Free The Closer by Donn Cortez Page B

but you—you must be home with your family, nicht wahr?”
    “It’s okay. They’ll understand.”
    “Well, then—I would like that very much. And this time I will be there, I promise.”
    “Great!” Jack gave him the address, thanked him, and hung up.
    Now all he had to do was tell everybody else….

    DEATHKISS: I don’t understand your definition of “success.”
    PATRON: My objective was not to kill Torigno. It was to find the person he loved the most, and destroy that person in the way that would resonate most deeply in his soul. Torigno is a devout Catholic; I chose the religious symbology carefully. The Easter bonnet was a nice touch, don’t you think?
    DEATHKISS: Yes.

    The sun was already starting to set when Jack set out for his studio. Under normal driving conditions he would have been able to get there in half an hour; now, he knew it would take him at least twice as long.
    He drove through a surreal landscape. Almost three feet of snow had fallen within forty-eight hours, turning his neighborhood into alien terrain: vehicles that had been parked for the last two days were completely encased, white bulges lining the street like the foothills of a glacier. Hedges, bushes and trees were coated so thickly they were only shapes, globes and ridges and cones of sparkling white. It felt like staring at a blank page and seeing half-formed ideas pushing their way up through the paper.
    As Jack had expected, Janine and his mother had been supportive, while his father had grumbled. The senior Salter had never been crazy about his son’s chosen field; he had tried to convince Jack more than once to pick something “with a little more stability in it.” Jack had long ago learned to simply change the subject, rather than defending his point of view. Art wasn’t something Jack had chosen; it had chosen him. That was the closest thing to an explanation he could give his father, and Jack knew his father didn’t understand.
    Despite that, they had come to a kind of truce, a treaty unknowingly written by Sam. He had seen them get into an argument once, started crying and refused to stop until Jack and his father had hugged each other. After that there were no more loud disagreements, not when Sam was around.
    In the end, his father had insisted Jack take their car. “It’s got snow tires on it, and you won’t have to dig it out. Just don’t leave the radio on that junk you listen to.”
    Jack lived in Burnaby, while his studio was on the east side of Vancouver, just off Main and Terminal. He took Hastings Street, but even that was moving at a crawl; there’d been some sort of chain-reaction accident on the long downslope just past Boundary Road. At least three tow trucks and five police cars blocked the road, turning the snow into a strobing rainbow of yellow, blue, and red.
    By the time he got to his studio it was just past six, and full dark. Liebenstraum wasn’t there yet, so he unlocked the door and went inside. He puttered around for a few minutes, pulling out a few pieces he had in storage and arranging them nervously. Jack worked primarily in mixed media, combining elements of painting, sculpture, and text; his stuff tended toward pop culture and the three-dimensional, like the bust of Madonna he’d made out of condom wrappers, Styrofoam, and white glue.
    Fifteen minutes passed, then half an hour. No Liebenstraum. Jack wondered if he’d been able to get a cab. He thought about making some calls, seeing if taxis were available, but there were too many cab companies in Vancouver—besides, what if Liebenstraum were trying to call him?
    Finally, there was a knock at the door. It wasn’t Liebenstraum, though; it was a cop. “We got a call about a prowler,” she said. She was in her twenties, with short dark hair and brown eyes. She was amazingly cheerful for someone working on Christmas Eve.
    Jack showed her some ID, told her what he was doing there. She wished him a merry Christmas and left.
    He waited