Justice

by Doug Sutherland

  Yeah, Frank thought, I know all about that feeling. Everybody does. He didn’t think it would help to remind her.

  “Angie,” he said gently, “I can tell you for sure that if Stromberg did this—”

  She backed away from him.

  “What do you mean if?” she demanded. “Open your eyes! Everyone in town knows he did it!”

  “Angie–look, you should come in, just for a minute.”

  “No, Frank, I’m not coming in. I never should have in the first place.”

  46

  “You okay, Ted?”

  Ted Saunders didn’t look okay at all, and both of them knew it.

  “You should take some time off, Ted. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Where the hell else can I go, Frank?” Saunders demanded, “Go home and sit around and stare at the wall? Doesn’t matter where I am. Speaking of which, what the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out helping that Henderson bitch get Stromberg off?”

  Frank let that one go. Saunders had been through too much already.

  “I told Karen that fucking animal was bad news.”

  “That’s all you could do, Ted. You know that.”

  “I should’ve done something,” Saunders looked around at the bar. It was early afternoon, quiet, except for the occasional sounds of the gambling machines in the alcove around the corner from where they were standing, “I mean, it’s the bar business, Frank. I hire good-looking girls so I can attract more business and make a living but they bring in people like Stromberg and stuff like this happens. I’ve been doing this long enough, I should have seen this shit coming.”

  Frank had been wondering about that. He didn’t want to bring it up but he had to.

  “Something I don’t understand,” he said carefully. “The way I heard it, Stromberg went apeshit in here that night, took out one of your bouncers, and nobody called the cops.”

  “I wasn’t here.” The look on Saunders’ face told him that Angie wasn’t the only one thinking about what could have been. “Shit, Frank, if I had been here damn right I would’ve called them. I wasn’t feeling that great and I let Karen talk me into leaving early.”

  That was a surprise. Saunders had always been an immutable fixture behind the bar, always there from open to close, seven days a week. It said something about their relationship that he’d trusted Karen Dennison to take over that night. Frank could only suppose that Karen had decided she didn’t want her boyfriend to get in trouble with the cops, or that she’d been afraid of what Stromberg would do if she did. Frank had no doubt that if Saunders had been there he would have made the call and everything else would have unwound differently, no opportunity for Stromberg to do what he’d done to Karen later that night. There wasn’t any use in belaboring that point. Saunders was beating himself up as it was.

  “The two of them,” Saunders was saying, “the other night wasn’t the first time they’d gotten into it. She’s just trying to do her job but he’s right there all the time, and from what she told me it wasn’t just here. Not enough that he’s here every night, sees her just about every day, but the guy was following her around, checking up on her.”

  Great, Frank thought, Laura will love this.

  “She saw him doing it?”

  “No, but she knew. You know that feeling you get? That somebody’s watching you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She never actually saw him doing it, but she told me. She’d be somewhere downtown running errands or something and she’d just get this cold chill and she knew he was there.” Saunders lowered his head for a moment, and when he finally looked up at Frank his eyes were haunted. “She even called him on it one night, right over there,” he gestured at the corner of the bar.

  “What night?” Frank asked sharply.

  “No, before that.” Saunders shook his head. “This was about a week ago. I was hoping that’d be it, but the bastard talked his way of it. He laughed at her, said he had better things to do than follow her around. That’s when I should have done it, barred his ass from ever coming in here again.”

  “Wouldn’t have made a difference, Ted, you know that.”

  “You think?” Saunders snapped. “You know that for sure? All I know is that she’s dead now. Maybe if I’d done something like that it would have changed things, made her see that mutt wasn’t any good for her or anyone else.”

  Maybe it would have, Frank thought. The trouble was that they’d never know.

  47

  Angie wasn’t sure where the feeling had come from. The big old house gave her the creeps, and she hated going into it at night. Maybe that was all it was.

  As with so many things it had seemed like a good idea at the time. The elderly woman who owned it had been widowed years before. She was in her eighties now, and while she’d done her best to maintain the place after her husband had passed away, in the last few years it had all proven too much for her. Her husband had been third generation wealthy, the kind of 19th and 20th century money built on extracting and refining minerals from rocky ground, the kind of industry that had been left behind. Her husband, bless his heart, had proven the exception to the apocryphal rule about third generation capabilities and had diversified into more lucrative pursuits while minimizing his exposure and commitment to the ones on which his wealth had been built.

  ‘Wealth’ of course, is and has always been a relative term. It was a perfectly accurate description of what she had in Strothwood but wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in Boston or Pittsburgh or New York – especially not in New York. She would stay in Strothwood, but there were too many memories in the house and they were overwhelming her. She had the resources and her health and she had gone away on the kind of extended world tour that would have been more familiar to the dowager empresses of the 19th century than to their nearest equivalents today. Her great-granddaughter was Early twenties, had graduated from where else but Radcliffe, adored her great-grandmother, and post-graduation but pre-real life would have spent four months with her anywhere, let alone in a style light years removed from hostels and backpacks.

  That resulted in an opportunity for Angie, although not the brass ring she had envisioned. She had first seen it, reasonably enough, as a chance to get what was still a prime real estate listing, something that if it sold would give her a commission that could keep her going for months in a downwardly spiraling market. Most of her competitors saw it the same way, but Angie was the only one who kept listening after the old lady said she wasn’t prepared to sell. She was, however, worried that the house would fall even farther into disrepair during her absence, and Angie invested enough time and genuine interest in the old woman to persuade her that the mammoth home needed a house-sitter during the time she was away. Even Angie realized there was a cynical self-interest involved, but she knew that if she hadn’t done it someone else would have. It might as well be me, she’d told herself, and that was where the self-recrimination had stopped. There was also the long game to think about. Sooner or later the house would have to be put on the market, and if Angie made a point of being the best damn house-sitter of all time she’d be the one to get the listing.

  Inevitably there was a downside. There were nights in the big empty house-this was one of them-when Angie felt like the next victim in some B-movie slasher flick, the one who hears noises and creaks and groans and who’s afraid to look under the bed because she might find something. Enough already, she’d spent too many nights like that in this place and she wasn’t going to do it again, especially after that night when she was nearly run off the road coming back from the lake.

  She wasn’t a nervous person by nature. She’d been on her own for a long time, survived a disastrous marriage to an overgrown man-child who’d spent more time on and in various sports fields and bars than he ever did with her, made her own way in a series of grindingly mundane jobs until finally reinventing herself in the real estate business.

  She couldn’t account for the sudden apprehension
she’d felt after she’d pulled the Miata into the driveway and turned off the ignition. There was no need of it, especially when she had an imperfectly good ex-cop to whom she probably owed an apology anyway. She picked up the phone and called Frank. It rang four times until the voice mail kicked in, got Frank’s laconic instruction to leave a message. The beep sounded and, suddenly nervous, she stammered something about thinking she’d heard somebody outside, maybe trying to get into the house. The beep sounded again before she finished and she was left staring at the phone, replaying her message in her head and realizing that she’d probably sounded like a hysterical fool or—worse—a calculating bitch just trying to lure him back.

  Either way it had been stupid to call him in the first place. It had only been a couple of days ago that she’d accosted him in his doorway, slapped him in the face and told him to fuck off. Now she was calling him because she’d heard a bump in the night. Pathetic.

  Suck it up, buttercup, she thought. Call 911 like everybody else. This time she kept her voice low and controlled, even thought she might have overdone it a bit because the female 911 operator sounded, well, bored and a little annoyed once Angie had explained the situation. She didn’t even ask Angie to stay on the line, just said they’d ‘have a unit there shortly’. Then she hung up.

  Angie stared at the phone for a moment, embarrassed and pissed off at herself. Then she went to one of the front windows and parted the drapes slightly so she could see the cops when they pulled up.

  48

  She’d known someone was there the moment she’d stepped out of the car. Vince didn’t know how she knew, but she did. He should have left right then, tried again another night, but instead he gave it a few minutes and then slipped in closer. He realized he’d gotten sloppy again, in spite of his determination not to. He’d underestimated Angela, thought the only real danger lay in the heat her death would generate.

  There was something in all this he didn’t like. This time he’d been scrupulously careful, taken his time. The old house was huge, not unlike the one the old police chief had lived in. Hell, it was even in the same neighborhood, only a couple of blocks away. He already knew the ground, and that was oddly reassuring.

  Too reassuring, he’d decided, in spite of his surprise when after trolling through just about every neighborhood in town he’d discovered the Miata sitting incongruously in the driveway of the gigantic old house. It didn’t fit the place, and neither did the woman. That had been after his abortive attempt on the road leading from the lake. The fact that he’d missed her then should have prompted him to be more careful, not less so, but he wanted to get this done. His decision to relocate to another motel farther out of town had been a factor, complicated the mechanics and the time involved in getting back and forth to lay the groundwork. Tonight was supposed to be just another part of that preparation, a simple if time-consuming check to make sure he had it right, to make sure that she wasn’t sharing the house with roommates or a man.

  He’d had to wait for darkness before he went anywhere near the place. He’d done the same thing he’d done with the old man, parked the car blocks away and then gone the rest of the way on foot. Unavoidably, and until he got closer to the house itself, that meant he had to traverse stretches of sidewalk. Judging from what he’d seen around town he didn’t think jogging was a common activity, but it was all he had. He’d gone to a shopping mall in the next town over, picked up an upscale track suit in dark blue and a matching baseball cap. As long as he kept moving and kept his head down he should be okay.

  Still, it was a risk. There were a lot of places in this country where the cops would take one look at a big guy running alone at night through a neighborhood like this and brace him just on general principles. Based on what he’d seen so far Strothwood was one of those places, and he felt conspicuous as hell until he got closer and was able to veer off into one of the large backyards next to the house. That was one of the few advantages to the neighborhood. The houses looked like they’d all been built around a century ago, back when land was cheap and there was plenty of it. The yards were huge and for the most part unlit, with mature trees and hedges, all kinds of places to stay low and out of sight.

  The house was dark by the time he got into the yard next door to it. There was no trace of the Miata, but he was willing to wait. All the indications were that she had the house to herself, but this was his last chance to make sure. It was a warm night, and other than the mosquitoes he was comfortable where he was.

  It was over an hour before he heard the sudden rasp of the Miata’s engine note as she shifted down before turning into the driveway. He stayed down until she shut off the engine, raised his head in time to feel a sudden frisson of arousal as she swiveled her legs out of the low slung little car. He was alarmed by what he felt, knew it to be dangerous. Even more dangerous was the sudden thought that he could take her then, something he knew to be impossible without risking noise. He hadn’t planned on doing it this way, hadn’t planned on doing it tonight at all, but he still found himself calculating distance and time and realizing there was too much of one and not enough of the other to ensure she wouldn’t see him coming. By that time she was walking across the driveway to the door at the side of the house, and now it was too late and probably just as well. The night air would carry a scream a long way.

  Suddenly he wanted to do it now, tonight, plans and calculations be damned. The only reason he could think of had been the sight of her as she made an impossibly graceful exit from the tiny car. That was a disturbing echo of the way he’d felt with the Dennison girl, and it bothered him.

  Vince felt like he was losing it, all his logic and planning unraveling at the edges. If he went after this woman now the little scenario he’d constructed around Karen Dennison would fall apart just when he needed it most. From what he’d heard the cops had pinned the whole thing on her boyfriend, in effect given Vince a free pass to finish off the remaining men. That could all vaporize if he went after Angela instead, but he’d had second thoughts about what he’d done and about his own sense of justice. Setting up an innocent man for what he’d done to Karen Dennison seemed like the ultimate hypocrisy. Tommy had been innocent too.

  So here he was. It had been enough to kill the others. He wasn’t sure it would be enough this time, and the thought frightened him. Something he hadn’t counted on was building inside him, a kind of lust, and whatever it was he had to get a handle on it, fast. To do anything else, to give in to it, would corrupt the whole purpose of what he was trying to do. This little crusade was about retribution, and he couldn’t let the dark places it was taking him get in the way.

  49

  Vince had been clumsy. He’d been on the back porch, should have known there’d be some kind of crap lying around back there. He’d stumbled on something and nearly gone headlong into the back door before he’d gotten a hand out and seized a railing. He wasn’t sure how much noise he’d made or whether it could be heard in the house. He didn’t wait for a reaction from inside, just went over the railing onto the concrete driveway. It was more of a drop than he expected, close to five feet, but he knew enough to land on his feet and then roll. He felt vaguely silly about that, as if he was trying to be somebody in a movie, but it was better than not doing it and having his knees driven up into his chin. He still had to pause for a moment before going back across the driveway into the dark yard on the other side.

  He nearly called it a night right there, but the feeling he had was still on him and he kept going through the first yard and then the next before he risked crossing a darkened part of the street. Then he worked his way back through the yards on the other side, finally stopping at the back corner of a house directly across the street from the front door of where he’d started.

  He was lying on the ground, the dampness of the grass seeping through the front of his shirt, when he saw movement on the sidewalk across the street, a Mutt and Jeff tandem of a very large, heavyset figure and by what in comparison at
least was a very small one. It was too dark to see much but the big one had the unmistakable swagger of a cop, something confirmed when Vince saw the sudden bloom of flashlight beams scudding across the front yard and the porch.

  He didn’t bother wondering why they’d shown up on foot, just raised himself slightly off the ground and crab-walked behind the bulk of the house. He took his time and retreated maybe fifty feet back to another hedge that separated the back of this lot from the back of another one. Then he went sideways until he could see Angela’s house again. Its entrance was framed by a verandah running the length of the house, but it was only about twenty feet back from the sidewalk and in full view of anyone driving or walking by.

  • • •

  Angie had expected to hear sirens and see flashing lights, but the first indication anyone was there was a stray flashlight beam flicking across one of the front windows. That startled her until she realized it just meant the cops had arrived. A couple of moments later she heard footsteps on the front porch. The door bell in the old house was finicky—sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t—and she was already on her way when she heard a surprisingly light knock on the heavy door. She opened it so quickly that the female police officer actually recoiled at the suddenness of it. She was petite, dark haired and pretty, in almost comical contrast to the big middle-aged cop looming behind her. Both of them looked familiar, but she couldn’t think of their names. The female cop identified herself and her partner—she was Randall, he was Raycroft—but Angie pretended she’d already recognized them.

  It was a brief conversation, just long enough to make sure they had the right address and the right complaint, and that she was all right. It was a matter of only a few minutes before Randall came back to let her know that they’d searched the yard and around the house but couldn’t see any sign of a prowler. Angie had started to apologize for making the 911 call but Randall had quickly reassured her, told her to make sure everything was locked up and not to be afraid to call back if she heard anything else.