The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (16 page)

Quintanna stood there and waited. When the voice came, it knifed through him as always—not a voice so much as syllables squeezed together on borrowed breaths, as if the speaker could not separate the independent actions and had to combine them instead. There was never any cadence of tone to the words, no rhythmic balance or intonation. It was all mutters and half-formed utterances, the shadow of words but not the form. It emerged through a small speaker as black as the curtain it hung from.

“Mr. Quintanna,” the box said, “you have more to tell me?”

“We have received additional information concerning our failure in Atlanta,” Quintanna replied in a voice formed of so many accents that its origin was unidentifiable.

“Why refer to it as ‘our’ failure when you mean yours?”

“Whatever you wish.”

“What I wish is that your people simply fulfill their side of the bargain. You and your group were retained to avoid such complications.”

“It is merely one woman.”

“Not just a woman!” The voice came out as a whispery shout. “A cog, a vital cog in a machine that must be rendered impotent before the rest of my operation can begin. You are failing to live up to your part of the bargain. Perhaps I should consider failing to live up to part of mine.”

“The woman will be eliminated. The situation is under control.”

“Really? Then what is this additional information you came up here to pass on?”

“The Eiseman woman’s life was saved by a man who has apparently discovered our pattern.”

“This man, who is he?”

“His name is Jared Kimberlain.”

More awful breathing. “You mentioned his name earlier, Mr. Quintanna. Now I wish to know
who
he is.”

“Many things, all of them dangerous.” And Quintanna proceeded to provide a capsule summary of Kimberlain’s rather extensive file. When he was finished, the breathing filled his ears for long seconds before the voice emerged from it.

“Spoken from memory, Quintanna. Apparently you know much about this … Ferryman.”

“He came close to us during his tour with The Caretakers.”

“And yet you didn’t kill him. Why? Were you frightened?
Are
you frightened of him?”

“It is often better to avoid a problem than to confront it. Kimberlain is a powerful adversary and one it is advisable not to cross.”

The breathing filled the air beyond the black curtains.

Beep … beep … beep …

“Mr. Quintanna, I do not approve of you or what you stand for. You were chosen to fulfill a purpose for me, and I realize I fulfill a purpose for you as well. Fine. We serve each other, and when my work is done, I care not in the least what you make of the remains. But I will have my work done as I wish it until the time that final moment comes. We cannot permit this Ferryman to become a hindrance to us. I must see my operation finish as I have planned it. I must see the dawning of tomorrow.”

“Kimberlain has only pieces, fragments, nothing to alert him to the true shape of our plan.”

“ ‘Our’ again, Mr. Quintanna?”

“Figure of speech.”

“You will kill the Ferryman. Do it any way you choose, but I want him killed. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“The woman too, only sooner. Immediately.” Quintanna could feel the man watching him on the monitor. “You’re hedging, Mr. Quintanna.”

“We know where she is, but she is extremely well protected. It can be done, but it will take time. A day at least.”

“Then get started, and see that she is disposed of.”

“Using our resources for such a risky venture seems senseless at this stage of the operation.”

The sounds of the monitor quickened. The breaths emerged thicker and wetter until the voice resumed.

“It is my lot to make sense of this, Mr. Quintanna, not yours. You still do not understand. You still do not see that the individuals must be made to pay separately. These tycoons of technology were responsible in themselves for this world of terror and death and must accordingly be torn from the planet like so many trees that no longer fit in the landscape—the landscape I am crafting and you will inherit when my work is done. The woman must be made to pay as the others already have been. You will see to it, Quintanna. Whatever it takes to reach her, to kill her.”

“Yes,” Quintanna acknowledged, burying his reluctance in the thought that it wasn’t a “what” that was called for, but a “who.”

The old Chevy rattled down Alabama’s Route 59 in the general direction of Birmingham, though it would turn off well before nearing that city. Night had come hours before, and the lights of cars streaming in the opposite direction were the only things that told Dreighton Quail anyone else was alive.

The night was his time. It belonged to him.

He slept the days away, and he liked the winter best because then they were the shortest. He pulled off the road and slept in whatever old car he was driving at the time. He was always able to find a spot no one could see while driving past. Old, lonely roads were best, because then if he was seen it would be by a single driver in a totally secluded setting. If the person chose not to approach, that was fine. If he chose to approach, that was fine too.

He’d been branded with many labels over the years of his travels: the Freeway Killer, Dormitory Slasher, Vampire, Gemini, and others. In at least three of the cases other men had been caught and convicted of serial murders a majority of which had been committed by him. Quail’s secret was to sniff out a serial killer in the papers and follow the other’s pattern for a time. Worked like a charm. He could kill all he wanted, safe in the knowledge that someone else would be caught and blamed.

Quail was without peer, unless of course you counted Winston Peet. Quail had almost cried with joy the day Peet had been caught, because it left him alone to cruise the dark underbelly of America with killing on his mind. He feared no man except maybe Kimberlain, and Kimberlain was out of his life now, just a shadow from the past like so many signposts on the many roads he had traveled once and would never travel again.

But the past had many shadows, slippery and dim and clinging to the dusty corners of his mind. He had been beaten as a child in Pennsylvania, beaten bloody by both parents, who felt they were exercising the will of God. He was reduced to a cowering shape that slept under the bed instead of on it. But when he was taken from his parents by the welfare people and adopted by another couple, in another part of the state, what had started out bad got plenty worse.

A few months past his twelfth birthday, they’d caught him fondling himself. The Devil’s work it was.
Jesus God, save our boy, save him; show us the way, O Lord, show us the way
… It was the hands that had touched and stroked, and thus the hands would have to pay.

Oh yes.

So they dragged him kicking and screaming to the wood stove, with the full intention of forcing those cursed hands into the raging flames. Quail kicked and fought, and, with the hearth doors open, one of his kicks struck a gasoline keg his father used to quicken the fire. It splashed up at him just as the flames reached out. Yes, these shadows still brought back the pain, so awful and unrelenting, along with the screams that followed him to the hospital and beyond.

He had been burned over ninety percent of his upper body, all his hair gone, an ear, his lips, part of his nose. And his face, oh, his face! It simply wasn’t there. Skin grafts did little; the pain was hardly worth it. He didn’t die, and for a long time Quail didn’t understand why that was so.

Months passed and the couple that called themselves his parents took him home. The beatings were replaced by their total avoidance of him. They moved him into the basement behind a locked door, and that became his world. He grew to hate the light and love the dark, because the dark spared him his own reflection. Quail lost track of time, of the months and years passing. But the pain was always there. He grew bigger than the damp bed they gave him and had to curl his knees tighter and tighter to squeeze under the blankets on frigid nights. If he listened hard enough, he could hear them praying for help upstairs, for forgiveness, for salvation.

Quail hated them.

He knew even without the company of others that he was different. It was more than just the hideous features hidden behind the chalk-white masks the doctors had given him. There was wood for the stove in the basement, and Quail could crush fist-size fragments in his hands. There were layers of thick steel piping, and these he bent, then twisted, then ripped apart.

He wasn’t sure why he ventured upstairs that one night in particular; he was sure only that there was something for him beyond this door and the next, something that remained unfinished. The locked cellar door was a simple matter to negotiate: barely a nudge of his shoulder splintered it open. He slid through the house in utter silence, making sure all the doors and windows were locked and tied down. Then he soaked the floors with gasoline from the same keg that had burned him, and tossed one match on the second floor and another on the first. Outside he stayed close enough to the flames to feel their heat in order to make sure he would hear the awful shrieks of the man and woman who had made him what he was.

And just what was that?

He was a traveler of the night who trembled with happiness to hear screams of pain. Not his pain: he had survived all that, he realized, because it was his lot to bring it to others, to grow stronger with each wailing gasp, each final breath of life. Quail barely noticed his huge size—then or now; he only realized there were plenty of doorways he had to duck to pass under and driver’s seats it was impossible to be comfortable in.

He used that first car to start his cruise of the nation’s freeways and back roads, driving by night and sleeping mostly by day, avoiding the sun as much as possible. The flaming corpses he left behind taught him that he had been nothing for so long that he had become nothing. He was starting from scratch, then, on his way to becoming something greater and better. It was killing that made him feel good for the first time, so killing must be the answer he sought, and Quail embraced it. At night, when the lonely and vulnerable were out, walking the highways and huddled in the dark crevices in search of a ride or a friend, Quail would appear. There was never a pattern to the killings besides those that others had begun. He had long lost track of how many had perished by his hand; he knew only that he grew stronger with each death. He couldn’t visualize life without the killing. It
was
life.

There had been four sets of perfectly imitated random killings before the Ferryman caught on to his existence and took up the chase. Not only had Kimberlain caught on, but he had even traced Quail back to his Pennsylvania Dutch origins and had found out about the terrible fire that had started it all. And when “the Dutchman,” as he came to be called, continued to elude capture in spite of the killings left in his wake, the word “Flying” was added to his title naming him after the mythical Dutch mariner doomed to sail the seas forever. The roads of America were Quail’s seas and the idea that one man could be responsible for a nationwide reign of terror devoid of pattern or motive was bizarre enough to keep Kimberlain virtually alone in his pursuit. But the Ferryman drew closer and closer. Quail began seeing him in every hitchhiker, in every car he passed or that passed him.

Their confrontation seemed inevitable, and Quail thought it had come when the roadside diner he had entered just before a dawn many months ago was flooded with well-dressed men. He left a number of them broken and unconscious, but the rest overcame him and took him to another town and a motel room where a dark man waited in the shadows. The man told the others to leave the two of them alone. This impressed Quail even before the dark man lauded his skills, his brilliance, said they were things that deserved to be recognized, utilized, rewarded. The dark man said that Kimberlain could be thrown off the track and arrangements made to ease Quail’s cross-country sojourns. Money when needed, refuge if required. There would be a number to call anytime he wanted to. In return there were jobs the dark man would want done for him, tasks deemed impossible by others who had considered them.

Quail didn’t believe in the impossible. And the dark man was offering him a chance to prove he was far, far more than nothing.

Since the first job he had done for the dark man, every other day the Flying Dutchman would make a call to an answering machine. If his services were required, he was referred to another number where the assignment would be detailed. Quail loved the legitimacy the dark man offered him along with much-deserved recognition of his special powers. His anonymity bothered him only because it kept Winston Peet as the most renowned, and thus the greatest, in his field. How unfair. Peet had killed seventeen at most, Quail as many as ten times that number. He carried the news clippings of his killings in the glove compartment of whatever car he was driving at the time the way a young boy stuffs baseball cards into the pockets of his jeans. Since Kimberlain no one had dared believe a single man could be responsible for it all. In that respect, the Dutchman had fallen victim to his own expertise.

Quail figured the time had come for a phone call, so he pulled over at the next gas station he came to and stepped into the phone booth, keeping the door cracked open to keep the light off.

The phone rang twice as always. The answering machine picked up.

Quail smiled. The dark man had work for him again.

Chapter 15

ON THE PLANE
back to New York, Kimberlain didn’t bother to hide his surprise when a stewardess handed him an Airophone he thought was reserved for outgoing calls.

“Mr. Kimberlain,” she said, as surprised as he was, “it’s for you.”

Up to that point he had busied himself with considering the aftermath of the attack on Lisa Eiseman by her sabotaged creations. Clearly she needed protection, and just as clearly he was in no position to provide it himself. It was Lisa who suggested the solution.

“Dom Torelli,” she said, and she proceeded to explain who Torelli was and how she knew him. “Torelli’s a king down here,” she finished. “Nobody would ever dare cross him.”