Jack of Spades Read online

  “Matt, I need to be sure. Do you understand the rules? Take a moment to think about it.”

  Finneran did as told. He thought back to what the fucking nutjob had said. He’d get two choices, he had to choose one or the asshole would act like he’d chosen both options offered. Finneran looked up at Galaxo and nodded again.

  “Good,” Galaxo said. “Now, let’s see…okay, here are your choices. You have to choose one. Ready? I’ll either take out your eyes with a spoon, or cut off your balls with an electric carving knife. Castrate you. The choice is yours.”

  Finneran’s eyes widened. Holy shit! The news stories hadn’t prepared him for exactly what this bastard did to people. His eyes or his balls? Holy shit.

  “I don’t know,” Galaxo said, “maybe that’s not a good one. Let me think…”

  Finneran sucked a big breath into his nostrils and tried to slow his breathing. He didn’t want to panic. Was there a way out of this? He didn’t think so. He lived alone in an old apartment building with thick walls. Even if he screamed into the tape covering his mouth, he doubted his neighbors would hear him. Besides, it was the middle of the night. They were all sound asleep. And he wasn’t going to be able to break free of the tape securing him to the chair. He’d already tried. No, this piece of shit would be able to do whatever he wanted.

  Finneran wondered if he was going to die tonight. He remembered from the news that some of Galaxo’s victims had lived. Would he be so lucky?

  He realized that Galaxo had fallen silent, as if in deep thought. Then the guy shook his head.

  “You know, I don’t think I’ll be able to top that one. So that’s your choice. Your eyes or your testicles. Once I start this timer—” he held up a kitchen timer shaped like an apple “—you’ll have one minute to choose. Now, normally I’d take the tape off your mouth, but this is an apartment, not a house, so I can’t take the chance that you’ll call for help and someone will hear you. The tape has to stay on. So I need you to make your choice nonverbally, okay? Why don’t you blink rapidly if you want me to take out your eyes and, oh, I don’t know, rock your hips a little if you want me to cut off your balls? Got it?”

  Jesus Christ, Finneran thought. This was really going to happen. This motherfucker was going to do just what he said. And there wasn’t a thing Finneran could do about it.

  “I need you to indicate that you understand, Matt. It’s very important that you understand your choices. So nod right now or I’ll beat you to death with a wrench.” He reached into the small gym bag on the kitchen table beside him and pulled out a big, dark, metal wrench. Finneran nodded quickly.

  “Okay, then,” Galaxo said brightly, his cheerful fucking cartoon voice squeaking, “here we go. Remember now, blink quickly if you choose to lose your eyes, move your hips for your balls. Ready…here we go!”

  He started the timer and placed it on the kitchen counter. The top half of the apple turned slowly. The soft ticking sounded loud to Finneran.

  Eyes or testicles. Dear God. And he had no doubt that Galaxo would carry through on his threat. He’d take one or the other, and if Finneran didn’t choose before the timer went off, he’d take both.

  “Ten seconds gone already, Matt,” Galaxo said. “You really need to—”

  Finneran rocked his hips. Galaxo stared at him in silence for a moment.

  “Almost twenty seconds gone now. Only forty left.”

  Finneran thrust his pelvis as far forward as the tape restricting his movement would allow.

  “Is that…are you making your choice?”

  Finneran nodded. He moved his hips again. Galaxo said nothing for a few seconds. The timer kept ticking.

  “You need to take this seriously, Matt. I swear to God, I’ll cut your balls off. You don’t believe me, I know, but I’ll do it. So take a little more time. You have just over half a minute—”

  Finneran pumped his hips forward in the chair again and grunted into the tape over his mouth.

  “Are you telling me you’d rather lose your balls than your eyes?”

  Finneran nodded vigorously.

  “Are you crazy?” The question, coming from the sick bastard in the kid’s toy mask, almost made Finneran laugh. Instead, he shook his head and moved his pelvis again. “What kind of man are you?”

  Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick…. Galaxo stared at him. When he spoke again, though the voice was still that of Galaxo, Starboy Avenger!, the chipper tone the man under the mask had used until that point disappeared. “You don’t understand, you dumb fuck. I’ll take an electric carving knife and cut your balls off. I’ll fucking do it. Now think about it again and make the right choice.”

  Finneran didn’t have to think about it any more. He was almost thirty years old and he’d never had a serious girlfriend. He was overweight and, he had to admit, ugly. He didn’t even have a decent personality to at least partially offset these deficiencies. He wasn’t friendly or funny. He wasn’t good with people. Never had been. To be honest, he didn’t think he’d need his balls all that much. Sure, no guy wanted to lose those, especially not like this, cut off by a psycho with an electric knife, but he supposed he could live without them. His eyes, though…

  Finneran was an artist. He painted. And sculpted a little. And he’d been told by the few people to whom he’d shown his work that it was beautiful. He’d moved them with it. He hadn’t sold anything yet, hadn’t even tried to, but he knew he would one day, when he was ready to let his creations go, free them into the world. Right now they were all in the garage behind his parents’ house, which they’d converted into a studio for him and his sister, who proved not to have nearly the talent he possessed. Right now his art was still his own. He could look at it whenever he wanted. He could travel to the worlds he’d created on his canvases, remember the feelings he’d had painting them, the freedom he’d felt, the distance he’d felt from this world, the real one, the world in which he’d never love or be loved, in which he’d never find true friendship, or even comfortable companionship. But one day, one day soon he’d put his work out there, and he’d move even more people. He’d make a mark. And that was something he’d never do with his testicles. He’d never please a lover. Never father a child. But he’d created dozens of elegant works of art over the years, and he had many, many more inside him. And he needed his eyes to help him release them.

  “Twenty seconds left, Finneran,” Galaxo said. He was angry now. “And I’m not just going to cut off your balls. I’ll cut off your dick, too. Understand? I’ll turn you into a woman. So make the right choice.”

  Finneran moved his hips again and Galaxo struck him hard in the jaw with the wrench. Finneran felt something crack. The pain was excruciating.

  Tick, tick, tick…

  “You have fifteen seconds now, you pathetic piece of shit, and unless you make the right choice, I’ll skin you alive. You hear me?”

  Finneran knew what the fucking lunatic wanted. He tried hard not to blink at all, afraid to move a muscle in his eyelids. He didn’t want to send the wrong signal. His eyes were watering now and he let them. While keeping his eyes open and perfectly still, he again moved his hips forward and back and flinched, fearing another blow from the wrench.

  Galaxo’s black-gloved hand gripped the heavy metal wrench tightly.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked, the profanity and angry tone so incongruous with the smiling cartoon face and the silly cartoon voice. “Are you even a man at all? Who would choose his eyes over his genitals? Goddamn it.”

  Tick, tick…

  “Blink your fucking eyes!”

  Finneran didn’t let his eyelids fall a fraction of an inch. He could barely see through the water welling up in them. Tears ran down his cheeks. He could hear Galaxo’s breathing beneath the mask, hard, raspy breaths hissing through the little speaker in the yellow plastic face.

  “Do it, goddamn you, blink your fucking eyes!”

  Finneran didn’t.

  “Fucking do it.”
<
br />   Ding.

  All Finneran heard was Galaxo’s breathing. He was staring at Finneran. A moment later he turned and looked at the shiny red apple timer, which had stopped ticking, sitting on the Formica counter. His breathing got deeper. Finneran thought he heard a low, guttural sound, like a grunt. Then Galaxo turned back toward him.

  SIXTEEN

  When the phone rang, Spader was slouching at one end of his sofa. At the other, the Galaxo mask sat watching him with its twinkling green eyes, smiling its big fucking smile. The Galaxo case file was spread out in front of him on the cheap, scarred coffee table the prior occupant of his apartment had left behind. He was tired of looking at the file, however, and was watching a John Wayne war movie on television with mild interest. He wasn’t even sure which one it was. The Duke’s war movies weren’t nearly as good as his westerns, but any one of them was still a pretty good choice for late-night viewing. Spader was relaxed. He’d let the Duke take him along on the battlefield, take him away from his own battles for a while, which was nice. So when the phone rang, it wasn’t a welcome sound. It seldom was, he reflected, in the middle of the night, and it was quarter to two at the moment.

  “Spader,” he said into the receiver.

  “It’s Gavin. You awake? Stupid question, you just answered the phone. You get beeped yet?”

  “No. Shit, what happened?”

  “There’s been a murder.”

  Spader sucked in a breath. Oh, Christ, if only he’d followed Wagner when he left Hull. He could have stopped him from—

  Dunbar interrupted his thoughts by adding, “It’s Oscar Wagner.”

  “Shit,” Spader whispered under his breath.

  A flurry of questions rose in his mind, like a flock of pigeons in a park scattering, taking to the air when a kid on a skateboard cruises through. Was Gavin saying he was right, that Oscar Wagner was Galaxo? Had they caught him? But Gavin said there’d been a murder. Maybe he was caught in the act. Before he could ask any of these questions, Dunbar said, “He’s dead.”

  Spader frowned. “Hold on a second, Gavin,” he said. “Who’s dead?”

  “I told you. Oscar Wagner.”

  Spader opened his mouth to say something, then froze that way.

  “You there, John? You hear me?”

  “Oscar’s dead? Then he’s not…I don’t understand. What happened?”

  “You can see for yourself. Struthers wants us out at Wagner’s place, where it happened. He figures you’d want to be there anyway.”

  Spader felt numb. He also felt a little guilty. For a brief moment he’d been disappointed that Wagner was dead, not because his former colleague and friend had died, but because it made it less likely that he was Galaxo and this goddamned case would close soon. He shook his head. “He’s right,” he said, “I do want to be there.”

  Spader drove along Lexington Street in Waltham, then turned right onto School Street. He traveled another few blocks and saw up ahead the flashing lights of two Waltham PD cruisers. Blue flashes lit up faces in two dozen windows, all watching the action with interest, despite the late hour. Spader pulled over behind an ambulance, which sat behind a state police Crime Scene Services van, which was parked behind the cruisers. He saw an unmarked unit at the scene as well. He walked up the stairs, showed his badge to the cop at the door, and followed the cop’s directions to the third floor, apartment 3C.

  Spader had never been inside the apartment, though he’d been parked in front of it the past two nights, of course. Wagner had moved to Waltham after they’d lost touch. As he climbed the stairs, Spader’s eyes roamed over the peeling paint, paint not far along the color spectrum from the avocado-green of the stairwell leading up to Eddie Rivers’s apartment.

  Apartment 3C was easy enough to find. It was the only apartment on the third floor that had a cop with a clipboard standing beside a door with a pair of feet sticking out of it. Spader flashed his badge to the Waltham officer, took a small breath, and peered around the doorjamb.

  The place was a big enough, but it was a dump, from what Spader could see from his vantage point. Water-stained walls, carpets stained with a dozen substances it would probably take the CSS team a week to identify. Mismatched, yard-sale furniture. But what caught his eye was Oscar Wagner, lying face up in a puddle of blood on the floor at his feet, eyes open and staring. Spader blinked once, then looked again with his detective’s eye. He counted half a dozen bullet holes. He’d taken a few in the body, one in the neck, and at least two in the face. Whoever gunned him down had started pulling the trigger and probably didn’t stop until the gun was empty.

  Spader stepped carefully over Wagner’s legs and into the apartment. He ignored the cops and a few local police evidence technicians working the scene and just stared down at the body. This body, this person lying here, used to be Spader’s friend. They used to work together. They shared food and beer and stories and laughs. Spader looked down at the face, full of blood and surprise, and tried to reconcile it with the face he remembered—not the gray, gaunt face from the other day, that wasn’t how he really remembered Oscar, but the face from years before—the face with the slightly sleepy eyes and friendly, cocky smile. Near Wagner’s right hand was the small gym bag Spader had seen him carry out to his car earlier.

  “Oh, shit.”

  Spader looked up to see Dunbar standing in the doorway.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Spader said. “Looks like whoever did this knocked him down with the first few slugs and just kept shooting.”

  Dunbar looked up. “You don’t know?”

  “What?”

  “They caught the killer. She never left the scene. She’s down in one of the squad cars right now.”

  “She?”

  “Peter Lisbon’s mother. Looks like he went out and she was waiting for him on the landing out here when he got back, probably in the shadows. She must have said something after he opened his door, made him turn around, then she dropped him.”

  The shock at hearing Dunbar’s words hit hard and fast, and just as fast it disappeared as Spader realized the full implications of those words.

  “I killed him, Gavin.”

  “Bullshit, John, you couldn’t know—”

  “I fucking killed Oscar. Shit.” Spader took a blind step back and dropped onto a threadbare couch, completely unconcerned at the moment about possibly contaminating the crime scene. A CSS officer, his red hair buzzed into a crew cut, hurried over.

  “Uh, excuse me, Detective?”

  Dunbar waved him away. He put a hand on Spader’s shoulder.

  “John, come on, you couldn’t know Lisbon’s mother would go after him. Besides, somebody must have leaked that we suspected him. Whoever did that, they’re to blame, not you.”

  Spader blew out a breath and stood up. He appreciated Dunbar’s words, even though they didn’t make him feel much better. He snagged the attention of the redheaded CSS officer, who was taking a photograph across the room.

  “Officer, do me a favor?” He pointed to the gym bag by Wagner’s right hand. “Process this bag as soon as you can, tell me what’s in it.”

  “Will do.”

  Spader took a last look at Wagner, then turned away. “Let’s find whoever’s in charge here.”

  “No need,” Dunbar said. He nodded toward a tall, angular man in a tired suit who was walking up to them. Before he could ask who they were, Spader and Dunbar flashed their badges and introduced themselves.

  “Mike Crossland,” the Waltham detective said, shaking their hands.

  “Detective Crossland,” Spader said, “as I understand you’ve been made aware, the victim was one of us at one time. That’s why we’re here, why we requested to work with you on this.”

  Crossland nodded slowly. “Doesn’t seem like too tough a case, though,” he said. “Not sure we’ll need much help.” Spader said nothing and Crossland regarded him for a moment. “But, of course, we’ll be happy to work an open, cooperative investigation with you.” S
pader suspected that the man had been told by his superiors to cooperate fully, and he realized the state police officer who had liaised with the Waltham PD might have requested that their reason for wanting in on the investigation be kept confidential. “Have a look around, if you want,” Crossland added.

  He seemed a decent sort. It probably rankled him to have the state police in on this, but he tried, at least a little, not to show it. Spader nodded his thanks and he and Dunbar had just started checking out the scene in more detail when Spader’s cell phone rang on his hip. He pulled it from its little leather holster.

  “Spader.” He listened. “Son of a bitch. Where?” Dunbar watched him. “Give us fifteen minutes.” He closed his phone and turned to Dunbar. “Galaxo struck again tonight,” he said quietly. “Beat a guy half to death, then took his eyes out, apparently with a spoon.”

  “Beat a guy? Doesn’t sound like Galaxo.”

  “Plus, the attack took place in an apartment rather than a house, so it doesn’t fit Galaxo’s pattern so far. We’re heading over there in a few minutes.”

  He walked over to the redheaded CSS officer, who was just placing Wagner’s gym bag on the coffee table.

  “Who’s in charge of your team here, Officer?” Spader asked.

  “Sergeant Stern over there.”

  Dunbar followed Spader over to a pear-shaped man squatting beside Wagner’s body, using a tape measure to measure the distance between the corpse and the sofa. Spader watched the man record the result on a sketch he’d drawn of the apartment’s layout, then introduced himself and Dunbar. They shook hands. Spader glanced around the apartment. He could see only two other CSS officers working the scene, even though at least half a dozen had worked each of Galaxo’s crime scenes. But that made sense. Those were unsolved, high-profile cases. This was open-and-shut, with a killer who was kind enough to stand around after the murder, empty gun still smoking in her hand, waiting for the cops to come.