Frank lost a little of his height and a lot of his presence in one great sigh. “Where is the portrait?”

“Sitting in the bottom of a garbage can at Hauser’s.” Jake suddenly realized that he was very tired and very cold. His fingers felt like they had been salvaged from someone else’s hands and he was storing a frozen roast in his chest. “I need a hot shower, some dry clothes, and about a thousand years of sleep.”

“Go bed down in one of the empty rooms. This is America, Jakey. You can do shit like that.”

“Can’t. Kay, Jeremy. I won’t stop until I know…” The words dropped off for a few seconds. Then he came back with things he could do. “I need to talk to Hauser. I need to get back to the station.”

“And your father?” Frank said.

Jake headed down the steps. “They’ll get him through surgery. There’s sweet fuck-all I can do here. Let’s go.”

Frank stood in place, his foot poised a few inches over the next step down. “What if he—it—comes back?”

An image in grainy brilliance flashed on the TV tube behind Jake’s eyes, an image of the figure standing in the corridor behind Mrs. Mitchell. “If he wanted Dad dead, he wouldn’t have cut out his tongue. He’d have cut his fucking head off, Frank. He’s gone from here.” What else could he say? That he really didn’t give a fuck about his old man, not if forced to make a choice between the old bastard and his wife and son? No, he couldn’t say that. Not out loud.

Frank pulled out another cigarette and started down the steps. “If he’s done with everyone else, Jakey, he’s coming after you next.”

Jake felt the frozen roast shift in his chest. “I’m counting on that.”

Jake had to put his shoulder into the steel emergency door to force it open. He held it for Frank and it bucked and pulled against his fingers and he pushed it closed with both arms.

They kept low, hunched into the wind, and moved as fast as they could for the Hummer parked around the corner of the hospital, up on the grass. Jake climbed over a mailbox that the storm had thrown across the parking lot and jammed up against the side of the vehicle. The roof of a house sat in the lot on Frank’s side of the truck, shingles ripped up, joists sticking through like broken bones.

He got in, snapped the seat belt on, slid the key into the ignition, and froze.

A T-shirt was slung over the steering wheel like a towel left to dry. It was hacked through with dozens of slash marks, the once baby-blue cotton now stained black. David Hasselhoff grinned up obscenely from the bloody fabric, the line Don’t Hassel The Hoff! blaring out in bright script streaked with blood.

It was a gift—a postcard—a note to let him know that someone was thinking about him. Having a grand time. Wish you were here.

Jake screamed.

70

Jake had his hands wrapped around a cup of warm coffee and his fingers almost felt like his own again. Hauser had scrounged up a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and the dry clothes combined with the warm mug had almost stopped the shivering. He sat in a wooden chair in the same interrogation room where he had hastily put together Emily Mitchell’s portrait. Hauser sat on the edge of the table, cradling his own cup of coffee and looking just as tired as Jake. Frank stood in the corner, working on a sandwich and another cigarette that Hauser had grudgingly allowed him to smoke inside. Kay’s bloody T-shirt sat on the table in a clear evidence bag.

Jake and Frank showed up at Hauser’s office just after the sheriff had returned from the Mitchell house—in these conditions the crime scene investigation would have to wait, and Hauser had left his most inexperienced (i.e., expendable during the storm) deputy to make sure that no one contaminated the scene. The ex-quarterback’s usually calm demeanor was showing signs of tension rot from watching the community he was sworn to serve and protect get ravaged by forces far beyond his control. After Jake filled him in on what had happened at the hospital, he had run through an extensive—and impressive—litany of curses. Now, after the initial rush of adrenaline, the three men sat in an exhausted silence.

It was Frank who spoke. “This sandwich tastes like ass. And not the good kind.”

Hauser shook his head. “It might taste better if you didn’t smoke while chewing on it.”

Frank snorted in derision and went back to work on the cigarette break/snack.

Hauser crossed his arms on his chest. He looked at Jake, his bloodshot eyes narrowing. “What do we do to stop this guy? Wait until he runs out of people to kill?”

“I have to stop him. There is a way. He has a purpose here, I’m just not seeing it.”

“How the fuck can you sit there so goddamned calm and analytical? Your wife—” he picked up the evidence bag with the wet T-shirt inside—“your son—are missing! This guy has your goddamned family and you sit there like the fucking Rock of Gibraltar. Jesus Christ, where do you come from?”

Jake sprung up and threw his cup at the two-way window. It hit dead center and detonated in an explosion of ceramic and coffee that sprayed the room. “You think I’m calm? I’m one inch away from going out and executing everyone I see on the off chance that it’s him! I’m real sorry about Madame X and Little X and Rachael Macready and David Finch and Mrs. Mitchell and her daughter and my father and the rest of the people who have been hit by this—I really am. I’d like to be benevolent. I’d like to believe in sacrifice. But I don’t. Not now and not ever. I’d trade all of them for my wife and son. And if I can’t get them back, I can go forward until this burning in my guts turns to despair and I give up.” Jake pointed at Hauser and his eyes filled with tears. “The only way I can do this—the only way I keep from eating a round from this—” he yelled, slapping the pistol in the holster on his belt—“is by remembering that this monster is going to keep doing what he does until I stop him. And you, with your I’m only a poor country cop soliloquy, certainly aren’t going to do it! Not with your whole fucking troop of inexperienced egg-salad-eating morons out there! The one chance we have at this—the one guy that can find this fucker—is me. He’s here for me. And you want a little fact, Mike? I hope he finds me. I pray to whatever roll of the dice put him onto me all those years ago that he finds me, because he and I are going to have a little talk.” Jake’s eyes went a deeper shade of not there. “And only one of us is walking away.”

Hauser pursed his lips. “So what’s next?”

“I go home. That’s where this started, that’s where it’s going to end. I don’t know how I know, but I do. He’s going to come looking for me. He has to.”

The door flew open and Wohl burst in. “Special Agent Cole, we got a satellite link. I don’t know why—the storm’s not getting any better—but it’s up. I don’t know for how long.”

Jake reached for his laptop on the table beside Hasselhoff’s bloody face grinning up from the evidence bag. “I need a few minutes for this.”

Wohl shrugged. “You can have all the time you want but when it comes to the satellite, that’s up to Mother Nature.”

Jake followed Wohl and Hauser closed up the rear. Frank opted to stay in the interrogation room now that he had someplace to smoke.

The communications room was pretty much what Jake expected: a pair of dispatch transmitters—a hot unit and a backup—blinking like pachinko machines; three computer terminals equipped with enormous monitors for tracking cell phone and handheld calls; and an assortment of server towers and network hubs, all running off the backup generator.

Jake sat down and the communications officer, Mary Skillen, nodded a hello. “We’ve had a connection for one minute, thirty-one…thirty-two…thirty-three seconds. It ain’t gonna be here forever.” There was a FireWire cable and a computer printout in her hand. “Here’s the system access code. Get your mail out as fast as you can.”