Time Release

by Martin J. Smith

  He picked up the pile of photographs and laid them on his desk, the coroner’s picture still on top. He turned it face down, then sat. For better or worse, Sonny was getting closer now, an arm’s length from whatever demons he’d locked away. Experience told him Sonny was either going to open the door and confront them, or they were going to burst through and devour him. For Sonny, now, there was no turning back. Was he ready?

  Christensen dialed his answering service. All he could do was make sure Sonny had somewhere to turn if—when—the time release began. He left Sonny’s name and made sure the operator understood it was a priority. He hesitated, then approved the release of his home number and address if Sonny asked for it. He hung up the phone, shrugged into his overcoat, and turned out the lights, then sat down in the chair beside the door feeling helpless, waiting, knowing that neither he nor Sonny would ever be more vulnerable.

  Chapter 32

  The car’s dome light was pale, but bright enough. Downing laid everything out on a towel spread across the front seat, making sure he was ready for anything. He opened a small envelope and let the seven capsules spill into his palm, one of each major brand of pain reliever on the market, including Primenyl. No matter what Corbett kept in his medicine cabinet—and everybody got headaches now and then—he’d find a match. He poured them back into the envelope and picked up his fail-safe, testing the needle guard on the syringe he’d loaded an hour earlier.

  A single headlight rounded the corner ahead, bumping toward him along the rutted road. He’d expected to wait hours, maybe overnight. Could he be this lucky? Downing rolled everything back into the towel and shoved it into the satchel. In his various visits to Outcrop, he’d only seen three working cars parked among the rusted junkers and rickety houses. One was usually on blocks, an orange-colored Dodge. Another, an old Beetle, was dark blue. He could tell by the engine noise it wasn’t the VW. The third was Corbett’s. It wasn’t registered, so he’d never been able to nail down the make and model. But it was light-colored and it rolled, making it easy to identify even at night. He’d know soon enough.

  The car turned left, its light sweeping the grove of spruce, hemlock, and pines where Downing was parked. He squinted into the country darkness. It was Corbett’s car. Had to be. The cone of its headlight beam moved down the access road, away from the strip mine toward civilization. The son of a bitch would be gone at least thirty minutes, because there was nowhere to go between here and the main road, and the main road was at least fifteen minutes down the goat path that wound its way to Outcrop. “Bye-bye, Chickie,” Downing said.

  He planned to work fast anyway, to be safe. He pushed the small silver button on his wristwatch. When the watch beeped in twenty minutes, he’d know it was time to clear out.

  He locked the car out of habit and crossed the road at the curve. Something skittered into the underbrush to his right, making him jump, but the sound of his breathing and the crunch of his footsteps on the night-crusted snow calmed him again. The open pit to his left stretched forever, like a black ocean.

  The path that wound through the woods to the back of Corbett’s house angled steeply up from the road. Downing climbed the bank to the flat path, breathing a little harder now, his nose tingling from the sulfury smoke from the houses. Would anyone wonder about the fresh footprints? Since this could take weeks or months to work, would the footprints even be there by the time Corbett died? And even if they were, would the Greene County investigators think to look for them? He’d get rid of the boots on the way back, just in case.

  Downing was close enough now to see the faint glow of lights in every house but Corbett’s. Had to have been Corbett in that car. He stopped in the pine grove behind the houses to map his path to the back door. No chance of being seen. And unless Corbett had changed the back-door lock since his last visit, getting in would be a piece of cake. This might be easier than he’d imagined.

  Or would it? He’d killed twice, but both times had been pure instinct. There’s no decision when it’s a simple question of survival, when a gun’s pointed at your chest.

  Those killings hadn’t involved painstaking preparation. Or premeditation. The world didn’t call them murder.

  This was different—but no less moral, he reminded himself. He closed his eyes, looking for an image to give him courage. He found himself again at the Allegheny County morgue, thinking about lopping shears. Lab techs call them rib-cutters. How easily the tech had scissored open Carole’s torso. How unforgettable the sound, like someone pruning wet branches from a tree.

  He shoved his ski gloves into the satchel and pulled on a pair of latex surgical gloves, then started down.

  His leg tingled as he climbed the back steps. Funny. Hadn’t bothered him in days, but suddenly it came back as he stood there working the tool into the keyhole. He was in Ron Corbett’s kitchen in less than a minute, groping into his satchel for the flashlight. He left his boots on the back steps. He intended to ditch the boots, so he wasn’t worried about being identified. He just wanted to make sure Corbett didn’t suspect someone had been in his house. If this was going to work, everything had to seem normal.

  The kitchen smelled of cigarettes, grease, and mildew; the floor was sticky beneath his stocking feet. Downing set the satchel down beside the battered Frigidaire and opened its door. Shit. Practically empty. Three cans left from a Bud six-pack on the top shelf. A jar of baby kosher dills. Yellow mustard. A squeeze bottle of ketchup. He opened the carton of eggs, wondering if Corbett would notice a needle prick in one of the two that were left. Too risky. He lifted the lid from a saucepan to find what looked like a pork chop in tomato sauce. Slipping it into the red mess would be easy enough, but that would be all wrong. He needed something that would go straight from a store-bought container into Corbett’s mouth.

  An orange in the vegetable drawer. If nothing else turned up, that was a possibility. But that would be risky, too. If it sat too long, it might get discolored. Corbett had probably experimented on everything, and even a slight imperfection might tip him off. Downing closed the refrigerator. Maybe he’d have better luck in the bathroom.

  The flashlight beam cut through the gloom, and Downing followed it from the kitchen into the tiny living room at the front of the house. Corbett didn’t spend a lot of time decorating. An old recliner was anchored in front of a small TV, which sat on an upturned wooden fruit crate. The only light source was a fixtureless overhead bulb in the center of the ceiling. Downing kept the flashlight trained on the floor so he wouldn’t attract attention from outside.

  He passed a narrow stairway leading to the second floor, but he didn’t go up. It was clear from the night he’d watched Corbett double-team the neighbor lady that the bedroom was on the ground floor. After checking the bed, just to make sure he was right about it having been Corbett in the car, he moved to the door he thought led to the bathroom. Even before he opened it, revealing a closet jammed with boxes, he remembered the outhouse. Goddamn. If Corbett didn’t have a bathroom, he didn’t have a medicine cabinet. And if he didn’t have a medicine cabinet, where would he keep his medicine? Downing checked his watch. Five minutes already gone.

  He opened every kitchen cupboard, sweeping his light across the mostly empty shelves. Did the same under the sink. He rifled the contents of a cardboard box on the counter: A half-empty bag of sugar. Salt and pepper. A few canned vegetables. Christ. Think. Where would the guy brush his teeth or shave? He played the beam on the kitchen sink, then on the windowsill just above it. He moved closer. On the left corner of the sill sat an old leather travel kit. The zipper was broken, and it yawned open wide when Downing lifted one rigid edge. Bingo. Buried under a half-empty Aqua Velvet bottle, down among a nest of crumpled Band-Aids and rubbers, was a beautiful white plastic bottle. He set the flashlight on the counter and poked a finger in, rotating the bottle so the label faced up. Could the gods of fate have a sense of humor?


  Primenyl capsules.

  Downing carefully unloaded the kit, laying each item on the counter in the order he removed it. He wanted to put everything back just the way he found it. The bottle was open, about half full. Perfect. The Primenyl killer should die this way, in an apparently random death that seems like the work of … the Primenyl killer. The symmetry of it! He pulled the towel from the satchel and unrolled it on the counter. Only a childproof cap stood between him and the end of this nightmare.

  Downing poured the capsules from his envelope into a tiny mound on the towel and brought the flashlight beam in close. He separated the green-and-white Primenyl capsule from the rest, then poured a few capsules from the bottle into his hand just to make sure they matched. The moment he dropped the loaded capsule among the others in his hand, it was lost; no way he could tell them apart even if he wanted to back out. He poured them all back into the bottle, replaced the cap, and gave the bottle a quick shake, just to make things interesting. As he reassembled the contents of the travel kit, he thought how sickeningly easy it had been.

  He held the flashlight close to his wristwatch, then set it back on the counter. Seven and a half minutes left of the twenty he’d given himself—a comfortable cushion to get back to the car. But he planned on staying in the car until Corbett got back. He didn’t want to take the chance of passing him along the goat path. He’d wait all night if he had to. If Corbett wasn’t back before dawn, he’d have to chance it. No way he’d get out unnoticed in daylight.

  The kitchen suddenly got bright. Downing froze. He counted, one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, then slowly turned his head to the left. The generous neighbor lady was in her kitchen, maybe twenty feet away, in a loose burgundy robe. Same peroxide-nuked hair, which was bound up in pink curlers. She’d looked younger with her clothes off. A sullen, pan-faced boy with a crew cut, maybe twelve or thirteen, trailed behind her. Straight out of Deliverance. No curtains filtered the light pouring through their window into Corbett’s kitchen, but then, none of these people seemed too worried about privacy.

  The boy turned and left the kitchen, and she disappeared for a few seconds from the window that framed her. She was working on a slice of white bread when she reappeared, then stopped at what must have been a kitchen table. From there, she could see straight into Corbett’s kitchen. Downing tried to follow her eyes. Was she looking down at the table, or at him? Reading something? Downing noticed his flashlight on the counter. Still on. Fuck. What would she notice more easily, light or motion? He decided to stay still, leaning as best he could into the shadow of Corbett’s refrigerator. What was she doing?

  She turned a garish, colored page. One of the tabloids. Christ. The kid wandered through the window frame again. Then an older guy, talking at the kid’s back loud enough that Downing could make out a few words. Had to be his father. The kid passed again, and for a moment all three were framed in the small window. Downing stole another look at his watch.

  At least he was ready to go. In the unexpected light, he double-checked the floor for any sign of his passage. He’d touched nothing in the kitchen except the refrigerator handle and the travel kit, and that was back on the windowsill where he’d found it. Nothing he’d brought had left the towel, which was rolled back into the satchel at his feet. His boots were on the back steps, and he could pick them up and disappear into the woods in a few seconds. All he needed was darkness.

  She was alone again, absently flipping pages, tuning out the rumble, which had moved into another room. She opened her robe, exposing one bulbous breast, then cinched the belt tight again. Downing felt himself get hard. Trix was right: Men are pigs. He knew it. He should have been repulsed watching Corbett’s three-way circus through the window that summer night. What he was, though, was jealous. For one lost moment, he was Ron Corbett. Tasting the whiskey, watching the action from bedside, savoring the chance for seconds, fucking a woman while her husband watched from a chair. On an average day, how different was he, really, from that hateful bastard?

  A tinny electronic beep. In the tense silence, his watch alarm seemed like a factory whistle. Did she see him recoil? See his right arm move to shut it off? Could she have heard? Blondie flipped another page, oblivious. Then, as suddenly as she arrived, she turned out the kitchen light and was gone. Darkness returned. Downing breathed.

  He pulled the back door shut behind him, making sure it locked, then grabbed his boots and ran through the snow toward the trees behind the house and onto the trail leading back to the car. His heavy wool socks were soaked by the time he stopped, but he wanted to get away from the houses, away from possible witnesses. He peeled off the socks and pulled the boots over his bare feet, then took off running again. Out here, he was exposed. Corbett was probably just making a cigarette run, and that Stop-N-Go store wasn’t far off the goat path. He could be back any minute, and Downing wanted to be safe inside his car when Corbett got home.

  And he was, but barely. The pinpoint of Corbett’s single headlight appeared somewhere down the hill just as Downing was opening his car door. Downing was still panting from his run, watching through the gray fog on his windshield, when Corbett’s car swept around the right curve toward the houses.

  “Sleep tight, Chickie,” he said, watching the car bounce over the rise and out of sight.

  Corbett’s engine noise would cover the sound of his car starting, assuming the Ford didn’t stutter too long in this cold. Downing turned the key, thinking, Start, you bastard, saying, Thank you, Jesus when it did. He backed up to clear the trees, then started down the goat path in the winking moonlight, waiting until he was halfway to the main road before turning on his headlights.

  Downing was forty miles away, somewhere along Hartwell Creek, when he pulled off I-79 to find a place to get rid of the boots. That’s when he wondered, for the first time, where he’d left his socks.

  Chapter 33

  “Who’s the guy on Mom’s porch swing?”

  Christensen interrupted his parallel parking. Annie was pointing through the Explorer’s windshield at their porch, at the antique wooden swing Molly had stenciled by hand. Melissa had her headphones on in the backseat, oblivious.

  “I can’t see around the big bush, honey. Who does it look like? Somebody we know?”

  “He looks cold is all. Wait. It’s that guy that came to swimming lessons.”

  “Sonny?”

  Christensen strained to see. He still couldn’t make him out, so he finished wedging the Explorer into the too-small space between the Koslowskis’ Caddy and a mound of plowed snow. He never parked in the garage during these occasional visits home, when they picked up fresh clothes to take back to Brenna’s. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it was Sonny. Ever since he’d shown him the coroner’s photograph, Sonny had been walking a knife edge of emotion and didn’t know why, which confused and frus­trated him. But Christensen knew they were close to a breakthrough, for better or worse. It was like watching a pot come to full boil. He didn’t expect this, though, even if he had authorized the release of his home address and phone number to Sonny. He wasn’t entirely comfortable, either, now that the killer’s son was sitting on his family’s front porch. The closer Sonny got to a breakthrough, the more desperate his father was likely to get. Christensen thought of 1986, of Ron Corbett’s cruel assault on the detective who was tormenting him. Threatened, he’d simply killed the thing Downing loved most.

  “Wait here, ladies,” he said, turning off the engine. He was halfway across the street when the passenger-side doors slammed one after the other.

  “We’re just going inside,” Melissa said.

  “Yeah, it’s cold,” Annie said.

  Sonny was sitting at the exact center of the swing, his legs tightly crossed and extending to the floor, balancing on a single toe, a daypack slung over his right shoulder. The swing seemed suspended halfway through a downward arc.
No jacket, only a flannel shirt. His arms were wrapped all the way around his upper body. He seemed cold, damaged. When he looked up, his face was the color of oatmeal and his eyes had the suspicious look of a feral dog.

  “Hey,” he said. His lips were almost blue. His teeth chattered.

  “Hey,” Annie said. She climbed onto the swing beside him.

  Christensen felt Melissa prying the house keys from his hand, so he gave them up.

  “You look half frozen,” he said to Sonny. “Been here long?”

  Sonny shrugged, then lifted his foot, letting the swing continue its arc. He stopped the backswing with an awkward stomp. He looked past Christensen and waved at Melissa, who was struggling with the front-door key. Sonny was what she and her friends might call an SLS—a Suitable Love Slave—and she seemed flustered by the proximity.

  “That’s right, you two haven’t met,” he said. “Melissa, this is Sonny Corbett. Sonny, my daughter Melissa.”

  “Hi,” she said. She was working the lock furiously now, a living portrait of hormone-fueled anxiety.

  “And I think you know Annie”—who was staring up at Sonny with the same reverence she used to save for the mall Santa, the one who this year she accused, loudly and publicly, of fakery.

  “Sorry to just show up,” Sonny said. “Tried to call, but I kept getting your machine. Nobody’s ever home.”

  “Long story. Come inside.” Annie climbed down from the swing and followed her sister through the front door. Sonny didn’t get up when Christensen put his hand on his shoulder. He seemed anchored, determined. He whispered something Christensen didn’t understand.