Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place
Page 20
someone looking them over through the fisheye lens in the front door. He
pushed back his hood and smiled.
The door opened on a security chain, and an Asian man peered out. He
was in his forties, short, slender, with black hair fading to gray at
the temples.
"Yes?"
Julie showed him her private investigator's license and explained that
they were looking for someone named George Farris.
"Police?" The man frowned.
"Nothing wrong, no need police."
"No, see, we're private investigators," Bobby explained.
The man's eyes narrowed. He looked as if he would close the door in
their faces, but abruptly he brightened, smile
"Oh, you're PI! Like on TV." He took the chain off the door and let
them in.
Actually he didn't just let them in, he welcomed them as if they were
honored guests. Within three minutes flat, they learned his name was
Tuong Tran Phan (the order of his nam having been rearranged to
accommodate the western custom of putting the surname last), that he and
his wife, Chinh, were among the boat people who fled Vietnam two years
after the fall of Saigon, that they had worked in laundries and dry
cleaners, and eventually opened two dry-cleaning stores of their own.
Tuong insisted on taking their coats. Chinh-a petit woman with delicate
features, dressed in baggy black slacks and a yellow silk blouse-said
she would provide refreshment even though Bobby explained that only a
few minutes of their time was required.
Bobby knew first-generation Vietnamese-Americans were sometimes
suspicious of policemen, even to the extent of being reluctant to call
for help when they were victims of crime. The South Vietnamese police
often had been corrupt, and the North Vietnamese overlords, who seized
the South after the U.S. withdrawal, had been murderous. Even after
fifteen years or longer in the States, many Vietnamese remained at least
somewhat distrustful of all authorities.
In the case of Tuong and Chinh Phan, however, that suspicion did not
extend to private investigators. Evidently they had seen so many heroic
television gumshoes, they believed all PIs were champions of the
underdog, knights with blazing.3 8s instead of lances. In their roles
as liberators of the oppressed, Bobby and Julie were conducted, with
some ceremony, to the sofa, which was the newest and best piece of
furniture in the living room.
The Phans marshaled their exceptionally good-looking children in the
living room for introductions: thirteen-year-old Rocky, ten-year-old
Sylvester, twelve-year-old Sissy, and six year-old Meryl. They were
obviously born-and-raised Americans, except that they were refreshingly
more courteous and well-mannered than many of their contemporaries. When
introductions had been made, the kids returned to the kitchen, where
they had been doing their schoolwork.
In spite of their polite protestations, Bobby and Julie were swiftly
served coffee laced with condensed milk and exquisite little Vietnamese
pastries. The Phans had coffee as well.
Tuong and Chinh sat in worn armchairs that were visibly less comfortable
than the sofa. Most of their furniture was in simple contemporary
styles and neutral colors. A small Buddhist shrine stood in one corner;
fresh fruit lay on the red altar, and several sticks of incense bristled
from ceramic holders. Only one stick was lit, and a pale-blue ribbon of
fragrant smoke curled upward. The only other Asian elements were
blacklacquered tables.
"We're looking for a man who might once have lived at this address,"
Julie said, selecting one of the petits fours from the tray on which
Mrs. Phan had served them.
"His name's George Farris."
"Yes. He lived here," Tuong said, and his wife nodded.
Bobby was surprised. He had been certain that the Farris name and the
address had been randomly matched by a document forger, that Frank had
never lived here. Frank had been equally certain that Pollard, not
Farris, was his real name.
"You bought this house from George Farris?" Julie asked Tuong said,
"No, he was dead."
"Dead?" Bobby asked.
"Five or six years ago," Tuong said.
"Terrible cancer." Then Frank Pollard wasn't Farris and hadn't lived
here. The ID was entirely fake.
"We bought house just a few months ago from widow, Tuong said. His
English was good, though occasionally dropped the article before the
noun.
"No, what I mean to say-from widow's estate." Julie said,
"So Mrs. Farris is dead too." Tuong turned to his wife, and a
meaningful look passed between them. He said,
"It is very sad. Where do such men come from?" Julie said,
"What man are you speaking of, Mr. Phan?"
"The one who killed Mrs. Farris, her brother, two daughters." Something
seemed to slither and coil in Bobby's stomach He instinctively liked
Frank Pollard and was certain of his innocence, but suddenly a worm of
doubt bored into the fin polished apple of his conviction. Could it be
just a coincidence that Frank was carrying the ID of a man whose family
had been slaughtered-or was Frank responsible?'He was chewing a bite of
cream-filled pastry, and though it was tasty, he had trouble swallowing
it.
"It was late July," Chinh said.
"During the heat wave which you may remember." She blew on her coffee
to cool it. Bobby noticed that most of the time Chinh spoke perfect
English, and he suspected that her occasional infelicities of language
were conscious mistakes that she inserted in order to seem more
well-spoken than her husband and, a subtle and thoroughly Asian
courtesy.
"We buy house last October."
"They never catch the killer," Tuong Phan said.
"Do they have a description of him?" Julie asked.
"I don't think so." Reluctantly Bobby glanced at Julie. She appeared
to be shaken as he was, but she did not give him an I-told-you-so look.
She said, "How were they murdered? Shot? Strangled?"
"Knife, I think. Come. I show you where bodies were found." The house
had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, but one bath was being remodeled.
The tile had been torn off the walls, floor, and counter. The cabinets
were being rebuilt with quality oak.
Julie followed Tuong into the bathroom, and Bobby stayed at the doorway
with Mrs. Phan.
The rattle-hiss of the rain echoed down through the ceiling vent.
Tuong said, "Body of youngest Farris daughter was here, on the floor.
She was thirteen. Terrible thing. Much blood. The grout between tiles
was permanently stained, all had to come out." He led them into the
bedroom his daughters shared. Twin beds, nightstands, and two small
desks left little room for anything else. But Sissy and Meryl had
squeezed in a lot of books.
Tuong Phan said, "Mrs. Farris's brother, staying with her for a week,
was killed here. In his bed. Blood was on walls, carpet."
"We saw the house before it was listed with a real-estate agent, before
the carpet was replaced an
d the walls repainted," Chinh Phan said.
"This room was the worst. It gave me bad dreams for a while." They
proceeded to the sparely furnished master bedroom: a queen-size bed,
nightstands, two ginger-jar lamps, but no bureau or chest of drawers.
The clothes that would not fit in the closet were arranged along one
wall, in cardboard storage boxes with clear plastic lids.
Their frugality struck Bobby as similar to his and Julie's. Perhaps
they, too, had a dream for which they were working and saving.
Tuong said, "Mrs. Farris was found in this room, in her bed. Terrible
things were done to her. She was bitten, but they never wrote about
that in newspapers."
"Bitten?" Julie asked.
"By what?"
"Probably by killer. On the face, throat... other places."
"if they didn't write about it in the papers," Bobby said, "how do you
know about the bites?"
"Neighbor who found bodies still lives next door. She say that both
older daughter and Mrs. Farris were bitten." Mrs. Phan said,
"She's not the kind to imagine such things.
"Where was the second daughter found?" Julie asked.
"Please follow me."
Tuong led them back the way they had come, through the living room and
dining room, into the kitchen.
The four Phan children were sitting around a breakfast table. Three of
them were diligently reading textbooks and taking notes. No television
or radio provided distraction, and they appeared to be enjoying their
studies. Even Meryl, who was a first-grader and probably had no
homework to speak of, was reading a children's book.
Bobby noticed two colorful charts posted on the wall of the
refrigerator. The first displayed each kid's grades an major test
results since the start of the school year in September. The other was
a list of household chores for which each child was responsible.
Throughout the country, universities were in a bind, because an
inordinately large percentage of the best applicants for ad mission were
of Asian extraction. Blacks and Hispanics complained about being aced
out by another minority, and white shouted reverse racism when denied
admission in favor of an Asian student. Some attributed
Asian-Americans' suggested conspiracy, but Bobby saw the simple
explanation for their achievements everywhere in the Phan house: They
tried harder. They embraced the ideals upon which the country had been
based-including hard work, honesty, goal-oriented instead of denial, and
the freedom to be whatever one wanted to be. Ironically, their great
success was partly due to the fact that many born Americans had become
cynical about those same ideals.
The kitchen was open to a family room that was furnished as humbly as
the rest of the house.
Tuong said, "Oldest Farris girl found here by sofa. Seven teen.
"Very pretty girl," Chinh said sadly.
"She, like mother, was bitten. So our neighbor says."
Julie said, "What about the other victims, the youngest daughter and
Mrs. Farris's brother-were they bitten too?"
"Don't know," Tuong said.
"The neighbor didn't see their bodies," Chinh said.
They were silent for a moment, looking at the floor where the dead girl
had been found, as if the enormity of this crime was such that the stain
of it should somehow have reappeared on this brand-new carpet.
Rain droned on the roof.
Bobby said, "Doesn't it sometimes bother you to live here?
Not because murders took place in these rooms, but because the killer
was never found. Don't you worry about him coming back some night?"
Chinh nodded.
Tuong said, "Everywhere is danger. Life itself is danger. Less risky
never being born." A faint smile flickered across his face and was
gone. "Leaving Vietnam in tiny boat was more dangerous than this."
Glancing at the table in the adjoining kitchen, Bobby saw the four kids
still deeply involved with their studies. The prospect of a murderer
returning to the scene of this crime did not faze them.
"In addition to dry-cleaning," Chinh said, "we remodel houses, sell
them. This is fourth. We will live here maybe another year, remodeling
room by room, then sell, take a profit." Tuong said, "Because of
murders, some people would not consider moving here after the Farrises.
But danger is also opportunity." "When we finish with the house," Chinh
said, "it won't just be remodeled. It will be clean, spiritually clean.
Do you understand? The innocence of the house will be restored. We
will have chased out the evil that the killer brought here, and we'll
have left our own spiritual imprint on these rooms." Nodding, Tuong
said, "That is a satisfaction."
Removing the forged driver's license from his pocket, Bobby held it so
his fingers covered the name and address, leaving the photograph
visible.
"Do you recognize this man?"
"No," Tuong said, and Chinh agreed.
As Bobby put the license away, Julie said, "Do you know what George
Farris looked like?"
"No," Tuong said. "As I told you, he died of cancer, many years before
his family was killed."
"I thought maybe you'd seen a photo of him here in the house, before the
Farrises' belongings were removed."
"No. Sorry."
Bobby said, "You mentioned earlier that you didn't buy the house through
a realtor. You worked with the estates"
"Yes. Mrs. Farris's other brother inherited everything."
"Do you happen to have his name and address?" Bob asked. "I think
we'll need to talk to him."
DINNERTIME CAME.
Derek woke up. He was groggy but hungry too. He leaned on Thomas when
they walked to the dining room. Food got eaten. Spaghetti. Meatballs.
Salad. Good bread. Chocolate cake. Cold milk.
Back in their room, they watched TV. Derek fell asleep again. It was a
bad night on TV. Thomas sighed with disgust. After an hour or so, he
stopped the set. None of the shows was smart enough to care about. They
were too stupid-silly even for a moron, which Mary said he was. Maybe
imbeciles would like them. Probably not.
He used the bathroom. Brushed his teeth. Washed his face. He didn't
look in the mirror. He didn't like mirrors because they showed him what
he was.
After changing into pajamas, he got in bed and made the lamp go dark,
even though it was only eight-thirty. He turned on his side, with his
head propped on two pillows, and studied the night sky framed by the
nearest window. No stars. Clouds. Rain. He liked rain. When a storm
came down, it was like a lid on the night, and you didn't feel like you
might float up in all that darkness and just disappear.
He listened to the rain. It whispered. It cried tears on the window.
Far away, the Bad Thing was loose. Ugly-nasty waves spread out from it
the way ripples spread across a pond when you dropped a stone in the
water. The Bad Thing was like a big stone dropped into the night, a
thing that didn't belong in this world, and with a little effort Thomas
could sense the waves from it breaking over him.
He reached out. Felt it. A throbbing thing. Cold and full of anger.
Mean. He wanted to get closer. learn what it was.
He tried throwing questions at it. What are you? Where you? What do
you want? Why are you going to hurt Julie?"
Suddenly, like a big magnet, the Bad Thing began to pull him. He'd
never felt anything like that before. When he turned his thoughts to
Bobby or Julie, they didn't grab him pull at him the way this Bad Thing
did.
A part of his mind seemed to unravel like a ball of string and the loose
end sailed through the window and way up the night, through the
darkness, until it found the Bad Thing.
Suddenly Thomas was very close to the Bad Thing, too close. It was all
around him, big ugly and so strange that Thomas felt like he'd dropped
into a swimming pool full of ice and razor blades. He didn't know if it
was a man, couldn't see shape, only feel it; it might be pretty on the
outside, but inside it was throbbing and dark and deep nasty. He could
see what the Bad Thing was eating. The food was was still alive and
squealing. Thomas was scared big, and right away he tried to back away,
but for a moment the ugly mind held him tight, an he could get away only