by Bill Alive
“Who said we were breaking in?” Mark said.
He pulled out a key.
“Where’d you get that?” I said, dumbfounded, as he twisted open the lock and gently slid the door aside. The room within was pitch black, and its musty moist breath exhaled in my face, like the foul cave of a creature that would devour all intruders.
Mark was squinting into the dark, getting a read. “Back at the house, while you were primping, I got something useful out of Yvette.”
“But why do we have to…”
He had already stepped inside.
At first, the mere darkness was terrifying. I had never violated anyone’s space like this, put myself so completely in the legal wrong. I felt utterly out, outside all protection, out in the wild and the dark. Not to mention Mrs. Turcot was a murderer.
I could hear people upstairs, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying, or the tone. For all I knew, Mrs. Turcot was about to kill Theodore up there, and here we were stumbling around the basement.
Then Mark shone his phone light, and I forgot all that.
I fumbled out my phone to look too. At first, all I could see was tons of crap — boxes and boxes and boxes. They were stacked almost right up to the door, with narrow goat trails between columns. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and every shelf was groaning under not only a full load of upright books, but a second layer of horizontal stacks. The spines were out, and I caught a few titles … they made my stomach twist. Compared to these, the books the Turcots sold in their store were almost mainstream.
I did see a stack with titles that seemed less insane, maybe even normal. I even recognized a guide to crystals that Vivian sells. Then I saw that the stack was in a box with the markered words, “TO BURN.”
All these boxes and books were at least contained. But on top of all this, teetering and sprawled and perilously piled, was plenty of other random crap. There were ancient board games with water damage, antiquated appliance boxes, mildewed tennis rackets, and just random, random who-knows-what that must have been scooped up from yard sales by the armful.
Standard hoarder fare, maybe, but then … perched here, there, and everywhere … were statues. Angels and nuns and monks and Marys, pale and ghostly in my phone light, their sad eyes cast downward toward the nearest junk.
But all this turned out to be no big deal.
Relatively speaking.
Because when I’d pushed through the box hallway for twenty feet or so, the basement suddenly opened into a larger space, large enough to hold…
“What the hell is that?” I hissed.
You know those oil tanker trucks, with the long metal tank like a submarine? This was like that. A steel cylinder tank. Nearly ten feet wide, maybe thirty feet long.
In their freaking basement.
They had still crammed even more boxes around the thing, but not completely. I could make out the round end of the tank, and the smooth curve of its roof stretching away toward the other end of the basement. I could not even imagine what the hell the thing was for, but my gut knew it would be worse than I was guessing.
I followed Mark toward the tank’s other end, picking my way around the boxes and stacked furniture. We were getting too close to the stairs, and the voices were louder now. We had to actually stand at the bottom steps before we finally had a clear view of the other end of the tank.
A metal door. Like a submarine.
“Don’t!” I whispered, but Mark squeaked open the door — to me, the screech wailed like a fire alarm — and disappeared inside.
I considered running all the way back to Thunder and hiding in the back seat until Mark came back. If he came back.
In other words, I considered abandoning my friend and roomie in the basement of a murderer.
Yeah, right. As if that were an option.
I allowed myself a silent groan, then followed Mark into the death trap.
My first confused impression was the shelves. Long metal shelves stretched on either side, built into the round wall and packed to bursting. I flashed my phone light over crates of cans, over stacks of huge flat brown bags labeled “FLOUR” and “BEANS”…
“Well,” Mark said, “at least they got proactive about their paranoia.”
I flicked my light his way, and gasped.
We were standing in the small entry space before the shelves began, and behind Mark, on a built-in counter, loomed a huge statue of a flagellated Christ.
The thing had to be four feet high, and when I say flagellated, I mean the flesh was literally ripped open all over the body, with muscles and guts dripping out in red plaster gobs. The tortured face was pleading, but also, smoldering with blame and passive-aggressive rage.
Mark followed my look and winced. “Yikes,” he said. “Wouldn’t be my first choice for bomb shelter decor. I’d be thinking more pastels.”
“A bomb shelter?” I said. “For real?”
“Sure,” Mark said. “We’re not that far from D.C. Even with the mountains and the distance, if some idiot finally flicks the first nuclear domino, we’re pretty much done.”
“Please don’t tell me you think this is cool.”
Mark gave a short laugh. “No, it’s psycho. Hooray, we get to play cards for three months until our beans run out and then we die. If we don’t kill each other first.”
“Yeah, about that getting killed thing—” I began.
Outside, at the top of the stairs, the basement door wrenched open.
We froze.
Light flashed on, straining through the open crack of the shelter door to reach us. I shrank back like it might burn me.
“Not good,” Mark muttered.
Heavy feet began to thump down the stairs. The wood creaked and groaned.
I was clenching with panic — my chest closing, thighs tightening, skull pounding and dizzy.
But Mark darted his phone light down the narrow path between the shelves. He snapped me a stern glance, then yanked me after him down the path.
The strip of floor was wood, and on my first step, it creaked. My heart thudded and I froze again. But the steps on the stairs didn’t pause, and they were getting so close, and Mark yanked me again, and we made it to a built-in counter that had been squeezed into a break in the shelves. Mark ducked under the countertop. I would have taken the space under the counter on the other side, but of course it was jammed with crap, so I crammed in beside him, wedged together under the counter like the two lamest kids in a round of hide-and-seek-and-slaughter.
The next freaking second, light clicked on inside the shelter.
“Shit, shit,” I whispered.
Down at the entrance, the voices sounded incredibly loud after all our whispers. I forced myself to breathe as deeply as I could and just listen.
I realized that neither voice was Mrs. Turcot. They were two men. Casual. Theodore and Roger.
Thank God, I thought. It’s not Mrs. Turcot.
Then I got a mind blast from Mark. Clear as day.
You still thought it was MRS. TURCOT?
I went cold.
The door clicked shut. I couldn’t see anything, and there was no way I was risking a peek down that aisle. But we were less than ten feet away, and I could hear every breath.
“Take a seat, Theodore,” Roger said, with a smooth warmth. “This is the only place to get comfortable down here. And we know we won’t be disturbed.”
A cushion squeaked and sighed under someone. Probably Roger. I could hear him wheeze. I’d noticed that built-in seat near the entrance when I first came in, with thin cheap cushions like a diner. Something else had glinted in my phone light too, hanging on a hook behind the seat.
A small gun.
Chapter 41
My heart was pounding so hard that I couldn’t believe Roger couldn’t hear me.
Theodore said, “Thanks for sending Mrs. Turcot out to get groceries.” His voice was quaking and high. He sounded almost as nervous as me, like a kid about to confess to his M
arine dad.
“No problem,” Roger said, calm and in control. “I could tell you wanted privacy. Now. What’s on your mind?”
Theodore gulped a deep breath. The floor creaked as he paced in the small entry.
“Can you—” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “Can you get me that gun first?”
Pause.
Then Roger said, “Sure.” His voice was inscrutable.
The seat whined, and metal scraped. The gun thudded into Theodore’s palm, and in the dead silence, he fiddled with it.
“Thanks,” he said. “Sorry. Guns make me nervous.”
“I understand,” Roger said. “But calm down, Theodore. It’s not loaded. You’re safe.”
“I know,” Theodore said. “Except that you’re a murderer.”
The air went still.
I literally held my breath. I hated that I couldn’t see their faces. My back and neck were cramping hard here under the counter, and crammed beside me, Mark was wincing, sweating — how could they not smell us? — but I had no idea what he was thinking.
When Roger finally spoke, he was even more calm. “Theodore. These deaths have been traumatic for all of us. It’s natural to want someone to blame—”
“I heard you that night. You didn’t think I did, but I heard every word you said.”
Roger said, “What night?”
“The night before Kelsey poisoned that milk.” Theodore’s voice was speeding up now, the words tumbling and evacuating before it was too late. “I believed in you, Roger, I really did. It was all so fast and compelling and real, and I wanted to be in, I had to be just as special as the others.”
“You are special, Theodore,” Roger said. “God is preparing you to be a leader in His Church. After the chastisement.”
He said this so easily, with a soothing tone that was almost hypnotic. Like, yes, the coming apocalypse was a done deal, but for them personally, it would be totally fine. He knew a guy.
Theodore ground on, like he was pushing against a storm current up to his neck. “It was after a meeting, you sent Mrs. Turcot and Yvette out for food and you wanted me to go too. You kept nudging me out, but holding Kelsey back. You practically pushed me out to the porch and shut the door … but I stayed. And one living room window was still open a crack.”
Roger’s smooth breath caught.
“He was babbling, Roger. He was terrified. I couldn’t make out everything he said, but it was enough. And you cut him off. ‘I have told you,’ you said, ‘hear me on this. It is better for one man to die for the people than the whole nation fall into ruin.’”
Beside me, Mark whispered, “Damn.”
Roger said, “Theodore. That’s a passage from Scripture.”
Theodore was breathing hard. “And then you said…” He stopped, cleared his throat again. “And then you said, Roger, ‘For the last time, Kelsey, you’ll be utterly safe. That’s the whole point of pentobarbital.’”
Oh crap.
Up to that moment, I’d still been hoping that Theodore was wrong, and that though Roger was certainly crazy, only Mrs. Turcot was actually murderous.
For one thing, she was currently far away.
Plus, hadn’t she actually confessed? What kind of mind would fake confess to murder? Had Roger made her do it? What the hell did Roger do to people?
Roger said, “Theodore. You must have heard me wrong.”
“I know what pentobarbital is, Roger,” said Theodore. “That was one of the worst nights of my life. I had really thought you might be the way out. I obsessed about what the hell you two could possibly mean, I obsessed for days … until I heard what had happened.”
Roger shifted in his creaking seat. “Theodore. Kelsey was a gravely defective human being. I cannot possibly take responsibility for his insane actions.”
“You took responsibility for all his actions,” Theodore snapped. Something had given way now. Maybe the worst was past, because he finally sounded pissed. “Are you forgetting that I’ve been here, I’ve eaten with you people? No one does anything without asking you. Mrs. Turcot asks whether she can mow the lawn. Yvette asks whether she can shower. Whether she can change her underwear.”
“Theodore. We have a very old septic system—”
“Kelsey couldn’t eat a damn pizza without having to hand you his plate so you could decide which slice he could have. They all had to. Hell, I did it myself, no one even had to tell me.”
For the first time, Roger’s voice crackled with a hint of threat. “Be careful, Theodore. Don’t turn this into an attack on holy obedience.”
I flashed back to Yvette on our couch, hands curled in her sleeves. I wouldn’t even GO into the basement without permission.
Then I thought of Jonestown, of the crowds enacting every last whim of the charismatic leader, down to the last cup of poisoned Kool-Aid.
Holy shit. This was a straight-up cult.
Complete with multiple wives and a bunker for the apocalypse.
A bunker in which we were now trapped. With the man himself.
Theodore snapped, “Holy obedience, right, I forgot. Kelsey certainly did obey you. First with Ed. Then with himself. And Vanessa.”
Now Roger sounded really angry. “Why would I ever command such a brutal assault on Vanessa? My God, man, I was her spiritual director. My wife is the one consumed with jealousy. That woman has always wanted me all to herself.”
Whoa.
Mrs. Turcot had used the exact same words … “I wanted Roger all to myself.”
She really had faked that confession to order. Down to the choice phrasing.
Theodore said, “Your wife would never have told Kelsey to do anything but obey you. And even if she had, Kelsey wouldn’t have listened. The man couldn’t choose a slice of pizza without consulting you, Roger. You think anyone’s going to believe he could have killed people on his own?”
Roger’s breath was slow now. Slow and even, like a man trying to beat the lie detector.
“I think you overestimate my influence,” he said.
“Roger, for the last time, I’m an insider. I’ve seen you all in action.”
I thought, Could you maybe stop reminding him you’re his one lethal witness?
Roger’s voice sank, even more calm and quiet. “Son, I don’t care what you think you saw here. You did not know Kelsey. He was deeply, deeply disturbed. And deeply obsessed with that woman. He had every reason to commit every one of those crimes.”
“Of course he did,” Theodore said. “That’s why you used him. You had your own team of perfect witnesses who would testify how obsessed he was. Yvette, your wife … you probably even counted on me. Yes, Your Honor, we heard Kelsey ranting about Vanessa Kimm. No, Your Honor, we never heard Roger ranting about Ed … or how desperate he was for Vanessa to keep feeding him Ed’s money.”
Money?
I thought of the one time we’d met Ed, his ominous, We are not spending my hard-earned money on a couple of joker detectives. But in the end, Vanessa had easily written us a huge check.
“I see,” Roger said. He sounded almost amused. “You really think I am capable of having a man put to death for the sole reason that his wife might contribute a small portion of his savings?”
“Are you kidding? Once you got her moved in here, you’d get it all,” Theodore said. “You dropped me enough hints that you ‘share everything in common’ … and that there’s not much to share when you all don’t do anything besides obsess about the apocalypse and run that dying store. Hell, you hit me up for a loan! After knowing me, what, a week?”
“If you’re going to build a case around an unexpected expense—”
“Yeah, like your mortgage. Or maybe the minimum payment on whatever card you maxed out to build this bunker. Hot tip, Roger — if you don’t want to look insolvent, don’t write the date when each separate card loses the zero-percent intro rate on your kitchen calendar.”
“If you think for one moment that my relationship with Vane
ssa was about money—”
“Oh no. Trust me, I know you can always crave another adoring bombshell disciple. But Vanessa was hot and loaded. You all could have been set for years. The only problem was Ed. That big scary husband who kept making threats.”
“And I say again,” Roger said, still preternaturally calm, “if I were willing to go to such lengths to acquire Vanessa, why on earth would I want her dead?”
“I’m not saying that was Plan A,” Theodore said. “But you say more than you think, Roger. And not just in front of me.”
Beside me, Mark whispered, “I knew it.”
“Knew what?” I whispered back.
“Besides,” Theodore said, and his voice went cold. “Vanessa wouldn’t have been the first time you’d gotten a disciple killed.”
“You need to blame me for everything, don’t you?” Roger snapped. “You’re becoming the spoiled brat of a son that God never gave me.”
Theodore’s voice stayed low. “I knew Olivia. Remember?”
Roger said nothing. Now his breath was heaving.
Theodore said, “I remember when she first started working in my office. Back then, she was calm, almost normal. But something happened, Roger. She changed. It took me so damn long to figure out where she got it, all the guilt, the self-hatred, the insistence that God hated her too.”
“That woman had mental issues long before she met me.”
“But you’re the one who got her off her meds. You moved her in here and you took her paycheck, her damn paycheck, for the good of all. And what do you know? Even for a woman on suicide watch, meds didn’t make the cut for the common good.”
“It wasn’t just the expense!” Roger said. “Those medications absolutely interfere with free will—”
“Oh. My. God,” Theodore shrieked. I jolted, accidentally elbowing Mark. “Of course her meds would be a sin! Just like everything else. You taught her that everything she could possibly want was evil … dance school and marrying Brett and just being happy, just taking pleasure in anything or anyone but you.”
“Anyone but God, Theodore,” Roger said coldly. “God alone. But I don’t expect a self-willed young man like you to understand detachment. Beware, son. You have had your chance at true holiness. It may not come again.”
