Blind Fall (5 page)

After about twenty yards, the trees broke, revealing a massive two-story, imitation log cabin at the crest of a grassy slope that ran down toward a rushing creek. The cabin had an expansive wraparound porch on the first floor and a massive stone chimney. There was a large garage in back and a manicured set of stone steps leading down to the creek. It was the kind of place that was designed to look rustic but probably had every modern amenity inside you could think of.

And the front door was open. The rain was coming down hard, the house was entirely dark, and the front door was standing open by several feet. He flicked on his Maglite, shined it on the front door as he approached. The place was being robbed surely. As he pulled his Sig from the back of his jeans with his right hand and switched the flashlight to his left one, he saw the scene play out. Mike was away. Robbers had broken in, not expecting to have their asses kicked by a former Recon Marine—a far better gift than the Spartan sword still sitting in his truck. He was elated suddenly, a level of adrenaline coursing through him that he hadn’t felt since combat. He stepped inside the front door.

The front room was almost dark except for the dying embers in the massive stone fireplace. He saw the back of a large, modern-looking sofa, glimpsed framed prints of wilderness scenes hanging on the walls. A set of carpeted stairs led to the second floor. The white carpet was thick under his feet. At first he thought the rain had soaked it. Then, he heard movement: a quick scrape on the carpet from the second floor. He would have kept his mouth shut and gone after the guy full bore, but his flashlight had given him away, so he said, “This is John Houck. I’m looking for Mike Bowers!”

John raised the flashlight. At the top of the stairs, the beam hit an open door, flashed across a doorknob. John almost passed it over before he noticed something on the knob. A dark V-shaped stain. Blood. Almost silently, he mounted the stairs, gun raised. When he reached the open door at the top, he lost all composure, left himself exposed to whoever might have been behind him when he saw what was waiting for him in the bedroom.

Mike Bowers had been tied to the metal bed frame by both arms, his legs splayed in front of him on the bloodstained sheets: a seated crucifixion. He was shirtless, and the gashes in his chest—several of them straight through the area over his heart—had spilled what looked like ink down his abdomen and onto his crotch and thighs. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, John saw that there were twice the number of stab wounds in Mike’s chest than he had first thought. He remained in a crouch in the doorway, listening to himself whisper a stream of curses with snippets of prayers jammed between them. Every frail border he had imposed between himself and his recent bloody past had been ripped away from him.

In an instant, he became convinced that what really tied the universe together was not the bright light and airy-fairy bullshit that spiritual people were always trying to sell. It was blood spilled in violence; it was split-second rage exacting eternal consequences, and it could happen just as easily in Owensville, California, as in the streets of Ramadi. The horror in front of him made perfect sense in a way he would spend the rest of his life trying to forget, as if Mike had been torn apart from the inside by the same horrors that lived within John, horrors that carved themselves into a different part of his brain every time he remembered them.

He was about to go to Mike and check his pulse when he heard floorboards creak. He raised the Sig on one of the dark, half-open doorways on the other side of the banister, felt every inch of skin on his body constrict, a full body reaction he hadn’t felt since Iraq. He was positive there was someone on the second floor with him, but then there came a shuffling sound from below, the first floor. A tall, slender shadow appeared at the foot of the stairs. John couldn’t make out its facial features, but the shadow saw him, went stock still.

“Don’t you fucking move,” John said.

For a split second it seemed like the guy would comply. Then he was out the front door of the house, long legs pumping, a flash of pajama bottoms before he sprinted off the front porch. The muzzle flare lit up the staircase, and John realized he had fired—a stupid move but he didn’t stop to beat himself up over it. He pursued the figure out the front door, glimpsed him running down the slope, paralleling the steps that led to the rushing creek, leaping through bushes. John followed the guy’s path, almost lost his footing in the mud, came to the bottom of the slope. The creek in front of him was rock-strewn, about eight feet wide, ripping against its banks from the force of the rainfall. He swept it with the Sig while he eyed the opposite bank, almost a forty-five-degree incline, densely packed with cottonwoods and untamed oaks but full of possible escape routes.

What looked like a man-made bridge of stepping-stones crossed the creek, but they weren’t stable. He took to them, eyes on the far shore, gun raised. He was almost halfway across when the water exploded all around him. A ghostly, soaking-wet figure rose out of the miniature rapids, leaping to its feet in what turned out to be only three feet of water. John realized too late that the guy had been lying flat on his back under the surface to conceal himself. The rock the guy held in both hands slammed into John’s right knee. The blow sent him into a half spiral. His back hit the water, and he felt the Sig slip from his hands. The pain had paralyzed him and the flow of the river carried him along, into a deepening channel. He felt the sand under his back fall away, and enough panic filled him to overcome the throb of white-hot pain in his right knee.

His head broke the surface and he stood up in waist-deep water, saw the guy clawing at branches and pumping his long legs as he made his way up the opposite bank. John gripped at rocks, pulled himself to the far bank, and hoisted himself out of the water on a low-hanging oak branch. He ignored the pain and summoned every muscle he had to pursue the guy. It worked. The rain must have muffled the sound of his footsteps, because he overtook the guy just as he was heading sideways along the slope. John seized the back of the man’s neck in one grip and slammed his forehead into the trunk of a cottonwood. Immediately the guy fell to his knees, a long, agonized groan issuing from him. There was enough of a tremor to it that John thought for a second he might have fractured the guy’s skull, fucked up the speech centers in his brain. But he didn’t release his grip on the back of the man’s neck, gave him only a few seconds before he yanked him to his feet. The guy was still groaning, but now John could hear the sound for what it was. Defeat, a terrible defeat at having been apprehended in the midst of his horrendous crime.

“I should just kill you right now,” John said. “I should just fucking kill you right now!”

At this, the guy went limp and silent. The tree trunk was still just three short feet away from his forehead. John had lost the gun, but the guy didn’t know that. “We’re going to walk back toward the house. Nice and slow. Turn around and I’ll kill you, got it?” More sobs. More rain.
“Got it?”
The guy nodded furiously, and John backed up to allow the guy to get his footing. John told him to raise his hands over his head, and he complied. Carefully, they began their descent. The guy kept his hands raised over his head and his legs bent as he tried to move down the steep slope without falling head over heels. A few times the guy had to reach out and grip a branch to keep from falling, but he did so briefly, releasing it as soon as he was done, never once looking back. It took them twenty minutes to descend thirty yards. Along the way John managed to snap off the end of a thick branch. They reached the edge of the creek. The Sig hadn’t washed to shore, but now that they were both on level ground, John pressed the butt of the branch he had broken off against the small of the guy’s back. He jerked and lifted his hands higher.

The grassy slope on the other side of the creek concealed most of the cabin, except for its roof and chimney. The stepping-stones were in front of them. John said, “Cross. No bullshit this time.”

“What are you going to do to me?” the guy whimpered.

“Cross!”

John knew better than to engage this fuck. He was shirtless, scratched up from his climb through the cottonwoods, but John was confident some of the blood on the guy’s body belonged to Mike. Was the sick fuck jerking off over his corpse after he stabbed him through the heart? Given the determination with which the guy had tried to flee, John saw no other choice but to get him back to the house and restrain him before he called the police. His cell phone had been doused, so that meant he would have to use the landline.

But as they neared the front steps of the cabin, the guy started to hyperventilate. “Where’s Mike?” he asked, gasping.

John used the branch to keep the guy moving up the front steps and onto the front porch, all without responding to the guy’s query.

“Where is he?”
the guy screamed.

It was the possessiveness in the guy’s voice that enraged John. Did all monsters feel that way about their victims? Had Danny Oster cried out for his brother in the same way? Fine. He would show him Mike. He drove the guy into the foyer, then up the carpeted stairs and toward the yawning master bedroom door.

“What—what are you going to do to me?” the guy spat.

“Nothing. You want to see Mike again, you get to see Mike again, you sick fuck!”

At the top of the stairs, he gripped the back of the guy’s neck as he shoved him into the master bedroom doorway. He heard a siren wailing in the distance, probably responding to the shot he had fired. Before John could stop him, the guy reached up and hit the light switch on the wall just beside the doorway.

The light from the hallway fell across the empty bed, which had been freshly made, the waffle-print comforter drawn up to the four king-sized pillows. John heard the breath go out of him, was so shocked by the scene in front of him that he ignored the feeling of the guy turning slightly in his grip, just enough so he could look back at John with one big blue eye.

“John Houck,” he whispered.

John hurled him against the wall. “How do you know my fucking name?”

The guy went silent, raised his palms in a gesture of surrender as he slid down the doorframe. His blue eyes were wide and unblinking. His soaked bangs draped his forehead. His skin was pale, smooth, like he had never worked a day outside in his entire life. “How do you know my name?” John screamed.

“I live here,” the guy whispered.

“Bullshit. There was someone else. Someone else moved the body!”

“Turn around, John.”

At first he thought it was a threat, but he knew there was nothing behind him except for a wall. “Who are you?”

“I’m trying to tell you who I am. Turn around and look! I’m not going to do anything. I don’t feel like getting my head blown off.”

John turned. The wall behind him was hung with framed eight-by-ten photographs. The first one his eyes landed on featured Mike and the guy sitting behind him standing shoulder-to-shoulder, smiling at the camera. There was a large metal pole behind them, and behind it, through plate glass windows, was a boulder-strewn, pine-studded mountain slope—the rotating tram car that carried tourists to the top of Mount San Jacinto, high above Palm Springs.

Then another photo: Mike was the center of this one. He sat on a bar stool, beaming, as he received a big wet one on the cheek from the guy John had almost killed. A neon sign above the bar spelled out the word
Budweiser
in all the colors of the rainbow, and the chunky little bartender serving a drink behind him wore a green T-shirt that said
The Catch Trap,
a gay bar in San Diego that was the punch line to some of the fag jokes John heard while he was stationed at Camp Pendleton.

John turned. The guy hadn’t moved from where he had crumpled to the floor.

“We live here, John. Me and Mike. This is our home.”

The stranger’s eyes moved to the branch John was still stupidly holding in one hand. He dropped it to the carpet just as two khaki-clad sheriff’s deputies came through the front door, their hands on their holsters, calling out to anyone who could hear them. One of them saw the scene at the top of the stairs, and without taking his eyes off John said, “Are you all right, Alex?”

“No, I’m not. This man broke in and tried to kill me.”

And before John could put words together to defend himself, let alone make any kind of sense of the pictures he had just laid eyes on, they cuffed him and shoved him facedown onto the wet carpet. He managed to get a look back as they dragged him down the stairs, expecting to see the guy watching this with some kind of satisfaction. But he wasn’t there.

He could hear him, though. The stranger named Alex was walking through the house shouting Mike’s name, but not with enough fear in his voice to suggest that he believed any real harm had come to the man.

The deputies led John to a windowless room with Navajo white walls that looked like it had been turned into an interrogation room five minutes prior to his arrival. The wall behind him was taken up by a chalkboard, and the chair his cuffs were attached to sat in about three feet of space between the wall and the edge of a massive conference table. The exhaustion he could feel deep in his bones couldn’t escape to the rest of his body, so when a man he presumed was the sheriff walked in, out of uniform, looking as if he had been roused from bed, John sat up as politely as he could given his restraints and gave the man a deep nod, which seemed to amuse him.

He was movie-star handsome, with thick jet black hair that still looked perfectly combed even though the man had clearly traveled through the rain, a dimple in his chin, and a jawline that looked like it had been drawn by a comic book artist. He was tall with broad shoulders and the kind of stout body that suggested muscles under his clothes.

For what felt like hours, he just stared at John as if he were growing a second head right there in front of him. Finally he said, “Mr. Houck, I’m just going to throw something out at you and see if you catch it for me. As you told my deputies, you came up here tonight because Mike Bowers saved your life over in Iraq and you wanted to give him a present, which I’m going to presume is the sword we found in the back of your truck.” John opened his mouth to answer, but the man didn’t give him time. “Now, what you would like us to believe is that you walked in on Mike’s corpse and that while you were chasing Alex Martin out into the woods someone
moved
this corpse. Presumably Alex Martin, who not only has the ability to take it up the back end like a champ but also to bend space and time and be in two places at once.”

“No,” John said.

“No? He doesn’t have the ability to be in two places at once?”

“Whoever committed the murder moved the body.”

“And you don’t believe Alex Martin was responsible for what you saw in that bedroom?”

“You’re the sheriff.”

He sank down into a padded chair on the other side of the conference table. “Captain Ray Duncan,” he said, then extended his hand and made a show of realizing that John was cuffed to the chair. “Sorry, but there’s not a chance in hell the sheriff of Hanrock County is going to come up the mountain from Boswell on a night like this. So it’s just you and me. And Alex Martin. And one missing Marine who went to a great deal of trouble to keep you from finding out he was a homo. Personally, I think he’s still trying to hide it, given that he’s nowhere around to explain himself.”

John said, “Are you trying to tell me that you didn’t find any trace of Mike Bowers in that house?”

“We found a lot of traces. He lives there. He’s lived there for about four months—with Alex. Can you see why I’m having trouble accepting any story you tell, given how much you don’t seem to know?” When he saw the look on John’s face, he flashed him his palms in a gesture of apology and placed his elbows on the table. “Look, I know I may seem a little combative here, but it’s late, and I’m actually trying to throw you a bone.”

“What does that mean, sir?” John asked.

“I’m giving you an
out
. An out from having to play the role of crazy, fucked-up Iraq vet with post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

He let this sink in, paid no mind to the furious expression John could feel on his face like a mask. “So here’s what I think happened: I think you came up here with the best of intentions, and you walked in on something you couldn’t quite understand. Some kind of sex game. It may be the twenty-first century, but this isn’t San Francisco, and I’d prefer not to go into detail. Let’s just say you misread the scene, which is understandable. But it’s not murder.”

“Then where the hell is Mike Bowers?”

“Waiting for you to leave, John. Waiting for you to get the hell out of here so he can go back to his little gay life with his little butt buddy, without any of his old friends poking around in his business.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Well, Alex Martin does.” When John said nothing, Duncan’s expression grew grave. He clasped his hands on the table as if he had lost all use for sarcasm and leaned forward. “Brief visual flashbacks brought on by certain auditory stimuli,” he whispered. “Read that online just a few minutes ago. It’s a common occurrence among our fighting men and wo—”

“Don’t you even try that!” John shouted. “Don’t you even
try
that shit on me. I may have a hard time some days, and I may not like hearing a car backfire, but this is not some PTSD bullshit. I don’t
see
things! I don’t imagine things. And I’ve never seen Mike Bowers stabbed through the heart before tonight. So tell me how the hell that could be a flashback.”

“There’s not a drop of blood in that entire house, John. You never gave Alex Martin a chance to see this alleged corpse or crime scene, so he can’t verify your story. I don’t think you’re a bad man, John Houck, but I think you’ve had quite a shock, and you’re responding to it in the way a man who has already been through a helluva lot might respond to it. You get me?”

Maybe it was his years in the Marine Corps, but John could better tolerate being shouted at than being condescended to like this, and he could feel pure anger swelling within him. “I see. So this isn’t convenient for you, is that it? I’m just some dumb jarhead who wandered into your town and dropped a pile of shit. I’m too stupid to realize that people only investigate murders around here when it’s convenient.”

Duncan tried to laugh it off, but the effort left a grimace on his face and a tense set to his jaw. “This isn’t
anything,
my friend. It’s not a murder, and it’s not even a pile of shit. And believe you me, if anyone at this station took you seriously, you wouldn’t be talking to me. You’d be talking to two homicide guys out of Boswell. But you’re not, John. Now, if Mike Bowers doesn’t turn up in forty-eight hours, you’re welcome to come back and file a missing-person report. But I’m fairly confident that his
huuusband
will beat you to the chase.”

“You’re talking like you’re already done with me,” John said.

“Pretty much am.”

“Your deputies informed me I was arrested on suspicion of breaking and entering. Aren’t you going to charge me?”

“No,” he said quietly. “Alex Martin has decided not to file charges against you.”

John was stunned silent by this. Duncan studied his reaction intently. John’s wrist tingled, a memory of the secondary impact he had felt when he had slammed Alex Martin’s head into a cottonwood trunk. Duncan continued, “He cited your friendship with Mike. Said he thought you were going through a lot because Mike sure is. All you guys are, which I can understand. But he also added that he never wants to lay eyes on you again. Don’t take it personal, but I happen to feel the same way. You’ve got a lot swirling around up in that head of yours, John Houck. Bring it under some kind of control before you come back to Owensville.”

“Where is he?” John asked.

“Beats me.”

“Not Mike. Alex.”

“He’s at home. Waiting for Mike.”

“He’ll be waiting for a long goddamn time.”

Duncan groaned and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He got to his feet and lifted his hand, as if he had spent the past few minutes giving John sound investment advice, only to watch him sink his money into snake oil. Duncan was almost out the door when John said, “He’s hiding something. Maybe he said it was because I was a Marine and Mike’s friend, but he’s not filing charges against me because he wants this over, and that means he’s hiding something.”

“Are you accusing him of murder?”

“I said he’s hiding something. That’s all.”

Duncan forgot about his planned exit entirely, closed the distance between them slowly. It was the first time since they had met that John saw what the man looked like angry. “You don’t believe most people have good intentions, do you, Mr. Houck?”

“I beat the holy hell out of him tonight and he’s not filing charges against me. Pardon me if I don’t think he was able to
work through that
in less than four hours. I think he wants me out of here as much as you do.”

“That’s fine. But I need you to remember that you may be a veteran, but in my book, you’re a civilian, which means when you have a suspicion about something you report it by phone to an officer of the law. And that’s the end of it for you. Got it?”

John didn’t answer. Duncan didn’t move an inch. Finally he said, “Have I made myself clear, son?”

“Yes, you have.”

Bowers lied to me
. He repeated these words to himself like a mantra. They carried him home, through the harsh, unfiltered dawn that lit his way back to Cajon Pass and his trailer park, where his neighbors were rising and going to work, making him feel like a gutter drunk returning from a bender. Everything inside his trailer seemed to point an accusing finger at him. The unmade bed suggested the presence of someone else who had not expected him home so early because he was supposed to be out there still, looking for Mike’s body, hunting for bloodstains on the floor of his bedroom.

Mike Bowers lied to me
. True, he hadn’t gone so far as to invent a fake wife, had never mentioned anyone who might be waiting at home for him aside from his Holy Roller parents in Phoenix. But it had been a lie of omission. Wasn’t that the worst kind?

John pulled a beer from the fridge, downed it in several swallows, and collapsed at the kitchen table and remained frozen there as if awaiting the arrival of a tax man.

He stopped himself from dozing off by going to the phone. Bowers and his father had the same first name, but when the operator told him there were fifteen different listings for Michael Bowers in the Phoenix area, he groaned and asked the woman to give him a minute. When he took three, he thought the operator might hang up on him. Then, as if a ghost were speaking to him, he could hear the derisive manner in which Bowers had once referred to his parents as
Mike and Suzy
. There was one listing for a Susan and Michael Bowers in the Phoenix area. He dialed the number and got the machine after a few rings. A chipper, high-pitched female voice with a trace of a Midwestern accent told him to leave a message. The sudden beep left him feeling as if he were back up on the high-dive board at Las Pulgas, staring down at a swimming pool full of other potential Recon Marines, the skull and crossbones leering at all of them from the far wall.

He managed to stutter his name, but as soon as the words “friend of Mike” left his mouth, he heard the machine shut off, then the sound of the receiver on the other end brushing against fabric. “Who is this?” a frantic female voice asked him, even though he had just told her.

“My name is John Houck. I served with your son—”

“Mike,” she asked, voice accusatory. “You’re a friend of Mike’s, are you?”

He heard a man enter the room. Words passed between them, but the woman was obviously holding the receiver to her chest. It sounded like the woman was protesting as the receiver was pulled from her hand. Then a man’s voice, a slightly weaker version of Mike’s commanding baritone, said, “We aren’t interested in hearing any more of your
slander
today. Is that clear?” In the background there were louder protests from the woman—Mike’s mother. She was probably trying to tell Mike’s father that John was not the same man who had called earlier. But Mike Sr. ignored her. “If you are confused as to the whereabouts of our son, perhaps it is the good Lord’s intention that you
stay that way
!”

Only after he hung up was John able to assemble the brief sequence of events. Clearly Alex Martin had phoned Mike’s parents to find out where he might have gone. In the process, he had let them in on Mike’s big secret. John prowled up and down his trailer for about half an hour, telling himself he was giving Bowers Sr. enough time to calm down. But when he tried their number again, an automated voice informed him that his phone number had been blocked.

This time he called information and asked for a listing in Owensville, California. He already knew Mike wasn’t listed, but the man he had been living with was. But when John called the number for the house, the phone rang ten times before he was given a voice mail message. In a clear and level voice, Alex Martin told him that no one was available to come to the phone. Neither one of those people was identified by name.

John didn’t leave a message.

The phone woke him at a little after six in the evening. John’s plan had been to drive to Phoenix and try to confront Mike’s parents face-to-face, but exhaustion had overtaken him, and he woke up to the orange light of dusk framing the shade over his tiny bedroom window.

As soon as John answered, Alex Martin said, “He said you were a good Marine but you had all kinds of shit in the way.”

“Like what?” John asked as he sat up straight.

“Like you drove yourself nuts ’cause you couldn’t live up to your sister and you never wanted to admit to any of the other guys that you were living in the shadow of a woman.” Alex let this hang. There was a ragged edge to his voice that suggested tears or alcohol or both. John thanked God he hadn’t confided in Mike what had been done to his brother; he doubted he could have kept his cool if Alex had thrown that at him in this moment.

“He never said one word about you,” John said carefully.

“He didn’t need to. He was going to spend the rest of his life with me. You? He only had to lie to you for six months.”

He could hear the fear in Alex’s voice, the fear that John hadn’t been hallucinating the night before, so he ignored his insults and said, “I called the house.”

“I’m not staying there,” Alex said. “I can’t stay there right now. I’m at a motel.”

“Has he come back yet?”

A long silence, and then Alex said, “You know he asked me if he should tell you. He thought maybe you would understand. Or try to, at least. He was thinking about inviting you up here.”