The Devil's Dream: Waking Up (13 page)

"You need me to wait?"

"No," Jake said. "You go ahead."

Jake looked at the meter as the cab driver clicked the button on the top. He handed the man two twenties and then stepped out from the cab. The air immediately found its way through his long sleeved shirt, goosebumps breaking out across his skin at the coolness. He watched the cab driver pull off and then looked down the empty street. The houses were dark; the place looked like an older neighborhood and Jake didn't think too many people would be up at this hour.

Jake had meant it when he told Art there wasn't time. The world didn't have the time to wait while Manning decided when to move. Henry Werzen didn't have time, if he was even still alive. Jake didn't have time either. No, something had to be done, and that's what Jake was here for. To do something. He didn't know what, not exactly—he only knew what the end result would be: Charles Manning would tell Jake what he knew.

That's why Jake showed up here, why he had called a cab and left the hotel room. He wasn't going to wait on this man and these cops to figure out what was happening. Everyone had waited enough, and thanks to Jake's great idea a couple days ago, there was a new someone waiting on him to do something. Henry Werzen was waiting on someone to show up. Henry Werzen signed up for a mission he didn't fully understand, and now he needed someone to save him. Now he needed the people that got him into this to rescue him.

Pick up a gun and go kill someone.
His father said something to that affect. Jake knew he hadn't meant it literally, knew that if he called his dad and told him what he was doing right now, his father would beg him to stop, to call the cab back, and to head to the hotel. His dad meant that Jake needed to keep on keeping on. But Jake knew that no longer applied. He realized that fully when the front door shattered and he stood staring at a man that knew nothing of fear. Art and Jake were of this world, of the world that Jake's father tried to create for him. They were of a world governed by rules that valued cooperation and civility. They were of a world where, for the most part, laws reigned. Jake knew that he straddled the line of his world and another one, one where the only law was based on might. His job had been to try and wrestle that other world to the ground, to force it under the reign of law.

The man that looked back at him last evening, though, would not be forced by any law. The man that held a gun and threatened to call the police on Art and Jake, he knew what was happening. He knew Welch's whereabouts and he knew how the man planned to find Brand. Manning didn't care about laws, didn't care about what was right, probably didn't care about justice either. He cared about his own wants and those ruled his decision making, ruled his life. What was Jake supposed to do against that? Follow him around and hope that he led them to Brand? Hope that he did something stupid so they could arrest him and then interrogate him? Darkness would shroud the world long before either of those things happened.

No. He had to pick up a gun and go kill someone. His father hadn't meant it literally, but that was the only way the advice made sense. Jake couldn't keep on keeping on, not like this. Something had to change. Jake couldn't continue to live in this world, the one of law. He had to cross over if they were to find Brand.

Jake started walking, his footsteps softly echoing off the asphalt. After a minute or two, he saw the cop car parked at the curb. It was unmarked, and a few houses down from Manning's house, but two men sat inside. The lights were off, which was good, at least they weren't trying to watch an iPad or some other such foolishness that would let Manning know the thing wasn't empty with a single glance. Soon, it wouldn't matter, though. They could watch a movie with surround sound hooked up if they wanted—they'd no longer be needed.

Charles Manning. Jake and Art had missed a good bit on their first glimpse into the man's past. They'd searched their own databases, saw he did a small stint, and then saw nothing else on him. The guy must have found a legal job and had the luck of the gods, because he didn't even have a speeding ticket over the next ten years. Nothing.

What the database didn't tell them, but what Jake had found out this evening on his own, was that Charles Manning had a brother named Jared and Jared had been cut up by Brand four years ago. A cop that had been watching another victim, and Brand showed up, slit his throat, and kept on moving. So what they had in the house down the street were two men, each with relatives murdered by the man that Jake needed to find. He still hadn't been able to uncover anything on Charles Manning during the past ten years; it was like the man walked out of jail and then walked out of life. That was never the case. It usually meant that the man walked into the shadows and learned to live there quietly. Jake didn't know what Manning did, what he involved himself in or with whom, but he knew the guy was chasing Brand. He knew that he and Welch were onto something and they were withholding it from the police.

So Jake was here to figure out what Manning knew.

Jake took a left before he reached the car, walking behind another house and then hiking through backyards. Besides a few fences, the area was pretty much open. He caught some luck with the cold air, he thought, because he didn't hear dogs barking. The owners must have brought them inside, if they even owned any.

Jake slowed as he reached Manning's house. The lights were all out and the place dark. Jake walked to a door, one he thought probably led to a kitchen, and twisted the knob already knowing it would be locked. Jake took the book-bag from his back and set it on the small concrete slab beneath him. He would either get busted here or get inside. Two years ago he had seen something like this work on a B&E. The perp taped up the window completely. Then he'd given it a pop, and sure enough the window cracked, but none of the glass fell to the floor and the tape muffled the noise. The perp moved through whole neighborhoods like this, in and out, stealing jewelry and petty cash. Jake had never tried doing it because he didn't have the opportunity, although he'd always wanted to see what it was like.

He took the clear roll of tape from his book-bag. He removed the pre-cut pieces of duct tape, all of them in large, neat circles and wrapped loosely around pens he took from the hotel room. He slowly undid the pieces stuck together and put them across the door, which held small pieces of plate glass, windows, outlined by wood. Five windows up, four across. Jake put four layers on, just like the criminal had done, hoping that the extra layers would absorb more of the sound waves when the glass cracked.

He took a towel he'd stolen from the motel room and wrapped it around his elbow. Holding his breath, he stood next to the windowpane and launched his elbow at it.

There was definitely a crack, but muffled, not nearly as loud as it should have been. Jake moved quick, pushing his hand through the taped glass—broken, but still in one piece—while being careful not to allow the whole thing to fall on the ground. He felt for the lock on the other side, twisted it, and then the back door was open.

Jake took one step inside and listened. He didn't hear anything, nothing in the entire house but the night’s silence. He made sure the kitchen was clear, then the living room, and began walking up the stairs. Each creak in the wood beneath him sounded like thunder, but there wasn't any other choice. He had to hope the fat man slept deep or else there was going to be gunfire and...

He stopped on the stairs.
Focus. Focus on getting up there and getting this over with. You're going to die if you think about anything else.

He moved upward again, slowly, but eventually finding the top of the stairs. He paused, looking down both sides of the hallway, deciding left.

The first room he searched was empty, but as he slid open the second door, he saw a large shape lying in a bed. The man lay on his back, his massive stomach looking just a bit less massive because of gravity pulling on it. Jake stood completely still, his gun raised and pointing directly at Charles Manning. The fat man slept, had no idea anyone was here.

He walked to the bed and stood over Manning, the only light in the room filtering from the moon through the drawn blinds. Jake could see the tattoos on the man's neck, looking like oily stains in the darkness.

Jake didn't think about what came next; instead, he raised the butt of his gun and brought it down on Manning's forehead.

* * *

J
ake didn't know it
, but Manning sat in the same chair that Joe Welch had a week or so before. His arms and legs were strapped to the chair with zip ties. It had been a mess getting him into the chair. The man was just huge, like planetary huge, and lugging him out of bed and then sitting him up in the chair caused Jake's whole body to start sweating. He finally got the big man tied down though, and then he waited. It took thirty minutes to get Manning in the chair and then Jake cycled through Internet articles on his phone, waiting for the man to wake up. Two hours later, he heard moans from the chair sitting across the room.

Jake looked over at Manning and saw the huge, purple welt growing out of his forehead.

"Time to wake up," Jake said.

"Whutsdu fuck isdis?" Manning slobbered out, spit falling onto his chin.

Jake sat up on the bed, his legs hanging off the edge.

"This is where you're going to start telling me exactly what's going on with you and Joseph Welch."

"Fuck you," Manning said, his voice straightening up some.

"That's one way to do this, but it's not the smartest way, I can promise that. You're going to tell me, Manning, or you're going to end up in a lot of pain."

Jake watched as Manning's eyes turned into that same iced over stone he saw yesterday. Jake's father might have recognized the look—something which said Manning knew enough of the world and there wasn't anything here to surprise him with. Something with spoke of resolution, and maybe boredom.

"Alright." Jake stood from the bed and walked over to Manning's chair. "I need to know what you and Welch are doing. That's all. You tell me, I walk out of here and there's no trouble. The police sitting outside go away, I go away, everything goes away and you can go back to your life. I know you're doing this for your brother, but it's not going to work. You don't have the tools, the sophistication, none of it. You tell me what's happening and I'll make sure we get Brand."

"Maybe you didn't hear me? Fuck you.”

Jake picked up a pair of socks sitting on the end of the bed. He stepped forward and latched his right hand onto Manning's jaw, using all of his strength to spread it open even as Manning tried to bite down. Once Jake got his fingers in between Manning’s lower and upper teeth, his mouth opened easily enough and Jake shoved the pair of socks deep into his mouth. He picked up the roll of tape he had brought with him and strapped it over Manning's lips.

He dropped the tape to the floor and pulled his gun from the back of his pants. He pointed it directly at Manning's leg. "Last chance."

Manning's eyes stood wide, the frost on them having melted some, but he said nothing.

Jake pulled the trigger and the bullet smashed into Manning's kneecap.

* * *

J
ake had never
shot anyone before. Most cops went their entire career without having to use their weapon outside of training. He thought he knew what would happen when he pulled the trigger, a belief stemming from movies and the media.

When the bullet from his gun entered Manning's knee, he understood his notions of shooting someone were false. Understood movies couldn't possibly reveal the truth.

Manning tried to scream, anger and pain rising through his throat, a scream that surely would have been heard on the street—making the silencer on Jake's weapon absolutely useless. The sock in his mouth blocked the cry though. Except cry—in the singular—wasn't right. The man was screaming, not stopping, sucking in tiny, quick breaths through his nostrils and all the hurt in his knee trying to erupt through his mouth.

"Tell me where he is," Jake said. He didn't scream back, didn't want any chance of the police outside hearing him. He kept his voice calm, though what was happening in front of him made that hard to do.