Blindspots Page 6

  Alexa smiled. It was time she tried her other talents. Other skills, long out of practice, were now demanded. Not that she doubted the loyalty of anyone in her Brotherhood; she just wanted to be doubly sure.

  "I'll take care of it. Just call the prison, and when you get our man on the guard detail, put him through to my line."

  9.

  Cape Canaveral

  Jake Griffith hung up the payphone in the prison hallway. Over his shoulder, Fenrik was watching him. At his side stood the new guard, someone named Jesse Krantz, transferred in today from Alabama. Fenrik was showing him the ropes.

  Fenrik, of course, was impossible to mistake: a bulky lumbering giant; and Krantz was obvious just by his contrast with Fenrik. The new guard was a desiccated scarecrow with drooping shoulders and slicked back hair; plus, he had that unmistakable circular tattoo on the side of his neck: a red-eyed snake eating its tail.

  Jake had just been talking to a lawyer. The latest in a succession of court-appointed hacks, but now he was nervous. Had Fenrik been able to listen in somehow? Maybe that was it. Maybe the phones were bugged, privacy and lawyer-client privilege be damned. But what would it matter? What would the guards make of his impassioned plea for his lawyer to follow up with that place in Vermont, the place Jake had seen on the news? Daedalus.

  The alternative was to attempt another escape, but after the last incident, they were watching him like a hawk. No privileges for at least another year, no excursions, no chance to slip away.

  But he had to find out about the woman. Monica Gilman. Jake's first call, earlier this morning, had been to the Daedalus Institute, where the receptionist there put him touch with another woman, a woman with a strange voice that almost sounded like an echo. She had asked Jake about his interest in the institute, and it was at that point he suddenly felt as if he'd made a mistake by revealing his excitement at seeing Monica Gilman on the news, his shock at finally being able to recognize someone, to retain a face. The woman on the other end of the line seemed impressed as well, promising to be in touch very soon, when they could work out a way to come visit him, or vice versa, the law permitting.

  After talking to that woman, he had felt drained, completely exhausted. He'd gone back to his cell and promptly fell asleep, plunging straight into a dream, in which shifting veils of black netting obscured an occupant in a shapeless room, a room that tilted back and forth, like a boat on the waves. A shadowy form sat on a lone wooden chair in the corner. The paint was peeling from the walls, hanging in tattered spirals. Somewhere a clock ticked. And voices -- that woman's voice from the phone, along with the other one, the sinister echo – were both speaking in mumbled, half-whispered phrases. The figure in the chair stirred. The shadows retreated and the light moved upwards from the floor, illuminating orange prison pants, then glinted off the item on the man's lap, the gold-rimmed hourglass with red powdery sand drifting the wrong way, into the top half, as if time was moving backwards.

  The light erased the shadow as it ascended, highlighting the blond-brown hair, and a blurred-out face.

  A face he somehow knew to be his own.

  The mumbled words, the shifting veils, then one word pushed free, clear and precise. The dream-Jake, his eyes closed, spoke the same word, over and over:

  "Daedalus."

  #

  Krantz and Fenrik closed the cell block gate behind them and approached, thumbs hooked under their belts. Jake stared at their batons and the holstered pistols, then he glanced over his shoulder, hoping some of his fellow inmates were around; he had the feeling he was going to need witnesses. But the hallway was deserted. Three in the afternoon, most everyone was outside, getting exercise, smoking or just laying in the sun.

  Some dudes would kill for this kind of life, Jake thought. Some of them had, he realized, but his concern now was only in saving his neck. He wasn't sure why Fenrik was after him this time, but it couldn't be good. Best to break the mood early.

  "Hi guys, heard from the Governor yet? Am I being pardoned?"

  Fenrik smirked as he walked past, taking up a position behind Jake while Krantz stayed in front, blocking him in. Jake looked around for the hallway's surveillance camera but saw it had been disabled, with wires hanging loose.

  "Uh oh," Krantz said. "Looks like nobody's gonna see what happens next."

  Jake inched sideways, flexing his fingers into fists, tensing his legs, preparing for a fight. "So, what now? Still mad about my little beach run the other day? Believe me, I've learned my lesson."

  Fenrik gave him a little shove from behind. "Tell you what, Jakey-boy. You tell us why you were calling some psycho ward up in Vermont and we won't beat the living shit out of you."

  Krantz shoved him back toward Fenrik. "--And blame it on a nasty spill you took down the stairs."

  Jake swallowed. "So it's going to be that kind of day? Fantastic. Okay, you got me, I'll talk."

  "We're all ears."

  "Listen, I need to have a doctor come down here and look at me. There's a chance--"

  "That you're fuckin' nuts?" Krantz giggled. "Wouldn't surprise me, given what we just learned."

  "What?"

  Fenrik gave him a shove, then backed out of the way as Jake threw an arm back to ward him off. "You hoping to get committed, Jakey?"

  "It's not that kind of place."

  Krantz faked a punch, then backed up, bouncing on his feet like a prizefighter. "Wouldn't have anything to do with a certain little boy who wandered off with a man who wasn't his daddy, now would it?"

  Jake's blood went cold. He couldn't move. The guards were circling now. Fenrik moved in front of him. "Yeah, Jakey-boy. We did some digging. Turned up a file someone forgot to seal, one of your early sessions with our quack psychologist here."

  "Rough life, kid," Krantz said, gloating. "Abducted from mommy and daddy when you were only a little tot." He made an exaggerated face and pretended to rub at his eyes.

  Fenrik chuckled. "At Disney World, of all places. Ain't that a kick in the balls? Perverts everywhere."

  Jake said nothing, warning his memories to stay back.

  Krantz moved in closer. "You ever wonder if your ugly little mug showed up on the back of milk cartons?"

  "Shut up."

  Krantz laughed. "Wasn't so bad, though? Right? Got to live on a nice houseboat for ten years. Didn't have to go to school or do any homework."

  "All you had to do," Fenrik said, in little more than a whisper, "was just lie back and let the old queer have his way."

  Jake shuddered, his nails digging into his palms.

  "Tell us, Jakey." Krantz moved right into his line of sight, inches from his face. Fenrik moved in close from the other side. "Do you miss his old leathery prick?"

  Fenrik grabbed him by the shoulders. "Do you--"

  Jake spun, his hands clasped together into one big fist that struck Fenrik square in his blurred-out face. The big man dropped to his side, choking and holding his blood-spurting nose, and then Jake was on him, pounding, punching, clawing... Choking.

  Krantz leapt on his back, but Jake shook off the lighter man instantly, then went back to work pummeling Fenrik.

  Fenrik's head cracked against the ground, and his nose – now a flat pulpy ruin – took another direct hit. But that was when Krantz put all his weight into the baton swinging against the back of Jake's head.

  And everything went black.

  #

  He awoke in a sandy field punctuated by waist-high grass under a looming silver moon, with the sound of the surf competing with the cicadas. To the east stood the back-lit silhouette of Cocoa's correctional facility, surrounded by a glinting metal fence with a silver crown of barbed wire. Searchlights stabbed along the ground in the yard, roving, moving from the higher watchtowers.

  He was a good half-mile at least from the fence.

  Uh oh. How did I get out here?

  Before he could even try to reason it out, two dark figures strode into his vision, one huge, the other built like a toothp
ick. Oh shit, Jake thought. This is it. Both men had guns, and they were just standing there, looking down at him like dispassionate mobsters, simply carrying out an assignment.

  "Awake, Jakey?" Fenrik's voice sounded horrible, as if he were still choking on blood. His nose had to be a mess, and Jake was surprised he was even walking and not in a hospital.

  "We've got about ten minutes," said Krantz, waving a gun in Jake's direction. "Before someone notices you're gone."

  "A lot can happen," Fenrik said, now holding a towel to his face, "in ten minutes."

  "Then kill me already," Jake whispered. He stumbled to his feet, fought a rush of nausea, raised his hands and turned around. "This is probably the way you want me, right – a clean shot at my back?"

  "We'll get to that," Fenrik said in a drool-laden garble. "You shouldn't have tried to escape."

  Jake took a long breath, held and savored it as his last. He had to laugh in spite of it all. He turned his face to the cowering stars, to the near-blinding face of the moon, and then he closed his eyes.

  Would he even hear the gunshots? The bastards were toying with him, but he wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of pleading, begging or whimpering. In fact, he was hoping they'd shoot soon. He'd suffered enough.

  As he held his breath, questions struggled, vying to be answered before the end: Why had he been born this way? Were there really others like him? And most importantly – why could he see that woman on the news?

  Silencing his questions, a single deafening gunshot, echoing off the distant prison walls.

  A choked cry of surprise. A gurgling sound, then a collapse of something heavy.

  Jake exhaled. He counted to five, waiting for the laughter, a final joke before the real shot. When he couldn't wait any longer, he turned. Slowly.

  Only one guard remained on his feet, shining in the moonlight. Big Fenrik lay on the ground. His feet twitched, then were still.

  "Listen to me, Jake." Krantz lowered his head, and the hand that held the .45 began to tremble. "Listen good."

  His voice had shifted, turned hard, mirthless and almost unrecognizable. "In a minute, you're going to take my uniform. Then, you’ll take my gun and go to the jeep – it's behind the trees right over there. The keys are in the ignition. There's five hundred dollars in the glove compartment. Get to the I-5 and drive until you hit the next exit, where you'll get out at the closest parking lot and switch cars. I assume you can hotwire a car?"

  "Yes, but--"

  "After that, you know where to go, right?"

  Jake was still looking at Fenrik's body. "I think…I think so."

  "Say it," Krantz whispered. And his hand rose, the gun coming with it.

  Jake's tongue dried up as if he had just chewed a mouthful of salt. "Daedalus."

  Krantz smiled. He reverently placed the gun's barrel to his own temple, and in the silvery-blue moonlight his tears sparkled as they rolled down his face. His eyes pleaded with a vehemence that his body ignored.

  Jake screamed and lunged.

  And Krantz squeezed the trigger.

  #

  Jake looked back toward the prison, to the searchlights that were already lengthening, seeking the source of the gunshots. Dogs started barking.

  Take my uniform, my gun, my jeep…

  What if I refuse? Jake thought. Sit here and surrender when they come? Tell them the truth, as crazy as it sounded: that Krantz went psycho and shot his buddy, then himself. No, Jake doubted he'd even be given the chance to talk. Some trigger happy guard would see the condition of his colleagues, and just start shooting.

  More bad luck. Or was it something else? Whatever the case, there was only one path left now. All the other doors had been closed.

  He had no other choice. He bent over Krantz and started to take off the guard's shirt. After changing and tossing his orange suit over Krantz’s unseeing eyes. Jake picked up the gun and headed for the jeep.

  10.

  Nevada

  The knock at the front door came at the worst possible time, but Nestor Simms had never once believed his mission would be easy.

  The Scourge would not go quietly; it might look weak and fragile, like the young woman strapped with leather belts to his bedposts, pretending to moan, bleeding those fake tears, trying to plead for its life through the duct-tape, but Nestor knew better. The demonic Scourge, living inside this girl, was far from defenseless. It had allies.

  And now its minions had tracked him here, way out in the Nevada desert, thirty miles from Reno, to his trailer home parked beside a wall of cactus trees shaped like infirmed gargoyles.

  The knocking again, insistent, demanding. And a voice, shouting through the window, “Nestor Simms?"

  Nestor grimaced, pulled his two-hundred and forty pound frame off the bed and gave the woman a quick glance-over before averting his eyes, ashamed suddenly, to be aroused by the demon's costume, its fleshly robes. The way her legs slid against each other as her body twisted, her neck straining… her face…

  Ah, the face. At once Nestor's resolve returned. The Scourge was powerful, and other men might be ensnared by its guises, but not Nestor. He had the gift. The gift of True Sight. There it was; faces didn’t lie.

  That's what his father had said, right before Nestor killed him. Look at their faces, boy, and see the Devil, the Scourge. Faces don't lie.

  Faces, like his own father's. Maybe no one else could truly see, but he could. He saw through the masks. Faces couldn't lie – not like mirrors. Despite what mirrors reflected, Nestor knew he had a face. He could feel it, touch the solidity of his own face. Constant, perfect, his features unchanging, not like the face he saw in the mirrors – before he broke them all.

  The insistent knocking pulled him back into the present.

  He'd been found.

  #

  After adjusting the gag, making sure the woman couldn't make a sound and that she was secured tight against her bonds, Nestor changed his t-shirt. He walked over crumpled Coke cans and empty Tequila bottles – the only thing able to keep the horror of his mission at bay. He walked past the frame that once held a mirror, now only fragments, shards hanging from the top frame like loose teeth in diseased gums.

  When he opened the door and looked down upon the Scourge's minion – a blond-haired, blue-suited police officer with a blurred-out face and those horrid reflective sunglasses, he nearly lost his composure. But he found his inner strength and remained calm. "Can I help you, officer?"

  The cop nodded, inclined his head slightly, trying to look around Nestor's considerable frame. Nestor saw the dusty police car ten yards away, noted the footprints in the dirt where the officer had obviously taken a little walk around, looking for anything suspicious.

  The officer handed Nestor a newspaper. “Your Sunday paper, it was on the step.”

  “Thanks.” Nestor took it and set it on the table beside him without looking at it, or away from the officer. “You moonlighting as a paperboy?”

  The cop shook his head without breaking a smile. “Nope, I’m here to ask about this.” He held up a 6x9 photograph. "Seen this woman?"

  Nestor squinted, leaned forward, suppressing a smile as he looked at the head of hair surrounding a jumbled-up mess where the face should have been.

  "Nope," he said honestly. "Can't say as I have. What happened, another lost hiker?"

  "Another one?" The mirrored sunglasses reflected Nestor's image suddenly, showing only the blur of his own undecipherable features. "You hear of others?"

  "Ah, always someone gettin' lost up here. Desert's a tough place for a hike."

  The cop shoulders relaxed, just a little. "All the same, can you tell me if you've seen anyone recently?"

  "Nope, been awhile since I seen anyone, 'cept maybe at the county store."

  "How often you get into town, Mr. Simms?"

  Nestor smiled, his tongue licking over yellow front teeth. "Twice a week's enough for me, officer. I have all I need out here, what with my DirecTV to keep track
of the world, my water pump out back, and a couple chickens for some eggs."

  The officer nodded absently, not even listening. His head was cocked and for a moment Nestor worried that his prisoner had somehow gotten free and had crawled into the path of the officer's vision.

  "Well then, Mr. Simms, be sure to keep an eye out for our lost hiker, and call anything in."

  "Sure thing," Nestor said.

  The officer turned, then paused just as Nestor was about to close the door. "Hey, I wonder if you wouldn't mind – it's been a long trip out here and I drank two cups of black coffee and I really got to go like a sonofabitch…"

  "You can piss out back," Nestor said. "Against the cactus if you like."

  The officer smiled. "Really, I'm sorry, but I'm thinkin' it might be more like a shit, but I didn't want to offend…"

  Nestor lip quivered. "Oh. Well--"

  "Really won't be no trouble," the officer said. "In and out, I promise. …"

  Nestor glanced back at the mess in his kitchen, and before he could think of a response, the cop was stepping on in, holding his stomach. "Thanks, buddy. Really appreciate it."

  As the metal door slammed shut, Nestor maneuvered to get in front of the officer to lead the way – and to make sure he reached and managed to shut the bedroom door before his guest passed on his way to the lone bathroom.

  "Thanks again," the officer said, removing his sunglasses and grinning at Nestor as he stepped over bottles, empty potato chip bags and broken egg shells. "Nice place you got here."

  Nestor said nothing, as he kept his hand on the bedroom's doorknob.

  "Be right out," the officer said, shutting the bathroom door.

  Nestor whispered a curse and finally, grudgingly, when it seemed the officer might be a few minutes, returned to the kitchen and began to clean up, picking up cans and putting them in the sink. Later in the week he would have go into town and deposit the two-hundred and seventy-five dollars the girl had in her purse; it would join the small savings he had accumulated – spoils of war after defeating the others the Scourge had sent to test him.