The Pictures

by Guy Bolton

  The knob turned; the door opened; an inward rush of light through the darkness.

  Craine’s eyes caught another’s in the doorway. Both raised weapons. He didn’t have time to think but he had a brief recognition that sooner or later he was going to die.

  Strobes of muzzle flash intermittently lit up the room. A deafening noise and the crack and puncture of a hail of bullets shredding through the body of the car between them. Craine held his arm out straight, pointing the Browning toward the square of light. He squeezed the trigger and clenched his jaw tight against the noise. The gun roared. Empty cases clinked as they hit the concrete and rolled across the floor. He kept firing until he heard a high-pitched keening from the doorway and the man fell back into the light of the hall. He saw the muzzle trailing upward, the gun flashing and more bullets tearing up through the ceiling before the machine gun fell from his hand and clattered to the floor.

  At last there was a shrill silence. Bitter cordite hung in the air. Craine’s ears were humming so loud he couldn’t be sure he’d even heard the scream. Then, from somewhere deeper in the house, the living room maybe, he heard the telephone begin to ring. Regular, urgent, like the sound of a final countdown to God only knows what.

  He frisked himself for wounds. I’m okay, he thought, no bleeding. Now get up. He lifted onto one knee, holding the Browning with two hands to keep it level. Christ, it felt heavy, like gravity trying to pull it clean out of his hands.

  Unnerved and desperately afraid, Craine turned into the light of the corridor. The floor was slick with blood. There was a short blood smear sweeping from the floor to the wall where a man in a long gabardine coat lay propped up with his hands limp in his lap. The wound was small and round in his chest but a steady freshet of blood ran down his front and pooled all around him. He wasn’t moving. His jaw was relaxed, eyes glazed over. He might have been dead but there was no easy way of being sure. Craine kicked the machine gun away, leaned down and put his ear to the man’s mouth. Ragged breaths, shallow but still there. He could hear a sucking sound between his ribs. He wasn’t dead yet but it wouldn’t take long, he knew that much.

  Craine straightened and pointed his pistol down the corridor. His hearing was coming back now, tinnitus passing, the whining replaced by a gentle hum. From the other end of the house he could hear the sound of glass under feet, angry whispers and heated accusations. There still were others somewhere in the house. He stepped back and stood there, panting heavily. He had to get to Michael before they did.

  Michael lay very still. From where he was he couldn’t see anything, but he could hear the gunfire echoing through the house. There were sounds of footsteps getting nearer but then they faded away. A few seconds passed and he could hear nothing but a throbbing in his ears and, from far off, the telephone ringing.

  He tried his best not to make a sound but his pajamas were wet and he was shivering with cold. He pulled his knees against his chest to keep himself warm and tried to stop his body from trembling. He had no idea who these men were in his house but he knew that they would kill him. He was alone, abandoned. His father didn’t care about him: he had left him to die. He wished his mother was here and started to cry. He bit his lip so he wouldn’t make a sound and pushed his ear toward the direction of the door.

  Nothing but the drill of the phone ringing.

  Most of a minute passed. The voices trailed off. There was shooting further down the hallway, maybe coming from the bathroom or the maid’s room. The voices were quieter now, almost distant, and he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  Then, from the hallway: the sound of footsteps.

  Kinney checked his watch one last time. There was no way the police weren’t on their way. Whether they found him or not, they had to get out of here.

  Nelson passed him as they moved quickly through the corridor. God knows what awaited them through each of the doors further down the hall. Kinney remained apprehensive. One or two of the lights were on in the hallway and he felt vulnerable. They should have cut the power in the first place. Too late now.

  They passed an open door to a bathroom. Nelson swung into the doorway and sprayed the room with automatic fire. Empty. Down the corridor now, the room at the end. The door was closed. He had to be inside. Kinney turned the doorknob, swinging the door open with a light push as Nelson covered. A study. Kinney opened up, firing toward the desk, firing another long burst at the dresser along one wall. Nelson started firing right beside him and he thought for a second his eardrum had burst.

  Craine wasn’t here. Either he’d got outside or one of the brothers must have found him.

  “Go find the others. We have to go.”

  But as Nelson ran back through the house, Kinney’s flashlight probed against another door.

  He walked over to the jamb and stood listening. Then he swung round with the carbine in his shoulder and kicked open the door.

  A bedroom. A child’s bedroom.

  Craine moved further inside the house, both eyes open, gun out front in one hand, the other feeling for the wall to keep him upright. Was the floor moving? His legs felt unsteady, the room swaying like a hull in a storm. His feet followed the direction of the pistol, his finger touching the trigger.

  He kept walking, concentrating on the space ahead as he approached the corridor that led back toward Michael’s bedroom. Covering the hallway, breath sharp and deep, chest swelling, almost lifting him off the floor. He was moving faster now, legs pumping, gaining speed. Don’t make a goddamn sound.

  Crouched in his hiding place, Michael held his breath and tried not to move. The door creaked open and booted feet stepped into the center of the room. He could hear the man breathing. He might have been only two or three feet away.

  He heard shouting. Not from this room; somewhere else in the house.

  “Let’s go,” it screamed. “We have to go!”

  The boots stepped back toward the doorway. Michael let out a small sigh of relief but then the footsteps stopped. For what seemed like a long time there was silence before the room suddenly erupted into gunfire, like fireworks going off by his ears. Michael fought the urge to scream. He bit his lip so hard he could taste blood in his mouth. The firing stopped as quickly as it had started and he could smell smoke in the air. The shouting was louder in the corridor but the man wasn’t moving. He wasn’t finished here.

  Michael knew he was next.

  He thought of his mother as the gun roared for the last time.

  * * *

  Craine was too late. He had heard the firing from further down the corridor and knew that they had found Michael. When he reached the bedroom door, he heard an ignition turn from somewhere outside, an engine cough to life then the squeal of rubber tires. Were they leaving? He stood there with his gun outstretched, ears pricked for the sound of anything but that goddamn telephone ringing. Nothing.

  He stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Under his feet, the carpet was covered in muddy footprints. The windows were shattered, great panes of glass twisting the moonlight across the wall. He felt the cool breeze from the cityscape, smelt the lingering odor of gunfire.

  When he was sure that they were gone, Craine turned on the bedroom light.

  The bedroom had been raked with machine gun fire, the closet mottled with a line of small holes and the small bed bullet-ridden, feathers scattered across the carpet. He turned away and took another deep breath. He couldn’t bring himself to see the body. He should never have left Michael alone. He should never have left him under the bed, knowing that they would kill him if they found him. Celia put him in my care. I’ve failed her.

  Craine dropped the pistol onto the floor and his body started to shake. He let out a desperate moan he didn’t know was in him.

  There was a sound, and for a fraction of a second he thought they were still in the house. Then, from the corner of his eye he saw the lid of the clothes chest open. Two small eyes met his. Craine saw his son crouching inside the box chest and might have
cried.

  If Craine had ever hugged his son before then he couldn’t remember it. But he embraced Michael now, grabbed him and held him so close that he wasn’t sure he would ever let him go.

  And still the phone was ringing.

  Chapter 39

  There were six cars in the driveway when he got there, most of them patrol cars, two of them from the Bureau. Craine recognized Simms’ sedan immediately.

  Craine and Michael were in a patrol car, sat in the back behind the two officers who’d arrived at his house barely a minute after he’d put the phone down. It was Simms who had been calling him and Simms who met him as they pulled up behind his Cord.

  “Stay in the car, Michael.”

  Michael grabbed hold of his father and let out a soft noise that might have been a whimper. He had crawled into the box chest not long after his father had left the room. He felt safer inside it and knew he could fit, never knowing it was what saved his life.

  “Please, I need you to stay in the car. These men will take care of you.”

  The boy started crying. He was holding his father’s hand now, gripping it tight. Maybe he knew how close he came to dying tonight. Craine still couldn’t believe he was alive.

  “Michael, it’s okay. It’s okay, Michael, I’m only going inside the house. I’ll be a few minutes, that’s all, I promise. I’ll be right back. These men will stay with you the whole time. I need to go inside, and then we’re going to find you somewhere you can be safe. Look at me, Michael. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I promise you. I promise.”

  Gently pulling himself from Michael’s grasp, Craine looked at one of the officers as he stepped out onto the driveway. It was the uniform officer he’d seen at Florence Lloyd’s house months ago—Officer Becker. “Stay with him, Becker,” he said with a desperation in his voice only parents understand, “I mean it. I want both of you with him at all times. You know what these men are capable of.”

  “Yes, Detective,” said Becker sincerely. “I won’t let him out of my sight.”

  Simms was informally dressed, wearing an open collar and brown slacks. Even without his suit he maintained a stoical authority, his face impenetrable. “He’s passed, Jonathan, he’s dead.”

  “You’re sure? Have you called a doctor?” This when they’d made it to the door of the house, a white plywood with a ten-foot lawn that had been sold on the back of a white-picket dream.

  “He’s been and gone but there was never any doubt. You should know, it’s not . . . it doesn’t look good. Worse maybe than how it really was. It would have been pretty quick; we can’t say he suffered long. We think they came in through the back door, found him in the bathroom.”

  Craine sighed inwardly. He could barely believe it. “What happened?”

  “We got a call from the neighbors, maybe an hour ago. They reported gunfire, said they saw a car outside but didn’t see any faces or get any plates. Three uniforms arrived first. No one logged who it was until Henson got here. I called you as soon as I heard, sent the two cars over.”

  In the corridor, Detective Henson and half a dozen uniformed men were gathered round an open door in solemn silence, photographers clearing space, taking pictures, paying fretting attention to their work. One of the uniforms had a pair of glasses between two fingers and he dropped them carefully into a manila envelope.

  They stood back and stared at Craine when he came down the hallway and pushed through to the bathroom. They were standing very straight, with their arms by their sides, hats tucked under their arms. Their eyes followed him, waiting to see his reaction so they could follow suit.

  Craine stopped dead in the doorway. What he saw in that bathroom, what he stared at when his eyes refused to look away, stole the breath from his chest.

  Patrick O’Neill was lying sideways in the bathtub, naked and pale, his legs twisted unnaturally, his head tilted up to the ceiling in redundant prayer. His face was untouched, his arms and knees as polished and childlike as they’d always been. But his chest was no more, peppered so many times there were no bullet holes, only a gaping wound that rived across most of his torso and left his organs open and exposed.

  The room smelt foul, gastric acid and excrement seeping from his abdomen. Someone had turned the tap off but the tub was filled to the top with crimson-stained water, the floor slick and brown where the bath had overflowed. Above his head, chipped and broken tiles showed the extent of the gunfire. He took a margin of comfort in knowing O’Neill likely died even before his knees had buckled but the margin was narrow and he couldn’t pretend otherwise. I never had a chance to truly know him, but he had his whole life ahead of him. He deserved so much better than dying naked and alone, butchered in his bathtub.

  A photographer came and stood beside him and the room momentarily lit up as the flashbulb popped. It was Crickley. His arms were shaking and his eyes were bloodshot but he was going about his work like it was any other day. Craine didn’t know how he could stand it. In all the time he’d been a police detective, nothing he’d seen could have prepared him for this. It didn’t resemble a crime scene. There was no part of him that could pretend it was a stranger in that tub, someone he didn’t know or care about. It was Patrick O’Neill. The boy who wore tweed suits and glasses and wanted justice for victims he’d never really known.

  “I’m sorry,” said Detective Henson, entering the bathroom and standing next to the photographer. “I liked him. He was a good kid. Did you know him well?”

  He wanted to tell Henson that O’Neill had, in only a brief time, made more of an impact on his life than any police officer he’d ever worked with, but instead all he could manage was to whisper, “No, I didn’t know him well.”

  When Crickley and Henson left the room, Craine stepped forward and peered at O’Neill’s face. He looked into those gentle eyes, so afraid and helpless, the boy who would have looked away when the door opened and the men with shotguns and submachine guns cut him open from hip to hip. He considered the tenacity that had lived in those eyes and realized he had none of it. He might not be able to go any further without him.

  He took one last look at O’Neill then left the bathroom and let the men of the homicide unit close the crime scene.

  Back in the hallway, Craine made his way slowly toward the front door, taking in the pictures and furniture that made up O’Neill’s life. It was a simple house, but a home nonetheless. Despite the booted footprints and broken glass, he could tell that the place was decorated with care and consideration. It wasn’t just the radio, the hung paintings, the furniture. It was the personal touches: the newly painted doorframes; the curtains; the personal trinkets that Craine had completely removed from his own house.

  There was a picture on the floor that had fallen off the dresser. Craine picked it up and looked at it. It was a photograph of a man in his fifties with a row of medals emblazoned across his chest. Although he was larger and more handsome than Patrick, the similarity was undeniable. The man in the photograph was Patrick O’Neill’s father, the hero cop from San Francisco. What was it O’Neill had said in the car last night? That every child wants to be like their father.

  Simms was standing behind him now. He reached out and patted his shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” he said, quiet and assured. “Are you okay, Craine?”

  Wearily, Craine met his eyes. “What?”

  “I said, are you alright?”

  He stared at Simms’ face, wondering what could possibly be alright. A few deep breaths and a clenched-jaw calm took over him. No, he couldn’t begrudge Simms his phatic gesture. What else was there to say? Patrick O’Neill was no longer. Gray and wasted and gone but he, at least, was alive. That had to be enough.

  “I’m fine. I just need some air.”

  Outside, he stood by O’Neill’s Plymouth, the fender bent and the paint chipped. He could hear the men working the rooms inside the house, talking noisily among themselves as they tried to clear the crime scene.

  “I’ll call his moth
er,” Simms said, lighting a cigarette. “She lives up in San Francisco.”

  “I know.”

  Simms nodded toward the line of police cars on the curb. “I heard what happened at your house. Your boy okay?”

  “Yes. He is. Thank you for asking.”

  With his back to the house, Craine could see Michael sitting in the rear of the police car with Officer Becker. He felt better for being out in the open air. Being inside came with a sick feeling. Not from the smell or the gore, which he was used to. Not with grief, although he would miss O’Neill. But sick with the thought of finding Michael the same way as O’Neill. Bloody and gutted by strangers, his tiny body left in pieces like a broken doll. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t spoken to each other properly for six months. It didn’t matter that when he looked at Michael he saw Celia. All that mattered was that Michael was the only real family he had.

  As he tried to remove the images of O’Neill from his mind, Craine’s aching head filled instead with long lists of questions, reeling out like a ticker tape machine. How had they found them? Who were they? Who sent them? What did they want from them? He focused on the last question, and the images of Campbell’s photographs started to burn in his retinas. He considered them now, turning them over in his mind as he began to think more clearly.

  “Did you find the pictures?”

  Simms shook his head. “They’re not here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “The uniforms checked.”

  “Check again.”

  “They’re gone, Craine. They must have took them.”

  Craine regained his focus, moved away from the house and walked toward the line of police cars.

  “We took the man in your house to the hospital.” Simms was already coming down the driveway after him. “He’s still alive; they’ve stabilized him and they’re prepping him for surgery as we speak. He survives, and we may well have ourselves a court witness.”