Final Notice

by Jonathan Valin

  “Now what?” Kate whispered with excitement.

  And I realized, suddenly, that I was excited, too. After a week of groping about, after Twyla and Effie and Norris and that barn, I'd have to have been a lot less sanguine than I was not to have gotten excited.

  “Now we sit back,” I said. “And hope that Jake swallows the bait.”

  ******

  By ten o'clock most of our excitement had drained away. No one had stirred inside the Lord house. No one had even come to the window. We'd shifted around on the car seat a couple dozen times. Played a few games of twenty questions. (Mona Lisa, turnstile, Jake Lord.) Necked a little. And finally understood that Final Notice wasn't going to work.

  It should have worked. By all psychological rights, Jake Lord should have come surging out the door—to reproach and clean up after his prodigal brother. Only Jake didn't come out. Which meant one of two things—either he knew that his brother wasn't in Milford or, after two murders and a police investigation, he'd finally given up on Haskell and decided to face the world without the help of a scapegoat he could blame for all of his problems.

  Kate was being polite. But I could tell from her Cheshire grin that she was a little satisfied that her theory was being proved right—that Jake was just a nice young man with a sex murderer for a brother.

  “We can still search the house,” she said with a peak of pleasure in her voice.

  “He's going to come out,” I said. “Just give him time.”

  “Maybe he has an invisible car?”

  “Shut up, Kate,” I said.

  She sat back on the car seat and smiled.

  “You've just never been on a stake-out before,” I said haughtily. “Sometimes it takes days before you get a response.”

  “Years,” Kate Davis said.

  “Maybe if we gave him another dose of the cops?”

  “Told him the bloodhounds were being trucked out to Milford at twelve?”

  “I'm thinking of a thing, Kate,” I said. “And I don't think you'd want to know what it is.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes,” she said.

  And I said, “Shit.”

  ******

  Two more hours went by. In the rain and the cold. My good spirits were wearing thin. And Kate's were just about worn out.

  “It's not working, Harry,” she said. “And my ass is turning blue.”

  “I could warm it up for you.”

  She giggled and said, “Maybe later.”

  And at that moment, after almost six hours of waiting, I heard a car start up behind the Lord house.

  “He's probably going out for a doughnut,” Kate said. But her voice was stern and when I looked at her face, there was no playfulness left in it.

  “I'll be O.K.,” I said.

  I bent down and kissed her lips. She wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered, “Please be careful, darling. And don't do anything heroic.”

  “And you, too.”

  We kissed again—for a long moment—then I hopped out of the Pinto and dashed across Stettinius to Al Foster's Chevy. DeVries and Cal Levy were sitting in the back seat.

  “All right, boys,” Foster said. “Let's go.”

  ******

  For above ten minutes, none of us was sure exactly where Jacob Lord was leading us. He wandered up and down the suburban streets of Hyde Park as if he weren't quite sure himself about where he was going. When he turned on Erie, I thought we'd lost him.

  “He's going home,” I said to Foster. “Goddamn it! He's going home.”

  I held my breath as he coasted toward Stettinius. Al had to lay back a good half-mile because of the light traffic, so all I could see were the red pinpoints of his taillights and a trickle of smoke coming from the exhaust pipe.

  Jake got to Stettinius, stopped momentarily at a stop sign on the corner, then continued down Erie. We all let out a whoop, because he was headed east now, toward the interstate that led to Milford. He turned north on Ridge and picked up the expressway in Norwood. We swooped down the ramp after him, through the concrete interstices of the overpass, and out along 71 where it winds through the Montgomery hillsides. The roadway was dark and misty where it cut through the hills, the only light coming from the ranch houses set back on the wooded slopes and from the red taillights of the cars in front of us. No one in the car had said a thing for over five minutes, because it had become apparent that Jacob was going to take us where we wanted to go, that after six hours of deliberation he was finally going to lead us to the sleepy hamlet of Milford on the eastern edge of the county and to a showdown with his brother, Hack. The only thing that bothered me was why it had taken him six hours to make up his mind. I patted my coat pocket nervously. It was there, all right, the big Colt Commander with its nine-shot clip. I patted it again, sat back in the car seat and waited.

  By the time we got to the 275 interchange, we'd all begun to get a little nervous. You could smell the fear in the hot smokey air of the car. Over the cigarette smells and the musty, electric smell of the heater, the keen, wilting smell of fear.

  “I guess we'd better plan things out,” Foster said abruptly.

  “What's to plan?” George said. “We take him as soon as the kid goes inside the house.”

  I thought of Andrea Gibson and said, “What happens to Jake? What if his brother decides to make a fight of it?”

  “There are four of us,” DeVries said.

  “That's not what I meant. The way Jake feels about Haskell, he might do something foolish. And I don't want to see him get hurt.”

  “He's harboring a felon, for chrissake!” DeVries said.

  “He's protecting his brother, George. And that's not a shooting offense. I think we should wait until the kid comes back out the door before we make our move.”

  “What if Hack comes out with him?” Levy said.

  “Then one of us knocks Jake down and out of the way, and the other three tackle Hack.”

  “It's O.K. by me,” Cal Levy said.

  Foster didn't say anything and DeVries clucked his tongue.

  “That boy in there is a certified lunatic,” George said. “He could be armed to the teeth. And all you can think about is hearts and flowers. I'll tell you this, if Hack or his brother so much as flashes a piece of iron, I'm taking both their heads off with a shotgun. And I'll cry about it later.”

  We continued on I-71 to 275 east, and then Jake veered off at the Batavia exit. He turned north on 27 and before we knew it, we were in flat, fenced-in farm country—acres and acres of rain-swept fields and white slat farmhouses. Al had to lay back a good distance because we were the only traffic on the road. I was studying the tiny pinpricks of Jake's taillights when they disappeared.

  “What the hell happened!” DeVries said.

  Foster said, “He turned off.”

  Al flipped off his headlights and we coasted to a stop about a hundred yards south of where Jake had turned off in the Buick.

  “Can you see a house?” DeVries said.

  I stared through the side window. All I could make out through the curtain of tree branches was a glimmer of white board, like a tatter of cloth caught on a strand of fencing. There were no lights at all along the road or out in the muddy fields. And no sounds but the plinking of the rain on the car roof and the swishing of the willow branches in the wind.

  “All right,” Foster said. “Here's what we're going to do. Cal, you and George take the east side of the house. Harry and I will take the west. If the kid comes out without his brother—fine. Let him pass. If Hack comes out the door after him, we wait until they're in the clear and rush them. That is, unless either one of them is carrying a weapon in his hand. Who's the best shot here?”

  Cal Levy said, “I ain't bad with a rifle.”

  “Right,” Foster said. “There's a 30-06 in the trunk of the car along with a pump shotgun. Cal, you take the rifle and George will take the scatter gun. If Hack comes out of that house carrying a gun, Cal, I want you to drop him where he st
ands. If he hasn't got a weapon, we'll rush him. And, George, don't get trigger happy or you may end up shooting one of us.” Foster picked up the transceiver and called in to Station X. He gave them our location and requested a S.W.A.T. team and a negotiator, in case Haskell decided that he wasn't coming out on his own. “They won't make it out here for at least three quarters of an hour, so until then it's up to us.” He cracked open the side door and said, “Let's go.”

  We piled out of the car, got the. weapons and a bullhorn from the trunk, then filed up the road. A line of maples and willows strung along the roadside shielded us from the house. Then we got lucky and the rain died down to a drizzle, making it a helluva lot easier to see.

  When we got to the turn-off, I ran ahead to size things up.

  The Buick was parked on a gravel lane that led up to a dilapidated two-story farm house, set in a stand of pine trees.

  There were no phone or power lines leading to the house. Which was why Jake hadn't made a call. Pines lined either side of the gravel lane—good cover for us. But there were trees behind the house, too. Which meant that one of us was going to have to keep his eye on the rear door. Al Foster came up behind me as I was thinking things out.

  “Cal and George are on the other side of the road,” he whispered.

  “Somebody's going to have to take the back door,” I whispered in return.

  He nodded. “Let's try to work our way up to the porch.”

  We sidled through the pine trees, moving from trunk to trunk. Al covering me as I moved ahead and then me covering him. The damn pines were full of rainwater. With the wind blowing, I was soaked to the skin by the time we got to the house, and Al's rubbery face looked like a lump of clay that had been left out in a storm.

  “Helluva way to make a living,” he whispered acidly.

  We huddled behind the trunk of a pine and stared at the porch. We were only twenty feet away from it, now. Close enough to get a clear view of anyone coming out the front door. The Buick was parked about forty feet behind us, in the center of the gravel lane. If Jake and Haskell didn't spot us, we could take them from behind as they walked out to the car. I pulled the Colt from my pocket and flipped off the safety.

  There wasn't a sound for better than ten minutes. Then the front door opened and Jake stepped out onto the porch. He was alone and he was carrying something in his hand. I couldn't make out what it was until he was halfway down the steps. It looked like a paper shopping bag, and whatever he was carrying in it was heavy enough to make him lean slightly to his right.

  Now what the hell's going on? I said to myself. Maybe it was food he'd brought for Haskell. But there was something else peculiar about the way he looked. I couldn't put my finger on it until he was in the Buick and driving back up the lane. He hadn't looked excited or worried—the way he should have looked under the circumstances. What I could see of his face was mournful and subdued, as if he were coming out of a church rather than out of a killer's lair.

  “He must still be in there,” Foster said to me, as we watched Jake's taillights disappear down the lane. “We're going to have to pry him loose.”

  “Swell,” I said.

  Al raised the bullhorn to his mouth and flipped on the battery. The horn made a high-pitched whine, like the ear-splitting peak of an improperly balanced microphone. It made me jump. It had probably made Haskell Lord jump, too. Wired on speed. Half-starved and crazy. It had probably made him jump right out of his skin. I studied the upstairs windows. But nobody looked out. There wasn't a sound from the house at all. Not even the creak of a floorboard.

  “Haskell Lord!” Al said into the bullhorn and the whole yard echoed his voice. “This is the police! We have the house surrounded. Come out with your hands raised.”

  Al put the horn down and winked at me. “Never got a chance to say that before in my life.”

  There wasn't a sound from that broken-down house.

  “Something isn't right,” I said to Al.

  He raised the horn and shouted, “Haskell! We know you're in there. Don't make us come in after you.”

  Someone came rushing across the yard.

  “Easy, Harry,” Al said. “I think it's DeVries.”

  George ducked behind the pine tree where we were standing and said, “You know what? I don't think he's in there.”

  “The hell,” Foster said.

  “No. I'm serious,” DeVries said. “I took a look through the back window and didn't see a thing. Couldn't hear a thing either. It's all torn-up in there. Just a shell, really. And I'm telling you nobody could hold his breath in that place or just stand in one spot without making a little noise.”

  “Well if he isn't in there,” Foster said. “Why the hell did Jake lead us all the way out here in the middle of the night?”

  Nobody said a thing for a moment.

  “Maybe we'd better take a look inside,” I told them.

  24

  THE TAIL had been my idea, so I was the first one through the door. It wasn't locked, but George blew it off its hinges with the shotgun anyway. Kate had been right about that much—he was intent on shooting something that night. When the cordite smoke had cleared, I scampered through the hole into a pitch-black room, full of plaster chips and broken glass that crunched like rock salt underfoot. If Hack were in the house, he sure as hell knew we were coming. Foster followed me in—his service pistol in one hand and a heavy-duty flashlight he'd dug out of the trunk in the other. The flashlight beam danced about the room, touching on some exposed timber in the wall and a crack in the dusty wood floor and one rusted beer can that was sitting in a corner. The room stank of mildew and of woodrot and of something else, something sweeter and more frightening.

  Cal Levy said it for all of us when he walked through the doorway. “Somethin's died in here.”

  “An animal, maybe,” DeVries said.

  “I don't think so. It's too strong a stink.”

  We looked at each other for a second, and I thought of that remote and mournful look on Jake Lord's face.

  “I’ve got a real bad feeling about this house,” I said. To no one in particular. To myself, I think.

  “Let's take a look around,” Al said nervously. “George, you and Cal take the ground floor. We'll look upstairs.”

  The staircase was located in a hall that connected the front room with what looked like an old kitchen or what was left of a kitchen—a rusted wash basin dangling from the wall and an old refrigerator lying on its side in the dirt with the smug, encroaching look of a coffin. The staircase itself was in pretty good shape, except for a few boards at the bottom that had been bitten in two by time and weather. When Al passed the flashlight beam up to the top landing, I saw footprints in the dust. Two or three sets of a man's shoe-print. Someone had been walking up and down the stairs recently. Maybe on behalf of someone else on the second floor. I nudged Al with my elbow and he said, “Yeah, I see them.”

  I started up the staircase, the pistol in my right hand.

  “Keep that damn beam in front of me, Al,” I said over my shoulder. “I don't want to run into any surprises.”

  Up we went, the flashlight leaping from stair to stair in front of us. Then we reached the landing and the death smell became so strong that I almost gagged.

  “It's up here, all right,” I said to Al and he nodded grimly.

  The staircase opened on a hallway that ran the length of the top floor. Three rooms—two on the east side of the hall, one on the west—were scattered along the corridor. Each one was closed off by a painted wooden door.

  “Take your pick, Harry,” Al said drily.

  I sniffed at the air and said, “Let's start at the back. I think that's where the smell is strongest.”

  We walked down the hallway to the rear room.

  “You ready?” I said.

  Al grunted.

  I put my hand to the door knob and pushed the door open. Al flashed the beam into the room.

  ******

  His eyes were the
first thing we saw, glimmering in the light the way a rat's eye glimmers in the beam of a headlight. Only they didn't wink shut, as they should have. They stared out lifelessly from his bloated face. Mean black eyes above his tight bully's mouth. His arms were crossed on his chest, as if he'd been reading a book in bed and fallen asleep. There was a Bible on the floor beside him. I recognized the Bible. Just as I recognized the mark on his arm. The mark I'd been looking for since the day I'd first seen it in Lon Aamons's study. The snake's eye was ruby red; his coiled body the color of a fresh bruise. We'd found him, at last. We'd found Hack Lord.

  Al walked over to the body and kneeled down beside it. “I wonder why he didn't shut the eyes,” he said.

  I stared at the Bible on the floor. I'd seen it that morning on a nightstand in the Lord house. Jake must have brought it with him from home. Perhaps that's the only reason he'd come all that way in the rain—to say a prayer over his poor, misbegotten brother before the police found him in the morning. To say goodbye to his best friend.

  “He's puffed up pretty good,” Al said. “But you can see needle marks on his right arm, all right. My guess is that he O.D.'d or just plain starved to death. Looks like he was in a bad way for a long time.”

  I looked at the dead man's face, at those lifeless black eyes and at the flesh surrounding them that had pouted like a piece of rotted fruit. It was almost as if he was looking at something on the opposite side of the room. On the wall, behind us.

  “Give me your flashlight for a second, will you, Al?”

  He handed it to me.

  I flashed it along the wall beside the door. And there it was. The thing that Hack was still looking at, even in death. The same thing that had hung on Effie Reaves's wall in that nightmare trailer. A sketch of the Eden Park Overlook. The place where he'd killed Twyla Belton.

  “Now what the hell does that mean?” Al said.