The Closer (23 page)

And the sound began. A rhythmic, bass pulsing, so deep Nikki felt it in her bones. Speakers, mounted somewhere above her.

“Hello.” The disembodied voice issued from the same speakers. “Are you aware that elephants can converse across many miles?”

Abruptly, the chimpanzee began to scream. It was a crazed, wild sound, both heartbreaking and terrifying at the same time. The chimp began to throw itself around its cage, slamming into the wire mesh with no apparent regard for its own safety.

“They use ultra-low frequency waves, undetectable to the human ear. The French have experimented with the same type of waves on human beings, and discovered they can produce a wide range of effects: disorientation, nausea, extreme anxiety.”

Nikki’s heart pounded. The bass pulse got quieter and deeper at the same time—it felt like she was hearing it with her whole body, not just her ears. Her stomach lurched in panic and her head ached.

“Pachyderms are much more sensitive to these waves, of course. I’ve done a few experiments of my own. At a certain level of intensity, they become quite agitated. I imagine it’s like having the whole universe screaming in your brain….”

The elephant bellowed, much louder than before. There was an audible
click
and Nikki saw the cuff around its leg fall off. It shambled toward her, madness in its eyes.

Nikki did the only thing she could think of. She shot the octopus tank.

The front exploded outward in a wave of water, tentacles and shattered glass. She was already sprinting— not away from the elephant, but toward it. She cut to the side, ducked as it swung the wrinkled gray club of its trunk at her, went into a shoulder-roll and came out of it in a desperate, full-length leap.

She landed sprawled on top of the pile of bales at the same moment the wave of water sloshed against them. Against them, and past—to the cuff lying on the floor, the one that had restrained the elephant.

The cuff attached to the wall with the thin, insulated cord.

For a second, she thought she had guessed wrong. The elephant had turned, a corrugated cable of muscle was reaching for her neck—and then there was a sharp crackle, followed an instant later by a deafening bellow of pain. The colored spots died, as did the speakers.

The sound of the elephant collapsing in the dark was like someone dropping a waterbed from a two-story window. She’d been right—the cuff had been electrical, had shorted in the water. The jolt had been enough to knock the pachyderm for a loop, but she could tell from its ragged breathing it was still alive. The chimp had stopped its screaming, the dogs their barking; she hoped she hadn’t killed them, but at least they wouldn’t be dinner for a sociopath. She could hear octopi flopping wetly on the floor.

She stepped down cautiously from the bales, hoping that the power wouldn’t suddenly come back on. Cool water soaked through her shoes. She kept as far away from the wheeze of the elephant as she could, and began once again to make her way through the darkness toward the back of the quonset.

She was in the middle of the room when she heard the door open.

The Gourmet heard the shot, the surging splash, the elephant’s roar and collapse and the dark silence that followed. He knew what must have happened: overloaded by fear, about to be trampled, the intruder had shot at the elephant and missed, hitting the tank. A single shot meant the elephant must have dispatched him immediately afterward. The water had then shorted out the electrical systems, incapacitating the animals and causing the collapse of the elephant.

Well. He’d have to work quickly to get the necessary organs into storage.

He quickly located a flashlight in the darkness, though he didn’t turn it on. Opening the door, he ducked through quickly, staying low. He had the revolver in one hand and the flashlight in the other. He really didn’t think there was anyone left alive in the room—if there had been more than one person, there would have been more than one shot—but he liked to be thorough.

He crouched in the dark, listening.

Nikki stayed perfectly still. She brought her gun up and trained it on where she thought the Gourmet would be. She waited.

Abruptly, the lights came on.

Nikki had enough time to see one thing—
that’s not Jack
—and then she fired.

Bullets slammed into the Gourmet’s body. He staggered back, dropping the revolver and the flashlight. The last rational thought he had was
why are the lights on?
and then he died.

Jack appeared in the doorway. He met Nikki’s eyes.

“You killed him,” Jack said. “Fuck.”

And then he collapsed.

Jack came to on a couch. He looked around; he seemed to be in a mobile home. “Nikki?” he croaked.

She came in from the kitchen holding a glass of water. She tried to give it to him, but Jack couldn’t seem to raise his arm. She held it to his lips and he drank.

“Jack,” she said. “What the hell happened?”

“Got sloppy. Gourmet traced my remote access to the motel, staked it out. Followed me.”

“Yeah? How’d he miss me?”

“Didn’t. Assumed you were just a hooker I was going to do—thought I was Djinn-X.”

“A real genius. Sure did a number on you, though.”

Jack glanced down at the mottled green, purple and yellow of his arms; they looked like the skin of something from another planet. “Yeah. I’d have a bullet hole in my chest to go with them if the GPS unit hadn’t caught the slug. Lucky he didn’t stick around for a second shot.”

“Well, I’d be elephant toe-jam right now if I hadn’t shorted out Jumbo’s electric leash.” She described how she’d managed to incapacitate the elephant. “I guessed he had it wired up to give the beast a jolt if it tried to break free—otherwise, there was no way that cord could be strong enough.”

“You guessed wrong.”

“Sorry?”

“Baby elephants are restrained with a thick chain— they soon learn they can’t break it. As they get older, the thick chain is replaced by a thinner one, and eventually by a rope. The elephant is conditioned to think it can’t break free—so it doesn’t. Only the lock was electric, so he could release it remotely.”

“Huh. Well, what the fuck do I know about elephants? I’ve never even seen
Dumbo,
for Christ’s sake….”

Jack struggled to his feet, wincing in pain. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“You expecting friends of his to show up?”

“No. I doubt if the Gourmet had any.” Jack edged past Nikki, headed for the door.

“But—shouldn’t we go through his stuff while we’re here? Check for notes, trophies—”

“There’s no point. We’re done.”

“Jesus, Jack, you sound like you’re giving up.”

“Giving up?” He turned back and faced her. “There’s nothing
to
give up. We
lost.
Don’t you get it? All we can do now is screw up evidence—there’s nothing we can accomplish now that a forensics team can’t do better. I’ll send the Gourmet’s files from the Stalking Ground to the police, and hope he was arrogant enough to be honest. If not, we’ll never know. You understand?
We’ll never know.”

“What was I supposed to do, Jack? Let the asshole shoot me?”

“No. You were supposed to do your job.”

“Yeah? Kinda hard to do when your partner disappears in the middle of the fucking night.”

“I wouldn’t have gone anywhere if you hadn’t jumped down my throat—”

“You were fucking up!
Somebody
had to tell you, and it wasn’t gonna be one of our targets, was it?”

“My targets,” Jack said, “tell me everything I need.”

It hurt like hell, but Jack forced himself to grab the knob and open the door. He walked out into the pitiless Nevada sunshine, and told himself he was lucky to be alive.

He almost believed it.

They erased as much of their presence as they could, though they didn’t re-enter the menagerie. Nikki could hear the elephant moving around, and she didn’t think he was happy. They broke down the back door instead, and retrieved the remains of the GPS unit. “So what about Road Rage’s head?” Nikki asked. “Or what’s left of it…”

“Leave it,” Jack said. “We get rid of the packaging, the authorities will think he was just another victim.”

“Once this hits the papers—with the fucking elephant and all—the Patron’s gonna figure out what happened,” Nikki said.

“Yeah. The Stalking Ground is just him and me, now….”

They drove back to Reno in Nikki’s rental. They didn’t talk much. When they got to the motel room, Jack took four painkillers and slumped onto one of the beds, exhausted. He was asleep in seconds.

When he woke up, Nikki was gone.

There thou mayest wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

—John Dryden,
The Maiden Queen

Charlie Holloway stood on the roof of his gallery and looked up. It was late afternoon in October, almost five o’clock or so, and the gray Vancouver sky was punctuated with thousands of dashes of black. Crows, flying southeast to rookeries in Burnaby, just like they did every day at this time. Charlie knew a flock of crows was called a murder, but what would you call this? A massacre? A holocaust?

He watched for another few minutes as the last stragglers swooped past, trying to beat the sinking sun, then climbed back down the fire escape and into the alley. His assistant, Falmi, leaned next to the open back door, smoking a clove cigarette. He looked even more Gothic than usual; his spiky black hair was stiffened with some arcane styling product, every inch of exposed skin was dead-white, his nose and eyebrows and lower lip all sported silver rings or studs. His pants were made of skin-tight black latex, his shirt a mesh of some bright orange industrial plastic. Silver barbells pierced his nipples, stretched the gaunt scarceness of his belly button. His boots were high-heeled, black, and laced to the knee. He sported a new tattoo on his right arm, a naked woman draped over a grinning, fanged skull.

“You know, you can see the crows from here,” Falmi said in his high-pitched voice.

“Yes, but you can’t see them filling the whole sky,” Charlie said. “Expanse, vista, that’s what I like.”

“Expense, Visa,
that’s
what you like,” Falmi said. He dropped the clove cigarette to the ground and crushed it out delicately with one thick-soled boot.

Charlie chuckled. Falmi knew one of the reasons Charlie kept him around was the image he projected, and his sardonic attitude was part of that. “Everything ready?” Charlie asked as they went inside.

“Caterers are just finishing up,” Falmi said. “We’re good to go.”

Charlie bustled around, checking on last-minute details. He expected a good turnout for this opening, lots of media, and he wanted to make sure everyone was fed and happy.

There was a rap at the front door. “We’re not open yet,” Charlie said, strolling up to the glass. The man outside looked unkempt, with bleary eyes and a week’s worth of beard. Probably a transient, hoping to scarf some free appetizers and a glass of wine—

And then Charlie recognized him.

“Oh my God,” Charlie said. “Jack?” He quickly unlocked the door and opened it.

“Hi, Charlie,” Jack said. “Got a few minutes for an old client?”

“Of course, of course,” Charlie said. “We’re having an opening in an hour or so, but I’m free until then.”

Jack stepped inside. Charlie thought he looked terrible, but didn’t say so. He knew what Jack had been through. “Haven’t heard from you in a while,” Charlie said. “How have things been going?”

“Not so good, actually. I’ve been kind of… adrift.”

Charlie nodded. “Ah. Why don’t we sit down, have a glass of wine, catch up? Falmi has everthing under control.”

Jack glanced over at Charlie’s assistant, who returned his look with a smile that bordered on a sneer. “Sure,” Jack said. “That sounds good.”

Charlie led him into the gallery. A buffet table along one wall was laid out with finger foods: smoked oysters, paté, deep-fried East Indian
pakora
. Charlie grabbed a bottle of red wine and two glasses from the bar as they passed it and nodded at the bartender. “Open another one and let it breathe, Paulo,” Charlie said. “This one’s ours.”

Charlie strode to the back of the gallery and sat at one tip of a crescent moon-shaped divan richly upholstered in dark green velvet. Jack sat at the other. A small table with an etched-steel star for a top stood between them; Charlie put the glasses down and poured.

“You’ve done some redecorating,” Jack said.

“Business is good,” Charlie replied. “The artist we’re showing right now, he’s local, but I think he’ll do well.”

Jack glanced around, nodded. Tried to smile, but it was like a swimmer fighting an undertow; it hovered at his mouth and then sank beneath the surface, too exhausted to reach his eyes.

“And you?” Charlie said gently. “What have you been up to?”

Jack stared at him. Opened his mouth, closed it again. Looked down at his hands in his lap. “I’ve been doing research.”

Charlie smiled. That was an old joke between him and Jack—Jack always claimed that since every part of life informed art, an artist should be able to basically write off everything as a research expense. “Keeping receipts, I hope?”

“Uh…yeah.” The question seemed to confound him, as if small talk was a separate language he no longer understood. He looked at Charlie blankly.

Charlie sipped his wine. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Nothing, really. I just—” He stopped.

“Just what, Jack?”

“I just wanted to …reconnect.” Jack took a gulp of his own wine. “You know?” There was a note of pleading under the feigned casualness of the question.

“Sure, Jack. You know you’re welcome here anytime. And I don’t mean to pry, but—”

Jack held up a hand. “Please, Charlie. No questions, not yet. I’ve had enough questions for a while…”

It was an odd comment, but Charlie let it pass. He noticed Falmi trying to get his attention with an arched eyebrow and sheer force of will. “Just a second—I think my young protégé is feeling a little insecure.” He put his wineglass down and got up. “I’ll be right back.”

“Sure,” Jack said.

He sounded anything but.

Nikki wasn’t sure why she went back to Vancouver. October on the Canadian West Coast was cold and rainy; she should have just stayed in Nevada, or gone to California.

Maybe that’s why she picked Van. She wasn’t in a sunshine kind of mood.

She found a decent place in Kitsilano, only a few blocks from the beach. It wasn’t as big or new as her last place in the city, but she didn’t have the same kind of budget, either. She didn’t know if she was going to go back to hooking, and if she wasn’t, she’d have to get used to a different lifestyle—to a whole different life.

That was fine with her. The last two and a half years with Jack had changed her; all the activities she once used to fill her spare time seemed like pointless distractions now. She bought a futon and some kitchen stuff, but didn’t bother with a TV or stereo.

So what was she going to do?

She went for long runs on the beach and thought about it. She ran at first light when the beach was deserted, ran with the rain and the cold wind off the ocean lashing her face, ran until her lungs ached and her feet were raw. She tried not to think about anything at all while she ran, but sometimes she couldn’t help it; Sally and Janet and all the other victims she’d known would rise into her thoughts one by one, like flotsam washing up on the shore. She’d think about all the girls she and Jack had saved, the ones they’d never get to meet, and wonder if it made any difference… or if those girls were doomed anyway, destined to die of suicide or an overdose. To float out to sea alone and unmourned with the tide.

She didn’t have any answers. She kept running.

Charlie disappeared into a back room with Falmi. Jack sat and drank his wine, and when his glass was empty he poured himself another. His arms were still sore, but in the few weeks since he’d returned from Nevada the bruises had begun to fade.

He didn’t know if coming to the opening was a good idea or not. He knew why he was here—he just wasn’t sure if what he was trying to do was possible. His previous, mundane existence seemed like a dream to him now, something that had happened to another person in another reality. Wife, child, career; just shiny surfaces that had been scraped away to reveal the cold, black iron beneath. Trying to get that life back seemed as pointless as throwing rocks at a thunderstorm.

But parts of that life were still around, still alive; parts like Charlie. He was one of those rare people who really listened when you talked—Jack had always admired how grounded he seemed, how aware of the world around him. Jack supposed it was why he was such a good agent.

When Nikki had left him, Jack hadn’t known what to do. He found himself at the airport with no clear destination in mind; he’d finally decided to go back to Portland, but only to pack up the computer equipment. Nikki’s stuff was already gone.

And then he found himself returning to Vancouver.

He hadn’t been back since his first interrogation, his first kill. He’d long ago sold the house, moved out of his studio; the only thing left for him there were memories.

That was why he’d come. He needed to find out if he was still human, and memories were the most human thing he had left.

He stood up after a bit and wandered around the gallery, looking at the pieces. The artist’s name was Ranjit Thiarra, and he worked in a number of mediums; photo-collage, sculpture, oils. His work tended toward the ethereal, juxtaposed images of angels and eclipses against backdrops of highly polished metal or exotic wood. Pretty, but to Jack they seemed as shallow and safe as a child’s wading pool.

He hadn’t logged on to the Stalking Ground since the shootout in Nevada. He was sure there would be some taunt from the Patron, some insinuation that it had all been Jack’s fault. He knew the Patron’s claim that the Gourmet had been a second identity was false; for all his boasting, the Gourmet simply hadn’t been smart enough to be the Patron.

Only the Patron was left in The Pack. He wouldn’t be drawn into a trap—and without Nikki, Jack couldn’t hunt at all. If he was ever going to walk away, now would be the time.

As long as there was somewhere to go.

He studied a deep blue glazed bowl, inlaid with photographs of tropical fish and lightning. Ran a finger lightly over the smooth, curving surface, tried to imagine what Thiarra had felt when he made it. Was it a reminder of a vacation in the tropics? Azure ocean, glittering schools of fish, a sudden squall cracking open the sky?

Charlie bustled up behind him. “Sorry, Jack—last minute details, you know how it is. I’m going to open up now, but you’re welcome to stick around. I’d like to talk more.”

“Thanks,” Jack said. “I think I will.”

People began to trickle in. Jack noticed that people on their own tended to arrive first; he supposed it was because they had no other place to be. Then came the couples, and finally groups of three or more, clusters of friends who had probably met for drinks or dinner beforehand. The usual opening types were all there: the immaculately dressed older man with the silver hair, examining the art with great care; the stern-looking, square-bodied women wearing denim and leather; the bright-eyed boys and girls barely out of their teens, sporting outrageous hair and clothing.

It was all familiar. Jack remembered the last opening he’d had, Janine keeping everyone’s wineglass filled, Jack circling the room nervously and trying to be charming. It had been just like this, this swirl of color and voices and music; soft jazz playing on a boombox in the corner while people laughed and talked and traded opinions, sipping wine and taking bites of sushi.

It was all so
normal.

He got himself another glass of wine and made a circuit of the room. There were a few people he knew, none well; he smiled and nodded and kept moving.

He was studying a painting when he heard Falmi’s voice beside him. “Do anything for you?”

He glanced over at the Goth. Falmi had been with Charlie for years, but he and Jack had never particularly gotten along. He suspected that was just part of Falmi’s personality—he wore his cynicism like a designer suit, showing it off whenever possible.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Jack said.

Falmi sighed. “I meant the
painting
. Does it
do
anything for you?”

Jack considered the canvas in question. It was a painting of a statue—except, when Jack looked closer, he saw that it was a photo of a painting of a statue, the statue being Rodin’s The Thinker. “I’m not sure,” he said.

“Well, it does for me,” Falmi said. “But nothing a good laxative couldn’t fix.”

“It seems… detached,” Jack said. “So many layers between the original and the viewer.”

“Exactly,” Falmi said grudgingly. “Layers of merchandising. A copy of a copy of a copy—even the statue itself is a fake.” He pointed to the base of the statue, where Jack could make out the words Made in China in tiny letters. “It’s just a cheap plaster knock-off, the kind you buy in a tacky tourist shop.”

“Maybe that’s the point—what we’re supposed to think about.”

“Right. Making the observer the fifth ‘thinker’ in the series. How clever.” Falmi tapped the small label to the right of the display; sure enough, its title was,
The Fifth Thinker.
“Too bad it doesn’t give us anything to think
about,
other than how clever the artist is.”

“It’s about disconnection,” Jack said. “Cognitive dissonance. What happens when you overthink something, overanalyze it. It loses its meaning.”

“Maybe that’s why I dislike it so much,” Falmi said. “Too cerebral.”

“Yeah. The original had power, depth, intensity. You
felt
it,” Jack said. “In your gut.”

“Well, all this makes me feel is the urgent need for another drink. Excuse me.” Falmi marched away.

Jack continued to stare at the photograph. He had the overwhelming desire to reach out and touch it, reach
through
it, past all the imitations and to the heart of the real thing.

To feel the passion he knew was there, under the cold, hard stone.

In the end, it was a combination of restlessness and curiosity that drove Nikki back to the street. She felt like she needed to prove something, even if she wasn’t sure what that was.

Nothing much had changed. New faces, of course, but that was a constant. She checked out the scene carefully, quickly learned who claimed what territory, and went to work.

The first night she was a little nervous, which was strange; this was undoubtedly the safest sex she’d had in the last two years. For the most part, things went smoothly… except for the gentleman who seemed to be reaching for something beside his seat while she blew him. He suddenly found the business end of a .38 inches away from his nose—until she saw he was only groping for the recline lever.