Closing Costs
Page 16
Lucky.
Evan groaned.
Roarke put his hands up to his head and pressed against his temples. “Shut up, the both of you! I can’t think,” he said, as if the slight sounds she and Evan made weren’t the direct result of him doing awful things to them. He tromped up the stairs.
Nelle listened to him rummage in the bathroom. His head hurt. I hope you’re having a fucking stroke.
While it was a pleasing mental image, she banished the fantasy of a blood vessel in his brain bursting open like a crimson grenade and instead tried to focus on how to get out of this situation. She could cooperate all he wanted, and at the end, the game was rigged for only one winner. If she wanted to come out ahead, she had to get out of this chair.
36
Malcolm Roarke—Mack to everyone who knew him—fumbled through the cabinet in the hall outside of the bathroom looking for anything to beat back at the headache that’d been with him all day but in the last couple of hours had become nearly unbearable. Dealing with the bitch downstairs made him feel like his skull was going to pop from the pressure. She looked at him just like his wife did. The way they all did, with that silent judgment that said she thought she was better than him. Well, fuck her. Fuck all of them. The pain throbbed, and he squinted and looked closer, imagining that he had to be overlooking what he wanted. The closet outside the guest room was just full of towels and skin lotion and hand sanitizer. “Where the fuck are the pills?”
He stomped into the bathroom and yanked out a drawer. A bunch of bottles rattled against each other. All he could see were the tops of plain white caps; everything looked alike. During the renovation, Sam had him hang a big black-framed mirror above the sink instead of a medicine cabinet, so they had to find somewhere else to keep their prescription meds and personal things. It was frustrating. Normal people stored things where they could see the damn labels. But then she got her big mirror, flat against the wall instead of a blocky medicine cabinet, because it fit her “design sense” better. To hell with convenience.
He started pulling bottles out of the drawer and tossing them in the sink until he finally found a bottle of generic ibuprofen. He twisted off the childproof cap with some effort and shook several pills into his hand. He counted out four, and then two more before tilting the rest back into the bottle. He replaced the cap and dropped the bottle into the sink with everything else. He had an urge to replace everything as it had been, but it passed. It didn’t matter what he tore apart in the house. It wasn’t his anymore, and it wouldn’t ever be again. He knew that. He wasn’t crazy. The news would end up saying a lot of things about him, but he knew it’d eventually end up spinning what he did into “our unaddressed mental health problem in America.” He was white, after all. But I’m not crazy. There aren’t any talking dogs telling me what to do. I’m settling scores is all. Scorched earth might be desperate, it might be irrational, but it wasn’t crazy. “I’m not crazy,” he said to his reflection. It mouthed the words along with him. See? he thought. Nothing wrong there. Still, everything was going wrong. It had been for the last year, but today, everything awry reached a kind of terminal velocity. Sam wasn’t returning the texts or taking calls—he’d only ever put the chances of her responding to his deceptions at fifty-fifty anyway—still, he wanted what he wanted. And that was to hurt her worse than she’d hurt him. The hang-up in the plan was that he couldn’t find her. She hadn’t been at her new apartment or her parents’ place. Her boyfriend’s condo in Worcester was empty too. And that was the only reason he’d kept the people living in his house alive. Without any other way to track her, they were the only way he could think of to reach Sam before the end of the weekend. That had been his timetable. When people returned from the long weekend and tried to get back to their lives, they’d see what he’d done. Then it would be all over. Best case scenario, he figured he had until Monday evening at the latest to do everything he wanted. Now, though, it was going to be over much sooner. If his wife wouldn’t answer her phone, that meant there was no reason to wait to kill the couple downstairs and move on to the endgame. He regretted not having the chance to show Sam what he had waiting for her in the trunk of his car, but she’d still find out. Maybe the cops would show her pictures. He hoped they did. And when she saw them, she’d know. If he couldn’t have his wife and his house and his life, then nobody could.
He looked at the blood and snot on his fingers. He’d had enough blood on his hands—that wasn’t a big deal to him—but something about her snot repulsed him. He ran the tap and washed them.
The phone in his pocket buzzed and pinged half a dozen times. He jumped like it was a scorpion stinging him. Sure, now that he was upstairs, it had a signal. It was downloading everything that hadn’t come through before. He had no idea if his phone had ever got a signal in the basement. He rarely went down there when it had been his house. Sam had turned the downstairs into a workshop for her antiques hustle, and he didn’t have room to do a thing down there except throw the circuit breaker when the lights went out. He’d wanted to finish the basement and turn it into a TV and game room. But she was always down there sanding and painting old pieces of shit she pulled off the side of the road or bought at yard sales. That was her space. She told him she couldn’t refinish antiques in a “man cave.” He did his work in the garage, where it was too cold half the year to do a damn thing. And he had to share his work space with the snow blower and the goddamn bicycle she never rode. He—
The chirp of the door alarm broke him out of his reverie and snapped him back into the present. It sounded again. Behind it, he heard the soft click of the front door latch catching. Someone had let themself into the house. He thought for a moment that it could be Sam, but then the bitch downstairs had only just left her voicemail message. She couldn’t have come already. Not unless she was already in the neighborhood. Her parents lived on the other side of town. But he’d already been by that place, and Sam hadn’t been there. And if she’d dropped by to visit her folks today, she wouldn’t be here now.
And she wouldn’t just walk in.
But the police would.
Mack peeked out of the bathroom into the hallway, trying to stay out of sight. He saw a pair of dark figures standing in the front room—men silhouetted against the light coming through the faceted glass in the front door. The word police flashed in his mind again like a red alarm beacon. He wasn’t ready for the cops yet. Behind the pair, through the window, he saw a black Range Rover parked in the driveway. Not a cop car. They could be detectives, he reasoned.
How didn’t I hear them pull up?
He knew how. Evan and Nelle had been screaming loud enough to muffle the sounds of an airplane landing in the driveway. He’d been washing his hands. He had a headache that was dulling everything. But then, if it weren’t for the door chirping, he wouldn’t have heard them enter the house either.
For a second, they stayed still, as if they were only the memory of figures who’d once been in the house. Then one of the phantoms moved. It detached from the light behind it and moved toward him with such suddenness all Mack could do was backpedal away into the bathroom wall. The man closed the distance before Mack was able to reach under his shirt for his gun. A closed fist redirected his attention from the small of his back to his nose with sudden efficiency. Mack had been hit before, he could take a punch, but this one felt like the end of the world. He saw an eruption of lights behind his eyelids, and his stomach turned with instant nausea. His head hit the bathroom window, and he thought he heard it crack. Felt something wet under his hair. Unaware of anything but his own disorientation, the phantom caught ahold of him and yanked him forward, throwing him into the front room.
Mack lurched forward, his own weight propelling him toward the second phantom. The other man hit him hard in the midsection, again with a punch that felt superhuman. Mack retched and fell to his knees. He had no air and struggled to take a breath. The phantom kicked him in the gut, and he fell over. The gun in the small of his back jammed into his
spine. Again, before he could reach for it, the other man was on top of him holding him down, a knee on one biceps and a foot pressing down on the other forearm.
The first phantom stepped up and stuck a gun in Mack’s eye. “Stop.” He spoke the word calmly, without anger or even a sense that he’d been exerted. Mack’s head throbbed, and he felt nauseous. The pain in his head surged, and his skull suddenly felt as if it might explode from the pressure inside. The other man got up off of him, but the first kept the gun barrel stuck in his eye socket, pressing down. Holding him in place like an insect on a pin.
Then their hands were on him, lifting. The pair of phantoms lifted him effortlessly up onto the sofa. He sat heavily, having to exert significant effort not to fall over onto his side.
A phantom spoke. “If you do not do what I say, I will shoot you. Do you understand?” Not detectives. His voice was accented like the livery company owner Mack used to drive for when he was in his twenties. Vlad something. No. Vadim something. He was Russian. He’d been indicted for racketeering and money laundering through that same livery company and went to federal prison.
“Do you understand?” the man who sounded like Vadim Something repeated.
Mack said yes, though a thickness in his throat made it hard to speak.
The phantom with the gun was pointing it at him, muzzle staring at him like a pupil. The stare of cyclopean death. At the sight of it, he involuntarily pushed into the sofa cushion behind him; his own gun still in its holster pressed against the small of his back. He fought the urge to reach for it, and kept his hands at his sides. He knew better than to move for his piece; they’d shoot him. It’s what he would’ve done.
His head hurt so much, it was nearly blinding. He had trouble taking air in through his crushed nose and breathed instead through his mouth. One of the two shades broke away and left the room, moving like a man coming out of a corner after a bell rang: determined, fierce, and direct. Mack heard him move through the house with speed and intention. He covered the first floor and then went upstairs. His footsteps overhead weren’t soft; he didn’t bother trying to conceal his movement. He wasn’t looking to sneak up on anyone anymore.
Mack sat there staring at the shadow with the gun. The phantom slowly resolved into a man as his eyes adjusted, though he was still blurry. The guy was wearing a suit. Or, something like it. Dark clothes. Everything black. His suit coat looked like it might be leather. White guy. Thinning, graying hair. He was angular, like his face had been knapped out of a piece of stone, the way you’d make a primitive ax.
Mack blinked and tried to clear his eyes. Things eventually took clearer shape, but occasionally the room seemed to yaw like a plane in bad winds. He took another deep breath and tried to settle himself.
The man pointed the gun at him, unmoving. Black tattoos on three of his knuckles resolved into clarity. KOT. Mack had no idea what it stood for, but figured it didn’t mean “mercy.”
A few moments later, the other man returned and rejoined his partner in the front room. They spoke to each other for a bit in what Mack guessed was Russian. He didn’t understand a word of it. Just the rhythm and tone of the language.
The man who’d gone looking removed his suit coat. Mack saw a glint of metal on his hand. Knucks. Those are illegal in Massachusetts. As if it mattered to these men, or him.
The man refitted the brass on his fingers and tightened his fist. “Where is your wife?”
IX
◆
Samantha
37
THREE YEARS BEFORE DEPARTURE
Samantha and Mack walked through the house, trying to imagine their own things in each room instead of the sellers’ hideous furniture. The real estate agent said that the place had been built in the fifties, but was updated in 1977. It looked it. The breezeway between the house and garage had been converted into a dining room, but the wood paneling and low drop ceiling made it feel more like a cave, or a singles bar with the word grotto in the name.
“How long have you two been married?”
“Six months.”
“Newlyweds,” the agent practically shouted as he led them through a door into a room with windows on three sides. It was bright, and there was a stationary bike and a stair step machine in front of a big CRT television and an antique-looking VCR. “They used this as an exercise room, as you can see, but it wouldn’t take much to turn it into family room or a game room. You could put a pool table right there.”
Mack smiled and said, “It’s perfect.”
Sam’s brow furrowed and her lips tightened into a thin, straight line. “Could you excuse me and my husband for a minute?” she said. The man smiled and told them he’d be in the kitchen if they had any questions. As he walked out, he reminded them that there were cookies. She turned to her husband and said, “Are you crazy?”
“What? It’s perfect.”
“Did you see that room in there? Or the living room? Frosted mirrors, Mack. All it’s missing is a disco ball and a fishbowl for the key party.”
“It’s a cosmetic fixer-upper. The foundation looks good, and the construction’s decent. They built these places sturdy back in the day. Yeah, it’s out of date, but this is the showcase for our home decorating business.”
“I told you I don’t want to have a home decorating business. I don’t want to live in a mess. I want to restore antiques and open a shop.”
“Selling old junk? Don’t you wanna do more? I mean, you can keep on with the bits and pieces, but the real money is in making places like this look good again. Lots of rich people in old houses want to update. I can do the structural work, and you’ll make it look like those places in the design magazines.” He held up his hands, splaying his fingers out as if he was showing her a marquee. “Roarke Remodeling and Restoration. We spend a couple of years—”
“A couple of years ?”
He spoke through gritted teeth. “We spend a couple of years on the weekends making this look like one of those fuckin’ dream homes offa HGTV while you do your antique thing on the side, and then when we get a few jobs based on our show house. I’ll quit work, and we go into business full-time. It’s perfect.”
“Weekends are when I do ‘my antique thing.’ How am I supposed to restore furniture and teach during the week?”
“Nights,” he said, as if the single word was a solution to a problem so easy it barely needed to be answered.
“I grade papers at night. I prepare for classes the next day at . . .”
Mack’s face started to turn red, and he got that twitch in his mouth, like he was trying to smile or scowl and couldn’t decide which. Sam knew better than to contradict him when he got like this. He wanted what he wanted, and he got upset—her dad said “mean”—when anyone disagreed or told him no. But she wanted to tell him no. She didn’t want to fix up a house and go into business as a remodeler. She wanted to live in a nice modern home now and paint some furniture so she could quit teaching other people’s bratty kids and open a cute shop downtown. Open for business when she wanted with no toxic co-workers undermining her with the school administration. Her dad had told her that the old bookstore next to the bistro and wine bar she liked was struggling to pay the rent and would probably be out of business within a year, or maybe eighteen months, tops. If she worked hard, she’d have enough floor stock to fill it by then, and he said he’d help her with the buildout and setup. She knew what she wanted to call the shop: Samantha’s Studio. That was what she wanted. Not this.
The real estate agent poked his head back into the exercise room and said, “You two want to see the back yard? Big enough for dogs, and it looks right out onto Cabot State Park. You have neighbors on one side, but a hedge runs the whole length of the property. You’d never know anyone was there. Total privacy.”
Mack turned to him and said, “We love it!”
“As soon as you walked in the door, I said, this is the kind of place for a couple like you. Take down the paneling, paint a little—”
She flinched as he hit the bruise already on her biceps. She forced a smile. “I guess I can see that.”
The agent said, “That sounds like the makings of a dream home!”
“Broker’ll call you with our offer,” Mack said.
Sam’s stomach dropped. The agent laughed and beckoned them to come have a cookie. “I’ll give you guys some privacy if you want to call your agent right now.” He leaned a little closer to Mack like he was about to share some really great betting tip on the big game. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but the sellers are motivated. Their parents, who lived in the house, died this year, and they want to make sure the place goes to a good family who’ll love it like their folks did. You two have kids?”
“Not yet,” Mack said. “But we’re working on it.” He tried to nudge Sam again, but she ducked out of the way, saving her bruise from getting worse.
“No kids,” she said.
“It’s a perfect place for ’em. Schools here are great.”
“I know. I teach at Mayr High.”
The agent blinked at Sam as if her telling him she knew more than he did about the subject didn’t register. He continued. “They’re pumping a ton of money into the local schools, and we’re outperforming Boston and Cambridge on the MCAS. It’s a great place to raise a family.”
Mack had his phone out and was dialing. He looked over his shoulder at Sam and said, “We can make great things happen here. We can make this a house we’ll want to spend the rest of our lives in.” He turned away when their broker answered. “Hey, Dave. We found one we want to make an offer on. We really like it.”
She tried to imagine herself in the house in ten years. Five.