Spider - Michael Morley [119]
‘Why are you doing this?’ asks Jack, fighting back another wave of nausea. ‘I don’t understand why my family is of any interest to you.’
‘Aaah, Jack. If only you knew how long I have waited for you to ask that question.’ Again the long pause fizzes out, before Spider continues, ‘Does the name Richard Jones mean anything to you?’
Jack can’t place it. His brain Googles ‘Richard Jones’; maybe ‘Dick Jones’ or ‘Dickie Jones’? Nothing comes back. ‘I’m sorry. The name means nothing to me.’
‘I didn’t think it would,’ says Spider. ‘But it means everything to me. And I mean everything. Thirty years ago, Richard Jones was killed in a car accident. He was run over by a police cruiser turning out on a false 911. Can you imagine that? The cops killed him, chasing a crime that hadn’t even happened.’
The name begins to ring a dim and discordant bell in Jack’s aching memory.
‘Richard Jones,’ says Spider, his voice starting to break with emotion, ‘was my father. He was killed just weeks after his wife, my mother, died from cancer. That murdering fucking cop left me an orphan, stranded me in this stinking life without any parents and forced me to live in a flea-pit orphanage. Have you worked it all out yet, Mr FBI man? That killer behind the steering wheel, that moron cop who never even had his knuckles rapped for murdering my father, was your old man. Do you understand now?’
Jack slowly starts to make sense of it all. Fragments of his family history flicker through his mind, but he can’t form the full picture. Another bomb explodes in his brain. He covers his face with his hands and leans against Howie’s car. The pain is unbearable and he is frightened of passing out.
‘My father,’ sobs Spider, ‘was hit so hard by that police cruiser, that by the time his body stopped rolling across the highway, and the traffic had stopped running over him, his head was completely detached from his body. Can you imagine that? Can you?’
Jack is speechless, his mind frozen in shock, his nerves blistering from old pains, his senses overwhelmed and close to shut-down.
Spider wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and looks again at Nancy and Zack. She’s now fully unconscious and the boy has pressed his body tight against her. Even though he’s still gagged, Spider can see the child is whimpering like a frightened dog. He turns his attention back to the phone. ‘I know you’re stupid, King, so I’ll fill in the rest for you. I saw your old man’s retirement feature in the newspaper. At first I thought it was something about you. I’m sure you guessed that I read all your clippings and follow all the nonsense you spout about getting close to catching me, which by the way is horse shit. And then I looked again. And even though you’re in the picture along with lots of other cops, I see it’s about your father.’
Spider watches Jack on the monitor, pleased that he’s visibly distressed. ‘What you probably don’t know, Jackie boy, is that the NYPD never publicly named the driver of the car that killed my father. So, imagine how I felt to read this piece, in which your old man goes on and on about the wonderful career he’d had, but how he’d trade all his commendations and promotions to have been able to have avoided just one traffic accident thirty years ago in Brooklyn, an accident that had killed a young pedestrian.’
Slowly, Jack remembers his father’s retirement day and how his dad had mentioned that he felt guilty even though it had clearly been an accident. He had still wanted to say sorry publicly to wipe the slate clean.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ says Jack, with no hint of sincerity.
‘Thank you,’ says Spider, sarcastically. ‘That means a lot to me, because I know you lost your own father in a similarly tragic accident. How long ago is it now? About five