Housebroken (22 page)

“Most people don’t bleed out four to five liters of blood before going on vacation,” McClellan said.

“Sorry to disturb you. Clearly you’ve got dinner waiting. Here’s my card,” Randall said, “in case you lost the first. You remember anything from the past few days, give us a buzz.”

He started down the stone path with his partner. Almost as an afterthought he turned back, but Blake knew it was no afterthought. “How was that, uh, doctor I referred to you?”

“We never called him,” Blake said.

Randall nodded slowly. “Strange, he had you on his books yesterday. His office assistant’s a good friend. Guess I’ll have drinks and a conversation with her a little later.”

Blake nodded; not much else he could do. If Malibu was like the Old West as Randall had intoned on their first meeting, then Blake and his family were the unwelcome newcomers about to be driven out by the local sheriff and deputy. The more frightening realization was that should his family survive the week, by the time the police were ready to issue a warrant, Joje and his accomplice would be gone.

The pizza was cold and dripping with grease. There was only one parlor in the Palisades that would deliver this far out. For the price it should have tasted much better than it did.

The house had a peculiar stink to it now, an odor that sat heavy like a cloud about to burst that went much further than the gore the Ukrainian doctor had left behind. Plates of discarded food and open containers fell from the full sink onto the counters. Drew was surprisingly an okay cook; a housecleaner he was not, and whatever he opened or pulled from the fridge stayed there, growing interesting shades of mold. Even the fruit on the metal rack on the kitchen island was beginning to go bad. Add to that the smell of Jenna’s legs, which equally stunk of rot, and the stench of Drew and Joje, which could have rivaled the most ostentatious homeless couple. Blake wasn’t aware of either of them showering since their arrival, the pimples bubbling beneath Drew’s oily face a sickly sight.

“Can I be excused?” Adam asked.

“Sure,” Joje said before Blake could reply.

Adam skirted away from the table, his chair scraping against the floor. His plate with the five uneaten pizza crusts remained on the table. “I’m going upstairs,” he called back.

“Take Dwew,” Joje said. Drew grabbed the remaining slice in the box and left through the living room. “We wouldn’t want another mess to clean up like the good doctor.” He smiled conspiratorially.

Blake did not smile back.

“I’m joking, Bwake. If Adam really wanted to off himself, trust me, he’d be dead. He’s a lot smarter than you give him credit for. Now while you were on your cleaning spree, I made a few calls in preparation for tonight.”

“You’re going through with this?” Jenna asked. She looked like a child sitting at the grown-ups’ table, her wheelchair so much lower than the other chairs.

“I don’t have a choice,” Blake said.

“Just like you had no choice but to let the police leave while our kidnappers have free rein of the house?”

“You know what would have happened, Jenn, if I had tipped them off.”

“But you don’t know what’s going to happen from you keeping your mouth shut,” she said. Angry tears were forming at the corners of her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder whose side you’re really on.”

“Come on, that’s ridiculous!” Blake couldn’t keep his voice from rising. “I’m doing everything I can to keep you and Adam from getting hurt. Worse than you already are. It’s not worth the risk.”

“I guess I’m old-fashioned. I had always hoped our family was worth the risk. Any risk.” Jenna pushed away from the table, her hands guiding the chair back.

“Jenna . . . ,” Blake said, but she continued wheeling herself into the family room. He stood, chair knocking backward and ringing off the hardwood floor. He wasn’t going to lose this fight, not this time, not by letting her walk away.

“What do you want me to do?” he yelled. “Not help get these files? Until Drew starts using that sword of his, hacking off fingers and limbs from you, me,
our son
? You and I both know that eventually I’d end up helping anyway. I’d have no choice. And say I had told the police, what do you think would’ve happened then? A gunfight in our living room? And let’s just say one of those cops were sharper than they looked and shot Joje before he could respond, they come storming outside, and guess what. That blade, that decorative sword you and Deb hung on our wall, would be slipping against yours and Adam’s throat before they’d have a chance to get off another shot. So tell me, Jenna, what am I doing wrong here? How am I not protecting my family by doing things I don’t want to do? Tell me!”

He could hear her sobs, her chair facing away from him, toward their garage.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, trying to soften his voice and failing.

“I want you to leave,” she said. “Do whatever they want, just . . . if we get through this, the next few days, and they go like they said?
If
that happens, I want you to leave.”

Blake had always wondered when their arguments would culminate in a request for divorce. He found the fight had gone out of him, words unable to repair the damage done. He stood behind her for some time, wanting to reach out, hold her, tell her he was trying—God, how he was trying. Instead he left her there in the family room. In that small way he could give her what she wanted.

Joje’s smile was more pronounced than ever, a black spec between his front teeth from the pizza. “Thank you for opening yourselves up like that. That was fun to watch.”

Blake pulled a beer from the pantry, knocking its top free on the rough-edged kitchen counter. He had always liked his beer warm. “You were saying? About tonight?”

“Right, we’re gonna need some supwise.”

“Surprise?

“No, supwise . . . spehshowized equipment.”

Supplies. Great.

“I know a guy,” Joje continued, “but he only takes cash, so we need your money.”

Blake waited for the punch line to the joke. “You have all my money.”

“Cash, Bwake. The three grand you had stashed away? I don’t know if it’s enough, but it’s worth a shot.”

Blake couldn’t remember telling Joje about any cash.

“You tried to buy me off, Bwake, remember? After you hit me with your car?”

“You hit me,” Blake said.

Joje just smiled. “Let’s go see that safe you told me about.”

Blake rolled his desk chair toward the closet, climbing atop and balancing as the seat spun beneath him. Reaching up to the dial, he felt like he was having an out-of-body experience, that he was looking down on himself, ashamed at his own actions. This safe, it was the last part of his life Joje had yet to stick his filthy hands into. And now Blake was granting him access. Maybe Jenna wasn’t so far off from the truth.

He turned the dials slowly. Sixteen–forty-two–eleven. The safe door popped open. Inside were stacks of bills wrapped in rubber bands—much more than three thousand—two manila envelopes bowed with the amount of contents they contained, a flash drive in a Ziploc bag, and two cartons of bullets next to his .38 Special. The Smith & Wesson’s wooden handle was turned toward him, six-inch barrel pointed toward the back of the safe. He always kept it loaded.

I had always hoped our family was worth the risk.

Drew was upstairs with Adam. Would he hear the gunshot? Undoubtedly. And what would his reaction be with Blake’s son at his side? And if something went wrong? If the gun misfired or, worse, he missed?

Blake felt that sharp ache behind his eyes again. He reached in, his palm knocking against the six-shooter, and grabbed a stack of bills. “Here,” he said, tossing it down to Joje, who was sitting on the desk.

“Empty it,” Joje said.

Twelve stacks, crisp hundred-dollar bills bending around the bands at their center as he handed them down. Each small stack contained one hundred bills, a hundred twenty grand in total. He had always kept cash on hand in case of an emergency, though real emergencies, he had come to learn, couldn’t be solved with any amount of money.

“I never realized how much three thousand looks like,” Joje said.

Blake grabbed the final two bundles. “A hundred and twenty thousand,” he said.

Joje had the cash stacked neatly on Blake’s desk, next to his wireless keyboard. “Don’t you get tired of all the lies, Bwake? Three thousand . . . What else have you got in there?”

Breathing harder, the pain behind his eye like a needle plunging its way through his oracular orb, he wrapped his sweaty palm around the wood stock of the gun. It felt so solid in his hand, its weight balanced. He hadn’t brought the gun out since he had put it in the safe, shortly before Adam was born. His first wife had hated guns, made him promise never to even show it to their then unborn son. It was a promise he had kept even after her death.

One of the few
, he thought.

The gun hadn’t been shot for over fifteen years, its last cleaning long before that. So many things could go wrong, would go wrong if he made a mistake.

“Bwake?”

He loosened his grip on the revolver and grabbed the two manila envelopes, dragging them along the bottom of the safe. “Here,” he said.

Any risk.

Joje opened the first envelope, spilling its contents onto the desk and shuffling through them. It contained every legal document for Blake’s holdings—rental properties in Park City, Utah, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming; a list of the corporations he had an interest in; stock certificates and trade ventures—it was all there, the final pieces of Blake’s wealth.

“You’ll sign these over to me,” Joje said, “just as a precaution. After our week is through, it’ll all be returned of course.”

“Of course,” Blake said.

Joje ripped into the second envelope, much thinner than the first. Out fell passports, social security cards, birth certificates, marriage and death certificates; the latter, documents Blake had never read. Joje took much longer with these, studying them, reading each one through. He rearranged them, setting a few side by side.

“Rachel Lynette Green. Your first wife? Pretty name.”

Not when it was pronounced
Wachel Gween
.
Blake felt the loss as if it had happened yesterday. Odd, he rarely thought of her these days, and yet having Joje go through these private moments, he felt more dismayed than the thought of signing over any of his holdings or stock.

These were locked here for a reason—memories and regrets no one had a right to peruse.

“Married January first, nineteen ninety-six. New Year’s Day. Was that right after college?”

“During,” Blake said, still standing on the roll-out chair. “My senior year.”

“College sweethearts. Quite the commitment that young. So, married in ninety-six, four years later Adam Green Crochet is born, February nineteenth, the year double zero. Five pounds, three ounces. Small.” Joje looked up as if it were a question.

“There were complications. He came early.”

“More complications two and a half years later it seems. US standard certificate of death,” Joje read. “Lot of boxes to be filled out. And there’s your signature . . . did you pronounce or certify her death?”

Blake felt his jaw clenching.

“Cause of death: caowdiopulmanao-wee awest, ductal . . . How the hell do you pronounce that? Adeno . . . ?”

“Pancreatic cancer,” Blake said.

“They could have just written that. So let’s see, your wife, to whom you were so in love you couldn’t wait to finish college before marrying, dies . . . and six months later you remarry. Jenna Shurtleff. No middle name. I like that.”

Joje turned another paper over, laying it beside the others. “No kids, no kids, and then after nine years, boom—a daughter. Evaline Stacy Crochet. Evaleen or Evalin?

“Evalin,” Blake said.

Joje held up two pieces of paper, shuffling them back and forth. “Birth and death certificates only two years apart. Life can be tragic.”

The lump in Blake’s throat was hard.

“You know I haven’t seen a single picture of her in the whole house. Was there a fire? In your previous home? Were all your photos destroyed?”

Blake felt his hand tightening on the grip of the gun.

“Must be tough losing your wife and daughter, though you don’t seem one to grieve long. Upgraded your wife after six months, how many days before you took down the photos of your little girl? What, did the dog take her place?”

I had always hoped our family was worth the risk.

“I guess in the end our lives are nothing more than dates and numbers on a sheet of paper,” Joje said. “All that blank space on the page? The details of our lives between the numbers? No one remembers that. They’re just locked up in some forgotten vault.”

Any risk.

Blake closed his eyes, steeling himself for the moment to come. Just as he began pulling his hand from the safe, the hilt of the revolver pressed firmly in his grasp, he felt the cold steel of Joje’s own gun against the nape of his neck.

Joje had been waiting for him.

“I had such high hopes for you, Bwake. Did you really think staying on that chair looked natural? Like you had nothing to hide? Open the cartridge and empty the chamber.”

His hands trembling, Blake did as he was told, letting the six-shooter slide open, the bullets dropping and bouncing off the chair.

“I’m gonna need that gun.” Joje extended one hand around the chair in front of Blake. It was gloved in the plastic bag the flash drive had been in.

Blake lowered the empty revolver, chamber still hanging to the side like a lifeless limb. At the last second, he whirled against the chair, the tall back whipping Joje in the side and slapping his hand away. Joje’s gun went off right next to Blake’s ear, the blast deafening. He fell from the chair, hitting into the closet on his way to the floor. The chair suddenly came reeling toward him, Blake barely able to bring his hands up in time to keep it from his head.

Joje stood where it had been, his face twitching. He set Blake’s .38 on the desk with a loud clunk. “You, Bwake, are testing my patience.”

He ran one arm against the desk, sweeping off its contents—the stacks of money, legal documents, clock, keyboard, and mouse all flying from the desk, crashing into the chairs and bookshelves carved into the wall. The rubber band on one of the wads of cash must have broken, hundred-dollar bills streaming outward and floating down like leaves in autumn.