by JM Gulvin
‘Where are we going?’ she said. ‘Why the garage and not the house?’
Isaac spoke without looking round. ‘It’s all right. I know what I’m doing. You just have to trust me, OK?’
Inside the garage he considered the floor where the trapdoor was closed and seemed to take a few moments to think. Again he looked back the way they had come and then he shut the garage doors before he dropped to his haunches and hoisted the metal hatch.
‘Down there is a storm shelter,’ he explained. ‘This part of Texas is hurricane alley, or at least that’s what Dad used to say. He built the shelter himself and told me you could last six months.’ He gestured to the hole in the floor. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Use the ladder; I’ll be with you in a little bit.’
Clara stared at the hole in the floor then she looked back and Isaac gave her an encouraging smile. Reluctantly she turned around then began to climb down to the passage below. When she got to the bottom of the ladder she looked up.
‘Are you coming?’
‘I’ll be with you in a minute. Don’t worry. There’s a switch for the light right there.’ He pointed to the darkened wall.
‘But why?’ She spoke sharply now. ‘Why aren’t you coming too?’
‘I’ll be there in a bit. Switch that light on and you’ll see how the passage leads to the room Dad built. There’s another light switch behind the door.’
Still she looked up. Still she looked unsure.
‘Mom, it’s all right. You have to trust me. I know what I’m doing. I’m a soldier, remember – same as Dad.’ He nodded now. ‘I’m going to close this door because that’s the way Ish got in before. Just go to the shelter and wait for me. I promise you everything will be OK.’
He let the trapdoor fall then fetched the keys to the pickup, opened the garage doors and went outside. He drove the truck inside and parked right over the trap. After that he closed the doors a second time before crossing to the house.
In the storm shelter Clara found the light. Halogen spots in the ceiling, they created an almost bluish glow. About fifteen feet square, an artificial space, she saw the array of water coolers and a first aid kit fixed to the wall. She took in the racks of metal shelving, the folding chairs and table and the propane-fired stove. She considered the cans of food and camp beds ready to be assembled, then her attention fixed on the opposing side. The lowest shelf, it was made of concrete as if it had been fashioned as part of the wall. There was something underneath: a sleeping bag, all bulked up as if somebody was inside.
For a long moment she stared. Then she crossed to the shelf. Trembling a little she looked down at the sleeping bag and sucked an audible breath. On one knee she reached out. She hesitated, fingers curling, the trembling so acute suddenly she had to make a fist. Then she spread her palm once more and finally gripped the bag. The weight shifted, the bag rolled over and she could not contain her scream.
In his father’s study Isaac stood stock still. His mother’s voice, like a dim and terrified echo, it lifted from beyond the wall. Wrenching the door to the gun cabinet open, he grabbed a Colt 45 and the bayonet. Then he cut behind the desk to the panelled wall. Working his fingers over the wood, he was in the darkness of the passage on the other side.
He could no longer hear her voice, that one scream then nothing. He was at the door to the storm shelter where the seal was so tight no light crept from inside. Still he could hear no sound and he threw open the door. He stood there with the Colt in one hand and the bayonet in the other and saw his mother crouched among several cans of food that had spilled to the floor. He was halfway to her when he stopped: her face pale, eyes like orbs, she stared at a sleeping bag pressed against the other wall.
*
Quarrie drove south; right foot flat to the floor, he had the siren wailing and the red light flashing under the Riviera’s clamshell grille. He had sent Nancy McClain back to Bellevue with instructions to get the safe in Beale’s office open and find out what was on his tapes. He was pretty sure he knew where Isaac would have taken his mother; somewhere he could secure one entrance and guard the other. He would do his best, he would try to keep his brother at bay, but eventually Ishmael would show.
Late morning, he drove up to the Bowen house where he could see no sign of the pickup truck that had been there earlier and the garage doors were closed. Leaving his car Quarrie made his way around the house to the kitchen door. Sliding one of his pistols from its holster he used the butt to knock out a pane of glass.
In the kitchen he stood with the pistol in his hand aware of no sound but the wind blowing hard outside. Moving to the living room he paused. No sign of any disturbance, no furniture out of place. In the hallway he noticed the door to Ike Bowen’s bedroom was closed and he couldn’t remember if he had shut it when he left or not. He could hear nothing from below and he started down the stairs to the basement passage. At the bottom he stopped. The study door was wide open and he listened again but still he could hear no sound. Inside the study he paused. The door to the gun cabinet hung at right angles and he noticed two more empty hooks.
A little more cautiously he moved behind the desk to the panel and there he listened once more. Still nothing, no sound, no hint that anyone was back there. He worked fingers down the lip of wood, feeling for the spot where the lever was housed. Locating it finally he heard the faint click and the panel swung in. Darkness in the passage beyond, no light from the storm shelter, he gripped his gun a little more tightly and made his way to the door.
‘Isaac,’ he called. ‘Are you in there? It’s John Q.’
No reply. Nobody answered. When he pushed open the door blue light flooded the room. There was nobody there. He could see nothing but a few cans of soup where they rolled on the floor. Gathering them up he put them back on the shelves and when he turned he froze. Slumped under the lowest shelf a dead man was zipped into a sleeping bag. His head encased in a mummy-shaped hood, his eyes were open and his features bruised and bloody.
Quarrie holstered his gun. On one knee he reached for the drawstring that bound the hood and the dead man’s head lolled back, telling him that rigor mortis had already been and gone. That meant this guy had been in here when he came through in the darkness last night. Carefully he worked the zipper all the way down and folded back the flap. No sign of any bullet wounds, the man wore a business suit and tie. His mouth was open and a sheet of paper had been screwed up and forced inside. Pinching with his index finger and thumb Quarrie drew the paper out and saw it was the missing page from the address book he had found in the banker’s box.
A savage-looking purple mark blotted the base of the dead man’s throat, the skin stretched and swollen; a protrusion of bone creating the kind of lump that would be there if he’d been hanged and his neck broken, only he had not been hanged, but his neck was broken just the same. Searching the dead man’s jacket he came up with a wallet containing a driver’s license in the name of Dr Mason Beale.
Upstairs in the kitchen he found the keys to the garage on the drainer. He called the Fannin County sheriff’s department then crossed the drive and unlocked the garage doors. The pickup was parked right over the trapdoor so it could not be raised and he figured it would’ve been Isaac who had done that. He had been back here clearly, he’d been down in the storm shelter with his mother and found Beale’s body, and that was what scared them off. Time was short and as he stood there he wracked his brains trying to figure out where they might have gone.
He was still trying to work it out when a sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the yard driven by the same young deputy he had met before. The guy looked a little sheepish when he saw it was Quarrie and he shifted the weight of the sidearm buckled on his hip.
‘The body’s in the storm shelter,’ Quarrie told him, ‘Dr Beale out of Shreveport, Louisiana. You’ll find a wall panel open in the study down where you were at before. I figure his car must be somewhere in the woods.’ He gestured to the far side of the house then looked the young man up and d
own. ‘Your name’s Collins, right?’
The deputy nodded.
‘What we talked about on the phone – I guess Ike Bowen ain’t in the ground just yet so best give the coroner a call.’
*
Isaac was a few miles north of Marshall, Texas, with Clara in the passenger seat. They had stopped for gas and he had bought her some coffee and a muffin to eat but it lay on the dashboard untouched. He was sipping coffee and telling her she really ought to put something in her stomach.
‘Even if it’s only a mouthful, it’s been a long night and you’ve had one hell of a shock. You need your strength, Mom because where we’re going it won’t be as easy to protect you as it would’ve been in the storm shelter.’
Clara stared at the road ahead.
‘That was Dr Beale by the way,’ Isaac went on. ‘The dead guy in the sleeping bag. I recognized him, Ishmael’s doctor. He’d already been to the house.’
South of Marshall he didn’t take Route 59. Instead he zigzagged, driving a little further east and hit the county road from there. Tiny little hamlets; De Berry, Deadwood and finally Logansport after crossing the state line briefly, before cutting back to Joaquin where they were into the woods.
Next to him Clara peered out of the window. ‘Trinity,’ she said. ‘You’re taking us to the hospital. Why?’
*
Lights and siren going on the Riviera again, Quarrie drove back to Bellevue with his foot to the floor. Before he’d left the Bowen place he called Alice Barker and told her that Dr Beale was dead. He called the FBI and he called the Louisiana State Police. Then he called Van Hanigan back in Amarillo and gave him the heads up too. Right now every cop in Texas and Louisiana was on the lookout for a blue Pontiac sedan.
Quarrie was trying to stay ahead of this and figure out where Isaac had gone. The truth was it could be just about anywhere, some motel somewhere, some out of the way hidey-hole that he didn’t think Ishmael would find.
It was mid-afternoon by the time he pulled into the main gates of the hospital. Instead of parking where he had before, however, he drove all the way to the main building. Inside the lobby he took the elevator to the third floor.
Alice met him in the corridor and he could see she had been crying from the redness around her eyes. She told him that Nancy McClain had been back for a while and she was in Beale’s office waiting for him. She told him that the police had found Briers’s body in a clump of reeds by an old fishing camp after the owner showed up with his dogs.
Inside Beale’s office Quarrie found Nancy sitting on the couch. Her face was pale and Quarrie gazed beyond her to where the reel-to-reel was plugged into an outlet and a stack of tapes lay on the table marked with Ishmael’s name.
Thirty-three
Rolling the length of the causeway, Isaac put the Pontiac between the pair of iron gates. Next to him Clara’s gaze seemed fixed on the wall where moss and lichen scattered the bricks. Inside the grounds she saw the burned-out mansion and an audible breath broke from her lips.
‘Something, isn’t it?’ Isaac said. ‘Saw it myself when I first hit back in the world.’ He let a breath go of his own. ‘This is his handiwork, Mom. What you see there, all that’s left of the building, that’s what Ishmael did.’
Next to him Clara was sitting bolt upright, no color in her face and her hands knotted between her thighs. ‘Why have you brought us here?’
He did not reply. Pulling up out front of the main building he sat for a moment holding the wheel and looked sideways to where she twitched a little in her seat.
‘Relax,’ he told her. ‘It’s all right. I know what I’m doing. This is my kind of country. We’ll be fine.’
Getting out of the car he flipped the seat forward and reached to the foot well behind. When he stood up again he had his father’s Colt 45 in one hand and in the other the bayonet.
‘Recognize this?’ he said. ‘North Africa, the Sbiba Pass, or that’s what he told us at least.’ His eyes had glazed a little and from where she sat in the car, Clara’s voice was sharp.
‘What’s the matter? Are you OK?’
He did not reply.
‘What is it?’ She spoke louder now. ‘Are you all right? Is everything OK?’
He did not answer. He seemed to concentrate on the blade in his hand. His lips parted but he didn’t speak.
Clara got out of the car and stood watching him, her face pale, hands almost pasted to her sides. As if noticing her for the first time, Isaac looked up. He squinted. He looked at the blade again then slipped it into his belt.
‘Ish sure set this place alight.’ He strode towards her now with the tunic of his uniform undone and the bayonet hooked at his side. ‘Can you imagine all the buildings going up? They must’ve really pissed him off.’
His mother did not say anything. She was standing by the car still, her gaze shifting from the ruined walls to the barred, glassless windows and back. Isaac stood beside her, the gun in his hand and his hand hanging at his thigh.
‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Before Dr Beale got a-hold of him my brother never hurt a fly.’
His mother looked into his face.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to be worried. Look at this place: if he shows up there’s a million different spots we can hide.’ He took her hand. ‘But the fact is I don’t think we need to. I figure I can talk to Ishmael because he used to listen to me.’ He looked a little wistful then. ‘Back when we were kids I’m talking about. He always used to listen to me. And the games we’d play, the adventures we’d get up to, whatever it was, always it was me made the suggestion, not him.’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘Ish never came up with anything, not a swimming tank or a camp spot or where to dip a fishing pole.’
Gazing towards the woodland he threw out a hand. ‘That vacation, the one in Lawton before you took off. You pretty much left us to ourselves. Do you remember that? Me and Ish would be gone from the house right after breakfast and only just back ahead of suppertime. What we’d do, the stuff we’d get up to, that wasn’t anything to do with Ishmael, Mom: it was always down to me.’
Sliding the gun into his belt now his hand hung loose at his side. He stared back up the causeway to the gates. ‘Anyway, what I’m saying to you: probably there’s no need to hide from my brother, but we best not be taking the chance.’ He worked his hand a little absently through his hair. ‘He’ll go back to the house for sure. He’ll figure we went back there but I doubt he’ll think to come here.’ Breaking off for a moment he frowned. ‘But then Ishmael’s got a habit of surprising me so we ought to hole up just in case.’
*
When Nancy switched off the tape Quarrie just stared at the floor. Sitting on the arm of the chair his mouth was dry and he could still hear the voices ringing out. A man and a woman, what had started as a stilted conversation had descended into screams and shouts. After that there had only been one voice, Ishmael’s voice, rising in an animal howl.
‘You were there,’ he said quietly. ‘You and Mary-Beth helped set that up?’
Nancy nodded. ‘We were in the next room. I had to supervise the meds so Mary-Beth worked the tape. Dr Beale had to be in the room with them and Briers was in the corridor outside. Someone had to work the tape so Beale asked Mary-Beth if she would do it and for Ike’s sake, she agreed.’
Quarrie looked at her now. ‘She knew Ike from before?’
‘Of course, we all knew Ike from before.’
‘And the three of you – Ishmael knew you were there?’
Again she nodded. ‘The door to the corridor was open. He saw us when Briers walked him past.’
Quarrie considered the tape recorder on the coffee table. ‘Mary-Beth there for Ike’s sake,’ he murmured, ‘so Ike wasn’t there himself?’
Nancy shook her head. ‘He couldn’t deal with it. And besides, Dr Beale didn’t think it was a good idea.’
Quarrie blew out his cheeks. ‘Given what I just heard he was probably right.’ He looked back at
her. ‘Nancy, Beale was killed because he showed up at the Bowen house to try and stop Ishmael finding Clara, only he left it too late. Ishmael killed him and stuffed that page from the address book in his mouth. Beale should’ve spoken to us. He should have called the police right off.’
‘He was convinced he could deal with it.’ Nancy lifted a palm. ‘He told me he thought the police would shoot Ishmael and nobody would be able help him after that. Sergeant, you have to understand that, in the beginning at least, he had no idea about Mary-Beth.’
Moving to the window Quarrie gazed across the grounds where some of the male patients were gathered in their oversized robes. Still he could hear that howl. Not a scream or a cry so much as a deep primordial wail.
‘It didn’t work,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘That experiment. Like you told me back in Tulsa, far from snapping him out of anything it only served to lock him in.’ His gaze carried the dividing wall to the women’s wing. ‘I don’t see it,’ he said. ‘I don’t see the reasoning. What was Beale thinking about?’
Nancy gave a helpless shrug. ‘I don’t know, I’m no psychiatrist, but I told you how he wanted to prove to his colleagues that his theory was right. I think he wanted that so badly he didn’t quite think it through. He told us that something had happened to lock Ishmael into his prison and nobody knew what it was. When he explained his reasoning to Ike, he agreed it was worth a try.’
Quarrie looked sideways at her then. ‘And both of them paid with their lives. Nancy, you did the right thing when you took off. If you’d stuck around your apartment we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. You did the right thing driving to Tulsa. You did the right thing trying to warn Clara. But she should’ve told me who she was when I saw her in Cain’s Ballroom, and she should’ve answered her door when I knocked.’
Nancy did not say anything, she just stood there gazing out of the window with her arms folded about her as if she was cold. Quarrie looked on as the side doors opened and a male orderly came out. Behind him Miss Annie seemed to stumble into the grounds, pushing that old metal stroller ahead of her with the breeze catching wisps of her wasted hair. They both watched as she guided the wheels down the series of stone steps with the orderly falling in behind.
