The Closer (7 page)

Jack studied the painting, eyes narrowed. There was something familiar about the style….

Another file. This one showed him horror: an elderly woman, naked except for a flowery hat, crucified in a doorway. Her wrists had been nailed to either side of the frame.

Jack’s eyes widened. “Finally,” he whispered.

With nothing more than that single, grotesque image and the feeling in his gut, he knew.

He’d found his family’s killer.

Three years ago.

A white Christmas in Vancouver was so rare that a local jeweler had promised to refund the full price of any wedding or engagement ring he sold in December if it snowed on the twenty-fifth. He’d made the promise in previous years as well, and so far his money had gone unclaimed.

He must be awfully nervous right about now,
Jack thought as he lay in bed, still not quite awake.
If I weren’t already married, I’d be doing some ring shopping myself.
It had snowed on the twenty-second and twenty-third, and not the slushy drizzle the West Coast usually got; every once in a while it would snow in Vancouver the way it rained, a steady barrage that went on and on and on. It came down in clumps like cottonwood fluff, big, heavy, white flakes that drifted earthward in a thick, sound-deadening curtain. Jack hadn’t gotten much work done on the twenty-second; he’d spent the whole day staring out the window of his East Side studio, just watching it fall.

By the twenty-third his opinion had changed to match most Vancouverites: snow
sucked.
Beautiful as it was, the city wasn’t equipped to cope—it didn’t have enough plows, and the majority of the population wasn’t used to the driving conditions. The city’s light-rail transit system, Skytrain, didn’t like it either; elevated, exposed, and electric, it shut down and sulked. City buses ran an hour to three hours behind schedule. Cab companies refused to take any fares that weren’t emergencies.

On the twenty-fourth, Jack did what most citizens did—he gave up, and stayed at home.

“Ja—ack,” called Janine’s voice from downstairs. “Come on, sleepyhead. Your folks are going to be here in an hour.”

Jack groaned, and burrowed underneath the comforter. He’d almost drifted off again when the covers were pulled away from his head.

“Argh! Lemme sleep,” he growled, diving face-first under a pillow.

His wife sighed, and sat down on the bed beside him. “All right. I’ll tell them you decided to hibernate for the winter.”

“Mmmph.”

“And they can give your presents to charity.”

He slid an arm out from under the comforter and around her waist. “You won’t tell ’em anything, because you’re going into hibernation
with
me. Gotta have something to keep me warm—and I hear long women with short hair give off a lot of heat.”

Janine laughed. She always kept her hair short, and currently had no more than an inch of blond fuzz covering her skull. “Oh, really? And what about Sam? Who’s going to take care of him?”

“He’s smart. He can learn to forage for nuts and berries.”

She yanked the pillow away and hit him with it. “I can’t believe you’d say that about your own son,” she said, pretending to be indignant.

“
I
can’t believe I married someone who’s coherent before nine
A
.
M
.
”

“I bet you weren’t like this when you were a kid,” she said, lying down beside him. He eased an arm under her head.

“Not at Christmas, anyway,” he chuckled. “I was a lot more like Sam—couldn’t sleep the night before, up at five-thirty Christmas morning. So hyper I swear I
vibrated.”

“So what happened?”

“I discovered masturbation. Calmed me down a lot.”

“Well, Sam’s only six—I think he’s got a few hyper years left.” Janine sat up and swung her legs off the bed. “Come on. I’ve got coffee made.”

“Caffeine? Why didn’t you say so…”

He got up and had a quick shower, whistling an old Devo song while he shampooed. He threw on some black sweat pants and a white T-shirt when he was done and padded downstairs in his bare feet.

“Dad! Just one more sleep!” his son announced from the living room. Sam had his mother’s narrow face and upturned nose, but his father’s wavy brown hair. He’d made a point of counting down the days for the last two weeks.

“You got it, Sam,” Jack said as he headed for the kitchen. His son followed him, waving a comic book in one hand.

“Look! Marshall gave me a
Spawn
number one for Christmas! Know why?”

“Uh—because he bought seven copies when it came out?” Jack poured coffee into a black mug with a green alien head emblazoned on it.

“No,”
Sam said in exaggerated exasperation. “It’s ’cause I’m his
best friend.”

“I thought I was your best friend, buddy,” he said, getting cream from the fridge. The fridge was covered with magnets Janine had collected from tourist traps. The one that caught his eye every day when he grabbed the door handle was from a ghost town in Arizona: a skull wearing a cowboy hat grinned at him, with “Yahoo, Buckeroo!” printed underneath.

“Yahoo,” Jack said, pointing a finger and cocked thumb at the skull and firing an imaginary shot.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, buddy?” He pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and sat down.

“How come you’re always shooting the fridge?”

Jack laughed. “It’s just a thing I do when I’m in a good mood. A ritual, I guess.”

“What’s a rich-yule?”

“It’s what you’re gonna have, once Grandma and Grandpa get here.”

“Oh. Okay.” He grinned in that completely accepting little-boy way he had, and ran back into the living room. Jack shook his head and grinned himself; he couldn’t remember a time when he’d had that kind of complete confidence in his father. It was heartwarming and a little scary, all at once.

Janine came into the kitchen and sat down at the table with him. “Well, the guest room is ready. All we need now is your folks.”

A double honk sounded from outside, the greeting Jack’s father always gave when he arrived. “And there they are,” Jack said.

Mr. and Mrs. Salter walked through the front door with their arms full of packages. “Merry Christmas!” his mother shouted. She was a tall woman, with curly hair dyed aggressively red. “Look what Santa dropped off at our house by mistake!”

“Wow!” Sam said, running up and hugging his grandma around the waist. “Are there some for me?”

“Oh, I think there might be a few in there,” Jack’s father said. He was a short, bullish man, with a square jaw and gray hair he kept cropped short. “Hey, there’s my twin!” he said with a laugh, getting a hug from Janine.

“Merry Christmas,” Jack said, accepting an armload of packages while Janine got their coats. “Oof. You buy out Toys-R-Us again this year?”

“Ixnay on the Oystay,” his father said. “Antasay, got me?”

“Huh?” Sam said.

“Never mind,” Jack said. “Your grandfather slips into an old Swedish dialect now and then.”

Jack ushered them into the living room. An eight-foot Douglas fir dominated one corner, decorated in a lavish and somewhat eclectic manner: action figures from Sam’s collection waged war in the tree’s branches over the fate of baby Jesus in a manger, illuminated by glowing chili peppers—patio lanterns strung up in lieu of Christmas lights—the tableau made even more surreal by Jack’s handcrafted ornaments. They were all composed of found objects, often silverware; Jack had discovered you could make a quite serviceable angel out of two forks, a spoon and a bit of wire, especially if you spread the tines out for the wings.

“Good Lord,” his father said, examining the fir. “Well, at least the tree is real.”

“I thought you’d be late,” Jack said, depositing the presents under the tree. “Considering the roads.”

“Oh, you know your father,” his mother said, dropping into an armchair. “Made us leave an hour early, just in case.”

“Good thing I did, too,” Mr. Salter said. “The main routes are all right, but we almost got stuck a few times on side streets. Slow going, I can tell you.”

“Well, they say it’s supposed to warm up by tomorrow,” Janine said.

“Yes, and then we’ll have to deal with the slush,” Mr. Salter grumbled.

“Anybody want a drink?” Jack asked.

“I wouldn’t mind a hot chocolate,” Mrs. Salter said. “Take the chill out of my bones.”

“How about you, Dad?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Me, too!” Sam piped up from under the tree. He was rooting through the boxes, looking for his name and saying, “Yes!” every time he found it.

“I’ll make some for everyone,” Janine said.

It was late afternoon when Jack got the call. Janine and his mom were in the kitchen fixing dinner and his dad was in the middle of a serious debate with his grandson: “No, Sammy, I don’t think Batman could beat Spiderman in a fight. Not a fair one, anyway…”

Jack picked up the cordless on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Jack?” The voice had a German accent as thick and heavy as a Black Forest cake. Jack recognized it immediately.

“Mr. Liebenstraum—merry Christmas,” Jack said.

“Jah, Jah,
merry Christmas to you, too. I am sorry to be bothering you at home, Jack, but it seems I will not be returning after the holidays, not for some time. I have pressing business concerns.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Liebenstraum was a wealthy German art collector who’d bought one of Jack’s pieces through an intermediary. He’d apparently been impressed enough to contact Jack about a European exhibit, maybe even a tour; it was the kind of opportunity that could make an artist’s career.

Jack had never met the man in person. The German had been in town for the past two weeks, but so far had been forced to cancel appointments twice because of business. The last time, he’d said he’d be busy until he left on Christmas Eve— but that he’d be back in town shortly after New Year’s.

“I am so sorry, Jack,” Liebenstraum said regretfully. “I wanted so much to see your studio, your pieces. Now that I finally have a few spare moments, it is too late.”

A few spare moments.
“What time does your flight leave?”

“Not until ten.”

“Well, if you wanted, we could still get together,” Jack said. “It’d take me about an hour to get to my studio. As long as the cabs are running again, you could meet me there.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind, I have nothing to do but drink schnapps in the airport bar, but you—you must be home with your family,
nicht wahr?”

“It’s okay. They’ll understand.”

“Well, then—I would like that very much. And this time I will be there, I promise.”

“Great!” Jack gave him the address, thanked him, and hung up.

Now
all he had to do was tell everybody else….

The sun was already starting to set when Jack set out for his studio. Under normal driving conditions he would have been able to get there in half an hour; now, he knew it would take him at least twice as long.

He drove through a surreal landscape. Almost three feet of snow had fallen within forty-eight hours, turning his neighborhood into alien terrain: vehicles that had been parked for the last two days were completely encased, white bulges lining the street like the foothills of a glacier. Hedges, bushes and trees were coated so thickly they were only shapes, globes and ridges and cones of sparkling white. It felt like staring at a blank page and seeing half-formed ideas pushing their way up through the paper.

As Jack had expected, Janine and his mother had been supportive, while his father had grumbled. The senior Salter had never been crazy about his son’s chosen field; he had tried to convince Jack more than once to pick something “with a little more stability in it.” Jack had long ago learned to simply change the subject, rather than defending his point of view. Art wasn’t something Jack had chosen; it had chosen him. That was the closest thing to an explanation he could give his father, and Jack knew his father didn’t understand.

Despite that, they had come to a kind of truce, a treaty unknowingly written by Sam. He had seen them get into an argument once, started crying and refused to stop until Jack and his father had hugged each other. After that there were no more loud disagreements, not when Sam was around.

In the end, his father had insisted Jack take their car. “It’s got snow tires on it, and you won’t have to dig it out. Just don’t leave the radio on that junk you listen to.”

Jack lived in Burnaby, while his studio was on the east side of Vancouver, just off Main and Terminal. He took Hastings Street, but even that was moving at a crawl; there’d been some sort of chain-reaction accident on the long downslope just past Boundary Road. At least three tow trucks and five police cars blocked the road, turning the snow into a strobing rainbow of yellow, blue, and red.

By the time he got to his studio it was just past six, and full dark. Liebenstraum wasn’t there yet, so he unlocked the door and went inside. He puttered around for a few minutes, pulling out a few pieces he had in storage and arranging them nervously. Jack worked primarily in mixed media, combining elements of painting, sculpture, and text; his stuff tended toward pop culture and the three-dimensional, like the bust of Madonna he’d made out of condom wrappers, Styrofoam, and white glue.

Fifteen minutes passed, then half an hour. No Liebenstraum. Jack wondered if he’d been able to get a cab. He thought about making some calls, seeing if taxis were available, but there were too many cab companies in Vancouver—besides, what if Liebenstraum were trying to call him?

Finally, there was a knock at the door. It wasn’t Liebenstraum, though; it was a cop. “We got a call about a prowler,” she said. She was in her twenties, with short dark hair and brown eyes. She was amazingly cheerful for someone working on Christmas Eve.