He never doubted his mission, never doubted the reason for this; he knew this was the only way to get away from what was coming. He had lived in fear for too long. No one could save him. Not even Jake. Not anymore.
His progress took all of his strength, all of his concentration, but his mind allowed him one brief image, a picture of Mia sitting on the deck of the sailboat all those years ago. Young, beautiful, when life had been full of potential.
He reached the edge of the roof.
Lifted one bloody foot from the water.
And stepped out into the sky.
79
Jake moved away from Frank’s corpse with slow but fluid movements, as if his bones were not connected to one another. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.
Hauser stepped down into the sunken living room. “I thought that’s what you did, Mr. Witch-doctor. Figure shit out.” He said it softly, almost kindly, but there was something else, something angry, behind the words. He had his pistol in his hand.
“Where is my wife? My child?”
Hauser moved against the fireplace. The remaining curtains danced like ghosts, tattered and torn. The sheriff looked over at Frank’s misshapen head, disconnected jaw. “I ask the questions, Jake,” he said, bringing up the Sig, and that’s when Jake saw the big trench knife hanging off his belt—a killer’s knife, not a cop’s.
Jake now understood that part of him, the part that knew this was all going to be over relatively soon, had stopped caring. He also realized that back there, in the static of disbelief over how this had unfolded, Kay and Jeremy’s voices had stopped. Along with this came a great weariness. He nodded at the kitchen. “I need a drink.” It was a statement, not a request. He had stopped asking anyone for permission when he had walked out of this place all those years ago and he wasn’t going to start now, not even when he was staring down a nine-millimeter Parabellum.
There was a foot of sand in the kitchen and he had to wrench the door to the cupboard under the sink open. He pulled out a bottle of scotch that had been hiding at the back and poured two fingers into a teacup. His head was buzzing like a shorted bulb and he heard the harsh chirp of electrical circuits simmering. He knew that after the blue-white jolt his heart had taken, he’d need a few minutes to get his think box back on line. Spencer was dead. Frank was dead. While he had been out on the floor, someone had killed them both. No, not someone—the man his father had been terrified of. Jeremy’s man in the floor—Bud man. His father’s faceless portrait. The killer. The Bloodman. All of them. “You want a drink?” he asked Hauser.
Hauser nodded wearily, and came forward, the pistol still up. “Why not?”
“You’re on duty,” Jake said, and poured one for Hauser.
“And you’re a recovering alcoholic.”
“Just a drunk between drinks.” He slid the cup across the counter, then raised his own in a toast. He looked at Frank, dead in the chair over Hauser’s shoulder like the lighthouse behind Rachael Macready in that goddamned photograph in the house of the dead. His eyes filled with clear, bright tears.
All he could wonder was, Why?
He downed the booze and the fire was sweet and familiar. He closed his eyes, took in the heat and the beauty of the flames in his stomach. How long had it been since he had had a drink? But he knew, down to the minute if he really wanted to think about it—a gift from his perfect memory. Except for those four months he had never been able to buy back—those were gone for good.
He opened his eyes and Hauser was still standing there with that unhappy look welded onto his skull, eyes distant, mouth turned down. He looked like the stickers that Kay put on the chemicals under the sink so Jeremy wouldn’t pour himself an afternoon cocktail of bleach and stainless-steel cleaner.
Kay. Jeremy. Where were they?
The living room was full of sand and debris. The portrait of the man in the floor was gone, covered over. Jake swiveled his line of sight to the pool. The storm had emptied the algae and lily pads and the foundation had all but been swept out to sea. It still hung off the deck, tilted into the ocean, the waterline at odds with the angle of the rim. The water was a dirty brown now. Murky. Lifeless.
And he remembered what Frank had said. You’re the guy who thinks like a murderer. You do the math.
And his head lit up like the lightning that had been coming down all night. He knew where the bastard had put them. Somewhere no one would check, not even the cops when they had combed the property. Someplace so fucking close no one would think of looking there.
Jake came out from behind the counter. Fast.
Hauser flinched but Jake was so fast he was past the sheriff before he understood what was happening.
Jake barreled by, jumped through one of the blown-out windows, and dove into the pool.
The underwater world tasted of salt and mud, not chlorine. Jake kicked for the bottom and felt his hand sink into the muck and garbage that had settled after the storm. He palmed through the silt and his fingers brushed aside pebbles and stones and empty beer cans and scotch bottles.
His pulse throbbed in his ears. He slid his hands back and forth over the bottom, searching the debris. The air in his lungs tried to pull him to the surface, back to the world, but he kicked to keep himself down. He felt a hubcap, a broken plate, more empty cans and bottles. Then the rough form of a cinder block. And below it, something soft and rubbery that could only be skin.
Jake ran his hands over it and it rippled, coiled back onto his knuckles like it wanted to touch him, to let him know that it knew he was there. His index finger slid into a slimy depression—like Braille, it was familiar to his touch—a small, perfect belly button. And beneath that he felt the crescent-shaped ridges created by a single-edged knife. Beneath that, the rough concrete bottom of the pool.
A human skin. Weighed down with a cinder block.
Jake screamed and lost the air from his lungs in one violent roar. He breathed in, sucked in silt and saltwater and despair. Vomited under the water. Instinctively pushed for the surface.
Broke through.
Screamed a long, horror-wracked vowel. Then dove back into the muck.
He found the cinder block, lifted it up, and wrapped his fingers around the oily skin below.
Foraged on the bottom.
Found a second cinder block.
And a second skin.
He wrenched it free, pushed for the surface, and came up in the shallow end.
They were as thick and as heavy as lead-shielded X-ray bibs. Jake stood there, his heart pounding against his ribs, unwilling to look down.
What was left of Kay in one hand.
What was left of Jeremy in the other.
Hauser stood on the deck above him, his mouth still turned down at the corners in such a way that it looked like his face had taken on a permanent set. He turned on his Maglite, flashed it on Jake. On the things in Jake’s hands. Then snapped it off.
Jake went to the steps, stumbled up, and collapsed on the deck.
Kay’s skin unrolled with a meaty slap. Her eyeless, toothless, lifeless face pointed up into the sky and Jake saw that a knife had opened her mouth from ear to ear. The pool had scrubbed her clean and every bruise, every laceration, leered up at him in madness.
“No,” he said so softly that it may not have been spoken aloud at all.
Jake turned to the skin that had covered his son. It was ragged around the edges and scrubbed clean from its time in the pool. There were no ears.
Hauser came over but kept the light off. “Inside, Jake.” The pistol hung loosely in his hand, glimmering like a prosthetic attachment.
Jake picked what was left of his little boy up, and something about it felt sickening. He got an arm under Kay’s torso, and her tattoo of the crossed pistols flashed in front of his eyes. Tough Love.