He hadn’t come home to work—he had come home because his father had set himself on fire and burned off most of the meat of his hands—little more than charred black hooks now. The short of it was he had come home to set things straight so the old man could be placed somewhere. Then he was going to get back into his car, head for New York, and never come back here. It was a simple scenario when it was put in those terms. Only those terms had been blown to pieces when Hauser had called last night.
The sandpiper off his flank raced in and picked up a sand crab he had kicked up, skedaddling away with the coin-sized animal. The bird dropped it onto the beach and stabbed at its belly with controlled jabs of its beak. For a few seconds the crustacean made a valiant effort but it eventually succumbed to the superior firepower and the bird pulled its guts out in a jet of color.
The lighthouse shone weirdly in the early-morning haze and Jake could see two fishing boats heading around the point, to the lee side of Long Island. He figured that every boat in the area would be somewhere else by nine a.m.
As far as he could see both up and down the coast he was the only one out. He turned his head back toward the house, a geometric wedge of black against a blue-orange sky, as if Richard Neutra had designed the Rorschach test. The light off the water bounced red and orange against the glass and the dark line of the horizon crept down the wall of windows that faced the beach. The house looked like it was rising out of the dune and Jake remembered watching the sun come up on the beach with his mother after a night spent eating Mallomars and watching old movie marathons on PBS.
Why was he unable to focus here? What was scattering his concentration? Was it the mess inside the house coming awake in front of him? Was it the memory of his mother? Was it that fucker who had taken the woman and child apart? Was it those creepy little paintings inside the house? Or was it just the plain old fucking fact that he didn’t want to be here? That he wanted to be back in the city with his wife and son, away from a place he had tried to forget for most of his life. After all, how did he have any responsibility here?
As the sun rose, its light crawled down the dunes and Jake felt the damp start to burn off his body. He stood on the sand, watching the edge of the world somewhere off to the east, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to leave. Not now. Not for a while. I came back to take care of my father’s life, he told himself. And now there’s work to do. There’s a monster here. A monster no one else can handle. A monster no one knows but me. A monster no one else can find.
Skinned.
I came here to help my old man. Not because he deserves it or because I give a shit. But because it is the thing a son should do. And what am I going to do about the past? Nothing. Because it’s not something I can fix.
Skinned.
It’s not a coincidence.
Skinned.
I don’t want it to be him.
Skinned.
Not now.
Skinned.
Not after all this time.
7
Jake stood in the kitchen sipping his eighth cup of fine convenience-store no-name blend topped off with a shoplifted packet of sugar from the coffee stand in the Kwik Mart. His hair was still wet from a hot shower and he felt better. At least comfortable in the doubts department, for whatever the fuck that was worth. From forty feet the endless line of black script tattooed into his flesh looked like a well-tailored shirt. He considered it part of the new him, one that began when he had stopped speedballing his way through life on heroin and cocaine and baby laxative. The end of the before. The end of the drugs and the booze and the heart attack trifecta that he had somehow managed to cheat. The end of the bad times before he had found Kay and Jeremy. Before they buried a cardiac resynchronization appliance under his chest muscle, almost in his armpit, to keep his heart from simply forgetting to beat. Before he had decided that life wasn’t shitty all the time. Before the new and improved Jake Cole.
He still missed the cocaine and the heroin. The booze, too.
But the coffee was good, and he raised his cup in a silent toast to the before, to the memory of his mother. To the good old days. Back before the whole thing had somehow just gone up in flames.
He was pouring another cup when the bell rang. He wondered if it was Hauser’s men or the news—both would be dropping by sooner rather than later. Out of habit, he dragged the cold stainless revolver off the counter, put it into the waistband at the small of his back, and walked to the door with the mug of coffee in his hands and another bologna on Wonder Bread clamped firmly in his teeth. He chomped down on the soft bread and it molded to the roof of his mouth. He tore the welfare sandwich away from his teeth and opened the door in one movement.
The bright panel of sun flooded the dark front hall and the space went from dead grays to dusty wood and chrome. Jake squinted into the figure at the door, haloed in light, features obscured in shadow, only one known quantity: male. The image slowly materialized, like an old-timey dial-up Internet connection, pixels slowly morphing into focus. Jake didn’t recognize the face behind the big Ray-Ban aviators, but he recognized the smile again, still amazed that it wasn’t broken like he had left it the first time they had met.
“Jakey!” Spencer yelled and barreled through the door, enveloping Jake in a bear hug that lifted him off the ground. Jake wasn’t small, but he was eclipsed by the mass of the man squeezing him.
“Jakey!” he hollered again, this time in Jake’s ear.
“Yeah, yeah. Jesus, you trying to make me deaf?” Jake wriggled out of the clinch, spilling coffee and losing the tail end of the sandwich.
His old friend backed away and held up the gun that Jake had put into his waistband. “Not very trusting I see.”
“Not particularly, no,” Jake said flatly and took it back. When it was in his hand, he looked the man up and down, taking in what twenty-eight years had done. “You look good, Spencer.” And he did. Better than the flashing blue-and-red Christmas monster at the entrance to the death house last night.
Spencer nodded, smiled. “Thanks. Yeah. You—” He stopped and looked Jake over, taking in the sinewy build, the tattoos. His eyes slid back to the pistol in Jake’s hand. “—too.” He paused. “Really.” Paused again. “Different. But good, man. Wow.” He grabbed Jake by the shoulders and held him at arm’s length like a client sizing up a painting. “You look just the same. Charles Bronson.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Thanks. Really. Come on in.” He ushered his friend into the house. “Coffee?”
Spencer lumbered by and the floor shook. “Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Holy shit, this place hasn’t changed at all. I mean at all.” He walked through the hall and stopped at the geometric model on the console by the door. It was the size of a library globe. “I forgot about that thing. Now it’s like I was here yesterday.”
Jake followed his eyes to the stainless-steel sphere. “I know what you mean.” Jake walked into the house, took his FBI T-shirt from the back of a chair, and slid it on. “What do you take in your coffee? I got sugar.”
“Black’s perfect. Unless it’s some chocolate vanilla crap, then just get me a glass of water. Tap water. The bottled shit gives you Alzheimer’s and cancer—” He stopped cold, reconsidered his words. “Aw, shit, Jakey. I didn’t mean—”
Jake dismissed it with a shrug. “Fuck it.”
The question of whether or not his father had drunk too much plastic bottled booze was asked by that creepy little voice he had already heard too much of in the past half day. He topped off his coffee, poured one for Spencer—into an old superhero mug that had held brushes for three decades—then slid it across the counter. “Thanks for coming by.” And he meant it, which surprised him almost as much as hearing himself say it out loud.