by David Martin
Copyright ©1997 by David Martin
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Villard Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Villard Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-82433-2
Random House website address: http://www.randomhouse.com/
v3.1
Cul-de-sac: Bottom of the bag
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Dedication
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
1
They were on the couch now, it had been an eventful hour and Judith Rainey was finally quiet, her head resting on Donald Growler’s lap while Judith’s husband Lawrence perched on a nearby chair.
Growler asked why he did it but Lawrence didn’t answer.
Night after night for seven years Growler plotted what he would do to the friends who had lied about him, sent him to prison … Growler imagining elaborate operas of vengeance, stages slick with blood, arias sung to pain. But not knowing why these former friends had stabbed him in the back had become worse than the betrayal itself, was like having a tiny voracious beetle lodged in his ear, eating its way to his brain, driving him mad.
“Larry, why?”
Unlike his wife who’d become hysterical under Growler’s questioning, Lawrence Rainey managed to park himself in some sort of mental quiet zone. He was seventy-two, his wife Judith was sixty-seven, they’d been married fifty years. Whenever this was mentioned, announced in church last Sunday for example, the Raineys received warm applause.
“Was it the elephant?”
Lawrence continued staring into the middle distance.
“You found the elephant, figured with me out of the way you could keep it for yourself?” Growler asked, his voice quietly solicitous … this had been gnawing at him for all these years and he genuinely wanted answers. “Oh Larr-y.” When Growler placed a hand on Judith’s head and stroked her wispy hair, Lawrence began leaking tears. “You and Judy testified I was with Hope the day she was killed,” Growler continued. “Why would you perjure yourselves like that?”
Lawrence stood. He wore flannel pajamas with prints of fish on them, bass and trout.
“Sit,” Growler commanded as you would a dog … and after a moment’s hesitation Lawrence sat down again.
Growler said nothing more for the longest time, he was tired but in no hurry … the Raineys’ living room silent except you could hear clocks ticking. Lawrence and Judith had been awakened past midnight by this man they’d known since he was a boy.
“I show you these?” Growler finally asked, drawing back his lips.
Astonishment caused Lawrence’s jaw to drop, Growler laughing softly and telling him to shut his mouth.
Lawrence complied.
“Do you know where I can find Kenny Norton or Elizabeth Rockwell?” No response. “Larry.”
The old man looked at Growler as if just then realizing someone had been talking to him. “I saw the photographs.”
Growler’s dark eyes widened, he sat up straight.
“I was … cleaning your uncle’s room after he died.” Lawrence’s voice gravelly with age and emotion.
“And you found Hope’s pictures?”
“In an envelope.”
“Where are they now?”
“You were going to get off on a technicality unless we testified like they said.”
“Like who said?”
Lawrence’s wet eyes blinked rapidly.
Growler spoke excitedly, “Larry listen this is important, who told you to lie about me … who was in those pictures with Hope?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t look, they were filthy and I didn’t …” His voice lost to weeping.
With thumb and finger gently on Judith’s chin, Growler turned her head to face Lawrence … whose weeping birthed a single wet sob as he demanded, “Why are you doing this!”
“Why am I …” Growler tried with some desperation to hold on to his composure. “Where are the photographs?” But his control was slipping away, his anger fueling itself. “What happened to the elephant, why all these goddamn lies about me!”
“I don’t know anything,” the old man pleaded.
When rage finally propelled Growler to his feet, Judith’s head rolled from his lap onto the floor, turning a full revolution before stopping face-up at the slippered feet of her husband … raising both hands to his mouth like a child who’s just spilled milk.
2
Annie should’ve known better. She had in mind a movie scene … Paul opens the door, his eyes round with delight as he asks what in the world are you doing here and she says I wanted to surprise you, they embrace, music up, lights down, fade to morning.
Reality saw it differently. Paul for example hadn’t even answered the door and Annie was worried she might be stuck out here in the country all by herself, after dark, no other buildings in sight. She’d already sent away the Corwoods who gave her a ride up from North Carolina, Annie now standing at the front entrance of a big lonely building she’d cosigned to buy even though this was the first time she’d seen it. She knocked again, called her husband’s name, then picked up suitcases and purse and went around to the side of Cul-De-Sac.
That was the building’s name. They’d bought it to renovate and resell but the place was so big, so deteriorated, Annie wondered how in God’s name Paul ever intended to do all the work by himself.
She went to his old truck and looked in. Seeing it parked here had given her the confidence to send the Corwoods on their way … yeah Paul’s here, she had said, there’s his truck. Also Annie didn’t want them around to spoil the reunion scene she had in mind. Paul didn’t like the Corwoods, a florid couple in their fifties … they drank and smoke and spoke frequently in sexual imagery. Annie thought they were hilarious but the Corwoods offended Paul’s sense of propriety.
Like the entrance doors, the two doors at the side of the building were locked … no lights showing here either. The last time Annie talked with Paul he said he was staying up every night until three or four A
.M. working on Cul-De-Sac’s renovations … maybe he chose this particular night to go to bed early. Annie raised a wrist to take advantage of starlight, eight P.M. Fishing a little flashlight from her purse she soldiered to the rear.
Four doors back here not counting one at the bottom of cracked concrete steps leading to a basement, Annie didn’t intend to try that door. The others were all locked but she found an open window and shined her light in on a storage room full of cardboard boxes, broken wooden chairs, dented metal filing cabinets.
Without really making a decision about what she was doing Annie pushed both suitcases through the open window, tossed in her purse, then lifted a leg to the sill … no way to do this ladylike, Annie’s bare ass showing as the blue dress hiked to her hips. Paul mentioned once that the dress made her look as fresh as morning and it’s funny how an offhand comment like that will stick with you, Annie having now categorized this dress as Paul’s Favorite. She had on low-heeled black shoes and over the dress she wore a denim jacket because mid-April was a lot colder up here in Northern Virginia than it was back down South.
Annie got caught half-in, half-out straddling the paint-flaking windowsill in a way that felt rough and unsafe between her legs. She laughed a little thinking how she might have to ask Paul to get a splinter out, he’d want to know where, she’d have to say … just then she dropped the flashlight. “Damn.” Annie struggled the rest of the way in. The flashlight was on the floor still shining. She retrieved it, her purse, the suitcases, then went through the storage room, relieved to find its interior door unlocked. Curious though. All the outside doors locked but a window left open to a room left unlocked … almost as if an intruder had entered this way.
No, Annie told herself, don’t start imagining things again … such as what she’d been imagining when she was pounding on the front door and calling Paul’s name: that he had a lover with him, they were warm in bed while Annie was standing out in the cold, and this lover—bimbo, slut, bitch—was the reason Paul didn’t want Annie to come up from North Carolina, not even for one visit during the entire month he’d been here.
Except Paul would never cheat, it wasn’t in his makeup … Annie was almost sure of it.
In the corridor outside the storage room she felt sweaty hot but left the denim jacket on so she wouldn’t have to carry it along with everything else. She checked walls for light switches, found one, it didn’t work.
If an intruder had come in that open window, maybe he cut the electricity and crept up on Paul in the dark, murdered him … the killer still here in the building.
She shook her head, stop it.
Feeling scared but mainly feeling stupid for putting herself in this predicament, for thinking it would be a nice surprise to show up here totally unexpected, Annie made her way though mazelike corridors and hallways, all of them overheated, finally coming around to Cul-De-Sac’s most dramatic feature: a central atrium reaching up three stories, all the way to the roof, with rooms and balcony-hallways on all four sides.
She didn’t want to go up the steps to the second floor but what were the alternatives … start walking country roads looking for a telephone, spend the night in Paul’s truck, sit on a suitcase and cry until morning?
Ready to take that first step Annie heard something, she shined her flashlight up the stairway and saw a man standing very still, looking down at her.
With a startled sound escaping the back of her throat she dropped everything and this time the flashlight went out when it hit the floor.
In the dark she heard his footsteps … not coming down the steps toward her as she’d expected but running away, hurrying along the second-floor hallway that also served as a balcony overlooking the atrium.
Annie shook the flashlight until it agreed to come on. He was gone, nothing but quiet at the top of the steps, as if Annie had only imagined seeing her husband. Hopeful, she picked up her things and resumed climbing that stairway to the second floor.
3
The shower went cold, Growler cursing and stepping back out of the water stream. He’d hoped that a long hot shower in the Raineys’ basement would refresh him but it wasn’t having that effect, just as ending their lives hadn’t particularly satisfied him. He’d been obsessing on vengeance for seven years but tonight’s installment was turning out to be like the cocaine and pills and booze he’d been indulging since getting out of prison a week ago: momentary relief followed by an even larger hunger.
When the water turned warm again, Growler stepped back into the stream. The maddening irritant of not knowing why he’d been betrayed was even worse than before … who told Lawrence and Judy to perjure themselves at the trial, what happened to Hope’s pictures? The police said no photographs were ever found, had Uncle Penny hidden them to ensure Growler’s conviction?
The hot water ran out a second time, Growler stepping back again, cursing again, taking it personally that the shower was doing this to him. Nothing ever worked out, the whole world conspired against him, son-of-a-bitch anyway, that little beetle gnawing its way into his brain asking why, why?
The hot water returned, Growler dipping his head into the comforting stream as if to receive a blessing. Getting out of prison and discovering the elephant was gone had been the final betrayal that put Growler where he was tonight, that made him the murderer he was accused of being seven years ago.
“Decapitations are this man’s signature,” the prosecutor had told the jury.
“Decapitating animals,” Growler murmured as he brought his hands up in a prayerful pose under his chin and folded his shoulders inward to take fuller advantage of the hot water washing away his sins. He used to cut the heads off dead animals he found, he never killed them himself, certainly didn’t murder Hope … he loved her.
He was tired. He needed sleep or needed more pharmaceuticals to continue postponing sleep … so incredibly tired.
This time when the water went cold it took Growler’s breath away and he leapt from the stall looking around for something to use on the shower head, to bust it apart, to punish it for mocking him. Then he heard the washing machine running and realized it had been robbing the shower of hot water … he’d put his clothes in to clean them of all the blood. Growler stepped back to the stall and sheepishly turned off the shower.
When the washing machine stopped spinning he transferred his clothes to the dryer. It was cold and damp down here in the basement, Growler hopping up on the dryer and hugging himself for warmth. He tried halfheartedly to jack off but nothing came of it, too frigging tired, then went back to scratching at that unreachable itch.
Uncle Penny must’ve convinced the Raineys to lie at the trial, Judith and Lawrence worked twenty years for Growler’s uncle and would’ve done anything for him. But if they’d taken the elephant they wouldn’t still be living in this little house, this crappy bungalow with shit-colored shingle siding. No, Kenny Norton, Growler’s former best friend, was the most likely suspect in the theft of the elephant because Norton was the only other person who knew about the scam, he must’ve gone looking for the elephant after Growler was sent to prison. And now Growler was looking for him … but Kenny had moved a lot in the past seven years and had left a cold trail.
When he closed his eyes they stung, Growler had been over these possibilities a thousand times, ten thousand times. And although his innocence in the death of Hope Penner no longer mattered, because as of tonight he was a murderer, what still mattered hugely was the goddamn elephant. His share of three million dollars would finance a way out of the country. Who took it?
Paul?
The dryer clicked off. Growler hopped down and took out his clothes, they felt comfortingly warm as he slipped them on. Having stashed the Raineys’ bodies in a closet upstairs he’d brought their heads with him down here to the basement … not sure why though. They were on the concrete floor, Growler lifting both lids to put Judith Rainey’s head in the dryer, Lawrence’s in the washer. He set the machines to their longest cycles but bef
ore closing the lids Growler stepped back to the shower stall and retrieved a container of shampoo, the contents of which he squeezed into the washer. The name of the shampoo amused him, Head & Shoulders. Or in this case just Head. It wasn’t that difficult being a homicidal maniac.
Growler closed the lids and turned the machines on, the washer sounding okay but the dryer making a terrible racket. He rubbed his weary face and felt along his teeth with an index finger which he then sniffed … time to go home to Cul-De-Sac.
4
Annie saw a light in one corner of the hallway-balcony that ran around the second level of the atrium. Up on that second floor now, still carrying suitcases, purse, and flashlight, she kept a wary eye on the closed doors to her left and stayed well back from the railing on her right. The light in the corner was coming from under a door, which was fitted with a heavy metal hasp and padlock though of course the padlock wasn’t closed because Paul was inside. She knocked tentatively. “Paul?” Why had he run from her?
He didn’t know it was me. Of course! Annie had shined the flashlight on him but Paul didn’t see who she was … he hadn’t been expecting his wife.
She knocked harder. “Paul! I’m sorry for scaring you, it’s me, Annie.” She tried the handle, it wouldn’t turn.
A soft voice from the other side. “What’re you doing here?”
Not the response she expected. “I came to surprise you. Stupid, I know. I’m sorry.” Why isn’t he opening the door? “Paul?”
“How’d you get here?”
“The Corwoods were coming up to D.C. and—”
“Are they here?”
“No, they dropped me off.”
“You have to go back.”
“Paul, open this door.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Open the goddamn door!” Annie could picture her husband’s pinched expression, he disapproved of her cursing.
A lock clicked, the door opening slowly. Annie intended to throw her arms around him and give Paul a big kiss but, shocked by his appearance, she just stood there in the doorway and stared.
