After five minutes, safe time is up according to the clock on the stove. Gabriel steps out of the circle, and then sits to put on his socks, trying not to see Willard’s paintings on the walls. The springy blond curls and blue eyes are kind of like Gabriel’s, but Willard didn’t paint in any of the scars and bruises. Gabriel pretends Terrance likes the paintings because it makes Willard nicer. Those are the only days he gives Gabriel almost enough to fill his belly.
The kitchen door opens sooner than he expected. Willard steps inside, bolting the door behind him. Miss Granger’s classroom disappears. The scared mouse runs away.
“Traitor,” Willard says.
«46»
Despite his own stomach pain and fever, Willard uses a folded paper fan to cool the slack face of the boy who admits he’s an impostor. It took some convincing, but the boy finally confessed to his trickery, shouting it over and over. He’s not Willard’s little brother, Terrance, as he’s pretended all these months. The bastard’s name is Gabriel Wheeler.
The boy’s face is swollen and his fever has lasted all day. Willard doesn’t feel too bad he went overboard with the punishment; the boy had it coming, what with the way he tricked Willard into giving him shelter and food, good things that should have gone to the real Terrance.
Willard doesn’t owe the boy a thing. Still, when the time comes, he’ll give him a decent burial. The body should be light enough for him to haul to a little creek-side glade he knows of. The soft loam is easy for digging a shallow grave.
The faker’s burial clothes, the white sheet and tinfoil halo he used to trick Willard, glow on a shelf in the dim light coming from the basement. Willard understands why he was able to lead the boy away from the Christmas play so easily. And he suspects the sweet little Virgin who waved goodbye as she cradled her plastic Jesus was in on it too. Willard bets she would have foisted herself on him also if given the chance.
The boy’s arm flails out, knocking a thermometer off the table. “Dog,” he says. His cracked lips bleed. Silver beads of mercury spread in a pool of water on the concrete floor, forming the shape of a heart.
Pain and nausea slows Willard down as he tries to scurry away from the toxic spill. He closes the security door, but doesn’t take the time to handcuff the boy, not that it matters: the faker isn’t going anywhere, not while he’s alive. Willard’s heart races as he wheels a false wall into place. The precautions he’s taken provide some comfort. If a search is conducted, the missing five-by-six feet of space will be hard to notice. A painting called The Blue Boy, hung to decorate the false wall, swings crooked as he seals the boy in.
By the time Willard gains the stairs his queasy stomach has worsened and he feels like he’s burning up. His plan to lie down is interrupted by the doorbell ringing. The woman from next door stands on the other side of the front door’s one-way glass.
He opens the door only wide enough to show his face and a sliver of his body. She takes advantage of his weakness to widen the space. “Sorry to bother you,” she says in her raspy smoker’s voice, “but some dog got his snout into your garbage this morning.” She shifts her position as though she’s trying to see past Willard into the house. “I wanted you to know it wasn’t Radar because he’s been inside with me all morning. I’d help you clean up the mess, but I’m already late for work.”
The heat and the pain prevent Willard from understanding.
“Come see for yourself,” the woman beckons. When she heads back down the steps, Willard’s illness makes him confused enough to follow.
When they reach the front yard, she leads him between a life-sized Blessed Mother and a spread-winged eagle, relics of his grandfather’s business that Willard brought out of the backyard storage shed after he moved to Trenton. “What a mess, hey?”
Pain blurs Willard’s vision. He struggles to make out what the things are on his lawn between the rows of statues. As he limps along glass crunches underfoot.
The woman’s touch to his back almost knocks him over. “Hey, guy. Are you feeling okay?” she asks.
Willard doesn’t answer. A glittering object holds his attention. Broken handcuffs. Evidence. The boy in the basement is going to get Willard in trouble: if they aren’t brothers, then taking him was just as bad as murder.
The woman touches his hand. “Tell ya what,” she says, “leave the mess ‘til I get home. It’s not like your garbage has anywhere important to go.”
A crust of blood is on the handcuffs. Willard must make himself bend over and pick them up, but he can’t.
“Kinky,” the woman says, toeing the cuffs. She isn’t smiling. She dials a number on her cell phone.
If Willard can make it to the shed where he keeps a jug of gasoline and then back into the house, he’ll set fire to the stacks of old newspapers before the police arrive. Instead of walking to the shed, he tumbles to the ground. One ear is pressed against the feet of a cement saint when he hears the woman’s panicked voice. It asks not for the police but for an ambulance.
«47»
Chase Solomon tells herself she’s a concerned neighbor as she places a call to Trenton General Hospital after work. A soft conscience has always been her problem. It’s why she agreed to join Lionel’s marijuana trafficking venture in '98. She’s the one who got him in trouble by maxing out his borrowed MasterCard, after all. He needed that credit to pay his gambling debt and it wasn’t available. The jobs she did probably spared him broken legs or worse.
A hospital receptionist provides the answers Chase needs to know. Willard Crawley, her neighbor’s name according to the ID Chase found in his wallet before the paramedics arrived, won’t make the return trip from the hospital for a week or more. Better yet, Willard is suffering complications after emergency surgery for infected peritonitis. Visiting hours were over for the day, but she can see him tomorrow between the hours of noon and three.
It’s a mercy visit that won’t happen. What will happen is a trip to her neighbor’s house. In case the receptionist gets her kicks out of passing on false information to grieving family members and Willard is actually making his sweet way home, Chase changes out of her boring work clothes. She chooses her tightest pair of jeans, the ones with rhinestones riveted down the seam, and a low-cut blouse. Willard might be a pudgy walking corpse, but Chase knows a pair of tight jeans can make a perfect smokescreen when a woman gets into a tight spot.
“You’re a good Samaritan, Chase girl,” she tells her reflection as she backcombs her hair to best effect. She drains the dregs from a Coors Light. “You did, after all, pick up all that stinking garbage from his lawn. And this is not a break-and-enter. The door’s still open and Mr. Creepy Crawley would thank you if he knew. It’s not like he had time to turn off the stove or taps. If he comes home, it’ll be to a house that hasn’t burnt down or flooded, and why? Because someone cared, that’s why. And if he finds himself a little lighter in the cash, booze or recreational drug department, well, that’s what happens when people don’t bother to shut their doors.
She roots through the piles of shoes and boots in her closet and decides the expedition deserves her best pair of cowboy boots. When she glimpsed their hand-stitched can-can girls and genuine rattlesnake trim in a high-end shop in downtown San Fran they seemed worth the risk of a little light-fingered action. They’re the worse for wear, but she still believes in the boots’ almost magical ability to get her out of tough spots.
Radar shuffles his old dog body to the door when Chase opens it. Now that she’s made up her mind to act, she’s too wired for patience, so she gives the animal a gentle prod on the backside with a foot to hurry him along. There’s enough light left in the sky to highlight the bats flitting around between the two yards. Two doors down, the bratty Ackerson boys are shooting hoops in their yard.
She waits as Radar takes his sweet time pissing. After the heat of an unseasonably hot day, the dew in the air is refreshing. Willard keeps his grass cut short, so the lawn goes from jungle to golf course at the 50-yard line.
Still, both of their properties are jungles, really. The difference is Chase’s consists of weeds, while Willard’s consists of twenty or so tacky statues. Both yards give a person somewhere to hide.
The Ackerson boys have finished their game and gone inside by the time the dog’s arthritic shuffle and Chase’s nervous swagger bring the pair to Willard’s porch. Radar needs more prodding and the promise of a treat before he climbs the steps. A green and yellow banana slug creeps its way up the sill, racing them.
Chase pushes too hard on the open door, making it slam against the inside wall. The shock of the bang and the stench she’d noticed earlier hit her simultaneously. It’s hard to tell, but she thinks she identifies grease, body odor, and urine. She’s hoping some of the smell originates with marijuana production, her best guess for why the man installed one-way glass in his windows.
She holds her breath as she steps inside. The mess is bad enough, but what the beam of light reveals on the walls is Psycho scary. Her runaway and foster child days brought her into some strange places, yet none of them had anything even half as bizarre. She feels like the lead in a horror movie, a femme fatale who’s about to get the ax, as she crosses the kitchen. She stands on a round throw rug in the center of the room, turning to take in the pictures one at a time. They all show the same blond boy. His pose is rigid, like the angel statues in the yard. Some of the paintings are titled like the base of the stone statues only with freakish things like Holy Baby and Saint Terrance. In one, the boy stands with his hands clasped as if in prayer. Our Child of Sorrows, the title says.
“Shit,” Chase says, “who the fuck were those handcuffs for?” Her hands shake as she digs through her purse for her cigarettes. She needs nicotine before she can do whatever it is she’s about to do: explore further, pass out, run.
She should hightail it outside, that much is obvious. Instead she plays the light across more of the kitchen. There are locks on all the cupboards. The beam plays across something dark and congealed on a chair near a table. She fumbles through her shoulder purse for her cell phone. The police should be here investigating, not sitting in a coffee shop stuffing their faces with chocolate-glazed donuts. She almost punches in 911.
“What the fuck are you thinking?” she says. If she calls, the police will trace it to her. And currently she’s facing five years for trying to help people chill out, then skipping bail.
“Screw this,” she says as she heads for the door. If the angel in the picture is here, she doesn’t want to be the one who finds him. After the life she’s led, nights are hard enough as is. Her nightmares don’t need fresh subject matter.
She turns the light on Radar as she butts out her cigarette on the floor with a boot. His tongue is working the concealed mess. “Sicko,” she says, “we’re out of here, and don’t even think of licking my face ever again.” Her stomach heaves as she hauls him out the door by his collar. The Coors Light and pizza she ate for dinner threaten to come up. She’s tempted to let loose on Willard’s porch: if her suspicions are right, vomit would make a fitting welcome home.
«48»
The sound of his baby brother’s crying wakes Willard. Cowering under his blanket, he waits for the door to his room to smash open. His stepfather will deliver the punishment and his mother will arrive toward the end to watch in silence. He’s failed, yet again, at his only job of keeping the baby hushed.
He counts to one hundred, but the expected fury doesn’t arrive. There still might be time to fix things. Willard pushes past unexpected stomach pain to slip out of bed. He approaches the crib in a daze of sleep.
He blows on his brother’s face, causing the baby to gulp. Jostling the railing has less effect. Then the cries do something terrible: they turn into real words, a demand to nurse. Willard tugs the pillow from under the infant’s head, presses it down on his face. The baby is strong, but even one-handed Willard is stronger.
Willard uses his free hand to squeeze his penis for comfort while he waits. From experience, he knows it will take a bit for his brother to relax. Instead of his own small, familiar penis, however, his fingers feel something large and horrible. His hand jerks back, freeing his mind to process other changes; the swollen skin and bandage covering his belly, the white walls and adult-sized crib, the machinery, wire and tubes. His mind races over possibilities until it lands on the truth. He is no longer a boy living in his stepfather’s house. He is Willard Crawley, a grown man in hospital.
He releases the pressure on the pillow. A man’s bald head springs up, tumbling the pillow to the ground. His jerking arm pulls out an IV. The beeping will bring a nurse to clean up the blood.
Willard steps back to his side of the room. No matter how much he hurts and needs the morphine at the end of the button, he can’t stay in hospital much longer, not while the faker is still in the house waiting to be found.
“Tell and you die,” he cautions the wide-eyed man. Quiet weeping is a promise to obey.
«49»
Radar saves Chase from a dream threatening to turn into a nightmare by barking at the back door. She throws a hand out and locates the clock on her bedside table. It’s three-fucking-thirty in the morning. Nightmare or not, she needs to sleep. She’s bagged enough to hope Radar will invite in the intruder, or whatever’s out there, and leave her be.
His barks grow more frantic. “I’m coming. Hold your horses.” Chase keeps the lights off to retain the bit of sleepiness she still feels as she digs through the clothing dumped on a chair for the embroidered silk of her Japanese kimono.
The door creaks open onto a night scene bathed in moonlight. There isn’t anything troubling that she can see, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Chase has been surprised by the unexpected more than a few times in her life, and she’s never been able to shake the feeling that Lionel’s cohorts are still on her tail. One thing she knows for certain, men like them have long memories when revenge is involved. As soon as Radar steps outside, however, his anxiety ends. Instead of chasing a threat, he makes his labored way down the stairs to relieve himself against a post.
“Hope you’re happy,” Chase says. Despite the damp, she sits on the top step of the porch to light up one of the cigarettes she stowed in her robe’s pocket for emergencies. She’s had a feeling sometimes, when sitting here, that eyes were on her. She feared Lionel’s goons or maybe the cops had her under surveillance. Now she’s not so sure. What if the boy with the curls is real and he’s been watching her? If so, he picked the wrong recipient for a psychic SOS.
What she does know is sleep’s going to prove impossible if she doesn’t do something to appease her curiosity. She slips her cold feet into a pair of sneakers, which are easier to run in than boots. Next she considers weapons and decides to arm herself with a switchblade and a flashlight.
The door to the house is open wider than she remembers having left it. As she enters the room the moon casts shadows that send her imagination into cartwheels. Monstrous possibilities present themselves; Creepy Crawley might have faked illness to trick her, he might be lying in wait behind one of the doors, he might have murdered Goldilocks and now needs a new victim to wear the halo.
The paintings of the child still freak her out. She’s seen similar martyred eyes on stained-glass windows the few times she’s stepped foot inside the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and she didn’t find those comforting either. The silver glitter glue used to make his many halos twinkles in the dim light.
Chase keeps Radar at her side as she searches the other rooms on the main floor. Apparently, Willard’s not only some kind of sicko, he also doesn’t recycle. Except for a narrow pathway down the center, what should be a living room is stacked high with newspapers, clothing and more junk than an average thrift store. If the boy’s upstairs, a load of crap has buried him.
A chattering sound coming from the kitchen makes her freeze. Radar’s hackles rise and a low growl rumbles through his body. Chase squeezes her fingers tighter around his collar before taking a few steps towar
d the sound. A crash replaces the strange noise. Chase runs for the kitchen intending to bowl her way past whatever is there, and escape out the door. Instead, she’s stopped by the hiss of a raccoon. The standoff lasts a minute, during which Radar shows no interest in protecting Chase by driving off the intruder. The raccoon loses interest first. After one last sniff of a torn bag of garbage it waddles away into the night.
Chase collapses onto a chair—screw the germs. The armpits of her robe are soaked. She can’t do this; there’s too much crap to dig through and her nerves are officially shot. She’s just not that curious.
Radar yawns. Chase feels a weird mix of anxiety and exhaustion. She wants to return to her bed and sleep the whole thing off. Besides, it’s not like anyone ever came to her rescue when she needed it. Where the hell were all the heroes when her foster parents locked her in their basement for a sweltering summer week because she stole purple eye shadow from a department store?
Basement. That’s where Goldilocks has to be.
Chase has watched too many horror movies not to know it’s a bad sign the basement door screeches as she pushes it open. The steps leading down are narrow and steep. Willing or not, Radar can’t navigate them with his arthritic hips. Leaving her quasi-protector behind is not an option, so Chase hoists the top half of seventy-pound dog over her shoulder. Despite his wriggling resistance, she makes her slow way down to the bottom.
Like the stairs, the basement is nothing but a basement. She flicks on an overhead light. The space contains everything a person would expect in the house of a disgusting psychotic slob: a rusty deep-freeze she refuses to look inside; washer and dryer; assorted boots and shoes; used paint and a half-finished canvass that shows the boy’s lost weight. The word famine now belongs before child. There’s also a cheesy Blue Boy painting identical to the one Chase’s grandmother hung above the sofa in the Seattle flat they shared. It was the old hag’s only attempt at interior decorating.
All That Remains (A Missing and Exploited Suspense Novel Book 1) Page 12