He kept talking; thank God—she didn’t need to think of her response.
“I don’t understand how they’re missing all this. Yes, it’s my purpose now to bring to light memories of some of the greatest murderers known to man.” He paused to laugh softly. “Jack the Ripper, the Black Dahlia killer and, yes, the Deadly Dancer.”
Keep him talking? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?
But for what? There was no recording device on her phone—it was just a cell phone.
“Frozen to silence, Miss Avery?” he asked.
“No,” she managed. “I was just thinking that they weren’t the greatest murderers of all time. You had many killers out there who committed more atrocious crimes—by number of victims, by ingenuity of form...” She was on her feet as she spoke, racing out to the hall. She tried to bang on Jackson’s door without the sound being heard over the phone.
“I haven’t even begun to leave behind my trail of victims,” he said, his voice low and chilling.
Jackson quickly threw his door open; looking at her, he apparently read her face and realized the killer—or someone purporting to be the killer—was on the line.
He drew her into his cabin, pulling out his own cell as he did so. He motioned to her to keep talking as he stepped aside and made a call. She could barely hear his voice. Tense, hushed, concise—she wasn’t sure who he had called or what he was asking for, but perhaps there was a way to follow through on the satellites being used by her phone.
“You’re also not unknown. You’re Tate Morley. You’ve been arrested and convicted and you’ll wind up dead or back in prison. You’re no great genius who has gotten away with his crimes,” she told him.
She thought she’d lost him; he went silent for so long. She had annoyed him. His tone was peeved when he spoke again. “No. When I end my reign of terror, the police and G-men and what have you will all be looking like a pack of ice spiders busy racing over the ice with nothing—nothing! I come and go at will. I disappear into the white mists of the snow. They’ll all be standing with their little dicks in their hands. I will reign as long as I choose, Miss Avery.”
“No,” she said quietly, “you are nothing.”
“Ah, bravo, bravo, Miss Avery! But, then, of course, you are an actress—a real one, at the least. Not like those pathetic ‘reality’ stars. Quite frankly, the nation should thank me,” he said, and laughed as if deeply pleased with his own joke. “Yes, I was lured by the promise of my fifteen minutes of fame, and what a lovely circumstance it proved to be! A perfect killing field, perfect victims, and the bastards who put me away all there, all ripe for the taking! But don’t be so very, very pleased, Miss Avery. The show doesn’t always go on. I see you right now—you’ve run to Special Agent Crow—yes, yes, laugh, laugh, Special Agent Crow. He’s special, all right! He’s there, he’s listening and he’s trying to get a tab on where I might be calling from. Well, duh, we all know I’m near, right? And his partner, ever so Special Agent Erikson, is running around on the ice right now, certain that he—great old tracker that he must be!—can find me in a snowbank. Pardon the crudity, but, yes—dick in his hand, dick in his hand! Oh, wait, I guess you’ll fix that for him later.”
“I’m hanging up now,” Clara told him.
“You don’t hang up on me. I hang up on you.”
Clara looked at Jackson. He nodded.
She clicked End on her phone and the call went dead.
She looked over at Jackson worriedly.
“It will ring again,” he said.
He was right. The phone began to ring.
“Let it ring several times. Not too quickly,” Jackson said.
Sixth ring. Jackson nodded.
She answered it. The man she believed to be Tate Morley began to speak, furious and cursing and spitting words.
“How dare you—how dare you! Every state in the Union wants me. You’re behaving as if I’m not the most important person in the world, and you know that I am. You know that you need me—any contact with me.”