Comes a Horseman

by Robert Liparulo

  “Okay, okay.” He pushed Zach into the alcove, stepped in beside him, and quietly pulled the door closed. He stooped to look out the peephole. The fumes must have filled the entire basement in the thirty seconds since they mixed the chemicals, for it seeped though the hole, causing his eye to water. He wiped it and stared at the base of the stairs.

  The basement door crashed open. Claws clicked rapidly on the wooden steps. Two dogs—for the life of him, they looked like wolves—shot to the bottom step and froze. One howled and jumped back, disappearing up the stairs. The other whined. It tried to sniff the floor but jerked its head back violently. Still, it brought its paw forward to step down, whined again, then slowly backed up the stairs.

  A voice boomed from out of sight. Brady couldn’t tell if the words were jumbled by the wall between them or if they were spoken in a foreign tongue.

  Another wolf-dog, this one smaller but equally ferocious looking, came into view. It approached the basement cautiously, looking back frequently to someone who issued sharp but still illegible words. Like the last dog, its head snapped back suddenly from a whiff of the fumes. It turned to go up, then circled around for another attempt to enter the basement. It made a choking-coughing sound, turned again, and was gone. The voice came like staccato drumbeats, angry.

  Brady pulled his eye away, wiped it. It felt like someone had rubbed a pencil eraser over it. Zach was gripping him from behind, his hands trembling. Brady reached back to rub his arm. He put his other eye to the peephole.

  He almost jumped back when he saw a man standing in the basement. He had come down quickly . . . and completely silently. Brady’s first thought was that he was in costume. Long, tangled hair flowed to his shoulders. A red beard bushed out from his face and down over a knitted shirt. He wore tight pants that appeared to be tanned leather and boots that rose to midcalf. A shaft of wood extended down from his right hand, culminating inches from the floor in a broad blade. He was stocky and muscular. Brady wondered if his broom-handle stake, stuck anywhere in that tree-trunk body, would bring him down or just tick him off.

  The man was squinting at the wet floor. The rise and fall of his chest indicated he was taking short, shallow breaths. Smart. He stepped close to the washer and dryer, barely visible to Brady’s left. In a move that made Brady’s stomach fold in on itself, the man hefted the ax over his head, readying it for quick service. He leaned out of view. Brady heard the washer lid bang open, then the dryer door.

  Didn’t he know the appliances’ small capacities? Brady thought, a chill finding his spine. Or could he be looking for Zach specifically?

  The man stepped into the center of the basement, halfway between the stairs and where Brady and Zach hid. Starting at the steps, he scanned the room, slowly rotating like a sprocket in a machine. He was taking his time, hunting for clues to his prey.

  That’s when Brady’s cell phone rang.

  41

  Jumping back from the peephole vision of the killer in his basement, Brady felt the cell phone spasm silently at the bottom of his front pants pocket.

  Thank God they had visited Karen’s grave before heading to the video store and then home for cartoons and popcorn. The cell phone’s ring was still set to vibrate. However, after three vibrating rings, it would automatically switch to a loud chirping. It was on its second vibrating ring as he shoved his hand into his pocket. He got his fingers around it and pulled. His fist, gripping the phone, refused to leave the pocket. Ring number three. Frantic, he blindly pushed several buttons with his thumb, hoping one of them would be the disconnect key, which silenced the ringer until the call was lost. His heart lodged in his throat . . . The fourth ring didn’t come. He let out the breath he had been holding and leaned to the peephole.

  The killer had not heard. His eyes were red and watering. He was continuing his slow rotation in the center of the room, scrutinizing every possible hiding place, every crack in the wall. The house had been built before the fire code that required basement windows. The bleach and ammonia were wet. The dogs had identified the door upstairs through which they had fled. The killer knew his prey was down here, somewhere.

  He turned and faced the hideaway door. He stared directly at Brady, but Brady knew the rowboat wall hanging made the peephole and his eye invisible, even to close inspection. The killer scanned the top edge of the “wall,” then squinted down at the fake boxes attached to it at floor level.

  Just boxes, Brady thought, willing the words into the killer’s head.

  The man stepped toward Brady. And kicked the boxes. They made a hollow thud and held firm. He immediately raised his ax to strike the hideaway door.

  Brady reared back. He pushed Zach against the far wall, held up the broken broomstick, and braced himself.

  That ax will tear through like a knife through bread, he thought.

  But nothing tore through. After only a moment, Brady ventured a peek. The killer was there, ax poised high, both hands gripping the handle. He was squinting at the exposed main-floor joists that composed the basement’s ceiling, as if deep in thought. Then Brady heard the distant but increasing warble of a police siren.

  Yes! he thought. Go! Run, you scum!

  Instead, the killer dropped his gaze to the wall and swung the ax.

  Brady jumped away, a half-second ahead of the blade as it ripped through the wall. It tore a jagged line down the drywall from head-height to waist-height. Crumpled gypsum and dust exploded over Brady.

  Zach screamed, a startled yelp. He must have pushed against the light switch, because the single bare bulb above them came on.

  Seeing the power of the ax, Brady realized their only hope lay not in the broom handle but in stalling their demise until the cops arrived; the sirens were near. Brady dropped the stake and did the first thing that came to mind: he grabbed the ax blade. He felt the flesh of his left palm split under the metal’s sharpness. The killer yanked on the ax. The blade slid partially away from Brady’s grasp. Blood made it slippery. Brady tightened his grip. He felt certain the blade was touching bone; he could squeeze no more. The killer tugged again, but Brady held on. He opened his mouth to scream an obscenity at this beast who’d invaded his home, but what came out was a guttural roar.

  A booted foot burst through the wall, striking Brady’s knee. At the same time, the blade pulled from his grip and vanished through the wall. He fell back, smashing Zach against the rear wall. His legs folded and he sat down hard. Zach collapsed next to him. Through the rent in the wall, Brady saw the killer staring at him.

  The man’s bearded face was tight in anger. His dogs were barking and howling at the top of the stairs. He cocked the ax into position for another blow at the wall. He hesitated, then spun away, out of Brady’s view. Brady heard footsteps pounding up the stairs. The dogs dropped into silence. A door overhead banged—either open or closed, Brady couldn’t tell. And then . . . nothing.

  The house was suddenly and eerily still. It was as though a tornado had screamed through and departed.

  The chemical fumes roiled around them; he had barely noticed before. His eyes stung, his throat was aching, his lungs felt compressed. Zach pulled in a ragged breath. The boy looked as though he’d been crying for a week.

  “It’s all right, son,” he said. He reached a hand to him. Blood poured from it, and he lowered it.

  Zach rose to his knees and embraced his dad. He hitched in a breath and let it out in a slow, low moan.

  Brady pressed his uninjured hand to the back of the boy’s head. “It’s all right.”

  A tinny voice reached Brady’s ears. He assumed it was coming from a police radio but soon realized it was nearer. “Brady!” it said. “Brady!” He released Zach, easing him back to sit on the floor. He fished the cell phone out of his pocket. He must have punched the answer key when he had tried to keep it from chirping. He held it up to his face.

  “Brady!” It was Alicia.

  “I’m here,” he said. His voice was raspy. If they did not leave the baseme
nt quickly, the chemical would do the killer’s job for him. Holding the phone to his ear, he rose and reached down to help Zach up.

  “What’s going on? What were those noises, that crashing sound? Are you all right?”

  “The Pelletier killer, he came after us, he almost . . .” He was starting to realize the enormity of what happened, of what could have happened. “We’re okay. Zach and I, we’re okay.”

  Alicia was silent.

  He used his damaged hand to slide the false wall away. It moved reluctantly, wanting to snag its broken and bent frame on the floor and fixed wall. He put his arm around Zach and led him to the stairs. His racing thoughts took a turn down What If Lane. What if Kurt had not made Zach this hideaway? What if the police had not come or had not used their sirens?

  “Brady?” Alicia’s voice was thoughtful, measured. “Listen. Don’t go to the cops. Not the locals, not the Bureau.”

  As if on cue, someone pounded mightily on the front door upstairs.

  “That’s them now,” Brady said. One step at a time, he and Zach climbed toward the kitchen. “What are you talking about? Why—”

  “Something’s not right,” she said. “Just . . . listen to me. Get yourself somewhere safe, but don’t go to the cops. Trust me on this.”

  He knew she was right. The Pelletier killer . . . here ? Something very messed up was going on.

  The pounding on the front door continued.

  “They’re here, though,” he said. There were too many thoughts in his head. “We called 911.”

  “Tell them it was a mistake.”

  Pause.

  “Go tell them, Brady. You don’t want them sweeping in, or our guys. They’ll pin you down, make you an easy target.” She hesitated. “Zach too.”

  Brady squeezed his eyes shut. “All right, for now. I’ll call you back.”

  “For now?”

  He disconnected.

  Standing, he touched his son’s face. “Everything will be okay.”

  More pounding. The cops would break in any moment.

  “We need to make up a story. I’ll explain later.” In a few seconds, he told Zach what to say. Then he went to answer the door.

  42

  The phone clicked and Alicia was listening to that more-than- silent void of a disconnected line. Brady had hung up on her. She cradled the phone and sat on the hotel room bed. He said he wouldn’t bring in the cops, so she knew he wouldn’t. At least not until he spoke to her again, gave her a chance to voice her concerns.

  Her concerns? She wasn’t even sure what they were. Only that nothing added up. A serial or spree killer attacking a federal agent, unprovoked, was strange enough. Flying across the country to do it was beyond strange. It was creepy and suspicious and . . . and . . . She couldn’t think of the adjective that could describe the icy-footed creature that had scampered up her spine when she’d heard Brady say he’d been attacked. It was now squirming around her brain, gnawing at her sense of reality. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t real.

  She realized her mouth was dry from nervous tension. Absently, she stood and walked to the room’s low dresser. Inside the ice bucket was a folded clear plastic bag, because God knew what people did with ice buckets besides put ice in them, and you certainly couldn’t trust room service to make them clean again. She pulled out the bag and dropped it onto the desk. She grabbed the bucket, made sure the room’s key card was in her pocket, and went out the door, pulling it tight behind her.

  She padded barefooted down the hall past the elevators to a T-junction. She followed a sign to an alcove crammed with pop and candy vending machines and an ice maker. In the time it took her to put ice in the bucket, she had decided to get to Virginia as quickly as possible.

  She started back toward her room, absently shaking the bucket, making the ice rattle.

  Brady would be dancing on the edge of hysteria, not because of the threat on his own life, she knew, but because Zach had been there. She couldn’t blame him for freaking out, but he needed someone with a calmer head to help him think through the situation and course of action. It was under a four-hour drive, if you didn’t pay attention to speed limits . . . and who did? When he called back, she’d tell him to get someplace safe, if he hadn’t already, and she’d be there shortly.

  This was scream-out-loud scary, but she didn’t deny the thrill it gave her. To the top of Everest without oxygen—dangerous, stupid, unnecessary. But people did it, and she knew how they felt.

  She paused at a door marked Housekeeping. It was on the other side of the hall from her room and about thirty yards away. She’d made a mental note of it as she walked to her room upon checking in. She’d even gone back to check the handle. It had been locked. Hotels and motels were notorious venues of crime; her frequent stays in them had made her habitually watchful.

  Now the door was ajar. Standing to one side, she pushed it inward. The light was off. She propped the door open with her foot, reached in, and flipped the switch. Shelves and shelves of folded bed linens and towels. A cart full of cleaning supplies, tissue boxes, and tiny bottles of shampoo. Stocked and clean, ready for battle in the morning. A Dumpster-size hamper sat empty next to a laundry chute. No lurking bad guys with criminal intent.

  She switched off the light and pulled the door shut. It locked automatically.

  Paranoid and overcautious. Nah, she thought. Just good at what I do.

  Back in her room, she glanced at the phone to make sure the message light wasn’t blinking. Her cell phone was next to the hotel phone on the nightstand. If someone had left a message on her cell line, the phone would beep every thirty seconds.

  Should have taken it with me, she thought, walking into the bathroom. But she didn’t expect Brady to call back so soon. He had the 911 cops to deal with first. She set the ice bucket on the counter, popped a crescent-shaped piece of ice into her mouth. Crunching on it, she flipped a protective cardboard cap off a water glass, dropped in a handful of ice, and filled it with tap water.

  She swallowed the pulverized ice and brought the glass to her lips, then froze.

  Her gun. She had set it next to the cell phone on the nightstand. She had a sudden and clear image of the nightstand when she came back from the ice machine: hotel phone, cell phone, her collapsible travel alarm clock, a TV remote. The pistol and holster were gone.

  The shower curtain vibrated almost imperceptibly. She caught the movement in the mirror, over her shoulder. Before she could react, before she could think about reacting, a hand appeared and the curtain peeled back, its metal hangers clanging together and rattling on the rod like a long strip of Velcro. Arms behind her flew up, then down, bringing something over her head. She started lifting her hand, the one gripping the water glass. She wanted to reach back over her shoulder, to grab the attacker by the hair and yank him around. Something knocked her arm inward. The glass in her hand slammed painfully against her cheekbone, slid up along her face, out of her fingers, and was gone. It flipped in the air, wetting her hair and face, arched over her head, and began its descent.

  She could not move that arm. It was pinned to her face.

  A garrote! she thought. She felt its wire slice into her forearm. In the mirror, her eyes were wide with panic. Blood jutted from the wound, sprayed the mirror, and poured down her arm, off her elbow. She shook back and forth. The person behind her held firm. He had not lassoed her neck as he had intended—from his hiding place in the tub, he could not have known she had raised a glass when he made his move. But he was determined to fell his quarry. He tightened the wire with what must have been all his strength. The wire cut to her radius; it slid upward along the bone, toward her hand, essentially filleting the muscle and tissue from her arm. The wire pressed against the back of her neck. Her arm kept it from cutting into the soft areas in front and on the sides, where the carotid arteries and jugular vein ran to and from her brain.

  Most people supposed garrotes were designed to strangle. When wire was used, however, the killer intende
d to all but sever the head from the body. All that prevented decapitation was the spine. A few years ago, Alicia had seen crime scene photos of a garroted mob boss. The wire had sliced through muscles and ligaments, veins and arteries, the thyroid cartilage and trachea. It had embedded itself in the fourth vertebra so deeply, the perpetrator had been unable to pull it free (serrations within the cut had indicated an attempt to dislodge it). Alicia thought of none of this except in the nanosecond flashes of memories and images that fueled her terror. She knew without thinking what she would look like when they found her. Her head impossibly pivoted around, fulcrumed at the spine. The inner workings of her neck exposed, but too much congealed blood for its parts to be identified—except for the spine, around which a piano wire would be looped and stuck forever.

  All the killer had to do was yank her arm around back so the wire could reach the front and sides of her neck. She knew that. She was sure he did as well.

  She flailed back with her left hand, but the killer easily dodged away. She could not lean forward to level a powerful kick backward at her attacker’s groin, but she could lift her foot and thrust it back. When she did, her heel struck something that gave way to the pressure of her foot. Her attacker fell backward, without loosening his grip at all. Pulled backward, she tumbled into the tub. She could no longer see the mirror, thank God—who would want her last image on earth to be of her own brutal murder? She landed heavily on a body that felt sharp and hard, all bones. Her legs were draped over the edge of the tub. Her pinned arm was now over her face. Blood poured onto her cheek, into her mouth. She spat, gagged, roared with anger and fright. Her assailant struggled under her, tugging tighter on the garrote.