Demon Jack (3 page)

It was pretty safe to say that the deck was stacked against me. I was next to a dead body. I was covered in blood. Granted, some of it was mine. Most of it wasn’t. I was, at one time, a known associate of one of Boston’s more powerful criminal entrepreneurs. I had a record that ran back to my teenage years and carried more than its fair share of violent offenses. I had done federal time. There were no witnesses to attest to it being self-defense, and even if there was, chances were the word of a few homeless folks saying I had fought and killed a homeless bag lady in self-defense, was -to put it mildly- a stretch.

I’d go so far as to say I was good and well fucked.

I felt the creeping edges of despair welling up in my chest. I had spent the better part of my life bouncing in and out of juvenile halls and county or state lock ups of one stripe or another. I had died for crying out loud. I had literally died and come back, demon in tow, for what? For me to spend the rest of my life locked up in a cage like an animal?

Then again, maybe that’s exactly what I was. Maybe I was an animal.

I had just killed a woman who had shown me kindness. It had been self-defense, but I had taken another life and felt absolutely no remorse in doing it. I was more concerned with what was going to happen to me than I was the fact that I had just murdered my friend.

A part of me couldn’t help but wonder if this was what I deserved.

I opened my eyes. The cop looked to be in his mid-thirties and was carrying more than a bit of pudge around his waist. He was dressed in an off the rack suit that all but screamed in protest to his bulk. The flashing blue and red lights of his squad car slipped through the now open door and bathed his face in hellish shadows. He had the look of a veteran. It was in the way he carried himself, something in his eyes that was equal parts determination and wariness.

He kept his service revolver trained on me, each step cautious as he approached. He made sure to maintain enough distance to give him ample time to drop me if I decided to do something rash.

“I’d stay nice and still if I were you friend,” the cop said.

I followed his advice. My body thrummed with aches, waves of pain washing over my muscles and nerves with every heartbeat. The spot on my face where Essie had hit me danced to its own particular aching waltz, something fast and up tempo, maybe even jovial.

I felt the press of the gun barrel against the back of my skull. He smelled toxic, bathed in a near tangible cloud of sweat, cigarette smoke and cheap aftershave. He hefted himself over me, pushing his knee into the small of my back. On the plus side, I wasn’t subjected to his stench anymore since he was heavy enough that breathing was almost more trouble than it was worth. On the down side, it hurt like hell. He cuffed me with the sort of precision that comes with years of practice.

He holstered his gun and jerked me to my feet, using the cuffs for leverage. He patted me down in the same efficient, precise manner he had used when he cuffed me.

“You got a name?”

I didn’t answer him, instead turning my eyes back down towards Essie’s body. Blood had pooled around her, painting the cement black underneath the flashing strobes. She looked almost peaceful, despite the blood and pieces of flesh stuck in her few remaining teeth.

“I asked you a question,” he said.

“I heard you,” I said, still staring at Essie.

“So what’s your name then shithead?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Suit yourself, mister ‘go fuck yourself.’”

God bless cop humor.

He gave me a shove, jerking the hood of my sweatshirt away from my head and began perp-walking me towards the waiting squad car. Apparently budget cuts had left the detectives driving black and whites instead of those fancy sedans they always drove in the movies. This close, the pulsing lights were damn near blinding, each color change sending a spike of pain through my aching head. I tried to focus on keeping my head down and putting one foot in front of the other.

The cop didn’t bother helping me into the car. It took a fair bit of balance and concentration on my part to slide into the backseat without smacking my head against the door frame or falling over. The interior was like every other police cruiser I’d ever had the displeasure of being in. The air inside was heavy with the smell of sweat and cheap tree air fresheners. The back seat was hard, contoured plastic, a thick wall of bullet proof glass serving as a barricade between the front of the car and the passenger area. I leaned forward in the seat resting my head against the partition. Thankfully, he hadn’t bothered with the seat belt. My shoulders began to ache in time with my skull and the cuffs were biting into the tender skin on the inside of my wrists. All in all, it was a pretty damned miserable set of circumstances.

He slid into the driver’s seat a moment later, shutting off the reds and blues and bringing the car’s engine to life. In the glow of the dash lights, he looked older and more tired than he had moments before. He left the car idling and began typing into a cell phone he had resting on the dashboard.

“Hey,” he said.

I looked up at the same time the flash on his camera phone went off.

“The hell?”

“Easy son, just checking on something,” he said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

The phone chimed. He looked down at the screen. The tired look on his face vanished beneath a wide, toothy smile.

“God damn I’m good,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he paused, checking the screen on his phone again. “Jack.”

I stared at him for a long moment. He broke eye contact, turning his attention to his phone again. I couldn’t see what he was typing from the back seat. The laptop beside him was closed, nestled safe and secure on its pedestal over the passenger seat. He hadn’t touched it. Call me crazy, but it was starting to seem like this was a man who wasn’t placing a whole lot of stock in procedure.

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

The cop cut his eyes to the rear-view and then back to the road as he pulled the car away from the curb.

“Hey. I asked you a question.”

“Yeah? I heard you,” he said.

“So?”

“So what?”

“You gonna answer me?”

“Need to know basis, Jack,” he said, punctuating the words with a sly smile.

We rode for the next few minutes in silence, the cop steering the car through Boston’s side streets with a casual ease. He glanced into the rear-view every few minutes, eyeballing me for a long moment before turning his attention back to the street.

I let my thoughts drift back over what had just happened. More importantly, I focused on what was going to happen to me and just how decidedly screwed I was. There really weren’t a whole lot of options. I could get out of the cuffs and escape. That wasn’t much of a problem. Granted, I’d have to kill the cop to do it. Again, not much of a problem. It was what came after that bothered me. The thought of Boston’s finest hunting me down for killing one of their own was something that just didn’t appeal to me at the moment.

“Jack. You’re not paying attention,” a girl’s voice said. It was musical, innocent, and never failed to creep me out, no matter how often I heard it.

I damn near jumped out of my skin. The little girl had appeared from out of nowhere. She looked maybe ten, twelve at the most. She was seated casually next to me on the back seat, her hands folded in her lap. Every single aspect of her was a stark, pure white; her lips, her hair, the dress she wore that always reminded me of something a kid would wear to mass on Easter Sunday. Even her eyes were like two pools of perfect, liquid ivory.

“Hello Alice,” I said.

She was flawless and doll-like, her face set with wide, expressive eyes, a little upturned nose, and Cupid’s bow lips. I cut my eyes toward the rear view, to see if the cop was watching. He wasn’t, his attention was focused on the road.

“I hate it when you do that,” I said.

She shrugged.

“And?”

I gave off an exasperated sigh.

“You’re not paying attention,” she said again. “Where. Who. What. Why. Though, I guess
how
would be via car. No, not paying attention at all.”

She let the last statement hang in the air, held up by her own sigh, though hers was a bit more disappointed sounding.

“Alice, what the fuck are you talking about?”

I cut my eyes back up, checking the rear view to see if the cop was paying attention yet. He was staring, a brow quirked as he watched me talk to, as far as he could tell, myself. He couldn’t see Alice. As far as I knew, I was the only one that actually could see the little demon. I had always just chalked it up as part of the deal, that the only evidence of Alice existing here on this mortal coil was the contract engraved in my skin. To the cop, I figured I probably looked like any random homeless crazy, one of several hundred he’d picked up in his long, illustrious career. Except he knew my name, and that was really bothering me. I had a reputation, true, but I didn’t think it extended
that
far.

“Hey. Pipe down back there.” The cop growled.

I ignored him.

“Well?” I asked her.

Alice’s presence had me on edge almost as much as her hints that I had missed something that was probably glaringly obvious. I suppose it was entirely plausible. I’d had a hell of a go at it the past hour or so, what with possessed friends trying to eat me and being arrested and all. I tried to take stock of my situation. I was still in Boston, still under arrest, still in a cop car on my way to a cage with nothing more to look forward to than three hots and a cot and a rather burly cellmate with a soft spot for yours truly.

She just stared at me.

“I got nothing,” I said finally.

“Jack. The police station is in the opposite direction. You haven’t been read your rights. You were arrested by a plainclothes officer. He didn’t call this in, nor has he touched his computer.”

I blinked. She was right. We were heading away from Police Headquarters. We were still downtown, but we were heading south. The cop who had arrested me hadn’t even identified himself as a police officer, let alone read me my rights or touched his radio to call it in. I had been too concerned with how fucked I could be as opposed to how fucked I actually was.

The line of thinking led to even more questions. Why had a plainclothes officer been patrolling a place that was a known haunt for the homeless? It was plausible that he was off duty, or maybe he was investigating something, but not this late at night. Plainclothes usually meant detective, or at least someone with some rank. They were at home in their suburban cookie cutter houses with their two point three kids and dog well before dinnertime, not out rounding up assholes like me. Better yet, who had he been texting? Further, why was this asshole taking my picture?

“Oh, goodie. He gets it,” Alice said, her voice a flat monotone.

Something was wrong here, really wrong. Alice had pointed out the holes and alarm bells started going off in my head like air raid sirens. My brain squirmed and tried to figure its way towards a solution. I really didn’t care any more about the
why
. My gut was telling me that now was a good time to get as far away from Mister John E. Lawman as possible.

That said, I was going to have to be patient with whatever I decided to do. We were easing onto the freeway and if it came to a fight in a moving vehicle chances were better than average we’d both be maimed in some horrible crash. I could probably snap the cuffs and then just kick through the window and jump. Unfortunately, the thought of hitting asphalt at seventy miles per hour wasn’t exactly appealing to me either.

“Hey Officer,” I said, settling back into my plastic seat.

“It’s detective.”

“Right, anyways. So, Officer, we lost?” I asked.

“Nope. Gonna make a quick pit stop.”

“Long way to go for a piss and a doughnut. The station’s about two miles that way,” I said, nodding my head to indicate behind us.

“Yep,” he answered, glaring at me in the rear view.

“So, where we going?”

“Got a friend interested in having a little sit down with you, that’s all.”

“Oh? Do tell?”

He grinned widely, yellowed teeth reflected back at me.

I
really
wanted to hit him.

“Jack, this is…” Alice said from beside me.

“Yeah, I know,” I said cutting her off. I turned my attention back to the cop in front of me. “So, like I said, where are we going?”

“Brockton. You have a date.”

I lifted both eyebrows, curious.

“Really? Who’s the lucky lady?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

I felt the air stirring before I was able to muster up a witty reply. It was a subtle change, a slight rise in temperature, the smell of ozone like before a lightning strike. Someone was gathering power, a lot of it, and fast. Whatever was coming, it was going to be nasty, it was going to be noisy, and if past experience held true - it was going to be painful.