Silencer (18 page)

Holding Gacy's drawing, Jonah saw himself down in that crawlspace, digging a hole. Working in those tight quarters with his shovel. Trying not to disturb the bones on either side of the new grave. All the while tasting the suffocating ammonia smell, the decay, the clammy air. Jonah Faust, shovel in hand, chunking the spade deep into the soft dirt, moving earth aside, sweating, hot, nauseous, and shivering with thrill. Digging that grave until it was deep enough, then grabbing the garbage bag, feeling the dead kid's weight, getting a revolting whiff of the decomposing body, then stuffing it into the earth, with one last look to remember how it felt to kill the kid, before covering the black garbage bag with dirt and more dirt. Airless down there beneath that house, as rank and dark and disgusting as the belly of a rancid whale.

Jonah heard a noise and turned to find Moses in the doorway.

Jonah was still down in the crawlspace. He hadn't meant to go there. He'd trailed along behind Gacy, looking out of the eyes of that mad-dog killer. He knew the racing heart, the wild electrified buzz. Gacy wasn't cold and empty. He was having fun. For him, the whole thing was pleasure beyond all pleasure. A black joy.

Jonah held up the Gacy painting.

“I was looking at this.”

“Jesus Christ. I can't leave you alone for five minutes. You're some little kid.”

“I wondered how his brain worked. How it felt.”

“Put that thing away. Put it in the bubble wrap. Do it now.”

Jonah slid the Gacy back into its packing material. Moses walked over to him, got up close, and reached out his right fist and knuckle-thumped Jonah's forehead.

“Anyone in there? Anyone alive?”

“Oh, come on, man. Don't go schoolyard on me.”

“Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ.”

“I'm sorry, man. I apologize. No harm, no foul.”

“This was a bad idea,” Moses said. “This whole thing.”

“What?”

Moses swept a hand at the shelves.

“All of it, this murder bullshit. It's playing with fire. I knew better.”

“What fire?”

Moses was silent, staring off. Big strong man, handsome and peaceful.

“What fire, Moses?”

“Forget it. We got to get busy.”

“What fire, goddammit?”

Moses closed his mouth, looked down at the floor, and shook his head.

“Go on,” Jonah said. “Go on and say it.”

“It's in our blood. You and me, we could get a transfusion every day of our fucked-up lives, it'd be there still.”

“What's in our blood?”

“Just drop it. We got to pack up and get out of here.”

“You're talking about the old man,” Jonah said. “The drunken prick?”

“There's cops swarming all over the ranch. We've got to move.”

“The old man did shit like this. Is that it? Come on, tell me.” Moses stared at the Gacy in Jonah's hands. “Like Gacy? With kids. He did that kind of shit?”

Moses bowed his head. It was true.

“Jesus,” Jonah said.

“As perverted as any of these people we make our living off of. It's why Mom dumped his ass. She knew what he was doing. Neighbor kids, boys he found on the street. In playgrounds, all that shit.”

“I thought he was just a drunk. A prick. An abusive asshole.”

“He was all that,” Moses said. “It was going on before you could remember. You were like four or five.”

Jonah tried to say something, but there was only a black droning in his head.

He set the Gacy on the floor. Cocked it carefully against the wall.

“He fucked with you, Moses? He hurt you in bed?”

Moses didn't answer. He didn't need to. His face was slack, the way he got when he zoned out. Jonah stepped back for a better look. Hell, he'd been wrong. Wrong about his brother being easygoing, cool, and carefree. It was different than that, completely different. It was like Moses knew how to power himself down. Put himself in safety mode.

“And me, Moses? What about me?”

Moses came back from the dead zone, looked Jonah square on.

“No, he never touched you. I stopped him.”

“You stopped him.”

“I did. I kept him from you.”

“Stopped him how?”

“Never mind.”

“Jesus on the cross,” Jonah said. “The prick didn't run off. That story, him packing his bags, throwing twenty bucks on the kitchen table on his way out the door, that was a lie.”

Moses went over to shelves, started at one end, swept his hand along each one, knocked all the drawings and the poems and doodles onto the floor.

“He would've killed us,” he said. “But we're still alive.”

“Are we?”

“That lady next door, Phyllis, you remember? Did pottery in her garage, old white-haired lady.”

Jonah wasn't able to reply.

“She was like seventy-five, lived alone, but she knew what was going on inside our house. I went over, told her what I did to the old man.

“I don't know why I picked her. If she called the police, that'd be the end. But no. She said it was a good thing. I was a hero. The two of us dug a hole out back in the middle of the night, me and Phyllis. She drove me to a canal and had me throw the butcher knife in. We covered that hole, planted that Jerusalem thorn you liked, one with the yellow blooms. Planted it right there on top of the prick.”

“I remember that tree.”

“Hadn't been for Phyllis, that old lady next door, I'd be on death row. You'd've gone into some foster family, never seen each other again.”

Jonah felt dull and sleepy. Too much to absorb. Information overload.

“Look,” Moses said. “We need to get our asses in gear. Put a bullet in Thorn and go.”

“Go where?”

“I don't know. Miami, somewhere. A do-over.”

“Why're we leaving? What happened?”

“Hammond's bitch put us at the lodge last night. We hung around
too long after you did Saperstein, and she saw the Prius in the lot, told the investigators. We're on their shit list.”

Jonah looked at the Gacy.

“I was breaking Thorn down,” Jonah said. “He was into some kind of deal with Earl Hammond. Real estate. They partnered up on something.”

“He told you that? That guy doing business with Big Earl? Give me a break.”

“I believe him. They were doing something together.”

“Time to man up, Jonah. Get your game face on. I'll take care of Thorn. You get whatever clothes and shit you want. Can you do that?”

“It should be me doing Thorn,” Jonah said. “He was my project. That was my idea from the start.”

“It's going to be okay, Jonah. You and me, we're alive, we're fine. The old man is dead and we're flourishing. No reason to get bogged down in all that. It happened and it's done. We are who we are.”

“He was killing kids,” Jonah said. “We were living in the same house. Our freaking mother left us with that guy.”

“You were four. It doesn't count if you don't remember it.”

“It counts,” Jonah said. “Goddamn right it counts.”

“Don't go south on me, Jonah. We're okay. We made it out alive.”

“Jesus shit,” Jonah said. “The MoJo brothers. Man, we're like so completely, totally, down to the core fucked. We're no different than these whackjobs.”

“No way. Don't think like that. The bad shit we've done, we've done to survive. These people, they were getting off. It was a thrill ride. Not the same thing. Apples and oranges.”

“It's all fruit, man. Different color, sweet or sour, it's still fucking fruit.”

Jonah swung around, nabbed the Glock off the weapon shelf, checked the magazine, snapped it back, took a last look at Pogo the Clown and the thirty-four skulls, the images warped and glowing inside the bubble wrap, and he walked through the house, went outside,
then marched through the back pasture where a herd of ibex goats were drifting around, munching on grass. As he grew close, one by one they lifted their heads, their ears perking as they registered his freakoid aura. In unison they bleated and scattered in a blaze of white dust.

 

 

THORN MADE IT TO THE
top of the pit, panting, knuckles busted, fingers torn. When he'd levered himself up the last few inches, he discovered a ledge not visible from below. He stared at it for a moment, thinking his vision might be playing tricks.

The depression was only a foot beneath the wood decking, and was recessed into the rock about thirty inches, roughly the width of a footlocker.

The space was so cramped that after he squeezed into it, he couldn't draw a full breath, and he wasn't certain he'd be able to pry his body out again.

The day was warm, somewhere in the upper-eighties, and felt at least ten degrees hotter in his tight space. Sweat pinkened with blood dripped off his bare flesh and trailed down the rock ledge. His throat was dry and his headache was chiming away again. He looked down at his flowered shirt hanging on the outcropping below. He should've indulged in a few more sips before he started the climb. It might be a while before he had another chance at water.

For a minute he lay there, diagnosing the workmanship of the wood decking.

The trap door in the deck appeared to be a recent addition. Its edges were cut sloppily as if by a ham-fisted amateur, and there were flakes of sawdust still clinging to the seams. Placed dead center in the cover, the hatch opened directly above the middle of the pit. Its hinges were on the upside, and it was a good yard beyond Thorn's reach. If a rope had hung from the opening, he might've had a chance to fling himself out from where he was, grab the rope, and haul himself up. But miss it, he'd drop straight down onto the half-dozen punji sticks of rock sprouting from the cavern floor.

He assumed the trap door had been added by Jonah or Moses to serve its present function. Turning the pit into a holding pen. Or maybe they'd just been exploring.

Clearly, the wood decking had been built by someone a lot more competent. That original carpenter had laid out the surface planks over a crosshatching of two-by-four struts whose ends were toe-nailed into notches chiseled out of the rock.

The planks of the flooring were nailed directly into the struts, no crossbeams, no cantilevers, no reinforcing joists as one might expect on an outdoor deck that would have to support the weight of several people. Apparently the wood covering was erected simply to prevent kids or wildlife from falling into the hole, with no consideration given to foiling someone's escape from below. Thank God for that.

The most vulnerable place Thorn could find were those anchoring nails.

Although their tips had gouged the rocks and most were sunk an inch or two into the wall, now that Thorn had gotten to know the geology of this pit, he believed those nails could be loosened.

The rock's composition was mostly limestone, which would crumble under enough strain. To jimmy loose the strut all he'd need to do was pull two of those nails free. Once he did that, he might be able to lever up that decking board and squeeze out of the opening.

What he needed was a good claw hammer or pry bar.

All he had was a sardine can and an antique wedding ring.

He took one more look at the construction, then squirmed a half turn to get at his pocket. Wriggling his right arm to his side, he dug out both the ring and the can.

He twisted to his right, tucked his shoulder, and brought his face to within inches of the two cut nails. They were flat-sided, made of steel with blunt points, and both were sunk about an inch into the chink in the rock wall.

Thorn screwed the diamond solitaire onto his left pinkie for safe keeping and got to work with the sardine can. He angled his arm under the strut and scraped at the rough stone around the entry point of the nail. He grubbed and jabbed, but after a minute it was clear that wasn't going to work. The aluminum didn't leave a scratch.

He set the can aside on the ledge.

Then took a long look at the wedding ring. He knew Kate Truman wouldn't object to his using it for this rough work. A no-nonsense, pragmatic woman, she'd gladly risk the family heirloom to dig away the limestone around the base of those steel nails. Do it, she'd say. Don't give it a second thought. Get free no matter what it takes.

He took the ring off his pinkie, found the best grip, pinched it tight and jammed a faceted edge against the dry rock. He ground it a half turn back and forth, then another grind and another. Chips of pulverized rock flittered onto the ledge. Thorn pressed harder, grating gemstone against limestone, screwing it right then left, watching the chalky rock fall away from the root of the nail.

As he worked, the diamond gave off a rosy light, and it was that light that flew Thorn back to one sunny afternoon in high school geology class—a lesson about diamonds, the way they were supposed to be cut in harmony with their own crystalline structure, a process meant to liberate the internal reflections of light, the unique brilliance within each stone. Like people, that old geology teacher said, all of us get the chance to shape our surface identities, those facets of ourselves that others see. But the trick is to craft our outer lives in harmony with
what's inside, and in so doing, enhance rather than stifle the true light that burns within each of us.

With Kate's ring, it took him less than a minute to expose the first nail's root. He grabbed the sardine can again and with its curled edge he pried the steel nail free. While he rested, he took a look at the four gold prongs that formed the simple setting on the ring. That would be the weak link. The torque he was applying to the gemstone was stressing that setting in ways it wasn't fashioned to withstand. But there was only one more nail to go and no other choice but this.

He held his breath as he worked, and the prongs hung on awhile longer. They were still holding as he cleared the last crumbles of limestone from the base of the second nail. That's when footsteps shook the decking overhead.