Jack-in-the-Box

by William W. Johnstone

  A month ago everything was sailing along on smooth seas. Now I’ve lost my best friend, his daughter turns out to be a little monster—literally—and I’m up to my neck in Nazis.

  And outside of my own little group, not one goddamned soul would believe me if I went to them with the story.

  Not one.

  Hell, my best friends would have me committed.

  He glanced in his rearview and cursed. He pulled on a pair of unlined leather gloves and turned off the Merritt Parkway, heading north. Sam knew there were stretches along this section of the road that were lonely and uninhabited. He remembered an old dead-end road where he had stopped one night to piss. It had been most embarrassing. The cops had come along and caught him in their headlights with his dick in his hand. They had reminded him, in typical solemn cop fashion, that as a well-known attorney he should know better.

  Suddenly, catching the rear car by surprise, Sam floorboarded the pedal and roared out of sight, the rear end fishtailing for a few seconds before he could bring it under control and straighten it out on the wet pavement.

  It had begun to sprinkle rain, more like a light mist. The temperature had warmed considerably, leaving pockets of ground fog where earlier snow had brightened the land.

  Sam slid around a wet, slippery curve, fighting the wheel, knowing he was overcorrecting, and almost lost the car. Nobody had to tell Sam he was a lousy driver.

  He pulled into an overgrown old road, the blacktop crumbling and filled with dead weeds. Trees and brush lay all around him. He jumped out, the Colt in his hand. He squatted down beside Debeau’s car and waited, the Colt Commander cocked and locked.

  “Forgive me, poppa,” he murmured. “I know you wanted me to be a peaceful man, like you. But it just ain’t in me. You and mother just relax down in Miami, and let me kill some Nazis.”

  He shook away his father’s face and directed all his thoughts toward the job at hand. Sam had never admitted this to anyone other than Phillip, but he had liked combat. He had enjoyed testing his skills against the enemy. If his future had not been laid out in front of him like some interstate highway, and he hadn’t known for certain that his father would have gone into Mt. Sinai with a heart attack and his mother taken to her bed forever, Sam would have stayed in the Rangers.

  He thumbed off the lock and waited.

  He could practically hear his mother saying, “Now, Samuel . . .”

  “Ma, forgive me, but shut up,” he muttered.

  He heard a car stop and the clunking of doors being slammed.

  Sam could almost hear his favorite great-uncle saying, “Give them a kick in the nuts for me, Sam.”

  “Yeah,” Sam muttered.

  Laughter drifted through the drizzle, reaching Sam’s ears.

  The laughter enraged him. Real sure of themselves, he thought. Must have all been reading Der Führer’s bullshit that all Jews are cowards. Won’t fight. Come a little bit closer, and I’ll stuff that screwball paperhanger’s words up your asses—after I blow your heads off.

  “Where’s the bastard go?” a man said.

  “I told you. He turned off the road right there! See his tire tracks? Goddamn, they’re right in front of you.”

  “And he’s liable to be waiting right around the bend with a gun in his hand, too,” a voice said quietly.

  “Naw. Shit, Dave!”

  “All right,” Dave said. “Let’s fan out and take him slow and easy.”

  “Piss on you! I ain’t gettin’ all wet and nasty in there. Hell, Dave. What’s the matter with you? You scared of him?”

  “The bastard was a Ranger in Nam. They don’t give them Ranger tabs to anybody who walks in the room. Yeah, he’ll be tough.”

  “Bullshit!” another voice spat the words. “There ain’t none of them guys tough. Bunch of lousy little Christ-killers!”

  “Then you take the lead, Benny,” Dave said.

  “Be glad to. We’ll take him back to the colonel and torture him. Listen to him squall.”

  “Come on,” Dave said. “Lets move on out.”

  “Ain’t it about time for us to . . . you know. You never did tell us, Dave—do you all really offer them up to . . . him?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough. Get off the road! A car’s coming!”

  The car roared past. Once more the day became sullen in its silence.

  The sky darkened further, as if the gods were angry. The rain picked up.

  “Move out!” Dave called. “Take the bastard alive.”

  Sam chanced a quick look around the rear of the car. The men were just approaching the turnoff. They were all armed with pistols.

  Sam ducked back down.

  A cold, hard rain began falling, hushing and deadening any sound.

  “There’s his car! The son of a bitch took off runnin.’ I bet you he’s so scared he’s shittin’ in his drawers.”

  Sam let the others laugh. For a very brief time. He abruptly stood up and emptied the Colt into the knot of men who had, fortunately for Sam, forgotten to fan out. The slugs knocked them spinning. The men screamed as the slugs tore into flesh, shattering bone. One slug hit a man in the throat, the hollow point expanding, almost tearing the man’s head off. His blood gushed upward in a crimson river. His legs jerked and kicked, then were still.

  Sam fought the bucking nine-mm, holding it in a two-handed grip, trying to keep the muzzle chest-high. His gloved hands were slick from the driving rain. Quickly he ejected the empty clip and popped in a full one. He ran to the fallen men. Their blood was running off the broken blacktop, urged on by the rain. Two of the Nazis were dead, he could see, and one was very close to death, with two holes in his chest, his spittle pink from a shot in the lung. The fourth man was hit in the side and arm. He glared hate at Sam.

  Sam kicked him in the mouth, forgetting he had on only loafers. “Hurt me about as bad as it did you,” he muttered. But the man was unconscious.

  Sam dragged the least hard-hit man to the car and opened the trunk, silently praying no car would drive by until he was finished. Centuries-old rage and hate filled him with unexpected strength. He dumped the man into the trunk cavity and slammed the lid shut. Then he ran back down the broken blacktop to the fallen men. He dragged them off the road and shoved them into the bushes. He backed Debeau’s car out and pulled the gunmen’s car as far up the weed-grown road as he could, then gunned it. The car nose-dived into the bushes, hidden from view. Maybe the police would think this a gangland hit. Sam hoped. He opened the glove box and removed all the papers, sticking them in his jacket pocket. Outside, he picked up his empty brass, ran back to his car, and roared away.

  His heart was hammering. He fought for breath. He could smell his nervous sweat drying on his body. OK, you mighty warrior, he thought. Now what? You really stepped in it this time, Sam.

  He pulled into the first service station he came to, which was closed—fortunately, for the Nazi in the trunk was hammering and yelling—and called Father Debeau.

  “Turn off the recorder,” Sam said.

  “Done,” Debeau replied.

  He told him what he had done.

  The priest remained steady as a rock, not flying off into a tantrum or an admonition or starting to pray. This was one hard-nosed priest.

  “Change locations and call me back in ten minutes,” Debeau said. “I’ll call Paul and arrange a meeting place. Paul can take my car and you can take his. Don’t get any further involved in this Nazi thing, Sam. Not if you can help it. If the man knows where Otto is hiding, Paul will get it out of him.”

  Sam didn’t ask how the P.I. might accomplish that. As an officer of the court, he didn’t want to know. “Right. Ten minutes.”

  Ten minutes later, he called back.

  “Where are you, Sam?”

  “Highway 106. Just south of the Norwalk Reservoir.”

  “Paul will meet you at the Westport exit on the Parkway. Drive slowly, give him time to get there. Sam, be careful in the Baxter house. Be very caref
ul. The house is evil.”

  “I know that, Joe. I just don’t know how it could be evil. Joe? What kind of a priest are you, anyway? I mean . . .”

  “I know what you mean,” Debeau said. “While I fully believe that love will conquer all, I believe that at times one must carry a big club to get the message across. Some people are hardheaded.”

  Sam chuckled. “Yeah, we had a policy something like that in Nam.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. It read: Give us your hearts and minds, or we’ll burn your damn hut down.”

  The priest laughed, not taking offense at Sam’s remark. “Take care, Samuel,” he said. He broke the connection.

  “I had you pegged wrong, buddy,” Paul Weaver said. “All wrong. You’ll do to ride the river with.”

  “I have this thing about Nazis,” Sam said. “I just don’t like them.”

  An odd look sprang into the P.I.’s eyes. “My grandmother was Jewish, Sam. She died in Dachau. I don’t have much use for them myself.”

  The men exchanged cars after Paul opened the trunk and looked at the wounded Nazi. The Nazi’s eyes glowed hatred at the two men standing outside in the light rain. He spat at Paul.

  Paul laughed at the man. “You sure as hell don’t look very superior to me,” he said.

  The Nazi began cursing them both. Filth rolled from his mouth in loud waves of racist hate.

  “You may have a difficult time getting any information out of him,” Sam said.

  Paul’s smile was not pleasant. “I’ll get it out of him.” He slammed the trunk lid shut. A howl of pain came muffled from the trunk cavity. “Caught his fingers,” Paul said matter-of-factly. “Gee, I sure am sorry about that.”

  Sam drove through the steady rain back toward the Baxter house, some miles away. He wished he had brought a change of clothing. He was soaked and his feet were cold. Then he remembered he had left a change of clothes at Phillip’s—he corrected that. At the Baxter house. Used to spend a lot of time out there, he recalled with a sharp pang of emotional hurt. Funny-sad, he thought, you never know how deeply you feel about a person until you lose them.

  Sam sighed, knowing he was driving toward the unknown.

  But his memories would not fade—rather, they became more illuminated.

  He remembered how, as silly freshmen in college, the four of them had been inseparable. One night they all,—Phillip, Sam, Ed, and Bob—had, after quaffing about a dozen quarts of beer, solemnly sworn to be brothers forever. Whatever one did, the others would do. And they had. Army basic training, jump school, Ranger school, LRRP training, Vietnam. Then a solid partnership.

  Sam realized with a mental jolt that he and Phillip had been fools. There had been no valid reason for them to have excluded Ed and Bob. Two more brains might have been able to combat Nora more effectively.

  He would talk it over with . . .

  Sam sighed. No, he wouldn’t. ’cause Phillip was dead. Forever. Accept it, Sam. Face it. All right then, he would talk it over with Debeau and Sheela and Paul, see what they thought about bringing in Ed and Bob.

  He could depend on those two at least to listen before calling the nut ward and making reservations for him.

  He drove automatically, deep in thought. He wriggled his toes in his wet socks and grimaced. Then he saw he had turned up the street before he realized it. From the driveway, the house loomed up like an evil monument before him.

  He pulled into the drive and sat for a moment, staring at the house. Despite himself, Sam felt the goddamned house was actually staring back at him. The upstairs windows seemed alive, unblinking and watching him.

  He started to put his Colt behind his belt, then dropped it back into the attaché case and closed the lid. Hell! he thought. What am I going to do? Shoot a house?

  Where would I shoot it? In the furnace?

  Then he thought of the men he had just killed. He was cold, emotionless, unfeeling. No, that was not true. He did feel that justice had been served.

  “Hell with them,” he muttered.

  He got out of the car and waved at a neighbor he knew slightly. The man was picking up a broken tree limb from his yard.

  “Any word about Nora?” Sam called, walking toward the vacant lot separating the properties.

  “Nothing since last night, when Jeanne called from the hospital. Nora will be there for a couple of days. Damn shame. That family’s really having a rough time of it.”

  “Yes,” Sam agreed, the word sour in his mouth. “I’ll be gathering up and going over Phillip’s cases most of the day,” he told the neighbor. He couldn’t remember the man’s name. “Might as well work here where it’s quiet.”

  “You need anything, you come on over,” the man said.

  “Thanks.”

  Using the key he’d had for years, Sam opened the front door and stepped inside. The silence greeted him. Heavy and tomblike. Oppressive, was the word that came to his mind.

  And evil.

  The evil was almost tangible. Sam’s flesh felt as though something slimy were crawling on it.

  He shuddered and fought the feeling away.

  He looked at the bottom of the staircase. The police chalk marks that had crudely traced where Phillip’s body had been could still be faintly seen. Sam sighed, lifting his eyes from that awful spot. He looked around the house.

  All the good memories came rushing back, flooding him. The parties here. The laughter. The closeness and camaraderie that had spanned more than two decades. Gone. Never to return. And all the while the little devil-child had watched and waited.

  Then Sam heard the music.

  He clenched his hands into fists and stared at the stairs leading to the second floor. The deadly tone of the music chilled him.

  He put his briefcase on the floor and listened. The music stopped. Laughter took its place. Taunting laughter, evil laughter. Voices suddenly filled the house. Crying voices, pain-filled voices.

  Sam had heard them before. In this very house, during his . . . whatever it had been, that awful night when he and Phillip had discovered the terrible truth about Nora.

  “Stop it!” Sam shouted.

  The voices faded into nothing. The big house was silent.

  Sam walked toward the stairs, his wet shoes squeaking. At the base he stopped for a moment. He despised his fear of climbing those stairs. He knew he had to go up those steps.

  “Come on up, Sammy boy,” a heavy voice called to him. “Ich warte auf Sie hier.”

  “Yeah, you do that, you bastard,” Sam said. He put one foot on the step.

  The storm outside broke open, intensifying. The heavy rain drummed on the roof.

  “Come on, pork-face,” the voice called.

  Sam slowly began the climb upward.

  23

  The haunting music cut the silence into ragged, morbid slices as Sam climbed the stairs. He lifted his eyes to the landing above him. He stopped as vision registered the human horror awaiting him in tattered silence.

  Sam closed his eyes, wishing and willing the sight to go away. He opened his eyes. The scene was the same.

  Men and women and children stood there, all of them dressed in filthy uniforms, all of them with the Star of David sewn on their jackets. They were so thin, so emaciated-looking, so drained and pale, Sam could not believe they would have the strength to stand. But there they were, standing on the landing, hands outstretched toward him. Their faces were gaunt, their eyes sunk deep into their sockets. Sam could smell the odor of death on them, starvation, as they died from within.

  Sam stood for a moment, his shoulders slumped. Then he straightened, facing the living proof of man’s inhumanity to man. “You’re dead,” he said. “And you’re not really real. Not here, not at this time. I’m sorry; I feel your pain. I lost family too. But you’re dead. Now leave me. I know, somehow, you don’t have to stay. Please. Go.”

  The pitiful band of men and women and children faded from view, leaving the landing empty. But t
he odor of them remained. How could that be? Sam wondered.

  He didn’t know.

  He wondered if it had all been real?

  Real once. But now it was only meant to torment him. No, he corrected himself. It was still real in gulags.

  Sam walked on, into the unknown.

  He stopped for a moment on the empty landing. Then he turned up the hall, toward the guest room where he had always stayed. The music became louder. He did his best to ignore it. Stepping into the room, he closed the door and quickly changed clothes. Clean, dry underwear, jeans, heavy shirt, dry socks, and tennis shoes. Dressed, his feet finally warm, he walked to the window and looked out. He caught his breath while his head seemed to swim for an unsteady moment than seemed more like an eternity.

  He was looking out at a bleak winter landscape. More than that, he was looking at a concentration camp. Dark, sooty smoke pumped into the cold air from the chimneys. He smelled the stench; he knew what it was.

  He stared in horror for a moment, then jerked the curtains closed. He stood trembling. “It’s a trick, Sam,” he said aloud. “A damned trick, and you’d better wake up to that fact real quick.” He opened the curtains. Everything had returned to normal—whatever normal meant in this crazy place, he mentally corrected.

  He turned around to look at the closed door. The music changed. A harsh, guttural voice sang, “The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle on your snout.”

  Hysterical laughter echoed throughout the house.

  Sam stood very still, listening, leaving the next move up to . . . whatever in the hell was in the house.

  Pitiful cries reached Sam’s ears. He remembered the sound from the living nightmare he had experienced with Phillip.

  He did his best to ignore the nerve-wrenching cries.

  The house fell silent.

  “Can’t find me, can’t find me!” the voice chanted.

  “What do you want?” Sam shouted, more than anything else just to relieve the tension building within him.

  “Come on, pork-bait. Let’s play hide-and-seek. Can’t find me, can’t find me!”

  Sam opened the door and stepped out into the hall.