The Husband (17 page)

40

W
ith hobgoblins of wind threatening at the open window in the driver’s door, Mitch cruised past Anson’s house in Corona del Mar.

Large creamy-white flowers had been shaken from the big magnolia tree and had blown in a drift against the front door, revealed in a stoop lamp that remained on all night. Otherwise, the house was dark.

He did not believe that Anson had come home, washed up, and gone happily to sleep almost at once after killing their parents. He must be out somewhere—and up to something.

Mitch’s Honda no longer stood at the curb where he had left it when he had first come here at the direction of the kidnappers.

In the next block, he parked, finished a Hershey’s bar, rolled up the window, and locked the Chrysler Windsor. Unfortunately, it drew attention to itself among the surrounding contemporary vehicles, museum grandeur in a game arcade.

Mitch walked to the alleyway on which Anson’s garage had access. Lights blazed throughout the lower floor of the rear condo above the pair of two-car garages.

Some people might have work that kept them busy just past three-thirty in the morning. Or insomnia.

Standing in the alleyway, Mitch planted his feet wide to resist the rushing wind. He studied the high curtained windows.

Since Campbell’s library, he had entered a new reality. He saw things more clearly now than he had seen them from his former perspective.

If Anson had eight million dollars and a fully paid-off yacht, he probably owned both condos, not just one, as he had claimed. He lived in the front unit and used the back condo for the office in which he applied linguistic theory to software design, or whatever the hell he did to get rich.

The toiler in the night, behind those curtained windows, was not a neighbor. Anson himself sat up there, bent to a computer.

Perhaps he was plotting a course, by yacht, to a haven beyond the authority of all law.

A service gate opened onto a narrow walkway beside the garage. Mitch followed it into the brick courtyard that separated the two condos. The courtyard lights were off.

Bordering the brick patio were planting beds lush with nandina and a variety of ferns, plus bromeliads and anthuriums to provide a punctuation of red blooms.

The houses to the front and back, the tall side fences, and the neighboring houses crowding close on their narrow lots all blocked the wind. Though still marked by blustering cross-currents, a more genteel version slipped down the roof slopes and danced with the courtyard greenery instead of whipping it.

Mitch slipped under the arching fronds of a Tasmanian tree fern, which swayed, trembled. He crouched there, peering out at the patio.

The skirt of broad, spreading, lacy fronds rose and dipped, rose and dipped, but the patio was not entirely screened from him at any time. If he remained alert, he couldn’t miss a man passing from the back condo to the front.

In the shelter of the tree-fern canopy, he smelled rich planting soil, an inorganic fertilizer, and the vaguely musky scent of moss.

At first this comforted him, reminded him of life when it had been simpler, just sixteen hours ago. After a few minutes, however, the melange of odors brought to mind instead the smell of blood.

In the condo above the garages, the lights went out.

Perhaps assisted by the windstorm, a door slammed shut. The chorus of wind voices did not entirely cover the thud of heavy hurried footsteps that descended exterior stairs to the courtyard.

Between the fronds, Mitch glimpsed a bearish figure crossing the brick patio.

Anson was not aware of his brother behind him, closing, and let out a strangled cry only when the Taser short-circuited his nervous system.

When Anson staggered forward, trying to stay on his feet, Mitch remained close. The Taser delivered another fifty-thousand-volt kiss.

Anson embraced the bricks. He rolled onto his back. His burly body twitched. His arms flopped loosely. His head rolled side to side, and he made noises that suggested he might be in danger of swallowing his tongue.

Mitch didn’t want Anson to swallow his tongue, but he wasn’t going to take any action to prevent it from happening, either.

41

A
pocalyptic flocks of wind beat wings against the walls and swoop the roof, and the darkness itself seems to vibrate.

The hairless hands, white as doves, groom each other in the dim glow of the half-taped flashlight.

The gentle voice regales her: “In El Valle, New Mexico, there is a graveyard where the grass is seldom cut. Some graves have stones, and some do not.”

Holly has finished the chocolate. She feels half sick. Her mouth tastes like blood. She uses Pepsi as a mouthwash.

“A few graves without headstones are surrounded by small picket fences crafted from the slats of old fruit and vegetable crates.”

All this is leading somewhere, but his thoughts proceed along neural pathways that can be anticipated only by a mind as bent as his.

“Loved ones paint the pickets in pastels—robin’s-egg blue, pale green, the yellow of faded sunflowers.”

In spite of the sharp enigmas underlying their soft color, his eyes repel her less, right now, than do his hands.

“Under a quarter moon, hours after a new grave was closed, we did some spade work and opened the wooden casket of a child.”

“The yellow of faded sunflowers,” Holly repeats, trying to fill her mind with that color as defense against the image of a child in a coffin.

“She was eight, taken by cancer. They buried her with a Saint Christopher medal folded in her left hand, a porcelain figurine of Cinderella in her right because she loved that story.”

The sunflowers will not sustain, and in her mind’s eye, Holly sees the small hands holding tight to the protection of the saint and to the promise of the poor girl who became a princess.

“By virtue of some hours in the grave of an innocent, those objects acquired great power. They were death-washed and spirit-polished.”

The longer she meets his eyes, the less familiar they become.

“We took from her hands the medal and the figurine, and replaced them with…other items.”

One white hand vanishes into a pocket of his black jacket. When it reappears, it holds the Saint Christopher medal by a silver chain.

He says, “Here. Take it.”

That the object comes from a grave does not repulse her, but that it has been taken from the hand of a dead child offends.

More is happening here than he is putting into words. There is a subtext that Holly does not understand.

She senses that to reject the medal for any reason will have terrible consequences. She holds out her right hand, and he drops the medal into it. The chain ravels in random coils on her palm.

“Do you know Espanola, New Mexico?”

Folding her hand around the medal, she says, “It’s another place I’ve missed.”

“My life will be changed there,” he reveals as he picks up the flashlight and rises to his feet.

He leaves her in pitch black with the half-full can of Pepsi, which she expects him to take. Her intention is—or had been—to squash the can and to create from it a miniature pry bar with which to work on the stubborn nail.

The Saint Christopher medal will do a better job. Cast in brass and plated with silver or nickel, it is much harder than the soft aluminum of the can.

Her keeper’s visit has changed the quality of this lightless space. It had been a lonely darkness. Now Holly imagines it inhabited by rats and waterbugs and legions of crawling things.

42

A
nson fell hard in front of the back door, and the wind seemed to cheer his collapse.

Like a creature accustomed to filtering its oxygen from water and now helpless on a beach, he twitched, spasmed. His hands flopped, and his knuckles rapped on the bricks.

He gawped at Mitch, moving his mouth, as if trying to speak, or maybe he was trying to scream in pain. All that came out was a thin squeal, a mere thread of sound, as if his esophagus had constricted to the diameter of a pin.

Mitch tried the door. Unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped into the kitchen.

The lights were off. He didn’t switch them on.

Not sure how long the effects of the shock would last, hoping for at least a minute or two, he put the Taser on a counter and returned to the open door.

Warily, he grabbed Anson by the ankles, but his brother was not capable of trying to kick him. Mitch dragged him into the house, and winced when the back of Anson’s head stuttered against the raised threshold.

Closing the door, he turned on the lights. The blinds were shut, as they had been when he and Anson received the phone call from the kidnappers.

The pot of
zuppa massaia
remained on the stove, cold but still fragrant.

Adjacent to the kitchen lay a laundry room. He checked it and found it to be as he remembered: small, no windows.

At the kitchen table, the four dinette chairs were retro-chic stainless steel and red vinyl. He moved one of them to the laundry room.

On the floor, hugging himself as if he were freezing, but most likely trying to stop the twitching, trying to get control of the less dramatic but still continuous muscle spasms, Anson made the pitiable sounds of a dog in pain.

The agony might be real. It might be a performance. Mitch kept a safe distance.

He retrieved the Taser. Reaching to the small of his back, he withdrew the pistol that he had tucked under his belt.

“Anson, I want you to roll over, facedown.”

His brother’s head lolled from side to side, not in refusal but perhaps involuntarily.

Anticipation of revenge had been in its way a different kind of sugar rush. In reality, nothing about it tasted sweet.

“Listen to me. I want you to roll over and crawl as best you can to the laundry room.”

Drool escaped a corner of Anson’s mouth. His chin glistened.

“I’m giving you a chance to do it the easy way.”

Anson continued to appear disoriented and not in easy control of his body.

Mitch wondered if two Taser shots in quick succession, and the second held perhaps too long, could have done permanent damage. Anson seemed to have been worse than stunned.

The big man’s fall might have contained an element of tragedy if he had fallen from a height, but he had gone from low to lower.

Mitch hounded him, repeatedly making the same commands. Then: “Damn it, Anson, if I have to, I can give you a third shock and drag your ass in there while you’re helpless.”

The back door rattled, distracting Mitch. Only the hand of the wind tested the latch as a strong gust swept more boldly into the sheltered courtyard.

When he looked at Anson again, he saw an acute awareness in his brother’s eyes, a sly calculation, which vanished in that glaze of disorientation. Anson’s eyes rolled back in his head.

Mitch waited half a minute. Then he moved quickly toward his brother.

Anson sensed him coming, thought he was going to use the Taser, and sat up to block it, grab it.

Instead Mitch squeezed off a shot, intentionally missing his brother, but not by much. At the report of the pistol, Anson flinched back in surprise, and Mitch slammed the gun against the side of his head, hard enough to hurt bad—hard enough, as it turned out, to knock him unconscious.

The point had been to gain Anson’s cooperation by convincing him that he was not dealing with the same Mitch. But this worked, too.

43

H
e ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.
Bullshit. He was Mitch’s brother, and he was heavy.

Dragging him across the polished wood floor of the kitchen and into the laundry room proved harder than Mitch expected. Hoisting him into the chair was one door away from impossible, but Mitch got it done.

The upholstered panel on the back of the chair fit between two steel verticals. Between each side of that padded panel and the frame was an open space.

He pulled Anson’s hands through those gaps. With the handcuffs that he himself had worn earlier, he shackled his brother’s wrists behind the chair.

Among the items in a utility drawer were three spare electrical extension cords. A thick orange cord was about forty feet long.

After weaving it through the chair’s legs and stretcher bars, Mitch tied it around the washing machine. Far less flexible than rope, the rubber cord would allow only loose knots, so he tied three.

Although Anson might be able to rise into a half crouch, he would have to lift the chair with him. But anchored to the washer, he could not go anywhere.

The blow with the pistol had cut his ear. He was bleeding but not heavily.

His pulse was slow but steady. He might come around quickly.

Leaving the overhead light on, Mitch went upstairs to the master bedroom. He saw what he expected: two small night-lights plugged into wall outlets, neither switched on at the moment.

As a child, Anson had slept with a lamp on low. As a teenager, he had settled for a night-light similar to these. In every room of this house, as preparation for a power failure, he kept a flashlight that received fresh batteries four times a year.

Downstairs again, Mitch glanced in the laundry room. Anson remained unconscious in the chair.

Mitch searched the kitchen drawers until he found where Anson kept keys. He plucked out a spare house key. He also took the keys for three different cars, including his Honda, and left the house by the back door.

He doubted that the neighbors could have heard the shot—or, having heard it, could have recognized it for what it was—after it had been filtered through the boom and cry of the wind at war with itself. Nevertheless, he was relieved to see no lights in the houses to either side.

He climbed the stairs to the condo above the garages and tried the door, which was locked. As he expected, the key to Anson’s house also opened this one.

Inside, he found Anson’s home office occupying space that would normally be a living room and dining area. The nautical paintings were by some of the artists featured in the front condo.

Four computer workstations were served by a single wheeled office chair. The size of the logic units, far larger than anything ordinarily seen in a home, suggested his work required rapid multitiered computation and massive data storage.

Mitch wasn’t a computer maven. He had no illusions that he could boot up these machines—if
boot up
was even a term in use anymore—and discover the nature of the work that had made his brother rich.

Besides, Anson would have layers of security, passwords and procedures, to keep out even serious hackers. He had always been delighted by the elaborate codes and arcane symbolism of the maps that pirates drew to their caches of treasure in those tales that enthralled him as a boy.

Mitch left, locked the door, and went down to the first of the garages. Here were the Expedition that he had driven to Campbell’s estate in Rancho Santa Fe and the 1947 Buick Super Woody Wagon.

In the other two-car garage were an empty stall and Mitch’s Honda, which he had left on the street.

Perhaps Anson had stored it here after driving it to Orange and taking two of Mitch’s garden tools as well as some of his clothes, to Daniel and Kathy’s place to murder them, and then to Mitch’s again to plant the incriminating evidence.

Mitch opened the trunk. John Knox’s body remained wrapped in the weathered canvas tarp.

The accident in the loft seemed to have happened in a long-ago time, in another life.

He returned to the first garage, started the Expedition, and moved it to the empty stall in the second garage.

After moving his Honda to park it beside the Buick wagon, he closed the big roll-up door on that garage.

Grimly, he wrestled the recalcitrant body from the trunk of the Honda. While it lay on the garage floor, he rolled the corpse out of the tarp.

Serious putrescence had not set in yet. The dead man had a sinister sweet-and-sour smell, however, that Mitch was eager to get away from.

The wind keened at the small high windows of the garage, as if it had a taste for the macabre and had blown itself a long way across the world to see Mitch at this gruesome work.

He thought that all this dragging around of bodies should have about it a quality of farce, especially considering that Knox was stiff with rigor mortis and hellaciously cumbersome. But at the moment he had a serious case of laugh-deficit disorder.

After he had loaded Knox into the Buick wagon and closed the tailgate, he folded the tarp and put it in the trunk of the Honda. Eventually he would dispose of it in a Dumpster or in a stranger’s trash can.

He couldn’t recall ever having been this exhausted: physically, mentally, emotionally. His eyes felt singed, his joints half-melted, his muscles fully cooked and tender enough to fall off the bone.

Maybe the sugar and caffeine in the Hershey’s bars prevented his engine from stalling. Fear fueled him, too. But what most kept his wheels turning was the thought of Holly in the hands of monsters.

Till death us do part
was the stated commitment in their vows. For Mitch, however, the loss of her would not release him. The commitment would endure. The rest of his life would pass in patient waiting.

He walked the alleyway to the street, returned to the Chrysler Windsor, and drove it back to the second garage. He parked it beside the Expedition and closed the roll-down door.

He consulted his wristwatch—4:09.

In ninety minutes, maybe a little longer, maybe a little less, the furious wind would blow dawn in from the east. Because of dust flung high into the atmosphere, the first light would be pink, and it would rapidly squall across the heavens, fading to the color of a more mature sky as it was blown toward the sea.

Since he had met Holly, he had greeted every day with great expectations. This day was different.

He returned to the house and found Anson awake in the laundry room, and in a mood.