The Intruders

by Michael Marshall Smith

  And what was going on in Rachel’s world that those last two words applied to her? She shouldn’t be walking late at night alone. She shouldn’t be standing here alone now either. It sucked.

  She raised the wineglass defiantly, thinking she might just throw it back and have another—there was nobody here to judge, right?—but then she heard something.

  The quiet shattering of glass.

  She turned so fast that the mid range Merlot slopped out and splattered on the carpet.

  The sound had come from upstairs.

  She set the wineglass down quietly on the table and went quickly out to the hallway, heart beating hard. Stood with her hand on the banister, looking up. Thought again about calling the police but knew it would be too long before they got here. Thought about running out onto the street but then thought, No. This is my fucking house.

  She climbed the stairs slowly, feet to either side of the treads to avoid the creaks, and got to the top without a sound. She waited a moment. No more noise. She took the two steps required to cross the hallway and pushed open the door to her bedroom.

  She could immediately see that the lower pane of her bedroom window was broken, a jagged, glinting hole. Glass lay on the floor just underneath it. She looked carefully all around the room. She knew only too well that there was no space for another blouse in her closet, never mind a human being. Her bed went right down to the floor, so there couldn’t be anyone under that either.

  Then she noticed something out of place. A small rock lying up against the bottom of her closet.

  Somebody must have thrown it at her window from below. It had broken, and the rock came flying in. Somebody? How may candidates were there?

  Rachel went to the window. Carefully got up against the wall and angled herself so that she couldn’t be seen. Then very slowly moved her head so she could glimpse the yard below—ready to jump back out of sight fast.

  There was no one down there, but Rachel decided that this had gone far enough. She was finally going to call the cops. She walked quickly back out of the bedroom and clattered down the stairs.

  The girl was standing at the other end of the corridor, silhouetted against the light in the kitchen.

  Rachel could see immediately what she’d done. Sent her upstairs with the noise, then quietly broken a pane in the back door, put her hand in, and unlocked it. But was that something a little girl would be able to plan? What kind of child was she dealing with here?

  “Get out,” Rachel said.

  Her voice was dry and not loud enough.

  The girl was holding something. Rachel recognized it. A professional-standard ten-inch chef’s knife, from when she’d decided she ought to learn how to cook French. She’d bought an armful of books and a food processor and gotten as far as badly fucking up a confit of duck before abandoning the idea. The knife hadn’t gotten much use since it left the store, bottom line. It was still very sharp, and out of scale with the person currently holding it. A child that age should look silly with such a thing in her hand. Unfortunately, she did not.

  Rachel turned and ran to the front door. Grabbed the catch and pulled it. It didn’t move.

  She’d locked it when she got back in.

  The girl was now in the living room. “You’re going to help me,” she said.

  “Listen, honey,” Rachel said shakily, hands on hips, “we are so done here. I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m calling the cops. I mean it.”

  The girl moved the knife until the point of it was right against her own throat. “No you won’t,” she said.

  “You’re wrong. Get out of my house.”

  “Don’t make me do this,” the girl said, and now the point of the knife was making an indentation in the skin of her neck.

  “What are you—”

  “Do you want the police to find things this way?”

  “Look…”

  Suddenly the girl’s eyes were wet. Rachel watched as she pushed her hand upward a little more, and a dark drop welled up around the point of the knife jabbing into her throat. Saw the girl’s hand tighten as she prepared to shove the blade up. Knew that she wasn’t going to stop.

  “Please,” the girl said, her voice quiet and very afraid and not the way it had sounded moments before. “Help me. I’m not doing this.”

  “Jesus,” Rachel said quickly, holding her hands out. “Okay. You win. Just don’t…do that.”

  The girl took a step forward. This brought her into the light, and for a second she looked less crazy, as if the blade had gotten into her hand by accident, Mommy not paying attention while they cooked together, and it would be put down with ostentatious care at any second.

  “Promise?”

  “You bet,” Rachel said. “I promise.”

  The girl slowly moved the knife away. She smiled tentatively. It was a nice smile, and Rachel allowed herself to relax just a little bit. A child who had that inside her could not be all bad. Hopefully.

  “Okay,” she said, in the same calm and friendly voice. “So we’re cool. Why don’t you tell me your name?”

  The girl’s face changed. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Well, how else am I going to know what to call you, honey? I’m Rachel. See? No big deal.”

  The girl was holding the knife loosely now, as if she’d forgotten about it.

  “My name is Madison,” she said. “Mainly.”

  “Great.” Rachel smiled. “That’s a real pretty name. Madison and Rachel. Friends, right?”

  The girl was silent for a moment, motionless. Then she blinked. “I already knew your name,” she said.

  She smiled again, but something had changed. It was as if everything about the girl—her face, body, clothing—were irrelevant. Only her eyes told the truth. Rachel’s stomach turned. She tried to look away but could not.

  “Time,” the girl said, looking Rachel over, “is not kind. You were perfect, so much my kind of thing. I even found myself prey to a little crush, would you believe it? Oh, well. That was then, and this is now. Understand something, not-so-little Rachel. You’re too old, and we’re not friends, and even if we were, it wouldn’t stop me from cutting you up. So it would be a very good idea for you to do what you’re told.”

  Rachel nodded. She didn’t know what else to do.

  “Good,” the girl said. “We’re going to make a phone call now. You should find it interesting. Instructive, at least.”

  The girl was holding the knife more tightly again now. This realization distracted Rachel, and she did not notice the girl’s other hand swinging toward her head until it was too late.

  “Excellent,” Madison said brightly, when Rachel lay unconscious on the floor. “Now let’s find out just how much the great Todd Crane loves his daughter.”

  chapter

  THIRTY-THREE

  I have been here before. Many times has this scene replayed in my head, but never has it been so much like it was when it was real.

  I am in Los Angeles. I am sitting in a cramped armchair, in the dark, surrounded by the smell of other people’s debris. I am waiting for two men whose identities I have determined through the closest thing I will ever do to detective work. Men who have been places that were not theirs to enter, and in which they stole, committed at least two rapes and a murder. I have come to believe that being human is most of all to be a social animal and that if you do not understand that you are not allowed into other people’s places without their permission, then while you may be a Homo sapiens, you are not a human being.

  I am aware I am committing the same crime as they, and as the men who killed my father, many years ago and hundreds of miles away. I am not allowed to be in this house. Even if I had a warrant, I should not be here. I should be at home with Amy, who is close to broken and needs me with her. Instead I am here. I cannot help Amy’s grief, or my own, and have run out of ways to try. So I sit in the rambling ruin of a house at the back end of a canyon, where all the windows are shut and there is no air.
What do I really think I’m doing here? Am I waiting to arrest two people whose identities I have established or instead for two unknown men from long ago, whose names I can never know and whom I can never catch?

  I am not thinking about this. I am not thinking about anything. Thinking means remembering the face of the prenatal technician as she stared at the images on the ultrasound for a beat too long, before quietly summoning a supervisor. It involves the sight of my wife moving slowly around our house, waiting in vain for the thing inside her to go away. It culminates in a spray of fine dust, thrown back in my face by the wind at the end of Santa Monica Pier, just two days before this night, as if all creation wanted to make sure I understood that this event was something that would never, ever go away. The material that came out and was cremated and dispersed was not him. Our son never made it to the outside world. He got stuck inside, still wanders those interior halls, affecting the world only through his shadowy presence in our minds. Those who share their lives with someone dead know that there is nothing as loud as the recounting of all the things that now can never be said, or the memories of events that will never take place.

  Cut off from the generations in both directions now, I have nowhere else to go. And so I sit here, and wait. Someone can be held responsible for something. Somebody, somewhere, has to pay. Finally I hear the door of the house open. I hear loud voices and the heavy thud of footsteps, and I sense that more than two people have entered. The sound of their voices is harsh, alien, and jagged with a frustration as toxic as my own.

  Within three minutes of this moment, I will have shot four men to death.

  I do not want to experience this again. When I finally fight my way up from the dream, I scare the life out of the person stuck next to me on the morning flight up to Seattle; and as I cry out, I realize that it is not the sound of footsteps I have heard but the plane’s wheels being lowered, ready to land.

  We touched down just before midday, and I turned my phone on immediately. It buzzed thirty seconds later. The message was not from Amy, as I’d hoped. It was from Gary. An address.

  His hotel was on the west side of downtown, close to the canyon of Interstate 5 as it cuts through the center. It looked to be around the same price point as the last one. After the conversation with Blanchard the previous morning, this made sense. Fisher was paying his own way, not charging it off to some deep-pocketed client. I parked the car under the hotel and went around to the trunk. Then headed inside.

  Gary had said he’d come down to the lobby to meet me. Instead I got his room number from reception and went up. I knocked on his door. A muffled voice answered.

  “Honor bar,” I said, facing the other way.

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “I have to check stock, sir.”

  As soon as the door opened, I kicked it straight at him, catching him in the face. I slammed the door shut again behind me as I strode in.

  “Jack, what the—”

  I shoved him hard in the chest, sending him stumbling. He fell onto his back, and I put my knee in the middle of his ribs, pulling out the gun and pushing it hard into the middle of his forehead.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Do not say anything at all.”

  He still started to open his mouth.

  “I mean it, Gary,” I said, pushing down harder. “I really do. I am done being fucked around by you and everyone else. Do you understand?”

  This time he just blinked.

  “Did you get Anderson killed?”

  He stared at me. “What?”

  “Only three people knew where we were going to meet. You, me, him. I didn’t tell anyone else. I’m assuming he didn’t. Which leaves one person. You.”

  He looked alarmed. He started to push himself up, saw my face, stopped. “Jack, you’ve got to believe me.”

  “No. I don’t have to believe anything from a guy who leaves a hospital when we’ve just seen a guy gunned down in front of our eyes. Who checks out of his hotel and disappears.”

  “I had to, Jack. There’s…People have been following me. Someone had been in my hotel room.”

  “For God’s sake, Gary. Go back to your therapist and take it seriously this time.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with—”

  “Really? So how come you told me you were still working for your company, when it turns out you’re on enforced leave?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “What exactly are these ‘personal’ reasons, Gary? What the fuck is up with you? Actually, you know what? I don’t care. I’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

  “No you haven’t,” he said. “There’s nothing bigger than this.”

  I looked down at the man lying on a hotel carpet and wondered how on earth my life had come to this. How we’d somehow gotten from a high-school running track to here.

  “Whatever,” I said. “I don’t care about Anderson, Cranfield, or any of this crap. I want you to tell me anything else you know that pertains to Amy, and then fuck off out of my life.”

  “Jack,” he said, “I’ve kept things from you. I admit that. But I had to. Please, just let me explain.”

  I should’ve started walking toward the door. The gun felt too good in my hand. But I didn’t know where else I could go except to see Todd Crane, and I knew that would be a bad idea. I was being drawn toward easy solutions. I wanted someone to hurt.

  “Please,” he said. “Give me five minutes.”

  “For what? More bullshit?”

  “Look in the briefcase.”

  I glanced at the briefcase lying open on the chair. “Why?”

  “Just look. I’ll stay right here. On the floor.”

  I went and looked. Photocopies of contracts, reference books. A Bible, dog-eared, marked with Post-it notes. “What, Gary?”

  “In the side pocket.”

  I pulled out a small, hard rectangle. A Mini DV videotape. “Is Amy on here?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Then I don’t care.”

  “Please, Jack. Literally, five minutes. And then I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “Does what you know affect anything I care about?”

  “Yes.”

  I tossed the tape down onto his chest.

  I sat in the chair, still holding my gun, and watched Fisher get off the floor. He took the camcorder out of the briefcase, along with a thin black cable. Went around the back of the room’s television to plug one end in and stuck the other in the side of a camcorder. Put the mini-tape into it.

  “I’m going to have to find the right place.”

  “Fine,” I said. “The time that takes is included in the five minutes.”

  He stood hunched in front of the set, doing something to the camcorder. I couldn’t see the screen from where I sat. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “We’re set.” He stepped out of the way. The television screen was still black. He went to the window and pulled the drapes.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “Because what’s on the tape is pretty dark.”

  He sat on the edge of the sofa. The room was now murky enough so you could tell that the television was on, from the slight warmth on the screen. Fisher pressed a button on a tiny remote.

  The screen was suddenly bright with picture. A park, on a cold afternoon. Grass, trees still with leaves, a couple of joggers in the distance, the sound of someone walking on gravel nearby.

  The camera swerved and zoomed in to show a child, a baby girl, tottering along a path, holding a stick and waving it insistently at nothing in particular.

  “Beth?” said a voice. Gary’s voice. “Bethany?”

  The child turned, after a pause, evidently still having to remember that the sound her father had just made related to her in some specific way. She grinned up at the camera and made a babbling noise, flapping the hand not holding the stick.

  “Look,” Gary’s voice said. “What’s that?”

  The cam
era panned left to show a large dog ambling up the path toward the girl, whose face lit up.

  “Ooof-ooof!” she said. “Ooof-ooof.”

  “That’s right, honey. It’s a dog. Woof-woof.”

  The child moved confidently toward the animal, hand held out conspicuously flat, as she’d evidently been taught. The dog had brought with it an elderly couple.

  “It’s okay,” the woman said. “He’s quite safe.”

  The little girl glanced up at her for moment, then at her husband. She raised her hand and pointed.

  “Granna,” she said firmly. “Granna.”

  Gary laughed as the camera dropped to her level. “Granddad? Well, no, honey.” He then added, not to his daughter, “She thinks everyone, who…well, you know.”

  The man smiled down affably. “Has gray hair. I know. And hell, I am a granddad. Five times over.” He bent carefully toward Bethany as she patted the dog’s back. “What’s your name, honey?”

  She didn’t say anything. Gary spoke. “Bethany, what’s your name?”

  “Batne?” the girl said.

  Then she patted the dog one more time, a little too hard, and went running away up the path.

  The video froze abruptly, then went to black.

  “Very fucking sweet,” I said. “But—”

  “Wait a second,” Gary interrupted. “You had to see that. But this is the thing.”

  The image on the television’s screen changed again, flipping from pure black to a kind of mottled purple. Some kind of view in very low lighting conditions.

  As my eyes got used to the dim light, I figured out that the glow came from a bedside night-light and that a collection of paler dots in the middle of the frame was a mobile, dangling animal shapes twisting slowly. I was looking into a child’s bedroom, in the dark.

  “What the—”

  “Please just watch,” Gary said.

  The camera remained motionless for a while, evidently positioned in a hallway outside the room. I realized I could hear the sound of its operator breathing, trying to do so as quietly as possible.