Jack of Spades Page 6

  With adrenaline coursing through him, jacking him up, everything else seemed to slow down for Spader. Rivers was actually smiling as he raised his gun, its barrel swinging toward Spader, who had his own gun trained on Rivers. Spader was a terrific shot with his weapon. He outshone his classmates at the academy and had kept his skills sharp over the years. In that surreal slow-down of time, Spader had time to decide—do I take the high-percentage shot, put a couple into his chest, or do I shoot to incapacitate? He could take Rivers down without killing him, in that split second of real time, he just knew that he could, or he could kill the sick fuck who got off on others’ agony, the murderer of seven people, the bastard who had left two survivors to spend the rest of their lives legless, crippled. Spader fired his weapon, the only time he’d done so outside the range in his entire career. The bullet struck Rivers in the right shoulder, just where Spader meant to put it, and the gun fell from Rivers’s hand as he dropped back onto the couch. His smiled disappeared.

  Rivers was cuffed, frisked, and Mirandized, and someone suggested—probably facetiously, Spader figured—that they significantly delay calling for an ambulance for the motherfucker, delaying it long enough for the piece of garbage to bleed to death. While the ambulance was on its way, they began to execute the search warrant and almost immediately found evidence of the illegal-drug activities that had been the basis for the search warrant. They kept searching, of course, and turned up more of the same. They carefully recorded each item, noting precisely where it had been found. They were meticulous. They wanted no screwups, nothing to give Rivers’s defense lawyer grounds for claiming any of the evidence was illegally obtained.

  While the other officers searched, Spader sat on the cheap, scratched coffee table, directly in front of Rivers.

  “I know you killed them, Eddie,” he said. “You cut off their legs and killed them. It’s only a matter of time before we find evidence of that. You’re better off just telling us. I’ll tell the judge you cooperated.”

  “Fuck you.” Rivers was in pain but perfectly lucid. And grouchy because of the bullet in his shoulder.

  “That wasn’t very cooperative, Eddie. And it was rude. It makes me want to put my fist into that bullet hole, which I think you wouldn’t like at all.”

  Rivers was well built, his muscles evident beneath his bloody T-shirt. He looked like a real hard case, one who wouldn’t be intimidated by physical threats. Still, certain physical threats were worse than others.

  A siren wailed nearby, closer and closer.

  “One of your victims was a ten-year-old kid, Eddie. I don’t have to tell you how the other prisoners treat child killers, do I? I sure as shit wouldn’t want to be you after we lock your ass up. Well, unfortunately for you, we can’t actually lock your ass up. But you know what I’m saying. So why don’t you talk to me now, get it all off your chest, and the judge might go easier on you.”

  “I don’t have to say a word to you,” Rivers said. “My friend Miranda just told me that.”

  Rivers’s Miranda rights, which Spader had read to him, did indeed give him the option of staying silent. Spader didn’t care. “Come on, Eddie. Just tell me why you did it. What do you get out of cutting off their legs? Is it a sexual thrill of some kind? Can’t see how you could jerk off with one hand while sawing with the other, but maybe you’re a good multitasker, I don’t know. Then again, you probably do this because you can’t get it up. Need to feel powerful.” Spader didn’t yet know that Rivers jerked off in the bushes outside the victims’ houses. He saw Rivers’s jaw clench, maybe from the pain, he thought, but maybe from something else. “Is that it? A little soft below the belt?”

  He was trying to goad Rivers into saying something stupid, something incriminating. Rivers opened his mouth and Spader thought it might have worked. Then the asshole smiled and said, “I’m not your guy, man.”

  “Yes, you are, Eddie.”

  Then paramedics rushed into the apartment and Spader had to back away to give them room to work on Rivers. As they did, Spader looked at the punk, who stared back with black eyes. Soon they had him strapped to a stretcher and were taking him from the room. As they passed, Spader saw something scurry across Rivers’s face, like a shadow, something darkly unpleasant, and if he’d had any doubt about Rivers’s guilt, it would have evaporated right then.

  After the ambulance left, Spader joined the search of the apartment. At one point, Oscar Wagner said to him, “Couldn’t you have aimed a few inches higher and to the right, put that bullet between the cocksucker’s eyes?”

  It wasn’t until twenty minutes later that Spader heard an officer’s voice from one of the bedrooms toward the back of the apartment.

  “Oh, shit. Look at these.”

  What the cop found—and what they found later—should have put Rivers in jail for the rest of his life. The trial should have been a mere formality. And it would have been, everything would have gone as it should have, if the cops—if Spader—hadn’t screwed up. Instead, Eddie Rivers got the chance to walk around free again, free to listen to his demons, to do the terrible things he so enjoyed doing. And at least two more innocents died.

  Spader was lying on his bed now, on top of the covers. He put an empty beer bottle—his fourth, he thought—on the nightstand and closed his eyes. He was tired. Tired of the day and tired of thinking about Eddie Rivers. He wanted to close his eyes, keep them shut tight, and try not to listen to ghosts. But some nights they spoke longer and louder than others and on those nights he got little or no sleep. This felt like one of those nights.

  FOUR

  A harsh ringing jerked Spader from his sleep. He slapped at the snooze button on his alarm clock, but the ringing didn’t stop. He reached for the phone and felt an uncomfortable wetness spreading on his crotch. As the phone continued to ring, he looked down between his legs and saw a half-full bottle of Bud that must have tipped when he leaned over to answer the phone. He didn’t remember going to the fridge for a fifth beer last night and that left him feeling a little uneasy, but he reminded himself that he didn’t drink nearly enough to have a problem and that yesterday had been a long, lousy day. He picked up the cordless phone and answered the call just before his machine would have done it for him.

  “John, did I wake you?”

  Olivia.

  “No, I was up. I mean, I should be up. What time is it?” He looked at the clock he’d been slapping a moment ago. “Shit.”

  He put the now nearly empty Bud bottle on the nightstand and got out of bed. He looked at the sheets he’d have to change before he went to bed that night, then started to take off his beer-soaked shorts.

  “John, are you there?”

  “Sorry, Olivia. Yeah, I’m here. I’m just really late right now. It’s a good thing you called. My alarm didn’t go off.”

  “It helps if you set it.”

  She knew him so well. With the phone cradled between his shoulder and his chin, he pulled on a pair of clean undershorts, then slipped into the same pair of trousers he’d worn yesterday.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” he said, forgetting that she was no longer his “honey” and immediately regretting the slip, “but I can’t really talk right now. If this is about those photo albums, I haven’t had a chance to—”

  “No, it’s not about those. I can come back and get them another time.”

  “Come back? You’re here?”

  “I’m parked on the street in front of your building.”

  “I wish you’d called earlier.” Not only would it have given him a heads-up that she was coming over, but the call would have woken him in time for him to shower before work, which he could really have used. Especially with the Budweiser smell emanating from the area of his genitals.

  “I did call. You didn’t answer.”

  “Oh.” He must have been really out of it not to hear the phone ringing three feet from his head. Considering he’d slept that soundly, Spader wondered if he should have felt more rested. But then again, even
the most sound sleep wasn’t all that restful if limited to two hours a night. “I really wish I could see you right now but I have a meeting that starts in,” he glanced at the clock again, “fifteen minutes. And I was the one who called it, so it wouldn’t look too good if I came rolling in late.”

  “Oh,” she said, “that’s okay. Maybe you can meet us somewhere later, huh?”

  “Us? Is David with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  He sighed. “I wish I knew you were coming.”

  “We went out for breakfast not far from here, thought maybe we’d catch you before you left for work. Like I said, I called a little while ago. When you didn’t answer, we thought maybe you were just in the shower.”

  “Is everything okay?” he asked, tugging on a blue button-down shirt.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Does he still hate us?”

  There was a pause. “Nothing’s changed in that regard,” she said.

  “And you think we all need to talk about it again, together.”

  “I do.”

  He blew out a breath. “Listen, I’ll be down in a minute. I can’t really talk now, but wait for me, okay. I’ll be right down.”

  Why had he asked her to wait? He could have told her he’d call her later and arrange a time to meet. Besides, after he spoke with them he’d have to go back inside and take the stairs down to the parking garage to get to his car. But he realized he simply wanted to see her, if even only for a moment. And David, of course.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll be here.”

  Spader bounded down the steps from his building to the sidewalk, shrugging into a navy sport coat. He carried a soft-sided canvas briefcase in one hand and a half-eaten Golden Delicious apple in the other. Olivia and David were waiting for him at the curb.

  “You look great,” he said to her. And she did, the soft morning sun lighting up her shoulder-length blonde hair, warming the faint red highlights, bringing out the dark blue of her eyes—the color of the blue you see in pictures of the world taken from outer space—which looked clear and far younger than the eyes you normally see in a thirty-eight-year-old face. Her pinstripe pantsuit was smart, businesslike but feminine, fitting her tall, trim body well.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You, too.”

  “You’re still a lousy liar. I think you’re gonna be hot in that suit today.” There was a brief, uncomfortable pause, then Olivia smiled. “I meant,” Spader said, smiling too now, “that it’s supposed to be hot today and that suit looks a little heavy. But now that it’s out there, you do look pretty hot in that suit.”

  “Thanks.” She rolled her eyes and smiled again.

  He turned to his son, who was leaning against Olivia’s Ford Escape. “Hi, David.” He didn’t expect a hug from his son, and a handshake seemed painfully formal, so he just smiled a smile that wasn’t returned. “Sorry I didn’t call you back last night, but I got your message after I got in and it was too late to call.”

  David shrugged his broad shoulders. He was as tall as Spader, but at two hundred twenty pounds he outweighed his father by thirty pounds or so, all of it muscle. David was lean and hard, a nineteen-year-old athlete’s body beneath a handsome face—a face that still had some boy in it, and some teenager, but was getting more and more man in it by the day. And sadly, in recent months, his face had grown nearly as hard as his body, at least when Spader was around to see it. He’d have to ask Olivia if it looked that way the rest of the time.

  “I know we’ve got some things to talk about,” Spader said, “but I’m late for a meeting right now. And today’s pretty jammed for me, I think.”

  “You’re a busy guy,” David said quietly, “with an important job.”

  Spader paused, then said. “That’s right.”

  “And you’re so good at it.”

  “Was that sarcasm there, David?”

  David shrugged.

  “You got something to say?” Spader asked.

  David shrugged again, but a moment later said, “I’ve just been hearing a lot lately how good you are at your job, that’s all. It’s in the papers, on the TV news lately. Some of my friends are even talking to me about it. I couldn’t be prouder to be your son right now, the son of the Jack of Spades.”

  “David, that’s enough,” Olivia said sharply.

  “No, it’s okay.” Spader didn’t really blame David, though the boy could have shown more tact and compassion. But he understood his son’s feelings. With Peter Lisbon’s death, the media had gotten a lot of mileage out of the Galaxo story. And the combination of Lisbon having his feet cut off and Spader being the lead detective on the case led the press to make the inevitable comparisons to the Eddie Rivers debacle, which stuck Spader in the center of a storm of controversy. With two murders committed in bizarre and brutal fashion to his credit, along with his maiming of a handicapped man, Galaxo was riding a wave of media attention. Unfortunately for Spader, he was being dragged along in Galaxo’s wake. Justified or not, the press had not been kind to Spader after the Eddie Rivers thing. Now, it seemed like every day a new story appeared, new theories propounded by journalists, new articles written to question Spader’s and the authorities’ efforts to catch Galaxo, new attempts made to draw parallels between Galaxo and Eddie Rivers, new headlines cleverly and no-so-cleverly incorporating that stupid Jack of Spades nickname. Spader knew it would get far worse before it got better. A few days ago he’d stopped reading the papers and watching the news altogether.

  “David,” he said, “all I can tell you is that we’re doing everything we can to stop this guy you’re reading about. I’m sorry if my involvement embarrasses you. But we’ll get him in the end, I promise you.” Spader turned to Olivia. “So, about getting together. Today’s out for me, but how does this evening look for you? We could all grab dinner together.”

  She hesitated. “Jason and I have theater tickets.”

  Spader didn’t want to show how he felt about that, about her date with her new boyfriend, so he moved on quickly. “Well, I suppose David and I could get together. Have a little dinner, discuss a few things. What do you think, big guy?”

  Before David could answer, Olivia said, “You can have dinner with David any time you’d like, of course, but I think I’d like to be there if you’re going to talk about this college thing.”

  Spader nodded. “How about breakfast tomorrow morning, maybe? We could go to that place down the block from here where the pancakes are as big around as your head. What do you say?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “How about you, David?” Spader said. “You could choke down a few of those monster pancakes, couldn’t you?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’ll take that as wild enthusiasm,” Spader said. He turned to Olivia. “Is seven too early?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Okay then.”

  There was that awkward moment, when he felt like he should lean over and kiss her good-bye, like he’d done for the twenty-two years they were together, the first few when they were dating, the rest when they were married. But good-byes were different now, so he just smiled and said, “See you tomorrow,” and walked back up the stairs and into his building.

  * * *

  Spader was walking quickly through the warren of desks and cubicles in Ten Fed when he spotted a young trooper, probably the youngest detective in the unit, coming out of the copy room. The kid turned and was headed away from Spader.

  “Hey,” Spader called.

  The trooper turned, looked at Spader, looked around, then looked back at Spader.

  “Yeah, you. I need a big favor. What’s your name?”

  “Miller. Detective Robert Miller.”

  The kid just had to thrown in that he was a detective, as if Spader hadn’t figured that out on his own. “I don’t think we’ve met. Just make detective?”

  “My first week.”

  “Congrats. Now, you just came out of the copy room, which tells me you know
how to make copies. I can do that, too, of course, but what I can’t do, at least not quickly, is figure out how to make enlargements.”

  “Yeah?” By which he meant, “So why are you wasting my time with your inability to operate a simple office machine?”

  “I’ve got a task force meeting in—” Spader looked at his watch “—four minutes ago and I need to make a color copy of a photograph, only I’ve got a four-by-six and I need an eight-by-ten or -eleven, or whatever the machine will do. I could probably figure it out myself but it’ll take me twenty minutes and there are half a dozen people waiting for me. Can you help me out?”

  Spader knew what the kid was thinking. I finally made detective, stepped up from the bottom rung of the ladder, and here I am doing the shit work again.

  “Come on, Detective Miller. A little favor, okay? I’ll return it someday. It’s the way we work around here. Together.” There was some truth to that, but a little bullshit, too.

  Miller reached his hand out and Spader slid a photo of Stanley Pendleton from his briefcase and gave it to him.

  “Detective Spader?”

  Spader turned. Walking toward him with quick, efficient steps was Ann Lamonde, Detective Captain Struthers’s administrative assistant, which was somehow different than a secretary, at least according to Ms. Lamonde. She was small in stature and walked with mechanical precision, not a wasted motion anywhere in her movement.

  “Good morning, Ann.”

  “Detective Captain Struthers wants to see you.”

  “Right now? I’m late for a task force meeting.”

  “If you’re late now, it means you were late before I even spoke with you. You might have considered setting your alarm clock so as to give you an extra fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  Spader nodded, as though considering it. “Good tip. Thanks. The captain really needs me now?”