Tom Piccirilli - Nightjack

Nightjack

NIGHTJACK

By Tom Piccirilli

Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press

Copyright 2010 by Tom Piccirilli & Macabre Ink Digital Publications

This book was copy-edited by Neal Hock

LICENSE NOTES :

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your vendor of choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

MORE FROM TOM PICCIRILLI & CROSSROAD PRESS

SHORT RIDE TO NOWHERE

Jenks and Hale aren't friends, partners, or even next door neighbors anymore. Not since they each lost their jobs and had their homes foreclosed. Not since they lost their wives and kids and whatever stability they'd fought for in the world. Adrift on the streets of New York, Jenks' dark path seems to parallel Hale's step by step.

After Hale is found nearly dead beside the corpse of a nine-year-old girl, and soon after commits suicide in a mental hospital, Jenks decides to find out just what the hell happened. What happened to Hale and the girl, what happened to the wayward American Dream, and what happened to his youth and forfeited hopes.

Because whatever happens to Hale happens to Jenks just a few months later.

THE FEVER KILL

Crease is going back to his quaint, quiet hometown of Hangtree.

It's where his father the sheriff met ruin in the face of a scandal involving the death of a kidnapped little girl and her missing ransom. It's where crease was beaten, jailed, and kicked clear of the town line ten years earlier.

Now Crease is back. He's been undercover for so long that most days he feels more like a mobster than a cop. He doesn't mind much: the corrupt life is easier to stomach than a wife who can't understand him, a son who hates him, and a half-dozen adopted kids he can't even name anymore. He's also just gotten his drug-dealing, knife-wielding psycho boss Tucco's mistress pregnant.

A fine time to decide to settle old scores and resolve a decade-old mystery.

With Tucco hot on his tail, Crease has to find his answers fast. Who kidnapped little Mary? Who really killed her? Was his own father guilty? And what happened to the paltry fifteen grand ransom that seems to spell salvation to half the population of Hangtree? The town still has a taste for his blood and secrets it wants to keep. Crease has a single hope; a raw and raging fever driving him toward the truth that might just burn him up along the way.

For Michelle

and Byron and Edgar

my two pals who were there with me through it all

and Criswell

who we lost along the way

Miss you, my boy

and Jack Barbera

more Jack than you can handle!

and in memory of Jack Cady

Jack of All Trades, Master of Each

PART I

Persona Non Grata

one

Are you cured ?

They actually ask you that right before you step back into the world. While youre standing there in the corridor, twenty feet from the front door, holding tightly to your little bag of belongings. Youve got a change of clothing, five or six prescriptions, the address and phone number of a halfway house. A few items they let you make in shop, what they called the Work Activities Center. Maybe a birdhouse. A pair of gloves that didnt fit.

Pace had an ashtray and a folded-up pair of pajamas that hed stitched together himself on an old-fashioned sewing machine. It reminded him of the one William Pacellas grandmother had in her bedroom. She used to make clothes for the whole family, had this big sewing basket with two thousand miles of multi-colored threads and yarn. Shed crochet sweaters for him every year for Christmas. Always in the hairnet, wearing black, shed say, Non strappi questi, mie mani sono vecchio . Dont rip these, my hands are old. Pacella would hug her and hear the click of her poorly-fitted dentures as she pressed her wrinkled lips to his cheek.

Are you cured ?

A final test to see if youre really on your toes. Like you might suddenly drop, fling the pajamas aside, and thump your chest with your fists. Cry out, No, Im still insane, youve found me out, seen through my thin charade, damn your eyes.

But then again, you could never tell, it had probably happened before.

So they escort you back to your room, unfold your pajamas, put the ashtray back on the nightstand, and get your slippers ready for your feet again. You step into the lounge area and all the other headcases look at you like the prize screw-up you are. Sort of laughing while they say, You botched the question, didnt you. We practiced and rehearsed but you went and told them the truth, that you were still nuts. The hells the matter with you?

The other wrong answer was when you told them, Yes, Im fine. Then they knew you were still fucked.

What they really wanted to hear you say was that you were sick and youd always be sick, and you knew youd always be sick but that youd make an effort to stay stable by taking your medication regularly. That youd attend the outpatient group therapy sessions, keep in touch, and if you had any serious troubles along the way, youd check yourself right back in for a short-term observation period.

So Pace told them that.

He meant it, too, and thanked them for all theyd done. Humbly grinning at the nurses, the guards, the other staffers of Garden Falls Psychiatric Facility. All of them moving off down the hallways, giving him the stink eye that said, Whatever happens, just dont come back here. We have enough trouble.

All right, so he was almost back on the street. He looked left and right down the corridor once more, feeling a little lost. He was alone now. It was a condition he didnt like and couldnt seem to get used to.

He started for the front door and stopped. He was supposed to wait here for somebody. For a minute he couldnt remember who, and thenas she stepped from her office and came at himhe did. His shrink, the assistant Chief of Staff, Dr. Maureen Brandt, was at his side, moving in sync with him as they walked to the exit, shoulder to shoulder.

Dr. Maureen Brandt. The name didnt exactly slide off the tongue. Hed worked it around in his mouth for almost two years now. She often frowned when he said her name because he usually rested on it an extra second, as if he had to remember it all over again. Shed jot notes on her pad and look up at him without raising her chin, her dark gaze burrowing into his head. It wasnt exactly an unpleasant feeling.

How are you doing, Will? she asked.

All the nutjobs on the ward always said fine because they didnt have the wit to say anything else. The candor had been burned out of them with primal scream therapy. Three in the morning and these idiots are practicing their prehistoric shrieks, regressing back to cavemen. Hauling ass down the hallways trying to escape the mastodons and saber-toothed tigers. This was supposed to help them with the issues they had with their parents, the oily uncles who took them into the bathroom. Instead, it just started the whole zoo shrieking.

Pace opened his mouth and the word wasnt his word. The voice wasnt his voice either. It said, almost buoyantly, Fine.

Dr. Brandt smiled at Pace, the condescension mixed with something else. Fear maybe, or disappointment. Like she missed the man he was before she got her hands on him.

Her face was one of those sculptures that looked too perfect to be real. So beautiful it had a kind of awful magnificence that had enthralled him from the beginning. It didnt have so much to do with her looks as it did with what lurked beneath. A kind of force he connected with even though he couldnt see it and didnt know what it was.