by Alan Spencer
“That man I told you about,” Officer Wright said. “The one that killed all those cops earlier. That was Ted Lindsey too. He was here, then he vanished into the red light. You think he’s coming back?”
The words shot out of Morty’s mouth, “Of course he’s coming back!”
Officer Wright was so startled by the sudden outburst that he shot a jet of mace into Morty’s eyes.
“Fuck! Ahhhhhh fuck! Why’d you do that? Asshole. Asshole. You stupid asshole!”
Morty hit the ground. His was rubbing furiously at his eyes. No matter what he did, the pain increased. It felt like paprika powder was thrown into his eyeballs.
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. He scared me. Everybody’s so jumpy.”
Cheyenne tended to her father. “I’m going to get some water. We have to wash that stuff out of his eyes. You two make a great team, you know that, officers?”
She rushed into the kitchen, stopped at the sink, and fumbled in the cupboards for a glass of water to pour into her father’s eyes. When she found a glass, she turned on the tap.
Bruce, holding a rag wet with blood to his bicep wound, realized too late what would happen. “Cheyenne, no! Remember what happened to me earlier?”
Cheyenne turned on the faucet. Long earthworms slithered from the faucet, mixed with clods of soil. “Oh my God!”
The smell was atrocious. Cheyenne saw a half rotted nose. A deflated eyeball attached to connective tissue that resembled old rope. Individual teeth. She turned before seeing anything more. It was just too much!
Bruce grabbed the couch coverlet, ran to her kitchen, and covered the writhing worms and mess up. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Bruce turned Cheyenne away from the sink. “Come on, let’s help Morty. There’s nothing we can do here. Maybe there’s water in the fridge.”
Detective Larson said not to open the fridge.
“Stay away from the fridge. Trust me on that one. Things seem to be popping out of everything.”
Bruce looked on the floor finding shattered ketchup bottles and broken glass.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Bruce said, helping Cheyenne back into the room. “You going to be okay, Morty?’
Morty was in the corner with his back against the wall. He used his shirt to rub at his eyes. The pain was incredible.
“What if that was a gun instead of a can of mace? You people could’ve accidentally shot any one of us because of your nerves. And why does that stupid reporter get a gun? If you haven’t noticed, she’s pointing it right at me.”
Janet noticed the barrel of the 9mm was in fact pointed at Morty, though her hand was resting against the top of her leg. She had done it unconsciously. Maybe.
Detective Larson made a proposal.
“How about we promise to be calm. Nobody yells at anybody. I put my gun away, my buddy puts his away, and you too, Janet, you put that bad boy 9mm on the arm of the couch. We have a lot to talk about. The faster we do it, the faster we get to the bottom of things. The faster we might be able to leave.”
“I don’t trust Morty,” Janet insisted, keeping the gun tight in her hand. And it stayed trained on Morty. “You see, I visited him the other day. He invited me into his house. He was lying in bed because he was sick. He said he’d do anything to help the investigation of his wife’s disappearance. I was asking questions, then the old man launches out of the bed, grabs my breast and assaults me.”
“I did no such thing! You’re full of incredible stories, aren’t you, reporter bitch? I never let you into my home. I wouldn’t dream of it after that article you wrote full of lies. You made me look like I was insane. I should sue your ass, lady. You’re a liar!”
Janet gripped the 9mm.
Her intentions were clear.
“Stay the fuck away from me, Mr. Saggs. Don’t. Come. Near. Me. I’ll shoot you dead. If you killed your wife, you could easily kill me.”
“How dare you?”
Morty’s eyes were irritated raw, making him look like a fuming maniac.
Cheyenne pointed a stern finger at Janet. “Morty’s the victim here. You’ve been no help to anybody.”
“Oh bullshit. Nobody wants to believe their father is capable of murdering anybody, but I know otherwise. My hunches are correct.”
“Your hunches are correct?” Morty was cornered by Bruce who kept telling him to cool it. “You haven’t been sniffing leads. You’ve been sniffing your own ass, lady. I’ve done absolutely nothing to anybody. I know how you reporters are! Whatever preconceived notions you have about me, you better start shaking them, because you’re so very wrong about me.”
“It’s your fault the detective hounded my father so hard,” Cheyenne accused. “You’ve got nothing better to do than make somebody’s tragedy even worse for your own personal gain. You make me sick.”
“Morty assaulted me,” Janet said. “He hurt me. It happened.”
“Bullshit,” Bruce said. “When did he have the chance?”
“I haven’t laid a finger on you,” Morty insisted.
Janet unbuttoned her top. She parted her bra to show her bruised breast. The nipple was covered in bandages. The bandages were spotting red.
“He grabbed me. The man was screaming nonsense at me. He leaped out of bed as if to rape me.”
“Now you’re saying Morty wanted to rape you!” Bruce was aghast. “You’ve got something coming to you all right.”
The pain in Morty’s eyes was still intense, but something rang true to him. He remembered the days he couldn’t leave the bed. The days the doorway was messing with his mind.
Morty had to ask Janet a question.
“Janet, was I in bed when you say I did this? Did I get up to answer the door? Was anybody else home at the time?”
“Nobody else was home. You called me from upstairs, and you sounded all nice and friendly. Too bad it was all a set-up. I took your bait hook, line and sinker.”
“You swear I did this to you?”
“Quit talking like you didn’t do anything wrong. Yes, I swear on my dead mother’s grave. It was you who assaulted me. You’re a monster. You killed your wife, and I will prove it.”
“I DIDN’T KILL MY WIFE!!!”
Detective Larson fired a round into the ceiling. It quieted everybody. The detective was done with the public relations campaign. Forget diplomacy. This was his show and he was going to run it to his liking.
“Give me the gun, Janet. Now.”
“But Morty will—”
“Right now. I can handle Morty, if need be.”
Instead of waiting for Janet to give up the gun, Larson forced it from her hand.
“Thank you. Let’s put things in perspective. None of the doors in this house will open. The windows are impenetrable. We’re not getting out of here until we figure out some things. We must work together. Now Janet, you said you saw a corpse upstairs?”
“Two corpses,” Janet corrected.
“Okay, two corpses. I want to have a look around with you up there soon. Do you know much about the Deborah Lindsey case?”
“You mean about what happened at The Interrogation House?”
“There’s that name again,” Morty said. “Why do you keep calling my home The Interrogation House? Everybody seems to know all about it except for me and my daughter.”
The detective decided to play it straight with the hard truth. “Ten years ago, before you lived in this house, I answered a call here. Deborah Lindsey was found dead in her upstairs bedroom.”
“So somebody died in my house?” Morty posed. “It happens. People are killed on properties all the time. What’s special this time around?”
“What’s so special is that this house, right now, matches the murder scene that night. This house is as it was ten years ago on the day Deborah Lindsey was murdered.
It doesn’t do much to explain the red doorways—”
“It sure as shit doesn’t,” Bruce said. “None of this scary crap makes sense. I’m going to bleed to death before we figure it out. And even if we do figure this out, does that mean we get to leave? It’s like we’re playing a game without the rules.”
“I might have a strong idea about what’s going on here,” Larson said. “And it has to do with Deborah’s husband, Ted. Do you know why they call this house The Interrogation House?”
“I sure don’t,” Morty said. “I never knew anything about anybody dying in my house ever until now.”
“That’s because what happened here ten years ago was pretty sick. People in town still talk about it sometimes, but they don’t have the whole story, which is why you don’t know the sick history of this house, Morty. Nobody knows everything, except for the unlucky few, like me. But I’m going to tell you all about it, because it was my case. And it was a case that went cold. I failed to solve Deborah’s murder. And now it seems we’ve all been summoned to solve it ourselves, or we all die. I understand why it chose me, but I don’t understand why everybody else here is involved.”
Larson didn’t realize how much clarity his statement gave to everybody in the room. The words were just came out of his lips. The explanation quieted everybody.
“So let me tell you why they call this house what they do. Then we can get on with putting our heads together and getting the hell out of here.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Ted Lindsey was scraping together money to make a living. He was a do-it-yourself guy. He hired himself out as a jack of all trades in the neighborhood. He re-shingled houses, performed basic plumbing work, painted houses and put down sod. His wife, Deborah, was a schoolteacher. They were in their early thirties and thinking about having children. They were both well-to-do people, honest and hard working. So Ted and Deborah had lived in this area for about a couple of years. They established themselves in the community. They went to church and had many friends.
“Nothing went wrong until that night about ten years ago. Ted frequented the bar downtown on Friday nights. People bought each other beers back then, because the community was a lot smaller ten years ago. Everybody knew everybody. One Friday night, Ted comes home late. He’s in walking distance from the bar, so he goes home on foot. All the while, he’s enjoying the night air and taking in his buzz.
“Between approximately one-thirty and two a.m., Ted arrives home. All the house lights are still on. Deborah was known to leave the porch light and kitchen lights on so Ted wouldn’t trip over himself in the dark. She knew what he did at the bar, and that was drink himself silly. But it strikes Ted as odd that all the lights are on. Even the television is on in the living room. Ted goes inside, turns off the TV, but when he enters the living room, he notices the back door through the kitchen is wide open. Ted calls out for his wife, and she doesn’t answer. Ted cases the house, and it isn’t until he arrives upstairs in his bedroom that he finds Deborah Lindsey on the ground, dead. She’s bleeding from the back of the head. The murder weapon was left in the room. A nine iron golf club was used to smash in her skull.
“Ted’s devastated. He calls the police, and things are set in motion. I was called onto the crime scene, and there was no evidence. I mean no fingerprints, traces of blood or anything stolen. My guess, it was a botched burglary. Odd though, how the person didn’t steal anything. Deborah’s fine jewelry was on the vanity near her dead body and not a single thing was taken. I couldn’t make sense of it.
“I ask Ted questions down at the station. The man’s not in a good place. He can barely speak, and he’s jittery. I would say it was suspicious, but it was the man’s nerves, in this case. So I let Ted go. The case goes on, and I find no new evidence, witnesses, or any leads. Even the reward put up for information in regards to Deborah’s death didn’t award a single phone call. That has never happened before. Even the crackpots who always call in attempting to cash in on reward money didn’t do so this time. Not a soul called.
“I’m doing everything I can do to put together a case, and I’m getting nowhere. No fingerprints, no footprints, no blood, no real witnesses, no nothing. The case goes cold. After so many months with nothing, you can’t proceed. New cases come in. You can only hope a witness turns up or a piece of the puzzle falls from the sky and onto your desk. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Meanwhile, Ted goes off the deep end. Nobody knew this until it was too late. The man kept working, fixing people’s leaky faucets, loose gutters, and performing basic home maintenance for the neighborhood. Ted has as much work as he wanted. Everybody in the community was pulling for Ted.
“Ted put on a good show. He wore his nice man in the community face during the day, but during the night, he tore that mask off. While he was doing odd jobs at people’s houses, he was compiling facts, observations and clues. After everything was said and done, I found fifty spiral notebooks full of notations that didn’t make sense. How people looked at him. The arrangements of people’s bedrooms. He was obsessed with rooms and how objects were put together. Ted was clearly going off the deep end.
“I wish the man would’ve stuck to his simple observations, but the guy took it to the next level. When he got home after a long day, Ted didn’t take off his work clothes. He stalked the streets, following anybody he suspected could’ve harmed his wife. Ted became a detective and vigilante. He kidnapped people and took them into the basement of his house. He built a small room made of bricks. From the outside, it was virtually soundproof. Ted placed a table in that room where he asked innocent people questions about Deborah’s death. He kept them chained to the floor by the ankles. Even if they escaped, the door out of the room was triple padlocked from the inside, and Ted was the only one with the key.
“If Ted wasn’t hearing what he wanted, and he never did, because he’d gone completely insane with grief, he would drive nails through the person’s hands. He tortured people for hours on end. Ted would bash toes out with hammers. Dip people’s feet in boiling pots of water. He resorted to ripping out fingernails. Busting kneecaps. He murdered fourteen people by the time someone witnessed Ted kidnap a local in the neighborhood. When the police busted in on his house, the man had torture tools lined up on the walls of his basement. Things I couldn’t even tell you what they did. Some crazy shit.
“Ted insisted the person he had in the concrete room was his wife’s killer. He had a knife held to their throat. We were at a standoff in his basement. I was on the staircase, and he was standing in the threshold of the concrete room. Ted kept saying, “One more time. I only need one more chance. I’ll prove this bastard killed my wife! Just give me an hour. Maybe two.” Things got out of control real fast. Ted made a move to stab this poor random guy he selected from the street when I shot him. Ted takes the shot in the shoulder. He slashes his victim’s throat, then he dodges my next shot. He darts across the room, finds a sledgehammer and starts breaking down the brick walls in a fury. Ted was going mad. After bashing the brick wall into rubble, he came at me with the weapon, so I had to shoot him again. That second shot ended Ted’s life. He died right here in the basement.
“Things were bad enough already, but there’s more to the story. Ted accumulated bodies during his so-called investigations. We found a corpse in the refrigerator. Another corpse was placed in the upstairs bathtub, buried in dirt. Ted had built a sandbox in the yard before Deborah had passed. They were going to have children, like I said. Two bodies were buried under the sand. Most of the victims, he drove to Hillsdale Lake and dumped them, though from a criminal’s standpoint, he was smart enough to weigh down the legs with cinder blocks to keep them from floating to the surface. We checked the lake on a tip. Somebody had seen Ted driving in his work van around the area late at night numerous times.”
Detective Larson paused a moment.
It took a lot out of him to tell the story.
“Whe
n I crossed through that red doorway, I was, I don’t know, displaced, into that fridge in the kitchen. I was trapped inside with one of Ted’s murdered bodies. Janet said Deborah’s body was lying upstairs. And Officer Wright saw Ted murder the rest of his fellow officers. Look, I know this sounds crazy, and it is, by God it’s bat shit crazy, but we’ve been summoned here to solve Deborah’s murder once and for all. And I think one of us is responsible for her death.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Detective Larson expected an outburst from everybody in the group. He indirectly accused everybody of murder. His words had the opposite expected effect. Everybody was silenced. Larson knew this was his chance to reclaim control of the situation. Considering Officer Wright was such a young pup, and everybody else was too scared to be a leader, the detective chose his next words carefully. These people needed a job, a role to play in the situation, and if they didn’t have one, they would argue with each other pointlessly until somebody, or everybody, ended up dead.
“I want to take a look upstairs with Janet. I’ll inspect Deborah’s body for myself. If this house is as it was that night she was murdered, I have to look for new evidence. We have to give these living corpses what they want, or we’ll end up like Hannah. Officer Wright, I want you to stay down here with the others. Keep everybody safe. Try the doors and windows again. After that, stay put and stay calm.”
Morty and Bruce were muttering things to each other. Both of their eyes shifted between Janet and Officer Wright. They were hatching a plan, and the detective knew it.
Larson had to keep them in check.
“Bruce, you stay here. You’re wounded, and I don’t want you expending anymore energy than you need to right now. Morty, I want you upstairs as extra backup in case anything funny should happen. Everybody else, do as I say. Does everybody understand what’s been asked of them?”
Cheyenne didn’t like the plan.
“I don’t want you to leave me, Dad. I’m so scared.”