King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle)

by Joseph Nassise

  “What’s so good about it?” I replied.

  He laughed. “We’re not serving life sentences for homicide yet, for one.”

  Leave it to Dmitri to get right to the heart of things.

  I wasn’t in the mood for cheery optimism though, and only grunted back at him in reply. I hadn’t yet eaten, but the smell of bacon and eggs was making my stomach churn. I was irritable and more than a bit anxious as a result.

  The night had not gone well. I’d awoken several times with my heart pounding and that sense of doom I’d felt as we’d entered the city hanging over me like a cliff about to fall on my head. Even now I could feel that pressure pushing at the edge of my thoughts …

  Relax, I told myself. There’s still time to get out of here. All you need to do is convince them to go with you. That shouldn’t be too hard.

  “I need to talk to you both,” I said to them.

  “So talk,” Denise replied, her fork clicking against her teeth as she took another bite of her omelet.

  I shuffled uncomfortably in my chair. I didn’t think she was going to like what I had to say next, but it needed to be said. I thought about calling up a ghost in order to borrow its eyesight, just so I could see her face as we talked, and then decided against it. Maybe I was better off staying in the dark for this one.

  As she waited expectantly, I debated just how to say what I needed to say. I finally decided that straight out was my best option.

  “We need to figure out where we’re going and then get back on the road. Being here isn’t safe for us.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  Dmitri cleared his throat and started to say something but Denise cut him off.

  “You want to … leave? Now?”

  She didn’t sound as angry as I’d expected her to be and so I pressed on, figuring this was my chance to show her the logic behind my decision.

  “Yeah, I do. We all should, in fact. Big cities are dangerous for us, you know that. There’s too much potential for being seen, for being recognized. We should stick to the smaller towns and communities where there’s less of a chance of running into a cop on every street corner.”

  “What about the people here, Hunt?”

  I shrugged. “What about them? They’re sick. So are hundreds of thousands of other people across the country.”

  “And you don’t think we should be helping them?”

  If I hadn’t been so damned eager to have her see my point of view I might have noticed the tightness in her voice, the way she sounded as if she was struggling to hold something back, but I rushed on, heedless, and missed the one clue I had that might have told me what was coming.

  “I’d like to, sure,” I said, “but that’s just it. I can’t help them. Neither can Dmitri. Of the three of us, you’re the only one who can, but since they’ve got their own set of healers, I honestly don’t see why we should put ourselves in danger by staying.”

  She wasn’t having any of it.

  “I’m supposed to be here, Jeremiah.”

  “Says who?” I countered.

  “My vision.”

  Just how was I supposed to answer that? It’s like being asked if you were still beating your wife. No matter what you said, you were screwed. On the one hand, if I told her that I believed in her vision, I was dooming us to remaining here for as long as she felt necessary. If I went the other direction and told her that I didn’t believe her vision actually meant anything, I was calling into question her entire belief system, which wouldn’t win me any points either.

  Still, I gave it a shot.

  “That’s not true, Denise, and you know it. Your vision showed you a city, that’s all.”

  “A city I recognized as New Orleans.”

  We needed to leave. I knew that right down to the very core of my being. If we stayed, something bad was going to happen. Why was it so hard for her to understand that our time here was done? Why didn’t she get it? I wanted to pound the table in frustration.

  I tried to reason with her instead.

  “If that’s the case, Denise, then where are the flames? Where is the raging fire that you told me about, the one that consumes everything around you?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  To drive home my point, I said, “Your vision showed you a city in flames, not one full of plague victims. These people are sick, Denise, but no one’s spontaneously combusting.”

  Almost casually, Dmitri said, “Fire purifies. You root out an enemy; you burn out an infection. Maybe that’s what she saw.”

  I could have killed him in that moment, but thankfully Denise waved away his comment. “I know what I saw, Hunt.”

  “I don’t doubt it, Denise. I’m not questioning what you saw, simply how you’re interpreting it. If we’re going to go, we need to do it now, before it’s too late.”

  I shook my head. “Besides, your friend Gallagher seems to have everything under control.”

  The minute I said it I knew I shouldn’t have.

  One offhanded remark.

  That was all it took to turn the tide against me. The atmosphere in the room instantly changed. When Denise spoke, her voice was full of icy disdain.

  “Oh, so that’s it?” she asked.

  “That’s what?” I asked.

  “You’re jealous.”

  I recoiled as if bitten.

  “I’m what?”

  “Jealous. It’s got nothing at all to do with those people in there, does it? You just want to get us out of here because you’re jealous of my past relationship with Simon.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She’d had a relationship with Simon?

  “Jealous? What the hell would I be jealous about?”

  But she wasn’t listening anymore.

  I heard her violently shove her chair back and felt her looming over me in anger.

  “Feel free to leave, Hunt, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to help those people in any way that I can. Not because I’m getting something out of it, but because it’s the right thing to do!”

  She stalked past me.

  On her way out of the room she said over her shoulder, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Hunt.”

  I sat there, at a loss for words.

  What the hell had brought that on?

  Me? Jealous?

  At last, Dmitri spoke. “You can be a complete ass, you know that, Hunt?”

  I glared at him. “Shut up and stay out of it.”

  I heard him stand up.

  “You’re probably right, Hunt. There probably isn’t much she can do for those people in there.”

  I knew he was pointing over his shoulder toward the warehouse adjacent to Gallagher’s apartment.

  “But the right thing to do is to try.”

  He snorted.

  “If you had an ounce of brains in that thick head of yours, you’d do the same. Stop being such a self-centered jackass, Hunt, and think about someone else for a change.”

  He left me sitting there fuming.

  16

  ROBERTSON

  The Bureau kept a number of Learjets in a hangar at Washington National, and it didn’t take long for Robertson to arrange to have one of them carry him and Agent Doherty on their fact-finding mission to Tennessee. The flight passed without incident, and it was just after three in the afternoon when they disembarked at the McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville, obtained a rental car, and headed for the headquarters of the highway patrol district.

  Much to Robertson’s surprise, Agent Doherty was not only a good driver but he knew when to keep his mouth shut and didn’t pester him with questions during the short trip. That was a good sign; maybe the kid would actually get somewhere inside the Bureau. He made a mental note to keep tabs on Doherty once the Reaper case was over.

  They checked in with the desk sergeant, who informed them that Officer Hendricks was currently on patrol and it would take fifteen to twenty minutes for him to return to the district hea
dquarters where they now were. The sergeant sent a young patrol officer to get them both coffee and then directed them to an interview room where they could wait for Officer Hendricks’s arrival.

  It was closer to forty minutes by the time Officer Hendricks arrived. He entered the room with his hat in hand, curious why two federal agents had flown out specifically to see him. He was younger than Robertson had expected and there were several fading bruises on his face.

  Robertson didn’t waste any time in getting down to business.

  “Is this your report?” he asked, sliding a copy of it across the table to Hendricks.

  The other man looked it over for a moment, then sighed dramatically. “Yeah, that’s mine.”

  The senior agent frowned. “Something wrong, Officer Hendricks?”

  The other man looked up and met his gaze, his expression full of resignation.

  “I just knew that thing was gonna come back and bite me in the ass, that’s all. Shoulda kept my mouth shut.”

  That attitude wasn’t going to help them at all, Robertson knew. He had to get the other man on their side as quickly as possible, and the best way to do that, it seemed, was to tell him the truth.

  “On the contrary,” he said, “that’s the last thing you should have done. We’re not here to cause you any trouble, Officer. In fact, we believe you have information that might provide a break in a major investigation.”

  Hendricks took a moment to digest what Robertson had said, then asked, “What investigation is that?”

  Robertson saw no need to mince words. “The Reaper case.”

  Hendricks’s eyes lit up upon hearing the name, but the special agent wasn’t finished.

  “We believe the man you saw was Jeremiah Hunt, the principal suspect in that case. If it was, you’re frankly lucky to be alive, as he’s killed more than twenty people in the last ten years, including several police officers. I’m hoping there’s more to the incident than what you put in your report. Often it’s the little, seemingly insignificant details that make the difference in capturing animals like this guy. Understand?”

  Hendricks nodded vigorously. “I’ll tell you everything I can remember.”

  “Take me through it, please.”

  Hendricks did so in a professional manner, explaining how he’d spotted the Charger headed south with a taillight out and the decision he’d made to pull the car over and issue a traffic citation. There had been three people in the vehicle: two males and a female.

  “The driver was wearing sunglasses, if you can believe that.”

  “Sunglasses?”

  “Yeah. Crazy, right? Guy claimed it was because he had some kind of health condition that made his eyes sensitive to the light. I made him take them off anyway.”

  Robertson leaned forward, suddenly eager. “What color were his eyes?” he asked. He’d seen Hunt without his sunglasses; it was a sight you weren’t apt to forget. If the man in the car had been Hunt, there was only one answer that would make sense …

  “White. Completely white. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.”

  The state trooper actually shivered as he said it, seeming to be as creeped out by the memory of it as he’d been when it happened. Robertson didn’t blame him; looking into Hunt’s face and having those milky white eyes stare back at you was a downright unpleasant experience.

  But it was Hunt. The eyes and the tattoos confirmed it.

  “What can you tell me about the woman who was with him?”

  Hendricks thought about it for a minute. “To be honest, I didn’t get a real good look at her. Dark hair, narrow face, that’s about all I can tell you.”

  Robertson drummed his fingers impatiently against the tabletop. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He had no idea who the woman was and that bothered him. That she was helping Hunt was clear, but Robertson didn’t know why. Knowing who she was would go a long way to helping him answer that question, which in turn might lead them to Hunt.

  But Officer Hendricks wasn’t done.

  “If she hadn’t started screaming,” he said, “he never would have gotten the drop on me.”

  Robertson’s heart rate went up slightly as they got to the heart of the issue. He was close; he could feel it. He decided to pretend he didn’t know what the other man was talking about in order to see if he could pull more details out of him.

  “I’m sorry. Did you say screaming? About what?”

  Hendricks’s eyes got wider and Robertson felt his pulse suddenly speed up. There was more to the incident than what Hendricks had included in his report.

  “What aren’t you telling us?”

  Under the close scrutiny of the two federal agents, Hendricks coughed up the rest of what had happened that night. He told them how the female passenger had started screaming and how the driver had thrown something in his eyes, maybe a dust or a powder perhaps, that had allowed them to escape when he was unable to see.

  He was clearly embarrassed by it all and kept looking away during his explanation, which told Robertson that even now he wasn’t telling the whole truth. There was still something else.

  To Robertson’s surprise, Agent Doherty decided to speak up at that point.

  “Let me get this straight. You pull him over, the chick starts screaming, and in all the confusion he throws pixie dust in your face to disable you? Do I have that right?”

  Hendricks mumbled something.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Doherty said.

  “It wasn’t pixie dust.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Doherty laughed, playing the bad cop routine to a T. “Of course you don’t. You were only hit in the face with it and presumably had to clean it out of your eyes before you could see again, but you don’t have any idea what it was. Does that make any sense to you, Officer?”

  Hendricks was starting to bristle. “It wasn’t like that. Wasn’t like that at all!”

  “So tell me what it was like then! And stop lying to me or I’ll have your ass in a cell faster than you ever imagined possible!”

  Robertson watched the exchange without a word. Doherty had taken Hendricks right to the edge and now it was time to reel him in.

  As Hendricks opened his mouth to protest, Robertson leaned forward and said softly, “Where did you get the bruises, Hendricks?”

  The question caught the man completely off guard, just as it was intended to. For a second you could see it on his face as he struggled to hold his story together and fit this new element into the overall fabric of the tale, but it was just too much for him and he finally gave up the ghost and sagged in his seat.

  “He touched me.”

  It was barely even a whisper, but it was enough.

  “He touched you? What’s that supposed to mean?” Doherty asked, his voice growing harsh, but Robertson waved him off with a quick hand signal. Now was not the time to break out the heavy guns. They needed skill and finesse at this point in the game.

  Hendricks looked at Robertson, a pleading look in his eyes. “You guys are going to think I’m nuts.”

  Robertson shrugged. “Try us.”

  Hendricks sighed, then shrugged. “The woman in the front seat started screaming and thrashing around, like she was on drugs or something. I didn’t know what was going on and so I put my hand on my gun, ready to draw it if necessary. When I was looking at her, the driver reached out and grabbed my wrist.”

  “And?” Robertson gently prodded.

  “And I went blind. One minute I could see, the next I couldn’t. Everything went completely dark.”

  Robertson had conducted hundreds of interviews during his time with the Bureau and had gotten pretty good at picking out the liars from those who were telling the truth. Hendricks wasn’t bullshitting him; he really believed that Hunt’s touch had done something to his eyesight.

  “Then what happened?”

  Another sigh. “The son of a bitch hit me. And kept hitting me un
til I lost consciousness.”

  That explained the bruises on his face and the delay in reporting the incident, which ultimately had let Hunt and his companions escape.

  Robertson sat back and thought for a minute. “Did you feel anything when he touched you? A nick or a sharp little jab, perhaps?” he asked after a time.

  Hendricks shook his head, but it was Doherty who picked up on his line of reasoning.

  “You think he was drugged,” the agent said.

  Robertson nodded. “It’s possible, certainly. He might have been holding a needle of some kind and jabbed you with it when he grabbed your hand. If he’d coated the tip of the needle with some kind of psychotropic compound, it could account for your sudden inability to see.”

  For the first time since he’d entered the room, Officer Hendricks seemed to buck up. If he’d been drugged, the fugitive’s escape wouldn’t have been entirely his fault.

  “Would you mind submitting to a few blood tests, Officer?” Robertson asked, and the other man immediately agreed. It had been a few days, and any traces of whatever it was had probably long since fled his system, but it was worth a try nonetheless.

  They spent a few more minutes going back through Hendricks’s recollection of the events of that evening, but didn’t learn anything more. Hendricks hadn’t written down the license plate number before he’d been jumped, and the time he’d spent unconscious had wiped it from his mind. It was too bad, really, Robertson thought. If they’d had that plate number, they could’ve identified the car’s passenger. That, in turn, might have led to some information on where Hunt was headed next.

  When they were certain that they had gotten everything out of Officer Hendricks that they could, they thanked him for his help, suggested he take a few days off to deal with his emotional state, and let him get back to his regular duties. Once he had left the room, Robertson turned to his temporary partner.

  “Well done, Agent Doherty. Well done, indeed.”

  The younger man practically beamed at his boss’s praise, but quickly grew sober again.

  “But now what?” he asked. “We know he’s out there, but we knew that before coming here. How are we supposed to figure out where he went?”