46

He tried to get Jeremy to explain the man in the floor, to describe him in some concrete way, maybe even to summon him. But when he had pressed—really pushed the boy—he had run to the middle of the living room, jumped up and down, and screamed, “Bud! Bud! Bud!” over and over until Jake had finally picked him up and told him to forget it. And for some reason this made Jeremy even more frustrated, more angry, as if jumping up and down in the middle of the living room was the answer.

Jake and Kay spent the morning photographing the paintings in the studio. Kay held the digital recorder and Jake flipped through the paintings, holding them up one at a time—just long enough for the camera to capture it—then he moved onto the next. Jake knew that when the video was finally viewed, it would look like a meth addict’s homage to Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” But he had spoken to the lab back at Quantico and they had software that could isolate each individual canvas and apply it to its place in an overall pattern.

They worked fast, some minutes capturing up to forty canvases, others barely getting ten. By the end of the first hour they had cataloged 1,106 canvases. By the end of the second hour, another 897—a sizeable dent in the process.

“I need a sandwich,” Kay said, her arm up on the camera, bent at the wrist, the word L-O-V-E inked across her knuckles.

“And a Coke,” Jake added.

Jake didn’t want Jeremy in the studio proper where the studies of the faceless men of blood looked down from everywhere, so he had been relegated to the studio’s small entryway, doing a pretty good job of entertaining himself with more Hot Wheels mayhem. Kay had found a Patti Smith album in one of the milk crates under the ancient freezer-sized oak stereo and Jeremy was using the soundtrack to his full advantage, little imaginary car-accident victims meeting their maker to “Redondo Beach.”

“You want a coffee, Moriarty?” Jake asked above the music, and walked over to the entryway. He stepped in. “A big coffee?”

Jeremy laughed. “I don’t like no coffee, Daddy. I like milk and apple juice.”

Looking at his son now, sprawled out on the tiled floor of the entryway with his cars shining like metallic insects, he could see the machinations the boy’s mind was going through to forget what had happened that morning. The part that frightened Jake was that his son refused to talk about it. What was he afraid of? Was it the same man in the floor that had his father spooked? Was it a communal hallucination or was it something more tangible? The answer was easy in coming: hallucinations couldn’t finger-paint a skull over your son’s face in blood.

“So let’s get some lunch,” Jake said, to Jeremy and Kay’s applause. “You guys are easy to please.”

“That’s us, easy-peasy!”

“Well, Mrs. Easy—” he said, winking at Kay—“and Mr. Peasy, how about some tuna sandwiches?”

Jake looked at his watch and saw that they had about an hour before Kay and Jeremy headed back to the city, and he wanted to catalog as many of the paintings as possible. They headed inside, Jake carrying Jeremy in his arms, Kay with the camera and tripod over her shoulder like a spear-bearer. Kay flipped off the lights.

The outer edge of the storm had made landfall and the sky was gone in a mass of gray and white that misted the coast with a solid shower. The grass was already saturated and the falling water pushed by the wind that had fired up etched shifting patterns in the rolling chop of the ocean. Jeremy laughed as Jake ran through the rain, swearing in Moriarty-friendly language that made him sound like a crazed Yosemite Sam.

Jake held the door for Kay, his hand protectively covering the back of Jeremy’s head. Wind ripped into the house and dust devils and papers swirled in mini funnels. The wind slammed the door for him as he jumped inside after her.

“I don’t want to be here when Dylan rolls in, Jake.” Kay took the camera off the tripod.

Jake put Jeremy down in the kitchen and dried his hair with a fistful of paper towels. “I say we have some sandwiches, then hit the road. Who’s with me?”

Jeremy shot his arm into the air in a Fascist vote and Kay nodded, grinning brightly. “What about the case?” she asked.

“F-U-C-K the case,” he said. “We are leaving.”

Kay’s T-shirt was wet and clung to her body and her nipples earned her a happy stare from Jake. “After a quick nap, that is,” he added.

“All right, coffee, Moriarty?”

Jeremy shouted, “I said I don’t drink no coffee!”

“Oh, yeah. Forgot. Sorry. I must be thinking about some other little boy I know.” He bent down, kissed his son, and sent him out of the kitchen with an affectionate pat on the bum. “You go play with your cars and I’ll make us some lunch.”

Jeremy ran to the living room and plopped himself down on the multicolored tapestry of intertwined rugs. He fished in his pockets, then threw his cars down like a handful of Yahtzee dice. Within seconds the casualties were piling up amid three-year-old dinosaur roars.

Jake washed his hands and pulled out the loaf of Wonder Bread from the Kwik Mart. He thought about Mallomars. And about what had happened to his mother three-quarters of his life ago. About his old man, terrified to the point of hysteria, screaming about the blood man, fastened to the bed frame so he wouldn’t open up his painter’s tool box and do any more portraits in the medium of dementia. Sobel, sounding a little too much like Vincent Price when he spoke of his father’s terrors, the academic nod of his head somehow giving his old man’s fears more weight than Jake wanted to allow. There was Madame and Little X, Nurse Macready, Hauser and his impromptu hurricane task force. His mother’s Benz, already in the science lab in Quantico, having her honor compromised by the best of modern forensic investigative techniques—being forced to give up her cherry after a third of a century. He thought about the goddamned lighthouse over Nurse Macready’s shoulder in the photo and about the isosceles puddle of black blood in the corner of her kitchen. About the beautiful people of Connecticut, laid out in candy by an autistic girl in a psychiatrist’s office. He thought about the approaching hurricane and about Jeremy’s creepy new friend, the man in the floor, who he wouldn’t discuss. There were the five thousand or so canvases—an obsessive-compulsive’s jackpot—stacked up in the studio. He thought about his wife’s cello and about Jeremy’s Hot Wheels. And he knew that he wanted to get away from here. To go as far and as fast as he could and not look back, not come back, not ever think about the stinking place for as long as he lived.

But he had a son to feed and he concentrated on that, the simple act of mixing a little tuna with mayo and adding a smidge of salt and pepper. He would have liked to add onions and some celery but like his old man had often said, you can only eat what you kill. So it was going to be boring tuna, a glass of milk, two Cokes, a quick nap, and it was off to the city in an ancient car with—

“Kay?” he said, simultaneously glopping a scoop of tuna salad onto a square of cancer bread. “We don’t have room for your cello. It won’t fit in the car and if we lash it to the roof rack, it’ll get soaked.”

“F-U-C-K the cello, Jake,” she said. “I just want us to get out of here.” She stood on the other side of the counter, the T-shirt clinging to her little frame. Beneath the white cotton the calligraphy of her skin moved as if it were a separate living creature. Jake knew how she felt about the instrument—it was the only material item she cared for—and if she was dismissing it so easily, he knew that she wanted to get out of here.

“It’s supposed to be airtight, right? I’ll duct-tape the seams—maybe that’ll help. It’s one for all—”