by Sandra Brown
Wiley called out Josh’s name and identified himself. “I brought your sister with me. She wants to talk to you.”
They waited in breathless anticipation, but there was nothing forthcoming from the house. Wiley tried again, putting more force behind his voice. “Josh? It’s time to surrender. You keep up this nonsense, you lose your bargaining position for leniency.”
The clock in the dashboard was a retro analog model. Shaw listened to it tick off another sixty seconds, and when still nothing happened, he opened the backseat door and motioned Jordie out.
“Take my place behind the wheel.”
One of his rules of engagement had been that if she came along, she was to do what he said, when he said it. She slid out of the back and into the front without question or argument.
He placed his hand on the top of her head and pushed her down. “Stay low. I’d leave Wiley here with you, but we need to go in from two different directions. Any sign of Josh, the rustle of one leaf, a bug fart, you lay down on the horn.”
“If Josh is in there, I’m praying he’ll come out with his hands up.”
“Me too. But in case another scenario plays out—”
“Like Panella?”
“Like anything. Hit the horn, and then floorboard the gas pedal.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t wait on us. You get clear. Understood?”
With obvious reluctance, she nodded.
Then he took the palm pistol from his boot and passed it to her. “If it really goes south, this is ready to fire. You’ve got seven shots. Don’t hesitate. Point and pull the trigger. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Will you do it?”
She swallowed. “I don’t know.”
“Great. You choose now to turn perfectly honest. I’m used to you mouthing back.”
She gave him a tremulous smile. “Be careful.”
He kissed her hard and quick. “Count on it.”
Hunkered behind the driver’s door, he looked across at Wiley, who signaled that he would take the front. Shaw nodded and indicated that he’d cover the back. Each took a deep breath, then came out from behind his cover and ran toward the house.
Wiley clumped up the steps onto the porch. Before Shaw lost sight of him, he flattened himself against the exterior wall between two tall windows. Nothing happened. So far, so good.
Shaw dodged windows as he ran along the side of the house, staying close to the wall. He knelt once to look beneath the house, but the crawl space was clear.
When he reached the far corner at the back, he paused and looked behind him toward the car. Because of the glare on the windshield, he could barely make out the top of Jordie’s head. It passed through his mind that he would kill anybody who harmed a hair on it. No matter who it was.
He slipped around the corner of the house.
The backyard was a patchwork of bare ground and weeds. A set of tire tracks led back toward the front of the house and presumably the driveway. There was a shed, a detached garage, both derelict, nearly falling down. A rickety wooden pier standing on rotten pilings extended over the bayou, two rusty light poles flanking the end of it.
He registered all this in the seconds it took him to reach the back door. It was unlocked and opened directly into the kitchen. He swept it with his pistol. It was a pig sty. Garbage and empty food containers were everywhere. The sink was filled with grease-filmed, opaque water. On the dining table, in addition to several empty TV dinner trays on which a cockroach was feeding, were a box of wooden toothpicks, a pair of eyeglasses, and a wadded-up lottery ticket.
Wiley came in through the door that connected to the front of the house and shook his head. “Clear.” But Shaw pointed out the items on the table. The lottery ticket was a giveaway. Josh had bought one in the convenience store.
Shaw motioned for Wiley to stay where he was to cover both the front and back doors and tipped his head toward a hallway leading off the kitchen, pointing to himself. Wiley nodded. Shaw crept along the hall till he came to a doorway standing ajar. He nudged it open with the barrel of his pistol then rushed in swiftly but silently.
The window shades were pulled, making the room dim. It was minimally furnished. A twin bed with dingy sheets had been left unmade. An oscillating fan sat still on the nightstand, although the room could have used an airing. Dirty clothing was piled on the floor in one corner. Army khakis were among the other articles.
Shaw backed out without disturbing anything. Farther along the hall was another bedroom. It was vacant. There were no footprints in the thick layer of dirt on the floor. The bathroom between the two bedrooms was tiny. The shower stall was black with mold. The stained toilet stank of backed-up sewage. But the sink had been recently used. The bottom of it still had drops of water in it, and a damp towel had been folded over the rim.
He returned to the kitchen and reported to Wiley what he’d noted in the bathroom. “We can’t be too far behind him. Or someone.”
Not that he thought Wiley had overlooked either of the fugitives, but he wanted to see the front rooms for himself, and going through them was also the shortest route back to check on Jordie.
The kitchen doorway led into a formal dining area, empty except for a light fixture that was dangling from the ceiling by a cord. The living room beyond was also unfurnished, in total disrepair, and provided no hiding place. Planks in the hardwood floor were missing, but none of the gaps was large enough for a man to fit through. Besides, he’d just checked beneath the house. No one was hiding there.
He went through the front door and stepped onto the porch. Looking anxious, Jordie scrambled out of the car. He motioned her back. “This is his lair, all right. He’s definitely been here, but there’s no sign of him now.” Living, he thought. He was afraid of what he and Wiley might find in one of the outbuildings. “Stay here.”
“I want to see.”
He shook his head. “It’s a mess. Nasty. Holes in the floor. Unsafe.”
“Where are you going?”
“To check the shed and garage around back. Same rules apply. Lay down on the horn.”
Jordie waited until they disappeared around the back corner of the house, then came out from behind the car door and started for the house. She told herself that they might have missed a clue as to where Josh could be now, but her real reason for wanting to inspect the place herself was Shaw’s evasiveness. What hadn’t he wanted her to see?
She pushed open the front door, then paused on the threshold and surveyed the front rooms with dismay. She walked through them quickly and went into the kitchen where she remembered her great-aunt serving her and Josh Christmas cookies and punch.
She was appalled by what she saw now. Had her brother’s mental state deteriorated to complete and total madness? How could he possibly live in this filth? Did he even recognize it as squalor?
Realizing that investigators would soon be summoned to collect evidence, she didn’t touch anything, not that she would have. The bathroom was more sickening than the kitchen.
The sight of the disordered bedroom filled her with despair. When Josh had finally been released from his year’s stay in the hospital, he was welcomed home with a newly decorated bedroom. Their mother had hoped that the surprise would boost his spirits. It hadn’t, of course.
The comparison between that bright, newly outfitted bedroom to this sad chamber was an allegory of Josh’s tragic and inexorable decline.
She returned to the kitchen. Through the window, she saw Wiley emerging from what appeared to be a work shed, while Shaw was bent down looking beneath a ramshackle pier. He would be upset with her for not obeying the rules.
She returned to the front porch and went down the steps. There she paused to look back at the house’s façade and wondered why it had fascinated Josh. What about it had intrigued him enough to make him want to return? It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t that large. The design was—
Suddenly she was struck by an incongruity.<
br />
Two gabled windows, symmetrically placed, jutted from the sloped roofline above the porch, but the house didn’t have a second story. Or did it? Had she missed the stairs?
Puzzled, she went back inside, but it was as she’d thought. There wasn’t a staircase where normally one would ascend from the living area to the second floor. She knew there wasn’t one in the back of the house, or off the kitchen, because she would have seen it.
Standing in the center of the floor between the living room and dining area, she made a slow pivot. Taking in architectural details she hadn’t paid attention to before, she noticed a narrow doorway in the corner of the dining room, concealed by its fit into the paneling and wainscoting.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.
She should alert Shaw.
Instead, she went over to the door and pushed it inward.
The smell hit her. Hard.
She covered her nose and mouth, as much to stifle her sob as to keep her from breathing the odor. Swallowing fear and dread, she gave the door a firmer push. It opened wider to reveal a steep staircase. “Josh?” Breathing swiftly through her mouth, she called again, “Josh? If you’re up there, please come down.”
There wasn’t a sound except for the beating of her heart.
Above her, sunlight shone in through the two windows so she could see to climb the stairs. The higher she got, the brighter the light became. It filled the attic at the top of the stairs with inappropriately cheery light, because the only thing in the space was a black body bag, zipped closed, lying on the floor.
“Oh, Jesus. Oh no!” She slumped against the doorjamb, covered her mouth again to stifle her keening sounds, and stared at the bag. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping against hope that when she opened them, it would be gone.
It wasn’t, of course.
She should alert Shaw.
But she owed Josh this one final penitence.
On rubbery legs she walked to the bag and knelt down beside it. Her hand shook as she took hold of the metal tab and unzipped the bag all the way down, then spread it open.
She screamed. Or would have.
Except that a hand was clamped hard over her mouth from behind and an eerie, overamplified, horribly distorted voice said, “Guess who?”
Chapter 39
As Shaw and Wiley walked from the pier back toward the house, Wiley mopped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. “I was afraid we’d find his body or a grave in one of those buildings.”
“Crossed my mind.”
“Your side hurt?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s blood on your shirt.”
Shaw seemed not have heard that. He was distracted, his brow creased with concentration. “You called this in?”
“They’re on their way. We gotta keep them from trampling those tire tracks. If we get a cast, maybe we can type Josh’s car.”
Without breaking stride, Shaw looked toward the house. “See that it’s done quickly, then let’s get everybody out of sight. We should lay an ambush. Didn’t look like he cleared out for good, did it? He left clothes behind. His glasses.”
“Maybe he didn’t leave of his own volition,” Wiley said. “Maybe he was removed.”
“By Panella, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe,” Shaw said thoughtfully. “But nothing indicates that a fight took place.”
“Hard to tell. The place is a shambles.”
“I know, but…”
“What?” Wiley prodded.
“I don’t know. Something keeps bothering me.”
“Heat’s bothering me,” Wiley mumbled, blotting his forehead again. “What’s bothering you?”
“I can’t quite pull it up.” He slowed. Wiley paused with him. Shaw said, “The first time I talked to Panella was on Saturday afternoon. Called him on Mickey’s phone to begin the negotiation of a new deal. That was around two o’clock.”
“Okay.”
“That same afternoon around three thirty, Josh shipped Jordie a cell phone.”
He turned to stare hard at Wiley, but Wiley got the impression that Shaw wasn’t seeing him at all, but rather a puzzle with one vital piece missing.
Suddenly Shaw said, “Those devices are easily obtainable off the Internet.”
“Pardon?”
“That’s what you said. Earlier today.” He whipped his gaze back to the house, then his long strides started eating up the distance back to it. By the time Wiley caught up to him, he was pushing through the back door.
“What are you thinking?” Wiley asked as he followed him through the kitchen and into the dining room.
“Josh wasn’t hedging his bet when he mailed that phone. He knew Jordie was alive. An hour and a half earlier, he’d heard her shout through the speaker of the phone.”
By now they’d reached the porch. Shaw drew up short and, in the instant that Wiley saw the empty driver’s seat, Shaw said, “Oh, fuck me.” He drew his pistol. “Search the house,” he shouted as he leaped over the steps, landed hard on the ground below, and took off running.
Wiley spun around and ran back into the house. The first thing he noticed was the opening in the corner of the dining room. He ran toward it, saw the staircase and bolted up it.
Nearly gagging on the smell, he topped the stairs and saw the open body bag on the attic floor.
Inside was a badly decomposed corpse. The eyelids were held open with toothpicks. The skeletal right hand was holding a pistol. On the left, a diamond ring glittered from the pinkie.
It was Billy Panella.
Chapter 40
Josh had clouted her over the head with the butt of his pistol. Close to losing consciousness, she’d been unable to protect herself when he pulled her hands together in front of her and secured them with flexcuffs. She’d barely swallowed the nausea rising in her throat before he stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth to prevent her from shouting for Shaw and Wiley.
He had dragged her down the staircase with such haste she’d almost stumbled over him. She wished she had. Of course, he might have shot her right then, ending her life before Shaw even knew she was in trouble.
Shaw.
The blow had left her dazed, her vision blurred. When they reached the bottom of the staircase, Josh grasped her bound hands, pulled her through the living room, down the steps, and across the clearing in front of the house. He then plunged into the thicket.
They’d been thrashing through it for several minutes now. Dizzy and disoriented, Jordie had glanced over her shoulder as she lurched along behind her brother, but already her view of the house was blocked. It was as though the hostile terrain had swallowed them. Shaw had warned her of the swamp’s hazards the night he’d taken her.
Shaw.
It was as though she wasn’t gagged and had spoken his name out loud, because Josh said, “That numbskull Mickey Bolden sure could choose his sidekicks, couldn’t he? He picked a cop? Or is this Shaw Kinnard character FBI? Treasury?”
When and how had Josh discovered that Shaw wasn’t a hit man and kidnapper?
“Doesn’t matter what kind of cop he is,” he continued. “He ruined everything on Friday night. What really hacks me, I never got my advance back from big fat Bolden.”
Her mind was beginning to clear, but nothing Josh was saying made sense.
“Hurry, Jordie.” He picked up his pace, roughly tugging her behind him. “No time to waste. Soon, he and Wiley will discover Panella’s rotten corpse. Won’t that be a surprise? Sure as hell came as a shock to you, didn’t it?”
He stopped and turned suddenly. “Using an electrolarnyx was a stroke of genius if I do say so myself.” He removed it from his rear pocket and held it up to his throat as he said, “Even Mickey Bolden was fooled into thinking I was Panella, and you know what bosom buddies they were.”
Jordie recoiled.
“What’s the matter? Don’t like the sound of it?” Laughing, he replaced the instrument in his pocket. �
��I’ll keep it as a souvenir of my stint playing Panella. It wasn’t easy, you know, keeping the cell phones straight, which to answer as Panella, which to use when I was myself. Talk crude and tough like Panella would. ‘Kill her, already!’ Then ’fraidy cat Josh.” He changed his voice into a falsetto. “‘I’m so scared. Is Jordie okay? Please save my sister.’”
The last of the fog was lifting from her brain, and things were becoming horrifyingly clear. Josh, not Panella, had plotted her death. He was the one who’d bargained with Shaw to end her life.
He rambled about Panella somehow discovering that he planned to turn informant. “I had no idea he knew about the house, but he barged in early one morning. He got rough and threatened me with the most disgusting methods of torture. You wouldn’t believe what he threatened to do to me if I didn’t tell him everything I’d already told the feds about our fraud.
“But I didn’t feel the least bit bad about betraying him. Why should I? I’d done all the brain work. When it boiled down to it, he was nothing but a smarmy front man with capped teeth.”
This wasn’t the Josh who pitched fits, had panic attacks, and blubbered when frightened. This Josh was calmly detached, and he was terrifying. Frantically she looked behind her again, but the thicket through which they’d just come appeared undisturbed except for a cloud of microscopic insects.
“Anyway, back to that morning six months and thirteen days ago, there he was, holding me against the wall, choking me, growling and snarling, being Panella. He didn’t expect cringing, hysterical me to shoot him in the belly. I’m not that good a shot. I went for mass. You should have seen the look on his face.”
He turned his head and showed her a gross imitation of it before continuing on.
Shaw and Joe Wiley would discover her gone and come looking for her. She just had to live long enough for them to get to her, because she knew with certainty that Josh’s intention was to kill her. He wouldn’t be confessing all this if he planned to let her live.