Chapter Eighty-Five
In the car, it’s Jules who seems disoriented, knocked on her heels. “We need to call the police,” she says, breathless. “We need to call Jack. We need to take care of him. We need to—”
“Deep breaths,” Quinn says. “We need to be smart, game this out. I’m going to call the guys at Midwest Investigators.” His old investigation firm is filled with former cops and federal law enforcement agents. They’ll know how best to proceed.
Jules is still breathing heavily. A moment later she says, “It’s time to end this, once and for all.”
By seven that night, Jules, Lucy, and Carrie are at the diner, the place they have met Jack every year to help the FBI find May Day.
Lucy and Carrie are quiet. She reaches for their hands.
“He’s here,” Jules says, seeing Jack at the door.
Jack comes over to the booth. Jules gets out and lets him slip into the booth next to Carrie, across from Lucy. “Hey,” he says cheerfully, “so great to see you all.”
He stops, studies them. “Is everything okay?”
Jules says, “We made a major break in the case.”
“What case?”
Jules gives him a look.
“Your cases are closed. We—”
Jules places the photo on the table.
Jack examines it. “I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand, John?” says Lucy. “That is your name, isn’t it, the long form of Jack.”
“I don’t know what you’re— I’m leaving.” He stands.
The hammer of a gun cocks loudly. “Sit down or I’ll blow your cock through your asshole,” Lucy tells him.
Jack stares at her a minute, notices her hand under the table, resumes his seat.
“Place your hands flat on the table or I swear, I’ll do it,” Lucy says.
“Lucy,” Jules says. “We agreed you wouldn’t—”
“He deserves to die, right here.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, what you’re talking about,” Jack says. “Why are you—?”
“Why?” Jules says, her voice laced with disgust. “We know. We know everything. About your mother, who died on May first, 1967. About Megan Tucker. About you and Patrick Knox—”
“You don’t know a damned thing.”
Jules scoffs. Slides the photograph of twelve-year-old Jack closer to him.
“You fit the FBI’s profile to a tee. It was right in front of everyone.
Someone with a law enforcement background.
Someone with stature in the community, hiding in plain sight.
And a man in a suit was seen talking to Quinn’s mother before she was murdered.
You and Pat became friends when you moved to Ashwell your senior year.
I don’t know how we didn’t see it. You knew I wrote the anonymous letter because you and Patrick took me.
Your name is Jack Smith. We were fucking blind. ”
Jack stays quiet like he’s contemplating. Then a dark shadow spreads over his features. “You think anyone’s going to believe you three? A convicted vigilante. A washed-up model. A half-wit religious nut. You think they’re going to believe you over a decorated FBI agent?”
“They searched your apartment in D.C.,” Carrie says. “They found the driver’s licenses.”
This seems to rattle him.
“Why?” Jules shouts, slapping the table with her open hand, causing other diners to go quiet.
He lowers his voice, a resignation in his tone.
“You know, I wanted to understand why myself. That’s why I joined the FBI, scrapped my way from the Chicago field office to the Behavioral Analysis Unit.
I’ve studied them all—Jack the Ripper, Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy.
But it was Ed Kemper, “the Co-Ed Killer,” that I related to most. His mother was a monster, so much so that after killing six college students, he came home and cut out her vocal cords and threw them down the garbage disposal so he would never have to listen to her again, then used her decapitated head as a dartboard.
But my mother was worse, she didn’t just abuse me herself, she let her clients… ” He looks down, unable to finish.
“So we’re supposed to feel sorry for you?” Lucy says.
Jack shrugs. “I tried to stop. I did stop. But after studying so many people like me, you know what conclusion I reached?”
They all watch and wait. Jules fears he’ll lunge for them, attack. But this man has always been passive, a watcher.
“I realized we’re all the same in one way: There’s no fixing whatever is broken in our brains. Another one of us monsters, H. H. Holmes, said it best: ‘I couldn’t help that I was a murderer any more than a poet could help the inspiration to sing.’”
Carrie joins in now, no longer the quiet, mousy girl she once was: “Why’d you let us go, why’d you stay in our lives? Because we looked like your mom?”
Jack smiles. “The man who killed her, he did me a favor. And I loved that he gave her a choice. Heads or tails when he flipped that coin. The same chance I gave each of you. Pat loved that part. But the truth is”—he smiles again and his features darken—“I told him to spare you because I liked the way you scream.”
Jules’s blood boils, and she clutches Lucy’s forearm, fearing she might pull the trigger. She looks at her friends. “I think that’s what we need.” She then signals with a hand raised, and the undercover police filling all of the diner’s other tables already have their guns drawn, aimed at Jack.
Jules, Carrie, and Lucy dart out of the booth while Jack is dragged to the floor.
An eternity later, they wait outside the diner in the parking lot, which is now filled with law enforcement vehicles from every conceivable agency.
Blue police lights illuminate the lot. Quinn has materialized, his arm tight around Jules; Lucy and Carrie are surrounded by their friends from Find Them.
“What’s taking so long?” Jules asks. They’ve held Jack inside the diner for too long. She’s worried he’s talking his way out of it. But the police caught everything on the wire, so there’s little chance of that.
“They’re waiting for this,” Quinn says, as a news van pulls up. A reporter jumps out, followed by a guy with a heavy camera on his shoulder.
A humiliating perp walk. A reward for the police officers who took Jules and Quinn seriously enough to lay the trap—with assistance from the fellas at Midwest Investigators.
Jack emerges from the diner looking different, not the solid handsome G-man he portrayed. He’s wild-eyed in the harsh light of the news cameras.
As two stolid cops hold his arms and perp-walk him to the car, Jules catches Jack’s gaze.
“You’re right, Jack. It is fun to watch.”