The Fear in Her Eyes

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The Fear in Her Eyes Page 20

by Grant McKenzie


  The news story went on to explain how prominent family lawyer Camille Vesna had been crippled in a hit-and-run accident nearly two years earlier and been confined to a wheelchair ever since. The second accident happened Friday.

  According to witnesses, Vesna had left her office and was rolling toward her parked van when an out-of-control SUV unexpectedly jumped the curb. The lawyer was dragged for nearly a full block before her mangled chair tore free. The vehicle never stopped, and Vesna was pronounced dead at the scene.

  With his hand trembling slightly, Ian handed the tablet back to Linda.

  “You need to make sure that you and Jeannie are safe,” he said. “She’s after me, but the more misery she can spread in her wake the better.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I have a name. I can get an address. It’s time we met face-to-face.”

  Linda looked worried. “Won’t she be expecting you?”

  “No.” Ian pushed back from his desk and stood up straight. His eyes were as dark as the night and filled with the same thunder that rumbled overhead. “The man she’s expecting doesn’t exist anymore. She thinks I’m weak, broken, but that’s not what she’s created. I’m going to show her exactly who I’ve become. And my face will be the last one she ever sees before she opens her eyes in hell.”

  Linda stepped back, putting distance between them, fright returning to her face. “I—I can’t condone murder.”

  “I know.” Ian sucked his teeth. His mind was set. “That’s what makes you a better person, and it’s also why you need to stay out of the way.”

  32

  Bleak and jaundiced rain battered the windshield as Ian glided within the low bank of cloud that had swallowed the moon and turned the twisting roads of West Hills into a river of ink. From time immemorial, the privileged had always selected to give themselves an advantage of height. From the top of a hill, it became easier to see the approach of enemies, and the higher one’s perch, the easier it was to step aside and let the shit keep rolling down.

  Retrieving the home address for Petra van Niekerk was as simple as following his partner into her office. According to Linda’s receipt book that allowed supporters to write off part of their contributions to Children First against taxes, Petra still lived in the same house that she once shared with her husband, Dirk, and their son, Olivier.

  Despite its brash attempts to be memorable, it was a house Ian only remembered once he saw it again.

  Built directly into the hillside, the jutting monstrosity was a modern illusion of smoked glass and mirrors held together by giant slabs of polished concrete and exposed brass rivets. Its ax-shaped nose mimicked the bow of a cruise ship emerging from the bowels of earth, while its white steel-railed balconies offered unrestricted views of the city and Mount Hood to the east.

  The seafaring architect had even added such nautical touches as porthole windows, anchor-chain downspouts, and a satellite antenna sprouting from the flat roof that vaguely resembled the tip of a wooden mast complete with a crow’s nest. But for all its modern flair, the house radiated an Arctic chill—as though instead of bursting free of the soil, it had become trapped there, a forgotten relic of some bright idea that never quite materialized.

  Ian parked and sat awhile. The Jaguar was a club member, easily blending with various Bentleys, Porsches, Mercedeses, and Range Rovers. So long as nobody’s drenched dog walker looked beyond the lacquer coating to the disheveled driver within, his disguise would hold.

  The house’s two main polygonal windows were tinted for privacy, and if there were any lights on inside, Ian couldn’t tell. The tinting faded in a gradual blend, with the windows on the second floor being lighter than those on the first, until it became completely transparent by the roofline. Regardless of opacity, however, no telltale signs of occupation appeared on any of the three levels.

  Slipping out of the car, Ian turned up his collar and darted across the road. The cement driveway was uncannily steep, and he had to lean forward to climb up to where it plateaued in front of a single-car garage hidden from street view beneath the first balcony.

  On tiptoes, he raised himself to eye level with a dashed line of small windows that ran horizontally across the automatic door. The interior of the garage was gloomy, but a panel of glowing red and green LEDs against one wall gave off just enough illumination to show it was also empty.

  Ian moved toward the front door, but didn’t ring the bell. Not yet. Despite what he had said to Linda, he still wasn’t sure exactly what he would say or do. His heart ached for vengeance, to lash out as a father and prove to his dead daughter just how much he loved her. He also wanted to punish the person who had made him into a liar every time he told Emily that she would be safe by his side.

  With Young, he had been convinced to be a good citizen, to step back and allow the legal system to do its job. In return, it had sentenced the murdering bastard to one month in jail for every year of Emily’s short life.

  That wasn’t justice.

  Now he needed to look into the eyes of the vindictive woman who had deliberately pointed Young at an innocent girl, and have her admit what she had done.

  If she did, he might kill her quickly.

  If she did not, she would unleash a monster.

  Either way, she could not be allowed to walk away.

  Forgiveness was a tool grown rusty and worn, its edge dulled by judges and cracked by law. It was no longer part of his arsenal, and the witch only had herself to blame.

  Ian cupped his hands and pressed his face against one of the large glass panels that fronted the ship’s bow. Peering through the smoky tint to the stark and secular interior beyond, nothing stirred. The house was a mausoleum to minimalist décor and appeared completely black and white. Even the floor was a checkerboard of mixed hardwood in dark and light squares.

  He stepped back. There was no rear entrance or other noticeable way in. The house literally vanished inside the hill.

  He wished he had brought an ax and a gallon of gasoline.

  Returning to the front door, he decided not to ring. Instead, he drew back his leg and lashed out with his foot.

  It took four heavy blows before the deadbolt tore free of the wooden frame and the door burst open. Nobody rushed down the stairs to stop him crossing the threshold or appeared in the entrance to the kitchen with shotgun in hand and sporting a cruel smile. If there was an alarm, it was ringing silently somewhere in a private security office, making some young studs hard as they strapped on their guns.

  The first of three floors had all the familial warmth of a show home: immaculate but unlived. Despite the vastly different décor, it reminded Ian of his own grandmother’s formal living room. How proud she was to let people lean over the velvet rope strung across the doorway to see her beautiful Irish furniture all covered in thick, transparent plastic. Not once during his many visits did Ian ever step inside that room, and he always wondered just what special occasion she had been saving it for.

  At the rear of Petra’s house, a series of false windows dominated the entire width of both the dining room and kitchen. Combining high-resolution photography with computer-controlled lighting, the realistic view was of a perfect English garden at the height of summer. The lighting was designed to reflect the appropriate time of day or night, but in the fake world, the weather was always perfect. While Ian watched, a crimson band faded on the horizon as the sun took its final exit and opened the stage to the first glittering of stars.

  The rest of Petra’s kitchen was steel and granite with a professional gas stove that boasted six burners and looked as pristine as the day it had been purchased.

  Moving up the grand staircase, the second floor continued the trend. Glass doors allowed a library to be opened onto the balcony above the garage. Shelves of books—oddly arranged by the color of their spines rather than by author, topic or genre—became a backdrop to two comfortable leather chairs nestled beside a natural gas fireplace. It was a small slice of tranq
uility and yet not just unappreciated, but untouched. In Ian’s estimation, books needed to breathe, to be opened and read, otherwise they were nothing more than pretentious decoration.

  Across the hall from the library was a boy’s bedroom. Unlike the rest of the house, there was actually a ghost of life lived still present. On the largest wall beside the bed was an enormous and highly detailed painting of a bullfrog with a glistening gold crown upon its warty head. The frog was winking as though it knew a secret, and the sight of it suddenly brought back a vivid memory of Petra’s gentle son, Olivier.

  Despite his freshly ironed clothes, scrubbed face, and unusually proper grammar, Olivier’s favorite thing to do on the supervised visits with his dad was go into the woods and look for frogs. Ian remembered how excited the boy had become when they found a massive gestating mound of gelatinous tadpoles, and Olivier had begged his dad to find a jar so they could take some home.

  Ian had recovered a discarded coffee cup from the back of his car, and the boy scooped up a dozen eggs along with a generous amount of brackish water. Ian also remembered the look on Petra’s face when he took the boy back home with his foul-smelling prize. The tadpoles were not welcome, and Linda had received an angry phone call later that day about Ian’s poor judgment in allowing Olivier to be prowling off the beaten path with his pervert of a father.

  Apart from the painting, however, the bedroom was a shrine. Everything neat and in its proper place—waiting for a boy who was never coming home. Framed photos lined the shelves, and as Ian studied them he noticed that only two people ever appeared: Olivier and his mother. Dirk had been effectively erased from memory. Out of sight, out of mind.

  Looking at this room, Ian thought of his own shrine. Emily’s room was empty—no toys, mementos, or photographs—but he still felt close to her there. And he wondered which way was healthier, and who was anyone to judge?

  If Petra hadn’t tried to quench the pain of her loss with the suffering of others, Ian would have felt a twinge of remorse for the hatred that blackened his heart. Instead he only felt sorrow for Olivier and his dream of being a frog prince with an army of loyal tadpoles circling the moat.

  The third floor was where Petra lived. The master bedroom had everything one needed to survive: king-sized bed, walk-in closet, bath en suite with soaker tub, large-screen LCD TV mounted on the wall, and glass doors leading to another balcony. On the far side of the bed was an antique writing desk that held a silver-framed photograph of Olivier. A stoppered inkpot and calligraphic pen rested on the surface alongside a sheaf of exquisite writing paper.

  Across the hall was her office, the only room that appeared off-limits to the twice-weekly maid. Beside a bank of filing cabinets and a pair of matching flat-screen computers, there was a stainless steel coffee maker, a portable microwave oven, and a small bar fridge stocked with two bottles of South African chardonnay and a dozen carb-controlled, microwave-ready meals.

  Ian moved to the nearest computer and wiggled the wireless mouse. One of the icons on the desktop was named Children First. He clicked it, and after a short delay, a smaller window opened that was an exact match to Linda’s computer desktop in the office. Moving the cursor into this secondary window, Ian clicked the icon for Linda’s office calendar. When it opened, it showed all of the staff schedules with times, places, and links to the client database. With this remote backdoor access, Petra could see exactly where Ian would be and with who he was meeting on any given day.

  Ian scrolled back a few days and saw where Linda had highlighted a note that Ian wasn’t available on Friday afternoon because of a trip to Salem. Petra would have known exactly what that meant, and Ian felt sure that if he checked the prison records he would discover that Tosh had received an urgent phone call just a few hours before Ian’s appointment with Young was set to take place.

  Grinding his teeth again, Ian shoved the monitor off the desk and stormed out of the room. He didn’t have the time or patience to break the computer case open and destroy the hard drive. Plus, he didn’t think that would send a big enough message.

  Instead, he hurried down the stairs and returned to the gourmet kitchen with the serene view of a make-believe world. Under the sink, he found four dishcloths folded in a neat pile. After soaking all four under the tap, he carried them to the stove and dropped one each on top of the burners’ tiny electronic ignition rods to prevent their ability to create a spark. He then turned the obstructed gas burners on full and listened to them hiss. A distinct rotten-egg smell quickly began to fill the room.

  In the pristine living room, Ian lit a half-dozen decorative white candles displayed from largest to smallest on a polished ebony coffee table. Once the candles were burning brightly, he exited through the front door and made sure to seal it tight against the broken frame behind him.

  The steep driveway was slick beneath his feet as he slid back to the street and across to his borrowed car. Inside the Jag, he switched on the heater and waited for the fog to evaporate from the windows.

  The doomed house held him in an hypnotic trance until he was jolted back to clarity by the buzz of his phone.

  The caller ID displayed: Unknown.

  HE ANSWERED. “Ian Quinn.”

  “It has become tiresome, Mr. Quinn,” said a woman’s voice. “The waiting.”

  “Petra.”

  A soft chuckle. “Ahh, so you are the one who has broken into my home? Good. That saves my pride from being wounded if you did not remember my face. A woman does not like to be forgotten. I can never forget you. Your treachery and lies are gouged deep into my consciousness.”

  Ian’s teeth crunched from the tightness of his jaw. “The only treachery was by you when you killed my daughter and threatened my wife.”

  “An eye for an eye.”

  “Damn it, Petra! I didn’t kill your son!”

  “You were working with Dirk all along. You don’t think I realized it the moment you helped that beast gain free access to my dearest darling. I trusted that you cared about my Olivier, but you may as well have held him down and raped him yourself.”

  “He wasn’t raped, Petra. I read the report. Dirk was obviously not in his right mind, but if there had been any signs, your lawyer would have—

  She hissed. “He’s already paid.”

  “I know. And so has Camille Vesna. But none of us—

  “The judge was tricky,” Petra interrupted. “You didn’t mention him. Although, to be fair, very few people did. Boating accidents are too common nowadays to warrant much press. Mr. Harris was much, much better. So … dramatic.”

  “Fuck the dramatics!” Ian exhaled heavily. “I don’t give a damn why you’re doing this or how fucking crazy you are. I just know it has to end. Tonight. Right now.”

  The soft chuckle again. “Then come and get me.”

  “Where?”

  There was a long, agonizing moment of silence before Petra whispered, “Mmmm, do you smell cinnamon? But you better hurry, my security people are almost there, and they have orders to shoot first and arrest you second.”

  The call ended a moment before an ear-shattering explosion rocked Ian backwards in his seat, and a catastrophic fireball erupted in the night sky. Chaos and panic took over the neighborhood as a dozen car alarms went off simultaneously, and a shower of broken glass and concrete chunks began to rain down. With the silent phone still clenched in his fist, Ian instantly kicked the sports car to life and threw it into reverse to escape the storm. At high speed, he made a 180-degree turn and, with slick tires spinning and protesting on wet road, challenged the large cat to meet its advertised 0 to 60 mph in under four seconds.

  He knew exactly where Petra was and why she had chosen it for their final meeting. She wanted to prove to him that no matter how hard he tried to isolate himself, there would always be loved ones that he couldn’t protect.

  33

  Linda and Jeannie McCabe lived in a two-story, barn-shaped home nestled in the U-bend of a secluded cul-de-sac in Arlingto
n Heights. A desirable neighborhood, 1,000 feet above the city and in the middle of Washington Park, Linda had found the 1940s-era barn in rough shape and at a good price when the real estate boom went bust.

  With skilled tradesmen suddenly desperate for work, Linda had transformed the unique space into two adjoining living areas surrounded on three sides by the tranquil woods of the 187-acre Hoyt Arboretum. Driving through the quiet neighborhood, it was easy to forget that you were still in the city—especially if you wanted to get somewhere fast. Then the quaint twisting roads and perilous blind curves became a curse for the impatient.

  Ian drove on pure adrenaline, his hands squeezing the steering wheel as his right foot danced between brake and accelerator to make the car drift dangerously close to steep ditches on each bend and devour the short straightaways in the blink of an eye. If any wildlife had chosen that moment to lap the rainwater off the tarmac, they would have both ended up in a meat and metal stew.

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Ian punched redial on the phone for the fourth time. And for the fourth time, he was sent to Jersey’s voicemail. Cursing, he glanced at the clock on the dashboard. If Jersey wasn’t wearing his badge, he could be on stage in black leather and chains, beating the crap out of a drum kit.

  He stabbed redial again.

  “What!” Jersey was panting and the roar of an alcohol-fueled crowd could be heard in the background.

  “I know who killed Emily.”

  “Christ, Ian, this—

  “She’s got Linda and Jeannie. I’m heading to Linda’s now.”

  “What? No. Stop. This isn’t smart. We need to—

  “Almost there. I could really use a friend.”

  “Ian? Fuck. Wait!”

  “Too late. If I fuck up, promise me you’ll kill the bitch.”

 

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