Kelly and Jake listened for a moment, controlling their breathing so they wouldn’t miss the slightest noise. The far-off roar of an occasional truck along the nearby freeway was all they could hear outside. From inside came the sound of music with a fast, heavy beat. The thud reverberated just enough to be more felt than heard.
Perfect, thought Jake, for drowning out secret conversations.
Kelly glanced at Jake and nodded. He reached over the fence, undid the latch, and held the gate while Kelly slipped through. Once inside, they stilled and crouched low against the fence. The music seemed to be coming from upstairs. In contrast to the blazing light of the ground floor, the upstairs was completely dark—with the exception of one lighted, arched window at the corner of the house.
Jake gently touched Kelly’s elbow and they crept toward the house, staying close to the edge of the fence along the desert’s edge. In their dark clothing and with the blazing lights inside, they would be hard to see if anyone should look out into the backyard. Nevertheless, they were careful to stay out of the curtain of light thrown through the picture windows.
As they neared the house, they peered into the kitchen. Styrofoam take-out containers littered the island along with the liquor bottles and chip bags. A sack of ice had slipped halfway off the counter and was dripping onto the tile floor. Their gaze traveled to the great room. Men’s suit jackets lay haphazardly over the backs of the sofa; a pair of black loafers had been kicked behind the couch.
Suddenly one of the suit jackets moved. Kelly and Jake shrank into the shadows at the desert edge of the yard, near a sliding door off the kitchen. The jacket shook itself out, lumbered to a standing position, and revealed its owner. Brigante.
Kelly eyed him from the safety of her lookout. His black hair, plastered to his head, looked greasy. He reached a hand out to steady himself, then weaved dangerously across the tile floor, clutching at whatever he could—a side table, the kitchen island, a barstool—on his way to the sliding door.
He’s drunk off his ass, thought Kelly, as she and Jake held their breath and pressed harder against the fence in the dark. Brigante threw open the sliding door and staggered out with an animalistic moan. He took about five steps outside, opened his fly, and let loose a horse-sized stream of piss, groaning as he did so.
Kelly shook her head. “These goons are so used to blatantly doing their dirty work, they would ejaculate right in the middle of Madison Square Garden.” But she saw their chance.
Flashing a look at Jake, she went first, dodging fleetly behind Brigante’s back, over the threshold, and through the kitchen and great room, toward the front of the house. Jake followed, glancing around for other guards, but Brigante seemed to be the only one.
Kelly sped to the base of a staircase, wheeled around the side of it, and crouched down. In an instant Jake was next to her, catching his breath. They froze, taking in their surroundings. They were in the front entrance area, which had a soaring, two-story-high ceiling and an enormous iron-and-stained-glass chandelier hanging from above. The Spanish tile from the kitchen continued in the foyer, accented near the door by a thirteen-foot-by-twenty-foot rectangle of colorful tiles painted to look like a fine carpet. Overhead, an interior balcony encircled three sides of the upper story in a squared-off U-shape, and Jake and Kelly could see several closed doors upstairs. The music they’d heard outside was more pronounced now, a steady rock beat coming from behind one of these doors.
They heard a crash and more moaning. Brigante had come back inside.
Kelly looked around frantically for a place to hide. Would he come to the front of the house and discover them? Built under the staircase was a door—a closet, she hoped. Her body tensed, ready to spring through the door if necessary. Then she heard the squeaky rustling of Styrofoam and the clanking of a bottle. Brigante muttered something to himself and shuffled across the kitchen toward the great room. Kelly heard a pop and a loud electronic buzz, and the huge television blazed to life, blaring a commercial at full volume.
“Shit,” mumbled Brigante, “fucking …” There were more sounds of fumbling, and then the TV quieted down. A narrator was discussing tropical birds. Brigante did not change the channel.
Her heart still pounding, Kelly reached up to grip the banister. The iron was cold in her hand. She nodded to Jake and rose to her feet. Quick as a cat she ascended the staircase, with Jake following her up the stairs just as quietly. At the top, ears straining for the slightest sound, Kelly looked around—then entered through the first open door she spied.
The room was dimly lit and smelled acrid, like burnt matches. It was a large bathroom, with a wide tile counter set with two sinks. Jake slipped a credit card–sized flashlight out of his pocket and shone the small beam of light across the counter. Yellowish powder dusted the surface near some chunks that looked like rock candy. Razor blades and bottle caps were scattered among Ziploc bags and uncapped syringes. A glass pipe lay in the sink. Jake felt his foot touch something and shone the light on the floor. A bag of drinking straws and a box of aluminum foil. He put his mouth on Kelly’s ear.
“Crystal meth,” he breathed.
She nodded and indicated for him to cut the light. They moved cautiously out of the bathroom and peered along the interior wall of the balcony. There were three more doors, all closed. Two of the rooms were dark; light seeped through the doorjamb of the third, in the middle. The music seemed to be coming from the darkened room farthest away, at the end of the corridor to their right. Brass plaques, like the nameplates found on office doors, were attached to the face of all three doors.
Odd, Kelly thought. She held out her hand for the flashlight and crept toward the first door. She flicked on the light. MR. F, read the sign. She flicked the light off.
The next moment, she felt Jake grab her hand. Before she registered what was happening, he was pulling her past the door and into an alcove down the hall. The small space was lined with empty bookshelves and had a skinny, arched window and a wooden chair.
As Kelly heard a door open, someone came out of the room they had just been standing in front of. She couldn’t see who it was, but the person moved down the hall, into the bathroom, and closed the door.
Jake took Kelly’s hand again and they slipped out of the alcove, moving swiftly toward the door of the lit room. It was easy to read the nameplate without the flashlight: MR. G.
Jake felt Kelly’s hand tense. He thought for a moment. If they crossed in front of the small shaft of light coming from beneath the door, would it cause a flicker that could be seen from inside the room? Maybe they were better off taking a quick look in Mr. F’s room before he—or whoever had been in there—came out.
It was impossible to tell who reacted quicker to what happened next.
There was a sudden shout and the third door slammed open.
“Goddamnit, Gillis!” yelled a man’s voice. “She’s tweaking!”
Moving so quickly, almost as if supernaturally, Kelly and Jake were back in the bookshelf-lined alcove. But they had both seen the man come out of the room.
It was Theodore Henckle, shirtless, carrying something in his twitching hand.
They heard the door marked MR. G open and feet move unhurriedly across the tile.
“Ted, Ted, everything’s fine.” Gillis spoke slowly, calmly, as though quieting a fretful child. “Talk to me, tell me what’s going on.”
Henckle’s voice had a slight quiver. “She’s bugging out. H-h-hitting. She’s going to scratch me. K-k-keeps scratching herself. Fucking cat.”
“Relax, Ted,” Gillis said in a soothing voice. “You’re okay. She’ll be alright. Let’s go back to your room and see what we can do.”
Jake and Kelly listened as Gillis continued moving slowly along the balcony to the room at the end of the hall, soothing Henckle with his voice and words. They heard a crash and a woman’s muffled cry, then silence. Kelly stood to move, but Jake kept her back. He held up a finger as if to say, One more minute. Just wait.
Kelly, nauseated at what she’d heard, knew exactly what Gillis was doing in there. She’d felt his fist in her own stomach enough times to know how it hurt. She knew how the cry was involuntary—pain passing through the air being forced out of your gut. She knew that next Gillis would probably tie the girl by her wrists and ankles, facedown on the bed. She remembered how his knee felt between her own shoulder blades as he held her down.
Panic rose in her throat, and she wasn’t sure she could contain herself. She had to go help that girl. She had to save that girl because no one had saved her.
Ignoring Jake, ignoring everything that advised caution, Kelly ran for the bedroom door. She thought she heard Jake hiss, “Stop!” but she kept running, her rubber soles silent on the tile. When she got to the door, she stopped.
The scene in front of her was more hellish than even she could have imagined. Kelly took it all in, like a panoramic camera capturing a wide frame. A red lightbulb illuminated the room in a grotesque bath of lurid crimson shadows. On the bed lay a girl of perhaps fourteen or fifteen, naked and facedown, as Kelly had guessed. Gillis, in his suit, was fastening a cord around her right wrist, his knee on her elbow. She was twitching and crying out, but didn’t seem to be struggling to get away. The skin from her neck to her thighs held a pattern of mottled blotches. In the strange light Kelly couldn’t make out whether they were fresh welts or old sores. The girl’s brown hair was long and matted.
To the left of the bed, by the window, were two chairs. One girl huddled in each, their vacant eyes looking rapidly around the room but seeming not to see. They, too, were naked and extremely thin, and Kelly could see raked lines on their forearms and thighs, as if they’d been scratched. The girls were silent, but their mouths and tongues were in motion, licking their lips, grinding their teeth. In the light, and in their drugged condition, it was hard to tell, but Kelly thought they could be no more than twelve or thirteen years old.
To the right stood Henckle, wearing only his suit trousers. Gray chest hair covered the front of his body down to the flabby white paunch that hung over his belt. His normally sleek, combed silver mane was sticking up crazily, and his face was blotchy. The thing in his hands was a whip with a black leather handle. His hands were trembling so violently, he could barely keep hold of it.
On the bed, Gillis pulled the cord taut and slapped the side of the girl’s head with the back of his hand.
“Are you going to be a good little girl now?” he bellowed. “You little piece of shit!”
In the few seconds that Kelly had been standing in the doorway, the images and actions piled up in slow motion. It seemed to her that a lot of time had passed, in what was really less than an eyeblink. One detail that had not escaped her notice, that her brain had given a weight equal to the horror of the scene, was Henckle’s stare. He was gaping at Kelly now, his eyes darting faster than was normal between her and Gillis.
Functioning on pure instinct, Kelly sprang like a tiger toward Gillis, just as the drug-addled senator yelled, “Who’s that?!” She caught Gillis as he turned, and the momentum knocked him against the wall. Kelly fought with all she had. She caught hold of his ear with one hand, digging in her fingernails, struggled to reach his eyes with her other hand, and tried to get her knee to connect with Gillis’s balls.
“You cunt,” he grunted through his teeth, and Kelly felt his whole body tense with excitement and adrenaline. He gave a tremendous push, and she flew nearly upright, but still she had hold of his ear. With her free hand she dragged at his sleeve, but the slippery fabric evaded her fingers. She crashed into the bed on her back, the impact bouncing her to the floor. Gillis loomed over her, a fist pulled back, his faced screwed up into a demonic grimace. Kelly scrabbled her knees toward her chest and tucked her arms and head into a fetal position. When Gillis’s arm tried to connect with her ribs, she would be ready.
Coiling her legs around his shoulder, she yanked him to the ground. His forehead crashed into her lip, and she felt a hot rush of blood. But once again, the element of surprise allowed her to roll out from under Gillis. He wasn’t used to her fighting back like this. She cocked her leg into her chest again and let her heel fly into Gillis’s solar plexus. She heard an ooph and saw his face contort with a mixture of pain and surprise. She flipped to all fours and was almost on her feet, ready to run, when a blinding pain crashed over the back of her head. Her vision went white, and she felt her knees buckle underneath her.
In a flash her vision returned, and as she fell she saw the half-naked, trembling Henckle standing over her, the leather-covered lead handle of the whip still hovering above her head. Her arms didn’t break her fall, but she was able to twist her body so that she landed on her shoulder. Immediately she felt Gillis’s iron hand on her cheek, pushing her head into the floor. She noticed that his hands were ice-cold. His voice was even colder.
“You little bitch. This is it.” He grabbed her wrists and coiled her arms behind her back, lifting upward. Kelly gasped in pain as he dragged her up by her wrists so her legs were dangling above the floor. She tried to kick, but the pain from her shoulders made it impossible. So she did the only thing she could.
“Jake!” she screamed.
Gillis was panting as he dragged her toward the bedroom door. “That cocksucker can’t help you … Natalie,” he said, his voice full of mockery and his lips in a sneer.
“Kelly!”
She looked up, and her heart plummeted with despair. In front of her was Jake, his strong face bloodied, his arms held behind his back by Brigante. The thug had a knife pressed to Jake’s jugular vein. Roland Farse, “Mr. F,” stood next to them, uselessly looking back and forth between Gillis and Brigante. Behind her, Kelly could hear whimpering, whether from Henckle or one the girls, or all of them, she didn’t know.
She could feel Gillis’s fury in the brutality of his grip and hear it in the forced calm of his voice.
“Take him out,” he said to Brigante, jerking his chin at Jake. “Make it look like an accident.”
There is a moment of clarity just before death that psychiatrists call “peritraumatic dissociation.” Time reorganizes itself into slow motion. Every sense kicks into high gear and sends hyper-coded messages to the brain: Vision is in Technicolor, hearing is Dolby stereo quality, and sense of smell is as keen as a basset hound’s. In that moment, Kelly felt the deep thumping of the music as if it were emanating from her own heart and controlling her pulse. She could see the tiniest beginnings of stubble starting to poke out through the blood running down Jake’s cheek. The acrid smell of the crystal meth and the fetid, animal smell in the bedroom became so strong, they were almost visible.
At the same time, another part of Kelly’s brain started a clip-reel of her life. Decorating paper dolls with her mom. Swinging down from a high place—her dad’s shoulders—in a flame-colored park in autumn. Footsteps in the hallway, her mother’s screams. The judge leaning toward her, massive in his black robes. Kevin grinning, one front tooth missing. Libby somersaulting off the front porch. In that instant, she saw the truth. She and Jake were going to die. Gillis had killed Porter, and now he was going to kill them.
All this passed in a millisecond. Suddenly, Kelly zoomed back into real time.
She twisted her neck to look into Gillis’s eyes. “Todd,” she murmured, “you win. You own me.”
Then, like a deer surrendering to a wolf, she threw her head back and offered him her neck. For a moment Gillis looked startled, then he looked amused, and finally he looked hungry. He pounced forward with his tongue and teeth, his hand reaching between her legs, releasing its grip on her wrists.
With all her strength, Kelly slammed her knee into his groin. Gillis crumpled forward with a monstrous howl. On his way down, she slammed that knee into his face, and heard a crunch.
Kelly turned toward Jake. Brigante seemed to be momentarily stunned. Jake seized the advantage and twisted out of the huge man’s grasp. Brigante lunged with the knife, but Jake caught him
from behind and sent him sprawling into the wall.
“This way!” yelled Jake to Kelly, holding out his hand. She sprang toward him, and they headed down the hall toward the stairs. They’d gone about ten feet when they stopped short. Standing in front of them in the hall was Farse, calmly holding a shotgun aimed at Jake’s heart. He trained it on Kelly, then aimed it back at Jake.
“You always were such trouble,” he sneered at Kelly.
Behind her, Kelly could hear Brigante stumbling to his feet. Gillis, she knew, would already be up, and sure enough, she heard his voice in her ear.
“You whore. You keep forgetting that you can never get away.”
Kelly struggled, but Gillis grabbed her tightly from behind and pulled her toward the wall, away from the balcony railing. He gestured to Brigante, who stumbled over to Jake and, twisting Jake’s arms behind him, pushed him toward the railing. Kelly screamed. A fall from the second story onto the tile below might not be fatal, but Jake would certainly be too hurt to escape. Brigante was pushing him over headfirst; the chances of Jake hitting the ground unscathed were slim to none.
Kelly continued to struggle helplessly against Gillis’s unyielding arms. Farse’s shotgun was still trained on Jake. On her other side, at the end of the hall, Henckle, backlit by the grotesque reddish light from the bedroom, was peeking out the door.
She became aware of Gillis’s breathing in her ear and realized he was chuckling. Furiously, she screamed out again, “No!” just as Brigante folded Jake over the railing, kicking and forcing his legs out from under him. Kelly felt a sickening surge in her throat as one of Jake’s legs slipped over the railing.
The Gray Zone Page 24