by S. B. Caves
‘Stop it,’ she whispered to herself, forcing the doubt out of her mind. ‘Just stop.’
* * *
Francine had got out of the car a couple of times to walk past the grounds in an attempt to get an idea of the layout of the house. As far as she could see, there was a CCTV camera posted on each corner of the roof, like gargoyles, and a guard manning the front gate. But if she could get over the wall at the rear of the property, she’d be able to waltz right on over to the back door. Glenn Schilling was a national treasure, and probably had a lot of crazed fans, but Francine was willing to bet good money that none of his groupies had ever gone to the lengths that she was planning on.
The days melted into one seamless stretch of time, a perpetual twilight that enveloped her. Were it not for her trips out of the neighbourhood, she could easily have believed that time was in fact standing still. She had not seen any other cars drive down Glenn Schilling’s street, nor had she encountered any dog walkers or neighbours going about their business. There was nothing but the patter of rain against the roof.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, she finished her last can of Triple Xplosion. She had managed a whole week on sentry duty. How could she have been such an imbecile? Why had she just rushed into this thing without any proper planning, without even attempting to consult somebody for advice? Because there was no time, she assured herself. No time for common sense either.
* * *
An unfamiliar sound roused Francine. She checked the dashboard clock. Hours had passed. A limousine drove past and she hunkered down in her seat. Clearing a line in the condensation on the window, she followed the limo as it drove into the grounds of Schilling’s house. She started the ignition and drove up the street, pulled around in a U-turn and idled on the corner so that she could see the vehicle when it re-emerged. She didn’t want Schilling to notice her car as he passed. A few minutes later, the limo drove back through the gates, turned left then continued on, never crossing Francine’s path.
There was a minute of uncertainty as she pondered her next move. She killed the engine and hurried over to the back wall. It was twice her height, with no obvious ledges for purchase, just smooth stone all the way up. A running jump might do it if she could manage to stretch up and grab hold of the top of the wall, then clamber with her feet.
As she stood sizing up the task, the weight of reality crashed down on her. There was no way she could scale the wall. There had to be another route in. She followed the wall around and came to a cylindrical pillar that marked the corner. She tested her foot on its base and hugged her arms around it. She attempted to shimmy up, but dropped off almost immediately. She tried again, except this time she used the toe of her right sneaker to press inside the crevice where the wall met the pillar. It was gruelling, and the effort it demanded from her arms and legs was immense.
At last she hoisted her right leg up and onto the top of the wall. It felt like her head might burst from the stress, her biceps bunching as she wrestled the pillar, a cold greasiness congealing in her stomach. She was boiling hot and could feel perspiration running down her torso from her armpits. She checked her jacket pocket to ensure she still had the gun, then swung her other leg over and dropped down into a hedge that lined the wall of the backyard. A rod of pain shot up her shins as she landed.
16
The smell of wet grass and exotic flowers filled Francine’s nose as she peered up at the darkened windows of the house, the only light coming from the ground floor – an area that she assumed was the kitchen. She trudged out of the bushes and began edging around the grounds. According to the journal she’d been keeping, the maids seemed to come at around seven in the morning and leave at six in the evening, but those were weekday hours. She wasn’t sure if they had additional staff at the weekends.
The garden was filled with statues, and as she neared the mansion, a large rectangular swimming pool came into view, lit with underwater spotlights. It was the epitome of excess: an outdoor pool in a city with almost ninety inches of rain a year.
She was panting by the time she reached the steps leading to the conservatory, and considered stopping for a few seconds to recover. A sudden blinding light bathed her and she automatically dived across the wet grass and slid behind the knee-high stone wall. She scrunched her eyes closed waiting for the alarm, but was met with silence. Peeking out, she saw that she’d activated a motion-sensor light.
On all fours, she watched the kitchen for any sign of movement. A minute went by, then another, and when there was still no activity, she got up and darted to the sliding doors that led to the kitchen. She was now in plain sight, and if anyone were to walk into the kitchen or along the hallway beyond it, they would see her clear as day. She twisted the handles, but the doors were locked. She didn’t need much more confirmation than that, so she abandoned the doors and rushed around to the side of the house.
The motion-sensor light switched off and she was plunged back into darkness, with only the spotlights from the pool to brighten the way. Her breathing sounded too loud in her ears, but there was nothing she could do about it; she was on the verge of hyperventilating from the adrenalin. With her back to the house, she shimmied against the wall and reached another door. A small green light glowed above a keypad. She didn’t dare touch it. Instead, she tested the handles, found this door to be locked too and carried on.
She continued to skirt the mansion around to the front of the property, where she slunk into the shade behind a column. She was standing at the top of the long driveway and could see the circular fountain, the guard at the gates and the street beyond. In front of her was the main entrance to the mansion: two huge double doors. With sweat dribbling down her face thick as cooking oil, she wondered what would happen if she walked over, rang the bell and shoved her gun in the face of whoever answered. Before she could act on the thought, she hurried across the concrete porch and started a sweep around the other side of the mansion.
She was about to glide straight past the garage when she skidded to a halt. It was open – only halfway, but that was enough. It was more than a coincidence, surely; it was a godsend. Yet still she hesitated. Everything she’d done up until this point could be explained if she were to be caught and arrested: her fragile state of mind, the approaching anniversary of Autumn’s disappearance. Jumping over Schilling’s wall and running across his lawn was forgivable. Anything beyond this point was not.
Every impulse in her body screamed at her to stop. Some internal warning system linked to the rational part of her brain flashed on red alert, and she gave herself a moment to back out and fully acknowledge the grievous error she was about to make. Then she looked over her shoulder towards the guard’s booth, decided that she was obscured enough to continue, dropped to the ground and scooted under the door on her belly.
Groping blindly, she got to her feet and felt her way across the garage, bumping into a vehicle. As soon as her knees touched the car, she cringed, expecting an alarm to sound. All the moisture in her body was leaking out of her pores, leaving her mouth dry as parchment. Taking baby steps, she moved in the direction she assumed the internal door would be. Her feet kicked a set of stone steps and she reached out, finding a banister and pulling herself up. She stroked the surface of the door at the top, hoping to find the handle; when she did, she held her breath and turned it.
The door opened. Francine didn’t immediately emerge into the house, but instead placed her ear against the inch-wide gap and listened out for sound. Nothing. She pushed the door open, and the slow creak of the hinges was like a train screeching to a halt against the silence of the mansion.
She was presented with a long hallway lined with big paintings in elaborately carved frames. Each was lit to reveal the intricacy of the brushstrokes on the canvas. In the centre of the hallway was a security camera, the type they had at the casinos to catch people rigging the machines. Francine ignored it, knowing there was no other way into the house.
The place smelle
d like a hotel, she thought absently as she wondered which direction to go in. The stairs seemed most logical, and so she ascended, her wet sneakers leaving faint impressions in the carpet. She stopped halfway up, wondering what to do about them, but decided it was unimportant. Unless she was caught outright, Schilling might very well think that the footprints had been left by a careless gardener. After all, she wasn’t going to steal anything; if she had wanted to, those paintings would already be off the wall.
At the top of the stairs, she walked past the elevator and tried one of the doors along the hallway. She reached inside the room and flicked on the light to reveal a study with a globe sitting atop the far end of a mahogany table. Displayed on the walls in frames were pressed butterflies and beetles and the skeletons of several large winged creatures that might have been bats. She closed the door and tried another room – a bedroom with a large window facing the front of the grounds. A gigantic aquarium glowed on the far side of the room, the shadows of the fish moving lazily over the walls. This didn’t look like the master bedroom, but she allowed herself a minute or so to nose through it. Finding nothing of interest, she moved on.
The next room along the hallway had a large pool table, a bar, and a hexagonal table in the corner with piles of neatly stacked poker chips. There was an old-fashioned jukebox too, but she didn’t go near it for fear that it might be motion-sensitive like the lights in the garden and come to life. Satisfied that there was nothing of use to be had here, she backed out and carried on with her search. The next couple of doors were locked, so she moved along until she neared what she assumed to be the master bedroom. The faint, tinny sound of a TV could be heard from within, and knowing that someone was on the other side of the door made Francine’s heart pinball in her chest. She reached into the front pouch pocket of her rain jacket and withdrew the gun. The metal felt slippery in her clammy palm and she noticed that the barrel was wavering as her hand trembled. She took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
The TV was curved and paper-thin. The brilliant colours splashed out of the screen and flooded the room in frenetic light. Francine turned and saw a naked woman propped up on the four-poster bed, her eyes gleaming slits. She inhaled sharply and almost raised the gun, but the woman made no move. On the bedside table was an obscenely large wine glass, stained red, surrounded by a cluster of pharmaceutical bottles. Francine stepped closer and saw that the table was also littered with dark green marijuana buds and tobacco from a packet of crumpled cigarettes. Now she could smell the pungent weed smoke clinging to the chiffon curtains that hung from the posts surrounding the bed.
The woman was completely passed out, her chest rising and falling slowly, her lips purple from the wine. Her breast implants jutted unnaturally from her emaciated chest and her sunbed skin looked tight and sore across her torso. Her pubic hair, Francine noticed, was trimmed into a small triangle. A six-foot black-and-white photo hanging on the wall behind the bed depicted Schilling and this woman dressed for an awards ceremony of some sort.
Francine tucked the gun back into her pocket and rifled through a few drawers, finding silk undergarments and a selection of vibrators and dildos. She tried the walk-in closet and began leafing through the jackets that hung on the racks above the outrageous collection of shoes. When she found nothing, she went across to another door in the bedroom and opened it.
She had to let her eyes adjust to the light in order to ensure that what she thought she was seeing was actually there. It was a glass tunnel that stretched on to another part of the house, concealed from the outside by the way it was positioned between the slanting sections of the roof. She remembered seeing a photo of Schilling standing in the tunnel with a pipe in his mouth, gazing up at the dazzling sun through the domed ceiling. An eerie, crawly feeling spread across her, and just before she stepped into the tunnel, she realised she was scared. What she was scared of, she couldn’t quite say, only that it felt as though the adrenalin had dissipated and her faculties had returned. For that one second she was completely sane again and understood what a monumentally bad idea this whole thing was. She had broken into the house of one of the most beloved entertainers in the country, and she was armed.
Yes, and let’s not forget why you’re armed, Francine. You have that gun because this sick, fucking bastard hurt your baby girl. He knows where she is. That’s what kept you awake this whole week, that’s what got your crazy fucking ass up and over that wall, that’s what got you where you needed to be. The blurry image of the Polaroid flashed in her mind and she once again lost her reservations.
She had started to walk through the tunnel when a voice stopped her. ‘I don’t think we need any laundry done at this hour.’
She whirled and saw the woman leaning against the bedroom doorway. She was still naked, her head tilting to the side.
‘And if we do, it can wait. There’s probably more for you … more for you to do downstairs in the … in one of the other rooms. This is … You shouldn’t be up here.’
‘Are you okay, Mrs Schilling?’ Francine asked. Instinct had taken over and she pretended to be a member of staff.
‘Cindy,’ the woman breathed. ‘I don’t like it when you all call me Mrs Schilling.’ Her head lolled back and she staggered on the spot. ‘Makes me sound … so … fucking old.’
‘Sorry, Cindy,’ Francine said. ‘Why don’t we get you back to bed?’
‘What … are you doing up … here at this time of night?’
‘I’m just making sure everything is okay,’ Francine said, studying Cindy’s face for any sign of recognition. There was none. The woman was drooling and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘Doing some spring cleaning … is that it?’
‘Yes, exactly. Would you like some help getting back to bed, Cindy?’
‘I’m not a fucking child … Unless you … Are you trying to tuck me in? Are you some kind of lesbian?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘My husband doesn’t like … the help going across there …’ She pointed behind Francine and down the tunnel. ‘You’re not allowed.’
‘Yes I am,’ Francine said, coolly. Because that’s exactly where I need to be, isn’t it?
‘Nuh-uh.’ Cindy shook her head unsteadily. It rolled around on her neck like a spinning plate balanced atop a stick. ‘Glenn’ll get real mad if he finds you.’
‘No he won’t,’ Francine said, conjuring a saccharine smile. ‘His instructions were for me to clean that section of the house. Why don’t you go on back to bed?’
Cindy’s mouth hung agape as she stumbled towards Francine. In any other setting, she would’ve looked like one of the crack addicts who patrolled the bus station hassling passengers for spare change. She was mumbling no, no, no, no and shaking her head defiantly. ‘You’re not allowed up there.’
‘Let’s not argue about this, Cindy,’ Francine said without any trace of a smile. She grabbed the woman by the arms, feeling nothing but bone. It was like taking hold of a bundle of sticks. ‘You need to get back to bed and let me get on with my work. Come on, I’ll take you.’
As she manoeuvred Cindy around with the ease of a mother handling a toddler, the other woman reached out for the door jamb and halted their progress. She looked up at Francine, and now there was a faint spark of recognition in her eyes, like candlelight at the bottom of a dark well.
‘You don’t work for my husband,’ she said, each word suddenly perfectly pronounced as the fog began to clear. ‘You don’t … What’re you doing in our house?’
‘I’m a special cleaner. Your husband only hired me today.’ Francine forced Cindy backwards and plonked her down on the bed. ‘Now go to sleep and let me do my job.’
Even in her lethargy, a small part of Cindy seemed to recognise the threat of violence lurking beyond Francine’s words. She reached down for the bed sheet and pulled it up to her neck to cover her nakedness.
‘You’re not going to give me any trouble, are you?’ Francine asked.
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br /> Cindy blinked as though she couldn’t quite understand the question, and then said, ‘You have leaves in your hair.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Francine said. She went back over to the drawer with the vibrators in and looked for a pair of handcuffs. Finding none, she removed a pair of stockings and returned to the bed. She dropped the pretence. ‘I’m going to tie you up. If you scream or do anything to upset me, I’ll come back here and hurt you. Put your arms out.’ She began tying Cindy’s wrists to the bedpost, knotting the stockings so tightly that the woman’s veins bulged. If she was in pain, though, it wasn’t registering.
‘Can I trust you to be a good girl, Cindy?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We don’t keep any money here. There’s nothing in that part of the house except my husband’s study.’
‘Good. Then I shouldn’t be too long.’
‘Wait!’ Cindy lurched up, her fake breasts unmoving. ‘I have some jewellery if you want it … diamonds. You can have it all.’ She sucked up saliva. ‘If you untie me, I’ll take you to the safe.’
Francine removed the gun from her jacket and let Cindy’s eyes catch the steel. ‘Don’t give me a reason to hurt you, Cindy, please. If you yell for help, I’m going to put you to sleep.’ Ignoring the woman’s pleas, she turned back towards the doorway.
The room at the end of the tunnel was spacious and filled wall-to-wall with books. Francine saw an oak desk with a decanter holding amber liquor, and a collection of crystal tumblers. Her mouth dried at the sight of the alcohol, but she resisted the urge. She felt jittery and dislocated. Part of it was the sleep deprivation, but a bigger part of it was the sheer unreality of it all. Her skin bristled with anticipation, and she felt sharp. The danger of her situation had heightened her senses and her mind was completely clear. She looked around the room, considered going up the ladder to the next tier then decided against it. There was a door on the far side of the study, but it was locked.