“Why?”
His conversation with Hauser that afternoon popped into his head. “She helped me. She helped my fath—” The words clanked to a halt in his throat as an image of Emily Mitchell and her bright yellow barrette flashed in his head. “Oh, God.”
Jake slammed the phone down and threw his borrowed police poncho on. He ran through the corridor for the back exit, hollering at Scopes. “Get in touch with Hauser. Tell him to meet me at the Mitchell house. Now!”
He slammed through the back door, out into the gyrating screech of the storm that was taking everything he had left apart, a little at a time.
65
The truck threw up thick plumes of water as it barreled down the empty streets of Southampton, enough that the Israelites could have followed in its wake. Since leaving the Sheriff’s Department, Jake had forded two newly-formed storm-fueled rivers that had sprung up in town and both times the water had actually climbed up over the hood—somehow Frank’s snorkel contraption seemed to be doing its job because the engine had not so much as coughed. When he wasn’t resorting to naval tactics, Jake kept his foot down as he ripped through the empty town. After a few blocks he realized that he had to ease off or he’d flip Frank’s gas-guzzling bitch and end up drowning alone in the middle of one of the abandoned streets.
Gunning it through the dark neighborhoods had a creepy, postapocalyptic quality to it. The farther he got from the sheriff’s office—the deeper into Southampton—the more visceral this feeling became. The whole time he barreled toward the Mitchell home, his brain was working on his father’s fragmented portrait. Was it just a symbol of his fractured mind or had he meant for it to be a portrait of the Bloodman? Jake was sure he had left all those faceless portraits for Jake to see, to pique his curiosity, to get him used to thinking. To get him used to looking.
Why hadn’t he just told Jake who the killer was? Left a note? A letter? Why the babushka-doll approach? A riddle hidden inside a riddle hidden inside a riddle hidden inside a…Jesus fucking Christ, it was endless!
Jake ran his mental fingers over the years, trying to find anything in the dust-caked pages that would help make sense of why his father had done this.
Jake knew that he was the one who was supposed to see it; that’s what he did—even his old man would know that. Bury a needle in a haystack, hide the haystack in a field of haystacks, and unleash Jakey with that divining-rod head of his and he’d find it, figure it out, solve the mystery.
Only it wasn’t just a mystery. Not any more. Not a job or a game or even an obsession. It was a need.
Something told him that Kay and Jeremy were alive. Why? Because they hadn’t found any bodies. And this fucker—the Bloodman—liked to leave a little something behind for his fans.
And if Jake didn’t drown or get crushed by a falling tree or get jolted by an electromagnetic pulse, he knew that he would find who he was looking for. He would find him.
At least now Jake would have something to call him when he put the barrel of the revolver to his head and opened it as wide as the sky.
66
Jake pulled up on the Mitchells’ lawn and the 9,000-pound truck settled to the rims in the wet earth. He kicked the heavy door open with his foot and jumped out into shin-deep water. The street was flooding, the neighborhood was flooding, the lawn was flooding. In another hour it could all be washed away. He wondered if Wohl had reached Hauser and if the sheriff was on the way. He wished that Hauser were here, or Scopes, or anyone else, because if that fucker showed up…
He raced across thirty feet of lawn, moving through the current that mired him down like a foot of wet cement. Candles now flickered in a few rooms and it looked like Mrs. Mitchell had fired up the old kerosene Coleman that had been sitting on the hall table. There was movement inside. A shadow passed by the big front window, stopped to look out. Jake recognized the shape of Mrs. Mitchell. His heart leveled out a little.
His foot hit the precast concrete step and he grabbed the iron railing. Mrs. Mitchell opened the door. She smiled for an instant.
And then Jake saw him. Behind her, standing in the kitchen doorway. For an instant he thought that it was his own reflection, but then he moved.
There was a knife hanging from his hand, the gleam of death in the dark.
He was just a dim outline but Jake knew the shape; it was the faceless man that Jacob had splattered on the wall in his blood. The man from the portrait. The man of blood. The Bloodman.
Jake’s hand went under the poncho, into his jacket, and he felt the rubber combat grip of his revolver, warm and dry against his hand.
The thing behind her moved. Twitched.
Jake got his index through the trigger guard and began to draw the weapon. He opened his mouth to scream, to warn her. There was a shift on Mrs. Mitchell’s face as she saw his expression, saw him go under the poncho for his pistol, and she began to turn, to look behind her.
Jake saw the faceless form move in the darkness.
There was deep whump followed by a resonant crack that lit up the sky like a billion-watt generator blowing its magnets. The earth rang as the bolt of lightning impregnated the ground and the soil went supernova, killing every earthworm in a quarter-mile radius.
Jake saw the world overload for a millisecond before the power went out. Then it was just as if nothing existed at all.
He fell back.
Away.
Away from the world.
Away from the steps.
Away from Mrs. Mitchell and Emily and everything else he had promised he would not leave to the Bloodman.
67
Jake stood in the entry with the fractured sounds of the storm battering the house a distant drone that barely penetrated the static swirling around his skull. He stared at the top of Emily Mitchell’s scalp sitting on the newel post, a skullcap of thick black bangs held back with a bright yellow barrette. The bridge of her nose and one eyebrow were visible beneath. The rest lay in the living room in the middle of a cheap imitation Persian carpet sopping with blood and flecked with puzzle pieces. The thing that used to be her mother lay beside her, stretched out and butchered.
Hauser was outside throwing up and Jake hoped he was pointed downwind. It was one of those back-of-the-mind things that came to him while he examined the top of the girl’s head, thrown carelessly onto the newel post like a winter cap, a little lopsided.
Hauser and his deputy had found Jake floating near the road. The drag of the heavy water-filled poncho had acted like a sea-anchor and saved him from being washed away in the surge that sloshed across the lawn. He had been unconscious and Hauser had slapped him, yelled, shook him. His eyes had fluttered open, and that first big breath hit him in the chest like an atom bomb. He sat up, screamed Emily Mitchell’s name. Hauser had run for the house. Taken the screen door off the hinges. Stumbled out fifteen seconds later and barfed in the swamp that used to be a garden.
Jake lifted himself from the water, his brain actually making a cartoon spring sound as he tried to keep the world from spinning. He fought to his feet and lurched across the lawn and fell up the steps like a drunk trying to make it to the toilet in time.
Mother and daughter were in the living room. Mostly.