by Dave Conifer
“I think the chickens are coming home to roost. You’ve put her through a lot of shit over the years. I know. I’ve watched it. She’s finally fed up with it. That’s all. That’s all this is. She got tired of you treating her like crap all the time. I never thought it was possible but Jane Havelock is steamed and she’s not going to kiss your ass anymore. That’s all this is.”
“You make me sound like a complete asshole. I’m not so bad.”
“Like hell you’re not. If I tried half that crap on Valerie it’d be me sleeping on the couch. It’s just like we said before. Things aren’t getting any better for you until you treat her right.”
~~~
He stared at her like he was never going to speak. It looked to Jane as if he couldn’t come to grips with the fact that she was standing on that porch. She was equally shocked that he had been the one to open that door, and her face probably held the same expression his did. “Rob? Are you okay?” she asked, if only to break the silence.
“How’d you find me?” he finally asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I—I guess I was worried when you didn’t come back to finish the painting. I mean, it’s only been a couple days. It’s just that—it’s just that my husband was complaining about it. I don’t know what he’ll do. I just don’t want any trouble for you.”
“Ain’t any trouble. I’ll be there tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.”
“What about what happened on the highway that night?” she asked. “Did you get in any trouble with that?”
“On the highway? I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” His eyes rolled back as he stumbled against the door frame. As quickly as he’d lost his footing he regained it. After a faint shudder he looked back at Jane as though nothing had happened.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jane asked again. “Who lives here?”
“Nobody here but me right now.”
“But whose house is this? Who’s Richard Creedmoor?” He just stared. “Can I come in? I’m worried about you.”
“I’m in the middle of somethin’,” he told her.
“That’s what I was afraid of. Please, just for a minute.”
~~~
“It just seems like everything’s falling apart at the same time. I get so damn frustrated. My job, my career, I guess, is in the shitter. I lost out on that job and I’m in the doghouse there. I come home and Jane’s shitting on me and Allie treats me like a stranger. Everything pretty much sucks right now,” Steve said.
“Maybe you should keep those separate,” Eddie suggested. “Work and home. One has nothing to do with the other, right?”
“Except I probably come home from work in a bad mood and act like that asshole you think I am,” Steve said.
“Well, that’s half the battle. If you know you’re doing it, don’t do it.”
“Oh, okay,” Steve agreed sarcastically. “Gee, why didn’t I think of that? Hey, you want to go hit some golf balls?”
~~~
“So who’s this Richard Creedmoor?” she repeated after she was inside and he’d pushed the door closed.
“How do you know that name?” he demanded. “You been checkin’ up on me?”
“No, no,” she protested. “I was just worried. I guess I was snooping. I know he owns this house.”
No response. No reaction. Nothing except more staring.
“Rob, where is Mr. Creedmoor? Are you in some kind of trouble?” she asked, noting not for the first time how often that word came to mind when she thought about Rob Manteo.
He mumbled something she couldn’t understand as he turned and walked through the foyer into an adjoining room. Jane considered walking out the front door and jumping into her car. There was, yes, trouble here. She could feel it. It would be best to go away, but she wasn’t ready to do that yet. Instead she followed him into what turned out to be the kitchen, but he was already gone when she got there.
Something was off in this house. If she hadn’t been completely sure, what she saw in the kitchen drove the point home. There were dishes in the sink and a few on a small Formica table, all partially covered with food. Even dishes that appeared to be clean weren’t put away. The counters were covered with empty mailing cartons and paperwork. It didn’t have the look of a room that had been wrecked by an earthquake or even a man having a tantrum. This was far more disturbing. This was the kitchen of somebody who just didn’t care. And where was Creedmoor?
She moved into the next room but Manteo wasn’t there either. The expansive oak table was strewn with everything one would need to self-administer steroids. There were vials of liquids of various colors with foil seals on top. A shoebox overflowing with tubes of cream occupied a chair. There were syringes and a rubber strap. Bloody tissues littered the floor. There were half-open boxes of pills and capsules.
Thankfully the syringes she could see were still in sterile packing. Maybe he at least knew enough not to mess with dirty needles. It bothered her that some of these pills had made their way to the floor. Based on the research she’d done since Manteo had confessed to being a steroid abuser she knew that these were not cheap materials, and he surely wasn’t getting them through any prescription plan. Was he so out of control that money was of no concern? And speaking of that, where was he getting the money to pay for this habit? Certainly not from the meager fees he charged for his work. He’s really trying to kill himself, she thought, if this is any indication of what he’s taking.
None of these questions were as scary as the one which kept popping back into her mind as she waited for Manteo to reappear. Where was Mr. Creedmoor? Why wasn’t there anybody else in the house but Manteo? Surrounded by illegal drugs and paraphernalia, she stood frozen in the dining room. Regardless of who was living there, she was trespassing. Even if she wasn’t afraid to go deeper into the house, she had no right to. It wasn’t just that. She feared what she might come across if she continued moving forward. Instead she pulled out a chair, careful not to upset the array of chemicals on the table, and waited.
The moaning started just as Jane was thinking strongly about retracing her path through the house and leaving. It was the sound of a man in anguish and it had to be Manteo. Again she thought about leaving but decided against it. She wasn’t afraid of him, and it sounded like he needed help.
She tiptoed through a doorway into the living room. The furnishings there were beautiful, or at least had been at one time, but the beige walls were covered with what she could only describe as graffiti. Whoever was responsible was so unskilled that it was difficult to know what had been drawn. Some sections appeared to be crude maps, complete with topographical features. Others were filled with distorted faces that resembled, probably unintentionally, the work of Picasso or Dali.
Another round of moans interrupted her study of the subway car décor in the living room. The sound was coming from upstairs. She walked through the room and was back in the foyer near the front door. As she walked up the stairs toward the moaning a chilling thought crossed her mind. What if it wasn’t Manteo? What if it was the owner of the house? It was enough to make her stop on the landing, halfway to the second floor.
Maybe it was her training as a nurse that kicked in as she decided that it didn’t matter who it was. Somebody needed help. It was probably Manteo but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t walk away. After drawing a deep breath to calm her nerves she continued up the steps until she reached the second floor, where she waited for a fresh set of moans to guide her.
~~~
“Why don’t you come right out and tell Jane that you’re not having an affair?” Eddie asked as Steve helped him load his painting equipment into the trunk of his car. “Nip it in the bud, why don’t you?”
“Because she never said I was having one in the first place. If I say I’m not she’ll start thinking I am. Once you deny something people start thinking you might actually have done it.”
“She already thinks that. Weren’t you listening?”
�
��That’s the least of my problems. What about her and the caveman?” Steve asked. “Maybe she should be the one coming to me and telling me she’s not having an affair.”
“Don’t put me on,” Eddie said. “Look, it was just a suggestion.”
“So what about going out and hitting some balls, or maybe even playing nine holes? Looks like I’ll have some free time today. Who knows when Jane and Allie will be back.”
Eddie smiled and shook his head. “You’re one of a kind, man. One of a kind.”
Chapter 12
Jane walked up the hallway on plush green carpet toward the sound, stopping at a closed door. The horrible smell that she’d noticed as she came up the stairs filled the air as she moved. It was a stench made familiar from her time at the hospital but it could have been any number of things. She blocked it out, planning to revisit it later. After determining for sure that the sound was coming from the other side of that door, she knocked. “Hello? Do you need help?” There was shuffling but then it was quiet. She twisted the doorknob gently and found that it was unlocked. With no idea what she was going to find in the room, she turned the knob all the way and pushed the door open.
The Creedmoors must have had a little girl. The room was decorated in various shades of pink and orange, and unlike the rest of the house it was in pristine and immaculate condition. The furniture was white and wooden, including a miniature four-poster bed with a net draped gracefully over the top. There was no single theme. It wasn’t princesses, fairies or rainbows. It was simply a tastefully done room, lived in by somebody much younger and more feminine than whoever it was that was agonizing on the other side of the bed.
As Jane had expected it turned out to be Manteo himself. He had jammed his still-shirtless body into a corner behind a delicate nightstand where he was hunched over with his arms tucked into his gut. If he was even aware that Jane had entered the room, he didn’t show it. When he unleashed another eerie moan Jane wanted to run. She decided she was either going to snap him out of his trance quickly or else bolt from the house, and she wasn’t going to give him much time. “Rob?” she said as she stepped closer. “Rob? It’s me. Jane. I mean, Mrs. Havelock.”
He looked up at her, eyes blinking erratically. “You can’t come in here,” he finally said. “You ain’t supposed to be here.”
“I was worried about you. Are you hurt?”
“My head. Something’s in my head,” he moaned.
“What? What’s in your head?”
“A tumor,” he growled. “It grows every day. It’s from all the shit I take.”
“Are you getting treatment? Who told you it’s a tumor?”
“I just know. It’s from the shit.”
“Rob, steroids do horrible things but they don’t give you brain tumors. I’m more worried about your liver and your kidneys. You’re sick but not in your head.”
He groaned again, and clawed at his bald head. When the apparent spasm of pain passed he looked up her. Tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Rob, you need to get to a hospital right away. You’re very sick. I’m a nurse, remember? I know a lot about what these do to your body.”
“I kept my promise,” he answered, his parched lips forming a weak smile.
“Nobody would want you to do this to yourself,” she argued. “Nobody.” She sat down beside him but kept her distance from his sweaty body. “How can I make you understand that? You think your wife wanted you to kill yourself with steroids?”
“If only I’d done it sooner,” he said. “She never got to see it. But now I’ve got this tumor.”
“Look at you,” she told him. “If you had cancer you wouldn’t look like this. Have you ever seen somebody with brain cancer? With any kind of cancer?”
“It’s cancer,” he replied. “I’m sure of it.”
“You sound so different.” The bad Amos and Andy imitation was gone and he was speaking to her the way she’d seem him speak only to Allie. She’d always wondered why he put on the act but that was a question for another day.
“Why did I wait? I was just a scrawny, weak man. She never got to see this.”
“Are you taking all those things I saw on the table downstairs?” Jane asked. “There must be thirty different meds.”
“Not all of them at the same time.”
“What ones? Start from the beginning. Tell me what you took so I can help you.”
His face puckered with thought. “I started with 200 of Deca a week, 35 megs of D-bol. A long time ago.”
“What’s Deca?”
His lips slid at an attempted smile. “I can’t remember. I just remember shooting it.”
“By megs, do you mean milligrams?” she asked.
He nodded without answering.
“How about D-bol. That’s Dianabol, right?”
“Yup. And a lot of Meth. Methyltestosterone. That’s where I get my temper,” he said, the lips twitching again.
“You mean you stopped the Deca and the D-bol?”
After a struggle he was able to sit up. “You have to switch it up,” he said. “Your body gets used to something and doesn’t respond. So you mix it up. I even switched between pills and shots. Change is good. Sometimes I’d stack them.”
“What does that mean?”
“Lots of different ones at the same time.”
“Dear God, Rob. Have you been doing this for five years?” Jane asked.
“I can’t remember,” he admitted. “Sounds about right.”
“I just don’t understand this, Rob. I don’t even know how you’re still alive. What made you think this was what she wanted? How did you even know how to do it?”
“I taught myself. I asked around at the gym. Searched the web.”
“If you don’t stop you’ll be dead in a year. Maybe a lot sooner. But not from cancer. You’re still taking them?” He leaned away and pulled up the back of his shorts, exposing a butt cheek. A series of reddened, bloody lumps pocked with needlemarks rose like a mountain range. Pink fluid seeped from one of the needle pricks, which looked to be only minutes old.
“My God,” Jane said. “Is that what you meant when you said you were in the middle of something?”
He nodded.
“Why is your face bleeding?” she asked.
“I think I fell,” he said.
“Why don’t you stop now? You succeeded. Save yourself.”
“It’s too late. I know I’m dying.”
The stench had been wafting into the room ever since she’d come into the bedroom. It wasn’t possible to ignore it anymore. It could have been anything. A tray of spoiled food, a pile of musty, rotting clothes. Or something else.
“Rob? Where’s Mr. Creedmoor? Did something happen to the family that lives here?”
“Something did.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” he answered, his head sinking into his hands, which were now shaking. “A lot has happened.”
“Rob. Look at me. I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to keep you out of trouble. Will you please give me a straight answer? Where’s Mr. Creedmoor?”
“Mr. Creedmoor? Creedmoor’s gone,” he said.
“If you don’t want my help then I have to go,” she said as she scrambled to her feet. Without looking back she left the room. The smell seemed stronger as she approached the stairway but she thought she might be imagining it. She held tightly onto the banister while making her way down and then out the front door where her car waited. A few seconds later she was speeding up the driveway, between the pillars and onto the road.
~~~
“It was so weird,” Jane told Kristie as she wiped her eyes with her shirt. “I’m completely confused. There are so many things I saw today that I don’t understand.” She spent the next few minutes explaining everything that had happened. “I don’t exactly know who lives there, but Rob’s walking around like he owns the place.”
“Just stay out of it, Jane. Really.”
“
There were enough steroids in there, right on the table, to pump somebody up for years. And that wasn’t the only place I saw them.”
“Is he selling them, maybe?”
“I didn’t get that impression. Kristie, he’s insane. I told you what he told me about his wife and daughter, right?”
“Wasn’t it a car crash?”
“He keeps saying he takes the steroids for her. He says he promised her,” Jane explained.
“Promised her what?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Jane admitted. “I guess he told her he’d bulk up. Something like that. It’s just crazy. And I have no idea what’s going on in that house. What do I do? And the place smells so horrible.”
“Like there’s a few bodies lying around or something? Maybe you should call the police,” Kristie said.
“I know. I was thinking the same thing. Something bad is going on in that house. Something really bad. It looks like an insane person lives there. An insane person does live there. Today, at least.”
“You should call the police. Wouldn’t it make you feel better?”
“What would I say? Do you just call 911? I don’t know who—what would I even say? Maybe the only trespasser was me.”
“That doesn’t make sense. What about the owner of the house? Where was he?” Kristie asked. “Maybe you could say that.”
“At first I thought he was just working there. But today it looked like Rob’s been camped out in there for a while. The part that scares me the most is Creedmoor. Where is he, and what does Rob have to do with it?”
“You really need to call the police,” Kristie repeated.
“I wish I could talk to Steve about it.”
“But you two aren’t talking,” Kristie pointed out. “Maybe you should be.”
“The scariest part is that he spent so much time with Allie. You were right. I can’t believe I let her in the same room with him. He’s completely crazy. I just don’t want anything to do with him anymore. What if he comes back?”
“Let’s worry about the police first. Somebody could be in danger. Or worse,” Kristie said firmly.
