It began to sleet at ten, frozen rain that looked like snow in the streetlights but stung when it hit your skin and then turned quickly to water. It drove everyone for cover. The subway cars had been packed during rush hour, but the corridors had cleared out as usual-until the sleet came and the Friday night clubbers and the half-frozen homeless started going underground. By now I knew a few of the regulars and could identify them by their individual stoops and shuffles. I assessed the new ones. Past midnight a tall man in a ragged peacoat slid past me at a concourse near Market Street. His long neck curved down like a garden hose, his shoulders wrapped around his sunken chest like it had been punched by a mighty blow and never recovered. By two o'clock the platforms and corridors were empty; those who were down here had found their hiding spots. I was working my way through a tunnel north of Chestnut when I turned a corner and scared the hell out of a young woman walking south. She was wearing duck shoes and a ski jacket and was carrying a backpack over one shoulder. She gasped when she saw me and I immediately showed her my badge and said, "I'm a cop. It's OK." I watched some of the alarm move off her face, and she was about to speak when we both heard an agonizing howl that was instantly cut short.
The woman's eyes went huge and she took a step in the direction away from the noise as I took one toward it.
"I'm Detective Freeman," I said. "Go up top."
She looked the other way and seemed to hesitate with panic, so I yelled, "Go up top! Just go." The echo of her running footfalls followed her and I went the other way. Before the next blind turn I had my radio and my 9 mm Glock in my hands. I turned the radio volume low and reported to dispatch my location and a possible subway assault. Then I clicked off the set. Fifty more feet and I heard a deep-throated groan that vibrated and carried off the graffiti-covered tiles. I knew there was an alcove up ahead that was sealed by a chain-link gate that had long been breached at one corner with a pair of wire cutters. I replaced the radio with my flashlight and moved on.
At the gate I stopped and listened. The growing roar of a train arriving at the City Hall station momentarily blocked out any other sound. I waited, and as the cars pulled out I used the noise to move through the bent corner of the gate. There was a stack of stored barricades against one dark wall and racks of metal scaffolding leaning against the other. A passageway between them was just wide enough for a man to get through. Farther in, the weak light from the corridor was lost and the shadows were black. I crouched to avoid being backlit and again tried to listen. After a few minutes of silence, I heard movement. The scrape of boot leather on concrete. A shifting of something heavy and soft. Then a noise, like the tearing of wet cardboard and the distinct sound of a watery suction. The sight of the empty eye sockets flashed in my head. I slapped the flashlight next to the barrel of my 9 mm, snapped on the beam and rushed forward.
"Police!" I yelled, jerking the light from shadow to shadow.
"Police!" I kept barking and then the beam caught movement and my fingers tightened on the Glock. I steadied the beam on his head as he rose, the white skin of his face illuminated in the light. I focused on his eyes and they did not seem to flinch in the brightness, and like a bad photograph I saw them glow red and fearless.
"Hands up and away from your body!" I yelled again, forcing my attention away from his eyes to the movement of his arms. He was tall and dressed in dark material, and he shuffled one step forward.
"Fucking freeze!" I yelled again, the adrenaline taking my voice.
He was ten feet away and I shifted the light and saw a flash of blade in his left hand and the dull metal of a spoon in his right. When I moved the beam back to the knife the light picked up the form of a body behind him. It lay still and I could see a patch of pale skin and then the light found a rubber daisy dangling on a small, white boot.
The man took one more step and I refocused on his eyes and shot him. I aimed low into his hip and did not care whether the round drifted in or not. He went down with a yelp of pain and I closed the distance between us before he hit one knee. I half skipped my last step and then swung my right leg and drop-kicked him in the chest with the toe of my polished combat boot. He was on his back, staring up into the flashlight beam, and the animal look of his red eyes had not changed. I stepped hard on the wrist of his left arm and watched the fingers uncurl from the handle of a six-inch butterfly blade.
"The suspect was armed and in fear of my life this officer determined that the use of force was required to subdue said suspect," I whispered aloud as I felt the ligaments in the man's arm pop under my shifting weight.
I reached down and swatted the knife out of his reach and then pointed the barrel of the Glock into his left eye.
"Roll over and put your hands behind your back."
I cuffed him and then moved my light to the woman. She was dead, and the sharp acid smell of fresh blood rose off her like heat. I rolled her and she stared up at me. One eye still glistened with a curved wound to one side. Her throat had already been cut. I got on the radio and was told a squad car was already up at the subway entrance. The man on the floor was crying now from the pain of the bullet wound but I turned away and let the rumble of the arriving train drown out the sound of his keening.
I woke with the sound of screeching metal train brakes in my ears and came up shivering in my bunk. The shack was still dark, and I swung my heels to the wooden floor and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and half expected to see my breath steaming in the air.
I got up and this time tossed some kindling into the wood- burning stove and started it. I watched the flames dance and build and then set my coffeepot over an open port on top. I stepped outside while the water heated and drew in the night air to wash the remembered smell of subway rot from my nose. For several days after the slasher's arrest the other detectives gave me the razz.
"Yo, you Freemans ought to start a Mounties' division. 'We always get our man,' eh, Max?"
"Chip off the old block, eh?"
"Or off the old bottle," one stage-whispered.
By then my father was existing on the good ol' boy network. His alcoholism was being covered by friends in the department. His abusiveness was kept in the family. His reputation was now the fodder of jokes, but never to his face. I heard the rattle of the coffeepot and went back inside.
By nine I was at Billy's, sitting in his immaculate study, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling book cases filled with law volumes, history and nonfiction collections as diverse at the owner. I was facing two computer screens and was using Billy's hookup to the Internet and LexisNexis to run through religious listings and church locations throughout South Florida. We were banking on Nate Brown's recollection that Jefferson's grandson had become a minister and hoping that he'd stayed in his home state. I was also hoping that his isolated, rural upbringing would have kept him from taking a position in a big city like Tampa or Orlando. By e-mail, Billy was coordinating with me from his office and guiding me to Web sites while he worked his own independent sources.
At noon I took a break from the air-conditioning and stood out on the patio. Out on the ocean I watched a sailboat at the horizon as it moved south, heeled over on a windward tack, its genoa sail pulled tight and its rails dipping into blue water. Before I loaded my canoe at sunrise I'd sat at my table in the weak light and cleaned my 9 mm. The gun had been wrapped carefully in oilcloth and stashed in the false bottom of one of the armoires. There were spots of brownish rust showing along the barrel and the trigger guard where the humid river air had gotten through. I found my cleaning kit and broke the weapon down on the table and meticulously rubbed and oiled each piece. I did not search for a motivation for what I was doing. The fire, the tracking devices, the helicopter, the blown-out windshield or even the psychotic eyes of the subway killer. There was something moving in my veins when I slid the parts back together, snapped the fifteen-round clip into place and dry-fired the piece one time before stowing it in my bag to bring with me. I'd left the bag locked in my truck when I came up, knowing that Billy would detest its presence in his home, but the thought of it somehow gave me comfort. I left the patio, poured another cup, and returned to my work.