A Blood Thing Read online

  Why?

  Could the blackmailer’s endgame really have been to frame Lewis for Judge Jeffers’s murder?

  Why such a complex plot to achieve a relatively simple result? Why destroy the lives of so many people—

  Unless that was the point. Maybe this had always been about destroying certain people. Maybe the rest of it was smoke and mirrors.

  The blackmailer had wanted them to think this was all about Kyle Lewis and something he was supposedly needed for in the next two weeks. But that was all misdirection. Despite how their caller had wanted this to look, it had never been about that.

  In less than a minute, he arrived at his apartment building, but rather than pull in to his assigned parking space, he left the Taurus on the street while he ran up to his apartment, grabbed what he needed, and hurried back to the car.

  He felt certain he was onto something.

  Maybe this had been personal all along.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Everything had gone according to plan, as Pickman had anticipated. He had trained himself to be an astute judge of human nature, first by reading sixteen books on the subject, and then by applying their lessons during his interactions with people. To be confident that he knew what to expect of someone of Tyler’s limited intelligence, over the past few months he’d read three more textbooks that dealt specifically with the minds of both children and the mentally impaired. And Tyler had behaved as Pickman had expected he would.

  He glanced at Julie Davenport’s body on the bed. To the best of his powerful memory, it looked precisely like the sketch he’d made four months ago, a sketch that was in the three-ring binder in his duffel bag, encased in a plastic sleeve. Also in the bag was the knife he’d used to kill both Julie Davenport and Sally Graham, a small nick taken from the end of its blade, the blade itself twisted ever so slightly so as to leave wounds on both bodies as distinct as the bloody fingerprints Tyler had left on the knife’s handle when Pickman had handed it to him. Tyler had also left prints on the metal doorknob as he’d opened the bedroom door.

  Pickman followed Tyler down the steps, watching the young man touch the bannister and the wall, leaving behind more fingerprints in Julie Davenport’s blood. They were leaving no bloody footprints as they walked because Pickman had taken care not to let blood get on the floor. He knew they would both be walking around, and he didn’t want two sets of bloody footprints trailing around the house.

  On the second floor, Tyler walked to his room, his head down.

  “You have a suitcase or something?” Pickman asked.

  “I have a backpack I can use.”

  “Okay. Only take what you really need. You’ll want to travel light. A few sets of clothes.”

  “I have to bring my toothbrush. Molly would want me to do that.”

  “Of course. I’ll wait out here.”

  Tyler left the door open, so Pickman was able to watch him packing his small bag, touching numerous surfaces, leaving behind irrefutable evidence of his guilt. As he waited, Pickman carefully stripped out of the bloody clothes he had stolen from Tyler and worn while he murdered Julie Davenport and stuffed them into a plastic garbage bag. He would keep them in case they should come in handy later. Then he took off the white suit—he didn’t want to get blood in his car, of course—balled it up, and jammed it into a second garbage bag. Then he crammed both bags into his large duffel bag.

  Whenever Tyler finished packing and returned to the hall, he would find Pickman waiting for him wearing his own clothes—as well as a new pair of latex gloves, which he doubted Tyler would even notice. He had originally considered wearing a ski mask, too, but realized that it didn’t matter whether Tyler saw his face, because he didn’t have long to live anyway. Once Pickman cut off his ankle monitor and drove off with him, leading everyone—including his sister and brothers—to believe he’d escaped after killing Julie Davenport, Pickman would simply kill Tyler and dispose of his body where it would never be found. He would have served his purpose. With him missing, everyone would assume he was still on the run.

  And as long as he was believed to be on the run, he could be framed for anything.

  “We should probably hurry this up a bit, Tyler. We don’t have all night.”

  Henry broke all sorts of motor vehicle laws on his way to VSP headquarters. He hoped like hell he wouldn’t be pulled over on the way, because he didn’t have time to spare, and he doubted that his status as a disgraced and soon-to-be-former Internal Affairs investigator was going to get him any sympathy from the cop making the stop. Fortunately, the gods of the road were on his side.

  He’d called Detective Egan’s cell phone as soon as he’d left his apartment a short while ago, expecting he’d be home, but Egan said he was catching up on some paperwork at his desk.

  “I’m coming to see you,” Henry had said.

  “Like hell you are,” Egan had replied. “You don’t worry me anymore, Kane. You’ve been declawed.”

  “I still have my file on you. Still have pictures and video of you taking payments from a local drug dealer. Doesn’t matter if I go down, Egan. Pictures don’t lie. Video lies even less.”

  After a long pause, Egan exhaled into the phone. “Don’t you dare come into headquarters. Call me when you’re here, and I’ll come down.”

  “See you soon.”

  When he was two minutes from VSP headquarters, he called Egan again. The man was waiting for him outside when he pulled up. Egan slid into the passenger seat.

  “Now what the hell do—”

  Henry handed him a thick envelope.

  “What’s this?” Egan asked.

  “My case against you. That’s everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything. My notes, records of who you met with and when. Photos. Video. That’s all of it. There’s nothing on my computer at work. Once I decided to . . . let’s say, once I decided to work with you, I took everything off it. There’s no trace of my investigation into you in there,” he added, nodding toward the building.

  “This is just a copy, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why’re you giving it to me?”

  “Because I think it’s all coming to an end very soon, and I need your help. I need the best you’ve got right now, and I’ll get better from you if you willingly hop on board than if I have to drag you along.”

  “And I should just hop on board because . . .”

  “Because it’s actually the right thing to do here. Helping me is the right thing, even though you probably won’t believe me.”

  Egan looked inside the envelope.

  “If you give this to me, I have no incentive to help you anymore, no reason to keep feeding you info on your brother’s case.”

  “Except, like I said, you’ll be doing the right thing.”

  “And I’m supposed to take your word on that.”

  “My brother’s innocent, Egan,” Henry said. “You won’t believe that, either, but it’s true. I’ll prove it eventually, with or without your help. But all I’ve been getting from you is information we would’ve gotten eventually anyway. So fine. You can stop. I release you from that obligation.”

  “Terrific. Have a good night.”

  He reached for the door handle.

  “Just do one more thing for me. It’s not illegal. Not even a little. But I need you to go upstairs and do it right now.”

  “Now?”

  “It’s important.”

  Egan thought a moment. He looked into the envelope again, must have realized it held his career inside it, and Henry had just given it to him.

  “What do you need?”

  “Search the databases up there, every one you can think of, for cases involving the following names . . . you gonna write this down?”

  “Why don’t you do the research yourself?”

  “At the moment, I don’t have the access you do.”

  Egan nodded and pulled a small notebook from his pocket, clicked a ballpo
int pen.

  Henry said, “Andrew Kane, Henry Kane, Judge Morgan Jeffers, Kyle Lewis.” He spelled out Lewis for Egan. “I want anything that comes up with those names in it. Anything at all. A case, a news story, whatever.”

  He left Tyler off the list because he was convinced that this had never, not for a single moment, been about Tyler. His youngest brother had been nothing more than a tool the blackmailer had used to get to Andrew, whose career he would ruin. And to get to Henry, whose career he would also ruin, and whose freedom he would try to take. He also left Molly off the list, having decided that this wasn’t about her, either, in large part because the blackmailer didn’t seem to care about destroying her. As for Jeffers, it was possible that his murder could have been nothing more than a means to an end, merely another way to ensure that Andrew was destroyed, but that seemed like a complicated way to pile on Andrew when the public was already calling for his head. No, it was more likely that Jeffers was a target, too.

  But not Kyle Lewis, who didn’t seem to fit the profile—men in public service, men who . . .

  Did what, to whom, and when?

  “Judge Jeffers?” Egan said. “We got a call a little while ago. Jeffers was murdered.”

  “I know. And I know who they’re supposed to think did it, because he’s dead at the scene, too. But he didn’t do it.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Because I know who did. And I’m trying to find the guy.”

  “If you know anything about Jeffers’s murder, Kane, you have to—”

  “I don’t know the killer’s identity. That’s what I’m trying to find out. And the longer we sit here talking about it, the longer it will take for me to do that.”

  Egan regarded him a moment.

  “If I come up empty,” Henry said, “I’ll come totally clean with you guys. But for now, this is the way it has to be. And if I figure it out, I’ll give it to you, okay, Egan? You’ll get to bring the guy in. You’ll probably get a promotion and a raise. You won’t have to take payoffs from drug dealers anymore.”

  “Screw off, Kane.”

  “Come on, Egan. Are you in?”

  “Okay,” Egan said, “we’ll do it your way for now. But tomorrow, if—”

  Henry cut him off, saying, “Terrific. You might also need to run the names a second time, do the same searches, but leaving out Lewis.” He gave that instruction in case he was correct that Lewis was nothing more than a pawn in the game. “So, you in, Egan?”

  “This could take a little while.”

  “Try not to let it. It’s important.”

  Finally, Egan nodded. He opened the door and stepped out of the car, the thick envelope in his hand. Before he closed the door, he looked back in at Henry.

  “This really the only copy?”

  “As far as you know.”

  Egan shook his head. “You’re an asshole, Kane.”

  “Hurry up, Egan.”

  The detective shut the door, leaving Henry with nothing to do but wait.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Tyler fought back tears as he walked for a final time through the house he’d lived in his entire life. He walked down the stairs, remembering the way he’d flown down them every Christmas morning when he was a kid. He moved down the hall, past the dining room where his family used to eat together on most nights, their parents on either end of the table, past the rooms in which his mother read to him and where he played games with Molly and Henry and Andy. They had a dog named Sugar when he was young. A boxer. His dad said it stood for Sugar Ray, but they called her only Sugar because she was a girl. Her bed used to be right there, in the drawing room.

  He opened the front door.

  “Whoa, Tyler,” the man said from behind him. “Are you allowed to go outside? With your ankle monitor, I mean.”

  “Yeah. I’m just not supposed to leave the yard.”

  He looked out through the front door. It was dark outside. The closest streetlights were pretty far away, so the very front of the property was darker than other parts of their yard. He reached for the light switch just inside the door, but the man put his hand on Tyler’s arm, stopping him from turning on the porch light.

  “Better if it’s dark, right?” the man said. “People won’t see us leave then.”

  Tyler nodded and stepped out onto the porch, then walked down the stairs. He was leaving the only home he’d ever known . . . the only life he’d ever known. Which was really scary. He heard the front door close behind him.

  “My car’s over there, on the street right outside the fence. You’ll need to ride in the trunk so no one sees you.”

  Tyler looked at the car not far away. “I don’t want to ride in the trunk.”

  “Just until we get to my house,” the man said. “It’s safer that way. I’m sure you’re smart enough to see that.”

  Tyler thought about it. He guessed it made sense. The guy seemed to think he was smart, or at least not stupid, which Tyler liked. He had to remind himself that this man had killed two women.

  The guy pointed a small remote control at the car and clicked a button with his thumb. On the street, the car’s trunk rose.

  The man knelt down and pulled from his bag a metal tool with two handles, almost like a big pair of scissors. “As soon as I cut your ankle monitor off,” the man said, “we need to move fast. They may try calling your house first to see if you’re home, but they might just show up here with lights flashing and guns drawn, understand? So as soon as this thing comes off, we need to run right to the car. You jump into the trunk, and I’ll close it before anyone sees you. Are you ready?”

  Tyler stared at the open trunk. He looked back at the man. His face was mostly normal—probably about as average a face as Tyler had ever seen, actually—but there was something about it Tyler didn’t like. Something in his eyes. Suddenly, things Molly used to tell him about strangers came to his mind, almost like she was standing right next to him in the dark, whispering in his ear. He thought his mother might have said those things a long time ago, too, but it was Molly’s voice in his head just then.

  “Tyler?” the man said, looking around. “We need to get going before someone sees us.”

  The man was starting to look nervous. Tyler understood that, though. He’d just killed Julie, and he was helping Tyler escape. But . . .

  “Come on, Tyler . . .”

  He kept hearing Molly’s voice, her warnings. This man was a stranger, which Tyler shouldn’t trust. Not only that, he was a murderer, which was way worse.

  “Tyler, we’re running out of time. Molly will be home soon. She’ll find Julie and think you did it. Then your chance to get away will be gone. And remember, your family will be better off without you here, right?”

  Even though the man was a murderer, he was right about a few things. Everyone would think Tyler had killed Julie, just like they thought he’d killed Sally Graham. Even his own family would probably think that. And the man was also right that they would all be better off without Tyler.

  “Tyler,” the man said, starting to sound angry.

  “I’m ready.”

  The man let out a loud breath. He lifted Tyler’s pant leg, exposing the ankle monitor, and held the metal tool to it. “Remember,” he said, “as soon as I cut this, we have to run as fast as we can to my car. You get in the trunk, I’ll close it, and we’ll be long gone by the time the police get here. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay, here we go.”

  Pickman brought the handles of the bolt cutter together, and the jaws snapped shut on the strap securing the monitor to Tyler’s ankle. With a pop, the jaws bit through, and the monitor fell to the ground.

  “Let’s go,” he said, grabbing his duffel from the ground and trotting toward his car. Tyler ran with him at his side. They had only thirty yards to go in all, but Tyler began to fall behind.

  “Catch up,” Pickman called quietly over his shoulder as he neared the gate, where his car waited o
nly another ten yards away. But Tyler’s footsteps behind him were growing fainter. Pickman risked a glance over his shoulder and saw Tyler sprinting in the opposite direction across the front yard, his backpack bouncing on his shoulder.

  Tyler was running away from him.

  Damn it.

  How had he not foreseen this?

  How the hell had that brain-damaged idiot tricked him?

  Why had he not behaved as Pickman had predicted? As the psychology and human behavior books had led him to believe he would?

  He dropped his duffel and started off across the yard in pursuit. He’d made it only a third of the way before Tyler reached the gate on the far side of the lawn, threw it open, and ran through. By the time Pickman got there, Tyler had disappeared. Surely, he’d raced across another property on the street and disappeared behind one of the other houses, but which one? He probably knew the area like the back of his goddamn hand.

  Should Pickman chase him?

  But his car was on the street on the other side of the property with its trunk lid wide open. Worse, his duffel bag lay on the lawn, with everything inside it to incriminate him: his bloody white suit filled with his own DNA; the clothes he’d worn over the suit when he’d killed Julie Davenport; the murder weapon; and his bible, which contained his entire plan on which he’d worked for over a year.

  Obviously, he couldn’t risk being caught. There was simply no way he would allow himself to go to prison. There was nothing on earth he feared more. Loss of his freedom. His schedule dictated by others. His need to surround himself with perfection left to the whims of those around him. The potential for beatings and sexual abuse. No Bach in prison. Doubtful they served Prince spaghetti in there, either. Probably even made their own sauce. Sure as hell wouldn’t be Prego tomato and basil.

  No, he could not be caught.

  His course was clear. He had to grab the duffel bag and drive away before the authorities arrived. With any luck he’d catch sight of the freak and be able to subdue him or kill him quickly.

  He was in his car three blocks away when he heard the first siren.