The Closer (30 page)

“You’re not going to shoot me, Jack.” Charlie’s voice behind the mask was muffled, but confident.

Jack kept the gun leveled at Charlie’s belly. “If I have to, I will. Keep driving.”

“Can I take the headgear off?”

“Go ahead.”

Charlie pulled the helmet off at a red light. “Ah, that’s better,” he said, smiling. “Face-to-face at last.”

“You fucking bastard,” Jack said.

“I know questions are really
your
forte,” Charlie said, “but I have a few of my own. How’d you find me?”

“Falmi helped me track down Stedman. You’d already decoyed him away from his niece, but I convinced him to tell me where they were supposed to be meeting.”

“How? Pull a few teeth?”

“No. I told him I’d found a cell phone in the back of my cab and his number was the first one in the directory.”

“And he told you his niece’s cell phone had recently been stolen. How did you know?”

“I found the cell phone you stashed under the bed to incriminate Falmi.”

“So Stedman gave you a description and told you where she’d be, so you could return her phone. Smart.” Charlie nodded. “I have to say, this is both a relief and a disappointment. I mean, I’ve really enjoyed our interaction online and I’m sorry it’s over, but it’s also great to be able to talk honestly—”

Jack hit him in the mouth with the gun. Charlie’s head snapped back; the car swerved abruptly to the right, and then Charlie regained control. He glanced at Jack, and grinned. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He spat a tooth onto the dashboard.

“Heh. Guess I should have expected that,” he said.

“You’re going to be a long time dying,” Jack said.

“Before you hit me again, you should know—I have Nikki.”

“Prove it.”

“Five foot six in her bare feet, bright blue eyes, nice tan, and a charm bracelet she’s
very
attached to; I couldn’t get it off. I’ll bet every one of those charms reminds her of a different dead friend… that’s how you persuaded her to join you, isn’t it?”

“Tell me how you found her.”

“You really
are
brilliant, Jack. Your secret weapon? A hooker! All those people who thought the Closer had to be a cop, using inside information to nail serial killers… and it turns out his information is a lot more ‘inside’ than anybody thought.” Charlie laughed out loud, exposing bloodstained teeth. “I mean, come on! It’s like Batman pimping Robin! ‘Let’s go, Boy Wonder—and don’t forget the Bat-Condoms!’”

“Tell me where she is.”

“She’s tied up, with a limited oxygen supply,” Charlie said. “About an hour’s worth. Think you can break me in an hour, Jack?”

“No.”

“Good answer! You played a nice end-game, Jack, but I’ve been playing this game longer than you. …I knew you two must have had a little spat after doing the Gourmet. That didn’t go quite as planned, did it? Police reports were sketchy, but they made it sound more like a home invasion gone wrong than an interrogation.”

“I cut her loose. I can always find another whore.”

“Excellent,
Jack. Always negotiate from a position of strength… and knowledge is strength. You want to know how I found her? Easy. I never really
lost
her. Nikki Jasper. Thirty-four. Born in Toronto, birthday is April 11. I hired a private detective to keep tabs on you three years ago, Jack—ugly little fellow, but very efficient. After you recruited Nikki, I had her checked out quite thoroughly. See, I always had high hopes for you, Jack. I kept an eye on you… right from the beginning.”

“You knew I was the Closer. All along.”

“Of course. This whole dance was choreographed, Jack. I could’ve stopped you at any time… but why should I? Do you realize how singular you and I are? There is no one—
no one
—in the world who has accomplished what you and I have. We belong to the realm of
legend
… and when you and your sidekick split up, I knew Vancouver was the place she’d probably run back to. Just like you did. Despite what you say, the two of you must have quite the bond. Guess the only tie stronger than sex is death. Isn’t it, Jack?”

“Where are we going?” They’d been driving for a few minutes now; Charlie had taken them north, toward the industrial docks on the other side of Hastings.

“I want to show you something. Don’t worry, Nikki’s nearby. You might even save her life …if you’ll listen to me for a few minutes more.”

Charlie pulled the car into a gravel parking lot beside a two-story warehouse. A faded, barely legible sign over the door read Kim Luc Imports.

Charlie turned off the motor. “Come on in, Jack. Not too many people have seen this.” He got out of the car. Jack followed, keeping the gun on him. Charlie hardly seemed to notice it was there.

Charlie unlocked the front door and they went inside. The interior of the warehouse wasn’t what Jack expected; the ceiling was no higher than an ordinary room, but a long hallway extended all the way to the back of the building, at least a hundred feet. Doorways were spaced evenly along its length on either side. Overhead spotlights sprang to life as Charlie flicked a switch.

“This is my real gallery, Jack,” Charlie said. “Every- thing in here, I’m directly responsible for. None of it would exist without me. I want you to consider that before you do anything else.” For the first time Jack got a good look at the outfit Charlie was wearing: a breastplate made of stained glass in a solar design, a blue toga emblazoned with suns, and boots and gauntlets made of leather and polished copper. He looked like a modern-day incarnation of Nero, an emperor of madness and flames.

Jack raised the gun. “Ten minutes. After that, you take me to Nikki—or I’ll burn everything in this place, piece by piece, and make you watch.”

Charlie’s grin vanished. He nodded. “Fair enough. This way…”

Everything in the first room was made of light.

At least, that was how it seemed to Jack. The artist had used various sources of light—neon, bulbs, ultra-violet, even monitors—then redirected them with mirrors, magnifiers, colored filters. Specific images were heightened or reflected, multiplied or distorted. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, shards of mirror suspended from electroluminescent wires of vivid scarlet. In the center of the chandelier, a nude figurine of glass, a woman with her arms over her head. The base of the figurine held a bulb that simulated a candle flame; the light seemed to fill the figure to bursting. Every line of her body was underscored in brilliance, from the muscled tautness of her calves to the elegant curves between hip and breast. The shards surrounding her revolved slowly: one side was a true mirror, while the other was some kind of foil, ever so slightly crinkled, reflecting an image warped and jagged. The shards were hung so thickly it was impossible to see the entire figure at once—glimpses of beauty were all you could catch, interspersed with bits of unpredictable, distorted sharpness.

The piece was simply labeled
Memory
. It was the most beautiful thing Jack had ever seen.

There were others, too: a cluster of words made from blue neon, interlinked in such a way that they merged into a complex maze at their center—Jack could make out
Skin
,
Sweet
and
Loss
. There were images projected onto twisting screens of silk, mosaics made of stained glass, even a hologram suspended in a teardrop-shaped container of liquid. The same woman appeared in almost every piece.

“You killed her,” Jack said.

“And he immortalized her,” Charlie replied. “In beauty, and wonder, and awe. You can’t deny it, Jack… there is
genius
here. I know you see it.
And I created it.”

“It’s too high a price.”

“Is it? Come on, Jack—you went to art school, you know how many artists had horrible, screwed-up lives. True talent thrives under that kind of pressure. All I’m doing is replacing the chaos of natural disasters with directed ones….”

“I understand the process. What I don’t understand is what you want from
me,”
Jack snarled. “I’m not going to create anything like this, Charlie. I create
suffering,
I create
horror.
I’m not your greatest success, I’m your biggest failure.”

“Not true,” Charlie said softly. He put a hand up to the chandelier, set it spinning with a gentle push. “All the artists who are represented here have one thing in common: their art is reactive. They’re responding to what I did to them, to their lives. But you—you did something else. You made a choice, turned your pain inward instead of outward. You chose transformation over expression.”

“I know what I did.”

“But you don’t understand the implications. Expression is basically selfish—but what
you
did was not. You gave up your humanity, Jack. You chose to become a monster, for the sake of the greater good.
Just like me.”

“What?” Jack whispered.

Charlie spread his arms, indicated the art around him. “Right now, the value of all this is going up and up,” Charlie said. “And when it gets high enough, I’m going to sell. Send it out into the world. And long after those people I killed are forgotten, all this will live on. It will inspire, it will uplift, it will bring joy. In the end, I’ll have made the world a better place….”

“And you’ll be rich.”

“Yes. And you’ll be dead or in jail… unless you join me.”

Jack just stared at him.

“We deserve to be rewarded, Jack. Both of us. We do important work, and we do it isolated and unthanked. That’s why I joined the Stalking Ground in the first place—I wanted to find someone I could share this with. Someone who might understand. All I found were lunatics and rapists—until you.”

“What do you
want
from me? Congratulations? Absolution?
What?”
Jack shouted.

“I want a partnership, Jack,” Charlie said. “You and me. You keep the Stalking Ground going, and I keep doing what I do. I’m a much better partner than Nikki could ever be… because I can do things she’d never dare. With my credibility on your side, we can
triple
the size of the Stalking Ground—you’ll have your pick of victims. We can go
global,
Jack. Think of all the killers you can end—”

“Anyone but you,” Jack said. “I can kill anyone but you.”

“Yes.” Charlie met Jack’s eyes. “We’ve been friends a long time, Jack. Right now, you might think you don’t really know me—but you do. You know what matters to me. I really think we could make this
work
… as long as we maintain the balance of power. I’m going to take something out now; don’t be alarmed.” From the folds of his toga, Charlie pulled out a small black unit that looked like a remote control. He held it up for Jack to see. “This is a little extra insurance, Jack. I press this button, Nikki’s air supply gets cut off. She’ll asphyxiate in around two minutes. I’ll make you a deal, though—I’ll trade this for your gun.”

Jack thought about it. “Deal.”

He held out the gun, still pointed at Charlie’s head. He reached for the remote—and at the last second, hit the cartridge release. The magazine dropped to the floor as Charlie took the gun and Jack snatched the remote.

Charlie laughed. He tucked the gun into his belt as Jack kicked the magazine into a corner. “Nicely done. Now that we’re on a more even footing, I want you to give serious consideration to my offer. And if you accept—Nikki goes free.”

Jack backed away. His head throbbed. It was insane… but then, so was everything else about his life. He’d already traded away so much—was this any different? Nikki could be safe. And no matter what he did, his family would still be dead….

“Time’s almost up, Jack,” Charlie said. “There’s one last thing you should know.” Charlie hesitated, then said, “They didn’t suffer.”

“They. You mean—”

“Your family. I killed them, but everything else was done postmortem. I can even prove it—look.” Charlie pointed at the corner.

Jack turned. A Polaroid was pinned to the wall. He swallowed, and took a step closer.

Details came into focus. It was a picture of Janine, Sam and his parents. They were lined up in the living room, in front of the Christmas tree; his father looked angry, the rest of them looked terrified.

“This doesn’t prove anything,” Jack said. He turned back—

Charlie was gone.

He’d been standing next to a full-length mirror that had been used as a canvas—and, Jack saw when he looked closer, to disguise a door. It was ajar now; Jack reached out and pulled it open. The room beyond was dark.

An overhead spotlight snapped on.

A monstrous figure reached for Jack with huge, missshapen hands, its mouth stretched open in a silent scream of rage. Jack shouted, backpedaled, lost his footing. He crashed to the floor, trying to cushion his fall with one arm and fend off the attack with the other—

An attack that never came.

Heart hammering, Jack looked around. The room was full of statues, most of them life-size. Their faces radiated intense emotions: fear, grief, rage. All of them were reaching forward, straining for something just out of their grasp. He got to his feet.

Charlie was nowhere to be seen—but there was another door at the end of the room.

Jack made his way through the gallery slowly, alert for traps. Halfway across the room, he heard Charlie’s voice—from a speaker mounted near the ceiling.

“The artist’s name is René Deslane,” Charlie said. He sounded slightly out of breath. “Wonderful
yearning
quality to his work, isn’t there?”

Jack didn’t bother answering. He kept moving, faster now.

“You don’t really want a gallery tour, do you, Jack? That’s all right. The work speaks for itself.”

The next room was hung with paintings, floor to ceiling canvases. Lots of black, lots of red—that was all that registered as Jack broke into a run. There were two doors, one leading out to the hall and one connecting to the next room. Another speaker was on the ceiling. Jack kept going in a straight line, trusting his instincts.

“Nikki’s running out of air, Jack. You know what I think you should do? Just press the button on the remote. She’s been drugged, so she’ll suffocate without even waking up. No more pain for her, Jack—don’t you think that’s the greatest gift you could give her? No more back alley blow jobs, no more living in fear of dying horribly or spending the rest of her life in prison. You wouldn’t even have to watch. Press the button, Jack…”