Mourn the Living

by Henry Perez

  The lower floor appeared to be empty, no lights on anywhere, no one to see or hear him enter. And if anyone did come, he could rush out of the house and into the night without being seen.

  As he slowly reached for the small round knob to open the screen door, Chapa had another thought, or a rather a series of them in the form of images. He saw Nikki’s face, then Erin’s, and Mike’s.

  What the hell am I about to do?

  His relationship with Erin was on the ropes because of situations like this, and she didn’t know the worst of it yet. Nikki expected her dad to come home for dinner. To be there for her as she grew up, graduated from high school, then college. To walk her down the aisle at her wedding. Mike had not known any other father figure. What kind of example had Chapa been?

  These thoughts melded together, then allied with Chapa’s growing concern about the wisdom of charging into a house that he was supposed to have been brought to by force. He pulled away from the door, and carefully stepped back down.

  The police would be there soon. He’d lean on Tom Jackson to let him follow his men inside. Maybe Jackson would agree, otherwise Chapa would have to find another way in. Regardless, he’d be the only newsman there, and he’d get the story.

  He was a father, and man that a woman he loved, a great woman, counted on to be there for her and her child. Running through darkened doorways and into dangerous houses was a job for the police. Chapa would wait until they arrived.

  That decision felt right. But Chapa thought about Tim Haas. Could he be in that house? In trouble? Or worse?

  A high-pitched moan from somewhere inside the house invaded Chapa’s thoughts. So loud it escaped through both an upstairs window as well as the screen door, like stereo. Then another, followed by what sounded like a muffled scream.

  Chapa looked around at the ground by his feet and located a piece of broken fencing that was probably as solid as anything he was going to find out here. He picked it up and gripped it tightly in his left palm.

  Then he heard another cry, this one even more agonized and primitive than the others. Chapa instinctively reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his press credentials. He draped the badge around his neck as though it would protect him somehow, like a white flag or a Red Cross uniform.

  Then he rushed up to the door, swung it open, and slipped inside, without giving it another thought or allowing for even the slightest instant of hesitation.

  Chapter 90

  The moment he stepped into the dark kitchen, Chapa was assaulted by a parade of pungent odors that reminded him of rotting food, animal shit, and vermin. He thought he heard mice scurrying inside the walls and behind cabinets.

  What Chapa did hear was the creaking of floorboards as they seemed to shift, expand, contract slightly with each step. He tried to tread lightly, though it was no use. But he told himself this house probably had so many creaks and squeaks that his footsteps might not stand out over the rest of it.

  As Chapa slowly walked through the doorway leading out of the kitchen, and into a narrow hallway, he saw there were two rooms, one along each side. The closest was on the left, its door was closed tight. Chapa gently leaned against it and listened for any sound inside, but all he heard was the shuffling of feet on the second floor.

  Chapa slowly placed his hand on the doorknob, tightened his grip, and tried to turn it. But there was no give. The door was locked solid. He thought about whispering Tim Haas’ name, in case he was behind the door, but decided against it when he heard a muffled voice coming from upstairs.

  The door to the room on the right side of the hallway was slightly ajar. A hint of moonlight formed a thin line through the open crack. Chapa eased up to the door, cocked his weapon, raising the wooden slat up above his head, ready to strike, then wrapped his fingers around the edge of the door and coaxed it open.

  His attention was immediately drawn to the crumpled mass on the floor. He could make out an arm extending from the darkness, and a hand lying open, palm up. Chapa swallowed hard, reached for the light switch and flipped it on.

  Any search for Tim Haas was over. The young man Chapa had met just a few days ago now lay sprawled out on the floor. His blood-drenched corpse had been left in a spread-eagle pose—arms and legs extended straight out from the torso, head centered, eyes open.

  The look on the dead man’s face was one of complete disbelief. As if he had not yet accepted what happened to him—even in death.

  It was hard to single out the killing cut. Tim’s throat was a tangle of fleshy shards and blood. His shirt was ripped open, and his bare chest had been sliced so many times in every direction it appeared as though the skin had been shredded.

  Chapa looked away, then turned the lights off and closed the door. Doing his best to blot out the image of what was once Tim Haas, he continued down the hallway until he reached the stairs.

  It was a straight shot up to the second floor, but first Chapa would have to get around the twisted body that was covering much of the bottom three steps. This guy had been stabbed in the gut, the chest, and half his neck had been sliced off. Judging from the jagged bone protruding through his forearm, he had also been pushed down the stairs.

  As Chapa began to maneuver around the corpse, he got a good look at the man’s face. His expression suggested that, like Tim Haas, he’d never seen it coming. But even more important to Chapa was the fact that he recognized the corpse.

  They’d had a standoff outside this same house a few days ago, during Chapa’s first visit. And Chapa wondered now if Cal had been his real name. As the events of the past several hours raced through his mind, Chapa realized that he may have heard this man’s last words.

  Bring him to the house.

  Chapter 91

  A carpet runner stretched from the top of the stairs to where the corpse lay at the bottom. Chapa’s steps were soft, though he’d never been accused of being light on his feet. As he took each step with care, Chapa couldn’t help but look back over his shoulder every few seconds.

  A triangle of light covered the upper half of the steps, and Chapa could see the carpeting he was walking on was gray and lavender, badly faded and frayed. His steps became even more cautious now as he leaned into the light. Projected on the wall to his right was the crooked shadow of a railing, bowed and weakened by time and wear, that ran the length of the second-floor hallway.

  He heard the sound of two or three men. Only one was talking, the others were making desperate, pained noises.

  As Chapa stepped up onto the landing, he looked back down the stairs once more. For some reason he felt compelled to make sure there was still a corpse at the bottom. Though he’d never believed in ghosts or the supernatural, Chapa decided that if a house could truly be haunted, this one was a prime candidate.

  The wall facing the steps was bare, except for a single nail protruding from the plaster. There were more nails like that one along the hallway walls. Apparently the current tenants weren’t much into art or family photos.

  Slipping around the end of the railing, Chapa found he was no more than five feet from the door to the only room in the house that held any signs of activity. He heard the sound of movement from inside the room. There were other sounds too, low pitched and metallic.

  Chapa pressed his shoulder against the doorframe, and tried to lean in and get a better look. A man’s shadow crossed the only wall Chapa could see. It grew large, then became smaller, before moving out of his line of sight.

  Another groan. Then a voice.

  “Yes, yes, tell me all about how it hurts.” Followed by a whisper, barely audible. “I want to know.”

  The voice was the same one Chapa had expected to hear, but it sounded different somehow. Too calm, almost free of emotion.

  Chapa wanted to get a better look beyond the door before deciding whether to barge in or retreat back down the stairs and wait for the police to arrive. He took a large, calculated step across the width of the doorway, then pivoted and turned his back to the
wall.

  But he miscalculated, and his shoulders landed against it, making a soft but audible thud. Now there was no sound or movement inside the room, and Chapa knew he’d been heard.

  He had to act—now.

  Electing to go in hard instead of quiet, assuming his presence there was already known, Chapa shoved the door open and rushed in, the wooden fence slat raised above his head.

  He’d planned on attacking once he was inside the room. But what he found on the other side of the door scrambled Chapa’s senses, as his plans tumbled to the floor in tatters.

  Chapter 92

  Charles Stoop wasn’t talking anymore.

  During their conversation, back when the inner workings of Oakton’s political and business machine functioned like a carefully crafted instrument, Chapa had wondered what it would take to get this guy to shut up. Now he knew.

  Stoop was bleeding from his forehead as well as several other areas of his body. His white shirt was soaked with fresh blood in a way that reminded Chapa of the end of Martin Clarkson’s life.

  But this setup was far more elaborate than the inside of any windmill. Stoop had been shackled to the wall. His wrists, waist, and ankles held in place by manacles, his bare feet suspended a few inches off the ground.

  The plaster was chipped and cracked in those areas where the chains and the bindings were fixed to the wall with long bolts. And Chapa knew Charles Stoop had struggled to free himself. His body convulsing with pain. Until he had no fight left in him.

  The wall was adorned with stick figures painted in bright red blood. A few were starting to take on a less glossy, brownish patina. It looked like something out of a chamber of horrors or a French dungeon from the Dark Ages.

  Blood was leaking from his forehead, pouring out through a series of jagged cuts, and washing down his face. His fingers and toes were losing blood also, and Chapa saw why. The soft flesh between each of his twenty digits had been sliced.

  Stoop’s mouth was taped shut, but that was just a formality at this point. He didn’t appear to have the strength to speak, or much interest in communicating.

  George Forsythe lay on the floor near a window. Eyes wide, he was twitching just a little. Chapa assumed Forsythe was going into shock, judging from the wide bright red gash that extended from his left armpit, up to his shoulder and neck, before continuing its path across his cheek and temple.

  The gun he’d pointed at Chapa minutes ago in the driveway had been discarded in a far corner of the floor, a half-dozen feet from Forsythe’s outstretched right arm. It may as well have been a half dozen miles, Forsythe didn’t look like he had much chance of reaching it.

  “Alex Chapa.” The voice was calm, flat, like someone reading to himself.

  Chapa turned quickly and stared at the man who’d been standing behind the door.

  “Are you still going by Greg Vinsky, or have you already moved on from that name?”

  He seemed to be looking past Chapa, as though he was waiting for something to happen.

  “Your friend isn’t coming,” Chapa said. “I saw him at the Megamart, he had a run-in with some avocados.”

  Vinsky smiled, but his eyes revealed no emotion. In one hand he was holding the largest hunting knife Chapa had ever seen. He had a cell phone clipped to one side of his belt, and what appeared to be a holster cradling a large device of some sort or the other.

  “Well done, Alex. Yes, very well done.”

  Which part? Chapa thought. And what the hell happens now? was Chapa’s next thought.

  “You’re not at all surprised, Alex?”

  Chapa’s mind was sprinting in several directions at once. Could he reach the gun and fire before Vinsky hacked off one of his arms? What if he rushed him, used the fence slat to take a swipe at the knife? He’d have one shot at it—if he was lucky. And most importantly, how soon would Jackson and his men get there?

  “I figured it out some time ago,” Chapa lied. “But I wasn’t sure until today.”

  “How? How did you figure it out some time ago?”

  “The photo in Martin Clarkson’s hand, you put it there.” Chapa was playing an angle, figuring Vinsky would be interested in how someone had seen beyond the veneer and into his secret world. Interested enough that it might buy some time. “Everyone thought Clarkson had pulled it out of his wallet as he lay dying. But that’s not what happened.”

  “Oh no, that’s not what happened. I brought that photo with me. Took it myself just before Mrs. Clarkson had that terrible accident.”

  “You like taking pictures of—how did you put it? Disturbing images?”

  Vinsky grinned as he took a measured step toward Chapa. Straight at him, not favoring one side or the other, narrowing the angles to the door and the gun at the same time.

  “Is that all, Alex? The photo?”

  “No. There was the dead businessman in Baltimore, the one burned so badly the police had to guess his I.D. You were Roland King then. Who was really in that car?

  “Just a former associate. Someone no one would miss.”

  Chapa nodded. That was what he’d assumed.

  “And Jim Chakowski helped. You may have ended his life, but not his work.”

  Vinsky’s empty expression returned.

  “Clarkson got to him, and Jim learned a few things he didn’t need to know. He became unpredictable, erratic, jittery. Now you look kinda jittery, Alex. Are you jittery?”

  Chapa understood now that Vinsky was trying to take stock of how many tracks he’d have to cover.

  “Sure, I guess so, considering that one of our community’s leaders is bleeding on your wall over there.”

  “Oh him, no, he’s not one of our community’s leaders,” Vinsky said, then leaned in toward Stoop and casually slashed his rib cage with a single swipe, leaving a six-inch streak of blood across his abdomen.

  The flow immediately began running down the side of Stoop’s shirt and onto the right leg of his pressed gray slacks. Stoop groaned, but it was a delayed reaction, then Chapa heard him start grinding his teeth.

  Vinsky watched with apparent curiosity as Stoop twisted in agony, and for an instant Chapa thought he had an opening. Could he reach the door or maybe take a swing at Vinsky? But his indecision cost Chapa, as Vinsky turned back toward him and all good options were instantly gone.

  “His real name, or at least the one I knew him by, was Gilley, and he murdered my mother thirty-two years ago tonight.”

  On the wall behind Vinsky, Charles Stoop seemed to be trying to shake his head.

  “That’s why I came to Oakton.”

  “He’s a stickman?”

  Vinsky’s eyes narrowed and appeared to darken. He stared at Chapa as though trying to see through him.

  “You know,” Vinsky said, his voice husky, not quite as calm.

  “I assumed.”

  “You could say he’s the original stickman.”

  Chapa pointed to Forsythe, who appeared to be trembling just a bit more than before.

  “Is he a stickman, too?”

  “George, a stickman, too? In a sense. There’s blood on his hands.”

  Chapa tightened his grip on his makeshift weapon. He’d been so focused on the three-ring circus of horrors that he’d forgotten he was still holding it in attack position.

  “Do you mean the explosion at Chakowski’s house?”

  “Not just that. George did set up the explosion at Chakowski’s house, but I added a little extra boom. No, it’s something that happened earlier.”

  Vinsky then looked over toward Forsythe. Take one step in that direction, Chapa thought. Just one.

  “I’m going to tell him about Houston, George. Maybe it’ll be in all the papers,” Vinsky said, then turned back toward Chapa and took a small step in his direction.

  “You see, Alex, there was this strip mall back in Houston where George used to be a big man some time in the last century. Then one day there’s an electrical fire, which kills thirteen people. Thirteen people—fu
nny, isn’t it? Unlucky number thirteen. Anyway, George had done the electrical contract work, but he’s so well connected—”

  Vinsky paused, apparently to see if Chapa got the pun. He did, but chose not to react.

  “He’s so well connected that they manage to blame it on the wiring, or bad luck, or whatever. But in fact, George had hired a couple of untrained workers to do part of the job.”

  Chapa looked over at Forsythe, who wasn’t moving anymore, except for the tears rolling down his battered face.

  “He hired some cons. Cheap labor, but not too competent. You might’ve met one of them on the way up here.”

  “So you blackmailed George?”

  “So I blackmailed George, yes, I guess so.”

  “And you’re going to kill him tonight.”

  “Yes, tonight. I gave him a charge with my stun gun,” Vinsky said, tapping the larger of the two holsters on his belt. “Maybe I’ll give him a few more before I bleed him out. Don’t know yet. Won’t know until the moment.”

  Chapa realized that Vinsky had calmly and with minimal effort narrowed the distance between them while also cutting off his path to the door.

  “So he’s the only reason you came here? You came to Oakton to kill Charles Stoop?”

  “Yes, Alex, I came to Oakton to kill this monster. Unfortunately I had to eliminate some others. But I did rid this town of a few bits of scum.”

  Chapa now understood that he’d made a mistake when he first spoke to Greg Vinsky, a few days ago at City Hall. He’d assumed that Vinsky’s unusual speech pattern was strictly a trained way of relating to potential customers. It may have been that, but the way he repeated a person’s name and how he would regurgitate what had just been said to him also had another purpose. It was his way of feigning empathy—an emotion that probably didn’t come easily to Vinsky, if at all. Like a person who phonetically speaks a foreign language that they don’t understand.