lane because it was farther from the shore, if only by a few feet. Off to their right the ocean was boiling up fifty-foot swells that slammed into the beach and snow-plowed the hundred yards to the highway where they detonated against the embankment, launching tons of water into the air. A three-foot surge pulsed over the asphalt, and Frank held the wheel to the right to keep the heavy truck out of the ditch. Every now and then the wash would lift the Hummer just a little, drifting it sideways; Frank would wrench the wheel and hit the gas, hollering for more purchase. So far this had happened three times in four miles and both of them knew that if they kept at this long enough, the law of diminishing returns guaranteed that they’d get washed off the highway. But maybe—just maybe—with the storm past its worst, they’d make it. So they kept going. For Jeremy and Kay and for the simple reason that there was nothing else they could do. It was that old Destiny thing again.

  The bottom foot of the truck was filled with water—a design detail that ensured the Hummer didn’t lose traction in flash floods or swampy conditions. Jake’s feet had been wet for hours now and he wondered if they’d ever be dry again.

  Hauser had asked them to remain at the station but Jake had insisted on leaving. He knew that the chances of the highway still existing were as slim as the house still standing but something told him that he had to go there. At least he’d be findable at the beach house. Not that that had made much of a difference up until this point. Still, it was all he could think to do.

  The Old Testament wall of water that shot up over the road made Jake understand how primitive man had seen storms as God’s wrath. A thick blanket of seawater hit the rock-strewn ditch beside the road, shot straight up in the air, and came down into the pavement with a muffled smack. Frank steered into the surge and the tires managed to stay connected to the road; a smaller vehicle would have been washed off the highway and it was only Hauser’s call that had got them past the roadblock that cut off access to the tip of Long Island.

  Frank negotiated the truck over enough debris to build a small city. It looked like ground zero for a nuclear test; at least a dozen homes were sprawled across the asphalt like smashed shoe boxes. Everything from crushed lampshades to a thirty-foot section of cedar deck blew across the road and Frank kept petting the dashboard and telling the truck she was a good girl. And when that didn’t work, he called her other things.

  Jake worked on a cigarette and decided that when this was all over he was going to crawl into a bottle until he stopped knowing who he was. He had had enough. And without Kay and Jeremy, none of it mattered anyway.

  Jake felt they were moving at the speed of plate tectonics but when he looked outside at the black world illuminated by the bright glow of the LEDs and found a landmark, he realized that they were actually making good progress. At this clip they’d be back at the beach house in another ten minutes.

  Then the real waiting would begin.

  Jake put the data through his head, crunched the numbers, and he knew he was missing something—something that would make sense of why things had happened the way they had.

  “I want to know why,” he said out loud, not meaning to.

  “What?” Frank steered the Hummer around a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser lying on its side in the wash, each slam of the waves coming in off the Atlantic nudging it a little further toward the opposite side of the road.

  A wave reached out of the dark and rose up beside the truck like the wall of a cliff. Jake flinched as it came down and Frank steered into it. The front of the truck bucked as it took the impact, then bounced back up. Frank hammered down on the gas to gain a little more purchase and the truck miraculously stayed on the road.

  When he caught his breath, Jake said, “This guy took my mother. Now he’s taken everything else. Why?”

  “The same guy? After all this time? He’d be old—I mean, she was killed thirty-three years ago.” Frank’s cigarette glowed orange as he sucked on it. “Christ, where did the time go? I remember the day she was killed
like it was yesterday. Your father had a big show in New York and he had nailed it. Sold out. He wanted to stay in town and get ripped and talk with his painter buddies and his good-time party friends. Your mom wanted to get back here to you. She worried about you, you know.”

  A small smile creased the corners of Jake’s mouth.

  “She left the city. I put her in her car and we drove back together. We ran out of smokes but she didn’t even want to stop at the Kwik Mart because she wanted to check on you. Wouldn’t even drive me down my street, I had to get off at the corner and walk.” Frank smiled.

  “It sounds like you miss her, too, Frank.”

  Frank nodded and smoke came out of his nose and teeth. “I do, Jakey. You know, I never told anyone this, but I envied him Mia. He thought I was in love with her but that wasn’t it. Your mother was just something special. Whoever took her from your old man effectively killed him, too.”

  “Why didn’t you ever get married?”

  Frank laughed. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m not exactly what you’d call husband material.”

  “Neither was my father.”

  Frank nodded and stubbed his cigarette out on the metal dashboard. “You got me there. But your dad didn’t find a typical woman—he found Mia. You know how many women can live with guys like us?” he asked, his thumb twitching back and forth, indicating Jake and himself.

  “Guys like us?” Then he thought of Kay, and realized that the old man was right.

  “Come on, Jakey. Me? I spent half my life on safari or in the mountains, hunting down just about everything that runs, walks, or crawls on the planet. Even now, I fuck off into the mountains for three-week stretches. You think that your average woman wants a man who does that? As much as they talk about being liberated, as much as they talk about wanting an equal share, I have yet to find a woman who lets me be me. And you?” He laughed, but it was a kind, loving laugh. “You’re the same. I don’t care who your genetic parents were, you’re a Coleridge. Only you hunt people for fun.”

  “I don’t do this for fun, Frank.”

  “I’m not big on advice, Jakey, but you get into trouble when you start believing your own bullshit.” Frank’s voice nearly disappeared in the noisy cab. “I watched you today—you like what you do.”

  Jake shook his head. “You’re wrong. I’m quitting. I made up my mind. This case and one more to tie up. At least I was.”

  Frank nodded. “Sure. And one more, then one more, then one more. Always one more. It’s like a bad relationship that you can’t get out of. Because we love the things that destroy us, Jakey. In that destruction we feel alive.”

  They reached Sumter Point and Frank swung into the driveway. In the bright lights of the truck the house looked like it had been abandoned for years. Most of the flashing was torn away, chunks of the roof were gone. The shrubs had been washed away along with the gravel drive—now just a muddy track. Behind the house, close to the ocean, the studio was leaning back, toward the sea, as if it had lost its grip on the earth and was thinking about diving into the ocean.

  Jake knew that the Bloodman was going to come here. He had to—there was no one left now but him and Frank. He thought about telling the old man about his plan, about what they were doing here. But Frank wouldn’t like it. Not one little bit. Because no one—not even a tough old sonofabitch like Frank Coleridge—liked to be used as bait.

  “Home sweet home,” Jake said.

  72

  Hauser had swallowed so much coffee in the past two days that he figured it would take a week to leach from his system. He hadn’t looked in the mirror in some time but the taste in his mouth suggested that even his teeth were brown. He walked down the hall, his left hand holding a mug, his right resting on the hilt of his great-granddad’s trench knife, taking a lull in the action to survey the station.

  It was still on the move but the directed frenzy of a few hours ago had given way to an exhausted hum. Most of the officers were on their fourth set of dry clothes and Hauser saw a few nonissue T-shirts and boots among his people. He watched the dulled movements and the thousand-yard stares—good people who had spent the last sixteen hours at the business end of the storm, helping a citizenry who should have listened to them and evacuated.

  He had wanted to put all his attention and resources into the homicides that were multiplying as fast as cells dividing but truth be told, he had limited resources. Of course, come tomorrow morning, the National Guard would roll in and he’d be able to put his men where he thought they’d be the most effective. But he doubted they’d be much good in hunting down this murderer—for that he’d need people who had experience with this kind of thing coupled with a personality that rested somewhere beneath the frost layer of human emotions. In short, he needed a cold analytical man like Jake Cole. Crazy fucking Jake, ripping around town in a tan Humvee hunting down sinners. Jesus, how could a life get so fucked up? he wondered. Then he realized that he was part of the same caravan. Well, almost the same caravan.

  Hauser had passed most of the night out in the hurricane, where the physical world had been thrown around. He was no stranger to what Mother Nature could do—being the sheriff of a seaside community came with its own broad set of experiences—but he had never imagined that Long Island itself could feel like it was being filed off the bedrock. Tonight, when he had been out there in the worst of it, he had been humbled, frightened even.

  A good chunk of the town had been taken apart—he couldn’t begin to estimate how many houses had been ripped out of the ground by the wind or pushed off their foundations by the mountainous swells that had come down like God’s own hand. Roofs were gone. Cars totaled. Land swept away in great mouthfuls. And this was only the first round.

  In another few hours, the first part of Dylan would be finished, and they would find respite in the eye of the hurricane. But for how long? An hour? Two? Then it would start up again and finish whatever business it had left undone, whatever damage it still felt like doling out.

  Hauser had spent half the night saving people from their own stupidity; why couldn’t they have listened? He felt sure that he had done his due diligence, that he had made an effort to get his citizens to abandon their…their…what? Crap, was what it amounted to. Sure, some of it cost a lot of money, but it was all just stuff. Stuff could be replaced. Or done without. But Hauser knew they wouldn’t be selling lives down at the Montauk Hardware store come Monday morning.

  As much as he tried to focus on the storm, to believe that it was the worst thing to ever hit his community, images of the Bloodman’s work kept coming back to him. Compared to this guy, Dylan was a minor inconvenience—and when you called the hand of God a minor inconvenience, you had some serious shit on your doorstep.

  Wohl came running up to him, a pink phone-sheet in his hand. “Sheriff, window on Myrtle Avenue blew in, blinded a lady. Her seven-year-old called it in. EMT’s dealing with two heart attacks and a guy who lost his leg so all three units are out. Want me to take it?”

  Hauser shook his head; Wohl had good organizational skills and he was needed at the station to keep the calls prioritized. “Send Scopes.”

  Wohl shook his head. “Scopes is out on a call. He shoulda been back half an hour ago but he ain’t.” The look in Wohl’s eyes was hopeful—he wanted to do some hands-on in the community, not spend the night safely inside eating egg-salad sandwiches and fielding messages.

  “Spencer?”

  Wohl shrugged. “Spencer’s out, too.”

  Hauser’s mouth turned down. “Shit.” He took a sip of coffee, then put the mug into Wohl’s hands. “Give me the address,” he said, and went to get his poncho. Better to deal with God than the Devil any time, he figured.

  73

  Jake held the door and Frank rushed inside. As he swung by, Jake saw that the past few hours had taken their toll on the man. He was a tough old bastard, but the night had chipped a lot of him away and the years showed through the fissures. Jake closed the door.

 
Frank shook himself off and stopped at the Nakashima console. Sitting on top, looking a little like Sputnik, was the wire-frame sphere that Jacob had welded all those years ago. Jake stared at it, seeing it with new eyes, new history. Frank did, too.

  They walked into the house and it was like the driveway; what had been a neglected filthy place was now taken over by the storm. The big front windows had caved in and the floor was a swamp of sand and water and glass. Outside, the pool was canted down, toward the ocean, the ground holding it up chewed away by the waves that had battered it for hours. It was obvious that physics would eventually beat out determination and it would fall into the water—it was only a matter of time.

  Jake flipped a few light switches but of course there was no power. It was in that hang time between expecting power and not getting it that his mind did that magical thing that no one understood and all of the pieces fell into place. Not iffy tentative places, but form-fitted and sure.