There was an awkward pause. It was obvious he wanted to say more.
‘May I ask why you are looking into this now, after all these years?’
Evan hesitated.
‘I, uh—’
Anthony held up a hand to stop him.
‘You don’t have to tell me if you’ve been asked not to. I’ve got a pretty good idea anyway.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s not rocket science. I’m an old man myself, I know what it’s like as you grow older. You look back on your life and all the what ifs come screaming into your mind. All those bad decisions you made come back to haunt you. Depending on the kind of man you are, you might try to make amends.’
Evan gave a small you-got-me dip of the head.
‘You’re very philosophical about all this.’
‘One of the few advantages of growing old. You learn to accept the things that can’t be changed. And don’t worry, it’ll come to you one day as well.’
A shiver ran down Evan’s neck, his palms suddenly moist. Was he talking about Sarah? The way he was looking at him, that small smile on his lips, something he couldn’t put his finger on in his eyes, made him think so.
‘Just one more question.’
The small smile on Anthony’s lips became a mischievous grin.
‘I thought you’d never ask. I still keep in touch with the investigator. His name’s Elwood Crow. He’s even older than me, but his mind’s as sharp as it ever was. You might learn something from him. Who knows, maybe he can help you out with some other things as well.’
Anthony Fox wrote Crow’s number on a slip of paper and sent Evan on his way, feeling as if he’d been turned inside out for the whole world to see.
Chapter 24
EVAN PULLED INTO THE driveway of Carl Hendricks’ farm, Beau Terre, and parked in the yard behind the house that separated it from the burned-out barns. He cut the engine and sat listening to the silence, not even the sound of birds in the trees breaking it.
The house was in darkness, the power cut off when Hendricks moved out to take up residence at the state’s expense. The windows were dark. He shivered, alert to the slightest sound. Floyd Gray might be hiding inside, watching him, just as he had hidden, watching, on the night he discovered Hendricks’ secret chamber and its grisly contents.
He was being paranoid. There was no need to be careless as well. He felt exposed, out in the open, the car advertising his presence. He started it up and drove back out, making a right turn and driving a half-mile until he came to a dirt road that lead into a wooded area. This was where he’d hidden the car here last time he came here. He backed in, all the way to a five-bar gate with a rusted-up padlock on it. The car was invisible unless you were looking for it. Then he jogged back down the road to the farm.
A cold wind had picked up, coming off the bare fields, ruffling his hair. He turned up his collar and approached the remains of the barns, the smell of burned timbers long since gone. The smaller barn had one wall intact, somehow surviving the ravages of the fire. A few charred corner posts poked up into the air like blackened fingers. The roofs had collapsed, tiles scattered across the yard.
Most of the floor of the smaller barn had caved in, the hole half-filled with blackened rafters and broken tiles. The concrete staircase leading up from the basement below was still intact, the metal handrail Hendricks cuffed him to now twisted like a piece of expensive modern art. Mounds of rain-soaked ash lay around, most of it scattered across the fields by the wind long ago. Straggly weeds sprouted in the fertile, ash-rich earth.
He picked his way through the debris, stared down into the hole. The fire had consumed the posts supporting the basement ceiling and a couple tons of earth had caved in on top. Even if there was a lower level basement under all that, he’d never dig it out in a month of Sundays. He hunkered down at the top of the staircase and shone the flashlight from his phone into the gloom. It didn’t penetrate far enough to see anything. He took hold of the handrail and shook it. Despite being twisted, it was solid enough, so he leaned forward and downwards, peering into the hole.
A patch of deeper darkness on the far side might have been the entrance to the chamber where Hendricks interred Daniel and Robbie Clayton. Or the other one where he found the Zippo lighter. It didn’t matter, he wasn’t interested in the ones he knew about, the ones he’d been in.
He pushed himself upright and looked for somewhere to wipe the soot off his hand, ended up lifting his leg and wiping it on his sock. He turned a full circle, cursing Matt Faulkner for setting the barns on fire, making everything so much more difficult. He would never find anything from out here. He’d have to approach it from inside the house, hope some of the underground tunnels were intact.
He paced the area between the barns and the house slowly, eyes sweeping the ground in front of him. It was flat and firm, no depressions marking the route of the tunnel he knew joined the house to the barns. Standing in the middle, he looked left and right, calculated the most likely route and stamped around on the ground. It was rock solid, no hint of subsidence, no sudden caving-in, tipping him into a yawning chasm.
Something caught his eye, half-hidden under the stairs that led up to the wraparound porch. He bent and picked it up. A bone, well-chewed, tiny scraps of meat still clinging to the slimy surface. It hadn’t been there long or the rats would’ve had it—unless there was something living here that kept the rats away. Memories of a single, whispered word made his breath catch in his throat.
Marlene.
He threw the bone back under the stairs, wiped his fingers on his pants, and slowly climbed the stairs up to the porch, testing his weight on each tread. Empty beer bottles were strewn around, crumpled cigarette butts in a plastic cup. It might be kids, hanging out at the creepy old farmhouse, scaring each other with stories about what happened in the secret chamber under the barns.
He had a sudden, vivid flashback to the last time he was here, creeping up the stairs from the basement to the barn, then Carl Hendricks’ sneering voice.
Help you with something?
He whirled around. There was nobody there.
His cell phone rang, making him jump. He ignored it, let it go voicemail. Thirty seconds later, a text message arrived. His imagination went into overdrive—another message from Hendricks’ buddy?
I can see you.
The flesh on the back of his neck crawled, the wind finding its way inside his collar, making him shiver. He pulled out his phone and stared at the screen.
Guillory.
He dropped the phone back in his pocket, feeling stupid. He didn’t want to talk to her now. She’d want to know where he was, what he was up to, and that was a conversation he wasn’t ready for.
He got the Zippo lighter out, ran his thumb over the inscription to remind himself why he was here. Remind himself why he deliberately deceived Guillory about the emails and texts from Hendricks. Why he deliberately ignored the evidence of his own eyes pointing to Floyd Gray living at this house, right now, with Marlene, his beautiful, sleek, killer of a dog.
He crossed the porch and stood in front of the back door, the sound of his blood loud in his ears. It was exactly like the last time he was here. Alone. Nobody knew he was here. The only difference was, this time, Carl Hendricks had deliberately lured him here with his taunting messages.
Don’t worry, it will all be over soon.
Would he ever reach that state of grace Anthony Fox promised he would, the ability to accept the things that can’t be changed?
He tried the back-door handle.
It was unlocked, as he knew it would be. He pushed the door open, his ears alert for the sound of a low growl in Marlene’s throat, his own throat constricting as if her teeth were already clamped around it, and stepped inside.
***
THE KITCHEN SMELLED OF stale cigarettes, moldy fast food containers and wet dog. It was empty. Even so, somebody was definitely living there. He relaxed, his shoulders dropping from up a
round his ears, and looked around. Nothing had been touched since he was here last. No attempt made to clean it, tidy it, with a view to selling.
Last time he was here, there’d been a ring of spare keys in one of the kitchen drawers. He searched them now, found them and locked the back door, left the key half-turned in the lock to stop anybody unlocking the door from the outside.
Once bitten twice shy.
Something caught his eye that definitely hadn’t been there before. Leaning against the wall was a takedown recurve bow. Without cams or pulleys, it was a thing of deadly beauty—the last time he’d seen one, it was being used to bring down kids and teachers in a school gym in the movie We Need To Talk About Kevin. He picked it up and tried it, surprised at the amount of strength it took. You could shoot an arrow straight through a grizzly bear and out the other side.
What kind of game did Floyd Gray hunt with it, sending Marlene to despatch anything that tried to crawl away and die?
He went through into the hallway, hesitated at the top of the stairs that led down into the basement. He tried the light switch because it was there. The power was off as he’d thought. He got out his phone again and turned on the flashlight. It did a better job of illuminating the stairs than it had outside in the open air. It still wasn’t great. He didn’t know how quickly it would run down the battery. He checked the display—about a third left. Hopefully it would be enough.
He took the stairs slowly, concentrating the beam in front of him. The basement hadn’t been touched. Lumber stacked in bays against one wall, a workbench along another, shelving on the other two sides. The false shelf unit with the hidden door behind it was wedged open with a piece of lumber. Beyond that, the tunnel that led to the other basement, the one under the barns, was in darkness. At the far end was another door, the room behind it now open to the elements.
He found a heavy-duty broom in the rack with the lumber and crept forward into the mouth of the tunnel. He swept it from side to side with one hand, clearing away the layer of dust and loose dirt on the floor as he went, his phone in his other hand. He got all the way to the end but didn’t find a trapdoor or a grill concealing an entrance to a lower level. He tried the door at the far end. It wouldn’t budge. There was a couple tons of damp earth piled up against it. It was that mound of earth that had stopped the fire from burning through the door and spreading into the main house.
The doorframe was twisted and skewed. A crack of light showed through the top right corner where the door sagged. A steady stream of air flowed in. He twisted his head and saw the sky above. He smelled the dampness at this end. Last time he was here, everything was bone dry. Since then, months of rain had soaked into everything, the timbers eagerly sucking up the moisture.
As if on cue, there was a loud creak from above his head, halfway back down the tunnel. He froze, then angled the beam of his phone upwards. The ceiling was lined with six-inch wide wooden planks, supported by wooden posts. Some of the planks were bowed, gaps showing between them. He hadn’t looked up last time, didn’t know if they’d always been that way.
Then another, louder creak, and a handful of dirt dropped from between the planks immediately above his head, falling into his hair, fine dust getting in his eyes. A longer groan made him spin around as one of the supporting posts flexed. Or was it just the distorting, flickering effect of the phone’s flashlight?
It was the next noise that made the creaks and groans of the old timbers sound like angels singing sweetly in his ear, made the prospect of being buried alive under a ton of earth and timber something to look forward to—car tires crunching on gravel above his head. The whole ceiling trembled as the car passed, more dirt and dust falling through the cracks. The tunnel had been built in the days when the heaviest thing driving over it would have been a horse and cart. He strained his neck, tried to see through the crack. The angle was all wrong, he couldn’t see a thing.
Two car doors opened at once.
What the hell? Was the realtor showing a prospective purchaser around? Or had Floyd Gray found himself a partner—or maybe taught Marlene how to open the door.
His overactive imagination pictured a finger held against lips, while another pointed at the door he hid behind.
The sudden squawk of a radio from inside the car told him it was none of those things. It was the police. A nosy neighbor must have seen him drive in, drive out and sneak back on foot, then called it in. Thank God he’d hidden his car. He wasn’t doing anything wrong—the back door had been open—it was just he didn’t want to answer a bunch of awkward questions if he didn’t have to.
Footsteps approached the hole, the two cops talking loudly the whole time. He felt them peering in as he had, imagined the curious looks on their faces.
A strong beam of light flicked across the small crack above the door, moving fast, not lingering. He pushed himself hard into the wall. He needn’t have worried, it was already gone. The post he hit creaked under his weight, more dust dropping into his hair.
There was a hissed command.
Shush
The beam of light played more slowly and carefully around the space on the other side of the door.
‘Nothing,’ one of the cops said. ‘There’s a door. Could be a tunnel leads back to the house. Must be right under us.’
They both stamped around on the ground above Evan’s head. More dirt fell through the cracks, wood creaked. Were they trying to feel if the ground moved, or cave some more of it in completely?
‘I’ll try the front, you take the back,’ the other one said.
Evan smiled to himself, feeling smug he’d locked the back door. Shit. He hadn’t tried the front door. It might be unlocked. There was nothing he could do about it now. One of the cops tried the back door, rattled the handle a couple of times. Evan pictured him shining his flashlight through the kitchen window, playing it around the room. He prayed the other one had the same luck, wasn’t at this very moment creeping down the basement stairs.
He was in luck. The two cops met back at their cruiser.
‘Back door’s locked.’
‘Front too.’
Evan took a deep breath, let it out slowly, his heart thumping loud enough for them to hear.
‘Reckon it’s some sicko. Come to get himself a souvenir.’
‘I don’t know. Looks like somebody’s living here. And I saw a half-eaten bone over by the porch.’
‘Could be the critters.’
‘Maybe. I don’t know how whoever’s living here gets in. There’s no sign of a break-in.’
‘You think he’s in there now?’
Evan pictured a shrug, hoped it was accompanied by a bored look on the guy’s face, like who really cares? He was out of luck. The cops were either new and keen or just bored, liked the thought of rousting a vagrant for a bit of fun, maybe dust off the nightsticks.
‘Woman who called it in said the guy drove in, drove out again, then snuck back on foot.’
‘Like he’s up to something. We should take a drive, see if we can find the car. He can’t have left it far. We’ll wait for him there.’
They got back in their cruiser and drove off. Evan prayed they turned left onto the street. He knew they wouldn’t. His luck didn’t work like that. They’d turn right and find the car in two minutes flat now they were looking for it.
He had to get out of here. He made a fast dash down the tunnel and out into the main basement under the house. Nothing fell in on top of him, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He kicked away the piece of lumber and swung the false shelf section over the hidden door. He had a feeling in his gut the answer didn’t lie that way. If there was a lower level, it was here, under the house.
He just hadn’t found it yet.
***
THE POLICE CRUISER WAS parked on the shoulder, blocking the entrance to the dirt road where he’d half-hidden his car, as he’d known it would be. The two cops got out and leaned on the hood of their car, arms folded across their chests to show off t
heir big arm muscles to their best effect. They wore identical mirrored aviator sunglasses above the mocking smiles.
‘Like to tell us what you were doing in there?’
There wasn’t any point playing dumb. They’d watched him walk out the driveway of Hendricks’ farm from the comfort of their cruiser.
‘Nothing. Just looking around.’
‘Looking around? Thought you might buy the place, eh? What are you, some sick bastard wants a souvenir?’
His partner rested his hand on his nightstick, fingers flexing.
‘We can give you one if you like. How about a broken nose? That’d be a nice memento.’
The cop came off the hood of the car and poked Evan on the shoulder.
‘You didn’t answer the question. What were you doing?’
Should he tell them who he was? Tell them he was the one brought Hendricks to justice in the first place. They’d never believe him.
Another poke on the shoulder, harder this time.
‘You living there?’
Evan shook his head.
‘Maybe he’s the guy burned down the barns.’
Evan laughed. Everybody knew Matt Faulkner did it, even if nobody could—or wanted—to prove it. Most people, including the police, thought it was good riddance.
‘You think that’s funny, do you?’
‘Maybe he came back to burn down the house too,’ the other one said. ‘Reckon we ought to take this guy in.’
They both took a step towards Evan, getting right in his face. He held up his hands.
‘Whoa. This is getting out of hand. We all know who burned down the barns and it wasn’t me.’
‘Turn around.’
‘I was the one found—’
‘I said turn around.’
The Evan Buckley Thrillers: Books 1 - 4 (Evan Buckley Thrillers Boxsets) Page 69