Deception

by Randy Alcorn

  Thump. No denying the noise, but it sounded more distant and higher. Mouth full, I set down the jar and moved the recliner forward as Mulch attacked the back door.

  I reached underneath the recliner on the left side and pulled out my SIG-Sauer, removing the duct tape. With my right hand I grabbed my Glock out of its shoulder holster, lying on the coffee table. People occasionally have good reasons to be on my front porch. Never the back. Like young Kevin Costner in Silverado, I was going out a two-fisted gunman, covering both sides. And for good measure, I put on my Baby Glock ankle holster, which may have looked a little funny considering I was in my boxers.

  I walked to the kitchen, mouth dry with peanut butter. I moved past Mulch, peering out the new, clean window. Nothing. Same thing I’d seen before a shotgun blast nearly answered my questions about the afterlife.

  I opened the door slowly and stepped out, nudging it shut with the Glock’s barrel. I heard a shuffling noise in the garage, six feet to my right. If these were mice, they must be fifty-pounders.

  I pivoted, pointing both guns at the roof. I stepped backward to the edge of the porch. Nothing above. Nothing in the yard. I turned toward the garage. Due to a gap at the bottom of the garage door, I’d had a cat in the garage, an occasional bird, even a possum. But when a shotgun has been recently fired at you from your back porch, you have no assurances concerning noises in your garage.

  I turned the handle to the garage door and pushed it open, hugging the side of the frame. I pointed inward, SIG in my left hand, waiting to see if it would draw fire.

  Nothing.

  I stepped into the garage, flipped on that wimpy overhead light, and treaded slowly by boxes, looking backward and forward. I hadn’t been out here since finding the nautical rope.

  The garage was still. I heard nothing. Elvis, framed in the corner shadows, looked like he wanted to warn me. Just then I realized I’d looked forward, backward, and down. I looked up just as something dropped around my neck.

  I was choking, unable to breathe, spitting out chunks of Ritz crackers and peanut butter. My legs were flailing wildly, as if detached from my body. I was dangling a foot above the concrete floor. I heard my gun bounce beneath me. Something was pulling me up. A noose. I was suffocating.

  I heard a noise above me, quick movement, and the sense of someone coming down a ladder ten feet away in the shadows, then rushing by under me. I thought I saw a ski mask, but wasn’t sure. Whoever it was exited out the door I’d entered.

  Hanging there in my boxer shorts, time seemed to slow as I contemplated what a humiliating way to die this would be. I pictured my detective colleagues taking my photograph, Kim Suda laughing at my underwear and Cimmatoni shaking his head in disgust. I even saw Carlton Hatch looking at my body—a still, blue corpse—then in a moment of drama declaring my death. I hoped Carp wouldn’t see me this way and, above all, Kendra.

  I tried to scream as I dangled. What came upon me next was a profound fear: that Jake and Clarence were right. And I was too late to do anything about it. Sharon had sensed light and comfort shortly before she died. I felt only darkness and dread.

  The more I fought the rope, the quicker my life eked away. The garage light dimmed completely. I lost all hope. Suddenly, a voice spoke inside my head.

  Your gun.

  I sensed something in my right hand. It seemed impossible I hadn’t dropped it. The SIG had fallen from my left hand, but my grip on the Glock had tightened. It felt like part of my hand. Somehow I managed to pull it upward. I put the barrel an inch from the rope above my head. Despite the dimness, I saw an old wasp’s nest and a spiderweb.

  I tried to find my trigger finger and move it, then heard an explosion. The recoil nearly knocked the gun from my weakened hand. I pointed it at the rope again and fired, hanging on. Nothing. My feet were still a foot above the garage floor. Finally, darkness enveloping me, in what I knew was my last chance I lifted the gun again, put the barrel near the rope, and pulled the trigger.

  Still hearing the explosion, I felt my feet touch ground and my dead weight crumble onto concrete. Simultaneously, I felt relief on my throat and severe pain in my lower body. I felt and heard, in the same awful moment, my head hit the concrete. In the split second before unconsciousness, I knew I was slipping into a pool of darkness, either sleep or death.

  27

  “It is cocaine, a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?”

  SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE SIGN OF FOUR

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9:00 A.M.

  SOMETIMES IN THE NIGHT wind I hear the world groaning like it knows it was made for something better. I see it in Mulch’s eyes. He knows something’s wrong. When I flip past those lame reality shows with pathetic people unveiling their emptiness for everyone to see, it’s like they’re crying out, “Something’s wrong, and I don’t know how to make it better; will somebody help me?”

  These vague notions swirling in my brain suddenly gave way to the blurred image of Jake Woods.

  “What happened?”

  I was talking, but what I heard wasn’t me. I sounded like one of those cowboys in the movies that survived a hanging and never got his voice back. My normal voice wasn’t much different, come to think of it.

  Seeing Jake above me, I wondered if he’d died too.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Jake said. “It was a close one.”

  “How …?”

  “Your neighbor, Mr. Obrist, heard the shots. He found you in your garage. He loosened the rope around your neck and called 911.”

  “Where?”

  “Emmanuel Hospital. They just moved you from Emergency.”

  “Throat … sore.”

  “Yeah,” Clarence said, obscuring the ceiling light. “That comes with being hung.”

  “Making fun of me?”

  “No,” Clarence said. “If we were making fun of you, we’d be mentioning your boxer shorts.”

  “We’ve been praying for you,” Jake said. “We didn’t want to lose you.”

  It was a tender moment of male bonding, so I said, “Get me a beer?”

  “Can’t do that,” Jake said. “But I think I can manage water.”

  “Ice chips,” a kind voice said.

  I looked up and it was a young brown-haired nurse whose name tag said “Emily Arnold.” She tipped the ice chips to my mouth. I took them in and they felt good, until water made its way down to my throat. I flinched.

  “I’ll get the doctor,” she said.

  The doctor was apparently playing the back nine, so it was just me and Clarence and Jake. I told them the part of the story they didn’t know; they told me the rest. Nurse Emily came back and checked on me a few more times. She seemed smarter and more helpful than a doctor anyway. When I asked when I could eat onion rings again, she thought it would be within a few days. That’s my kind of nurse.

  When she left, Jake said, “I’m so thankful.”

  “That somebody lynched me in my own garage?”

  “That you weren’t killed.”

  “And here I was wondering why God thought He needed to hang me.”

  “So instead of thanking God, you’re blaming Him?” Clarence said.

  “It was a miracle,” Jake said. “God saved your life.”

  “Didn’t I save my own life by shooting the rope?”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Jake said.

  “Yeah. The wrong way,” Clarence said. “The doctor told us it’s nearly impossible for you to have held on to the gun in the first place—and then to have fired it right through the rope?”

  “I’m a man who does the impossible,” I whispered. “What can I say?”

  “You can say, ‘Thank You, God,’ ” Jake said. “Because if He hadn’t kept that gun in your hand and steadied it in front of that rope and given you strength to pull the trigger, you’d be dead.”

  “God’s given you another chance,” Clarence said.

  “Another chance to get this killer.”

  “Anoth
er chance,” Jake said, “to prepare for the death you narrowly escaped.”

  Two hours later Manny and Sergeant Seymour came to my room. Despite getting the evil eye from the new nurse on shift, they explained how someone had screwed my own block and tackle unit into the upper storage platform of my garage. This jury-rigged gallows had taken a half hour’s work anyway, so when I heard the noise, it was exactly when he wanted me to hear it, to lure me out to the garage. He had every intention of hanging me. That I was in my underwear was an unanticipated bonus.

  “Let me get this straight,” Manny said. “You had a gun in your hand, and you saw the person who hung you running out the door—and you didn’t fire at him?”

  I explained that I didn’t know I had the gun, but it sounded lame. Finally I said, “Wait until you get hung, then you’ll understand.”

  Manny had talked with all my neighbors, including the Obrists, and no one had seen the guy. Naturally.

  “We’re considering posting a guard at your house,” Sarge said.

  “What? I can take care of myself.”

  “You got assaulted by a guy in your backyard, someone unloaded a shotgun at you, and now you were hung in your garage? I’m thinking maybe you can’t take care of yourself.”

  I pleaded with him not to do it. I’m the type of guy who protects people, not who’s protected by them. I mean, did Green Lantern have a bodyguard?

  “You’re just lucky you’re alive,” Sarge said.

  After they left, I lay there in that empty room, wondering if it was more than luck. I thought about what Jake and Clarence had said. And in case anyone was listening, as I slipped into a semidrugged sleep, I whispered, “Thank You.”

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14

  When the Friday afternoon examination showed no damage beyond a raw neck and a bruised trachea, a six-inch melon bruise on the right side of my head, a gash in my knee, and a general sense that I’d been pushed through a cheese shredder, the doctor reluctantly gave in to my pleas to go home to Mulch, provided I wear the protective collar around my neck and stay home for three days.

  I solemnly agreed.

  I kept my promise for one evening, but Saturday morning I couldn’t sleep, so I was first on the detective floor at five thirty. Not many show up on Saturdays, so it’s a good day to work. I’ll grant that I was making another statement. Even if few people saw me working Saturday, word would spread. “Missed me again.” I sat down at the snack table, looking out the window at Portland drizzle.

  A hungry dog hunts best. Being the target of a second assassination attempt increased my hunger to capture this guy; third strike and I felt sure I’d be out.

  At six thirty a voice behind me said, “Hey, man. You don’t look so great.” It was Jack Glissan. He sat across from me, drinking something that smelled suspiciously like Earl Grey. He said, “It’s a ghost town this time of day.”

  I nodded.

  “I heard you had to wear one of those collars,” he said.

  “I gave it to Mulch. He loves foam rubber. I’ll clean up the shreds tonight.”

  “You haven’t changed,” Jack said, smiling but showing his age.

  This episode had strained our relationship, I knew. It had strained my relationship with everybody.

  “Sorry about what happened,” Jack said. “And sorry I didn’t visit. So somebody really wants to take you down?”

  Suddenly I was saying, “You know when Linda and Sharon used to go to AA?”

  “Yeah. Every Tuesday night.”

  “Linda still go?”

  “Sometimes. Not often. Drinking’s not as big for her anymore. I’ve learned to keep the stuff out of the house. Except small quantities of beer, which she doesn’t like, so it’s no threat. Have to keep her away from wine.”

  “Any problem with it yourself?”

  “A drinking problem? No. But no reason for me to bring it home when it could trip her up. We have to look out for each other, you know?”

  “Yeah.” I poured more coffee and stirred in French vanilla Coffee-Mate. “Has Linda ever … blacked out?”

  “Couple of times, when it was really bad. Why?”

  “Because … I’ve blacked out. More than a couple of times. And I can’t remember what happened. I drink because I don’t want to remember. You know, Sharon and … all that.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. She was a good woman.”

  “The best. I’ve had times when I’ve been out places, and I can’t remember what I was doing. Especially between when I leave the bar and get home. It’s like a big gap. Sometimes not just the fifteen-minute drive. An hour or two. Then I wonder, what was I doing all that time?”

  “Still going to AA?”

  I shook my head, pouring in more creamer.

  “You should.”

  “It’s not my thing.”

  “That’s what everybody says till they realize how much of their lives they’ve been missing.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But sometimes missing part of your life is the whole point, isn’t it?”

  “Ain’t it strange what these folks think?” Obadiah Abernathy asked.

  “And what they don’t think,” said Ruby Abernathy.

  The Carpenter nodded. “They cling to youth and health with a white-knuckled grip. But they don’t take time to prepare themselves for what awaits them on the other side.”

  “Looking back,” Ruby said, “I wonder why I was so afraid to grow old. Every day brought me one day closer to being here with You.”

  “So many of them store their treasures there,” He said. “So every day they move toward their deaths, they’re moving away from their treasures. But if they store their treasures here, every day they’re moving toward their treasures.”

  Obadiah nodded. “The one who spends his life movin’ away from his treasures is goin’ to despair. But the one who spends his life movin’ toward his treasures is goin’ to rejoice!”

  The Carpenter smiled and nodded.

  “Ollie Chandler’s lost hope, hasn’t he?” Obadiah asked.

  “He once looked forward to the future,” the Carpenter said, “yet it didn’t materialize as he’d hoped. Even when it did, it failed to satisfy. Now he no longer dares to hope. It saves him disappointment. He doesn’t yet realize that I am the One he longs for.”

  “And You never disappoints,” Obadiah said. “I can testifies to that. Elyon’s Word tells us to look forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. Yet how often they seems content only to look forward to a new car. Or business deal. Or the next round of golf.” He shook his head in wonder. “Rarely do they look forward to that glorious world You promised.”

  “As they age, they imagine they pass their peaks,” the Carpenter said. “But Elyon’s children never pass their peaks. The best is never behind God’s children. The best is always ahead.”

  “I wish sometimes we could talk to our Clarence,” Obadiah said. “And Harley. And our grandchillens. And Ollie Chandler. I could tell ’em that the last of their lives before they dies is not the last of their lives. When they dies they go on a-livin’. They just moves to another place. Clarence believes it in his head, but maybe not his heart. Ollie doesn’t believe it at all.”

  “Our lives here are so rich, better by far than our lives ever were there,” Ruby said.

  “Yet even here we awaits resurrection mornin’,” Obadiah said, smiling broadly. “And the meantime’s as sweet as lickin’ the spoon of Mama’s beef stew on the stove. We long for Elyon to bring His kingdom to earth, where we gonna live again on that world You made for us,” he said to the Carpenter. Obadiah bowed his knee before Him, Ruby bowing by his side.

  “What I have planned is far beyond what even you imagine,” He said to Obadiah, placing His hands on their heads. “Together, as My kings and queens, you will reign with Me over a new universe. And billions of years from now, you will still be young.”

  Though I told myself I didn’t want attention, I was disappointed at how few
people came by my desk to give me their sympathy so I could brush them off and be the tough guy, saying something like, “Hanging, what hanging?” But after Jack left, only Cimma had come in, and he only said, “You okay?” without breaking his gimpy stride. Paul Anderson and a couple of larceny detectives came by and asked for my story, but that was it.

  So I sat and read the Tribune. Then I decided to read one last time an article not yet printed in the Trib, but which was about to be submitted. It was a guest column written by a cop:

  Call me Ollie.

  The full name’s Oliver Justice Chandler.

  I am a detective.

  The detective must set aside assumptions that blind him to the truth. He must follow the evidence wherever it leads.

  Beneath every mystery, every unsolved crime, is an unseen world of habits, attitudes and motives. It’s a world detectives must explore. That’s why I walk our city’s asphalt jungle.

  Detectives must familiarize ourselves with what lies in the shadows. We must learn to see the unseen. Optimists believe the human heart is good. They’re surprised by evil and quick to deny it, in themselves and others. Many murderers show regret at being caught. But they believe their crime was justified.

  There’s good in the unseen realm, but there’s also evil. There’s a malice that drives men’s hearts toward unspeakable crimes. The detective is a truth hunter. He must pursue truth relentlessly.

  I’ve known model sons who’ve given their frail mothers love and care. “He’s a wonderful boy,” everyone says. But probing deep, I have broken the skin and exposed the pus underneath. A homicidal pus. It surfaces in an overheard conversation, a scrawled note, subtle signs of resentment and blame.

  After discovering these threads of evidence, I sew them together to prove that a model son was his mother’s murderer.

  Right now at least one murderer is reading this column. He thinks he’ll get away with three murders and attempts on my own life. He’s wrong. I’m going to catch him.