The Grid

by Harry Hunsicker

  Intellectually, she grasps the concept, but what’s happening in front of her eyes is reality, and the reality is Olympic-level crazy, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest wacko.

  The sheriff who saw her at the motel, Jon Cantrell, just parked in her driveway.

  He’s talking to Walden. They’re both looking at the house.

  Sarah realizes what’s going on.

  They are coming to get her.

  Despite the Python being discovered at the scene of the terrorist attack, despite the assurances from her attorney, she is about to be arrested.

  She rubs her nose with one hand, grips the Ruger with the other. Her teeth chatter.

  From the passenger side of his vehicle, a woman with short brown hair emerges. She is tall and thin and pretty. The woman removes a baby from the back of the SUV. The sheriff is undercover, a clever ploy.

  Sarah snorts another line and looks back outside.

  Jon Cantrell, the woman and her child, and Walden are walking toward the house.

  Toward her.

  She grabs her cell and dials the attorney. The call goes straight to voice mail.

  Her heart races. She slams the last few inches of wine in her glass and chops up another line of cocaine. She has to get her head straight, to think of a plan.

  She’s been in her bedroom suite for days now, ever since she saw Walden and Rosa staring at her. Her husband has been staying in a different part of the house. No one has bothered her. She’s been alone. Just the coke and the wine and the memories of her childhood.

  An image of her daughter flashes in her mind, the cast on her leg white against her peach-colored flesh. She’s tried to be a good mother to the child, but she’s failed, just like all the adults in her life did when she was the same age.

  All but one. Her grandfather.

  “Dylan, I love you so.” She says the words out loud, the first time she’s spoken in hours.

  She wants desperately to leave the room and to run away. But she doesn’t. Instead she tries her attorney again—no answer—and snorts another rail of coke.

  - CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX -

  The inside of Eric Faulkner’s home was just as impressive as the outside.

  A huge living area with fireplaces at either end dominated the first story. Marble floors, a vaulted ceiling, clusters of leather sofas artfully spaced throughout.

  There were maybe twenty people in the room, scattered here and there. They were drinking and talking quietly. Servants in white jackets moved about, carrying trays filled with cocktail glasses and appetizers.

  Eric Faulkner greeted us in the entryway. He wore jeans, a white dress shirt, and a slightly nicer pair of work boots than what he usually had on in the field.

  “Nice to see you again, Agent Cantrell.” He shook my hand. “You want a drink?”

  “We’re good,” I said.

  He smiled at Elizabeth, tickled her chin. “Walden told you about the playroom upstairs?”

  Piper nodded.

  “You want to check it out?” He looked at his security guy. “Hey, Walden. Take the kiddo upstairs.”

  Walden nodded. He gestured toward a sweeping staircase that looked like a set piece from Gone with the Wind.

  Piper looked toward the second story and then at me. I shrugged and nodded.

  “I’ll be back.” She headed toward the stairs, Walden walking beside her.

  When they were gone, Faulkner said, “You sure you don’t want a drink?”

  “Okay. Maybe a beer.”

  Before the words had left my mouth, a man in a white coat appeared with a bottle of Heineken wrapped in a cocktail napkin. He also had a can of Diet Coke for my host.

  Eric Faulkner stood next to me, surveying the room, sipping his soft drink.

  “Half these people were friends of Price’s.” He paused. “The other half, well, they’re here to watch me crash and burn.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Sudamento’s board of directors.” He took a gulp of his drink. “They’re gonna shit-can me next week.”

  “It was a terrorist attack. An act of God.” I shook my head. “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “You know who Elias King is?”

  “The guy who masterminded the whole thing,” I said. “A demolitions expert and an ex-con.”

  Faulkner chuckled and rubbed one eye. He looked ten years older than when I first met him only a few days before.

  “We’ve managed to keep it out of the media for now, but Elias was my brother-in-law. My wife’s only sibling.”

  There was a little tidbit that Harris the Homeland investigator hadn’t let me in on.

  I tried not to look surprised. That helped explain how the attackers knew which plants had lake houses and what transformers to take out. They had inside knowledge.

  Faulkner was right; the board of Sudamento had to be planning to fire him.

  “How’s your wife taking all this?” I looked around the room for a woman who might be his spouse. No likely candidates presented themselves.

  “She’s in her room.” He drained his Coke. “She’s, uh, sick.”

  - CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN -

  Sarah stands behind a pillar at the entry to the playroom, watching from afar as the tall, thin woman with the short hair talks to Rosa.

  The infant is playing with some blocks on the floor.

  Dylan is in her room with a babysitter, a part-time assistant for the overworked nanny, according to the various texts and e-mails Sarah has received from her staff. She hasn’t seen her daughter in several days. Strangers in the same house. She wonders if Dylan has a remote chance of turning out normal, not fucked up like her mother and her now-dead uncle.

  Sarah has gotten dressed—a pair of navy slacks and a rose-colored silk blouse—and combed her hair. In the mirror of her bathroom, she’s noticed that she looks a little pale and her eyes are a tad red, but she is still attractive. She is SarahSmiles, able to seduce any man she wants to.

  The Ruger is stuck in her waistband, covered by the blouse.

  A new Spyderco lockback knife, the blade sharp enough to shave with, is in one of her rear pockets. The other contains a wad of cash and her passport. The beginning of a plan rumbles around in her brain.

  She wants to hurt someone, hurt them badly. Another’s pain validates her own, lessens it somehow.

  Maybe kill the sheriff, then run away, the next flight to a country that doesn’t extradite.

  She remembers the feeling after the deputy died in that motel room, the one besides the sense of fear, an utter sense of control. She wants that feeling again. That would be a better high than the coke.

  She touches the Ruger through the fabric of her blouse, the feel of the weapon almost arousing, pressed tight against her flesh.

  The woman with the short hair kneels beside the infant, kisses her forehead, and then stands, heading toward the door and where Sarah is located. She is leaving the child in the care of Rosa.

  The woman gets close.

  “Hello.” Sarah steps away from the pillar.

  The woman stops. Her eyes go wide like she’s surprised or something.

  “My name is Sarah-Jane Faulkner.” Sarah holds out her hand. “Welcome to my home.”

  “Hi. I’m Piper Westlake.” The woman makes no move to shake hands. Instead she stares at Sarah’s face.

  A long silence ensues. Sarah tries to stop the tremor in her arms.

  “You’ll have to excuse my appearance.” Sarah rubs her nose. “I’m recovering from a head cold.”

  The woman nods, her face blank.

  “Have we met before?” Sarah asks. “You look familiar.”

  “I don’t think so.” Piper Westlake shakes her head. “I don’t mean to get all up in your business, but do you need to lie down or anything?”
<
br />   Sarah doesn’t answer. In the background she can see Rosa staring at her, the infant playing at her feet.

  “I’m fine.”

  Piper doesn’t reply.

  “Let’s go downstairs, shall we?” Sarah points to the exit.

  “Okay.” Piper takes a look back at the infant and follows Sarah out.

  “That your child?”

  Piper nods.

  “I have a daughter, too. She’s a little older. That’s a fun age, when they’re not quite walking yet.”

  “Except for the dirty diapers,” Piper says. “And not sleeping through the night.”

  They descend the staircase. Sarah uses the handrail.

  At the bottom, Sarah sees that the party has moved to the far side of the room, to a sitting area overlooking the patio and the pool.

  Two men stand in the space where the foyer turns into the living room.

  Her husband. And the sheriff, Jon Cantrell.

  Piper Westlake moves to Cantrell’s side, linking her arm with his. They whisper with each other.

  Are they talking about her? Are they getting ready to arrest her?

  Sarah touches the Ruger underneath her blouse. She could shoot him right now, a single round to the back of the head. But would that really solve her problems? She wishes she’d done another line of coke. Her thinking isn’t as clear as it should be.

  Her heart is racing, however. Her vision is sharp, and she hears everything with an extra layer of clarity.

  Her husband turns to greet her. Next to him, Cantrell shifts his feet, beginning to turn as well.

  She touches the gun. When Cantrell sees her face, he will recognize her as the woman at the motel, and then she’ll have to kill him.

  She’ll have no choice.

  - CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT -

  Footsteps behind me. One or more people descending the stairs.

  I was visiting with our host. We were near the front door.

  Piper walked up behind me and slid her arm around mine.

  Faulkner turned and said hello to someone behind us.

  I glanced at Piper. “Everything okay upstairs?”

  “Yeah. Everything’s, um, fine.” She had a puzzled expression on her face, one that I couldn’t decipher. “Upstairs anyway.”

  She turned and looked toward the staircase.

  I followed her gaze and found myself staring into the face of a woman I’d never seen before, one who gave every indication she was about to die.

  She appeared to be in her early forties but looked a decade or more older. She was gaunt, like a cancer patient who’d lost the will to eat. Her hair was greasy and lank, the color of burnt wood. Her face was pale and lined. Her eyes red-rimmed and sunken.

  Eric Faulkner said, “Sheriff Cantrell. This is my wife, Sarah-Jane.”

  “Hello.” She dropped her hands from her waist to her sides.

  “Hi.” I smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Why don’t you go back to your room, dear?” Faulkner said. “You look tired.”

  That was an understatement.

  She looked like a cadaver and smelled like she hadn’t bathed in a week. She wore a light-red silk blouse. The arms of the blouse reached her wrists but had slits on the outside, baring the length of her limbs. The exposed flesh was pale, except for where it was mottled with bruises, including a particularly deep one on the bicep of her right arm, a yellowish-brown discoloration.

  “I want to enjoy the party,” Sarah-Jane said, voice shrill. “Price was my friend, too.”

  An awkward silence descended on the husband and wife.

  Piper glanced at me, one eyebrow raised.

  “It’s not a party,” Eric Faulkner said. “It’s a ceremony to honor his memory.”

  “His memory?” Sarah-Jane snorted. “What do you even know about Price Anderson?”

  Piper and I eased away. For reasons we couldn’t even begin to fathom, an argument was about to ensue.

  Walden, the security man, stepped between the two.

  “Let me help you back to your room, Mrs. Faulkner.” He grasped her arm gently. “You should lie down and get some rest.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Walden? Me lying down.” She wrenched free from his fingers and stared at me.

  “Sarah-Jane, please.” Her husband pointed to a hallway. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  She continued to stare at me.

  “You okay, Mrs. Faulkner?” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “You’re a sheriff, huh?” She smiled. Her teeth were gray.

  I nodded.

  “See you later, Sheriff.”

  She turned and staggered down a hallway leading to a different wing of the house.

  Walden followed a few feet behind her.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Faulkner said. “She’s not been well.”

  “Yeah, I sensed that.” Piper nodded. “Her unwellness.”

  I put my beer on a side table. Piper and Faulkner continued talking, but their voices were muted and their words didn’t make sense all of a sudden—background chatter in my brain.

  A river of disjointed information ran through my mind, snippets flowing in and out of my consciousness.

  The old drunk had described the woman who’d stolen the Monte Carlo as a “rich girl,” the same phrase Cleo Fain used about the person who attacked her, a woman who appeared to be in her thirties in a similar vehicle. The picture the Texas Ranger had shown me, a person in an expensive high-rise belonging to a woman named Debbie Wilson. The photos Piper and I had gotten from a contact at the Dallas Police Department, images of a suspect in the death of the two homeless men, a woman in her thirties, taken from a video system at a tattoo parlor.

  My own memories of the person in the Dallas Cowboys cap and the raincoat.

  Why did all these bits of data make me think of Eric Faulkner’s wife, a woman who bore little resemblance to the relatively healthy person I’d seen?

  Sarah-Jane Faulkner. SarahSmiles.

  A coincidence, surely . . . except that my deputy had been killed with a gun that belonged to her grandfather.

  Piper touched my arm, startling me.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  Faulkner was standing a few feet away, talking on his cell.

  Cleo Fain’s words rang in my head. I hit her with the tire iron. Her right bicep. Had to leave a nasty bruise.

  I looked at Piper. “She had a bruise on her arm.”

  “What? Who did?”

  “Sarah-Jane Faulkner. The wife.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What if Eric Faulkner’s wife is SarahSmiles?” I said. “The woman who killed my deputy.”

  Piper rolled her eyes. “Other than the fact that she looks like she has stage nineteen cancer and probably has a rock-solid alibi, you might be right.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Does the wife look anything like the woman you saw at the motel?”

  “Not really,” I said. “But I only saw her for a few seconds.”

  Piper looked down the hall where Sarah-Jane Faulkner had gone.

  “The wife has a bruise on her arm,” I said. “And it’s in the same place that Cleo Fain said she hit the woman in the Monte Carlo.”

  Piper frowned, scratched her chin.

  Eric Faulkner ended his call and approached us.

  “This is a weird question,” I said, “but do you know anybody named Debbie Wilson?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I mean, not really. That was the name of my wife’s college roommate. But she died a long time ago.”

  Piper’s eyes grew wide.

  A couple of people approached Eric. He stepped away from us and began talking to them.

  “Where’s E
lizabeth?” I asked.

  “Upstairs with the nanny. She’s safe where she is for the moment. Let’s check up on Mrs. Faulkner.”

  I headed down the hallway, Piper on my heels.

  At the end of the corridor was a set of double doors, the entrance to the master bedroom. One of the doors was ajar.

  I stepped inside.

  The security man, Walden, lay on the floor by the fireplace.

  His throat had been cut. Blood pooled around the top half of his body.

  Piper swore softly. “We left the guns in the car.”

  We searched the suite anyway, moving quickly. We found a half-dozen empty wine bottles in the bathroom wastebasket and a hand mirror covered in white residue. But no Sarah-Jane Faulkner.

  “Before we do anything else,” Piper said, “we need to get Elizabeth.”

  From another part of the house, somewhere above us, came a scream.

  - CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE -

  Eric Faulkner met us at the foot of the stairs. Several guests milled about, craning their necks to see what was going on.

  “Where’s the rest of your security team?” I asked.

  “Outside,” he said. “What’s happening? Where’s Walden?”

  I tossed the car keys to Piper. “Get the guns and find the other guards.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” She didn’t move. “My baby’s upstairs, Jon.”

  “She’s my child, too.” I shoved her toward the door, hoping she wouldn’t see the fear that had to be in my eyes. “GO!”

  Piper hesitated a moment, then dashed outside.

  “Walden,” Faulkner said. “Where is he?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Stay here.” I took the stairs two at a time.

  At the top was a large landing, hallways to the left and right. In the center, at the head of the stairs, was another set of double doors.

  An enormous stuffed horse sat beside the doors, not far from the edge of the first step.

  A playroom. That’s what Walden had called it.

  I flung open the doors and hopped inside, hugging the wall.

  The room was huge, big enough to cover maybe a quarter of the downstairs area. Big enough that you’d have to shout to be heard on the other side.