Jack of Spades

by James Hankins

  Olivia said nothing for a few moments. “Do you know what he had planned for Alison?”

  Spader shook his head. “Louise didn’t know.” He was lying.

  After another moment of silence, Olivia said, “How about me? Do you know what he was going to do to me?”

  “She didn’t know that, either,” Spader lied again. Louise Pendleton had told him the particular horror Stanley had planned for Olivia. And Spader knew that the nasty tool Pendleton had in his pocket in the library would have enabled him to carry out his plan. But Spader saw no reason to give Olivia more nightmares than she was already going to have to live with.

  “So is that pretty much everything?” she asked.

  “Most of it.” Pendleton kept an unregistered Ford Explorer near his house, which he equipped with plates he stole from a car he saw up on blocks behind some ramshackle house somewhere. When he knew Spader and the police were getting suspicious of him, he and his mother cooked up the little charade they carried out when he was out of the house, the little plays they wrote and performed on tape. On the nights when Stanley was out wearing his Galaxo mask, Louise would sit home, recite her lines, then press play and listen to a snippet of Stanley’s taped dialogue as the script required. Sometimes she’d take her wig off, sit in Stanley’s wheelchair, and roll around the house just in case someone was watching from outside. Then she’d return to the TV room and wait until the script called for her to put on her wig and perform some mundane task, as herself this time.

  “How could she help him?” Olivia asked. “I know he’s her son, but how could she help him do what he did?” The question sounded rhetorical. “It’s sad, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “Twenty-one years ago Stanley Pendleton had a terrible accident that ruined his life. He spent all those years planning how to get back at those he felt were responsible, whether he was right about that or not. Then, later, he drove himself to walk again in the face of incredible odds, all so he could take revenge against the people in the clearing that day.”

  “I’m waiting for the sad part,” Spader said.

  “Here it is. In the end, those people didn’t even know what they’d done. It was the same for them as it was for me, I bet. The last day of camp, an accident happened. The kid was probably fine, they thought, and they moved on with their lives. They finished their summers and went back to school. They grew up and got married and had kids and went on with their lives. Some were probably happy, some might not have been, but they all went on with their lives. And they never knew what their action, or inaction, that day so long ago had done to an innocent little boy.”

  Spader thought about that for a moment, then said, “What happened to Stanley Pendleton was a tragedy, but a lot of people suffer tragedies and don’t do what he did. I don’t feel sorry him.”

  “I do,” she said. Spader opened his mouth to reply but she continued. “I don’t feel sorry for Stanley Pendleton the man, the one who did all those unspeakable things. But I feel sorry for the Stanley I knew briefly a long time ago—eight years old, afraid to cross a log in the woods but more afraid not to. Less afraid of a long fall, maybe even of death, than of not fitting in.” She shook her head. “I feel sorry for that Stanley.”

  Spader thought about trying to put himself in that clearing that day, into the terrified mind of little Stanley, clinging desperately to that fallen tree, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to feel any sympathy for Pendleton.

  They fell silent again. The minutes ticked slowly by. Now and then their eyes met before one would look away—out the window, at the lilies, at the pictures of their family on the walls. Even though neither of them spoke, something changed in the room. A few minutes earlier, they’d been talking about Stanley Pendleton, and Olivia had been pensive and sad. Spader had simply been tired. Tired of Pendleton, tired of thinking about him, talking about him, living with him in his head all day, every day. Sometime over the past few minutes, though, Olivia’s mind seemed to have moved on, and his did too. As they sat together in comfortable silence, it seemed that neither was thinking about what they’d recently been through. Spader looked at Olivia, who was once again looking at the white lilies, and wondered if she, like he, was thinking only about what lay ahead of them.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Spader sat on the soft ground with his back against a thick tree trunk. A gentle current of unseasonably cool afternoon air blew gently across Stearns Pond, washing over him. He’d been coming here to Harold Parker State Forest every few weeks or so for the past seven months—ever since the last credible tip about Eddie Rivers had come in. He’d usually spend an hour or two sitting right where he was sitting now, staring out at the water, just thinking. Sometimes he thought about ways he could have been, and still could be, a better father to David. Often he thought about the things he’d done wrong with Olivia, things he’d do differently if he had the chance. In fact, he thought about those very things for a while before his thoughts eventually floated elsewhere.

  He thought a little about Stanley Pendleton, first the eight-year-old kid, then the twenty-nine-year-old killer. And he thought about Pendleton’s victims, the living and the dead, and how close Olivia had come to joining them.

  Finally, he thought about himself—about some of the decisions he’d made over the last few years, and some of the things he’d done. Some, he knew, were right. Others, he had no doubt, were wrong. And still others he wasn’t yet sure about. One thing he knew for certain, though: he’d crossed a line. Again. He had truly hoped that wouldn’t happen, that he wouldn’t be pushed over that line again. But he had been. Again.

  His gaze drifted out over the water, as it did every time he came here, over the water and across the pond, past the many small islands that rose gently from its surface, to where a tiny spit of land jutted out into the water. He looked for the gnarled tree near the tip of the peninsula and found it without difficulty. From there his eyes skimmed about fifty yards south across the glittering surface of the water and came to rest there, where they always did, near the middle of the pond. He watched the sun dance in the ripples there, there where it was deep, very deep, and he realized something: it was time for him to stop having nightmares about Eddie Rivers. He was gone, truly gone, and despite other people’s fears, Spader knew he wasn’t coming back.

  With his eyes on that place in the water, he thought about the concept of right and wrong and how blurry the lines separating the two could be. He pondered how circumstances and perspective could color those labels. And he realized that, in the end, what he thought was right or wrong didn’t really matter. The final judgment wasn’t his.

  So he’d learn to live with everything he’d done, right or wrong.

  Because he had to.

  He had no choice.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Some reading this book might think that I cast the city of Salem, Massachusetts, in an unfairly less-than-flattering light because, from the point of view of the main character, John Spader, the city distastefully capitalizes on an infamous period in its history—the Salem witch trials of 1692. While it’s true that much of the city’s cultural identity is based on the unfortunate incidents that took place there over three hundred years ago, Spader’s attitude toward Salem is more reflective of his own experiences than of my own view of Salem. I chose the city as Spader’s home precisely because of its history and its cultural ethos. Though Spader is aware of his own culpability in the errors that led to Eddie Rivers receiving a tragically light sentence given the heinous nature of his crimes, he knows that the lion’s share of the blame belongs to his former partner. Nonetheless, Spader feels that, because he was by far the higher-profile individual involved in the case, he was unfairly vilified by the media and, subsequently, the public. Subconsciously—and this is a thought he never articulates, even in his own mind, but which I, as his creator, knew was always there—Spader identifies with those innocent souls hanged three centuries ago for crimes of which they wer
e innocent.

  The truth is, Salem is a vibrant city with a rich history and culture beyond that related to those long-ago witch trials. It boasts historic houses (including the House of the Seven Gables, the subject of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 gothic novel), as well as a lively downtown area, the country’s second-oldest cemetery, and the Peabody Essex Museum, the oldest continuously operating museum in the United States. And there’s plenty more to Salem (including all the witchy stuff, which, I have to admit, is always fascinating and often just plain fun). I do echo John Spader on one point, though—if you visit Salem near Halloween, grab the first parking space you see.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, thanks to Colleen, my wife, who reads my books first and who keeps me honest. Without her love and support, I’m not sure I could do this, and I know for a fact I couldn’t do it very well. Thanks to my sons, Alex and Zack, for trying to give Daddy time to write. Thanks also to Daniel Suarez and Adam Winston, good friends and great writers, for their terrific ideas on the book. Thanks to the wish-to-be-anonymous Massachusetts state troopers who answered my many questions about the Massachusetts State Police. Thanks again to attorneys Susan Hankins (my sister) and John R. Gulash (my brother-in-law) for their advice on criminal law. Thanks to the rest of my family and friends for their faith and support. It means more than you all know. And again, many thanks to my agent, Michael Bourret of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, for believing in me (and for his sound editorial advice). Finally, if I’ve forgotten anyone deserving of my thanks—and I know I must have—I apologize and I thank you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JAMES HANKINS lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two sons. He used to be a lawyer. Before that he wrote screenplays. Now he writes books and helps raise his boys. Please visit his website at www.jameshankinsbooks.com.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One