She grabbed onto his thigh with her other hand—the hand that was still good—to keep herself from falling over, but his leg was slick with sweat, and anyway, it was too late. Her head tipped forward, acting like a dropped anchor and causing her to lean against him with all her weight. She lingered there for a bit, then slid along his inner thigh and, within seconds, was in a heap at his feet.
It was then that the seizure began.
Cal looked down at her, almost asked if she was okay, but caught himself before he spoke. She had landed on her side, and he could see that the half of her face that had twisted horribly was now frozen that way. Her still-good arm was raised, held out in midair and shaking; it looked to him like the arm of a puppet. From her misshapen mouth was coming a dreadful sound, the worst Cal had ever heard, part old person moaning and baby crying and dog whimpering. Not a loud sound at all, compared to his own howling screams a moment ago, but still loud enough that those upstairs might be called by it to investigate.
If he was going to make a move, he needed to make it now.
He looked at the tools she had laid out, his eyes quickly landing on the large scissors.
They could cut the tape that was holding him.
He would have to tip himself over, though, and make himself fall to the cement floor to reach them. Even if he did that, there was no guarantee he would land close enough. He tried to scoot the chair closer by bucking his torso, but his tormentor was in his way.
It would be impossible, with her there, for him to make it to the scissors. He frantically looked for something else, something closer, a piece of glass or broken bit of cement, something, anything. He saw nothing at all—and then something caught his eye.
A flash of silver, clipped to the hip pocket of her jeans.
A folding knife.
His heart soared. Quickly he turned the chair so his left hand—his unbroken hand—was directly above her. To lean in a way that would cause him to fall onto his left side meant pulling up against his restraints with his right hand, but what choice did he have? Each jerking motion sent pain rattling through him. It was like a spike was being driven through his palm. Even so, he kept at it and finally got momentum enough to upend himself. He lingered for a second on the edge of balance, then fell over, landing on top of her, close to his target but not yet there.
He needed to wriggle his torso and buck with his legs to bring her hip pocket within reach of his bound hand.
Her seizure was ending; she was making almost no noise now. Still breathing, but not regularly, and not without having to struggle. Every exhalation now carried a wet, raspy sound. Faint, from deep in her lungs.
Her face was just a few inches from his; there was no avoiding that if he was going to position himself properly. They were eye to eye, but hers were, thankfully, closed. He found the edge of her pocket, dug his fingertips in, and pulled her closer still. Her breath now, when she breathed, touched his face, and his hers. Grabbing the knife at last, he pulled it free, carefully but quickly turned it in his hand. He expected that at any moment the door at the top of the stairs would fling open. Looking down at the knife, he saw that there was a hole in the exposed back edge of the blade that would allow for one-handed opening. Pressing the fleshy tip of his thumb into it, he pried open the blade till he heard it lock into place. He turned the handle again and began to work the blade between his sweat-soaked skin and the tape clinging to it.
It took some doing, but finally he was cutting through it.
Still, it took him a good minute to free his left hand. All that time, he was face-to-face with her. She was dying, there was no mistaking that. By the time he cut his right hand free, she had stopped breathing altogether, and by the time he cut the tape holding his ankles to the legs of the chair, her dark, flawless skin had begun to pale.
Tossing the knife aside, he stood, looking toward the stairs and listening. He heard nothing, not even the sound of people moving around above. Could they have left? Bending down, he grabbed Heather’s cell phone, but since he was naked, he had no pocket to put it in. His clothes had been cut to useless rags, so he quickly looked around for something he could cover himself with.
Nothing.
Out of desperation he looked at his tormentor. Maybe her clothes would fit him. Then he thought of Messing, rolled up in layers of clear plastic. As desperate as he was, as vulnerable as he felt, he didn’t have what it took to strip a dead body of its clothes.
He looked for his Schott jacket and Sidi boots—they had been removed, so maybe they were here somewhere—but he didn’t see them. Giving up his search, he cradled his right hand against his chest and placed the cell phone between his elbow and his ribs, holding it there, then bent down again and picked up the revolver with his left.
His palm was sweaty, making the grip slick, but he didn’t think too much about that. All he cared about was getting out of there, putting this place behind him.
He moved to the bottom of the stairs, lingered there for a moment, looking up at the door, then finally started to climb them. He moved as slowly and as quietly as he could; it took all he had not to just bolt. Near the top of the stairs he paused again, listening through the door, hearing still nothing. He needed to turn the doorknob, did so with his broken hand, wincing but forcing himself to keep silent. Just as the latch was released and the door began to move from its frame, Heather’s cell phone started to slip from under his arm. Catching it in time with his left hand, while still managing to hold on to the gun, he placed the phone between his teeth. What else could he do with it? Nudging the door open with his shoulder, he looked through the widening gap into a dark kitchen. The door swung silently for a foot, and then another, and then, suddenly, the upper hinge creaked.
He probably wouldn’t have seen the figure on the other side of the cluttered kitchen if not for the sound the door hinge had made. Seated, its back to the door, the figure instantly stood, knocking the chair over in the process, and, turning, reached under its jacket for—there was no mistaking this, even in the confusion—a weapon.
Panicked moves, though.
Cal calmly raised the revolver and, aiming at the dark figure, pulled the trigger once.
Instantly the figure folded, dropping as though a trapdoor had opened beneath it, landing with a solid thump on the floor.
The sound of the gunshot was like a slap to both ears. Cal heard now only a dull ringing, but he ignored that and stepped away from the basement door, from where he’d been standing when he fired his shot. He seemed to know to do this. Moving around an island counter located in the center of the room, he took cover in a corner and aimed the revolver down at the fallen man, watching for any sign of movement but seeing none.
He realized then that this kitchen was a professional kitchen, the kind he and his brother had worked in years ago, back when Heather had been their boss, back in the good ol’ days. This gave the room, then, a degree of familiarity, and that, in turn, gave Cal the confidence to try to make his way around it in the dark.
Just as he thought this, though, a second figure appeared, stepping into the kitchen through a wide entranceway to the left of the basement door. This figure reached out and flipped a nearby light switch, and the row of fluorescent lights overhead began to flicker.
Visible in this blinking light now was Janssen. Standing just twenty feet away, he quickly looked down at Tierno’s body, then at the naked kid standing in the nearby corner, gun in his hand and cell phone clenched between his teeth.
The flickering stopped, the overhead light glowing steadily now. Before Janssen could even speak—before he could do anything more than display a look of angry surprise—Cal calmly took aim and fired another shot.
The bullet entered Janssen’s chest, and he was dead before his body hit the ground.
Cal displaced again, stepping over Tierno and moving to another corner, this one on the opposite side of the room. He took cover beside a stainless steel refrigerator, didn’t have to wait there, though,
for long.
Carver entered through the back door. He took one step inside and then froze when he saw the two bodies.
Leaning around the refrigerator, Cal raised his left arm and aimed at his boss.
His hand, to his surprise, was remarkably steady.
They looked at each other for a long moment.
Finally, Carver said, “Jesus, Cal.” He waited for some kind of response, a word, a nod, something, anything, but it must have dawned on him that there would be no such reply, that there was no talking his way out of this, because suddenly he broke for the door, backing toward it, his eyes, wild with desperation, fixed on Cal.
Carver had started a step, but he did not complete it. The bullet Cal fired shattered his forehead, exited the back of his head, and what had begun as a step quickly turned into a stumble.
He fell dead just inside the doorway.
It was minutes later that Cal emerged from the back door of the Hotel St. James. He was dressed in his boss’s jeans and boots and Belstaff jacket, nothing on, though, beneath that. It had been difficult enough—between his having one good hand and the fear rushing through him—to remove even those articles of clothing.
Holding the revolver, in case there were others he didn’t know about, he saw five vehicles parked in the unlit driveway. Around the property on three sides were trees, some bare, others not, and beyond them, fields. There were no neighboring homes, so no one was close enough to have heard the gunshots, or to glimpse him scrambling now to leave. Or so he hoped.
The first two vehicles that caught his eye were Carver’s Corvette and a black Town Car, but the very fact that they were the first he noticed meant they would be too conspicuous. He thought the same about the two unmarked sedans—Messing’s and Tierno’s, he assumed. The fifth vehicle, a basic four-door Ford, was the only option left, so he hurried toward it.
The keys were in the ignition. Cal wasted no time getting behind the wheel and turning over the engine. At the end of the driveway he paused, uncertain which way to turn, left or right. He still had no idea where in the world he was—the road ahead of him was a secluded two-lane road, probably a stretch of Montauk Highway, but which part, near which village? He decided to turn left, and in a matter of seconds saw a familiar landmark.
A landscaping business, closed for the season.
So, he was in Bridgehampton—just past the village itself—heading west on Montauk Highway.
Maybe all of two miles from his home.
He decided he would drive through Water Mill, and from there follow the back roads till he connected with Scuttlehole. An instinct, this blind urge to return to a safe place, or what had been once, for so long, a safe place.
He quickly thought better of that plan and pulled into the landscaper’s empty lot, parking in the shadow of the building and killing the lights and the motor.
He knew that he had left traces of himself back in that place. He didn’t have to think too hard to come up with a list of them. Footprints on the basement and kitchen floors, fingerprints on the knife, sweat and skin and probably hair on that chair, certainly on the tape that had held him to it.
There was also the matter of his cut-up clothes and missing boots and jacket.
What choice did he have?
He exited the vehicle and doubled back to the hotel on foot, careful to stay off the road—and out of sight—as much as possible.
Inside the kitchen, he went straight for the industrial dishwasher, identical to the one he’d used back when he had worked for Heather. Using the cuff of the Belstaff jacket like a glove, he pulled off the lower panel and found exactly what he was looking for.
A near-full container of liquid dishwashing detergent.
Removing it, he headed down to the basement. On the cement floor was the dead woman, and, not far from her, in the sheets of thick plastic, Messing.
Stepping to the chair in the center of the room, Cal looked for the knife he had used to free himself, spotted it, and picked it up. Wiping it clean against the designer jeans, he folded the blade closed and slipped it into his hip pocket. Turning the container upside-down, he poured the blue liquid over the chair, then picked up the pieces of his clothing and, using a segment of his cut-up jeans, wiped the chair down. Finally, after recovering and pocketing all the pieces of duct tape, he began walking backward toward the stairs, spilling as he went dashes of the liquid onto the trail he’d no doubt left with his bare feet. Dragging the same segment of his jeans with the toe of Carver’s boot, he smudged his markings.
When he reached the stairs, he picked up the soiled piece of jeans, wiping the steps as he climbed them. Every movement, every step and every bend, triggered tremendous pain in his hand, but he couldn’t care about that right now.
He retraced his movements through the kitchen as best he could, wiping away his footprints just as he had downstairs. Placing the now empty container on the center island, he wiped down the handle with a piece of his T-shirt, then paused to make certain he had covered everything.
It was at this moment that he realized something.
The second man he killed was, he had assumed, Janssen—but no one had ever said his name, had they? Cal remembered now what Lebell had said when he warned him about that man. A monster. The fucking Antichrist. Best, then, to be sure this was him.
Stepping to the body, Cal crouched down, covering his hand with a piece of his T-shirt as he searched the man’s pockets. Finding a wallet, he opened it and removed a driver’s license.
Holding it to the light and examining it, he saw the man’s photo and, printed beside it, the name he was hoping to read.
He’d got them all, then.
Good.
Dropping the wallet, he stood and was about to leave when something in the next room—the room from which Janssen had come—caught his eye.
This was, apparently, a dining room, and on a long table was another body wrapped in plastic. Cal hesitated, then took a few steps toward it, getting as close as he dared, seeing through those sheets the face of the man whom Angelica had struck and killed with a ball peen hammer.
It was only now that Cal realized traces of this man’s bone and blood were likely all still at the garage.
As he was turning away to leave, though, one more thing caught his eye.
At the man’s feet, on the far end of the table. Several items.
A closer look revealed a helmet, motorcycle jacket, and boots.
His helmet, jacket, and boots.
Grabbing them, making a bundle of all his collected items, and tucking it under his one good arm, Cal fled that place, walking as quickly as he could back to the Ford.
He sat behind the wheel, his heart pounding, his hand throbbing, each out of sync with the other. A numbing pain, the kind that interrupted thought, caused confusion, but he willed himself to focus through all that. Studying his surroundings, looking in all directions, he was fairly confident that no one had seen him come and go. He’d left footsteps, a trail from that hotel to this lot, and in the lot itself, tire marks. That didn’t matter. He would discard Carver’s boots eventually, and ditch the Ford, too, as soon as he could.
So, then, one more thing to do.
A hulk of a building, made of rotting wood and set on a dark Bridgehampton back road, the only indication of possible use visible from the outside a small security keypad mounted near the office door.
Holding the helmet, into which he had stuffed his torn jeans and shirt, Cal entered the garage through the office, moving quickly into the first work bay. Switching the circuit breaker back on, he flipped on the lights, saw right away the cloud-shaped stain of blood on the wooden floor and the ball peen hammer not far from it. Leaving them for now, he laid the helmet down and removed the heavy revolver, holding it ready and checking every corner, every possible hiding place, as he made his way through the work bays and to the plank stairs.
Up in his apartment, he proceeded with the same caution, only daring to relax, and even then onl
y slightly, when he was positive he was alone. Putting the revolver back in the outer pocket of the Belstaff jacket, he paused in the doorway of Heather’s room and looked at her bed, did this for a long moment. Finally, though, he entered and removed the pillowcase from her pillow, filling it with her few belongings—the thrift shop clothes he had bought for her, her vial of jasmine rose oil from her bureau top, her decks of playing cards and tarot cards, her few toiletries.
He stepped into his bedroom. There, of course, was the bed he had, for a few hours anyway, shared with Angelica. After everything that had been done to him tonight, that he had done, all he wanted was to hang on to the memory of her beside him, the stillness he had sensed from her. He would have given anything to put himself back there. He looked at his bed till he simply couldn’t look at it anymore, then went to his bureau.
He removed a thermal shirt, put it on, then the jacket over that. Every move, because of his hand, needed to be made carefully. Carver’s jeans didn’t fit very well, were too long, so he changed into a pair of his own—his second and only other pair. Putting Carver’s boots back on, he took Heather’s old cell phone and Carver’s wallet from the jeans he had removed. He decided to check Carver’s wallet, found in it five hundred dollars. His five hundred? It had to be. The cash went into the right hip pocket of his jeans, the cell phone into the left.
There was something else in the wallet, too.
Cal’s driver’s license. He pocketed that as well.
Hurrying to his closet and lifting the loose plank, he reached under the floor for the metal cashier’s box. Opening it, he grabbed all of his cash and stuffed it into the jacket’s inner pocket, did the same with a roll of quarters he kept for emergencies. After that he picked up the vial of morphine, studied it for a moment before finally pocketing it, too. He’d be a fool to leave it, considering.
Instead of replacing the floorboard, he carried it with him as he stepped into the middle of his room. Placing one end on the floor and holding the other, he stepped down onto the center of the plank, snapping it into two pieces.
[2010] The Violet Hour Page 22
