by West, CJ
It took Charles almost five minutes to crawl along behind the stone wall, but Charlie was still nowhere in sight when his father clumsily threw himself over the wall and stumbled feebly up to the house.
Oliver stiffened with anticipation from his fingers to the rigid muscles in his chest. His body yearned to pummel, strangle, and maim him in so many ways. He wished he had more time to linger over his work, but the plan was set.
Oliver got into position in the bedroom doorway and waited.
Charles slinked across the deck with nary a sound, but the sucking of the sliding door pulling away from its frame announced his entrance. Oliver heard two moist steps on tile then the footsteps stopped close enough for Oliver to hear his ragged breathing in the kitchen. He grinned. Charles was confronting the large red arrow he’d painted on the floor to direct him upstairs. Too bad the women had stopped banging on the walls and floor. He’d bound them up a few minutes too early he realized, but they’d be banging again when Charlie arrived.
Charles crossed the kitchen, but rather than follow the arrows down the hall, he slipped to his right toward the dining room just as Oliver hoped he would. Springing from the master bedroom, Oliver was behind him in two quick steps. Before Charles could plant his good leg and turn, Oliver had a hand on his shoulder and drove a fist deep into the opposite kidney. Charles dropped helplessly to his knees. The pain forced his spine ramrod straight long enough for Oliver to grab a handful of hair and slam a fist into his temple. The blow wiped all focus from his eyes. Oliver let him flop down on his back and watched him lie a second before dropping down on his chest, knees first. The air blew out of his lungs, spittle flying. Oliver punched wildly at his face. The impact on his knuckles affirmed his domination, increasing the furious energy behind each blow as Charles’ bloody head flopped about.
A glancing shot sent Oliver’s knuckles skipping off the floor; two fingers broken. He cradled them to his abdomen, cursing his carelessness as he retrieved the meat tenderizer from the counter. He turned to see Charles, dazed and blinded by the blood smeared in his eyes. Still he struggled to get up. Oliver took a long arcing step and drove the toe of his boot hard into his cheek. Charles flipped over face-down, writhing in pain. Oliver stepped on the nearest wrist, splayed his fingers and snapped down with the meat tenderizer, crushing the fingernail between the jagged teeth and the tile floor. Blood welled, Charles wailed in agony, and the women started kicking again. By the time Oliver finished all ten fingernails and knuckles, Charles was too hoarse to scream. The stomping had died down, too.
Oliver discarded the tenderizer, pinned his head sideways on the floor, and pounded his fist into his temple. Oliver slammed down again and again, compressing his skull between his fist and the floor. The oozing blood sprayed up as he struck. The impact felt like redemption.
Oliver stood up; his arms limp at his sides. He’d lost control. He’d imagined this day for so long, he’d gone wild and battered Charles to a featureless blob. Blood trickled into his eyes and he made no attempt to brush it away. Henri had looked better than this dead on the farmhouse floor. Oliver knelt and watched Charles weakly attempt to draw breath. He was barely alive.
Oliver hoped he was conscious enough to fear what was about to happen to him. If there was time, he would have revived him.
“Get up you piece of shit! We’re going upstairs.”
Charles muttered as if in a dream.
Oliver grabbed the duct tape from the counter. “Get up!”
Charles titled his head a few inches to the side and it fell back.
Oliver rolled him over and taped his hands behind his back. Charles wasn’t going anywhere, but the tape would complete the image for Charlie quite nicely. Hoisted to his feet, Charles wobbled blindly in search of support, his legs too weak to hold his weight. Oliver had gone a bit too far, but it was too late to let him regain his strength. Charlie would be inside in two or three minutes.
Oliver leaned him against the wall, retrieved a knife from the block on the counter and jabbed the point into his ribs. The pain was supposed to bring him back to focus and drive him up the stairs, but all Charles could do was stumble forward half a step and fall face-first onto the floor. His forehead smacked the tile, knocking whatever senses remained into a fog somewhere behind his eyes.
Oliver rolled him over, grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him up the stairs, cursing himself all the way. Breathless at the upper landing, Oliver hoisted him to his feet, his bloody-red eyes swollen shut, his body unresponsive to the yanking and prodding. Oliver finally faced Charles Marston man-to-man, the culmination of years of planning, but the lifeless shell in his hands was a tragic disappointment. Charles was as unworthy an adversary as he was a business partner.
Oliver reached for the neatly coiled noose he’d strung from the rafters. It had taken days to get it right; a work of art that only someone truly dedicated to the task would have taken the time to perfect.
He maneuvered Charles to the gap he’d sawed in the railing. The drop to the foyer was eleven feet. The rope overhead allowed three or four feet of slack, enough for him to get up some speed before it jerked him to a stop.
Charles seemed to feel the rope scratching over his face, but he was too dazed to resist. Oliver stood close and whispered. “You deserve far worse, but I’m running short on time.”
Chapter Fifty-two
“Westport Police, recorded line.”
“God help me. Hurry! He’s going to kill them!”
“Slow down, sir. Where are you?”
“Marston Vineyards—Hixbridge road. The whole place is on fire!”
“What’s the address, sir?”
“I don’t know the number. It’s a huge winery. Just look for the smoke.”
“Ok, sir. Hang on.” The dispatcher pressed a few buttons, spoke in the background, and came back on the phone. “Ok, relax. Help is on the way. Now tell me what’s happening.”
“He snapped! He totally snapped! He said he was going to kill him, but I never believed he’d actually do it.”
“Who, sir? Who are you talking about?”
“Charlie Marston. His father owns this place.”
“Did you see him hurt anyone?”
“No, but he told me… he told me he was going to burn the barn and hang his father. Flames are shooting out of the barn twenty feet high. It’s unbelievable. I just hope I’m not too late. I hope he hasn’t already found him.”
“Is anyone in the barn?”
“I don’t know. I’m just driving up.” Oliver accelerated to be sure the sounds of his engine would be audible on the recording over the crackling of his cell.
“Just stop where you are, the police are on their way.”
“No. I’ve got to go in there. He’ll listen to me.”
“What’s your name?”
“Oliver, Oliver Joyet.”
“Just relax, Oliver. We’ll have the police and fire there in three minutes.”
“I have to help them.”
“Hold on, Oliver. Just stay where you are. The best way to help...”
“You don’t understand. I told him.”
“Told him what?” The officer asked.
“I told him what his father did.”
Oliver left the question half-answered as he skidded to a stop in front of the Marstons’ house. He left the car running, the driver’s door open as he stomped up the stairs.
“Oh, my God!” Oliver opened the front door, the phone still in his hand and transmitting, but pointed to the ground as if he were in absolute shock at the sight before him. “Charlie, no! Don’t do it! Don’t push him, Charlie! He’s your father for God’s sake.”
Oliver ran up the stairs as fast as he could.
He stopped short of the landing and threw the phone down as if it had been knocked out in a struggle.
“No!”
He crushed the phone under his heel and stared down at the jumble of useless black-plastic parts.
Chapter
Fifty-three
Stunned, Charlie slipped through the trees and watched the bizarre scene unfold. A neatly-dressed young man ran out the front door, dashed across the lawn, and slipped into Oliver’s Mercedes. Charlie hadn’t noticed the car there next to the Volvo until the man climbed in.
Stranger still, the driver reversed the entire length of the driveway, paused a second at the road then drove back much faster. He parked in front of the house he’d left a minute earlier, left the car running and stormed inside leaving the door open behind him. The running car was an opportunity to escape; an opportunity Charlie didn’t consider with his mother held hostage inside that house.
Another game and another partner to deal with, he thought as he crossed the parking area and crouched behind the murmuring SLR.
Charlie spirited around the car and up onto the porch. When he reached the threshold, his eyes locked on the wretched figure dangling between the first and second floors. The bloody, battered face could have been any man, but the red, white, and blue sweater belonged to his father. His subconscious screamed that he was walking into Oliver’s trap. He needed to get out and come back with a weapon, but there wasn’t time. His feet stood fast in the foyer, his attention fixed upward. The great winepress had visited Charles in the form of a hangman’s noose. His limp body hung down straight and still, at rest if not at peace. He was consumed by the chain of events he’d touched off fifteen years earlier. Oliver had visited the ultimate revenge upon him. Standing there, facing his father’s body, Charlie wasn’t sure who to blame, the killer or the thief.
A few cautious steps toward the kitchen had his subconscious buzzing with warnings and his throbbing knee resisting each step. The legs, hanging at eye level, forced him to squeeze against the stairs to avoid bumping them. The improvised calf bandage had come loose during the struggle and the blood settling into his legs trickled out, soaking his pants and dripping to the floor in a thick, sticky pool beneath his feet.
The sheer size of the puddle smacked with certainty that his father was indeed dead. Tremors of guilt gripped him; for allowing Oliver into their midst; for wasting time in Oliver’s observation post while his father was battling for his life; for leaving the women unprotected.
A step further Charlie recognized a long serrated knife on the floor and picked it up. He hoped he’d have more success with it than his father had. Another step and he faced a big red arrow that had led Charles from the back door to the spot where he now hung. A savage beating had occurred somewhere in between, spreading a wide arc of red droplets that speckled the tiles, the wall, and the island.
Charlie spotted a roll of duct tape on the counter and sight of it sparked a vision of his mother bound in the guest room. Charlie picked up the tape and rushed for the stairs, terrified to think of Oliver acting out the script of a porn flick he’d seen with Elizabeth as his co-star. He moved quickly past his father’s legs in the hall, a gruesome reminder of the loss Oliver experienced as a child. Oliver blamed Charles for the death of his parents, he had seen what Charles had done, but no one would listen. What more fitting payback than to kill Charlie’s parents and let him suffer the same torment.
The house was silent. Charlie paused, expecting to hear violent grunting upstairs. The horrific image flooded him: Oliver brutalizing his mother. He was overcome by a horrid, dirty feeling. He rushed upstairs in a panic, shivering uncontrollably, ready to slice any man he saw.
Curious bits of black plastic debris slowed him just before the landing. A keypad, a smashed phone: not his mother’s or his father’s. He moved on, slower, calmer, wondering. The struggle was downstairs. Charlie recalled the man talking on the phone as he rushed from the car. Did he drop his phone in the struggle? Had his father been hung after the man ran inside?
Charlie eased onto the landing hoping he’d come in time to save his mother.
Four closed doors confronted him. Oliver lurked somewhere nearby and knowing him, the door Charlie chose would be hiding another surprise. He inched across the landing toward the room he’d recognized on the surveillance screen. He passed an improvised hangman’s platform, a wide section of railing Oliver had cut away. The gruesome results were close. The battered head brought a lump to his throat that he couldn’t swallow. Up close, the purple gashes and swelling roused a bubbling in his stomach like lava ready to erupt. He focused on the door. Stepping closer, he expected the floor to give way at any second or for Oliver to charge out and knock him plunging to the tiles below. Seconds passed. Silence.
Something thumped behind the door.
A muffled plea followed. His mother was alive!
Charlie dropped the duct tape and jerkily tapped the doorknob, expecting a shock. Nothing. He twisted the knob and burst into the room knife first, cutting his eyes all around. Elizabeth hunched at the foot of the bed, facing the footboard and looking exhausted, but unharmed. Her hands were duct-taped to the posts wide-apart, forcing her to bend down unnaturally close to the mattress. Deirdre was on her back tied spread eagle to the bed, one appendage to each post. Ropes around each ankle and wrist were duct-taped over to keep her from wriggling free. Seeing Charlie, their heads bobbed excitedly toward the door. Both women mumbled through a short strip of grayish-blue tape. Charlie understood nothing, except that Oliver was not in the room.
Charlie spun around and stopped, confused by what he saw. A synthetic-gripped revolver lay on the bureau, the satin-finished stainless steel glinting. Closer, he recognized the Smith and Wesson insignia, but this was no gun his father had owned. It wasn’t one of the guns Oliver and Sebastian had used to chase them back to the house, either. The range had been too far for a handgun, and their shots had been silenced. He picked it up, sensing this was what Oliver wanted him to do, but he couldn’t resist the power the gun represented. It might be filled with blanks like the shotgun, or worse, it could blow up in his hands if he tried to use it.
Before he could put down the knife and open the cylinder, the man he’d seen outside appeared two steps outside the door. He had Randy’s height and build, but a clean shave and a short hair cut. The reflective sunglasses were gone and the black leather had been traded for khaki pants and a freshly pressed golf shirt. The face was one Charlie had never seen. He was passable for an ivy leaguer if not for the blood smeared on the front of his white shirt.
“Chuckie Marston, son of the great deceiver.”
The voice! The change was astonishing.
Oliver showed his palms and rested his empty hands at his sides. “Sorry you didn’t get to play with daddy and me. We had fun without you, don’t you worry.”
Charlie adjusted his hand on the grip, found the hammer with his thumb, but didn’t pull it back. The women were safe for the moment, but he wished he’d cut their hands loose so they could be freeing themselves while he dealt with Oliver. The gun fit his hand well, a heavier version of the .22 he’d practiced with as a boy, but Oliver’s confidence and the idea that he’d left the gun for him to find, stole away the reassurance the awesome power in his hand should provide.
Oliver brazenly crossed the threshold.
Charlie instinctively leveled the gun on his chest.
“You’re not going to shoot me, Chuckie.” Oliver stood three feet away with an empty hand on each side of the door casing. From this range, Charlie couldn’t miss even with the gun in his left hand, but the scenario was troubling. The gun was left for him to find, another step in Oliver’s plan, but where was the trap?
He clicked the hammer back.
“After all I’ve done for you? Shit, your father and I waited as long as we could, but you were too busy yanking it out there in the woods.”
His finger found the grooved trigger, touched it ever so gently.
The bright red and white Budweiser cans flashed to mind. Not a mistake. Oliver had wanted him to find the surveillance tent, to see his mother bound to the bed, and then find his father’s battered corpse hanging in the foyer. The realization hit with crushing certainty, but it
made no sense. Oliver orchestrated every step of this day. He was pushing Charlie to shoot him, but why?
Oliver’s left hand disappeared outside the door frame.
Charlie swung the gun toward the window and turned his head as he fired, expecting the gun to explode in his hand or at least to find it loaded with blanks. Either way, he had to know what was going to happen. The blast stunned everyone and drowned out the sound of breaking glass as the slug ripped outside and buried itself somewhere among the vines. Charlie stared at the gun in his hand.
Live ammunition. Not a mistake, but why?
The answer crystallized an instant before Oliver could react.
Charlie turned to see him side-step through the doorway clutching the little leaguer’s bat. He cocked his arms for a huge swing and the elongated motion gave Charlie time to drop the gun and let it clunk to the floor between them. Oliver went slack-jawed mid-swing as his carefully engineered train jumped the tracks. He had never intended to finish this swing, but now he had no choice. The bat cleared the bureau and started gathering force.
Charlie hopped closer to take away Oliver’s leverage. Now the bat was too long, Charlie too close for a powerful strike, so Oliver snapped his wrists and angled the bat upward for a head shot.
Charlie was quicker. He thrust the knife into Oliver’s triceps and the shooting pain crippled his left arm, stealing the momentum of the bat. Off balance, with the bat now extended at arms length and only one arm for power, the mighty swing was reduced to a wave. Charlie dropped the knife, grabbed the bat handle with both hands and drove his shoulder into Oliver, knocking him into the bureau. Charlie ripped the bat away before Oliver could regain his balance and faced him again, bat in hand, standing directly over the handgun and the knife.
Oliver seethed as he eyed the gun between Charlie’s feet, a steady trickle of blood flowing through his fingers. His eyes bobbed up to meet Charlie’s for an instant then his arm straightened and he lurched for the discarded weapons, but he never reached them. Charlie lashed the bat like a whip and what the quick blow lacked in force it made up in location as the head of the bat struck Oliver’s elbow with a crack as if he’d batted a rock. The pain froze Oliver. He stood with two useless limbs hanging down, blind to everything but his own pain. Charlie palmed the end of the bat and rammed it into Oliver’s breastbone toppling him backward into the hall. He crashed to the floor on his back.
