He hesitated, poised on the verge of a tension-induced heart attack. Kane had fallen silent just a second before the light flashed out, and the thought of confronting him while nearly blind, armed or not, no longer seemed wise.
There came a noise: the subtle rattling of a chain.
It sounded at Frank’s back, from somewhere in the cellar of patchwork cadavers: an inconspicuous jingle under the clamor of men still trying to force their way through Hell’s gate at the top of the stairs.
“Fraaaaank,” a voice growled in his ear.
He swung around and fired three rounds into the wrinkled, slack-eyed face of a dead man chained at the far side of the room, at least twenty feet away. No one loomed behind him in the cellar. Everyone was dead. Dead and unmoving.
He twisted back to confront the doorway and met Kane’s grinning face. It flashed into the candlelight, his black eyes once again gleaming with a red reflection. Frank tried to aim his weapon, but Kane caught his hand, locking it in an unbreakable grip. He smashed it into the doorjamb, holding it there, with the handgun’s muzzle pointed uselessly away.
Then the knife flashed into view, clutched in the killer’s fist. It arced toward him with merciless speed, too fast to dodge, but skipped off the brim of his helmet when he tried to maneuver out of its way. The blade grazed his eyeball, splitting its surface, then stabbed into his face. It streaked down his cheekbone, cutting a hot trail from his ruptured eyeball to his jaw.
Frank shrieked.
Kane released him, letting him fall backward into the cellar. The killer smiled at him, his teeth gleaming in the murk.
Then Kane jolted and convulsed when gunfire exploded through him from behind, opening more holes in his chest.
The guys on the staircase, Frank thought.
He hit the floor, teetering on the dark edge of unconsciousness.
And blacked out when Kane collapsed beside him.
CHAPTER 22
Frank saw that his account of the raid on Kane’s farm had brought the young detective to the edge of her seat.
“The guys upstairs needed to use an explosive charge to get through the basement door,” he said. “The damned thing looked normal enough, but it had a solid steel core, with magnetic locking plates on the top and bottom.”
“What made it shut?” Melissa asked.
“Too many people trying to get around it at the same time,” he said, grimacing at the memory. “Once it closed, it locked. By the time the medics got to us again, Kane had slaughtered fifteen good men. It was a madhouse.”
Detective Humble shook her head in amazement. “And even after they shot him again, he still didn’t die.”
Frank nodded. “The headshot required the partial removal of his frontal lobe and reconstructive skull plates, but somehow he managed to survive in a coma. When I got word that he’d finally died last week… Well, I think you can imagine why I made those inquires to be sure he was dead.”
Melissa readjusted herself on the couch. “I never knew how intense the arrest had been for everyone involved. For you.”
Frank heard pity in her voice, and for a moment, he couldn’t respond. Recalling those details of the past had made him shaky, replete with emotions he couldn’t suppress. He looked at his clasped hands and said, “I put the whole story into my book, hoping I could rid myself of it for good—the arrest, the partner theory, everything. A lot of people said I was capitalizing on the misery of others, but I never did it for the money. I want you to understand that. I wrote the book because I was looking for closure. I suppose I was foolish to believe it would help.”
“What you did was a perfectly healthy way of dealing with it,” she told him.
He gave her an appreciative smile for her empathy, which she returned with a smile of her own. For an instant, he imagined himself leaning forward and kissing her. The thought blindsided him like an unseen assailant, hitting him hard, leaving him dazed.
Breaking eye contact, he redirected his gaze at the floor. How can you be thinking of such a thing right now? But he already knew the answer.
Not many visitors stopped by anymore, attractive women least of all. He’d grown accustomed to living alone in his small condo, the outside world closed behind the blinds, discarded. He only ventured into his old life long enough to collect his pension or disability checks from the mailbox. He didn’t even shop for himself anymore.
He glanced to the detective while she jotted down notes on a small pad. Being in the presence of such a smart and engaging woman, he found himself wishing he were insane, that Kale Kane’s accomplice existed only in his head. Then he could get help and maybe return to a normal way of life.
Melissa looked at him and said, “You told me you thought Kane preferred a certain type of victim.”
“That’s right,” he said, but paused at the frail sound of his voice. He cleared his throat. “Like I said, for all the trouble Kane went through to get at several of his targets, it seemed logical to say those individuals had something of a specific interest to him, something no one else could provide.”
Frank stopped himself again, deciding how much to reveal. Wracked by the understanding of what his life had become, he could’ve talked with Melissa all night. But he realized he needed to proceed with caution, reminding himself that he couldn’t let his rediscovered wanting for companionship cloud his judgment. Giving the detective too much information at this point would only cause her to regard him with skepticism, maybe even suspicion.
“Did you ever determine what the connection was?” Melissa asked, prodding him out of his thoughts.
“No,” he half-lied. “Once again, there wasn’t enough information. None of the victims shared any characteristics: physical, emotional, habitual, or otherwise.”
The detective said nothing, but her mouth pinched with disappointment.
“Did you ever determine what it was Kane was doing to them?” she asked. “I don’t recall hearing about the ritualistic stuff you described, other than the reconstructed corpses—the amalgamates.”
Frank didn’t respond right away, and when he did, he voiced the thought that had seized him the moment Melissa identified herself at the door. “This isn’t about an ordinary disappearance, is it, Detective? Judge Anderson is dead, isn’t he? He’s dead, and you’ve found something linking him to Kane. What was it? The double-K marking?”
She shook her head in protest. “Why would you think he’s dead?”
“Because I’ve feared this would happen,” he answered. “I’ve dreaded it for years. Recently, I thought I’d convinced myself I was just being paranoid, but when you came to the door I just knew.” Frank’s guilt seethed in him like a great furnace ready to explode. After all this time, his writing had finally served to educate the public of the danger still loose in the world. Now the Killer had taken the life of a man who’d wanted his help, and the weight of responsibility pressed even harder on his shoulders.
He wondered how the detective was interpreting what he’d told her. He’d seen her glance about the room during the breaks in their conversation, no doubt pondering the possibility that he might be the object of her pursuit. She hadn’t yet asked for his whereabouts during the time Judge Anderson had gone missing, but he suspected it was on her mind.
Melissa opened her mouth, maybe to ask that exact question, when five electronic beeps cut her off. She reached to her waist, for a pager clipped to her belt. “I’m afraid I have to go,” she said after checking the message. “I’d like to talk more about this if it’s possible. May I stop by tomorrow sometime?”