Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

by Blake Crouch

  Setting the candle atop Orson’s pine dresser, I started opening drawers. The top three were empty, but when I tried the last, it was stuck. Yanking on it again, it still wouldn’t open, so I kicked it. The wood squeaked, and jerking back once more on the handles, I pulled the drawer entirely out of the dresser and onto the floor.

  Thank you, God.

  I inventoried five videotapes, a stack of manila folders, a box of microcassettes, and three Mead notebooks. Bringing the candle down onto the floor, I held it over the drawer and removed a videotape. I read the label on the tape, written in his straight, microscopic penmanship: "Jessica Horowitz: 5-29-92; Jim Yountz: 6-20-92; Trevor Kistling: 6-25-92; Mandy Sommers: 7-06-92" — all on one label, and there were five tapes here, not counting the three I’d destroyed in Woodside. I noticed that each tape, without exception, had been recorded during the months of May, June, July, and August: his hunting season.

  The microcassettes were labeled only by date, and I assumed they contained the same self-absorbed drivel I’d heard Orson dictating in his bed in Vermont. Lifting a green wire-bound notebook from the drawer, I lay on my stomach and thumbed through the pages by candlelight. This one was full of poetry, every page, front and back. I read a short untitled poem aloud to explore the rhythm of his verse, his direct, protean voice flowing through mine:

  You are always with me

  When I lie in bed in the dark

  When I walk a crowded street

  When I watch the night sky

  When I shit

  When I laugh

  When I possess them, as you possess me

  You are omnipotent, but you aren’t my god

  You raised me but did not make me

  You are gas but not the fire

  I am deeper

  I am incalculable

  I am

  The two other notebooks contained short stories, brainstorms, and the fragmented thoughts of someone aspiring to write. Orson wouldn’t make it as a writer. He could turn a nifty phrase, but there was a general ungainliness and ambiguity in his verse and prose, which would’ve doomed him to fail had he ever tried to publish. I wanted to tell him this, and that his poetry was prosaic. I wanted him to watch me burn the notebooks and the tapes.

  There were three manila folders. The first, titled "In the News," was filled with newspaper clippings regarding the discovery or lack thereof of Orson’s victims. The second folder, "Memory Lane," bulged with photographs, and I studied all of them. I saw myself in half a dozen pictures, but they didn’t unglue me like I’d feared, even the one of me staring down at Jeff seconds after his execution.

  A handful of photographs featured Luther doing grisly things to people. In one photo, he stared truculently into the camera with dead, soulless eyes, fingernail marks running down each cheek.

  In the third folder, "The Minutes," Orson had chronicled six summers of killing on unlined loose-leaf paper. Flipping to the end, I skimmed the synopsis of our time together, until I reached the final paragraph:

  Wyoming: June 2, 1996

  He hasn’t been as easy or productive as Luther, but I see in him potential that transcends my other pupil. So I’m letting him go. Another week here and he’d lose his mind, when what I want is for his rage to ferment so he becomes drunk on the hate. He is my brother. He is me in so many ways. I love him, and the least I can do is introduce him to himself. Though I anticipate bringing him out here again, let me make a prediction: I won’t have to. He’ll come for me, and there won’t be anything I can do to prevent it. Andy’s smart and remarkably cruel when he needs to be. If he does come for me, I’ll give him the gift, because he’ll be ready. It’s funny — the selflessness he inspires in me.

  35

  THE moon came up over the Winds, lighting the snowpack like a field of blue diamonds. I simmered a can of pork and beans on top of the kerosene heater, and as they filled the cabin with their sweet, smoky aroma, I surveyed the desert for Orson.

  We’d left the car at noon, and it was nearly 8:30. He couldn’t have stayed alive on the desert this long. The temperature hadn’t surpassed ten degrees all day, and tramping through the snow in deficient clothing would’ve resulted in his freezing to death by now. So he was either dead out there or he’d found refuge, the only viable shelters being the Lexus, the shed, or this cabin. I knew he wasn’t in the cabin. I’d checked the four closets, under the two beds, and I knew with certainty that I was the sole occupant. The shed glowed in the moonlight. I could see it through the window beside the front door. If I’d mustered the nerve, I might’ve walked outside and searched for tracks leading to the shed. But I didn’t have the temerity to go back out into the cold to look for him, especially since my legs were beginning to blister. Where are you? I thought. And what are you going to do?

  When I finished my supper, I sat on the floor beside the heater and pulled a shoe box down from the couch. I’d found it under the defunct kitchen sink, and it contained all sorts of goodies, including Indiana, Oregon, California, and Louisiana state driver’s licenses. In addition to Orson Thomas and David Parker, he was also Roger Garrison, Brad Harping, Patrick Mulligan, and Vincent Carmichael. He had passports for every name except Roger Garrison, and flipping through them, I saw that he’d traveled extensively in Europe and South America.

  The find that pleased me most, however, was the rubber-banded stack of hundred-dollar bills. I counted $52,800 — plenty to disappear.

  Closing the shoe box, I tossed it into the drawer of videotapes and folders that I’d carried into the living room. Having scoured the cabin, every incriminating piece of evidence was contained in that single drawer, and it gave me great comfort to have it in my possession now. I stood up and walked to the window beside the door. The bluffs soared above the desert a mile behind the shed, like colossal dunes of white sand. Orson, I thought. Just you now. The only thing left to destroy.

  If he came for me, it would be at night, but exhaustion wasted my mind and body. I’ll sleep until midnight, I thought. I’m worthless now anyway. For all I knew, he might never come. He could be lying out there right now, statuesque under the snow.

  I extinguished the heater and went into his bedroom. Wrapped in the fleece blanket, I curled up with the gun beside my pillow, and the handcuffs in my pocket. In the absence of wind and the humming generator, my breathing and my heartbeat produced the only perceptible sound.

  I dreamed a memory: Orson and I are ten years old. The church service has just concluded at Third Creek Baptist Church, a chapel in the countryside north of Winston-Salem where Grandmom attends. Because it’s the last Sunday of the month, the congregation surges through the front doors outside for a covered-dish picnic. Beside the small brick building, the epitome of homely Baptist churches, a half a dozen picnic tables exhibit a smorgasbord of country cooking. Three grills have been going since midmorning, and the smell of hot dogs and hamburgers and a whole smoked pig floods the August afternoon.

  When we finish eating, Orson and I sit under a walnut tree and watch a regiment of ants feast on a discarded watermelon rind. It’s clear and hot, and we sweat copiously under our matching baby blue suits with yellow bow ties.

  I see her walking toward us, stepping daintily between families, who are gorged and lounging on blankets in the grass. New to the congregation, her knee-length sleeveless dress is the same premature yellow as the sun-scorched poplar leaves. She stops and stands by the watermelon rind. I watch an ant crawl across her unpainted big toe.

  When she speaks, she makes the most peculiar sound, something akin to a knife blade sliding across a sharpening stone: "Schick. Aren’t you two just the most precious little things I ever saw!"

  Orson and I look up from the ground into her heavily powdered face. Her curly platinum hair is rigid, and she smells like a concoction of cheap perfumes.

  "Darlings!" she exclaims, grinning, and we see her false teeth, where broccoli florets still cling. Here it comes — that question everyone feels compelled to ask, though
Orson and I are mirror images of each other. "Are y’all twins?"

  God, we hate that. I open my mouth to explain how we’re just fraternal twins, but Orson stops me with a look. He peers up into her eyes and makes his bottom lip quiver.

  "We are now," he says.

  "What do you mean, young man?"

  "Our triplet brother Timmy — he got burned up in the fire three days ago."

  Through the powder, her face colors, and she covers her mouth with her hand. "Schick. Oh, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to…" She squats down, and I’m pinching the back sides of my calves, trying not to laugh. "Well, he’s with Jesus now," she says softly, "so —"

  "No, he wasn’t saved," Orson says. "He was gonna do it this Sunday. You think he’s in hell with Satan? I mean, if you aren’t saved, that’s where you go, right? That’s what Preacher Rob said."

  She stands back up. "You’d better talk with your parents about that. Schick." Her feigned giddiness vaporized, she looks off into the bordering wood. With all her makeup, she reminds me of a sad clown. "Schick. Well, I’m terribly sorry," she says, and we watch her walk back into the crowd. Then we run behind the walnut tree and laugh until tears glisten on our cheeks.

  I woke and found myself sitting up in Orson’s bed, pressing the Glock against my temple. Nothing surprised me anymore. Sliding out from under the fleece blanket, I walked into the living room, the gun at my side. Without the warmth of the kerosene heater, the cabin had cooled again, and I bent down to punch the electric starter, when something curdled my blood: I recalled the dream and the woman’s queer nervous tic: schick, schick, schick. Instead of lighting the heater as I’d intended, I unlocked the dead bolt and cracked the front door. Subzero night air deluged the cabin.

  I hadn’t ventured outside again since arriving at the cabin in the late afternoon, and my tracks ran south toward the car. A surge of adrenaline straightened each hair on my neck — another set of tracks, which I had not made, came directly from the shed, up the steps, to the front door, where I now stood. He’s in the cabin. Closing the door, I turned around and chambered a bullet, regretting I’d not left the votive candles burning in every room. I stepped forward into the red darkness, squinting at the corners in the kitchen and the living room, straining to detect the slightest pin drop of sound — a noisy breath or a clamorous heart that pounded like mine.

  Are you watching me now? I thought, creeping from the living room back through the hallway. The door to the spare bedroom was cracked, and I couldn’t remember leaving it that way. Approaching the door, I kicked it open and rushed inside, spinning around in the darkness, my finger on the trigger, waiting for him to spring at me. But the room was empty, just as I’d left it.

  I returned to the hallway. Your room. You were watching me sleep. Disregarding my fear, I stepped over the threshold. The only place in the room obstructed from view was the other side of his dresser. The Glock raised, ready to fire, I lunged across the room, beginning to squeeze the trigger as the blind spot between the dresser and the freezer came into view. He wasn’t there.

  The four closets were the only places I’d yet to comb, but I couldn’t imagine he’d squeezed himself into one. They were filled with supplies — one a pantry, another a storage space for gas, bottled water, and a substantial coil of rope. Besides, I’d have heard him banging around in the dark.

  I walked out of his bedroom. There were two closets on each side of the twelve-foot hallway connecting the bedrooms to the living room. You’re waiting for me to walk by again, so you can swing a door into my face. I bolted through the hall back into the living room.

  Standing by the cold heater, I’d begun to devise a plan to flush him out, when a bead of water slapped the crown of my bald head. Snowmelt. Wood creaked above me, and I looked up into the rafters. A shadow swung down from a beam, and something blunt and hard smote the back of my head.

  I came to on the floor, and the Glock was gone. I struggled to my feet. The red darkness twirled, pierced by bursts of light. Am I dreaming?

  The point of a knife slipped between my right arm and my torso and touched my solar plexus. I saw the ivory handle, and when I felt his breath against the back of my ear, piss flowed down the side of my leg and pooled under my bare feet. When I tried to pull away, the blade pressed against my throat.

  "This knife’ll cut through your windpipe like it was Jell-O."

  "Don’t kill me."

  "What’s that jangle?" Reaching down, he felt the pockets of my sweatpants. "Oh goodie." He removed the handcuffs, with the key still in the lock, and cuffed my left hand. "Give me the other one." I put my right hand behind my back, and he cuffed that one, too. "Now lead the way," he whispered, the blade still at my throat. "There’s a surprise for you in the shed."

  36

  THOUGH barefoot, I couldn’t feel the ice between my toes. I imagined that the sliver of moon lit our faces blue and baleful. The night was surreal, and I thought, I am not here. I am not walking with him to that shed. Orson kept close, grunting with each breath, as though it were a struggle for him to stay with me. Withdrawal or frostbite, or both. I reached the back door of the shed, stopped, and turned. He shuffled toward me, pointing the Glock waveringly at my head. In the moonlight, I saw his face — the tips of his ears blackened, his cheeks, lips, and forehead corpse-white from the cold.

  "You’ve been guzzling your buttermilk," he said, grinning. "Go on in. It’s unlocked."

  I pushed my shoulder into the door and it opened. Terror weakened me when I saw what he’d done. The interior of the shed was filled with candles — dozens of them placed on the floor and the shelves. Innumerable shadows jitterbugged along the concrete, up the walls, into the rafters. I saw the pole, the leather collar, the sheet of plastic spread out on the floor to catch my blood.

  "All for you," he whispered. "A candlelight death."

  "Orson, please…." The tip of the knife pricked my back, urging me through the doorway. As I walked across the concrete, I stared at the hole in the far corner of the wall, presuming he’d crawled in out of the snow sometime after dark. The missing panel of pine lay on the floor.

  "On the plastic," he said. When I hesitated, he took three steps in my direction and pointed the Glock at my left knee. Immediately, I moved to the plastic and knelt down. "On your stomach," he said, and I prostrated myself as instructed. I smelled the leather collar as he slipped it over my head and cinched it around my neck — the scent of misfortunate strangers’ sweat and blood and tears and spit. I felt a terrible, intimate kinship with those doomed souls who’d worn this putrid collar before me. We were blood now — Orson’s hideous children. Papa dragged the stool out from the corner and perched on it, just out of reach.

  Shoving the Glock into the waistband of Walter’s jeans, he took the sharpening stone from his pocket and began drawing the blade across it: schick, schick, schick. Watching him work in the dim, jaundiced light, candles surrounding the plastic, I grew sensitive to the cuffs that dug into my wrists.

  They were mine. I’d owned them since a Halloween party in 1987, when a friend presented them as a gag gift to me and this woman I was seeing, Sophie. It embarrassed us at first, but I cuffed her to my bedpost that night. I’d tied up other women with these cuffs and allowed them to shackle me. I’d bound Orson. Now he bound me. Fucking durable metal.

  I sat up, facing him. Desperately and discreetly, I tried to pull the cuffs apart, and when my hands turned numb, I strained even harder. A man-burner named Sizzle in The Scorcher breaks the chain between a pair of cuffs while sitting in the back of a police car, and goes on to slay the arresting officer. Still pulling my hands apart, I recalled that deft little sentence: "The chain popped, O’Malley’s neck popped, and Sizzle climbed behind the wheel and shoved the officer into the wet street." It’s that easy. So break.

  "You’re wasting precious energy," Orson said offhandedly as he studied a ding in the blade. "I couldn’t break them when you held the flame under my eyeball." He resumed stroking
the blade, and his eyes fixed now on me. "A guy does favor after favor for you, and this is how you repay him. This betrayal."

  My mouth ran dry; I had no spit.

  "I don’t know what your definition of favor en —"

  "It was all for you," he said. "Washington. Mom. We could’ve been amazing, brother. I could’ve freed you. Like Luther. I held the mirror up for him, too, you see. Showed him the demon. He didn’t spit in my face." Orson began pinching his cheeks and scraping the skin off his face with the knife, as if amused with the lack of feeling in his brittle epidermis. He bled in several places. "You came in my house," he continued. "While I slept in my bed. Tortured me." He stared into my eyes. "You scare me, Andy. And that should not happen."

  "I swear —"

  "I know — you’ll never come after me again. Andy, when a person knows their death is imminent, they’ll say anything. I was carving this guy up once, and he told me his grandfather had molested him. Just blurted it out between screams, like it might change something." He laughed sadly. "You gonna talk to me while I open you? Nah, I’ll bet you’re just a screamer."

  Orson stepped down off the stool. The largest candle in the shed was a red cinnamon-scented cylinder of wax with the girth of a soup can. It sat on the shelf beside the back door, and he laid the knife blade over its flame and pulled the Glock from his waistband.

  "Pick a knee," he said.

  "Why?"

  "Disablement. Torture. Death. In that order. It begins now. Pick a knee."

  An extraordinary calm enveloped me. You will not hurt me. I came to my feet and found his eyes, invoking that irrevocable love that was our entitlement.

  "Orson. Let’s talk —"

  The hollow-point bored into the meat of my left shoulder. On my knees, I watched blood drizzle across the plastic. I smelled gunpowder. I smelled blood. I blacked out.