The part that infuriated him the most was how stupid it was. Tell it to sit, and it just stared at Jake as if he had asked it to tell him his telephone number. Shake or high-five was akin to a grammar question. Lie down or roll over was like asking that fucking dog to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx. The dog became neglected very quickly.

Then one evening Jake saw a dog play dead on the Dick Van Dyke Show—one of those boring old black-and-white programs that his mother made him watch because she thought humor was good for him. He saw the trick—performed with a German shepherd no less—and he became determined to teach it to Lewis.

By the fifth minute he realized that wonder dog was not going to be playing dead anytime soon. The only thing this dog was good for was smelling bad and pooping.

“Play dead!” the boy snapped, pointing at the ground.

Lewis stood there, eyes vacant, tongue lolling out of his mouth, actually looking like he had a smile on his face.

“I said play dead!”

Lewis took a step forward and got Jake in the mouth with a hot wet tongue.

And that did it. Jake stormed into the kitchen and ripped open the cutlery drawer. He found the big knife—the one his mother used to cut up chicken when she made that greasy slop called coq-au-vin. Jake pulled it out of the drawer, pounded back to the dog, and raised the knife above his head.

“PLAY DEAD!” he screamed at the dog.

Lewis’s ears snapped back and he winced. He knew the boy, knew how he became when his voice changed, and he backed up.

Jake charged the dog, grabbed it by the ear, and opened its throat in a wide swipe of the knife.

The dog made half of a high-pitched squeal, backed up a single step, and collapsed to the deck. Blood pumped out in a rhythmic arc that shrank with each pulse of his dying heart and his legs cycled in a run because his body did not yet understand that it was dead. He looked up at Jake with his big brown eyes.

The boy bent over the dog and spit on it. “THAT’S HOW YOU PLAY DEAD!” he screamed and went back into the house, closing and locking the door.

Of course, his mother knew. She had always known about him. Known how he was. Who he was. But Jacob wouldn’t listen. He’s had a tough start. Give him time. Give him a chance. Give. Give. Give.

His father had ordered her to take Jake out for breakfast, maybe to a movie. And the whole time she had just stared at him, as if examining an insect under a lens, her mouth a hard line, her eyes just a little too narrow. He had eaten a spectacular breakfast with a hearty appetite and when he had asked for more pancakes because they were his favorite, she had run from the table and he heard her sobbing in the restaurant’s bathroom.

After that morning she had always been afraid of him. And his parents’ marriage began to fall apart; it looked like eventually his father would have to make a choice between him and his mother. He had been on the boy’s side up until now, sticking up for him, trying to get her to give him a chance.

But it didn’t take a scientist to figure out that he had burned all of his chances with her—every last one.

As his father began the difficult process of choosing sides, Jake felt the gap begin to widen.

So he decided to improve his odds.

83

Jake was very still, his mind’s eye peering over one of the memory fences slapped up haphazardly between the different parts of himself. The images on the other side were spotlighted like exhibits in a museum—grotesque studies of a self he saw but did not recognize.

He drew the back of his hand across his mouth and it tasted of saltwater, tears, scotch, and vomit. Jake began to protest, to offer some kind of denial, but at that particular instant he saw something out of the corner of his eye, a glimmer on the staircase. He turned his head.

Jeremy sat on the bottom step, wearing the little hat with the dolphin embroidered on it. His son was smiling, hugging Elmo to his chest. He looked so happy. So alive. So real.

Jeremy lifted his little fist, opened and closed it in his own special version of a wave, then brought it back to Elmo. He flickered a little, like a distant television signal.

Tears filled Jake’s eyes. He blinked and they fell away. When he opened them again, Jeremy was gone.

Hauser stood up, circled around Jake. “You sonofabitch.”

Jake looked up, tried to focus on the man he thought of as some kind of an ally, some kind of friend. Did he not—could he not—see that this was a mistake? “I…I…didn’t…I couldn’t…”

“Yes, you could,” Hauser bellowed. “YES, YOU COULD!”

Jake’s defibrillator launched a bolt of electricity to his heart. He flinched, bit his tongue.

“You killed that woman and her child up the beach, Jake. You remember that?”

Jake shook his head. How could Hauser think that he had—?

But the compartments in his head were coming apart and the images were flowing together, creating pictures. Pictures that thrashed and screeched and bled. More pornography of the dead.

Jake had peeled Madame X, a squirming bag of shrieking bloody meat who had chewed off her own tongue. She had squealed and begged and bled and died in his hands. Jake Cole. The Bloodman.

The two television stations in his head were melding, knitting their separate signals into one program. The sequences they transmitted were still a little fuzzy, short on details. Except maybe the color red. There was plenty of that. More than enough to go around.

Hauser stepped to his right, blocking out Jake’s view of Frank with the yellow foam cracking his head apart. “Carradine told me that they got an ID on Little X, Jake. His DNA was matched through a lateral connection.”

“Through a sibling?” The only time children had their DNA on file was if they had been reported as missing and a sample had been provided to the bureau’s CODIS databank—the Combined DNA Index System. CODIS contained nearly three million DNA samples from missing persons. But a lateral match meant that they were matched through a family member who had their DNA in the CODIS databank—besides the missing persons section, CODIS contained nearly eight million genetic fingerprints of known offenders. As well as government and law-enforcement personnel.

Hauser’s face pulled tight and he looked into Jake’s eyes, the expression a cross between sadness and…what? Hauser walked over to Frank’s corpse, still shifting from the expanding foam. “I know who they are. Madame and Little X.”

Jake stumbled over and leaned against the island. “I don’t want to know.” The bright staccato of a rapid-fire slide show filled his vision. Faces developing out of shadows, like black-and-white photographs in a developing tank, growing clearer by the second.

Hauser shook his head, pulled two computer-printed photographs out of his pocket. He held them out, fanned wide like a pair of losing cards. Jake reached out, took them, and they slowly developed into faces. A woman. A boy. Beautiful. Alive.

His wife.

His son.

“No. No. Nononononononononooooooooooooo.”

Somewhere off in the distance he heard his son’s voice screeching as someone took him apart with a knife.

Not someone.

Him.

The Bloodman.

Me.

“Jake, I never saw them. No one did. You’ve been in Montauk for two weeks. TWO WEEKS! Jesus. You killed your wife and kid, Jake. Kay and Jeremy. You fucking skinned your wife and son, you sonofabitch. What is wrong with you?”

Jake’s chest thumped again but this was his adrenaline, not the Duracell. He held the photo, vibrating like a leaf in his hand. He saw Kay smiling up at him, then a quick loop of tape played through his head, one where she was on the floor, howling.