Blood and Ink

by Brett Adams

  Nick said, “That ain’t no cigarette lighter he’s holding. It looks like your man was going to fire that gun, until the other guy intervened.”

  Marten’s eyes shifted to Jack’s right hand. It was almost hidden by his trunk, twisted as he was toward the other man, but poking clear were two inches of the unmistakable blocky profile of a Glock barrel.

  It didn’t look great for Jack, true.

  The only movement Marten made was to press play, and release the two figures back into motion.

  They disappeared through the doorway, and appeared a moment later framed by the café window. Words were exchanged, and the newcomers took seats.

  Even at this distance, Marten could tell Jack Griffen was shell-shocked.

  From the corner of her eye, Marten noted the smug smile on Nick’s face.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “Now can you show me something useful?”

  The smile fell from his face so quickly Marten had to suppress a laugh.

  “But—”

  “Maybe you think profilers are failed screenwriters who ended up behind police desks, whose definition of a good day is to churn out a fun character. I don’t know you. But right now, I couldn’t care less about Jack Griffen’s past.” She flicked a hand at the video still running. Coffees had just arrived. “I need to know where he is now, or another person is going to die.”

  To his credit, Nick didn’t attempt to cover his embarrassment with a joke. His fingers went to work on the keyboard. The video jumped ahead, and Marten watched the four surveilled people file out of the café, and walk off screen.

  “From here, CCTV pegged them on the sidewalk two intersections over, and then they vanished.”

  “How could they vanish? What about the cell towers?”

  “Tracey’s phone fell off the world soon after the guy in the cap sat down.”

  From the look on Nick’s face, Marten assumed this was not an ordinary phenomenon. She let it lie, turning her mind instead to the problem of where Jack might have gone with his daughter, Hiero Beck, and the unknown fourth man.

  Had Jack slipped a clue to her when he called from the taxi? She raked over the conversation, which had been necessarily, frustratingly one-sided.

  Then she remembered—he did give her something. A photo. She whipped out her phone and thumbed open her messages, hoping the photo would be worth a thousand words.

  She found it, and laid the phone down on the desk between two odd rubik’s cubes and a stained coffee mug.

  Nick peered at the metadata attached to the photo. “Taken at 15:53. The GPS coordinates give us one fix on their location, but it doesn’t really help.”

  “The photo gives us direction of travel.”

  “What?”

  “The Sun?” said Marten. “The big ball of burning gas in the sky that explodes vampires and gives life to our lonely planet? Squint your eyes. Where are all the light values in this photo?”

  “The what?”

  Forced patience. “Where’s the sunlight coming from, Agent Alvero?”

  “Oh.” He didn’t need to say it. Every one of the three faces was limned clearly from the left of the image. It was taken in Gramercy Park, between Midtown and Downtown, where the skyscraper ranges momentarily broke, before the up-thrust ranges of Midtown.

  “That doesn’t really help us, either,” he said. Beyond the faces on the backseat of the taxi, the world was a blur in the rear window.

  “How about the taxi number, would that help?”

  She didn’t need to explain this to Nick. He plugged the number, which was silhouetted in reverse amid the rectangle of light, into his databases.

  Soon they would have a drop-off location for this fare. And then what?

  If Hiero was taking cover in New York City, Marten knew there was a chance of piquing Grover’s interest. If not . . .?

  Marten glanced at her watch and sighed. Back home in London it was 1 AM. Her son, David, would be sleeping. Benjamin, if he was being naughty on a Friday night, would be reviewing a case that had squeezed out of the work day, or curled up on the couch reading a book.

  She felt a pang of homesickness. Then, almost in the same moment, she wondered if Jack Griffen felt homesick.

  No, she decided. If she was any profiler, she knew what emotion gripped Jack Griffen’s heart at this moment. Fear. Fear alloyed with rage.

  The kind that doesn’t sputter out before it reaps a soul. She just prayed it wasn’t his.

  76

  It happened at a farmhouse on the outskirts of Holcomb, Kansas—a pin drop in the vast Great Plains, slap bang in the middle of the US of A, almost exactly halfway between San Francisco and New York.

  They came at night.

  In the early hours of November 15th, 1959, when the chill prairie night had driven folk to bed, and drink or fatigue had left those awake with blurred senses.

  They brought a knife and a shotgun, but this was just in case.

  They entered by a side door. It was unlocked, and led into an office. The moon shone through a venetian blind, revealing the dark bulk of a desk, a bookshelf, the glint of a letter opener. Closing the blinds, they made a furtive search by flashlight, the whisper of paper and creak of floorboards covered by a breeze rustling the leaves outside the window. Their search yielded nothing. Behind the desk stood a paneled wall, books, framed maps, a fine pair of binoculars (which were taken and later sold in Mexico)—but no safe.

  So the short one with shoulders like a bull, Perry Smith, ripped out the telephone wires. It was time to rouse someone.

  They began with the man of the house, softly-spoken Herb Clutter. They roused him from his bedroom on the ground floor. Standing there in his pajamas, his eyes revealed fear, but he was polite.

  “Safe? There is no safe.” No ten thousand dollars. He always paid by check. Had only thirty dollars in his billfold, and they could take it and go. Just please, please, don’t bother his wife. She’s been ill so long. Please don’t hurt his family.

  Thirty dollars? That just wasn’t going to cut it. The taller one, Dick Hickock, hadn’t driven all day for thirty dollars. And thirty dollars wasn’t going to buy food and women and a lifetime of diving off the coast of Mexico for sunken Spanish treasure, no sir.

  So they tied Herb up, the only real threat, and began to wake the family one by one.

  The mother—a waif of uncertain sanity.

  The boy, Kenyon, a strapping all-American lad of fifteen summers, whose only blemish was the glasses without which he struggled to coordinate his lanky frame.

  The daughter, Nancy, the epitome of country youth and beauty. Smart, pretty, helpful, accomplished, well-rounded and—amazingly for all that—humble. Smith couldn’t leave Hickock alone with her.

  Each was secured with rope, apart. Mother and daughter were tied to their own beds. The boy was tied to the playroom couch. The father was tied up on a mattress in the furnace room. God only knew how it felt for each to be alone with their thoughts as these men ranged through their house at night, and did who knew what to the other members of their family.

  At last it became clear that there really wasn’t a safe. Dick’s jail mate from Kansas State Penitentiary had been wrong, had mistaken Herb Clutter’s generosity for real wealth.

  Smith, meaning to call Hickcock’s bluff that he could kill a man, said, “All right, Dick. Here goes.” And he cut Herb Clutter’s throat. There was a sound like a drowning man might make. But Herb Clutter wasn’t dead. So Smith shot him, turned the room blue.

  Then came a succession of shots—burst of noise, then scramble after the discharged shell. After the first, the mother and daughter knew what was coming.

  The men left, departing into the darkness from which they had emerged. Thirty dollars richer, and the new owners of a radio and set of binoculars, which were later found by a KBI agent in a Mexican pawn shop.

  An entire family murdered for a fantasy spawned by a jailhouse rumor.

  Four lives blotted from under heaven
in cold blood.

  In Cold Blood.

  Truman Capote’s book had invented the true crime novel in one swoop.

  I ran over it again. Couldn’t believe it. Had to believe it.

  Hiero was taking us into In Cold Blood.

  No, not quite. Hiero was taking us into his novel, Blood and Ink.

  But, shit, the model was clear now.

  The date, the 15th of November, was tomorrow. An anniversary of the murders.

  It was the dead of night. The temperature had dropped close to freezing east of a place called Buckeye Lake. The lights of Manhattan seen last night now seemed a dream.

  We were some miles west of Zanesville, Ohio, on Route 70, heading for Kansas, and Holcomb. We had long since traversed the gently winding road that ran cross-wise through the worn folds of earth that were the Appalachian range.

  Memories haunted me, of conversations with Hiero about In Cold Blood. The novel had figured more than any other in our weekly catch-ups. Hiero was besotted by its sense of place, its sculpted pacing, and, above all, the knowledge that it was true. The gut didn’t dip as Capote evoked scenes of disintegrating panic and fear because they were like something that had happened once upon a time; it dipped because the events described had happened. It was appalling. Fascinating.

  Hiero wanted a novel. A great novel. A true novel. And he was going one better than Capote. Capote had simply recorded old facts stuck like flies in amber. Any dumb mechanism like a tape recorder could do that. But Hiero was creating the facts.

  My mind quailed at the thought. The lights of an approaching car filled the dirty windscreen. It passed, plunging us back into relative gloom. The Winnebago’s poor lights strained to push back the night, and the lane markers came on and on, as if they were rails and we were a train riding them. Last stop, murder.

  How could I derail this absurdity?

  At our last gas stop I’d steeled myself, extracted the spare key from my underwear and swapped it for its twin. It started the engine, but I was paranoid it might have a distinguishing mark, a scratch or notch on its black lozenge or metal tongue that would snag Hiero’s gaze and give the game away.

  Ahead, a corona of light silhouetted the dark mass of a hill. Probably another gas station. They were strung along the highway at intervals like so many fake pearls.

  My gaze flicked to the tank dial on the dash. Still a third full, but if Hiero wanted to push on . . .

  “We should fuel up,” I said. Hiero, who by his stillness might have been asleep, but for the glint of his eyes, was silent. “Plus, I need to take a piss. I think I’m getting bed sores or DVTs.”

  “You’re cute when you’re trying to be hip.” Hiero’s words were slurred as if he really had been sleeping with his eyes open. Perhaps the strain was telling.

  We crested the rise, and the gas station’s dome of light spread before us. Without asking again, I flicked the indicator, and lurched off into the gas station’s slipway.

  “We’re stopping?” It was Tracey. She leaned an arm on my shoulder. “I’m busting.”

  “We stopped for the toilet half an hour ago,” I said.

  “We’re in the US, Dad. It’s ‘restroom’. And we’ve also been having this argument since I was three. Girls have smaller bladders.”

  I lifted my right hand from the steering wheel to hold my thumb and forefinger a pea’s width apart. I didn’t trust my voice for a comeback. My gaze hunted the parking lot for the ideal spot while my gut twisted. Hiero’s promise was echoing in my head: “Try anything, and she’s dead.”

  But don’t try anything, and she’s dead.

  It was Russian Roulette. Spin the cylinder and hope to hell the lucky prize didn’t swing up to the hammer. At least in Russian Roulette there were empty chambers. In Cold Blood didn’t end well for anyone.

  Not even the killers. They were hanged six years later—Hickock hung strangling and spasming for minutes; it put the ghost into the witnessing chaplain. I wondered if Hiero had thought of that. Probably. His research had been impeccable thus far.

  The Winnebago crunched to a halt on the pockmarked asphalt, and our wake of exhaust wrapped the vehicle before swirling up into the night. The parking lot lights threw out weird coronas, like alien ships landing. I sat for a moment while the cooling engine ticked. Everything was a clock now. Tracey’s voice broke me out of it, unfroze my will.

  “Back in five,” she said. “You boys want some empty calories?”

  “I’ve gotta go, but it’s dark out. Any of you guys want to hold my hand?” Not waiting for an answer, I opened the door on its protesting hinges, and stalked toward the toilets.

  Tracey disappeared into the shop. My mind worked frantically at how to get a moment alone with her. I reckoned I had two minutes at most before Hiero or Ghost came sniffing. And how the hell was I going to convince her that we were in the hands of psychotic killers, a whisker from death (or worse, Hiero’s voice taunted).

  I slowed my steps, heading for the men’s. If I made it, there was a chance I could wait and listen for Tracey’s arrival, and slip into the women’s. If anyone was watching—anyone—it would be game over. If there was already someone in the women’s, it would be game over.

  Inside the men’s I found yellow light washing a tiled floor whose grout was the color of clay. I fancied they hadn’t been cleaned. Ever.

  I entered the cubicle nearest the entrance on the theory it would allow me to hear Tracey pass by on her way to the women’s. I lowered the lid and sat. My heart was thumping, but I didn’t bother checking my Medline. Perhaps passing out on a toilet was a novel solution to this nightmare. It occurred to me that some of the most exciting times in my life had taken place in toilet cubicles.

  The cubicle next door was occupied, but the thought was faintly encouraging. The proximity of another human, even one defecating or staring at the cubicle door, was comforting.

  And then I heard a whisper. “Dad?”

  Tracey’s voice.

  My sanity was cracking up again. Back in Vienna I had imagined her into Annika Kreider’s apartment. Then again, on the train to Paris. Each time, despite knowing she was not there, her presence had comforted me.

  Now I’d imagined her into the men’s toilet, when the real, living, breathing version was a stone’s throw from where I sat, buying snacks in the shop. Perhaps I should introduce them.

  “Dad.” More insistent.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Tracey?”

  “No, Dad.” The sarcasm confirmed it.

  “What the hell are you doing in the men’s toilet?” I said. Then, into the silence, crashed the realization that I’d got my chance. We were alone.

  But for how long?

  “Tracey,” I hissed. “You’ve got to listen to me.”

  “No, Dad—” There was a bang, and my cubicle door shuddered. “Let me in!”

  I unlocked the door, and she flew into my arms and buried her head in my shoulder. Wrapping my arms around my little girl, I felt a momentary—ridiculous—happiness. The world was going to shit, but here was my daughter.

  Too soon, she shoved me back and glared at me. Her finger jabbed me in the sternum. “Listen. And don’t you dare not believe me.”

  We spoke at once:

  “Hiero—”

  “Hiero—”

  Shared understanding crossed the gap between us like a spark.

  I shut my mouth. Tracey gulped air, visibly steeled herself, and spoke. “Hiero is planning to kill someone. Really kill.” Her hands balled in a crushing gesture of helplessness. “Maybe you.”

  I gripped her by the shoulders and made sure she could see my eyes. “I know.”

  “You know,” she said, as if to herself. And then she buried her head again and her body heaved with wave after wave of sobbing. I had to strain to make sense of what she was saying through her spasms.

  Hiero had played the same game with Tracey that he had played with me. Kept her toeing the line with the threat of violence to me.
He had bumped into her with seeming serendipity, and who knows how long he’d intended to keep up the pretense of a chance rendezvous in a city of over eight million, but something had forced his hand. Struck fear into him. Or perhaps he did it for the joy of it. Why torture only one when you could torture two?

  Fury took me. I had been nursing the lone consolation that Tracey—my little girl—wasn’t aware of the threat hanging over her. And here she was telling me I was wrong. She knew. And she’d been lying and playing a part just as much as me. Worse. Protecting me.

  My blood boiled.

  “I’ll kill the—”

  “Dad,” she sighed, pushed me away, wiping tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “You could never kill anyone.” Memory of a conversation we’d never had in a Vienna hotel room flashed through my mind

  Over her sniff, I could just hear her mutter, “Besides, it’s all my fault.”

  Gently, I pushed her to arms length. “How on earth could any of this be your fault?”

  The tears that rolled down her cheeks now were different—she looked forlorn—and it terrified me.

  “Simple, Dad. If not for me, Hiero wouldn’t even know you exist.”

  “But—”

  “Just shut up, and listen. Please!” She set her head, and, not quite looking at me, began to speak as if by rote. This was a prepared confession. Biting my tongue, I set myself to hear her out.

  “One time, one time only have I let myself drink too much—”

  “Jesus, Tracey, if you think—”

  “Dad!”

  I made a zipping motion across my mouth, tried again.

  “I was tired. Stressed. Probably self-pitying. It was end of semester, party season. Any number of excuses, but there you go.” She slid a finger across her cheek and rubbed idly at the moisture with her thumb.

  “Hiero was there, except his name was Randall Todd, then. He’d been at the university maybe half the semester. I think maybe he liked me, maybe not. Either way, I wasn’t interested. I mean, I liked him—in a kind of kindred spirit way. He’d lost his parents, and—” Her eyes darted to mine, and in them I saw the rest of that thought. “And I guess it all poured out of me. Picture every crappy, clichéd coming of age sob fest, and there’s me.” Her nose crinkled in self-disgust. “I kept coming back to the holiday we took to Exmouth. How the tension in the air between you and Mum was so thick I could see it, and I had this weight in my stomach that knew—just knew—there was something deeply broken in our family, and there was nothing in all the world I could do to fix it.