A Fear of Clowns (The Greasepaint Chronicals) (19 page)

The famous thing was the old saw
about how everything that was done by the Neanderthals had religious
significance. It might, but that idea was based on a different world view, and
ignored the practical day to day life of a culture that no longer existed. In
that case,
why
was no more than a guess. With things in the modern day,
it was only a little better. Most killers, no matter what they thought they
were doing, were just mentally ill or angry. Mills... From the sound of it, the
man had been at his game of death for nearly a decade. That would mean he was
barely a child when he started. In his late teens or so. Provided he was sloppy
enough that he'd left a trail for the FBI to track. The Killer Clown. If they
knew that, then he'd been seen, at some point.

That get up was probably a
misunderstanding of the serial killer John Wayne Gacey, who'd been called that.
He hadn't killed as a clown however, that was just part of the charity work
he'd done, entertaining sick kids. Popularly too. They'd all loved him, and he
was considered a pillar of his community. Until it came out that he liked to
kill young teen boys in his spare time. It was one of the things that had
vilified the profession in the mind of the public, even if they didn't know it.
That played in though, now. Anyone killing like Mills, dressed in a creepy mask,
had to be influenced that way. As a Sheriff's Deputy he'd be aware of the case,
no doubt, since it was famous.

None of that really explained
why, however. If there were enough clues to figure that out, Jay had missed
them. Not that it mattered. He needed to get to a phone and call the FBI. Struggling
didn't work though, since he couldn't even roll, being attached to something
behind him. Craning enough, he understood that it was a table leg. His hands,
behind his back, were taped to it. He tried to bend his legs, but they were
connected together too tightly for that. Jay also made an effort to chew at his
lips, but it didn't get him free, not even enough to do more than moan softly,
since the tape had been wrapped all the way around his head, in several strips.

In short, he wasn't going
anywhere, until someone came to look for him. That took a long time. The light
through the window faded into night, and he really wasn't certain what day it
was. Finally, just as thirst was about to drive him mad, the door made a sound.
With his luck it would be Mills again, he thought, turning his head to see Greg
and one of his security men coming in.

"What the hell?" The
man jogged to him and started working the tape from his mouth, which was a good
thing.

"Get me a phone. We need to
call the FBI. Now!" It probably seemed unreasonable, given that the
security man probably thought he'd just been robbed or caught in a kinky sex
thing, but the other guy, who was big and muscular, pulled a cell phone, and
then held it out, as if he was going to take it with his hands still taped up.

"There are two cards, on my
dresser, unless he took them." Jay didn't try to explain who he meant yet,
as Michelson finally worked on his hands. It took a while, but by the time he
could move he
did
have the cell stuffed into his hand and with only some
stiffness had the phone put to his ear.

"Special Agent Daniels, What
can I do for you?"

"Daniels," he croaked
the name, then went on. "This is Jason Hadley. The killer is Mills. Deputy
Mills. He ambushed me in my room here, at the casino. He said something about
having something else to do?"

"Hadley? Crap. There goes
that theory. We figured that you were responsible for Morse going missing. Your
ex too, Lynn Davies? It's been most of a day, what happened on your end?"

Lynn? That didn't make sense.
Carl either really. Why would Mills, a psycho murderer, go after them? He
spoke, going through it all as completely as he could. He was still dressed as
his MC character, but no doubt looked like something the cat dragged in. No one
mentioned it.

His brain still felt slow and
clumsy. Why? What could those two have to do with anything? Maggie sort of made
sense, because it allowed Jay to be framed for it, to shunt suspicion. Only the
chance happening of him getting a job in a place where everything was watched,
all the time, had saved him from being locked up, no doubt. There hadn't been
any proof, but Carl had been pushing for it. So had Richmond. It might well
have happened, even if he had an alibi, if it hadn't been as good as it was.
Solid to a level that almost no one got, in real life.

Just as Greg helped him free up
his legs, he finished going over the whole thing. It had taken about five
minutes, even if it wasn't a long story, but the man on the phone didn't double
back.

"I think we have part of it.
The log, the one from the tracking device on your car? It shows that you drove
it to Winthrop's on the day of the murder. To the dump site too. Except that
you couldn't have. It was so obvious, given that, that we looked at it for
tampering and found that Carl Morse had done it. His code was used at least.
Then he was gone. Vanished, along with his longtime mistress. Except of course,
that you had that alibi, and the log showed that it had been changed before the
body was found. It sort of points a finger there, but if you're claiming that
Carl Mills told you that the murder was part of a greater plan..." He
tapered off and stopped talking. He'd been thinking out loud, but it wasn't
like Jay was on staff. He didn't rate most of that information, normally. It
had only been the shock if being contacted out of the blue that had gotten
Daniels to speak.

Jason looked at the clock, able
to see it, after standing with a bit of help from the security men. It took
both of them, since his legs didn't work right yet. Drugs could do that to you.
It was just after nine.

"What day is it?"

Greg shrugged, his jacket pulling
over his large shoulders. "Sunday. When you didn't show up for the show, one
of the girls called us up and asked us to sober you up and toss you in the
shower. Maine? Said you had a drinking problem?" He sniffed, but the worst
of the residue from whatever Mills had given him had faded. As if he'd gotten
drunk,
and
duct taped himself like that?

"Not this time. Thanks for
coming anyway, just in case it ever happens. Yeah, I need to get to work."
He had a job to do and was late, which didn't make him look good at all. The
voice on the phone made an annoyed sound.

"No, what you need to do is
wait there for us. If this isn't about Morse and his sweetie running off
together after killing someone to frame you, then we need all the information
we can get. Don't go anywhere, we'll come to you. It will be... Call it two
hours? Do you need to go to the hospital?"

He shook his head and then wished
he hadn't, feeling ready to lose the contents of his soul. It prevented him
from answering for a minute.

"I don't think so. I'll be
by the main stage. I don't know if I can help any more than that. I also don't
know that I can't. Things are hazy. Rohypnol? That's what he said he was giving
me. If I was going to die from it, I would have by now." That was just the
truth. He needed water though, which he got first thing after the man hung up
on him. Hopefully hurrying to do something useful. Coming to him.

If Lynn was missing, was Alex? He
didn't know. Jay also didn't have an easy way to find out. He had an address
for her, being his old one, but not a number and hadn't sent anything to her
for over a year. The last thing had been a post card, before he left the
streets. It was a cheap thing, but he'd pretended to be happy and just off
finding himself. Doing the math, he realized that she'd only be fifteen. That
was too young to be abandoned like she had been.

He meant by him, but it worked
for her mother too. The girl probably figured that everyone was running from
her, after all that. If she hadn't been taken. God, he hoped not. Mills killed
women. It wasn't as if he had any reason to save her, in particular. Or excuse
her from his plans.

Lynn though, that just didn't
fit. Maybe she'd been picked up when Carl had, by mistake? That didn't sound
likely. It was more sensible that the two really had just run away.

"Hey, uh, Greg... Could you
find a phone number for me? I have an address. It's sort of important."

"I can try." The man
mentioned a reverse directory, but modern cell phones could make that sort of
thing not as effective anymore.

Still it was worth a chance. Alex
would need someone, in trouble herself, or not.

It took longer to find his
daughter than it should have. Mainly because he'd told Greg to look for her as
Alex Davies. It was actually under Alexis Hadley, to his surprise. He really
would have figured that her mother would have insisted that she change it. That,
or Carl would have. The jerk seemed like the type of douche bag to drop a kid
on another person like that, then swoop in later and insist that she take his
name, simply to prove that he was a real man.

Jason worried about her as he
reapplied his makeup in the back dressing room, the smaller one, and then
stumbled toward the front, where Gloria glared at him. He looked horrible and
smelled, but she just shook her head and whispered at him.

"Where the hell have you
been? This place has nearly fallen apart. We haven't even been introducing
anyone, just sending acts out one after the other. You have a twenty minute set
coming up next. Can you go on?" It wasn't a light question, and she
clearly thought he was drunk.

He nodded anyway.

"It's a real story. I'll
tell you later, when the FBI gets here. If they come behind the curtain, keep
them off stage?" He had to run then, and almost fell for real when he
tried to fake stumble.

"
Oooohhhh, I feeeel
Siiick
." He held his hand in front of his mouth, actually fighting a
real response. It was the lights that did it, but the unexpected arrival of a
brown jacketed and shoeless clown got people's attention. His discomfort, which
everyone would assume was feigned, got laughter.

It took a while for his brain to
catch up, but he realized that someone had stolen his shoes. His new ones.
Mills most likely, since they were probably about the same size. It was kind of
a mean thing to do, but could you really call a serial killer on that sort of
issue? It seemed almost too trivial to care about. He vamped and pretended to
feel like he was going to pass out so loudly that no one believed it. That was
good, since it was all an act. The part where he was in control of himself.
He'd had some experience, over the years, pretending to be normal, when he was,
in fact, hammered to the gills.

Finally, his real life experience
was paying off.

He saw Felicity in the wings, so
introduced her, and moved slowly enough that the music started just as she came
on stage, already singing. He'd gotten the timing a little off, he thought, but
she made it work pretty well. She was good. As long as she wasn't stealing from
them, of course. That was another thing that he didn't know the why of. He had
in his head the idea that he'd be standing there someday, in front of Mr.
Moretti, holding that piece of paper that the woman had signed, waving it as he
plaintively cried out that she'd
promised
. In his head he was dressed as
a happy party clown at the time, too. It would make it all the more poignant.

Not creepy like Carl Mills. The
name bugged him for a bit. Probably because it was too close to Carl Morse.
Carl M. Were all men with that name going to be a pain in his rump for the rest
of his life? He hoped not. Life was far too short to be running around secretly
afraid of anyone with the name Carl. Not that he wasn't on his way to it. Or,
hate at least, if not fear. That part was strange, but true. Jason didn't fear
either of those men. True, both could take him in a fight, or kill him, but for
different reasons he just couldn't bring himself to respect them. Mills for
killing Maggie, who had been sweet, if a little dim. Morse because the man
wasn't worthy of anything as grand as that. He was something so low as a person
that there was no name for him.

So Jay didn't bother with fear.
Not for himself. Just for Alex. Alexis now, apparently. That was another whole
part of her life that he'd missed.

The whole name problem was
explained to him by Michelson when he waved him over, the instant he got off
stage, still reeling and half blind from the lights suddenly being gone. A cell
phone was pressed into his hand, already ringing. For a second he nearly hung
up, wanting to get himself set first, not knowing if anyone would pick up.
Praying to a god he didn't believe in that she would.

Someone did, and a youthful, but
unfamiliar voice answered, it was a girl at least.

"Hello?" She sounded
sweet, and not like she'd just been whimpering in pain, which might be a good
sign.

"Alex?"

"Um, yes. Who's this?"
She sounded pleasant about it, and nearly chipper, not rude or angry. It was as
if she didn't know her mother was gone, or that anything had happened to be
concerned over.

"It's Jason. Uh, Jason Hadley?
Your dad?" He wanted to take it back the second the words came out,
knowing that she couldn't think of him that way, after two years or more of
Lynn denigrating him to her, but something surprising happened.

"
Daddy
? I wasn't
expecting a call from you! Are you all right? I'd heard that... Things had been
a bit rough for you? Carl the asshole said that you'd become a bum, and then a
clown. I couldn't tell if those were job descriptions or just him calling
names. Considering the source I figured on that second one." The words
were direct, but again, more pleasant than he had a right to assume would be
happening.