A Blood Thing

by James Hankins

Half an hour later, tires crunched on the pea gravel in the driveway out front. The muffled rumble of a garage door followed, first opening, then closing. Soon Pickman heard the sound of someone entering the house through the door between the garage and the kitchen.

  In the dark living room, he stood up. From his right pocket, he pulled the judge’s .38. From his left, he took an untraceable throwaway handgun, one of several he owned for occasions like this.

  “Ready?” he whispered to Lewis, who got to his feet on the far side of the room.

  Down the short hall, a light switched on in the kitchen.

  “What about your mask?” Lewis whispered.

  He turned to look at Lewis standing in front of the fireplace, near the left end of the mantel. “Move a few feet to your right,” he ordered, still whispering.

  “What? Why?”

  “Move to your right about four feet. It’s important.”

  “I don’t get this—”

  “Do it now. Move.”

  Lewis shrugged and moved a few feet to his right. Pickman noted his location and nodded. Then he turned back toward the dimly lit hallway. Behind him, almost under his breath, Lewis said, “What the hell . . . ?”

  Turning again, Pickman saw the man looking at several framed photographs on the mantel above the fireplace. Pickman had seen them on a previous visit. The one on the left was of a younger, tuxedo-clad Morgan Jeffers, smiling widely on the day he married the woman who would make him a widower thirty-eight years later. The one in the middle was of a middle-aged Jeffers standing beside a lake with his middle-aged wife, squinting in the bright sun and smiling more widely than on their wedding day. The final photo was of an elderly Jeffers in his black judge’s robes, standing between two other similarly attired judges, each of them brandishing a gavel like a caveman holding aloft a club. Good times.

  “I know this guy,” Lewis said quietly. “He’s . . . hold on . . . oh, shit, that’s the judge who put me away for manslaughter.”

  “Is it? What a coincidence.”

  “I shouldn’t be here,” Lewis whispered harshly. “This is crazy.”

  “You have to be here,” Pickman whispered back. “It’s part of the plan.”

  Just then, a light snapped on right behind him, and Judge Morgan Jeffers appeared in the hallway, heading for the stairs. He was flipping through a small stack of mail as he walked. When he reached the bottom of the steps, Pickman said, “Good evening, Judge.”

  Jeffers turned, and when he saw Pickman standing in the middle of the living room, he dropped his letters. With the gun in his left hand, the throwaway gun, Pickman gestured toward the closed front door, eight feet to Jeffers’s left. “Please step over to the door, Your Honor.”

  “What is this?” Jeffers said. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Move over to the door, Judge, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  Perhaps Jeffers was wondering whether to comply, whether it mattered if he was shot tonight or died from cancer in a few weeks. But there must have been a few folks he hadn’t yet had the chance to bid farewell to before shuffling off his mortal coil, because he moved eight feet to his left until he was in front of the door.

  “Perfect,” Pickman said.

  Behind him, Lewis said, “Listen, man, this is just crazy. I’m outta—” but that was as far as he got before Pickman turned, took careful aim, and shot him twice in the chest with the gun in his right hand, the judge’s gun.

  Pickman turned back toward Jeffers. “Nice shot, Your Honor.”

  “Huh?” Jeffers said, evidently too shocked to register the horror of the moment. “I didn’t—”

  Using the throwaway in his left hand, Pickman again took a moment to aim before shooting the judge in the neck, precisely where, months ago, he had planned to. The old man fell against the front door and slid to the ground.

  Stepping carefully to avoid any blood on the hardwood floor, Pickman verified that both men were dead, or would be within moments. Then he placed the throwaway gun in Lewis’s hand and squeezed off a shot toward the hallway, one that the state police’s Crime Scene Search Team should conclude had been an errant shot before his second bullet found its mark in Jeffers’s neck. Revenge for sending him to prison fifteen years ago. Lewis now had gunshot residue on his hand and shirt cuff. Pickman ran through the same routine with the judge, putting the man’s own pistol into his dead hand and firing a shot toward the fireplace, the bullet shattering one of the picture frames—the one in the middle, holding the photo of Judge Morgan Jeffers and his beloved wife enjoying a long-ago sunny day by a lake.

  Properties in the neighborhood were large, as much as an acre and a half each, so the nearest houses were fairly far away, but sound tended to carry at night, and it was very possible that neighbors had heard the gunshots. So Pickman had to move quickly. Still, he took a moment to survey the scene carefully, ensuring that every detail matched the narrative he had written far ahead of time and the sketches of the scene he had made. He closed his eyes, ignored the ticking of the clock in his head, and visualized the drawing he had made of Lewis’s body. It had fallen almost exactly where and how he had anticipated, though its legs were splayed more than he had expected, and its left arm was across its stomach instead of at its side, as Pickman had sketched it. He figured he could adjust the body to match his drawing without leaving behind forensic evidence of his actions. Then he moved back to the judge’s body and ran through the same visualization. The man had fallen against the door, as Pickman had planned, and . . . yes, it looked almost exactly as he had drawn it.

  He grabbed his duffel bag and hurried through the house, out the back door, through the shadows of the next-door neighbor’s yard—noting that there seemed to be no sense of alarm in the house—and returned to his rented car.

  In a few short minutes, he was miles away from Woodstock, Vermont, and the bodies of the Honorable Judge Morgan Jeffers, as well as the far-less-honorable Kyle Lewis, the violent career criminal Jeffers had sent to prison years ago for manslaughter, and whom Governor Andrew Kane had pardoned just five days ago.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Dinner hadn’t been much fun tonight. Everyone had been kind of quiet, and Tyler wasn’t exactly sure why. Julie probably thought the same thing, because the second she finished eating, she went upstairs to study instead of hanging out for a while after like she sometimes did. As soon as she left the table, everybody got a little more talkative, but it still seemed like they were all in bad moods. It sounded like Henry and Andy hadn’t had good days—especially Henry, who’d gotten into some trouble at work. Still, good old Henry tried to lighten things up by saying a few funny things, but nobody laughed except Tyler, and he wasn’t even sure why he was laughing because he hadn’t really understood the jokes. Andy had said he wasn’t in the mood for “gallows humor,” whatever that was. But even Henry stopped trying to make everyone feel better when he got a phone call from someone named Dave Junior. After hanging up, he’d looked at everyone at the table and said, “They lost Kyle Lewis,” which made everyone real upset—except for Tyler, who didn’t know who Kyle Lewis was, though he sort of remembered hearing the name. Andy was the maddest, though. He and Henry argued, and nobody wanted dessert—again, except for Tyler, but he didn’t ask for it because everyone was in bad moods.

  And now they were all quiet again. To Tyler, they looked tired. Andy and Henry still looked angry, of course, but also tired. Molly, too. Rebecca hadn’t come to dinner tonight for some reason, but Tyler thought she had also looked tired the last time he’d seen her. Now that he thought about it, everyone had looked tired for days, maybe even weeks.

  And he knew why. He’d been thinking about it. It was because of him. Nobody looked this tired before he got into trouble and got arrested and went to court and had to wear this thing on his ankle. Nobody argued with each other before that. This was all his fault. It had to be.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  One by one, they looked at him. It
almost seemed like they’d forgotten he was even there.

  “Sorry for what, Tyler?” Andy asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. For everything, I guess. For getting arrested. For what happened to . . . to Sally. For whatever happened to you and Henry today. For you guys fighting. I’m just sorry.”

  Suddenly, they were all talking at the same time, telling him that nothing was his fault, that he didn’t have anything to be sorry for, that they were the ones who should be apologizing to him for making him feel this way. He didn’t believe them, though. They just loved him and didn’t want him to feel bad for making such a mess of things. He loved them even more for that and wished none of this had ever happened. He’d give anything to make this go away for them. But he didn’t know how to do that.

  Henry was pissed off. He knew he’d let Andrew down. He’d let them all down. Even though it was Dave Junior’s guys who’d lost track of Kyle Lewis, Henry still felt somehow responsible. He’d promised that Lewis would be watched 24–7. He’d sworn that Dave Junior’s guys were the best. And now . . .

  “What are we going to do about Lewis?” Molly asked. “Knowing what we know, we can’t let him just walk around free.”

  For some reason Henry couldn’t fathom, they were sitting in the drawing room, on the least comfortable furniture in the house. Except for Tyler. He was eating ice cream in front of the TV down the hall.

  “There’s not much we can do,” Andrew said. “We don’t know where he is. Besides, it’s not like we can call the police and tell them that the guy I pardoned five days ago might be thinking of doing something illegal. He’s a free man now, and he hasn’t committed a crime since he’s been out of prison.”

  “Yet,” Molly said.

  “The plan was to watch him closely,” Henry said, “and stop him if he looked like he was gonna hurt anyone. Hopefully, Dave Junior’s guys find him again before he does anything like that.”

  “You agree with Andy that we can’t call the police about him?” Molly asked.

  “I do. And hey, Dave Junior’s guys weren’t even sure Lewis gave them the slip on purpose. It might just have been bad luck. A timing thing where someone looked the wrong way at the wrong time. They’ll find him again.”

  “Hopefully before it’s too late,” Molly said.

  “Amen to that.” Henry rose from the side chair he’d been suffering in, stretched his back, and added, “I’m gonna head home. I may be suspended, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep working this. In the morning, I’ll try talking with Wesley Jurgens again.”

  “The lawyer?” Molly asked. “Will he tell you anything?”

  “No,” Andrew said, answering for Henry.

  Henry scoffed. “He hasn’t met me face-to-face yet, Andy. He doesn’t know how persuasive I can be.”

  “Henry . . .” Andrew said.

  “Relax. I’m not stupid. But maybe I can convince him to share more than he’s been willing to so far. Or maybe I can bluff him into thinking we have something on him, some sort of conspiracy evidence.”

  “He won’t fall for that,” Andrew said. “He’s a lawyer himself. And anyway, you’re suspended, remember?”

  “I still have friends on the force, though.”

  “You do?” Molly asked, looking as though she were only half joking.

  “Okay, not many, no. But he doesn’t know that.” Then he shrugged as if to say, Besides, what else do I have to work with? “I’m gonna go say good night to Tyler, then head out.”

  Molly stood, too. “I won’t be far behind you. Got my study group tonight. Talk to you tomorrow, Andy.”

  Henry nodded good night to Andrew, who nodded back. In the car a little while later, Henry thought about Dave Junior’s report tonight. About his guys losing Kyle Lewis. And about something he hadn’t mentioned to the others, something that wouldn’t have meant much to them. Gabriel Torrance had spent the last three days walking through the projects in Rutland. At first, Dave Junior’s guys figured he had gone there looking to score drugs, but almost three days later, they believed it had to be something else. The thing was, they couldn’t follow him closely. He’d see them if they did. Instead, they waited outside the buildings for Torrance to come out, which he did after spending several hours in each one. He’d stop only long enough to go for food before returning to the projects. Apparently, he’d even spent the last two nights inside the buildings, a dangerous thing to do these days. The investigators concluded that he was searching for something, but they didn’t know what. Henry concluded the same and wondered what connection Torrance could possibly have to the projects where Dave Bingham had died eight years ago. He could have asked for Dave Junior’s opinion, but he doubted the man wanted to focus on the Rutland projects any more than Henry did. Most likely Dave Junior, like him, had spent the past eight years trying not to think about that place, or what had happened there.

  But what the hell was Torrance doing there?

  For the entire twenty minutes he’d been in the car heading toward home and his wife, with his ubiquitous security detail following behind, Andrew couldn’t help but think about poor Tyler blaming himself for everything. If anyone were to blame, other than the man who had orchestrated all of this, it was Andrew. And though he’d gotten angry with Henry about Kyle Lewis slipping away from the private investigators Henry had hired to follow him, Andrew was actually angry at himself, and he knew it. He never should have pardoned Lewis. He never should have pardoned Gabriel Torrance. He should have found another way. He should have—

  The phone in his pocket vibrated.

  That phone.

  Andrew considered not answering it, not giving the bastard the satisfaction of gloating or twisting the knife, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  “Listen, you son of a bitch—”

  The caller’s familiar, grating metallic monotone cut him off. “No, Governor, I don’t want to listen. And you can’t make me. Because I’m done.”

  That stopped Andrew. “Done? With . . . ?”

  “With everything. It’s all over. I’m finished with you. With all of you. You and Henry and Molly and poor Tyler. I’m done. I’m walking away. After I hang up, you’ll never hear from me again.”

  Panic surged through Andrew. If that were true—

  “What about Tyler?” he asked, unable to keep a tremor out of his voice.

  “Very sweet, Andy. With everything crashing down around you, you still worry about your little brother first.”

  “What about the video you have?”

  “I destroyed it.”

  “What?”

  “Part of you must have known all along that I would, Andy. But still, you did what you did, hoping against hope for Tyler’s sake. You’re a good brother, Andy. A terrible, dishonest governor in the end, but a good brother.”

  Andrew couldn’t find it in himself to protest. The caller was right.

  “And I’m afraid your decisions are going to be called further into question when they find out what happened tonight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that there’s been a home invasion, Andy, and two men are dead.”

  Andrew felt numb. He suddenly couldn’t feel his hands.

  “One is a respected judge. Did you know Judge Jeffers, Andy? I bet you did. The other . . . well, here’s where things get tough for you. The other is Kyle Lewis. It appears that Lewis broke into Jeffers’s house, the good judge had a gun for protection, and they shot each other.”

  “You lying bastard. You killed them both.”

  “I never said that’s what happened. I said it appears to be what happened. Because that’s how I staged it. As though Lewis killed Jeffers in revenge for sending him to prison for manslaughter all those years ago.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “All part of the plan.”

  “What plan? Nothing you’ve done from the start has made any sense.”

  “Not to you, maybe. But that doesn’t matter. My job is now done. It�
�s time for me to disappear.”

  “You can’t just—”

  But the line was dead. He tried to call the man back but got no answer. The caller was gone. Maybe for good.

  And with him, any realistic chance of proving Tyler’s innocence.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Pickman closed his burner phone, turned the device off completely, and dropped it into the large black duffel bag at his feet. He wondered if the governor had believed him when he’d said he was finished. It sounded like he had. If so, Andy was in for a big surprise.

  Standing in the moon shadow of a big elm, he regarded the back of the Kane house through the goggles he wore over the mask that was part of the white full bodysuit he donned when things were going to get messy. The rambling, stately Victorian looked peaceful and quiet, with warm light spilling from several windows even though only two people were home—Tyler, who couldn’t legally leave, and Julie Davenport, the graduate student living on the third floor who had been home all evening, as she had been on every single one of the fourteen Tuesday nights Pickman had surveilled the house since he’d taken this job.

  Over the past twenty minutes, he had watched from the shadows as the Kanes left one by one. First was Henry. Then Molly followed not far behind with a light backpack over her shoulder, the one she took to the late-night study group she had attended nearly every Tuesday during this entire school year. Andrew had been the last to leave.

  Pickman picked up the duffel bag—the larger of the two he had brought with him this evening—and walked to the back door. His bible was inside the bag, of course, and after finishing with Judge Jeffers and Kyle Lewis, he had pulled over in a Pizza Hut parking lot and studied Part VII, Section E, Subsection 1, taking great pains to memorize every detail of the relevant pages, because this time he wouldn’t have the luxury of lingering over the scene to ensure that he had made everything as perfect as he needed it to be. He would have to get it right the first time, adhering rigidly to his plan.

  Using his lock picks, he made quick work of the lock in the knob on the Kanes’ back door, then opened the door slowly and stepped into the kitchen. He tried to be as quiet as possible out of habit, though a great deal of stealth wasn’t necessary at that moment given the racket coming from down the hall.