One-Eyed Jack (11 page)

What was the point of anything? I was
doomed. I was going to rot here until they could arrange a good
frame, and then they’d scapegoat me for Jenny’s snacking and send
me to some prison hell-hole, where some other inmate with a grudge
against child molesters would cut my throat – if I was lucky, it
would be my throat. I shuddered.

Even though I knew that it
was at least partly her curse that was affecting me, I wasn’t able
to fight it off – after all, that
might
be what was going to happen to
me.

“
I’m in Lexington,
Kentucky,” I told her. “I’m in the police station. I haven’t been
arrested, but I think I would be if I tried to leave.”

There was a moment of ominous silence,
and my stomach knotted in fear.

The curse, I told myself. It’s just
the curse. She’s not angry.

“
Why?” she
asked.

Officially, no one was listening in,
but unofficially I would not be at all surprised if everything I
said and did there was being recorded. “A kid got hurt,” I said.
“Lost an eye. Maybe he was attacked – the cops seem to think so. I
found him and called for help, but you know how it is, I was a
stranger and I didn’t have a good explanation of why I was there in
the middle of the night, so they’re asking me a lot of
questions.”

I didn’t say Jack’s name, or mention
any dreams, but Mel knew the situation. She would figure it out.
That was why I had called her, rather than anybody else.

Not that I really
had
anybody else
anymore, I thought hopelessly.

“
What do you want me to
do?” she said, and while I knew she meant it and wanted to help, it
sounded to me as if she was telling me to leave her alone, keep her
out of it, it wasn’t her problem.

“
I...
I’m not sure,” I said. “I wanted
someone
to know where I am,
though.”

“
I bet.”

I knew I was imagining the venom that
seemed to drip from those two words, but I still felt sick at the
sound of them, and almost dropped the phone.

The curse wasn’t actually hitting me
as hard as I had feared, or as hard as it had when I called her
from my apartment; the hundreds of miles between us might have been
helping a little. It wasn’t easy to judge.

Still, I was feeling it. I was awash
in despair and fear, struggling to keep myself behaving rationally
and not collapsing into a sobbing mess.

“
Listen, Mel,” I said,
“I’m not feeling well. I mean, I still have some of that kid’s
blood on my shirt, and I haven’t eaten in hours. I’m going to hang
up, but if you think of anything I should do, let me know,
okay?”

“
It’s getting to you?” She
knew I was talking about the curse.

“
Some, yeah.”

“
You want me to find you a
lawyer?”

I didn’t really, but it was so very
hard to disagree with Mel that I said, “Maybe. I don’t know if I
need one – I shouldn’t, but maybe.”

“
Okay, I get that. Take
care, Greg, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“
Thanks, Mel. Take care.”
I thumbed the red button to break the connection.

Then I just sat there with my head
down, trying to fight off the effects of her curse. That’s how I
was when the plainclothes detective came in.

He sat down across the table from me
and said, “Hello there, Mr. Kraft. I’m Ben Skees.” He had a warm,
reassuring voice with one of those friendly accents that always
sounds like he’s about to offer you a beer, like the prosecuting
attorney in “My Cousin Vinny.” I’m generally not very fond of
southern accents, but his was kind of nice.

“
Hi.” I didn’t raise my
head. I really wasn’t up for more conversation at that
point.

“
I’m going to just go over
a few things, and we can wrap this up for tonight.”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
Jack Wilson is missing
the little finger on his left hand, and his left eye. He’s maimed
for life.”

I blinked. I sat up and looked at him.
I recognized his face from one of my dreams; he’d been one of the
people investigating Jack’s lost finger.

More importantly, he wasn’t asking me
questions. He was telling me things, instead. I wasn’t sure what
that meant.

“
We want to catch the
bastard that did that to him. We know it’s not an animal because
there’s no way any animal could have popped his eyeball out like
that, and we’re assuming it’s the same guy who did both, because
getting mutilated by two sickos in a single week is too much of a
coincidence for me to buy into.”

“
Okay,” I said
warily.

“
If it’s the same guy,
then it looks like you aren’t him – your alibi for the finger is
pretty solid, though we’re going to check with your boss – Armando
Sanchez, is it?”

“
Yes.”

“
We’ll be checking with
him and your co-workers in the morning, and maybe your neighbors,
and maybe some of the people who were on the flight you say you
took. That plane ticket’s pretty convincing, but there are ways you
could have faked it.”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
So
right now, we don’t think you’re the guy we’re after, which I’m
sure is good news. The
bad
news is, your story doesn’t make any
sense.”

“
I know,” I said
unhappily.

“
We’ve got a couple of
people in the neighborhood who say they talked to a young man in a
gray PT Cruiser. That was you?”

“
Yes,” I
admitted.

“
One of them says you
claimed to be an actor.”

“
I told her I was
practicing lines, yeah.”

“
The other says you
claimed to be a science student at the University of
Kentucky.”

“
I said that,
yeah.”

“
So you lied to both of
them?”

I nodded.

“
Why?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t want them
thinking I was the guy who cut off Jack Wilson’s
finger.”

“
You knew about
that?”

“
The woman who chased me
away the first time said a kid had been attacked.”

“
She
said that
before
you told her you were practicing
lines?”

For the first time, I’d been caught
out. I blinked. “I guess,” I said. “I don’t remember for
sure.”

“
You aren’t an
actor.”

“
No.”

“
And you aren’t a student,
at U.K. or anywhere else?”

“
No, I’m not.”

“
So
what
were
you doing out there?”

“
I don’t know,” I said
miserably.

He sat back and started tapping a
pencil on the table.

“
I told you that two guys
mutilating the same kid was too much of a coincidence for me to
swallow, right?”

“
Yeah.” I
nodded.

“
You
turning up in that same neighborhood, poking around that empty lot,
and finding that kid with his eye out, with no explanation of what
the heck you’re doing there – I can’t buy
that
as a coincidence,
either, Mr. Kraft.”

I just stared at him. I was still a
little disturbed from talking to Mel, and not at my
best.

“
Now, I
told you, I don’t think you did it, but I think you
know
something
about who did. I think you came to Lexington because you
thought he might strike again. I think you didn’t find Jack Wilson
by accident; I think you were out there
looking
for him. Parking the car
where you did and cutting through the park – that
can’t
have been an
accident.”

“
I don’t...” I stopped. I
had no idea what to say to that.

“
So is this guy a friend
of yours? Are you trying to cover up for him until you can get him
some help? Is that it?”

I shook my head. “Whoever did this is
no friend of mine,” I said.

“
But you know something
about him?”

“
Her,” I said.

I didn’t intend to; the word slipped
out. I’m not good at keeping my mouth shut. I could claim I was
still shaken from talking to Mel, but I don’t really know whether
that’s why I did it.

The pencil stopped tapping, and the
detective stared at me silently for a moment.

“
Her,” he said
finally.

I nodded. “Jack said... he called her
Jenny. When I was carrying him.”

“
And you didn’t think to
mention this until now?”

“
He asked me not
to.”

“
I’d hate to have to call
you a liar, Mr. Kraft.”

“
Ask him.”

“
We’ll do that. So you
didn’t know who was responsible until tonight?”

I shook my head.

“
Then why’d you come to
Lexington? Why were you out there tonight?”

“
I don’t know,” I
said.

Ordinarily I think I’d have been
pretty miserable at this point, but where I’d just been talking to
Mel, Detective Skees was downright comforting by comparison, even
when he was poking holes in my story. I wasn’t all that bothered by
his questions.

“
You haven’t been in
communication with this Jenny?”

I hesitated. I debated admitting I’d
been talking to Jenny when I was “practicing my lines,” but that
was before I’d met Jack, so that wouldn’t work.

“
I don’t know who she is,”
I said at last.

“
Mr. Kraft, would you mind
if we checked your cellphone records? I can get a warrant if I have
to, but it’d be much easier...”

“
Go ahead,” I said,
interrupting him. “I’m not... there’s nothing there. I’ve made a
couple of calls to an old friend from high school, and that’s about
it for the last week or so.” I handed over my phone.

He accepted it, then said, “This old
friend from high school – she wouldn’t happen to be named Jennifer,
would she?”

“
No, her name’s Melisandra
de Cheverley. She lives in Sandy Spring.”

“
Sandy Spring – is that in
Kentucky?”

“
Sandy Spring, Maryland.
She’s not involved in this.”

“
Are you sure?”

“
Pretty sure.”

He nodded.

“
Mr. Kraft, we’ve got men
out there searching the area, and we’ll have the forensics boys out
there once we have daylight to work with, but that didn’t help much
the first time, when the Wilson boy lost his finger. Do you think
you could show us exactly where you found him?”

“
I think so.”

“
So you don’t mind staying
around until daylight?”

I shrugged. “I don’t have anything
better to do.”

“
And maybe once you’ve had
some sleep, you think you might tell us what you were really doing
there?”

I looked at him.

He was probably twenty years older
than me, with dark brown hair that could have used a trim, and a
jaw a bit like Basil Rathbone’s. He didn’t look stupid.

“
Detective – Skees, was
it?”

He nodded. “Ben Skees.”

“
Let me ask you a purely
hypothetical question.”

“
Be my guest.”

“
Suppose
I said that I came here because I saw Jack Wilson’s attacker in a
dream? Suppose I had a dream where I saw the whole thing, and it
seemed so intense, so real, that I bought a plane ticket and came
out here to see whether it
was
real. If I told you that, would
it make my situation better or worse?”

He leaned back and put a finger across
his lips as he considered that. “You claiming to be
psychic?”

I shook my head. “I’m not claiming
anything. I’m asking a hypothetical question.”

“
Well,
son,
if
you were claiming to be psychic, and solving crimes in your
dreams, I’d think you’d been watching too much TV. I’m pretty sure
most psychics are, to be blunt, full of crap, and aren’t any more
in tune with the spirit world than I am. But on the other hand, I’m
a God-fearing man, and I’ve heard a few stories about the Lord
working through signs and visions, so I won’t say it can’t
happen.”

I nodded. “I’ll agree most psychics
are full of crap. But just hypothetically, still, I suppose I’d be
making my own position worse if I claimed that in my dreams the
attacks were committed by the ghost of a woman who murdered her own
kids.”

“
I can tell you it sure
wouldn’t help us find the son of a bitch.” He leaned forward again.
“You believe in ghosts? Enough that you’d have bought a plane
ticket to come see one?”