It took him several seconds to realize that he was awake. His mouth was dry and nasty. It felt as if he had eaten a bucket of sand. His tongue was coated with a hard, rough crust and when he tried to clear his throat it came out like a croak, like he hadn't spoken in years and years and his throat had stopped working.
Jack was disoriented. He had no idea how long he'd been dreaming or what time it was now and instinctively he went to look at his watch. But he couldn't. His left hand was handcuffed to the bedpost at the top left of the bed. Not yet comprehending where he was or what had happened, he yanked his hand but he couldn't get free. He yanked again, harder, and the pain of the cuff cutting into his wrist brought reality back to him in small drips: finding Samsonite, going to her apartment, talking, drinking, the hallucinogenic drug that had been slipped into his wine. He didn't know exactly what had happened after that, but flashes of it slipped in and out of his brain, and with them came anger and confusion and humiliation and, he couldn't deny it, excitement.
He yanked his hand again; it did no good. But his hard pull twisted his body over and Jack suddenly realized he was not in bed alone. He twisted his head to look to his right. Samsonite was next to him. Naked and still sleeping. Enraged, he shoved her with his right hand, pushed her hard in the back, but she didn't wake. He went to push her again, overcome by anger, but as his hand touched her spine, he saw that on the sheet by her lower back was a red stain. He could see her legs now, and they, too, were splashed with red. Jack looked down at his own naked body and realized that he, too, was stained. His chest, one arm, a thigh was splotched with thick, red blood.
He wanted to yell at her, to scream, "Wake up, you crazy bitch!" but there was no point because when he grabbed her shoulder and turned her body toward him he saw the river of blood covering her neck and breasts. He saw the slash marks, the deep stab wounds. Saw that she'd been gutted, her stomach slit wide open.
He yanked his arm as hard as he could and the bed rattled noisily, but Jack couldn't free himself. The handcuff cut into his wrist as he pulled again, grunting. He was starting to panic, in bed with a corpse, covered in her blood, but he forced himself to be calm. He could not afford to lose it, not now, so he told himself he'd been around many dead bodies before. Not human bodies but he'd seen a lot of blood and torn flesh, that's all this was, and there was nothing to be done about it now, and he made himself close his eyes and take a deep breath and think. Think…
Jack examined the bedpost. He stopped pulling and turned so he could put both hands on the knob at the top. He gripped it tightly and yanked upward. Straining, he felt something give. He took another deep breath, got another grip on the post, and pulled again. And again. He thought maybe the give had been his imagination but he shook that thought away and forced himself up onto his knees now, using them to dig into the mattress and give him more leverage. He forced himself to lift up as hard as he could. His jaw clenched and his entire body was as taut as it could be and this time, yes, definitely, he felt something move. One more tug, it moved again, and then a frantic pull and he was free, the metal post flying out of its socket. Jack tumbled out of the bed and, still scrambling on the floor, slid the cuff down and off the bottom part of the post. It dangled from his wrist as he ran to the phone…
Dead. No, not dead. Cut. The phone line had been cut, he could see the splayed cord sticking out of the baseboard.
Shaking, his breath coming in short, emphatic bursts, he spotted his pants lying crumpled in the middle of the floor, pulled them on, searched the pockets for his cell phone but, no, he realized he'd left it at home, he'd forgotten to take it when he went to pick up Grace. He saw his shirt, torn, ripped down the front, but he put it on and, not bothering with his shoes or socks, he ran to the front door, out into the hallway, down the steps, practically leaping from landing to landing, and out the front door. He was on the street now, still running. Ahead at the corner he saw a telephone.
He ran past a parked car and, as he did, he saw the front windshield explode. He stumbled and then there was a second explosion. Behind him, a storefront window had shattered into thousands of pieces. Jack's first thought was that the apocalypse had come. The world was blowing itself up. Madness had won out and destruction was complete. And then he realized it was nothing so overwhelming. It was much more banal and much, much more dangerous.
Someone was shooting at him.
What the hell was happening!
What the hell was going on!
Another window burst behind him and Jack dove for safety behind a parked car. An alarm went off, the noise echoing up and down the street. He heard footsteps. Running. And then the only sound was the blare of the alarm. Jack stayed on the ground, panting. When he finally raised his head, he saw a cop car pulling up and jerking to a stop. Two uniformed policemen ran out, their guns drawn. One took off down the street in the direction of the footsteps. The other stood over Jack, pointing the pistol straight down at him. The cop was telling him not to move, not to move one fucking inch or he'd get a bullet in his head.
Jack was only too glad not to move anymore.
He glanced down, saw the blood that still covered his body, stared back up at the cop and hoped that his eyes conveyed his fear and his innocence, and then Jack didn't move again until the second cop returned, panting, shaking his head to show he'd found nothing. By that time another cop car had pulled up and Sergeant Patience McCoy hopped out, mad as hell, Jack presumed, because she was probably missing breakfast with her husband.
– "-"-"THEY WERE STANDING in the shabby, puke-green hallway outside Samsonite's apartment. A locksmith was busy working to get Jack out of the handcuffs that still dangled from his wrist. Cops were going through the bedroom, examining the body and going over every inch of the place. It did not take long to establish that Samsonite had been stabbed fourteen times or that the murder weapon was not in the apartment or anywhere in the vicinity on the street. They had people going through garbage cans and searching in alleys but no one seemed particularly hopeful that anything would turn up.
McCoy had retrieved Jack's socks and shoes, which he'd put on, and in the trunk of her car she'd found a blanket, which, although it was quite warm outside, she'd put around his shoulders. The sergeant didn't say a word, just waited until the cuffs were off and the locksmith was heading downstairs. Then she nodded and said, "Let's start at the very beginning, and you tell me everything, only this time I'll believe you. And then we'll see if we can catch this crazy motherfucker."
Jack nodded and forced himself to remember every single detail he could. McCoy had also managed to get some hot coffee, which he sipped gratefully as he talked. He went through it all, from the first moment Kid showed up in his living room, through all the conversations about his team, every detail Jack could dredge up. He told McCoy all of it: about Kid's funeral and how, after that, he'd tracked down the Mortician. He explained what happened in Kid's apartment, and later at the Migliarinis' funeral home. He told her about talking to Bryan, which led him to Kim. How he'd found the Entertainer, and exactly what had happened the night of her murder, and how next he found the Rookie. At that point, he said, "I guess you know about her, though, she's the one who called you." When McCoy looked confused, he said, "She called you, right? When I didn't show up. In fact, if I wanted to be picky I'd ask what the hell took you so long." When McCoy finally told him she didn't have any idea what he was talking about, Jack shook his head, as if he were talking to somebody who didn't understand English, and said, "Grace Childress. The Rookie. She was with me at the gambling club. I told her to call you if I didn't check in with her in two hours. That was, what, four, five hours ago now, and you just got here, so-"
"Nobody called in for you," McCoy said.
"Of course she did," Jack told the sergeant. "She had to."
"I'm here because while somebody was shooting at you on the street, the guy in that apartment there" – McCoy jerked her head across the hallway – "came outside to go to work and saw this shit in here." Now her head nodded at Samsonite's blood-soaked apartment. "Somebody else reported the shots and we had a car in the vicinity."
"She had to have called you," Jack said. "I don't understand."
"I don't understand either," McCoy told him. "But I think you'd better give me her address and phone number."
"There's a reason she didn't call," Jack insisted. "She didn't do this. It's not possible."
"There's a lot of things I didn't think were possible just a few days ago," McCoy said, shaking her head. "So just give me the info. I want to find her immediately. Because if she's not the killer then there's a pretty good chance whoever is is gonna try to turn her into another corpse."
Jack nodded, solemnly repeated Grace's name, and gave McCoy the address. He couldn't remember her phone number but she told him not to worry about that, they could find it. She excused herself, disappeared for a moment into the apartment, and Jack could hear her give the information to one of the cops. Moments later, they both emerged. McCoy stopped to stay with Jack; the other cop kept going down the stairs.
"He'll find her," McCoy said. "One way or the other." She saw him stare after the cop who'd just left and she knew Jack wanted to go, too, to check on the woman he called the Rookie, but she told him to keep talking, to tell the rest of his story. "It's the only way we're going to finish this," she urged. "The most helpful thing you can do now is talk."
So Jack kept talking. He backtracked, told her everything he could remember about the Team. About Kid's world and his Slashes. She asked to hear more about Grace and he said that he thought she'd become the new Destination and he told her about Kid's romantic notion that Rome was a destination. He told her about the Mistake, a woman from Kid's past who'd appeared again, and how Kid had seemed shaken by both the past relationship and the current one. He told her about the break-in at his apartment, then worked his way back to Samsonite, told McCoy about finding her at the after-hours club and recounted how he went to her apartment, the things he'd learned about her – her stealing money from the club, Kid loaning her the five thousand dollars he'd borrowed from the Entertainer. It was a jumble of information to him now, hard to sort through, especially as new flashes began to come back to him: the things Samsonite told him she'd learned from Kid.
I know all about you, she'd said to Jack. Your stupid red-meat crematorium. Your fantasy apartment…
He told McCoy how he began to feel dizzy. At first he'd thought it was exhaustion, then the stifling atmosphere of the tenement apartment. Only as he stumbled did he begin to realize that he'd been drugged.
… The whaddyacallit, the balcony that you're terrified of…
He told McCoy what she'd said about the drugs: I know why you're here. I know what you want me to say. I figured it out, too. But when he came to buy the fucking acid, I didn't know what it was for. I didn't know what he was going to do with it…
"What did she figure out?" McCoy asked.
"I don't know. I think she meant she figured out who killed Kid."
"How come everyone seems to have figured it out except us, goddamnit? And who came to buy the acid? Kid?"
"That's what it sounded like," Jack said. "But I don't know for sure. I don't know anything for sure."
There was more but Jack couldn't dredge it out of his memory. His body was giving out now and his brain was not far behind. McCoy saw him fade and she told him he'd done more than enough, that she'd give him a ride home.
I'm missing something, Jack thought. What the hell am I missing?
In the ride uptown, McCoy tried to make sense of what he'd told her but she wasn't having much better luck than he was. "We'll check into Kid's background," she told him. "See if we can dig up anything from his past that might help. Get his college records, even high school. I'll go talk to Ms. Migliarini again, too."
"I think she's the one," Jack said.
"No. I don't think so," McCoy told him. "I'm certainly going to discuss that possibility with her. But there's one thing that doesn't fit."
"What's that?"
"Why would she let you live? If there's one thing your Mortician knows, it's not to be careless or sentimental. If it's her or somebody who works for her, it doesn't add up. You're the one who confronted her in the first place. You're the only one who's put the various pieces together. You're the one who tracked down all the other women – and let's assume that whoever it is we're looking for killed those women because they knew something, because they could've led us to where we want to go. Well, the person who's got the best chance of leading – you – was right there for the taking. Doesn't make sense. Especially for someone like little Eva. Why kill Samsonite and leave you there to keep hunting?"
Jack didn't have an answer to that. But McCoy did.
"You know something, Jack. You know something you don't even know you know. You're the point man, there's some kind of connection between you and whoever's doing this."
"No," Jack said, shaking his head. "I don't know any of these women. I never heard of them until Kid told me about them. I never met them until I started finding them."
"You don't know that."
"I do. I've met-"
"You've met them all except two, possibly three."
"The Murderess and maybe the Destination. And the Mistake."
"You don't know who they are," McCoy said. "You never saw them, you don't know their names, so how the hell do you know there's no connection?"
"I think if we find the Murderess we'll have the killer."
"We got good news and bad news on that one: most of the others have been eliminated. Your instincts have been pretty good so far, Jack. Mine have pretty much sucked but you're in my territory now and I'm telling you that Kid is the key. And you knew Kid. You knew him well enough to know he didn't kill himself, didn't you?"
Jack nodded.
"Then you know something else, too," McCoy said. "Your job is to try to figure out what the fuck it is."
– "-"-"THE FIRST THING Jack did when he got home was to call Grace. There was no answer, just a message on her machine saying she wasn't available. "It's Jack," he said after the recording instructed him to talk. "Call me so I know you're all right."
He took a steam, made it as hot as he could stand. Didn't press the off switch until he couldn't take it any longer. Then he turned the shower on and let icy-cold water run down over him. Toweled himself off and got dressed. He was dreading what he was going to do next. He didn't know why, exactly, except something inside of him knew that it was leading him somewhere he didn't want to go. But he knew he had to go there. If he wanted the horror to end, if he wanted the killing to stop, he understood that McCoy was right – he knew something and now it was time to dig it out of himself.
You're the point man, McCoy had said. There's a connection.
But what the hell was it?
What did he know? What was the secret?
And how far back did it go?
That's what scared him, Jack realized. He didn't know why, but he did know it was what was holding him back, what was blocking his mind.
How far back did it go?
Jack went to his computer, called up the file he'd made on Kid.
He studied the information he'd put in. As he studied, his mind flew to anything relevant he'd picked up from the women on Kid's team or from Bryan. What he had learned since he'd typed in these notes.
Kid had spent three years at St. John's quarterbacking the football team. He'd left after his junior year and he and Caroline had never gotten to the bottom of it. There seemed to be some connection to his teammate who had been injured on the practice field, had been hit hard enough to paralyze him, but what was it? And what else had happened that made him leave?
Question number one: The football accident was tragic, yes, but what was it that affected Kid so greatly? Why would a teammate's injury drive him to leave school and run off to another state? And what, if anything, did it have to do with what was happening now?
All right. What next? Think!
Kid bummed around for a while. Eventually went back to school, to Maryland State, where he got his degree. Why there? And what else could have happened there? It was where he met his first Destination. Who was she? Why did that end? Kid said it was because she chose another man. Who was it? Did any of that matter?
Why did Kid come back to New York? What was he into that would lead to his death?
It kept coming back to the same thing: the women.
The Entertainer: He'd found her, she was just as Kid had described. Beautiful and smart and sad. She'd given Kid five thousand dollars that he'd never returned. Kid had told her it was for his tuition but he'd lied. He'd given the money to Samsonite. Why did he lie? Because he was giving it to another woman? Because the Entertainer would have been jealous? Jack thought that the money was irrelevant. But what had the Entertainer known? Why was she killed? She said she'd heard things, noticed things, but what? Did her killer take anything from the apartment?
The Rookie. Grace. Jack checked his notes and saw that Kid had told him that the Rookie was dangerous. He couldn't believe that Grace was capable of violence, though. Jack realized that he was attracted to her, that he liked her; it was hard to be objective. But why hadn't she called McCoy? Why hadn't she called him? Where was she now?
Where was she when Samsonite had been murdered and Jack had been shot at?
The Destination #1: She seemed unlikely. Out of the picture for a long time. But the Destination #2 – Who was she? Grace? Jack was fairly certain that's what she'd evolved into, but he couldn't be positive. Was there someone else out there? Someone else with a secret? Someone who knew Kid's secret?
The Mistake. Kid hadn't talked much about her. He'd seemed particularly evasive. They hadn't had sex, he'd said. But the relationship was sexual. Was the Mistake in love with Kid? Had she been in love with him all these years? Did she kill him because that love was unrequited?
Finally, the Murderess. Jack didn't have much to go on. She'd been scarred by an accident in her youth. That was pretty much it. McCoy had said she could be anyone. Who? Someone he knew? Some link between him and Kid?
Who?
Jack got up from his chair and began pacing. He was getting nowhere. The more information he had, the more confused he was becoming.
What was he missing?
All right, he thought. Dig into the specifics. Go back to Samsonite. A sick girl, no question about that. But she didn't deserve to die like that. No one deserved to die like that. He knew he'd never get the image and the fear that came with it out of his mind.
Stop it, he told himself. Don't think about that now. Think about what you learned. What you can still learn. What had she said?
Christ, what I don't know about you. Your stupid red-meat crematorium. Your fantasy apartment. The whaddyacallit, the balcony you're terrified of…
Jack felt violated, thinking about the things Kid had shared. Things he had told these women about the man they knew only as the Butcher.
Your big affair in London…
Jesus Christ! How could she have known about that? How could Kid have known about that? It wasn't possible. Had she really said it? Or was it part of his own psychedelic fantasy?
How you tried to have a baby but your wife had an abortion…
No, it was impossible! She couldn't have known that! He'd tried to forget it himself. It was too painful; he'd shut down the memory. He had never even been able to tell Dom. They had wanted a child so desperately. Caroline had been pregnant when he'd gone off to England. When he'd had the affair with Emma. And when he returned, right after he got back, Caroline aborted the baby. She told him she'd done it, that she no longer wanted the child and, although neither of them had ever acknowledged it, they both knew it was because of what had happened in London. How she'd known what had occurred there, he never discovered. He had his suspicions but they didn't matter. What mattered was that he had hurt her and this was the only way she knew to respond. They had created the child out of love and she had destroyed it out of pain.
They'd recovered from it, though, individually and as a couple. He had wounded her, the scar had healed. Ultimately, she had understood and that understanding had made them closer. It was something that had been so private, so personal; the healing process had drawn them together Jack straightened up and stopped his pacing. There was something gnawing at him now, he didn't know exactly what. But something didn't compute.
It had been so private.
So how did Samsonite know about it? And about the affair? How?
His stream of consciousness took him to the front of Grace's apartment building. He remembered standing with her, asking her what Kid had told her that had frightened her.
This might sound crazy, she'd said, hut I had the feeling he wanted me to know certain things in case… in case you found me… I got the feeling there was something going on that had been going on a long time. For years. I think he felt responsible for certain things, people getting hurt. Maybe even getting killed.
What people? Jack had asked. But she didn't know.
Then he flashed on Samsonite again: How you tried to have a baby but your wife had an abortion…
What was wrong with that?
There was something going on for along time. For years.
How many years? What had been going on for years?
He felt responsible for people getting hurt. Maybe even getting killed.
What people?
But your wife had an abortion…
How did she know?
Maybe even getting killed.
Who? What people?
Your affair…
An abortion…
"Oh my God."
Jack said it out loud; the sound of his own voice made him jump. He knew now what had frightened him about searching the past. Somehow he must have known all along. He knew what the connection was. He didn't understand it, didn't want to understand it, but he knew.
Kid had told Samsonite about Caroline's abortion.
But Jack had never told Kid.
Jack had never told anyone. Not a soul. Which meant only one person could have told Kid.
Only one person…
But how was that possible? How? Why? And when?
Jack, forcing himself to move slowly, refusing to bow to the urgency that was kicking at his midsection, sat back down at his computer, immediately logged on to the CylockHolmes program. He knew what he was looking for and he scrolled down until he found it.
FIND: License Plate Numbers Social Security Numbers Business Records Unlisted Phone Numbers Unknown Addresses
And then: LOCATE Long-Lost Friends DISCOVER Dirty Secrets Your In-Laws Don't Want You To Know Criminal Search Background Check* Find Out About Your Daughter's Boyfriend NEIGHBORS! Find Out What They Have To Hide! Education Verification! Did He Really Graduate From College! Find Out!
Education Verification.
Jack double-clicked on it. At the prompt, he typed in Kid's real name, George Demeter. Typed in his home address on Staten Island. Listed St. John's and Maryland State College, then clicked on the "Verify" button and waited. It didn't take long.
Kid's name popped up on-screen. So did his date of birth. So did verification that he attended St. John's University in New York City for three years. The program listed the exact dates he was enrolled as well as his official extracurricular activities. In this case it was singular: SJU football team, freshman through junior.
Jack scrolled down. He knew what he was going to find, there was no doubt about it. And find it he did.
Kid had lied to him. He did not receive his degree from Maryland State. He did not attend, at any time, Maryland State or any other school in Maryland.
As he realized what had happened, the thoughts and images came into Jack's head as if driven there by a tornado. They whirled through him, rocking him back in his chair.
Kid's datebook. The one Jack found in the Mortician's apartment. It listed the Destination over and over again. And one name: Charlotte. Not a name, he realized. Not a name of a person. A place. An abbreviation for a place!
Grace: Bad things had happened to people around him. People he loved.
Samsonite: You tried to have a baby but your wife had an abortion.
Grace: He felt responsible for certain things, people getting hurt. Maybe even getting killed.
No, it was impossible. It was fucking impossible!
McCoy: You're the point man. There has to be some connection.
But it's not impossible, Jack realized. It was all too possible. There is a connection. And it's from one horror to another. From one nightmare to the next.
And now he remembered something. Something Caroline had told him several months before the Charlottesville opening. He had thought it was about the restaurant. Now he thought differently. That's the way I feel down in Virginia, she'd said. I have something down there that's beautiful. That's mine.
Jack forced himself to look at the computer screen. He saw the name of the second college that Kid had attended. Saw the location. Saw the dates he was there.
Virginia State University.
Thirty minutes from Charlottesville.
There the entire year Caroline was opening up the restaurant.
Caroline was the one who had told Kid about her abortion. It's the only way he could have known.
He felt responsible for people getting hurt. Maybe even getting killed.
Kid had lied when he stood in Jack's living room that first time. He had known about Caroline's death and Jack's injuries before he'd come back to New York, before he'd gone to see Dom. He had come back to New York specifically to heal him; Jack knew that now. To save him. Because somehow, some way, Kid had been unable to save the woman he loved. His Destination.
Caroline.
– "-"-"JACK KELLER HAD not been back to Charlottesville since the robbery and murder. He had told himself he would never go there again. But now he decided to return. He had to. Everything led back there. Everything seemed to start there. He had to go. And as soon as he'd made the decision, he knew he would have to leave immediately. Well, not quite immediately. He had one other thing to do first.
First, he wept.