by Ed Gorman
The smell came to her, then.
She knew instinctively what the odor was, but consciously wanted to deny it.
She stepped over to the desk and trained her light on the floor.
Puddles and splotches and puddings of dark fresh blood covered the Persian rug.
She raised the beam of the light and followed the trail of blood behind the desk, back of the couch, along the built-in bookcase and right up to the closet.
The brass doorknob of the closet was smeared with blood.
She played the light along the bottom of the closet door. A small river of dark blood was flowing from inside.
She had never heard her heart pound so loud.
Once more, her impulse was to flee.
But now she had to knowhad to see for herselfwhat lay inside the closet.
She put her finger on the blood-sticky doorknob and started to turn.
'You really don't want to see what's in there. Take my word for it, Toots.'
Peter. He'd always called her Toots.
She froze there for a long and disbelieving moment. She couldn't mistake the voice of the man she'd loved for so many yearsPeter. She was afraid to turn around and see who had spoken.
But how could it be Peter?
He was dead, executed in the electric chair.
This had to be some kind of memory trick. Being in the mansion again had made her think that the man was
She turned slowly around.
The man with the white hair and the James Coburn face stood in the den's doorway, looking at her.
He walked out of the shadow and into the moonlight. He wore a light gray expensive suit. The jacket was soaked with dark spots. His hands were bright red. She didn't have to wonder what it was.
'You look a little shocked, Toots. Like you're surprised I'm alive or something.'
He kept coming, slowly, closer, closer.
'If you're worried about Doris, she's fine. I just sort of tied her up so she couldn't call anybody.' He gave her a little-boy mock frown. 'I guess she wasn't very happy about what I did to poor old Mom. I thought she might be grateful. You know, given what that bitch did to us all our lives.'
He was close enough to put his hand on the flashlight and try to tug it away from her.
She held on tight.
He slapped her.
Very fast and so hard that her eyes teared and for a moment everything went dark.
'One thing you'll have to get used to now, Jill. I'm not the nice old easy-going Peter I used to be. Now when I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it. You understand?'
She didn't say anything.
He slapped her again, so hard that he rocked her back on her heels.
'You understand?'
'Yes,' she whispered.
'Good. Very good.'
He turned her gently around so that she was facing the closet.
'You never did like my mother, did you?' He laughed.
'Now don't lie. We're too old to lie to each other anymore. You couldn't stand her and she couldn't stand you. Wellmaybe you'll be a little more appreciative than Doris was.'
He opened the closet door and shone the light on Evelyn's head, which he had set on the shelf above the hangers.
The rest of her body, blood-soaked, was propped up against the base of the wall.
Jill tried very hard not to scream. Very hard.
***
Mitch decided to tell Jill in person about the girl named Cini. He wanted to be able to hold her, comfort her, after she'd heard such bad news.
Traffic was a bitch, many of the people over-cautious on the snow and ice, many others completely reckless.
In the course of his forty-five-minute drive, two drivers honked at him, one gave him the finger and one made a face at him. These kind of road conditions brought out the worst in people; they got uptight and took their uptightness out on everybody else.
He passed through a dour working-class neighborhood before seeing the relative glitz of Jill's neighborhood, everything refurbished and shiny clean and upwardly mobile.
He had to park a block away.
He smiled at the Christmas music coming from a CD store. Not Thanksgiving yet and already merchants were trying to put people in a buying mood. Mitch was glad that people honored Christ's birthday so irreverently. If Christ were alive today, that's just what He'd be doing, hawking CDs.
He knocked first and then, getting no response, rang Jill's bell.
He kept looking at the passersby. He liked people in their winter clothes. It made them more vulnerable, more human. In summer you saw all the hard human angles and the sweat, and picked up on all the smells. It was nice, every once in a while, to see people who resembled big dumb friendly bears.
He rang the bell twice more before thinking: She isn't home.
On the phone, in the bathroom, maybe working in the darkroomby now Mitch had eliminated all the likely things that would have kept Jill from bounding down the stairs the way she did when she suspected it was him.
No bounding now.
Just a cold dark front stoop. And a cold dark front door.
And an unanswered bell.
He thought: Where the hell is she?
He wasn't sure why exactly, but his cop instinct told him that something was wrong here. She should be home. Because of the way the press traipsed after her these days, she almost never went out at night.
But now she was gone.
Again that quirky but urgent sense of something wrong. Where the hell was she, anyway?
'So you're taking me with you?'
***
'That's the plan, Toots.'
'How far?'
'I'm not sure yet. Probably Vegas or someplace like that. Then I catch a plane. Right now, the cops'll be looking for me around here. They'll be watching the airport.' He smiled over at her. 'Meanwhile, I'll be whizzing down the Interstate with a nice new hostage.'
When they'd left the mansion, he'd steered her to his car but when she saw the bloody head of Adam Morrow in the backseat, she went into momentary shock and would not get in. First Evelyn and the maid and now this man's head in the backseat…
Now they were in her car and she was driving. This time of night, this area of the city, traffic had thinned. Buried beneath snow, and tinted by mercury vapor lights, all the working-class houses looked small and shabby and sad.
Peter held a gun on her. He looked quite comfortable and quite content doing so. Every few minutes, she'd glance at his face, at the mask plastic surgery had put there, and think: No, this isn't Peter. This isn't possible. Peter died in the electric chair. But then he'd speak and she'd know it was Peter for sure.
He had given her directions a few minutes ago. She said, 'Where are we going?'
'A storage garage. I need to pick up a suitcase. Got my traveling money in there. A quarter million.'
'I won't be able to drive all night, if that's what you're thinking. I'm drained, Peter, and I'm trembling. My whole body is trembling.'
'Soon as we get my stuff at the garage, I'll buy us something to eat.'
She almost smiled. 'Something to eat? You think that's going to do it for me?'
'It'd better, Toots. Because you are going to be driving all night. Up here, hang a left.'
She turned left.
'Six, seven blocks straight down,' he said.
They passed a block that held three different taverns. On the sidewalk of the second one, an old man was throwing up, his vomit a lurid green from the tint of the neon sign in the window.
Peter said, 'I'll bet he'd go out with you.'
That was one of Peter's old gags. He'd see somebody notably ugly and say, 'Bet he'd go out with you.'
She said, 'Don't you feel anything for what you just did?'
'You mean killing my mother?'
'Yes.'
'That's kind of funny, coming from you.' He genuinely laughed. 'I mean, all those years when you wanted to kill her yourself.'
'No, I didn't. I just wanted to leave.'
'Well, bitch, that's just what you did, didn't you?'
The cold anger. The old Peter. She knew better than to push him past this point.
Even the streetlights in this neighborhood were dim and dirty. Tiny ethnic houses cowered against the night like children trying to fend off a blow. The cars parked along the curbs were ancient rusty beasts.
'You're going to kill me, aren't you?' she said after a time.
'I have to admit the thought has crossed my mind.'
'Will you make it fast? And do it with a gun?'
The smile. 'Still making demands, eh, Jill?'
'Just don'tThe axe. You know.'
'Not to worry, Toots. I left the axe lying at the front of the family manse. And anyway, you don't have to worry about dying until we hit Vegas. Up here, pull in.'
She pulled in.
At the far end of the alley she could see cyclone fencing and powerful thief lights. The storage facility.
She drove toward the light.
She was still trembling badly and trying hard not to.
***
Mitch called the station and asked the dispatcher to put
Jill's license number out. If anybody spotted it, they should call in, but not stop the car. He didn't want to embarrass Jill if she'd just gone for a ride or something.
CHAPTER 64
It didn't take Peter long to empty out the little garage and pile everything in the trunk of Jill's car. He locked up behind him, making sure he'd left no traces of himself behind. All the time, he kept glancing over his shoulder to see what Jill was up to. He had the car keys in his pocket. She wasn't going anywhere.
He was starting back to the car when they came seemingly out of nowhere, the same two punks he'd run into before, one of whom he'd beaten up.
The black one put a gun, and a damned big one, to Peter's back and said, 'Slide all the way over, man. I'm doin' the drivin' tonight.'
The white boy was just now opening the back door and getting in.
Peter got in. He looked at Jill who started to say something but didn't.
In the backseat, the white kid said, 'I got a gun, too, man. So don't try anything, you dig?'
This was just crazy as hell, Jill thought.
Just crazy as hell.
***
Mitch sat in his car, punching numbers on his cellular phone. He called Jill's friend Kate. She didn't sound unduly happy about hearing from him, not after the way he'd dumped Jill that time.
'So you haven't talked to her tonight?'
'You really sound upset, Mitch. Is something wrong? Is there something you're not telling me?'
'No. Everything's fine.'
'It doesn't sound fine, Mitch.'
'I'll talk to you laterand thanks.'
***
They took Peter Tappley down a couple of blocks to a garage in which he could hear growling and barking.
Peter could hear the sounds from the garage even above the cold night winds soughing in the bare trees. Jill, sensing something terrible about to happen, found herself defending Peter.
'He's not a well man. He didn't mean to hurt anybody.'
'Hey, bitch, I don't remember askin' you to talk, you dig?' the black kid said.
They parked and dragged Peter out of the car. The white one hit Peter first, hard enough to drive him to his knees. Then the black one kicked him.
Jill screamed.
The white one reached in the car, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out into the snow. 'Now I'm gonna make you watch, bitch.' He pushed her up to the side of the garage.
***
A patrol car spotted a car matching the make, year and color Mitch had described, eighteen minutes after he put out the call. The patrol car pulled closer to check out the license plate.
This was the one they were looking for, all right.
***
The garage reeked of old, damp newspapers, garbage long left to mold, and wood reeking with decades of rain and rot.
The middle of the floor was empty. Jill wondered where the growling and barking had come from. She'd assumed in here. Now she knew that there was some kind of kennel nearby.
'You gonna travel, man?' the white punk said.
'Travel?'
'Yeah, you know, goin' somewhere.'
'Yeah, I guess so.'
'And you're tryin' to tell us,' the white one said, 'that the only money you got is what we found in your billfold.'
'I'm sorry, boys, that's all I've got.'
The black one kicked him again.
Peter knew he had at least one rib broken now.
'This here's our special place, man,' the white one said. 'Guys like you try'n hold out on us, we start bringin' the dogs in. One at a time.'
Peter thought of the quarter million he had stashed in the false bottom of his suitcase.
No way was he going to tell them about that.
No way.
They put on little shows for the neighborhood kids, they explained.
The little kids loved it.
They sure did.
Peter, they said, he was going to be tonight's entertainment.
They pitched him face down on the floor and then the white kid went and got the first dog.
***
Mitch got the call from dispatch just as he decided to go back to Jill's place and check it over. Maybe she was inside, injured or
'We located the car you were looking for.' The dispatcher then gave Jill's license-plate number and the location where the car had been seen.
Mitch broke several traffic laws getting there.
What the hell was she doing in that kind of neighborhood, anyway?
***
Jill stood at the front of the garage and watched as the dogsome variant on a Dobermanstalked Peter, backing him up against the walls, teasing him, tripping him, sniping and growling but not yet biting.
The punks loved it. They giggled a lot.
This was better than any horror show on HBO.
And every once in a while, one of them would say, as the dog seemed about to spring, 'Hey, man, you wanna tell us where you're keepin' the rest of your money?'
'Please,' Jill said. 'Please call the dog off.'
But they were losing their patience and their humor. They screamed at Peter, 'Where's your money, man?'
The dog jumped then, slamming Peter into the wall and then knocking him to the ground. He was all hunger and hatred, the dog, ripping, rending Peter in long bloody slashes.
'It's in his suitcase somewhere!' Jill screamed. 'Now pull the dog off!'
The black one went to get the suitcase. The white one stood with Jill, smiling. 'Too late, bitch. I couldn't pull him off now if I wanted to.'
'Peter! Peter!' she shouted.
But by now little human was left of his facethe flesh stripped away, one of his eyeballs torn free of its socket. The dog was now concentrating on Peter's throat. Peter used fingers, forearms, elbows to keep the animal's teeth from finding his Adam's apple. He rolled left, he rolled right, he kept his chin to his chest as much as possible, but in the end the dog was too fast and too strong.
He found Peter's throat and began the process of tearing it from his neck.
Instinctively, Jill started to lunge for the animalshe couldn't just watch Peter diebut as she took a step forward, a pistol shot could be heard even above the dog's slavering frenzy. At first the dog showed no effects from the shot, but then it abruptly stopped and collapsed onto Peter.
Mitch came in, the black kid in handcuffs trailing behind.
Mitch took care of the white one next, and let Jill go to Peter Tappley.
He wore a mask of blood, only one blue eye visible now, a flayed imitation of a man.
She knelt next to him, seeing both the man and monster in the bloody and now disfigured face. She tried to think of him at his bestwhen they'd first met so many years ago, when she'd been naive and desperate for lovejust as he'd been the
n. But then he'd become… something else.
She took his trembling handhis entire body was shakingand listened as he cried, 'Mother! Mother!' through the blood that was filling his mouth.
And then he was silent.
And still.
And after a time, there in the raw blood-spattered garage, the winter winds sounding like the ghosts of forlorn old men, Peter Tappley died.
CHAPTER 65
After the gawkers arrived to see what had happened, eager for the sight of blood, and then the squad cars came and the ambulance and then the crime lab van, Jill went over and sat in Mitch's car.
She wanted to be happy. On their way over to the garage, Peter had explained how Evelyn had set up Eric's murder so that Jill would be blamed. Doris learned of the plot afterward and would testify about it to the police.
Jill was free again.
And should right now be feeling very good about things.
Mitch got in the car, smelling of the cold night against the warm air of the heater.
'Hey,' he said. 'You're crying.'
'Yes, I guess I am.'
'You going to get mad if I ask you why?'
She smiled. 'Uh-huh.'
'OK. How come you're crying?'
She started to say something and then realized there was nothing she could saynothing at all.
He took her to him, held her with great gentle strength. A few gawkers, temporarily distracted from the juicy spectacle of a man ripped apart by a dog, watched them.
'How about if I say I love you?' he said. 'Would that make you feel any better?'
She laughed. 'Well, you could try, I guess.'
'I love you. There, did that work?'
'Well, it certainly didn't hurt anyway.'
'Then I'll do it every five minutes until we start to see some definite improvement.' He set his wristwatch. 'Got one of those teeny-tiny alarms, Every five minutes it'll remind me to tell you I love you.'
'Could we leave now?' She wanted to respond to his playfulnessshe knew how hard he was working to make her feel betterbut she couldn't.