Final Notice

by Jonathan Valin

  “What is that?” Foster said, as I picked one of them up.

  I flipped it over and my heart began to pound in my chest. He had left something behind him to guide me. The drawing—probably one of the drawings that Kate had taken from his room—was another clue, another connection between what we'd found in the farmhouse and what was waiting for us somewhere in the night.

  “What is it?” Foster said again.

  I'd never seen her before. But I'd heard her described. Sweet, round face, like a child's drawing of mother. That's what Aamons had said. “I think it's a sketch of Twyla. Twyla Belton.”

  Al leaned over my shoulder and studied the drawing. “That's her, all right,” he said grimly. “I saw her in the morgue when they brought her in.”

  Levy said, “Then he didn't take the drawings with him after all.”

  I bent down and picked up the second piece of paper, half-knowing, as I flipped it over, what would be on the other side. Knowing because it was the only thing that explained his actions, that explained why he'd taken Kate and why he let us know that he'd taken her.

  “Good God!” Levy said as I held the picture at arm's length. “It's the girl!”

  It was, indeed, a line sketch of Kate Davis—with the eyes and the mouth and the breasts and genitals neatly cut away. I dropped the sketch on the floor and sat down hard on the couch. I'd warned her it could happen when I'd first met her; but I hadn't really believed it. She hadn't believed it either. It had seemed so far-fetched, then. I could only imagine the thrill of terror she must have felt when she'd found her own likeness alongside the drawing of the dead girl, when she realized that it was she herself who was the Ripper's next intended victim. That was what had sent her rushing out of the Lord house and sent Jacob Lord after her.

  It all made such terrifying sense. She'd started working at the library in late July, just about the time Hack had begun to fall apart and Jake had gone searching for his own kind of scapegoat. He must have watched her from the stacks, as she sat on that stool in front of the art shelves day after day, until the pretty blonde girl and the picture books and all the pain they stood for merged into a single obsession. He'd tried to resist it. Judging from what he'd left in my room, he was still trying. But it was a battle he wasn't going to win. And that, I thought finally, was what he was trying to tell me, that was the real meaning of the slash mark and of the two pictures and of the drawing of the Overlook he'd left for his dead brother to see. He couldn't stop himself, unless someone got to him quickly.

  But then Jake Lord had told me where he'd be. He'd told me twice. Once in the farmhouse. And once in my own living room, when he deliberately left the two pictures behind him—one of a girl he had murdered, one of a girl he was planning to kill.

  “Let's go!” I said to the three men.

  “Go where?” DeVries said.

  “To where Jake said he'd be. To where he killed Twyla and where he'll kill again, if we don't stop him. To the Overlook in Eden Park.”

  26

  IT WAS almost five A.M. when we reached the circular drive of the Overlook on the northeast edge of Eden Park. Al pulled in beneath a clump of elder trees at the park gate. For a minute or two, we just stared up the road to where it curved beneath the low stone wall on top of the hillside. Lovers sat on that wall in the summertime and gazed down the hill at the river-lights and at the woody, moonlit hamlets on the Kentucky shore. In the afternoon or at twilight, it was a place for lovers. And for artists. The stone wall and the benches set beneath it and the small park in the middle of the circular drive, with its oak trees and its reflecting pool and its graceful walks and arched bridges and, of course, the statue—Jake's statue—gleaming in the soft powdery light of a gas lamp. Somewhere in that beautiful little place, the Ripper was waiting like the serpent tattooed on his brother's arm. A serpent in a garden. Waiting to strike or to be trod under. I prayed we weren't too late.

  “I'm going in alone,” I said to Foster.

  “The hell you are,” he snapped.

  “We don't have time to argue, Al. He's got Kate out there and he's been leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow since the first day he saw me. He wants me—maybe because I was the first one to put two and two together and come up with Twyla Belton. Who knows exactly how his mind works? But part of that madman in the park wants to be stopped. And I think I can reach that part. I think he thinks so, too. That's why he trashed the room when he didn't have to leave a clue. If he sees a whole army of us coming after him, he'll certainly kill her and maybe himself. I'm sure of it. That is, if he hasn't killed her already.”

  I cracked open the car door. “Stay out of it, Foster,” I said. ‘The rest of you stay out, too. If you don't...when this thing is over, I'll kill you.”

  I slammed the door shut and walked quickly down the sidewalk and into Eden Park.

  ******

  A gas light was sputtering beside a boarded-up refreshment stand on the east rim of the drive. I walked up to it, leaned against the siding, and waited. The Overlook wasn't a large park, but it was much too big for one man to cover. Anyway, I figured if I was right—if Jake really had been leaving clues for me to follow—then he'd come to me, once he was sure I was alone.

  I stood by the slat shack for about five minutes, listening to the rain dripping down the naked rock wall behind me and studying the tall oaks and the gaslit drive. Then I heard the footsteps. Even, unhurried footsteps, echoing above the patter of the rain. I put a hand to my brow and squinted through the drizzle until I saw him. He was stepping out of the shadows on the west side of the park. He was wearing a windbreaker and he had a green ski mask over his head.

  I blew all the air I could out of my lungs, waited a second, then sucked in. The fresh oxygen made me a little giddy. I exhaled again, breathed in. Then I pulled the Colt Commander out of my shoulder holster, cocked it, flipped off the safety, and stuck it in my overcoat pocket. I took one more deep breath and walked out into the gaslight—to my rendezvous with Jacob Lord.

  He'd seated himself on the low stone wall that runs around the crest of the hill. His hands were buried in his jacket pockets; his face was bent toward the sidewalk. He didn't look up when I sat down across from him on one of the benches. Just stared through the eyeholes in the ski mask at the rain-soaked pavement at his feet.

  “Did you find Haskell?” he said after a moment.

  “Yes.”

  “And the drawings?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew you would,” he said and rolled his head a bit, side to side, like a little boy who's very pleased with himself. “You're a smart man—finding me out, like you did.”

  “I didn't do it alone, Jacob. I had some help.”

  “You mean your friend, Ms. Davis?”

  I shook my head. “I mean you.”

  He looked up and I could see his teeth flash behind that mask. “I did give you a few hints, didn't I?”

  “You did, indeed. Why do you think you did that, Jake?”

  He shrugged. “Who can answer that question—why? Why did my brother have to die the way he did? Why am I like I am? Somebody probably knows, but he's not telling.” Jacob put a finger to his lips and said, “I'm not telling, either. Do you want to know where Ms. Davis is?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed softly. “I thought you might. She's a very attractive woman. Don't you want to know what I've done to her?”

  My hand clamped around the gun in my coat pocket. “What have you done to her?”

  He shook his head. “I'm not going to tell you. Not yet. Not until I'm ready. And you know better than to try to force me.” He crossed his legs and said, “Sometimes I think this is all Haskell's fault. I mean the way I am. He made it so easy. He was too tenderhearted. He let Mother push him around. Oh, God, the things I used to get away with when I was a kid. Stealing cookies, candy, money. She'd always blame him. It was always his fault. My poor, poor brother. Do you know how long it took the Reaves woman to die.” Jaco
b snapped his fingers and rainwater shot from their tips. “But Hack...it took him two whole years. And he suffered every minute of every day. I was with him at the end. He made a true confession. I wouldn't feed him until he did. He'll be redeemed.” Jacob gazed out into the night and said, “We'll all be redeemed.”

  “I can understand how you felt about Effie Reaves,” I said. “But what about Twyla?”

  “I don't know why I did that,” he said remotely. “Do you always know why you do the things you do?”

  I had to shake my head, no.

  “Sometimes I'll just be sitting in my room reading. Only when I look down at the page, it's all torn up. Like I've been sketching, only I've cut things up.” He looked down again at the sidewalk. “I cut them up. Like with my drawings, when I get mad because they're not right. You see, there's this gap between what's in here”—he tapped his forehead—“and...” He held up his hands and stared at them dispassionately. “It's as if they have a will of their own.”

  “And Kate,” I said heavily. “Why her?”

  “Something about the way she looked. Her hair, I think. That color of blonde, like coins on a tablecloth. Her body. There's something wrong with beauty—don't you know that? If it could stay inside, if it didn't touch the world, why then it would be fine. But it makes its way into your heart and then you burn. Can you take a live coal into your heart and not burn? That's what the Bible says. It says women turn men into crusts.”

  His eyes shifted behind the mask, but he didn't catch his mistake.

  “Where is she now?” I asked him. “Where is Kate?”

  “Oh, she's all right. I haven't killed her yet. She's down that hill on the right side of the park, tied to a tree. I told her I'd be back to finish when we were done. You know,” he said as he pulled a long hunter's knife from his coat pocket, “you remind me of my brother. I can talk to you.”

  I stared at the knife in Jacob's hand and at the forlorn look in his eyes. “Don't!” I shouted. “Don't do it!”

  Jake shook his head and whispered, “Too late.”

  He leaped off the stone wall, the knife cocked above his head, and I pulled the trigger of the Colt. It went off with a terrific bang, slamming my elbow into the back of the bench. The muzzle flash burned a hole through the coat pocket—a three foot tongue of fire that licked Jacob Lord's chest, lifted him off the pavement, and sent him flying backwards, in a bloody smear, all the way down the long, stony hillside to the river and to his death. The last look I saw in his eyes was one of almost gentle disappointment.

  The gun blast was still echoing through the trees as I started running down the sidewalk to the west side of the park. It took me five minutes to find her in the dark, tied to an oak, halfway down the hill, a gag in her mouth. There was blood all over her blouse from where he'd been cutting her, and her face was sheet white. But when I fell to my knees beside her and cried, “Kate! Kate!” her eyelids flickered and I felt my heart move again inside my chest.

  “You're going to be all right,” I said fiercely and tore the gag from her mouth.

  “It hurts,” she whispered.

  I untied her arms, lifted her off the ground, and carried her to the park road. Foster, Levy and DeVries were waiting at the top. I put her gently into the car and Al drove her to the emergency room at General.

  27

  KATE SPENT two days in Cincinnati General—getting sewn up and transfused and shot full of antibiotics and pain killers. I stayed beside her from morning to night. Every time I looked over at her, I saw her sassy, blonde face smiling up at me. It made me understand why hospitals didn't supply double beds.

  “My hero,” she'd say and bat her eyes.

  It made me blush.

  So did Miss Moselle, who showed up on Sunday evening with a Ouija board and a bundle of papers under her arm. She sat down beside me and said, “I've finally finished your chart.”

  “And?” I said.

  “You are a very unlucky man.”

  I laughed.

  “But that will change in the next few months,” she said with great assurance and smiled at Kate. “I see a long trip ahead of you. And romance.”

  “You do, huh?”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out two plane tickets. “These are for you, Harry, darling,” she said with real tenderness. “It was my idea, but Leon and the rest of the librarians chipped in. There's a check here, too, from Leon—for services rendered. He would have come by himself, but he was called downtown.” Miss Moselle put a hand to her mouth and whispered, “I think he's finally going to be promoted. Things won't be the same without him,” she said with a sigh.

  “You'll break his replacement in quickly enough,” I said.

  She giggled.

  I looked at the tickets, which were for Jamaica, and at the check, which was for twelve hundred and fifty dollars or one week's work, and said to Kate, “When are we going?”

  Kate grinned and said, “We?”

  “We.”

  “That suits me fine,” she said. “You see I'm a changed woman. A completely reformed character.”

  “Completely?” I said.

  She nodded and then she said, “Aren't I?”

  ******

  We stopped at Potter's Field before we left. That's where the County had buried Jake Lord and his brother Haskell. Their mother had decided she wanted no part of the funeral. It was a cold blue day with a wafer of a moon in the eastern sky and just a trickle of wind running down the grassy hillside. There wasn't any headstone, just a mound of fresh earth. We had to ask the digger—a seedy-looking hillbilly with a red bandana around his head—which graves they were buried in.

  He looked at a placard hanging on his tool shed and said, “They're buried together. One atop t'other.” Then he coughed and said, “Saves space. Couple others buried with ‘em.”

  He showed us to the grave and I stood there for a minute looking at the freshly turned earth.

  “I still feel sorry for them,” Kate said. “In spite of...of everything. Don't you?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “He doesn't seem real to me, I guess he never will. You know I must have talked to a dozen people last week, some of them pretty knowledgeable folks, and I still don't understand Jake Lord.”

  “Let's go,” Kate said with a shiver.

  I took her hand and we walked back up the dirt path to the car. A little boy, probably the gravedigger's son, was sitting on the ground, playing mumblety-peg with a penknife. I watched him through the rearview mirror as we drove off and thought of Jake Lord. Then Kate tugged at my arm and smiled at me. And all I wanted to think about was her.

  THE END

  Enjoy all of Jonathan Valin’s HARRY STONER series, as both Ebooks and Audiobooks!

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  The Lime Pit: Harry Stoner Series #1

  Final Notice: Harry Stoner Series #2

  Dead Letter: Harry Stoner Series #3

  Day of Wrath: Harry Stoner Series #4

  Natural Causes: Harry Stoner Series #5

  Life's Work: Harry Stoner Series #6

  Fire Lake: Harry Stoner Series #7

  Extenuating Circumstances: Harry Stoner Series #8

  Second Chance: Harry Stoner Series #9

  The Music Lovers: Harry Stoner Series #10

  Missing: Harry Stoner Series #11