It took him ten seconds to begin speaking. “First off, if you want to know about Jake Cole, you’ll have to ask him. But I’ll tell you what, Sheriff Hauser, I am going to share a little information with you because you can’t afford the luxury of mistrust on this one. You don’t have the time. Of all the police departments in the United States investigating a homicide right now, yours is the luckiest. If Cole’s father wasn’t going through what he is, I’d have Jake out of there so fast you’d think he was a dream. I am not denigrating your situation—I’ve read the file and you have a real problem on your hands—but Jake has other cases that are a lot more pressing than yours.”
“What’s more pressing than a mother and her baby skinned alive?” Hauser asked, reminding himself out loud what was at the center of this whole thing.
“Try nine little boys who have disappeared over the past month and whose parents have been receiving their heads in the mail a few days later—collect. With nails pounded into them. Pre-mortem.”
“Jesus.”
“Yes. Jesus. Look, I understand that Jake Cole does not fit the bureau profile that we have set for ourselves and I’d be lying if I said that you were the first law-enforcement officer to field a call like this. It’s obvious to all parties that Jake’s left of center of our phenotype. He works autonomously for us and we are privileged to have him—you are privileged to have him.” He paused again, as if he was deciding how much to open up to Hauser. “Jake has a rare ability.”
“Is he some sort of a psychic?”
Hauser was surprised to hear Carradine laugh, a hearty roar that echoed for a few seconds. “Sheriff, we are good at what we do because of science. Because of protocols we have developed. Because we understand that data supports data and that the eventual outcome is a solution. Not because of some boojie-woojie evil eye. Again, I’d be lying if I told you that you were the first person who had asked me that, but as a lawman you should know better. There are no mediums. No psychics. No people who speak to the dead. That’s all unsupported unscientific wishful thinking.
“In simple terms, Jake is the most pragmatic problem solver I have ever seen. First off, he has eidetic memory—I mean complete photographic recall. He walks through a room once and he can recall the tiniest detail, as if he has a digital recorder in his head. It’s a little disconcerting because it’s very uncommon. It’s also remarkable. Jake would be the first to tell you about it if you bothered to ask.”
Hauser felt himself drop the classification of Jake as some kind of circus freak to little more than a stupid human trick. “It’s not some weird I-see-dead-people thing?”
Carradine let a little chuckle roll out again. “No, Sheriff, it’s just a very keen power of observation. And if his calm gets to you, please remember that he sees the worst of humanity all the time. It takes a lot to get him flustered.”
Hauser remembered Jake in the ME’s subterranean room, caressing Madame X’s peeled foot.
“Have I answered your questions?” The tone told Hauser that his five minutes were over.
Hauser realized that in a way he now knew less about Jake Cole than before he had made the call. “I guess so,” he said, then added a tired “Thank you,” and hung up.
25
Jake crouched in front of the master bedroom pocket door. He had managed to spread it a few more inches, and the opening was almost large enough for Kay to squeeze her nearly diminutive body through. She stood in front of him, her arm and shoulder already through the crack. From his vantage point, her crotch was in his face and he felt himself staring at the tight V of her jean shorts instead of concentrating on getting the door open.
“Can you get that out of my face?” he said between clenched teeth and gave the door another tug. It moved slowly in, as if the pocket were filled with tightly packed sand.
“What?”
“That,” he said, nodding at her crotch.
“My vagina?”
“I can’t open this door and stare at your camel toe at the same time. It’s too distracting.”
“Camel toe? I have a camel toe? I thought current nomenclature was cooch. When did we go to camel toe?”
“When you put those shorts on.” Jake rolled his eyes. “Now cut it out.”
“Oh, all right.” She squatted down beside him, resting the part of her ass that was hanging out of her shorts on the heels of her boots again. “This better?” she craned her neck theatrically, to see if anything was popping out. “No fur.”
Jake shook his head sadly. “Jesus, where did I find you?” he asked rhetorically.
“AA—us good ones all hang out at AA meetings. We get to meet the cool guys there. The guys who have no jobs, no friends, no self-esteem. Or if they do have jobs, they’re like really creepy jobs that don’t make them happy.” That had been six-plus years now. Before, in the language of their relationship. Before they had fallen in love or had Jeremy or had found the feeling of safety neither had ever experienced but both had recognized on sight. “And in exchange these guys get hot musician babes with no jobs, no self-esteem, and big juicy camel toes.” She leaned forward and kissed him. “Now open this fucking door, Houdini, we need a place to sleep and if we have to crash in the living room, you won’t get to put anything in my warm parts tonight.” Her freckled face scrunched up. “Clear?”
Jake nodded. “I’m working on it, okay?”
Another good tug and it opened enough for Kay to squeeze through.
“Lucky you,” she said. “You’re gonna get some lovin’ later.”
Jake stood up without brushing the dust bunnies off of his jeans. His peripheral vision stayed on Jeremy engineering the death of more imaginary two-inch motorists. “I’m glad he doesn’t pay attention to your mouth.”
Kay managed to squeeze through the crack by putting her hands over her head and sliding sideways. Her breasts made a scraping sound on the wood when they popped through. She flipped a switch and a single table lamp on the floor in the corner sputtered to yellow, feeble life.
“Oh, hey. Here’s why you couldn’t budge the door.”
There was a soft clack and she slid the door back, a two-foot screwdriver in her hand. “Your dad drove this through the wall, into the door.”
Jake rolled the door closed again, and saw the crude hole whittled into it.
“How did he get out, though?”
Kay looked at the doorway, the hole in the wall, the screwdriver, and did some rough calculating. “He could have reached through and locked it from the outside. You’d have to know where this was to get to it but if you’ve got long arms…”
A heavy chest of drawers blocked the opening and Jake slid over the top. The room, like the rest of the house, was cluttered, although this one felt more like a lair. The bed didn’t look filthy but the sheets were crumpled and knotted on top of the mattress in the shape of a human nest. Clothes—mostly his father’s standard work outfit of jeans and white T-shirts—were strewn about. There were empty scotch bottles, cracker boxes, and anchovy tins in the way of garbage. And, of course, a few dozen yellow plastic utility knives.
“This isn’t good,” Kay said in a long, low whisper.
“Let’s jimmy the locks on my old room and my mother’s office.”
His mother’s office was a static photo of what it had been all those years ago—exactly as it had been when Jake left—exactly as it had been for the five years previous to that. More than thirty years of closed air and dust and sadness. His own room was sparse and bare, as if no one had ever lived there at all.