Free Nightjack by Tom Piccirilli Page B

followed.”
    “Stop with the compliments.”
    Vindi’s eyes took in everything. He was aware of the screwdriver in Pace’s fist, and kept himself just out of range. His arms were loose at his sides, huge hands slightly raised so he could block or attack as needed. The bull neck bulged with corded muscle. He wouldn’t be easy.
    “So let me hear it.”
    “You are William Pacella,” Vindi said. “Former high school English teacher. Schizophrenic with dissociative identity disorder, better known in most circles as multiple-personality disorder. You went mad when your wife died in a restaurant fire.”
    Pace couldn’t get his mouth wrapped around the name of the place though. He tried a couple of times and couldn’t quite get it. He said, “Emily’s? Emeel’s?”
    “ Emilio’s , yes. Named after the owner, Emilio Cavallo.”
    “Cavallo,” Pace said, nodding. “Yeah.”
    “The local syndicate, run by Joseph Ganucci, also known as ‘the Ganooch,’”—he had to stop and grin—“these Italians and their ludicrous nomenclature.”
    “Get on with it.”
    “Ganucci’s crew had apparently been trying to drive Cavallo out of business. Your wife, Jane, the restaurant manager, was caught in the blaze along with three other employees, one of whom you saved. You had a psychotic break and hunted down several of the mobsters responsible, known collectively as the Ganucci Family. In the guise of an alternate persona called Nightjack, you killed each of them with either a knife or your bare hands. This is rather common knowledge although the police agencies never acquired enough formal evidence against you. Your alternate identities confused them greatly. After you finally dispatched Joseph Ganucci, you voluntarily admitted yourself into the Garden Falls Psychiatric Facility. You were eventually state committed after you carried out acts of violence in the hospital. Today you were released.”
    So there it was, laid out front to back in a few simple sentences. Pace gritted his teeth and gave a rictus grin, thinking about Jane in flames. Now he understood why it was so clear in his mind. Pacella had been there, in the restaurant, and had watched her die. Why hadn’t he been able to save her?
    “That sounds about right,” he whispered.
    “Would you like to hear more?” Vindi asked. “There is a good deal more to cover.”
    “No,” Pace told him. You didn’t go willingly to your reckoning, you let it come to you, inch by inch. “Not right now.”
    “As you wish.”
    “You’re quite amenable.”
    The great shoulders shrugging, the mouth shifting into a brief, curious smile. “We were once friends.”
    “You and me? So what happened?”
    “I cannot discuss that with you at this time.”
    “Why not?”
    “It would not be in your best interest, I think. Nor that of my employer.”
    A family walked past them in the lot. Man and wife, five-year-old daughter holding a melting ice cream cone. The three of them tired from a long drive and moving slowly. The father perceived the situation and drew his wife and kid close, skirting away trying to get to his minivan that the Jag had almost blocked in. Pace watched them, knowing there were a half-dozen men inside him who could relate to the father, a group of children who wanted to go play with the little girl.
    The guy pulled his minivan out and barely missed clipping the Jag’s rear quarter panel. He kept his face down and refused to look over as he gunned it out of the lot and hit the highway, heading for one of the beach motels.
    “It was stupid to send Rollo Carpie after me,” Pace said.
    Vindi seemed almost embarrassed. “He was no real threat to you. It was meant to gain your attention, nothing more.”
    “You’ve got it.”
    “Yes.”
    The need to do something was building up, thrashing within him, a black ocean filled with drowning people. All of them reaching up, asking to be saved. How many of them could take Vindi? How many could get him alive, and