Jericho's Razor (20 page)

“Slow down,” I told him, realizing the futility of my advice. Grimes was hostage to a killer who had a weapon to his throat. The only reason he was still breathing was because his role had not yet played out.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“An area close to my church. It's a big park we use for gatherings and picnics. There is a big cross. Twenty foot tall and surrounded by floodlights. It looks like a beacon, you can't miss it. You'll come, won't you? I have a family a wife and a teenage daughter and a baby boy named Daniel and they all need me!”

The cop's antenna was up. He walked toward me while speaking into his phone, probably telling the person on the other end that something was happening. I had about ten seconds before he was in earshot.

“Okay. Tell my brother I'm coming. Alone.”

I disconnected the call but kept the phone to my ear. I turned my back to the cop and started shouting.

“I'm glad you're sorry, Katrina! I'm glad you're sorry that you ripped my fucking heart out … No, I don't care if you are drunk and feeling nostalgic, I am not coming over.” I hung up and turned around, bumping into the cop who was now just behind me.

“Sorry about that man.” I motioned toward the phone. “Ex-girlfriends.”

“Yeah. I hear you.”

The cop ordered a beer from Gus and went back to his table. When my shadow was settled in and focused away from me, I slid my keys across the bar.

“I need a favor.”

“I can't wait to hear it.”

Grimes said that Eli would be looking for the headlights to my truck. Hopefully he would not be too stringent on that detail, since my truck was speeding down Interstate 74 in the opposite direction. Gus hated the idea, but he eventually agreed to it, provided I call Jagger and Torrez the moment I reached the field. I called Jagger first. Her voice would be more pleasing to listen to while she yelled at me.

“You're where?”

I told her again. The park had a cobblestone walkway that disappeared over a rise. I stayed in the truck and followed it, driving on the wet grass with the high beams on, thankful that Gus had four-wheel drive.

“But I just got a text message saying that your truck ...” Jagger paused while she put it together. “You son of a bitch. Do not leave that vehicle. Do not engage your brother. Do not fucking move until we get there. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly.”

“You're getting out of the vehicle right now, aren't you?”

“Not just yet.”

“I am arresting you the second I get there, Sands!”

I hung up and drove across the field to a wide-open area. There were soccer goals and picnic tables. Fire pits for grilling burgers and lighting bonfires. I could picture Grimes and his congregation huddled together at sunset, roasting marshmallows and singing hymns.

In the center of the field was the cross. Mounted on the cross was Pastor Albert Grimes. In the high beams I saw his wide-eyed look as I approached, could see his mouth moving, screaming words that I was still too far away to hear. I drove right up to him and jumped out.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

I didn't realize what he saying until it was too late. Just as I began to turn, I was hit hard from behind. My last thought, as I landed on the wet grass at the feet of a martyred pastor, was that I had to stop falling for traps from my own books.

The field was a haze of shadow and fog. Albert Grimes was nailed to the cross. Beside him, on a black throne framed with thorns, sat my father, Peter Sandborn, a demon risen from whatever corner of Hell I sent him to. I sat up.

“Hello, Jericho.”

“Hiya, Pop.”

I reached back and felt a gash on the back of my head. It was sticky and warm. Blood matted my hair. But there was no pain.

“That's a hell of a wound you have there.”

“I guess it is. And I guess since it doesn't hurt, and I am talking to a ghost, that I'm dead.”

Peter grinned.

“Concepts are dangerous things for you, Jericho. They always were. You cling tight to your misconceptions like a philistine to a bag of silver.”

“Uh-huh. As usual, I have no idea what you're fucking talking about. But I'm sure that it's nuts.”

“You never listened. You could never see. Mirrors terrify you, because you fear what lies within. That's why you're so proficient at constructing false realities. You have been doing it forever.”

“Is this my Hell, having to listen to your bullshit for eternity?”

“We create our own Hell, Jericho.”

“How truly profound. Somewhere down here Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison are having a jam session, and I am stuck with you.”

“Sarcasm. Vanity. Sins for which so many men have fallen.”

“Vanity? That would hardly fit, seeing as how you just acknowledged that I can't look in a mirror.”

“There are several forms of vanity, Jericho. You excel at many of them.”

“Awesome. I'm being lectured about morality by a homicidal lunatic with a messiah complex.”

Peter leaned forward.

“Why is Eli here? What does he want?”

“Revenge.”

“Revenge? Really? Eli was a better hunter by the time he was fourteen than many men ever grow to be. Certainly better that you. Why all the misdirection? What is he really trying to tell you?”

It was a question I had been asking myself since I learned he was in town. I still had no answer.

My head was beginning to hurt. A lot.
Not dead
, I thought.
Not yet, anyway
.

“If Eli wants you dead, why are you still alive?”

“I don't know. Ask me again in three days.”

I woke from the dream. A helicopter hovered over the park, shining a spotlight on the cross. Torrez and Jagger crouched beside me, pushing aside an EMT. They waited a respectable five seconds after I regained consciousness to yell at me.

“What the hell happened?”

The medic tried to hold them back, but quickly reconsidered after Torrez threatened to rip his arms off and beat him with them. I told them about the phone call. About coming to the park and finding Grimes alive. About being hit on the head. I left out the conversation with Peter. No reason to make them think I was crazier than they already did.

“In your books, this is where the cop would make some lameass joke about once again finding you by a corpse,” Torrez said. “Am I right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I can't think of a joke. But the next time this happens, the corpse will be you.”

“You're a ray of sunshine as always, Torrez.”

“You want sunshine? Well here it is, hotshot. Your last three days on earth starts right now.”

Chapter Sixteen

My head took seven stitches. The doctor told me to take extra-strength Tylenol and avoid being hit in the head. Ten minutes later, Jagger slapped me in the head and said if I pulled another stunt like that she would kill me herself.

The first day of my three-day countdown fizzled down like a fuse. I felt crushed under the weight of the constant presence of the police, who watched me like a ticking time bomb. Unable to sit around and wait, I jumped on my bike and hit the interstate, pushing the Triumph past 110 miles per hour. The unmarked police car did it's best to keep me in sight, but wasn't as willing to weave through traffic as I was. After an hour, a helicopter appeared on the horizon and followed me from a half mile up.

I turned back toward town and ended up at the marina. My boat is a fifty-foot sailboat bought at auction after the sale of my third book. It's rough. Dents and scrapes in the paint make me wonder if the previous owner used it for a water-based version of demolition derby. But it's perfect for sails up and down the Illinois River. I would often take it north, all the way to Lake Michigan, drop anchor, and spend the night in the cabin, writing, playing guitar, and disappearing from the world for a few days at a time.

I named it
Infamy
.

Anchored off Paradise Cove, I sat on the deck and looked out at the Peoria skyline, framed by an apricot sky. Beside me was a cooler packed with bottles of Newcastle. Beside the cooler was my gun. I drank with a cautious eye. A fifteen-foot bass boat spent the early afternoon tracing the shoreline. Other than that I was alone, save for the police helicopter that occasionally passed overhead like a vulture.

The inactivity was torture. Any writer worth his Times New Roman font knows that the protagonist has to consistently impact the plot. The main character must drive the story. Watching the sun disappear from the deck of my boat, drinking beer, I wasn't driving jack. Eli was at the helm while I rocked on the tides, waiting for his next move. I was thinking about digging out the fishing gear and tossing a line out when lights penetrated the darkness, followed by the sound of twin outboard motors. I reached to my left and grabbed two beers, ignoring the gun. Eli wouldn't arrive making such a racket. And he still had two more days.

Jagger stood on the bow of a police boat clutching the rail with both hands. She was clearly not a water person, but she knew to ask permission to come aboard. I nodded and she hopped over, refusing my offered hand. Strong and stubborn, just like another woman I could not get out of my head. I wondered why I spent so much time comparing them.

She waved goodbye to her ride and I handed her a beer. The police boat disappeared toward the Murray Baker Bridge until it made nothing more than a distant hum. Jagger sat opposite me and opened her Newcastle.

“It's nice out here. Quiet.”

“It was.”

“The helicopter can't see you in the dark. They could throw the spotlight on you, but they were worried you would shoot it.”

“I have my running lights on. The boat is visible.”

“I didn't say they couldn't see the boat. I said they couldn't see you.”

“What am I going to do, give you the slip by swimming to shore?”

Jagger just stared at me. After my ruse to ditch the cops shadowing me and chase after Pastor Grimes, that's most likely exactly what they were thinking.

“So, you get to come over and babysit me?”

“It could have been Eddie.”

Jagger pulled off her shoes and set them beside her bag, keeping both within arm's reach.

“How is the head?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“When I saw you laying there, you were as still as a rock. There was blood everywhere. I thought you were dead.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Jesus. Do you always have to be such a jerk? Or only when someone is trying to show that they care about you?”

“Just most of the time to the former. But always to the latter.”

Jagger took a drink from her beer and pointed the bottle my way. “Man, Katrina Masters really fucked you up, didn't she?”

“Don't be ridiculous. I was fucked-up way before I met Kat.”

That earned a smile. Jagger took in the view of downtown as though seeing it for the first time. The city looks different out on the water. The harsh edges of the buildings and bridges tend to blur, making the skyline look like a watercolor.