Every Day Above Ground

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  I shook my head. “The Slatterys have the Sledge City gang. They’re tougher than you.” I glanced at Boule under the glass table. “And you’re down to the dregs.”

  “Then help me,” Ingrid said. “I meant what I said.”

  “Like our last deal.”

  She stepped forward. “Damn you. Don’t you think I deserve to see him dead?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Listen.” Ingrid stood directly in front of me. “Gar is being released from prison tomorrow morning. Fekkete will meet him at the airport and take him to see Joe. We’ll catch them there. Everything is all prepared.”

  A bad thought, what sort of dark preparations Ingrid might have made for Joe Slattery. It wouldn’t be a simple bullet between the eyes. Not after two decades of rot eating at the woman’s soul.

  “I’ll win,” she said.

  Maybe she would, somehow. But it wasn’t my fight. Let these maniacs massacre each other.

  “After you’re done, if you’re alive,” I said, “get out of Seattle. Stay out. If I find you or Boule or any of your people in my town again, it’ll be war. You won’t win that.”

  I used one of the bar towels to wipe my prints, as I ejected the magazine of Boule’s Beretta and cleared the chamber before dropping the gun on the carpet.

  “You were wrong,” Ingrid said, just as I reached the door. “Wrong about April.”

  I stopped.

  “You don’t think I have the courage to dirty my hands,” she said. “But I was the one who gave April Slattery the shot of potassium chloride. I held her under the water. I watched her die.”

  Ingrid raised her head, every jagged shard of willpower back where it started.

  “And I felt better than I have in years,” she said.

  Age Twelve, Christmas Eve

  Home, for the first time, didn’t feel safe.

  There had been times when it had felt a little scary, sure. I’d had nightmares like every little kid, and then Granddad would leave the lights on and a radio playing for me. He had drawn the line at my sleeping in front of the TV.

  And if I’m gonna be totally honest, there were some nights since coming home from the Rolfssons’ that our big house seemed a little too big, especially when dodging the creaky stairs on my way down to sneak a snack late at night.

  But those are just spookhouse feelings. The kind of scare you get when you know somebody is going to jump out and go Boo and you’ll yell and then you’ll leave and go on to the next ride. Fun.

  I saw a dead guy today.

  I saw a murderer today.

  And he knows where I live.

  I’d tried Granddad twenty times. Hollis, too, and left him like three messages. I even tried to reach Mr. Willard, and he was scarier than any funhouse. Nobody answered. It was like the whole town had packed up and vanished.

  Leaving the house might make me miss Granddad when he came home. If he came home. The longer he was gone, the more stressed out I got. Where was he? They had driven away from the mansion in the RV like twelve hours ago. Was he driving it out of town? Fencing the artwork they had stolen?

  Or was he lying in a grave somewhere, just like Quincey?

  I pictured Granddad’s face in profile, half-submerged in the earth. Dead white except for the whiskers and eyebrows and black hair like mine.

  No. Don’t think about that. Think of something to do. Something that would—I don’t know—trick Trey into leading me to him, or reach somebody who could reach Granddad. Anything.

  It would be dark soon.

  This is a bad place to be, said that calm cold part of my brain. After dark.

  Go to Davey’s. Go to a neighbor’s. Go to any business still open on Christmas Eve. Go.

  Instead, I went to the pantry and moved the cans of Stagg chili and Chunky soup until I could reach Granddad’s hiding place. Fight or flight. We learned about that in Science last year. If I wouldn’t run away, maybe I could claw and bite. The human version.

  No gun in the square hole, just ID cards and money. I’d check around the house, but I already knew every space would be empty.

  I was kind of relieved. The whole shooting-Trey-in-the-leg idea that had flashed through my mind seemed like sci-fi, it was so bizarre. Still, there were other options. I had a Swiss Army pocketknife. Granddad had something better. I ran upstairs.

  In his dresser drawer he kept a wooden Montecristo cigar box. It still smelled like tobacco, not the stink of cigarettes but the raw sweet aroma from a harvest. The box was full of treasures. A Zippo lighter that he filled from the bottle of butane under the stove. A silver cigar cutter. And a folding knife, with an antler handle and a razor-sharp five-inch blade. I could totally confirm the sharpness, because honing it was how Granddad had taught me how to sharpen the two little blades on my own knife.

  I took it, opening up the knife for a second to look. Just holding it made me feel better.

  Time for Part Two. Get the heck out. The sun was going down.

  I left lights on, mostly upstairs, and in the kitchen and foyer. Then I wheeled my bike from the front porch through the house and out the back door, around to the far side. It wouldn’t be visible from the street, but I could jump on it and soar down the stone steps if I had to make a run for it. Hopefully without wiping out and breaking my neck.

  Then I went to hide in the backyard shed.

  Trey might not show. Granddad could return at any minute. Still, being in the shed felt like having my own gopher hole. Safe from predators. I could crack the door and peer out at the house, knowing I was undetectable.

  The sun was nearly down. I could see the glow of Christmas lights from the street below our house, green and white and blue and red. We didn’t really decorate for the season, other than wrapping gifts and putting up stockings, which Granddad always filled with food. I think his family had gone hungry sometimes when he was a boy, and Santy—Granddad says that’s what the kids had called him, or Father Christmas, which was also strange—Santy bringing them food was always the best.

  Dark now. Undeniably dark.

  Through the windows, I had a wide view of the foyer and most of the kitchen. Upstairs, only my room. The house looked strange at night, from this direction. Like somebody had made paintings of familiar things and pasted them to a black canvas background. Nothing moved.

  Until something did.

  Behind you.

  Not actually in the shed, but close enough. A soft bump and the sound of scraping over wood. My hair stood up. I froze so solid I didn’t even dare to reach out a finger and pull the shed door all the way shut.

  To my right, something was moving along the shed wall outside. It stopped. I was sure that any second—in horror movies they always wait for a second—the shed door would be flung wide and Trey would plunge an axe—

  It moved away. I heard footsteps crossing the lawn, going to the house. I leaned, just an inch, to peek through the crack.

  It was Trey. Hood pulled up, tall body hunched as he skulked up to the back door of the house. I’d locked it, but I hadn’t turned the alarm on. Scaring him away wasn’t the idea. I just wanted him to think we were gone and see what he would do.

  He opened the back door. I guess he could pick locks like me and Granddad, or maybe he had broken in really quietly. He stood there in the open doorway for a moment. Listening, I think. Then he closed the door behind him and moved so slowly into the house that he might have been pushing his way through clay.

  He stopped, halfway through the kitchen, and turned toward the counter and bent a little. Was he writing something? No, opening a drawer. The same drawer where Granddad and I kept the little tools, including the screwdriver Trey had stolen from us.

  I knew he couldn’t be returning it. The screwdriver was still in my pocket. Was he stealing something else with Granddad’s prints on it?

  He finished with the drawer and continued his slow walk. A little faster than before. He must be confident he was alone in the house now. I watched him
through the windows as he crossed the foyer and headed toward the stairs. Then he was out of sight.

  What was Trey doing? Searching for something? He hadn’t looked around downstairs at all.

  Then he was in my room. He seemed very close, his tall hooded body right there at the window, and I shrank back into the safety of the shed.

  My own room. It was freaky. It also pissed me off a little.

  The lights went out upstairs.

  I strained my eyes, trying to make out anything. But my room had vanished into the black canvas.

  Trey was hiding there. Waiting. For us.

  What could I do? Try to call Hollis again? Maybe we could trap Trey in the house somehow. I wished I had a button like in the crime movies, one that would slam steel plates over all of the windows and doors, sealing the exits.

  I should leave, find help—even the cops if I really had to—and bring them here. If Trey was in jail, he wouldn’t be a danger, at least for a while.

  His messing with the tool drawer bugged me, though. Had he stolen something else? Or put something there? If cops looked in the drawer, would we be in trouble?

  No matter what, I’d have to abandon the shed and cross the lawn. In easy view of the upstairs windows, if Trey was watching. Better to move fast. I slipped out onto the grass and quick-walked to the back porch, where the overhang would hide me again.

  I was ten feet from the back door. It would only take me a second or two to check the drawer. I could run right back out if I heard Trey coming.

  Okay. Decision made.

  It was my house. I’d snuck around it enough to know just how to open the back door and step across the kitchen without making a sound. The whole time, I willed my ears to be ten times more sensitive, to catch any movement from upstairs.

  The tool drawer liked to stick. I slid it open an inch at a time, careful for the squeak of rubbing wood.

  Trey had put something in the drawer. A knife.

  Not a regular steel knife. It was some kind of thick clear plastic, and it looked handmade, an eight-inch single piece that narrowed to a point. The handle was wrapped with athletic tape. It didn’t have much of a blade, and I figured that was because the knife was intended for stabbing, not cutting.

  And it was stained. Discolored at the tip and in the tiny cracks of the plastic and even a spot turning the white athletic tape a dark rusty red.

  Blood. Quincey’s blood.

  I couldn’t leave it here. It was the same trick Trey had tried at the mansion with the screwdriver, planting evidence. I reached for a paper towel and picked the plastic knife out of the drawer with two fingers, figuring I’d wrap it up and button it in my pocket with its buddy the screwdriver—

  The stairs creaked.

  I turned and ran for the back door, out onto the porch, as Trey thundered down the stairs. I vaulted the porch railing and ran along the edge of the house toward my bike. My hand still clutched the plastic knife wrapped in its paper towel. I jumped on the bike and pushed off, getting it moving.

  I was going to win this race. I knew the yard much better than Trey did, and I would be down the stone steps before he figured out which way I had run.

  Except he had gone out the front.

  There he was in the corner of my left eye, rounding the opposite corner of the house. Racing to intercept me at the top of the steps. I cut right, the bike catching air on the steep slope. Trey dived and his body slammed into my rear tire. I heard his grunt as the bike flew out from under me.

  I hit the ground, half on the slope, half on the stone steps. My arm banged into the steps and then into my head. Red and green from the neighbors’ Christmas lights flashed and spun as I rolled all the way down to the sidewalk.

  Trey. Where was he? A loud clatter as the bike crashed to the sidewalk near me. My legs scrambled. I was standing, all of a sudden. Trey was lying facedown on the steep slope, practically upside down. Moving. Getting up.

  I grabbed my bike and tried to jump on it. Missed. I was dizzy. My hurt arm wouldn’t grab the bars. I made it on the second try and the bike started coasting down the street. I bumped into a parked car. Kicked off again. Too woozy to run. Hard enough to stay upright and let the bike carry me.

  Behind me, I heard an engine roar to life. It must be Trey. I found the pedals, somehow, and told my feet to start moving. Amazingly, they did.

  The steep hill gave me wings. I flew through the second block, the third, much faster now as the street leveled out, toward the playfields leading into the arboretum park. Too late I realized I had passed all the houses and people. Past anyone who might help.

  If they could. Trey was going to kill me. If I ran up to somebody and told them what was happening, maybe he would just murder them, too.

  Headlights flashed as the car behind me thumped down the last block. He was coming. He was going to run me over.

  The street curved sharply to the left, and I leaned into the turn, hearing the wheels hiss as I pumped harder. The headlights grew brighter. I ditched the bike and ran, straight into the trees that bordered a short hill leading down to a soccer field. My leg wobbled and I fell, tumbling at the edge of the slope. Brakes screeched on the street behind me. I glanced back to see Trey jumping out of a brown panel van. The sight got me to my feet. It felt horribly slow, working my way down the dark hill, around trees and thick bramble bushes. Wanting to run but knowing I’d brain myself on a branch if I moved faster. Trey crashed into the brush behind me.

  Then the trees ended suddenly and I dashed out, almost falling onto the soccer field. Open ground. I was fast, not as fast as Davey, but I could really run, most of the time. Right now my legs shook. Trey would be able to catch up, unless I could reach the opposite slope and the arboretum on the other side. Plenty of hiding places there.

  A branch snapped and I heard him curse as he broke through the brush to the field. I was halfway across, the yellow boundary line glowing up ahead. Legs still moving. I’d hit the wall soon, that moment when my body would stop doing what my calm cold brain told it to.

  Go. Go.

  Ten yards to the trees. Five. None. I dashed into a narrow split between two trunks as Trey’s huff of effort sounded near enough to chill the back of my neck. I kept going, slipping and sliding on wet leaves as I pushed through the brambles, up the slope, ignoring the pain in my hands. Too dark to run now. Thorns and spindly winter branches grabbed at my sleeves and jeans. Slowing me down even more. Trey was a freight train, smashing his way through everything. He was catching up.

  I ducked behind a thick tree stump, fell to my knees. Tried to quiet my gasping. Would he run right on past?

  No. He’d stopped, almost. Twigs crunched under his feet, as he searched for me in the dark.

  If he missed me, I could double back. Get help. If he didn’t . . .

  I reached into my jeans pocket, found Granddad’s folding knife. Opened it. Fight or flight.

  It was so hard to see. Even in winter the trees let no light in from the city or the sky. I focused on the last place I’d heard Trey, listened for the squeak of his soles on the sodden ground.

  There. Right next to where I crouched. Leaves shifted underfoot as he turned, seeking.

  I plunged forward with the knife held in two hands, almost diving. The blade met something, and Trey yelped. I bumped my head off his knee and the knife fell away as he yelled and cursed. I scramble-crawled away in a panic. Up on my feet, moving, I didn’t care which way.

  Lights now, through the trees ahead. Streetlamps. The road through the arboretum. Get there. Hide.

  I hurtled out of the woods. Trey was so close. I could hear every one of his staggering steps over the bang of my heartbeat. The road. I was on the pavement.

  Headlights boomed, closer even than Trey. I turned, knowing I was about to be flattened, but the headlights veered away and there was a scream and a terrible thudding sound.

  I fell down, right on the yellow dashed line in the middle of the road. The pavement was cold against my
face.

  Granddad was there, bending down, lifting me up.

  “Daideo,” I said. Grandfather.

  “Van,” he said. “What happened?”

  “I lost your knife,” I said. And started crying, for the second time that day.

  Big baby.

  Thirty-Six

  Just after the witching hour, Seattle was as quiet as it ever got, resting until the eruption of the next working day. I had the sidewalks outside the Olympian hotel and into downtown all to myself.

  Ingrid Ekby was insane. She had murdered three people that I knew about, to devise a slim chance of avenging her own horrific rape. She’d kill more before she was done. Without hesitation.

  I agreed that she deserved to see Joe Slattery dead. If someone had ripped my life apart the way that Joe had done to her, I’d sign that same contract with the devil.

  But Ingrid would pay any price, overlook any collateral damage, to see her vendetta through. She hadn’t spared a thought for Marshall or her other man, dead at the farmhouse. Corcoran, and the fence. All the same. She would undoubtedly have sacrificed Boule or me or O’Hasson with as little hesitation.

  I passed a tree-lined courtyard at the back of Benaroya Hall. A pair of skateboarders clattered through tricks on the steps and wheelchair ramps. The boards reminded me of Cyndra, who I had frightened so badly just that afternoon. I wasn’t sure how to make up for that, if it could be fixed at all. Even Hollis had me on his shit list. One winner of a day.

  At least I knew where my feet were taking me.

  Luce lived in a one-bedroom apartment above the bar that she owned, near Pike Place. My grandfather had owned the bar, called the Morgen, originally, in partnership with Luce’s uncle. Most of the time, Luce used the adjoining staircase in the back room of the bar that led to her hallway. There was also an exterior entrance to the building. I pressed the intercom button, not knowing if it actually worked. I’d never heard it buzz while Luce and I had been dating.

  Midnight. Luce might still be in the bar. Or out. Or with someone. I pressed it again.

  “’lo?” came her electronically garbled voice over the speaker.