“ No, I–I-I-”
“ The power of feeding on another life; taking life through your mouth, down your fucking gullet. You thought it made you special, didn't you? Didn't you?”
“ I was addicted.”
“ Didn't you!”
“ I thought it made me immortal. That tells you the extent of my… my addiction.”
“ So you're no longer crazy?”
He said nothing to this.
“ You're no longer going crazy?”
He refused to reply.
“ Now, you're going sane? And we're supposed to believe you?”
“ If you cooperate with me, and I cooperate with you, as my mind improves, then perhaps you can learn something about Kentucky, Ohio, other places. The question,” he said, standing now, pacing in his cell, “is whether or not you want that information unlocked.”
“ You're in no position to blackmail the FBI, Matisak.”
The madman's scars were on her body, but the deeper scars were those done to her psyche and her soul.
“ There are others, you know,” he teased.
“ Other bodies, yes.”
“ Others like me. Vampires.”
It dawned on her what he was saying. “Do you really believe for a moment that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would ever in a million years, Matisak, ask you in on a case involving vampirism? Is that really what you expected of this meeting here today?” There are a lot of others like me, spread across this country, and when another one's craving and addiction reach the heights of mine, nothing will stop him from killing for blood, and you and your agency will come crawling to me for help. Do you hear me? Do you hear?”
“ I think I've heard enough of your rantings, Matisak. This interview is over.”
She clicked off the tape, stood up and rang for the guard to open the door and let her out. Behind her he said, “Look in the woods in Kentucky off 1-75, about a mile from the intersection of county road 54 near Lexington. You'll find a shallow grave not a hundred yards from an abandoned old farmhouse.”
Her jaw quivered where she stood. Without turning back to face him, she said, “I'll see that it is checked out.”
The door opened and she hobbled out on her crutches to his final words to her. “I hope you're healing well.”
The door closed with a resounding echo and his laughter. He had just posited information with her that only she knew about. It hadn't been taped. He had waited for the tape to be turned off. He had baited her intentionally. With this new information she had a choice to make. If she told O'Rourke and the others and a search actually turned up a body, then she would be sent back again to speak with this devil, and the more he cooperated with the FBI, the more likely he would be viewed by prison officials as a rehabilitated man. The body in Kentucky was most likely Julie Marie Hampton, missing for over two years, a time when Matisak took many more precautions, before he began to feel supernormal and invincible.
As she made her way back down the long white corridor she struggled with herself about what to do, knowing that in the end she must do the right thing. The Hamptons in Kentucky had to know; O'Rourke had to know, along with the others; and if she could get more information out of Matisak, then she would have to come back to this awful place again and again, consigned to this hell by her counterpart.
She could still hear his laughter.
She could imagine the official stance on this one: play out the bizarre game that Matisak had initiated… see where it leads. But she feared it would lead to no good. And she feared his games and where they had led in the past, and she feared that he might get what he wanted. There was nothing in this life that she wanted him to have; seeing him stripped of his personal freedom was not enough. Like the dream of carrying in the concealed weapon and blowing his head off, she feared that her cooperating repeatedly with him as he cooperated with the agency would lead to her one day carrying out that dream for real.
There would be other cases of Tort 9 level, and even some cases of a lesser degree-cannibalism, for instance- in which information gleaned from the mad mind of Matisak could help in the pursuit of an equally deadly killer that was not in a federal facility but walking loose on the streets.
Jessica had made the distance from Matisak's cell to her car in the lot with great effort both physically and mentally. She chugged the crutches into the rear seat and got into the car, where J.T. had fallen asleep at the wheel as he waited for her. He was instantly awake and when she slid into the seat beside him, he asked if she was all right.
“ I'll never be all right again, but for now… yeah.” She held her tears in check.
“ What did he want?”
“ He wants to use us.”
J.T. frowned. “Then you were right all along. Prick bastard.”
“ And O'Rourke's going to want to use him.”
“ How can you be so sure about O'Rourke?”
“ Oh, something Otto told me once about her.”
“ Which was?”
“ That she played like him; that he admired her for being as ruthless and as tough as him.”
“ So where to next?”
“ Lexington, Kentucky.”
“ He opened up about Kentucky?”
“ He did.”
“ Holy shit, Jess. Do you know what that means? Boy, you really got to him, then, didn't you? You really got him talking. Got it on tape?”
“ Let's get to the airport, shall we?”
“ You're really good, you know that, Jess?”
“ Yeah… yeah, I know, I know… I'm good… Wake me when we get to the airport.”
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Killer Instinct jc-1 Page 30
