Vessel, Book I: The Advent Read online

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  "You're a fireman, Mr. Jackson?"

  "Yep."

  "And so what exactly were you doing when you first noticed the suspect?"

  "Getting something out of the vending machine."

  The deputy took a moment to shuffle papers, papers that were not even related to the case at hand. He could not think of a counter question to that.

  "I'm the driver," Jackson explained, fidgeting in the rolling chair and drumming a finger against the empty Gatorade bottle in his hands. "The fire was pretty minimal. So I was just sort of killing time."

  The deputy bobbed his head vaguely, diagonally, so that he was neither shaking it nor nodding. "And what did you see then, from the vending machine?"

  Jackson frowned. He had definitely gone over this already with at least two other officers. Why did these people write anything down if they were just going to ask again?

  "I saw him coming down―"

  "Who?"

  "I saw this guy." Jackson, with clear exasperation, prodded a finger at the mug shot lying in front of him. "Coming down the fence on the south side of the prison yard."

  "The outside of the fence?"

  For crying out loud. Jackson flopped back in the chair and looked around at the people coming and going within the crowded police station. He wondered how many other convicts were running loose, and how long they'd be out there, since these guys took so damn long asking inane questions like this.

  "No, inside the fence," he answered, with obvious sarcasm.

  Not obvious enough, apparently. Or perhaps too thick. The deputy looked up from his notes, blank and disapproving.

  "Outside," Jackson sighed. "He was coming down the outside of the outermost fence."

  "And that's when you pursued the suspect on foot?"

  "Yep."

  "And you did not alert anyone else?"

  "Nope. Just ran."

  "How far would you say he ran before your encounter?"

  Jackson shrugged."'Bout a half mile or more? He took off down into the valley, followed the creek north, away from the highway."

  He stared at the convict's photo on the cluttered desk as he spoke, replaying the whole thing in his mind. The sheer height of the guy, the way he ran, so fast and deliberate even in the dark, hurling himself through branches and shrubs like they didn't even exist. Until that rotting stump tripped him up. That was when Jackson had done what seemed most sensible to him in the moment: he'd tackled the guy.

  That was also where Jackson's report got a little skewed. There were some things he hadn't mentioned to any of the officers, things he couldn't quite figure out himself. The overpowering, blackout-like impulse that had forced him to give chase in the first place, for instance. And the switchblade. He hadn't said a single word about the switchblade.

  He'd heard it before he'd seen it, the metallic click and the little whistle of sliced air. The guy twisted beneath him before they'd hit the snowy earth, got onto his back somehow and swung an arm out. Jackson dodged, fast but not fast enough, and the blade cut clean from the stubbled flesh under his nose to the broad side of his cheek. Could have been worse, he knew; it could have been his eye or his throat. Instead, he'd grown one half of a bright red, instant mustache.

  They were both on their feet in the next instant, staring into the dark at one another, the convict with his knife held at a threatening level, Jackson with his hands out, waiting to defend himself. The blood on his skin had felt as hot as bath water in contrast to the freezing air. He remembered that vividly.

  Neither of them moved for ten excruciating seconds, during which the following thoughts occurred to Jackson, in this order:

  Ouuch-Shit! Son of a bitch! Ouch!

  How the hell do you get a switchblade in prison?

  Hey. I know this guy.

  Moonlight reflecting off the snow was the only light he had to go by, but Jackson was absolutely certain. He had seen that face before. Many times. Countless times.

  The convict, it seemed, was having a similar revelation. Or, much less likely, a change of heart. The goliath figure straightened suddenly, pocketed the switchblade, and without so much as a look over his shoulder, jumped across the creek and ran hard into the woods.

  Jackson hadn't followed. He just stood there on the bank, smearing blood off his face with his hands, listening to the sound of slapping branches fade into the howling wind. "That's right, you run!" he'd shouted. "Cut my face, big mistake! Goddamn Commie!"

  Jackson swiveled impatiently in the rolling chair, watching the hypnotic patterns of snow sweeping by the police station window. It was eight in the morning now, but everything was as dark and gray as dusk outside. The deputy had interrupted his own questions to take a call, but when he noticed a string of headlights entering the lot outside, he immediately flagged down a passing officer and handed the phone over to her.

  "Those'll be the feds," he said to Jackson, gesturing at the window and standing up. "They're going to want to get a report from you, too."

  "Are you kidding me?" Jackson turned back toward the desk, his wide green eyes now wider than ever. "Look, man, I'm still on call for the next forty-eight hours and this blizzard's just getting started. They're going to need seven of me today."

  The deputy shrugged unsympathetically.

  Jackson shook his head and stared through the haze of snow at the advancing figures, tall and shapeless in their black overcoats. He sighed resignedly.

  "So this Kin Su guy―"

  "Su Kim Khan."

  "Right. So he's a pretty big deal, huh?"

  The deputy's eyebrows lifted. It was the first actual expression Jackson had seen him make.

  "Oh. He's a very big deal."

  The officer who'd taken the phone leaned through the door again. "They said the snow's covered everything by now, wind's too high, dogs are no good." She looked to Jackson. "Which way did you say he ran from the site?"

  Jackson opened his mouth, but he didn't speak immediately. He wasn't thinking about the answer. He knew the answer. Across the creek and into the woods, due east. That was the answer.

  He was thinking instead about that face, the face from the snowy darkness, the face from all those dreams. He didn't understand, but he knew somehow that this was right.

  "West," he said. "He ran west, up the side of the mountain."

  Satisfied, the officer disappeared again. The deputy excused himself to greet the agents in the lobby. Jackson watched them all through the shuttered office glass, rubbing at the flesh above his upper lip for the hundredth time that morning.

  Nothing was there. Not so much as a scratch.

  C H A P T E R 4