“What?”
“Oh, it’s something he read about in his comic books. It’s a demon who lives in your house and does bad things.”
Stride’s eyes narrowed. “Why would your son think that?”
“He’s a boy, Lieutenant. Boys have active imaginations.”
“Maybe so, but have bad things been happening at your house?”
“Bad things? No, not really. Evan has simply been acting out more because of the difficulties between me and Alison. Yesterday he broke one of Alison’s collectibles and didn’t want to admit it. Little things like that have been happening for weeks. Rather than tell us he’s upset, he created a monster to take the blame.”
“What else has he done?” Stride asked.
“Lieutenant, I hope you’re not suggesting my son is a serial killer.”
“I just want to know what other problems you’ve observed in your house.”
Malville shrugged. “Food has gone missing. Cookies, cheese, leftovers. Evan has been in my office a couple of times, even though he knows he’s not allowed in there. My papers have been moved around. He’s been on my computer.”
“What if it wasn’t Evan?” Maggie asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, could someone else be responsible for the things that have been happening?”
“I already told you, there’s no one but the three of us in the house,” Malville said.
“Are you sure?” Stride asked.
“Am I sure? What the hell are you saying?”
“I mean, is there any space in your house where someone could be hiding?” Stride asked.
“You’re suggesting a stranger could be living in my house?”
“Is that possible?”
“Well, we have an unfinished attic, but that’s crazy.”
“Not necessarily. It happens more often than you think. Homeless people will sometimes make a nest in an unused space and only come out when the family is away or asleep. The incidents you describe are consistent with that possibility.”
“You think someone could live in my house for months, and I wouldn’t notice?”
“It sounds like you did notice,” Maggie told him. “You just didn’t realize what it might mean. Has anything else happened that seems unusual?”
Malville opened his mouth to protest again, then closed it as he remembered something. “My e-mails,” he said.
“What about them?”
“Someone hacked my home e-mails. They got into my wi-fi and gave e-mails to the plaintiffs in litigation against my company. The other parties claimed the information came from an anonymous source.”
“Could someone do that from inside your house?” Stride asked.
“Sure.”
“If that’s true, it doesn’t sound like the kind of risk a homeless stranger would take,” Maggie said. “It sounds personal.”
“Do you have any enemies?” Stride asked.
“I run a business. When you do that, there are people who don’t like you.”
“Is there anyone in particular?”
“Take a number,” Malville replied. “I’ve had major layoffs because of the recession. People are suing me. Everybody’s got a grudge.”
Stride shook his head. “This is more than a grudge, Mr. Malville. We’re talking about someone capable of several brutal murders. Someone willing to destroy you and your family. Do you know anyone like that?”
Malville’s face, which was closed and confused, slowly came alive. A dark horror spread across his features. “There is one man.”
“Who?”
“His name is Carl Flaten,” Malville said. “He’s a software engineer. I fired him.”
“Why?” Maggie asked.
“Carl was brilliant but severely anti-social. A lot of the good ones are rain men, but they’re mostly harmless. Not Carl. He sabotaged equipment for co-workers he didn’t like, he used company technology to develop sick video games, he was abusive to our customers. I kept him around longer than I should have because he was a genius, but finally, I had to get rid of him. That was about three months ago.”
Malville paused, shaking his head, and then he added, “He had something wrong with him, too.”
“What do you mean?” Stride asked.
“He was sick.”
*
The cough rattled like the sound of death.
Alison spun, illuminating the corner of the attic with the beam of her flashlight. There he was. The spitting devil living in their house was tall and bony, like a walking skeleton, and his clothes sagged on his frame. She recognized the black turtleneck and jeans he wore; they were Michael’s. The man’s face had a sunken, ghostly pallor. His dirty blond hair hung low on his forehead. He was young but looked old, except for glistening blue eyes that pierced her with a naked malevolence.
Behind him, Alison saw old blankets shoved together on the floor; they’d been taken from their closet. Remnants of food stolen from their refrigerator and freezer sat on a wooden tray. She saw a laptop computer fed by wires that climbed the walls and disappeared toward an electrical conduit. The bare beams of the attic surrounded him, and he’d stuck dozens of paper photographs to the protruding roof nails. The pictures flapped in the air currents that blew through the space.
She recognized close-up color images of herself. Naked, in and out of the shower. Pictures of her and Michael making love, from weeks ago, before she drove him out of their bedroom. Pictures of women with red hair, dressed in her clothes, dead from dozens of stab wounds.
He coughed again, and sputum bubbled up from his lungs and dribbled onto his mouth. He wiped it with his sleeve.
“You did it, didn’t you?” he rasped. “You turned him in to the cops. I knew you would.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Carl,” he told her. “Don’t you remember me?”
“No.”
“You saw me at your husband’s office dozens of times, but you looked right through me. I was a non-person to a woman like you. I was invisible.”
“Carl Flaten,” she murmured, as her brain put together the pieces.
“That’s right. You won’t forget me again, will you?”
Alison did recognize him, although he’d wasted away from the man she remembered. She also knew the stories that Michael had told her about his sadistic behavior at the office. If he didn’t like you, he tormented you, like a boy with an insect in a jar. He could smell a person’s weakness and exploit it.
“My husband fired you? That’s what this is all about?”
“Oh, it’s about more than that.” Carl took a step toward her, and Alison retreated. “I used to watch you hanging out with him, you know. It made me sick. Michael had everything. Money oozing out of his pockets. Power to dictate everybody’s else lives. A kid to show off. And you. This beautiful wife he could fuck whenever he wanted. And what did I have? Terminal cancer, that’s what I had. You call that fair? I’m twenty-six.”
“You’re right, that’s not fair. I’m sorry.”
“Shut up. I don’t need your pity. I’m the one with the power now. An invisible man who controls your whole life. How does it feel, Alison?”
Carl Flaten laughed, and then he coughed so hard that his knees buckled. She took a step toward the hole, looking for a way to escape, but he reached into his front pocket and withdrew a corkscrew with a sharp, spiral point that he nestled between his fingers. From his rear pocket, he extracted an eight-inch saw with jagged, rusty teeth that had once hung on a peg board in their garage. He blocked her way to the stairs that led down into Evan’s closet.
“Michael dumped me by the side of the road like garbage,” he told her. “The bastard thought he was better than me, even when he was making a fortune off my brain. He had everything, and he left me with nothing. I wasn’t going to crawl away and die like that. I wasn’t going to let him win. So I figured out how to commit the perfect crime. The ultimate revenge. I decided to steal his perfe
ct life.”
“By killing innocent women?” Alison snapped. “You’re nothing but a sick freak.”
“Sick? Is that all you can say to me? My plan was brilliant. Like masterfully designed computer code. At first, all I wanted was to live inside Michael’s house and be a part of his life without him having a fucking clue. Then I realized I could have so much more. I could drive the two of you apart. I could kick him out of your bed. I could own his wife’s mind. Look at what I’ve done to you. I made you believe that the man you loved was a monster. I made you betray him. You did just what I programmed you to do, Alison.”
“I’m not one of your computers,” she told him. “I’m a person. So were the women you murdered.”
“Do you think I care about them? Do you think I care about you? I’m already dying.”
He took another menacing step closer. His left hand hoisted the saw high in the air. She knew what would happen next.
“Stay away from me!” Alison screamed.
She switched off the flashlight. The attic turned black as he charged her. She heard the thunder of his footsteps, and she ducked into a ball, causing him to spill over her body and fall hard behind her. She scrambled to her feet and sprinted toward the exit ladder, but as she did, she slipped on loose sawdust, and her legs shot out from under her. She tumbled forward face-first, gasping as the impact emptied her lungs. The flashlight rolled out of her grasp. Before she could get up, Carl landed on her back, and one of his skinny arms snaked around her throat.
The twisted point of the corkscrew punctured the skin on her neck. She gasped and felt a stab of pain and a warm trickle of blood. His mouth was at her ear; she heard the gagged noise of his labored breathing. He coughed from deep inside his lungs, spraying a mist over her face. She wriggled under him, struggling to throw him off her back, but he hung on fiercely, dragging the corkscrew into a deep gash across her skin.
Alison felt something else. Something worse. The teeth of the old saw landed on the bulge of her carotid artery. She felt it like a vampire’s bite. With one jagged pull, he could send her blood pumping like a fountain from her heart directly onto the dirty floor of the attic.
“Now I can take what’s left of his life,” he whispered. “His wife. And his son.”
“No,” she gasped.
Carl began to saw at her flesh, but then he froze. The light of the flashlight bathed the two of them, flooding their faces. Alison’s eyes squeezed shut as she was blinded. She heard a young voice only inches away, and her heart seized.
Evan.
“YOU DON’T SCARE ME!” the boy bellowed.
The beam of light streaked like a comet in the night sky toward Carl Flaten’s head as Evan swung the flashlight with all the strength he could muster in his two little hands. It landed with a sharp crack of bone on the side of the man’s skull, enough to deaden his grip and give Alison a chance to dislodge him from her back with a mighty upward thrust of her torso. The light disappeared.
“Evan, hide!” she screamed.
Alison heard Carl Flaten staggering toward her again, and as they collided, the two of them wrestled in the darkness. Her hands clawed for his eyes with her long nails. Her cocked knee pummeled his groin. In pain, he swung the saw blindly, and its dull blade slashed her shoulder, drawing blood. She dropped to the ground, and the saw whistled above her head a second time, barely missing her. She grabbed his ankle, trying to topple him, but his whole body arched upward as he prepared to chop the saw downward into the meat of her skull like a cleaver. She dove free just as the metal whipped through the cold air toward the attic floor.
The blade stuck there, buried in the soft wood. She heard its vibrations. Carl struggled to dislodge the saw, and she followed the noise of his ragged breath. She leaped forward with both arms outstretched, catching him with her fists in the center of his chest, driving him backward. Her momentum carried her with him, and they both seemed to fly, cascading downward until Carl’s body landed at the speed of gravity against the low, angled roof of the attic.
An abortive scream died in his throat. Then there was silence.
Alison scrambled free, waiting for the man to rise to his feet, but she heard no movement, only a nauseating gurgle from his chest. In a corner of the attic, Evan flipped a light switch, and she saw Carl Flaten wriggling against the roof beams, his body contorted at an odd angle. She instinctively jumped backward, but he was pinned there, like a butterfly in a collection. Trickles of blood oozed over his bottom lip. His eyes blinked frantically. His legs twitched, scraping along the dusty floor. When he freed himself, he couldn’t stand. He sank to all fours and pitched forward, squirming on his face and choking. Blood matted his head and shoulders.
On the wall, Alison saw the long, bloody row of nails that had penetrated his neck and skull.
She didn’t move.
“Evan, go downstairs and call the police,” she said quietly.
Her son was frozen, staring in fascination at the spastic motions of the man on the floor.
“Please, honey, go do it now,” she told him.
Evan nodded and climbed down from the attic, leaving Alison alone. She crossed her arms to quiet her shivers. She waited with the man in the attic, feeling the wind rustle her red hair. She waited, standing over him, until the jerking in his limbs stopped and he wasn’t moving anymore. She was still there minutes later, crying, paralyzed, when Michael finally appeared at her side, wrapped his arms around her, and guided her away.
*
Stride waited in the cold outside the Malville home as the medical team removed the white-shrouded body of Carl Flaten. On the street, he saw Michael and Alison Malville loading suitcases into the trunk of a Duluth police car. Their house was a crime scene, but even if they could have stayed there, Alison Malville had made it clear that she had no intention of sleeping under that roof again. Some ghosts couldn’t be exorcised. Instead, Stride had offered to escort them to a downtown hotel.
“A lot of people are going to do a look-see in their attics and basements tomorrow,” Maggie said.
“Yeah.”
“No one wants to find out they’re living with a stranger,” she added.
Stride didn’t reply.
As the squad car passed them, he exchanged glances with husband and wife. Michael was in the front seat next to the officer driving them. Alison was in the back with her son. There was no anger on their faces. There was no emotion at all, only shock. The breakdowns would come later. Stride had been through his own near-death experiences in his past, and he knew that you couldn’t shake them off like a coat. They clung to you. They lingered.
“Do you think those two will be able to put the pieces back together?” Maggie asked.
Stride followed the taillights of the squad car until they winked out behind the trees. “Could you get past the idea that your spouse believed you were a murderer?”
“If they split up, then Dead Red won. He stole their perfect life.”
“Nothing’s perfect,” Stride said.
He watched the shadows of police officers and evidence technicians moving behind the windows of the house. The scene was secure, but the work would go on through the rest of the night. He had time to escape for a few hours.
“I’m going to try to get some sleep,” Stride told her.
“Good idea.”
“You coming with me?”
He didn’t know why he asked. The two of them had slept together in his bed for weeks. Even so, he knew her answer before she said it.
“Actually, I think I’ll crash at my place,” Maggie told him. “I need to get some stuff done there in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“Unless you weren’t talking about sleep,” she said.
“I was.”
“Yeah, I figured. Maybe tomorrow night?”
“Sure.”
But it wouldn’t be tomorrow night. It wouldn’t be ever again. Some friends were never meant to be lovers. They both knew it, and they didn
’t have to say it.
No one likes living with a stranger.
“See you tomorrow, boss,” Maggie said.
Stride nodded. “Night, Mags.”
*
Alison and Michael lay next to each other in the dark, loosely holding hands. Evan slept peacefully on a roll-out bed in the hotel room, but the two of them were awake and silent. They’d been silent with each other for hours. She knew they had a long journey back, and she had no idea if they would get there. She didn’t even know how to begin.
“Can you ever forgive me?” she murmured at last.
Michael waited a long time to reply, but then he said, “Don’t do this to yourself now.”
She knew what he really meant: don’t do this to me now. Don’t make me choose. I don’t know if I can ever trust you again. You allowed yourself to believe something terrible and untrue. You lost faith in me.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“We both have things to be sorry about. I was ready to – ” He stopped.
“What?”
“Nothing. Not now.”
“Please.”
Michael rolled over on his side. She could barely see his eyes. “I was ready to ask for a divorce. I was ready to cheat on you. I was ready to give up.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now I know it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me. We were both victims.”
He was right, but she wondered if that really changed anything. If someone killed you, or if you killed yourself, you were still dead. She opened her mouth to say more – to beg, to pray, to seek answers – but he put a finger at her lips and whispered, “Don’t talk.”
He was right about that, too. They wouldn’t solve anything in the darkness. Not now. Not yet.
Their two warm bodies molded against each other. It was strange and yet familiar to have him in her bed again after weeks apart. He was awake beside her for a long time, but eventually, she heard his breathing change and knew that he had fallen asleep. She wished she could sleep herself, but her eyes remained wide open. There were no ants. There was no spitting devil. Even so, she found herself staring blindly through the darkness at the ceiling of the hotel room, listening to the footsteps of innocent strangers moving above her.
Spitting Devil Page 5