Blackburn Bakes Cookies

                    by Bradley Denton

     Once he was dead, Jasmine's brother stopped showing up in her dreams. In life, he'd been there all the time. But after his execution, he stopped bothering her. In fact, when Jasmine dreamed at all now, it tended to be about work or sex. Or about taking a test she'd forgotten to study for.

     But it was never about Jimmy.

     She guessed that was because she thought about him so much while she was awake. Most days, he was the last thing on her mind every night, and the first thing every morning.

     That became even more true a month before the tenth anniversary of his death -- because that was when Jasmine began getting phone calls from someone she named the Sicko. She called him that because of what he said he wanted from her. Jasmine was appalled that he thought she would give it to him. Even a maniac should have known better. But whether he knew better or not, he called four or five times a week even after she changed her unlisted number. She came to expect it.

     So as she lay in bed waiting for that call on a warm Wichita evening one week before the anniversary of Jimmy's death, Jasmine listened to her boyfriend snoring beside her and tried to kill time by remembering a happy moment from childhood. But the only thing she could think of, the only thing that even came close, was an incident that had happened when she had been ten and Jimmy had been fifteen.

     In those days, Jasmine had hated her brother and Jimmy had ignored his sister, as was only proper for their ages and genders. He was a high-school sophomore and she was a fifth-grader, and they might as well have been living on different planets. But late one afternoon at the tail end of a long Kansas winter, Jasmine had been sitting on an old tire behind the garage, miserable, when Jimmy had come around the corner and found her.

     And then, to her shock, he had helped her.

     She could still see him standing there, stark and skinny against the slate sky. And she didn't have to dream to do it.

                                        #

     He was carrying a magazine that he stuffed up under his shirt. Clearly, he was hiding it so she wouldn't see what it was. But she didn't care what the magazine was or why he was bringing it back here. She didn't care about anything or anybody. She hated everyone. Daddy was gone all the time, and right now Mom was off shopping in El Dorado instead of staying home to comfort her. And Jimmy was a creep. She couldn't count on any of them.

     "Go away!" she yelled.

     But Jimmy didn't go away. He just stood there staring at her. So she got off the tire, picked up a rock, and threw it at him as hard as she could. It hit him in his hidden magazine with a thwok and dropped dead to the dirt.

     Jimmy adjusted the magazine. "Something wrong at school?" he asked. "You didn't turn on the TV to watch Major Astro the way you usually do."

     That took Jasmine by surprise. She hadn't thought Jimmy paid any attention to what she usually did. And he sounded as if he was really interested when he asked if something was wrong. The shock of that cut through her rage all the way down to how she was really feeling, which was awful, so she collapsed back onto the tire and cried.

     "Tell me what happened," Jimmy said, and after a while Jasmine managed to tell him the whole story.

     She told him about Lyle and Sarah, the sixth-graders who waylaid her on the playground outside Wantoda Grade School every morning, and about how they always grabbed the sack lunch that Mom had packed for her. If there were cookies in the sack, Lyle and Sarah would take them. And if there weren't, they stomped on the rest. Most often, they stomped on the rest anyway.

     This had gone on for three weeks now, and Jasmine couldn't stand it anymore.

     "I want you to beat them up," she sobbed.

     Jimmy didn't respond to that right away. Instead, he asked, "Have you told Mom? Have you told your teacher?"

     Jasmine wanted to throw another rock at him, but she didn't have the energy. Her face was cold and her nose was running. She stuffed her raw hands into her lint-pilled coat pockets.

     "No," she said bitterly. "That would be tattling. I don't tattle."

     Jimmy nodded. "Good. Never tattle, because the grownups you tattle to will punish you at least as bad as the kids you tattle on. It's better to take care of the problem yourself. You know, like how I used my kite to get back at Todd Boyle that time he was torturing your Doll-Baby. Remember?"

     Jasmine scowled. "No. I don't play with that old doll anymore. I don't even know where it is."

     "I guess that was a long time ago for you," Jimmy said. "Anyway, my point is that you can take care of Lyle and Sarah yourself."

     Jasmine rubbed her face on her shoulder. "How? They're bigger than I am."

     Jimmy came over and squatted beside her. The magazine under his shirt crackled. "So don't fight them. Instead, just let them take your cookies tomorrow. It's the best way."

     Jasmine was dumbfounded. "They do that every day, stupid. Except when I don't have any. And unless Mom makes some tonight, I won't. They'll squash my sandwich the way they always do."

     Jimmy stood, turned toward the house, and motioned for Jasmine to follow. "Come on, then. We'll make cookies ourselves before Mom gets home. She'll be gone a while, because she left a note that I should take care of you."

     Jasmine got up and followed him past the chicken coop and down the rock path to the house's back door. "I don't want you to help me make cookies," she said. "They'll just take them away again. I want you to beat them up."

     Jimmy paused at the door, looked down at Jasmine, and smiled.

     It was the first time that Jimmy had smiled at Jasmine in she didn't know how long. In fact, it was the first time he had smiled, period, in as long as she could remember.

     "Sometimes beating them up is your only choice," Jimmy said, "and then you have to do it. But it can come back and bite you, just like tattling can. So it's better to let them do what they want -- but fix things so that once they've done it, they really wish they hadn't."

     Jimmy took Jasmine inside then, and after he stashed his magazine in his room, they turned on the oven and made chocolate-chip cookies. But there weren't any chocolate chips in the cupboard, so Jimmy had Jasmine bring Mom's blue-and-white box of chocolate Ex-Lax from the refrigerator. They crumbled the squares into the mixing bowl, and Jimmy said that Jasmine could spit or blow her nose into it too, if she liked.

     So she did. And then they mixed up the batter and baked the cookies, which smelled great.

     Lyle and Sarah attacked Jasmine once again the next morning, but then they both went home sick in the afternoon. They didn't show up at all the next day. And the day after that, Lyle came by himself. He tried to grab Jasmine's lunch before school as usual, but he was pale and weak, so she knocked him down and pounded him. A few other kids joined in, and they hit him until he cried.

     The day after that, Lyle was absent again. But Sarah showed up. Sarah didn't try anything, but Jasmine knocked her down and pounded her anyway. Once more, other kids joined in, and they hit her until she shrieked. But her shriek was drowned out by the first bell, so they didn't get caught.

     Afterward, though, Jasmine felt terrible. What she had done to Lyle and Sarah didn't seem fair, somehow. So she prayed to Jesus to forgive her for it.

     She never knew whether He did or not. But she did know that Lyle and Sarah never bothered her again.

                                         #

     The nightstand phone rang at a quarter to two, and Jasmine jerked awake knowing that it wasn't Mack calling because he was in bed with her. That meant it was either a family emergency or the Sicko. So she stuck her head under her pillow and pretended that she didn't hear anything.

     In the middle of the second ring, she felt Mack reach over her to turn on the lamp.

     "I don't recognize the number on the Caller I.D.," he said. The pillow over Jasmine's head made him sound far away. "But it's local. Should I pick up?"

     "No," Jasmine said. She spoke into the mattress, but was pretty sure that Mack could hear her. "Let the machine get it."

     The machine clicked on after the fourth ring. But several seconds passed after the beep, and the caller said nothing. So maybe it was a wrong number. A few more seconds, and the machine would click off.

     Jasmine took the pillow from her head and rose to her knees. Mack's hand closed on her right shoulder, and she put her left hand over it.

     "Little Sis," the answering machine whispered.

     If she had stayed under the pillow, she might not have heard it. But it was too late now.

     "I know you're there." It was the Sicko, still whispering. He didn't usually whisper.

     Jasmine squeezed Mack's hand. "Do you have your cell phone handy?" she asked.

     Mack got out of bed, but kept his hand on her shoulder. "It's in the living room," he said. His dark hair was sticking up in places, and his deep-set eyes looked worried. "I can call the cops, but they haven't been much help so far."

     "I know," Jasmine said. "But that Detective what's-his-name, Holliman, said I should phone in the number from the I.D. the next time Sicko called. You know the right extension?"

     "God, yes. I know all the cop extensions, thanks to the high class of clients I represent. But I'd better take another look at Sicko's." Mack leaned over and peered at the Caller I.D. unit while sliding his hand down from Jasmine's shoulder and running his fingers over her breasts.

     "Little Sis," the machine rasped. "Is your loverboy there? Is that why you won't talk to me? Are you too busy letting him corrupt you with his filthy little lawyer business? Is he grabbing that short, sandy hair of yours and looking for an alibi in those baby blues?"

     Jasmine reached out and gave Mack's lawyer business a squeeze. "Don't listen to him," she said. "It's not that filthy."

     Mack grunted. "Uh. Thanks." He frowned at the answering machine. "I'm starting to dislike this guy more than I do most Sickos of my acquaintance."

     "That's because most Sickos of your acquaintance happen to be colleagues," Jasmine said. She released his business. "Now go call the police before he hangs up."

     "He won't hang up," Mack said. "He never hangs up. He's a goddamn recording artist."

     "Go."

     Mack went.

     "Pick up, Sis," the machine hissed. "Pick up, and I'll tell you why I'm whispering."

     Jasmine sat on the edge of the bed and took a few deep breaths to calm herself. It didn't work. The Sicko's timing had been impeccable. She and Mack had gone to bed screwing like rabbits at about midnight, and then she had lain awake until a little after one. So she had been at just about the deepest point in her sleep cycle when the phone rang.

     But she couldn't let him hear that she was rattled. She would have to channel her emotions so they came out as annoyance. She thought she could maybe do that.

     Jasmine took another deep breath, then picked up the receiver. But she left the answering machine on in case the Sicko let something slip. Sooner or later, he had to let something slip.

     "You know what I wish?" she asked as soon as the receiver touched her ear. "I wish I had your phone number. Then I could call you at some ugly hour."

     "But I'm up all night anyway," the Sicko said. "I can't sleep until I have what I need. Now, don't you want to know why I'm whispering?"

     "I suppose you think it's sexy," Jasmine said. She put as much sarcasm into her voice as she could muster.

     The Sicko made a clucking sound. "Now, we don't have that kind of relationship. That would be incestuous, and the results would be three-eyed monsters. Besides, you're too short and skinny. I prefer taller gals with some meat on them. No, I'm whispering because of the Wichita Wranglers. They blew a two-run lead against San Antonio tonight even though they had an enthusiastic home-stand crowd. So I yelled in frustration, and something in my throat blew out."

     Jasmine was puzzled. "I hate to break this to you," she said, "but I happen to know that the Wranglers are on the road. I think they're in Tulsa."

     "That's right," the Sicko said, "but I despise Tulsa for its liberal attitudes, so I refuse to pay that city any attention. In protest, I listened to a tape of an old game. I get them off the radio. I have a collection."

     Jasmine perked up at that. It might be a clue.

     "I didn't know you were such a baseball fan," she said.

     The Sicko gave a phlegmy laugh. "You still don't. Who gives a damn about double-A ball? My throat's sore because I choked on a tablespoon of cayenne pepper, and I've never taped a thing off the radio in my life." The tone of his rasp shifted toward nasty. "And if you don't want me to keep on filling up your answering machine tapes, you'll give me what I want."

     Jasmine forced herself not to react to his shift in tone. "Well, at least you aren't threatening me or my boyfriend with bodily harm this time."

     The Sicko let out a long, soft hiss. It made Jasmine shudder.

     "No, you didn't respond to that," the Sicko said. "And I figured out why. You're an accountant and he's a lawyer, so the damage you inflict on each other is worse than anything I could do. But your mother, on the other hand -- I could do something to her that you'd notice."

     Jasmine came off the bed as if stabbed by a live wire. It was all she could do to sound as if she didn't believe him, as if she didn't care.

     "You're so full of shit," she said. "My mother doesn't even live around here."

     "I know," the Sicko said. "She lives in Spokane, Washington, which is where you lived as well until you moved back here two years ago." He made a hmmmmm  noise. "Let's see, this is Sunday morning. Mother's Day. When you call her this afternoon, you can tell her that she'll have a visitor driving in on Wednesday to help her celebrate Jimmy's birthday."

     Jasmine's head began hammering. "You can't even make a decent threat. My mother died two years ago. That's why I was able to move."

     The Sicko laughed again. "Give it up. Your mother is alive and bitching. However, her second husband, Gary, had a stroke four months ago. You flew up and spent a week with them before your responsibilities at work and in your lawyer's boxer shorts called you back. Gary will probably go into a home if he has another stroke, because then he'll need constant care. And your mother is too dotty to provide that."

     Jasmine thought so too, and the fact that the Sicko had said it made her furious. "You're not one to be passing judgment," she said. "'Dotty' doesn't even begin to describe you."

     "What does, Little Sis?"

     "Motherfucking crazy."

     "It's against the law to talk like that on the telephone," the Sicko said in mock indignation. "Besides, I'm no such thing. Not unless it's motherfucking crazy to cut off an elderly woman's fingers and toes and stick them into her bodily orifices. Which is what I'll do if you don't give me Jimmy's ashes. After all, they're mine."

     Jasmine hated him. "I keep telling you, I don't have Jimmy's ashes. But even if I did, they wouldn't be yours. And I still don't know why you think they are."

     The Sicko gave a sandpaper sigh. "I've explained that. I'm his successor, and I have to incorporate his body into mine to make the transformation complete. Otherwise, I won't become the perfect serial killer he was."

     Jasmine yelled into the phone. She couldn't help it. "What do you want to do, eat him?"

     "Well, yeah," the Sicko said. He sounded surprised that Jasmine would ask. "He was my enemy, so if I consume his remains, I'll ingest his power. It took me years to figure that out, so I'm out of time to waste. That's why I'm only giving you two more days. If you don't deliver Jimmy's true ashes -- not fireplace leavings this time -- to his grave marker by Tuesday morning, I'm off to Spokane. You'll have to do it at night, though, without a flashlight. I'll be watching. And of course, no one else can see or know about it. Otherwise, chunks of your mommy will start showing up in cans of sockeye salmon. 'Bye now."

     "Wait!" Jasmine shouted. "Wait a second!"

     But the Sicko had hung up.

     Jasmine slammed down the receiver. Then she picked it up and slammed it down again. Then she picked up the phone, the Caller I.D. box, and the answering machine, and she tried to slam them all down. But the cords yanked them from her hands, and they tumbled back to the nightstand.

     Mack came up behind Jasmine and put his hands on her shoulders. She turned and slugged him. His chest hair was rough against the side of her fist.

     "Sorry," Mack said, staggering back. "I thought you knew I was there."

     Jasmine blinked away tears. "Jimmy wasn't a serial killer."

     "I know," Mack said. "I know he wasn't."

     Jasmine couldn't stop. She had to make somebody understand. "He had reasons. They were the wrong reasons, but he wasn't just . . . just sick."

     "You're preaching to the converted," Mack said.

     Jasmine turned away and went out to the kitchen. She switched on the light, sat down on the floor, and opened the cabinet under the sink. Then she yanked out bottles of Windex and Comet and crusty floor wax until she came to the urns. One of the urns was blue ceramic, and the other was stainless steel.

     She brushed her fingertips over the ceramic urn and murmured, "Hi, Daddy. You poor diseased old thing."

     Then she picked up the stainless steel urn, pressed it to her chest, and planted a kiss on its lid. The metal was as warm as if charcoal smoldered inside. Mack had once suggested the warmth might come from the faucet's hot water line, but Jasmine didn't think so.

     "Sicko can't have you," she said with her lips against the steel. "You're my brother. Not his."

     Mack came into the kitchen. He didn't say a word about the scattered cleaning supplies, but extended a hand to Jasmine and waited for her to take it.

     Eventually, she took it, leaving the stainless steel urn on the floor next to the blue ceramic one.

     Mack pulled her up and said, "May I have this dance, Miss Blackburn?" Then they danced back into the bedroom and held each other until the Wichita police called to say they had found the pay phone the Sicko had used tonight.

     But there had been no one there.

                                          #

     On Tuesday morning, Jasmine was waiting at the gate at Mid-Continent Airport when her mother and Gary came off the 737. A skycap wheeled Gary from the ramp, and Mom came along behind, fussing.

     "Don't roll him so fast," Mom said. "You'll dump him out and run over him. Young man, I said don't roll him so fast."

     Gary looked up with watery eyes and gave Jasmine a grimace that she knew was meant as a smile. He probably shouldn't have flown so soon after the stroke. But at least he didn't look any worse than he had four months ago.

     The skycap stopped the wheelchair in front of Jasmine. "These folks with you, ma'am?" he asked.

     Jasmine nodded.

     "This is as far as I go, then," the skycap said. "They need the chair five gates down. Can he walk?"

     Mom stepped up, and she was wearing the pinched, persimmon-lipped expression that Jasmine knew so well. But for once, it wasn't directed at her.

     "Young man," Mom said to the skycap, "I know that you Negroes are proud of your natural speed, but this man has had a stroke. You could've killed him."

     Jasmine winced and gave the skycap an apologetic look.

     "Can he walk?" the skycap asked again.

     Gary was nodding and reaching toward Jasmine, so Jasmine pulled him up from the chair. He was lighter than she expected, and she stumbled back a few steps. But then she caught herself and put her arms around Gary to steady him. He smelled of Ben-Gay and peanuts.

     "You see?" Mom said, pointing a finger at the skycap. "You see what you almost did?"

     The skycap made a noise in his throat, then turned and left with the wheelchair.

     "Wait," Jasmine said, struggling to support Gary and open her purse at the same time. "I'll give you a tip."

     The skycap kept moving, and Gary plunged both hands into Jasmine's open purse.

     "He's looking for a mint," Mom said. "Do you have any mints?"

     Jasmine gently removed Gary's hands from her purse and then stepped back from him. He stood on his own.

     "I don't think so," she said. "I have gum, though."

     Mom's pinched look intensified, and now it was directed at Jasmine. "He can't chew. If he tries to chew, he'll choke. Are you trying to kill him?"

     "No, Mom. I didn't know he couldn't chew."

     "You would if you'd stayed in Spokane," Mom said. "And then we wouldn't have had to ride in that death trap. Air pockets, my eye. The wings were coming off. I could see them bouncing."

     "I couldn't stay in Spokane, Mom," Jasmine said. "I have a job. The firm's letting me take my vacation days now so I can spend some time with you, but they're reserving the right to call if they need me. So it makes more sense for you and Gary to stay with me for a while." She hesitated, then pulled out a weapon borrowed from her mother's own arsenal. "Don't you want to visit me?"

     Mom gave her a grudging smile, then a quick hug. Jasmine noticed that Mom smelled just like Gary, and that she seemed to have shrunk a few more inches since the last time they'd hugged.

     "Of course we do, honey," Mom said. "We appreciate the tickets ever so much. It's a very thoughtful Mother's Day present, even if it is two days late. But the flights were too long, and changing planes in Denver was a nightmare. And we wish you'd given us more notice."

     Jasmine linked arms with Mom, then held Gary's elbow in her free hand and began guiding them to the baggage claim area. "I'm sorry about all that," she said. "But Mother's Day snuck up on me. And these were the only bargain tickets available."

     It was a lie. The tickets had been outrageous, but Jasmine's hope was that Mom would hear the word "bargain" and inquire no further. Mom understood bargains. But she might not understand that there was a Sicko out there who was going to cut off her fingers and toes if she stayed in Spokane.

     "Oh," Mom said. "Well, I can see that."

     Mom and Gary had just two pieces of luggage. The first was a garment bag that Jasmine snagged from the carousel with no trouble, but the second was a huge suitcase. It was a brown faux-leather behemoth that nearly dragged Jasmine away when she tried to pull it from the carousel. Mom had apparently packed it with sacks of wet flour. Gary shuffled forward, reaching out to lend a hand, but Jasmine managed to heave the suitcase off the carousel and onto the floor before he could come close enough to hurt himself. She could just see him tumbling onto the metal belt and chugging off around the bend while Mom went apoplectic.

     "And what are we going to do now?" Mom asked. "How are we going to get these things to your car? And where is that -- that boyfriend of yours? He could at least have come to lend a hand."

     Jasmine winced. Mom said the word boyfriend as if it were a euphemism for pimp.

     "I told you when I called, Mom," Jasmine said. "He had to be in court today. They can't postpone criminal cases so the defense counsel can make airport runs. We'll rent a cart for the bags."

     "Waste of money," Mom muttered. "Shouldn't be defending criminals anyway. Should be prosecuting them."

     Jasmine thought that was a bit hypocritical, considering who Mom's other child had been. But she said nothing.

     Gary tapped Jasmine on the shoulder. When she looked at him, he gave her his grimace-smile and held out a hand. There were four quarters in his palm.

     Jasmine smiled back. Gary hadn't talked much before his stroke, either, so except for his frailty he seemed about the same as always. He was a good man. She wished that Mom had found him before Daddy and Jimmy had turned her into the bitter pill she was now.

     If that had happened, though, then Jasmine might never have existed. But that would have been a small price to pay, as far as the world was concerned. Because then Jimmy would never have existed either.

     "Thanks, Gary," she said, scooping the quarters from his hand. She glanced around. The baggage carousel was still surrounded by the passengers from Mom and Gary's plane, and a big security guard was keeping an eye on things. It was probably as safe here as it was at her house. "You two wait here, and I'll go grab a cart."

     Mom muttered something negative, but Gary nodded. So Jasmine stepped away from the carousel, spotted a rental-cart rack a dozen yards away, and hurried over to it.

     One of Gary's quarters jammed in the coin box, so she had to pound on the box and yank the cart back and forth for a minute. But at last the quarter dropped, the cart came free, and she turned to head back to the carousel.

     As she turned, she saw Mom dragging the suitcase into the middle of the concourse. Gary was shuffling after her with the garment bag draped over his outstretched arms like a dead body.

     And a dirty, long-haired man in a lime-green bathrobe was coming up behind them.

     Jasmine's heart seemed to freeze for an instant. Then a shriek leaped up from her chest, and she ran at the man in the bathrobe, shoving the luggage cart ahead of her.

     People scattered and cursed. But the man in the bathrobe didn't. Instead, he stepped to one side so that Gary was between him and Jasmine.

     For a moment, Jasmine thought about plowing right through Gary. But then she veered to one side and slid to a stop just beyond Mom, Gary, and the bathrobe man. She spun the cart around and aimed it at the bathrobe man again.

     "For the love of Morton!" the bathrobe man cried. His ratty hair bobbed, and his tangled beard waggled. His voice was like the sound of balloons being rubbed together. He raised his hands, and a sheaf of black-and-white pamphlets flapped in one of them. "I'm just handing out free literature. Don't break a Commandment for no good reason."

     His voice was wrong. But that didn't mean anything. He could have altered it for the phone calls.

     "Get lost, Sicko," Jasmine said. Her voice was fierce. "Get lost and leave us alone. Jimmy's gone. There's nothing left of him. Not a speck, not an ash. So get lost."

     The bathrobe man backed away. "Okay, Miss," he said. "I just wanted to give you some information, that's all."

     He took a pamphlet from his sheaf and let it fall. It fluttered away from him and landed on the luggage cart.

     "And another thing, Miss," the bathrobe man said. "You ain't got a lot of room to be calling other folks 'Sicko.'" He turned and trotted off down the concourse, his shower slippers flapping on the buffed tile, his pipe-cleaner legs flashing under the hem of his robe.

     Jasmine watched him until he vanished down the broad hallway that led to the gates. Then she turned her attention back to Mom and Gary.

     Mom had picked up the pamphlet from the cart. She was staring at it and trembling.

     "These people," she said. Her voice quavered. "These people and their horrible lies. James didn't say any of these things. I know he didn't."

     Gary teetered beside her, looking off down the concourse as if he might be thinking about trying to chase down the bathrobe man for upsetting his wife.

     Jasmine reached toward her mother. "Give it to me, Mom."

     "He was a good boy," Mom said. She looked up at Jasmine, and her eyes were wild with maternal fury. "He didn't do any of the things they say. He was innocent."

     Jasmine was annoyed. Mom was constantly making backhanded remarks about her daughter's sinful and wasted life, but Jimmy -- no, Jimmy was her poor abused baby boy.

     And the worst part of it, the part that rankled most, was that Jasmine agreed with her.

     "Mom," Jasmine said. "Please. May I have that?"

     Mom dropped the pamphlet and turned away. Jasmine caught the pamphlet before it hit the floor, and she was about to look at it when someone cleared his throat behind her. She turned around and saw the security guard glaring down at her.

     "There seemed to be a commotion here," he said. "Can I be of assistance?" His tone made it clear that by "assistance," he meant chucking them out onto the street.

     "No, thank you," Jasmine said. "We were just leaving." She opened her purse and stuffed the pamphlet inside, then grasped the handle of the suitcase and tried to heave it onto the luggage cart. But her arms and legs were shaking. She wanted to sit down and put her head between her knees before she passed out.

     The security guard reached around her, brushed her hands away from the suitcase, and then tossed it onto the cart as if it were a box of Kleenex.

     "Thanks," Jasmine said.

     "No problem," the guard said. He was grim. "There's a cart rack out by the parking lot. You can return it there so you don't have to come back in."

     That was all right with Jasmine. She didn't want to run into the bathrobe man again.

     Mom gave the guard a disdainful glance. "I wish this man had been as helpful when he was rolling my husband at a hundred miles per hour."

     Jasmine took the garment bag from Gary and flopped it over the suitcase. "Mom, it's not the same man," she whispered as she began pushing the cart toward the automatic doors.

     Mom and Gary came along with her, but Mom looked back at the guard.

     "Well, he's a Negro and he has a uniform," she said. "How do you expect me to tell the difference?"

     "I don't expect anything, Mom," Jasmine said, squinting as they stepped out into the May sunshine.

     "It was a Negro who did the crimes they accused your brother of doing," Mom said. "Five different witnesses said so. But by then it was too late."

     That was all Jasmine could stand. Mom had been in Wichita less than twenty minutes, and it was already too much. Maybe it would have been better to leave her in Spokane for the Sicko to find.

     Jasmine stopped the cart in the middle of the street between the terminal and the parking lot. Three cars squealed to a halt and honked, but Jasmine ignored them.

     "Those 'witnesses' were all in the Texas Klan!" Jasmine shouted. "And two of them said that Jimmy was black. They were liars, Mom."

     Mom had stopped in the middle of the street too. She looked at Jasmine and blinked against the sun.

     "He was your brother," Mom said in a low voice. "And tomorrow would have been his birthday."

     Jasmine closed her eyes, but opened them when another horn blared. She saw that Gary had gone on across and was now waiting for them in the parking lot.

     "You're right," Jasmine said, pushing the cart toward Gary. "He was my brother."

     They joined Gary, and Jasmine led the way to her Pontiac. The luggage cart rattled. Jasmine still felt shaky, and her chest ached.

     "He was my brother," she repeated. "And he would have been thirty-nine tomorrow."

     She spoke in her normal voice. But Mom and Gary were behind her, and she knew they couldn't hear her over the rattle of the cart.

     "But that doesn't mean he didn't kill them," she said.

     She remembered how unafraid and unashamed Jimmy had looked behind the thick glass in Huntsville.

     "That doesn't mean he didn't kill them all."

                                         #

     Jasmine sat in the reading chair in her bedroom, waiting for Mom to get off the cordless extension in the kitchen so she could call Mack. Mom was talking to Mrs. Boyle, the only friend she still kept up with from the old days in Wantoda. Mom and Mrs. Boyle talked on the phone at least twice a month, and Mom always seemed surprised that Jasmine didn't also keep in touch with Mrs. Boyle or her children -- especially now that Jasmine was only thirty-five miles from Wantoda.

     But Jasmine barely remembered the Boyles. And what little she did remember indicated that they had been bullies and brats. Especially the boy. Not that he had been much trouble after Jimmy had gotten through with him.

     Mom was already making noises about paying Mrs. Boyle a visit. But Jasmine would put that off as long as she could. She didn't want to go near Wantoda unless she was on her way somewhere else. Wantoda was a place where boys fought, dogs died, and men wielded fiberglass switches. Or guns.

     And maybe every place was like that. But she hadn't had to grow up every place.

     The pamphlet from the airport was on her lap. It was made from two sheets of photocopy paper folded together and stapled at the crease. On the first page, in large type, were the words:

                          The One True Gospel of

                                   MORTON

                                  Son of Stan

                        as revealed to his prophet

                                     James

                         (later cruelly martyred)

    in the wilderness of Palestine in the Republic of Texas

             in May of the Year of Our Previous Lord

                  Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Six

     Jasmine was pretty sure now that the bathrobe man hadn't been the Sicko. The odds were that he was just a Mortonite.

     She had heard of the First Church of Morton before today, of course. Jimmy had even mentioned Mortonism when she'd visited him in prison. But this was the first time that she'd seen one of them doing the Hare Krishna thing in an airport.

     It might be that they were making a special effort to proselytize this month. After all, tomorrow would mark the tenth anniversary of the martyrdom of their chief prophet.

     Jasmine hesitated, but knew she would turn to the second page.

     The words here were in smaller type:

     For lo, Morton, Son of Stan, having been born of the virgin-only-fourteen-times-removed Bernice in the city of Bethlehem in the state of Pennsylvania, didst appear to Blackburn the Righteous in the Wilderness of Palestine.  And Morton and Blackburn didst wrestle two falls out of three, after which Blackburn didst drink of the Gatorade of Life and eat of the Cracker Jacks of Redemption.  And yea verily Morton didst proclaim, Now shalt thou no longer be called by the name Blackburn the Righteous, but shalt forevermore be known as James the Prophet, lest I shalt knowest the reason why.

     The rest of this page, and the next, contained more of the same. From the Church's perspective, Jimmy had killed ("sacrificed") Morton at Morton's request when the "centurions" approached so that the world might be saved by his wacko blood. And as he'd died, Morton had charged Jimmy with the responsibility of spreading the Conditional Gospel -- which Jimmy had done until the State of Texas had stuck a needle in his arm. Jasmine suspected, however, that the .357 slug that had pierced Morton's heart had in fact been the result of something Morton had done to piss Jimmy off, and that Jimmy's spreading of the Gospel had been exaggerated.

     She turned to the center of the pamphlet, and there, in large type again, were the Church's "Ten Conditional Commandments" as supposedly set down by Morton and revealed through Jimmy:

I. Thou shalt have no other gods before Morton (unless a better one cometh along [but what are the odds of that?]).

II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them, unless they shalt incorporate something useful, such as alarm clocks in their bellies.

III. Thou shalt not take the name of thy Lord and Savior Morton in vain (but, again, what are the odds of that?).

IV. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it wholly, with a football game, picnic, or movie.

V. Honour thy father and thy mother, unless they beith abusive assholes.

VI. Thou shalt not kill, unless the guy deserveth it.

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery, unless thou just canst not helpeth thyself, and then useth an appropriate prophylactic device.

VIII. Thou shalt not steal, excepteth in an emergency.

IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour, but little white lies to spareth his feelings beith okay.

X. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's, and -- oh, just forgettith this one, for yea verily it beith impossible in the event that thy neighbor's wife beith a babe.

     Jasmine wasn't sure. Some of it sounded like Jimmy, but some of it didn't. The lax Commandment about adultery, for example, didn't seem like one that her brother would endorse. If the circumstantial evidence was to be believed, he had killed at least two of his victims for committing that particular sin.

     She was about to turn the page when the doorbell rang.

     "Jasmine!" Mom's voice called before the ringing faded away. "Someone's at the door!"

     Jasmine stood, tossed the Mortonite pamphlet onto her bed, and went into the hall.

     The bell rang again. "Jasmine Leigh!" Mom yelled at the top of her lungs. "Someone - is - at - the - door!"

     Jasmine paused at the kitchen and saw Mom and Gary sitting at the table. Mom had the cordless telephone pressed to her face.

     "I heard the bell, Mom," Jasmine said. "You don't have to shout."

     Mom looked hurt. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wasn't sure. You had your bedroom door closed. Although I don't know why. That boyfriend of yours isn't even here. But that might be him at the door, and I thought you'd want to know."

     Jasmine muttered "Thanks" and then went to the front door. It wouldn't be Mack. He was working late tonight.

     It occurred to her then that it might be the Sicko showing up at her home at last. Maybe he had decided not to drive to Spokane after all. She wondered whether she had been right in deciding not to buy a gun.

     But guns had been Jimmy's thing. And Daddy's. And the fact that she kept both of those men under the sink didn't mean that she wanted to emulate them.

     Besides, it wouldn't be the Sicko at the door. Sickos didn't ring doorbells.

     She looked through the peephole, and at first she didn't recognize the man standing under the porch light. He was stoop-shouldered, tired-eyed, and had creases in his face that cut down from either side of his nose to his jaw. He was wearing a blue necktie and a ratty brown sport coat, and his formerly white shirt looked as if he'd fished it out of his dirty laundry that morning.

     He held up a flat black wallet and flipped it open. There was a dented badge inside.

     Jasmine unlocked and opened the door, trying to push down a surge of panic.

     "Officer Holliman?" she said. Her throat was tight, and she had trouble getting the words out. "What's wrong?" All she could think of was that the Sicko had done something to Mack.

     Holliman looked at her with dull hound-dog eyes. "Lots of things are wrong," he said. His voice was a low monotone. "For one thing, my back hurts. And of course there's that thing in Lebanon. And call me 'Detective,' please. I haven't been 'Officer' for seventeen years. I know it's all the same to you, but it's a matter of respect. Makes up for still getting lousy pay after three decades of selfless service." He flipped his wallet closed and stuck it into a back pocket, just behind the holster clipped to his belt. "And you can wipe the worry off your face. Nobody's been shot. At least, nobody you know. But I've been trying to get you on the horn for the past hour and a half, and your phone's been busy. So I figured I'd drop by on my way home. You ever think of getting call waiting?"

     Jasmine was discombobulated. "I -- what? Then Mack's all right?"

     Holliman made a face that indicated he couldn't care less. "Far as I know. Mind if I come in?" He slapped himself on the cheek. "You got mosquitoes out here. You wouldn't think there'd be any, what with the dry spring. But there's been a rash of septic tank leaks in the area, so that might account for it."

     Jasmine didn't see any mosquitoes. But she stepped back and let him in.

     As Holliman came into the living room, Mom emerged from the kitchen with the cordless phone still pressed to her ear. She was talking into the mouthpiece as if nothing else were going on, but her eyes were fixed on Holliman.

     "I see you have company," Holliman said. "And I also see why I wasn't able to get you on the phone. But I'm glad you took my advice."

     Jasmine frowned. "What advice?"

Holliman jerked a thumb at Mom. "Bringing your mother here. So the perpetrator wouldn't be able to find her in Spokane."

     Jasmine didn't remember Holliman saying any such thing. Bringing Mom and Gary here had been her idea. But maybe he had said something to Mack.

     Holliman was staring at Mom now. "Excuse me, ma'am," he said, "but who are you talking to?"

     Mom stared back and put her hand over the mouthpiece. "I'm sure that's none of your business. I don't even know you."

     Holliman's eyes narrowed, and Jasmine wished she hadn't let him in.

     "I'm the police detective assigned to investigate the threats your daughter has been receiving," Holliman said. "In other words, I'm the guy who's supposed to look after you people even though you're next-of-kin to a cop-killing sociopath. Who are you talking to?"

     Mom blanched. "I'll call you tomorrow, Nadine," she said, and turned off the phone.

     "Nadine who?" Holliman asked.

     A strange heat began building up behind Jasmine's eyes. She had the feeling that if Holliman didn't leave in the next few seconds, it might flare out and burn him to a crisp. He didn't have any right to be telling Mom about the Sicko's threats, or to be grilling her like this.

     Jasmine stepped behind Holliman and opened the front door again. "I think you should leave," she said.

     Holliman looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, Ms. B.," he said. "It's my job to investigate. I came by to let you know that you ought to keep your phone line free in case we need to call you, and also to ask you a few questions because of a possible lead. So as long as I'm asking questions, I don't think 'Nadine who?' is unreasonable."

     Jasmine glared. "What kind of lead?"

     "Jasmine," Mom said. Her voice was small. "What's he talking about? What kind of threats? Who's been making them?"

     Holliman turned back toward Mom. "That's what I'm trying to find out, ma'am. Your daughter's been receiving telephone calls from someone who wants to possess the ashes of your deceased psycho-killer son. He says the urn buried in the Wantoda cemetery isn't the real McCoy. Or rather, wasn't, since he already dug it up."

     Jasmine slammed the door, and the house shuddered. Mom dropped the phone, but Holliman didn't even twitch.

     "If you have to speak with me," Jasmine said, "let's go into another room."

     Mom went to the couch and sat down. "It's too late for that now, dear," she said. Her voice trembled, but her tone was no-nonsense. "I want to hear what the officer has to say."

     "Detective," Holliman said.

     "As you wish," Mom said. Her voice seemed to be getting stronger. "What's this about James' grave being desecrated?"

     Jasmine brushed past Holliman and sat beside her mother. "Mom," she said, taking her hand, "Jimmy's grave has been vandalized five times since he died. The third time, somebody actually tried to dig him up, so I -- I had the urn removed and replaced with a fake. I thought that would give the grave robbers something to steal, and then they wouldn't come back. I did the same for Daddy, because they'd done things to his grave too. God knows why."

     Mom looked at her, incredulous. "Why didn't you just take the urns and stones away, and give the plots to someone else? Then there wouldn't be anything to desecrate."

     Jasmine was nonplussed. There was no bitterness or sarcasm in Mom's voice. She was serious.

     "Well," Jasmine said after a moment, "because I thought you'd be upset. You visit the cemetery every year. So I thought I should keep the graves nice . . . for you."

     Mom closed her eyes and shook her head. Then she put her arms around Jasmine and hugged her.

     "Oh, honey," Mom said. "Graves and ashes don't matter to me. The only thing left of Jimmy that matters is what's in our hearts and memories. And as for your father, well, the only reason I've never desecrated his grave myself is because I thought it might upset you."

     Jasmine disengaged herself from the hug. She didn't feel comfortable with a display of affection while Holliman was peering at them.

     "So why have you kept visiting them?" Jasmine asked.

     Mom rolled her eyes. "I haven't. Not really. But Gary and I have gone to visit Nadine Boyle a few times, and since you're in Wichita now we've come to visit you -- and it would seem wrong not to stop by the cemetery. As long as we're here."

     Jasmine felt stupid. All these years she had donated money to the Wantoda Nazarene church, which maintained the cemetery, to ensure that they would keep Dad's and Jimmy's empty graves presentable. And now it turned out that Mom hadn't cared one way or the other.

     Holliman stepped in front of the coffee table. The furrows in his forehead had deepened. "Nadine Boyle wouldn't be the wife of the guy used to be the constable over there, would she? Fellow named Ted?"

     "His name is Todd," Mom said icily. "He's her son. And he's still the police chief."

     Holliman gave a derisive sniff. "Yeah, for a force of one. Unless he's hired himself a Barney Fife. Haven't talked to him in about eleven years, so I wouldn't know."

     Holliman's voice sounded odd, and Jasmine didn't like it. "Why would you have talked to him at all?" she asked.

     Holliman put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. "Police business. After your brother was caught, we figured he might be responsible for some of our unsolved homicides here in Wichita. So I naturally called the lawman in the suspect's hometown for information. Guy said he knew the suspect when they were kids, and that the suspect was one foamy-mouthed puppy even then. But maybe it was genetic, on the father's side. No reason to blame yourselves for the family environment, which I'm sure was as wholesome as could be. Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and blame the boy's testosterone."

     "You're very rude, officer," Mom said.

     "Only to the blood relations of cop killers," Holliman said. "I'm funny that way. And it's Detective."

     Jasmine stood. She wanted to get Holliman out of there. "You said you had a lead on the person who's been harassing me."

     Holliman took his right hand from his pocket and scratched his chin in what Jasmine thought must be a gesture copied from some TV or movie cop.

     "Yeah, maybe," he said. "What I'm wondering is, have you ever had contact with any known Satanists? Any pagans, witches, Wiccans, Druids, Scientologists, yahoos like that? See, we got a tip that some local coven worships your brother, or possibly Jeffrey Dahmer. Our informant wasn't sure which. But your caller's expressed desire to eat your brother's remains like they were Grape Nuts seems to tie in with that sort of thing."

     Mom made a strangled noise. "Eat -- Oh, dear God."

     Jasmine went past Holliman and opened the front door again. "We've never had contact with people like that," she said, struggling to keep her voice even. "The closest was a Mortonite who approached us at the airport this afternoon."

     Holliman shook his head, sighed, and started toward the open door. "Nah, your perpetrator isn't a Mortonite. Those guys only eat Cracker Jacks." He stepped past Jasmine, but paused halfway out the door and looked into her eyes without blinking. "You want some advice, Ms. B.? Off the record?"

     Jasmine didn't blink either. "There's a record?"

     "Sure," Holliman said. "I write up everything we talk about. Part of my job. Except this advice, if you want to hear it. I would, if I were you."

     "No shit," Jasmine said, lowering her voice so Mom wouldn't hear.

     "No shit," Holliman said without lowering his voice at all. "And my advice is: Give this guy what he wants. After all, what do you lose? Sane people like you and me understand that ashes are nothing but dust. But this sub-genius perpetrator wants them anyway. And I think he'll leave you alone if he gets them."

     Jasmine felt her lip curling. "I have a better idea. Let's arrange a transfer with fake ashes, and when he shows up for them, you can do your job and grab him."

     Holliman looked disgusted. "This isn't a kidnapping case, Ms. B. This is just some pissant necrophagiac jabbering over the phone. There hasn't even been any violence up to this point -- and I don't think there will be, if you give him the ashes. And I mean the real ashes, not some barbecue-grill substitute. Just let him have 'em, and be done with it."

     Jasmine started to close the door even though Holliman's foot was still inside. "That's a perverted suggestion, Officer Holliman, and I wouldn't take it even if I could. But as I've told you before, I scattered both Jimmy and my father in the Whitewater River after I had them disinterred."

     Holliman smiled. It was repulsive.

     "Yeah, well, I ran into your boyfriend at the courthouse the other day," he said, "and Mister Legal Eagle let it slip that you keep the ashes here in your house somewhere. Don't be too mad at him, though. He tried to cover by saying he thought you just had the empty urns. But the boy's a lawyer, Ms. B. And you know how you can tell when a lawyer is lying?"

     "No," Jasmine said, looking down at her feet. Holliman's foot was between them. "How?"

     "His lips are moving," Holliman said. "But I'll give him this: The boy knows enough to call me Detective." He moved his foot away. "You consider my suggestion, now. Off the record, I truly do think it's the best solution to your situation."

     Jasmine listened to him walk to the street, get into his car, and drive away. Then she closed the door and pressed her forehead against it.

     Mom came up beside her.

     "You've kept some bad secrets from me, haven't you?" Mom said.

     Jasmine stayed against the door. "Whenever possible."

     Mom gave her another hug.

     "Thank you," Mom said. "That's really the way I prefer it."

                                         #

     Jasmine slumped on the couch with all of the lights off except the television. She was watching David Letterman mug his way through the Top Ten list. It reminded her of the Mortonite pamphlet's Ten Conditional Commandments. Neither one struck her as funny.

     Mom and Gary had retired to the spare bedroom an hour ago, and then Jasmine had called Mack to tell him about Holliman's visit. She hadn't mentioned his slip about the ashes. There didn't seem to be any point.

     But she had told him about Holliman's suggestion that she just give Jimmy up, and Mack's response had made sleep unlikely for tonight.

     "I can see where he might say that," Mack had said. "Because I'm beginning to think the Sicko might be a cop."

     That hadn't occurred to Jasmine before Mack said it. But it made sense. The Sicko claimed that he and Jimmy had been enemies -- and cops certainly qualified in that category.

     She glanced over her shoulder and saw the little amber lights glowing on the security-system console beside the front door. If anyone tried to break in, the system would alert the security company, and the security company would alert the police. But what if the police were the ones breaking in?

     Mom was right. The ashes weren't Jimmy. Wouldn't it be worth it to give them up if that would give her a normal life again?

     Except that Jasmine's life had never been normal. Her father had been a cancer-ridden misanthrope, and her brother had been a multiple-murderer.

     Now Mack said he wanted to move in with her. But as long as those other two men were under the sink, she couldn't let him do that. It would be too weird. Even if ashes were only ashes, they were family.

     As she thought about it further, she decided that she might be able to give up Daddy. If she had to.

     But not Jimmy.

     At first that struck her as odd, because she had spent a lot more time with Daddy than she ever had with Jimmy. She had even nursed Daddy through his final illness. But from the year she'd turned twelve to the year she'd turned twenty-two, she hadn't even laid eyes on Jimmy. He'd left home on his seventeenth birthday after killing his first man -- Officer Johnston, the city cop of Wantoda.

     Still, Jimmy was her brother. And that made him closer kin than Daddy. Jasmine had been only one chromosome away from turning out just like him.

     The glowing face of the VCR atop the television told her that it was a few minutes before midnight. A few minutes before Jimmy's thirty-ninth birthday. A few minutes before the tenth anniversary of his execution.

     She watched the dots between the numbers blink, watched the seconds count off. She thought about leaping up and yelling "Happy Birthday!" or "Good Riddance!" at the stroke of midnight. She thought about getting the steel urn out from under the sink and fitting it with a paper-cone party hat made from leftover Sunday funnies.

     Then something creaked behind her, and she jumped up from the couch and spun around, grabbing the remote control from the coffee table. But as she cocked her arm to throw it, she saw that the creaking sound had come from Gary. He was at the mouth of the hallway, wearing an oversized white robe and leaning on an aluminum cane. The glow from the television flickered over him like reflected lightning.

     Gary stopped where he was, gave her his crooked smile, and raised his hands in mock surrender. The cane swung from his right hand like a pendulum.

     Jasmine replaced the remote control on the coffee table and let out her breath. "Sorry," she said. "I'm a basket case." She gestured at the couch. "Want to watch TV?"

     Gary nodded, then grasped his cane at both ends and pushed. It collapsed into a foot-long tube, and Gary dropped it into one of the robe's big pockets. He walked the rest of the way to the couch on his own.

     Jasmine grasped his arm and helped him sit down. "Couldn't sleep, huh?" she asked over the roar of laughter on the television.

     Gary shook his head. Or maybe it was a spasm. Jasmine wasn't sure. Gary was looking at Letterman, and he made a noise that was almost like a chuckle.

     "Nice cane," Jasmine said. "I've never seen one like it."

     Without looking away from the TV, Gary pointed at his own chest.

     At once, Jasmine knew what he meant. "Oh, you made it yourself?" she asked, and then was afraid that she'd sounded too surprised. Gary had spent most of his life maintaining the machinery at a salmon cannery, and had sometimes fabricated replacement parts himself. The cane would have been easy for him. Except that she couldn't imagine how he could have done it in his current condition.

     Gary waved his hand back over his shoulder.

     It took Jasmine longer this time. "You mean you did it before the stroke?"

     Gary touched the tip of his nose. Bingo. He looked away from the TV then and, with obvious effort, gave Jasmine a wink. It told her that he had made the cane because he had guessed he might need it soon.

     Jasmine had the sudden thought that she had just had a more meaningful conversation with Gary than she had ever had with her real father. And that included the years that she had spent taking care of Daddy while he was dying.

     She wanted more. "Uh, Gary, I know you're watching the show. But would it be okay if I talk to you?"

     Gary leaned forward and fumbled with the remote control on the coffee table until the TV volume went down to a mutter. Then he leaned back again and looked at Jasmine with a lopsided, quizzical expression.

     "I guess you heard the whole thing with the police officer," Jasmine said.

     Gary rolled his eyes and thumped his chest.

     Jasmine managed a small laugh. "Right, sorry. Detective." She rubbed her neck. "That guy hates me just because I'm Jimmy Blackburn's sister. Is it my fault that I'm the sibling of a notorious murderer and prophet?"

     Gary shook his head.

     "Of course not," Jasmine said. "But that doesn't matter. The sins of the brother are visited upon the sister." She slumped again. "I wonder if John Dillinger or Jesus had little sisters. I'll bet those girls got a raw deal too."

     Gary opened his mouth, and Jasmine moved closer, anticipating a whisper that would be difficult to hear. But there was only a rasp of breath -- and then the television winked off with a crackle of static, and the room was dark.

     Jasmine was startled for a moment, then waited another moment to see if the power would come right back on. It didn't. Even the lights outside seemed to be off. The window shades were closed, but there still should have been a glow from the nearest streetlamps. And there wasn't.

     She turned around to see if the security-system console's lights were still functioning.

     They weren't. There was supposed to be a battery back-up. But the console was dead.

     "Gary, we might be in trouble," she said, reaching out for him.

     He wasn't there. She could feel the warmth on the couch where he had been. But now he was gone. She hadn't heard him, but he must have stumbled back down the hall to be with Mom.

     At that thought, Jasmine felt as if an ice pick had been driven into her spine. She had fallen for the Sicko's bullshit about going to Spokane, and so had brought Mom and Gary right where he had wanted her to bring them.

     The cops wouldn't help. The Sicko was one of them. That was why the security system was off.

     Jimmy had been right. He had been right about cops and state troopers and everyone in authority. They were the enemy, and they had hated him for knowing it. So now they wanted what was left of him for themselves. They wanted the power that still burned in his ashes.

     Jasmine heard glass shatter and knew that it was the window in the guest bedroom.

     There was the beginning of a shriek. And then nothing.

     Jasmine lurched up from the couch, banged her shins on the coffee table, and then dropped to the floor so she could crawl across the living room and down the dark hallway to the guest room. The Sicko and his policemen friends might not think to shoot low. Unless they had some of those night-vision goggles. And of course they would. They had everything. They were cops. They had guns and goggles and Mom and Gary and they wanted Jimmy's ashes and she didn't know why in God's name she couldn't just let them have what they wanted.

     But she couldn't.

     She wished Jimmy would come back and kill them all for her.

     She ran into a wall and stopped there on her hands and knees, panting even as she tried not to breathe. This wasn't going to work. She didn't have a weapon. And she wasn't Jimmy. She needed help.

     But the phone would be dead. She was sure of it. So she couldn't call Mack. And what could Mack do, anyway? Alert the police?

     Jasmine stayed on her hands and knees, quaking and sweating, and tried to listen. She couldn't hear Mom. Couldn't hear the creak of Gary's cane. Couldn't hear anything.

     She was in darkness, in silence. She was alone.

     "Jimmy," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut tight. "You jerk. Where are you when I need you?"

     He had never been around. He had turned seventeen, killed a cop, and took off. Jasmine had been left to endure being the daughter of a hateful father and bitter mother. And the sister of a homicidal maniac.

     In high school, the only boys who had wanted to date her had been the ones who liked bragging that they had gotten some from a killer's sister. The others had all been afraid that Jimmy might come back someday.

     And so he had. But not until years later, when Daddy was dying and Jasmine was stuck with taking care of him. And Jimmy had tried to fuck that up, too.

     So the hell with him. And the hell with his ashes, too. Selfish little bastard. Why shouldn't she give him up? Hadn't he done the same to her?

     A red blaze lit up her eyelids, so she opened them and found herself a few feet from the guest bedroom. The door was open, and hot electric light stabbed out and fell as a slanted knife-edge at her fingertips.

     Jasmine managed to hold her breath and listen. There was still no sound. But she felt a puff of air against her face.

     "Mom!" she yelled, and scrambled into the room. She hoped that the Sicko was still there so she could rip open his face with her teeth and fingernails.

     But the Sicko wasn't there. Neither was Gary, and neither was Mom. The bedsheets sparkled with glass from the window. The window was open, and the breeze blew in and swelled the curtains.

     Jasmine stood and went to the bed. She clambered across to the window and stared out at her small front yard and the street. She opened her mouth to shout again, then closed it. Shouting would do no good.

     She got off the bed and stood in the center of the room. She had bits of glass stuck in the heels of her hands and in the knees of her jeans. She picked the bits from her hands and watched the blood well up. She imagined the strands of DNA tied up in helical tangles, floating there, waiting. Waiting for her to call on the part of her that was Jimmy.

     If she could figure out how. And she had to. Jimmy was her only option now. Too bad he was dead.

     When the telephone rang, she didn't even jump.

     Instead, she walked to her bedroom, flicking on lights as she went. She didn't hurry. Jimmy wouldn't hurry. She even let the phone ring beyond the point where her answering machine would have picked up. But it didn't pick up this time, because it had to be reset after a power outage. So she let the phone ring a few more times as she stood and stared at it.

     When she finally brought the receiver to her ear, she didn't flinch at the sound of the Sicko's voice. He was trying to sound terrifying, but he was only trite. That was how Jimmy would think of him.

     "Little Sis," the Sicko whispered. "I have your mommy. I have her old man. And I do mean old man. I'm concerned that I won't be able to cut on him for more than fifteen seconds before he croaks. So I'll probably begin with Mommy."

     "You haven't already?" Jasmine asked. She was calm. Jimmy would be calm.

     "Haven't had time. Got them trussed up like rodeo calves, though. Can't be too comfortable for old folks. But pretty soon we'll see what's what. Of course, I'd advise against your calling the police."

     As if he'd had to tell her. "I'm not calling the police."

     "Good deal," the Sicko said. "Because if I hear sirens, I'm going to take a tire tool and shove it through the womb that gave birth to Jimmy Blackburn. I might anyway. Do the world a favor."

     Jasmine tried to think of how Jimmy would respond to that. "If you do," she said, "I'll never give you what you want. And I do have it."

     The Sicko hissed, but Jasmine knew that to Jimmy it would sound like a cricket fart. So that was how she let it sound to her, too.

     "I know you do," the Sicko said. "And I know you'll give it to me now."

     "Yes." Jasmine didn't know whether it was a lie or not. "If no harm comes to my mother or stepfather."

     "That sounded like attitude. You'd better not be giving me any attitude, Sis. My tire tool and I would frown on that. I got me a baseball bat too, autographed by two Wichita Wranglers."

     Jasmine kept thinking of Jimmy. She could picture his face behind the glass in Huntsville. "I'm not giving you any attitude. I'm just resigned. I have to do what you want."

     The Sicko chuckled. To Jimmy, he would sound like a dying chicken. "That's right. And I must say, it was easy. I wasn't sure you'd actually bring your mommy to Wichita."

     Jasmine studied the beads of blood on her hands again. Some of them had smeared. "I didn't have much choice. You really would have gone to Spokane if I hadn't. And then you would have hurt her for certain."

     There was a brief silence on the line.

     "You've got a point," the Sicko said then. "But all's well that ends. And the end will take place about two hours from now. That should give you time to retrieve what's necessary from wherever it's hidden, and then to make a short drive. I'll expect you at the Wantoda cemetery at 2:00 A.M. Alone. You'll wait for me at your brother's false grave. But park your car several blocks away and walk to the graveyard. No weapons and no flashlight. The moon's at first quarter, and that'll be enough." He paused. "Be sure to bring his ashes, now. And they'd better be real this time."

     "How can I prove they are?" Jasmine asked.

     "Don't worry. I'll recognize the Blackburn smell."

     Jasmine thought about that. "If you say so."

     "I say so. 2:00 A.M., big brother's grave. Any deviations -- such as if you bring your boyfriend, or a steak knife -- and that cemetery location will be real convenient. 'Bye now."

     The receiver clicked. Jasmine waited a moment to be sure the Sicko's voice didn't return, and then she replaced the receiver in its cradle.

     She went out to the kitchen and looked at the clock on the microwave oven. It was blinking 12:00. So she looked at her watch. It was 12:11. It was Wednesday, May 14, 1997. Jimmy's birthday.

     Jimmy's deathday.

     It was time to dispose of his earthly remains.

     Jasmine figured that she had more than an hour before she would have to leave. Wantoda was only a thirty-five-minute drive away, and there was no point in showing up early. The Sicko would make her wait for him until 2:00. Leaving now wouldn't help Mom and Gary any sooner.

     She brought out the urns from under the sink and held Jimmy's close to her chest with its smooth steel lid tucked under her chin. The metal was warm, as it always was.

     "What would you do with an hour, big brother?" she asked.

     An hour to kill.

     And at that thought, Jasmine smiled.

     She hadn't heard Jimmy's voice. It wasn't anything like that. She wasn't losing her mind. Despite the knot in her belly that kept tightening at the thought of what the Sicko might be doing to Mom and Gary, she was sane and rational.

     No, Jimmy didn't speak. But Mom had been right: He was still in Jasmine's heart and memory. He lived in her blood and brain.

     And so he had told her what to do. It was the same thing he had told her a long time ago.

     Jasmine turned on the oven.

                                          #

     She left at 1:19 A.M. and drove fast, heading east out of Wichita on Kansas 254. Two Tupperware bowls, one white and one blue, were warm against her thigh. They were still warm twenty-eight minutes later when she slowed down to enter the dark little town of Wantoda.

     "Home," she said, and then parked in the unlit gravel lot behind Nimper's IGA on Main Street.

     The cemetery was eight blocks away, on the north side of town. Jasmine had a few extra minutes, so she opened the white Tupperware bowl and selected another cookie. It was her sixth. An even half dozen ought to be about right. She made this one last a full four minutes. It added to the warmth in her belly. The knot there had become a cluster of hot coals.

     And then it was ten minutes to 2:00. She picked up the blue bowl, got out of the car, and started walking.

     Wantoda was asleep. Jasmine's footsteps were the only things breaking the silence of the tree-canopied streets, and that made her feel as if she owned the place.

     It was the way Jimmy must have felt.

     The cemetery gate was locked, but the stone wall was low enough for Jasmine to sit on it and swing her legs over to the other side. She hopped down onto soft earth and set out for the northern edge of the cemetery.

     The weak moonlight didn't cast shadows, and the headstones were vague gray shapes. The cemetery was old, and the trees were tall and massive. Jasmine had never come in here as a child, and she hadn't visited too often as an adult. But even so, she knew her way around the place. Daddy's and Jimmy's graves had to be checked on twice a year. Otherwise, the groundskeeper would never bother to clean up the vandalism.

     Jimmy's grave was next to the north fence, which was only barbed wire. This was the boondock area of the cemetery, where barbed wire was the only respect you got. Jasmine guessed that Daddy might appreciate that. His grave was right beside Jimmy's. He wasn't in it, but having his name carved on a piece of rock meant that something of him was here.

     No grass grew on either grave. The dirt had been dug up enough that it had given up on supporting life. The headstone for Jimmy's grave was leaning, but Jasmine tried pushing it and found that it wasn't going to fall. So she placed the Tupperware bowl on the barren soil and then sat on the stone to wait. A cool breeze blew through just then, and a huge elm beside the graves rustled and moaned.

     A dirt road lay beyond the fence, and beyond that were low hills of scrub pasture. Jasmine could barely make out their outlines, but she pretended that she could see past them to the place where she and Jimmy had grown up. The house was still there, three miles north of where she sat. She had sold it after Daddy's death, and she and Mom had split the money. She had driven by it just once since then, and had found that the guy who'd bought it had turned the place into a hog farm. It had smelled terrible.

     That had upset her. The old homestead, as Jimmy had called it, had in many ways been an awful place to grow up. But at least it had smelled good. There had been trees and alfalfa and places to hide and think. It had just been the constant threat of rage and violence that had made things difficult sometimes.

     It had only been as Jimmy's execution had drawn near that Jasmine had realized it hadn't all been his fault.

     She wished she had paid more attention at the time. She wished she hadn't hated him so much.

     Still, he shouldn't have killed all those people. He really shouldn't have. Then again, based on everything Jasmine had ever heard about any of his victims, none of their deaths had been any great loss to the world.

     Except perhaps for Morton. And Morton had wanted to die. Otherwise, his followers could never have been saved. His death, then, had been a sacrifice on both his part and on Jimmy's. Because Jimmy might have escaped his own death if he hadn't granted death to Morton.

     She wondered if Mortonism allowed women into the priesthood.

     "Little Sis," a voice said.

     Jasmine flinched, but didn't gasp or yelp. The voice came from right where she was looking, on the other side of the barbed-wire fence. So at least the Sicko hadn't crept up behind her as she had expected. And although he sounded hoarse, he hadn't whispered or hissed. That was something.

     Not enough, though.

     "Right here, Detective," she said.

     The Sicko rose from the ditch, a gray specter against the black hills, and slid between the strands of barbed wire. It was only as he stepped close that Jasmine could make out the glint of the badge on his shirt, the bulk of the gun on his hip. He seemed to be a big man.

     "You can just call me Officer," he said.

     The hoarse voice did not belong to Holliman. And as the Sicko leaned down toward Jasmine, she could see that his face didn't either.

     "Don't you know me?" the Sicko asked.

     Jasmine smelled his breath now. He'd been eating peanuts.

     The Sicko reached for his belt, and Jasmine tensed. But then he brought up a flashlight and turned it on under his chin so that it lit his face like someone telling a ghost story.

     "Ooooh," the Sicko said. "Scaaary. But you still don't know me, do you?"

     Jasmine studied his face. It was fleshy and unmemorable. Midwestern plain, like a clod of ruddy dirt. His hair was receding, and there was a pale stripe across his forehead indicating that he usually wore a hat. His eyes were small and ordinary.

     She didn't recognize him at all. But she knew who he was.

     "Todd Boyle," she said. "You're the Wantoda constable now."

     Boyle flicked off the flashlight and replaced it on his belt. "Going on thirteen years," he said. "And I'm kind of sorry you remembered me. Now I suppose I'll have to bury all three of you. But at least they water the grass in here. This spring's been awful dry, and the ground'd be like concrete otherwise."

     His tone was sarcastic. But Jasmine didn't know whether that meant he wasn't going to bury them, or just that he wasn't too upset about it.

     Jasmine stood up from the gravestone. "I had assumed," she said, "that you'd already buried Mom and Gary."

     Boyle stepped onto the grave and nudged the Tupperware bowl with his foot. "You assumed no such thing," he said. "If you had, you wouldn't have come. And you wouldn't have brought me what I want."

     "Maybe I haven't," Jasmine said. "You don't know what's in the bowl."

     Boyle took a breath and let it out with a whistling noise. "It smells of Blackburn," he said. "I recognize the stink."

     Jasmine's muscles quivered, but she didn't think she was afraid. Fear might be in there somewhere, but what she was mostly aware of was anger. And contempt.

     "If it stinks," she said, "then maybe you'd better not eat it. It might be too strong for you."

     Boyle squatted beside the bowl and put his hand on the butt of his pistol. "I don't have a choice," he said, looking down at the bowl. "I have to consume him. He humiliated me when we were kids, and that made me a failure as a man. My old man hated me because of it. Even coming back to be constable didn't help, because he wanted me to be in the FBI. But they wouldn't take me, and it killed him. And now my mother just thinks I'm a bully."

     "You are a bully," Jasmine said. She licked her lips and tasted sugar and sulfur. "You always were. I remember that much."

     Boyle looked up then, and a sliver of moonlight gleamed in his eyes. "You sure got a mouth on you for a skinny woman in your position," he said. "I could pull out my .357 right now and put a hole through you that'd make you flat disappear."

     Jasmine couldn't help smiling a little. She hoped Boyle couldn't see it. The moon was behind her, so her face ought to be hidden from him.

     "So why don't you?" she asked.

     Boyle looked back down at the Tupperware bowl. "Because you can't die until I'm sure you've brought me the stuff. I mean, it smells right, but that might be you. Maybe you stink just like him, and that's confusing me."

     "I guess there's only one way you're going to know," Jasmine said.

     Boyle reached for the bowl with his free hand, but Jasmine put her foot on the lid. Boyle glared up at her and unsnapped his holster.

     Jasmine glared back. "I want to see Mom and Gary first."

     Boyle stroked the butt of his pistol for a few seconds, then stood. "They're right here," he said. "Watching over us from above." He pointed upward.

     At first Jasmine thought that Boyle meant he had killed them. But then she was able to make out the self-satisfied expression on his face, and she knew that he wouldn't look so delighted with himself if he had merely done away with them. No, he wanted Jasmine to look up into the elm tree. He wanted her to see how clever he was.

     He wanted her to see how he had bested her brother.

     So she looked.

     All she saw for a moment were dark clumps of foliage. But then, twenty feet above, caught among the boughes, were the angular shapes of something else. The moonlight might have revealed them, but there were too many leaves and branches in the way. Jasmine saw only quick, pale flashes of hair, fabric, and flesh.

     "Here," Boyle said. "Lemme help."

     He unclipped the flashlight from his belt again, snapped it on, and aimed its beam at the shapes in the tree.

     The spot of light played over first one shape and then the other. And now Jasmine saw that the shapes were enormous kites, one red and one green, and that Mom and Gary, still in their nightclothes, were strapped to the cross-braces like Jesus being crucified. The kite's white tails snaked up and wrapped around their mouths.

     "Got a winch on my cruiser," Boyle said. "Hook that up to a block and tackle, and bang. You got yourself a kite-eating tree."

     Mom and Gary's eyes were open, and they stared down at Jasmine. For a moment she thought they were dead, but then she saw her mother blink and turn her head from the light. Then Gary blinked too. And they were both trembling.

     Something small and cold wriggled into Jasmine's chest, scuttled up into her skull, and began sucking blood from her brain.

     Her poor old mother up in the tree. Dear sweet Gary up in the tree. And God only knew what else Boyle had done to them. All because Jasmine had been stupid. It was her fault they were there. Her fault.

     Her knees crumbled, and she began to sink.

     But then the knot of coals in Jasmine's belly reached up with a hand of fire and strangled the cold thing that was trying to pull her down. And when the cold thing was dead, the fire boiled through her brain and muscles and skin -- and this time, she really did hear Jimmy's whisper.

     Fix things, he said.

     Fix things so that once they've done it . . .

     Jasmine stood up straight, looked at Todd Boyle, and gave him a broad grin.

     . . . they really wish they hadn't.

     "Jimmy strapped my doll to a kite and made you think it was your baby sister," Jasmine said. "He told me about it. But I wouldn't think you'd hold a grudge over it this long. We were only kids, Todd."

     Boyle sneered. "I guess you still think it's funny. But it wasn't. I was supposed to stay home with Tina, but she disappeared. And somebody left a note saying if I wanted her back, I'd better go to the water tower. So I did. And there was Jimmy Blackburn and his fucking kite. I could hear the baby crying when it flew away. But after I found it and saw that the baby was just a doll, I went home and got the shit beaten out of me because my old man thought I'd left Tina alone. She was back in her crib all covered in her own poop. Real funny. I did something brave and got screwed for it."

     Jasmine suppressed a laugh. "You were the farthest thing from brave. You picked on me and all the other little kids. You were a prick. And since you've just taken out your grudge on a couple of helpless old folks, it looks like you still are."

     Boyle's head jerked as if Jasmine had punched him. But then he brought the flashlight up under his chin again. "You've got it wrong," he said. "It's never been a grudge. It's been a learning experience. But I can't put it to use without surpassing my teacher."

     He switched off the flashlight, clipped it to his belt again, and then kept his eyes fixed on Jasmine as he crouched down and opened the Tupperware bowl.

     Jasmine didn't move. She concentrated on trying not to laugh. Jimmy would be patient. Jimmy would wait for his moment.

     Boyle reached into the bowl and brought out a chocolate-chip cookie. He held it up and stared at it.

     "We are not amused," he said.

     He stood and drew his pistol with his free hand. The moonlight shone from its barrel, and Jasmine could see that it was a Colt Python like the one Jimmy had used.

     Boyle pointed it up at the kites.

     "I thought you said you could smell him," Jasmine said as Boyle cocked the pistol.

     Boyle hesitated, then sniffed the cookie.

     "It's Blackburn, all right," he said, lowering the Python. He gave Jasmine a suspicious look. "In cookies?"

     Jasmine shrugged. "Why not? You said you wanted to eat him. And I think he would have preferred it this way. He loved chocolate-chip cookies."

     Boyle took another sniff. "I don't smell anything wrong -- but how do I know you didn't add rat poison or something?"

     "Because I wouldn't do that to him," Jasmine said. She reached for the cookie. "Here. I'll eat that one."

     Boyle pulled the cookie away and pointed the Python at Jasmine. "No. Just knowing that you would have taken a bite is good enough for me."

     He brought the cookie to his mouth.

     "Say goodbye, Little Sis," he said.

     Jasmine almost wished she could stop it.

     "Goodbye," she murmured.

     Boyle stuffed the cookie into his mouth, chewed once, and swallowed. He took a sharp breath and stood frozen for several long seconds.

     Then he gave a hungry growl, crouched, and began wolfing cookie after cookie. But