by Dana Marton
“Take it easy, son.”
Nobody had called him son in at least a decade. And Bing wasn’t yet forty. They had less than a decade between them. Oh, hell. He had to be in even worse shape than he’d thought. Pain stabbed his side. He’d been hurt, badly, but couldn’t remember how.
Bing leaned forward, the chair creaking under his weight. Not that he was fat by any measure, but solidly built with muscle. He put in his share of time in training at the station’s gym. He required his team to keep in shape and would never ask anything of them that he himself wasn’t prepared to do. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
Jack forced his mind to focus. “Going out on an anonymous call. Suspicious activity reported at an abandoned farmhouse.” At first he’d thought drugs. Then he’d gotten there and saw that chunk of bone.
Memories flashed across his mind suddenly, a horror movie on fast-forward. His teeth clenched. “It was Blackwell.”
Bing went still. “You think too much about the man. You were in a lot of pain. Your mind came up with—”
“Blackwell,” he said again. “I had time to make positive ID.”
Bing sat up straighter, stared at Jack for a long moment. “They got some DNA from under a couple of your fingernails, but it’ll be a while before the results come in. Do you know if the FBI has DNA on him?”
“They don’t.” Adrenaline spiked through him. If they gained enough DNA, if it matched to something in the database…
Bing rubbed his hand over his knee as he watched him, that look of doubt still in his eyes. “Do you remember enough for a sketch? I can have someone here in ten minutes.”
Jack shook his head. The images that had come back to him were only of the lower half of his own body, a cement floor stained with his blood, Blackwell’s boots. He gritted his teeth. “He kept me blindfolded. But he talked about the others.” The bastard had taunted him while he’d tortured him.
“I might recognize his voice.” That he wasn’t sure he would killed him. But there’d been a fan rattling the whole time, pushing the heat of the woodstove around the torture chamber. And his mind had been in a haze of pain, not exactly on full speed. “How long was I gone?”
“Three days.” The captain’s jaw clenched. “We were looking for you. Harper and Chase never went home. The rookies too. We were looking for you every hour of every day.”
“I know. That kept me hanging on.” A small cough sent stabbing pain through his midsection. “He knew who I was. He had a trap set up.”
The captain swore, which was usually the worst of his temper. He was, for the most part, pretty even-keeled, not the type who got off on tearing his men down just to show who was boss. Although, at the moment, he didn’t look too happy with Jack.
“I told you being obsessed with a serial killer was a dangerous hobby,” he snapped.
He had. But Blackwell went way beyond a hobby. This went back to Shannon. But nobody needed to know that.
Machines beeped around them, various hospital noises filtering in the open door as Jack thought of all the people he’d looked for in the past, the ones he hadn’t found in time. He figured Bing might be thinking the same. Except now Jack knew exactly how those victims had felt, what his sister had gone through before she’d died fifteen years ago.
Bile rose in his throat. “How bad is the damage?”
Bing waited a second before he answered. “Nothing to come crying to me about. Four broken ribs, blood loss, some internal bleeding, some burns, hypothermia, and a concussion, some nancy-ass lacerations barely worth mentioning. I pretty much figure you’re only here to get out of mandatory overtime.”
“When are they letting me out?”
“Some frostbite here and there,” Bing went on. “I’m going to overlook it this time, but you’ve got to stop parading around buckass naked. You’re scaring well-meaning citizens.” He kept his tone as light as his words, but concern filled his eyes.
“I want to get on the case as soon as possible.” Jack drew a shallower breath, testing if that might circumvent some of the pain. Not really. “You think you could pull some strings for me here?”
“We’ll take care of Blackwell.” The captain gave him a hard look.
Jack hardened his own gaze. “Blackwell is mine.” He’d been after the man for most of his career. He wouldn’t allow himself to think how close he’d come to having him.
“You’re lucky to be alive. One of the broken ribs punctured your lung. If the Price woman hadn’t been there, we’d still be looking for your body.”
Price woman. For a second, he didn’t understand; then more memories trickled back. The grave. There’d been a woman—a possible connection. He knew Blackwell now as he’d never known him before, and with an actual lead… “I want this case.”
“Your body, Jack.” Bing surged to his feet, his voice tinged with anger and exasperation. “Do you understand what I’m saying? You were that close.”
He’d been closer than his captain thought. He remembered that light, the floating feeling, the out-of-body sensation. He remembered someone being there with him on the other side, how he had reached out to that presence. But it hadn’t worked. Apparently, he hadn’t been ready. The pain had returned. Then he saw the woman.
The Price woman. “I want to talk to her. She has to be in with Blackwell. How would she know where to find me? He sent her to check on me. Or she got nervous.”
Bing shook his head. “She’s a damn artist. I’m not saying I like her, but she’s not a criminal. You have to stop thinking about this. You’re on medical leave. And you’re officially off the case.”
Jack swore a blue streak.
“Forget Blackwell, dammit,” Bing growled, but when he continued after a moment, he lowered his voice again. “You’re losing perspective, Jack. I’m telling you this as a friend.”
He had no friends. All he had was his badge and his mission to see Brady Blackwell dead. “You have to keep an eye on the woman for me.”
Until he got out and he could do it himself. She would lead him to Blackwell. In his mind, she was all tied in with the pain. He’d about died of it on the trip from the woods to her house.
She hadn’t looked like much—disheveled, hair plastered to her head, wet from the snow, eyes wild. She’d smelled like paint. And just thinking of paint made his body pulse with pain all over again. He felt the blood run out of his head. He drew a slow breath to steady himself as he blinked.
“Dammit, Jack—”
“What do we have?” he cut Bing off. “Doesn’t being half-dead earn me the right to some answers?”
A bleak look settled on the captain’s face. “The DNA, if the lab can make it work. A generic el cheapo sheer shower curtain with no other fingerprints than yours and Ashley Price’s. Shoe-print casts, size twelve, men’s. Pattern not in the shoe-print database. But we have a fair idea of the shovel used to dig the grave; standard-issue army-entrenching tool, triangle tip, one side serrated.”
His lips narrowed for a second. “The kicker is, I was sitting just up the road, handing out a speeding ticket. I saw Ashley Price drive by.”
“Who else?”
“The snowplow for one. And the mailman. Old Arnie Martin drove by too. Mrs. Smutzky. Couple of cars I didn’t recognize. I was paying attention to the people I was ticketing.” He rubbed his hand over his knee. “We canvassed the area as soon as you were found. Nobody reported seeing any strange cars pulled over in the hours before you were discovered.”
Jack nodded while he gritted his teeth against the new wave of pain that washed over his body. Whatever drugs they’d given him were wearing off. Good. He wanted to be able to think clearly. He wanted to remember.
“Is someone watching the Price woman?”
“Forget her,” Bing snapped. “She had nothing to do with this.”
I’ll be the judge of that.
He had a lead after all these years, a living, breathing, tangible link to Blackwell. He held on to that thought
with everything he had. She might have fooled Bing, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to fool him.
“Let it go. That’s an order.”
He looked his captain in the eyes, preparing for a shit storm as he said, “Shannon Sullivan, the third victim, was my sister.”
A long, tension-charged moment passed as Bing stared at him. “So this hobby of yours is not a hobby. It’s personal.” His expression darkened as he put two and two together. “I don’t believe in coincidences, not in one this big.” His voice sharpened. “Have you followed Blackwell here? Is that why you showed up at my department last year, asking me for a job? You knew something?”
Jack said nothing as the man’s hands fisted on his knees.
“You knew there was a damn serial killer in my town, and you said nothing to me?” Anger heated the captain’s voice.
“I wasn’t sure. I was trying to figure it out.” He’d be damned if he apologized for it. “Blackwell killed my sister.”
Bing pushed to his feet, jaw tight, eyes flashing, about as pissed as Jack had ever seen him. “I can’t talk to you about this right now. I’m gonna strangle you if I stay. Hell, I liked you, Jack. You’re a fine detective, one of the best I’ve ever worked with. But you crossed a line here.”
He wasn’t sure he cared at this stage.
The captain stalked to the door but then stopped to look back with a scowl. “You sure it was Blackwell?”
“One hundred percent.”
A muscle ticked in the man’s face. “Brady Blackwell, one of the most wanted serial killers of the decade, confirmed in Broslin. You know what this means? Freaking FBI all over my town.”
Jack’s jaw clamped tight. He needed to get the hell out of here before the FBI mucked up every clue and lead. Before Ashley Price could disappear.
He glanced around. “Where are my badge and my gun?” A sick cold spread in his stomach.
“He kept them,” Bing said quietly.
The highest insult to a cop. That hurt more than all the injuries put together. Jack swore under his breath. When he got his hands on the bastard—
“Don’t you worry about that now,” the captain said. “You’ll get a new set when you get better.”
He watched Bing leave, then sat up experimentally and nearly passed out from the pain, sweat beading on his forehead. He might be able to walk out of here if he asked for some heavy-duty drugs, but with those drugs he couldn’t think straight and, above all, he wanted to keep his mind clear.
He levered himself back onto the pillows and closed his eyes, ran through everything he knew about the man he hunted, from the very beginning, every case, every detail from the considerable file he’d put together over the years. And then he added every bit of new information, every impression he remembered from his three days of bloody torture.
He put everything in neat order first, then shuffled the puzzle pieces over and over again to see what might fit together, if he could see a clear picture emerging. Hours passed, awash in pain and trying to force his brain to work, to see something he hadn’t seen before.
A nurse came around, a kind-faced black woman, and checked his chart. “How are you, Mr. Sullivan?”
“I need to get out of here.” He struggled again to sit up, hoping to succeed this time, pulling on the tubes hooked up to him.
“You need to watch those.” She pushed him down gently.
When he tried to resist, she frowned and did something with his IV. He wanted to protest, but his brain slowed and his tongue wouldn’t turn in his mouth suddenly. And then darkness claimed him.
His dreams weren’t happy. He was back in the cold and the dark, in the grave.
When he woke, the sun sat low in the morning sky outside. Long minutes ticked by as his brain slowly began clearing. Another nurse stuck her head in. This time, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to be put to sleep again. He closed his eyes, trying to work through the fog in his brain, come up with a plan. He was so focused on his thoughts, he didn’t hear the man standing in the doorway until he cleared his throat.
“Detective Sullivan. I was told you were awake. I’m Dr. Beacon.” The doctor, wearing dress pants, a white shirt, and a lab coat, strode into the room. He was meticulously trim and meticulously groomed, right down to his fingernails, in his midthirties, his face stretched into an artificial smile that matched the sense of artificial serenity he carried.
“When can I be discharged?” Jack asked with all the impatience that coursed through him.
The man sat in a chair next to the bed, not a hurried movement there. “That will be decided by your attending physician. I’m the psychiatrist the police department called in to help you deal with your ordeal.”
Jack’s hands fisted at his sides as he cursed Bing. The captain meant well, but no way in hell was some shrink going to poke around in his head. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”
The doctor tilted his head, regarding him with a smarmy calm. “Here’s the thing. While your discharge is up to your attending physician, we’ll both have to sign off on your returning to active duty.” He crossed his legs, gloating in his power as he took out a small notebook from the pocket of his lab coat.
“Why don’t you tell me everything you remember?”
At least he didn’t ask about his personal connection to Blackwell, which gave Jack hope that Bing had kept that part to himself. Not that the captain owed him any favors. In his place, Jack would have been just as ticked.
He gritted his teeth and sat up, the pain in his ribs a little better than earlier. Or maybe he was just used to it. He slipped from the bed, bracing himself on the side when the room spun with him. When his vision cleared, he ripped the tubes out of his arms.
Dr. Beacon was on his feet by then. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Checking myself out against medical advice.”
The man stepped in to block the way, clamping a restraining hand on his arm. “I realize it can be difficult to talk about a traumatic experience—”
Jack put whatever strength he had into making sure his voice was strong and clear, glancing down at the hand holding him back, then back up into the shrink’s pale eyes.
“Not as difficult as wiping your broken nose with a broken arm. Step aside,” he said and didn’t give a damn that his words would be quoted in his psychiatric evaluation.
~~~***~~~
Chapter Three
That Jack Sullivan still lived filled him with fury. He’d been careless. He wouldn’t be careless with the detective again.
His art was more important than a handful of lives. Art at the level where he practiced it had to be protected.
He was living his dream at last, living to his full potential, and nobody was going to take that away from him. He’d always wanted to be an artist.
His father hadn’t approved, had refused to pay for art school. And the art school hadn’t given him a scholarship, unable to understand his art. He’d accepted then that they couldn’t have taught him anything anyway.
In hindsight, the rejection had been lucky. Anyone could be trained to a fair level of competence in anything, but creative genius was born. Structured instruction would have imposed restrictions on his vision.
The old fan chugged on in its valiant effort to distribute the heat from the antique woodstove in the corner. He didn’t really feel the cold. Creating always filled him with fire.
He manipulated the small engraving drill to draw his complicated design onto bone, working in his basement studio, pleased as his composition took shape. He didn’t have to worry about the neighbors hearing the drill, or the hammer when he was assembling larger pieces. They hadn’t heard Sullivan’s screams. The basement was soundproofed.
He’d learned how to do that and all kinds of construction tricks from his father, who’d built houses for a living, the same path he’d chosen for his son.
His father had said art was for liberal loafers who lived on the government tit and did nothing but do drugs
and fornicate with each other. Art was for the gays. Art was for the kind of women who would neglect their families for their own entertainment.
A real man built things with his two hands, big, sturdy things, manly things like houses. The family tree was full of carpenters.
Yet even now, in the corner of the basement studio, stood his great-grandfather’s walking stick with the whalebone handle he’d carved himself. Art.
Carving was the first art, practiced by the first men who first used tools and wanted to decorate them. The carving of bones was elemental, the highest form of art. It needed the highest-value medium.
He’d tried stone. He didn’t like it. Stone was dead. Bone was alive.
These days he no longer used cat and dog bones like he had for the art school projects that had been rejected. If they could see him now…
They still wouldn’t understand him, he thought with irony as he worked, creating yet another piece for his latest installment, a statue of shards, every inch intricately carved, his skill bringing the pieces back to life. The beautiful bones of a beautiful woman, being made into something sublime. Women were special.
He hated his father, but he’d always loved his mother. Women were his connection to the elemental, to Mother Nature, to Mother Earth. Someday, a more enlightened world would understand the profound symbolism of his art. Someday.
He would never sell his work in his lifetime, he knew that, had accepted it years ago. This wasn’t for some rich collector anyway, to lock away. He created for all humankind.
So he got a job that paid the bills, played the dumb everyday man people were comfortable with. Small-town folks, especially, didn’t have the first idea what to do with true genius.
Someday his pieces would be exhibited in the finest museums. Someday he would be called the premier artist of the twenty-first century. Someday the rest of humanity would grow up to his vision.
All he had to do was keep creating and remove things that were a threat to his legacy, Jack Sullivan being at the top of his list.
