by James Newman
“I’m always home,” I said.
“Very good.”
I stood to show them out. A tad too eagerly, perhaps.
As I led them to the door, I heard two muffled barks from my backyard. I reminded myself to go check on Norman after the detectives left. See how he was holding up. Hopefully much better than his master.
“By the way, Mr. Holland,” Detective Hembry said then, lingering in my foyer, “I did want to ask you…”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind… er… that is…”
“What is it, Detective?”
“I don’t suppose you could sign something for me, could you?”
“Um, sure,” I said, a bit taken aback. I hadn’t pegged either of these guys as horror fans. “I guess I could do that.”
Hembry pulled something from his back pocket, held it out to me. It was a dog-eared copy of my third novel, The Ancient Ones. The first printing, with the garish red-eyed demon thing on the cover. One of only two books I have written which I can truly say I loathe. The critics were right about that one.
“I’d appreciate the hell out of it,” he said. “If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind?”
I took it from him, opened the cover.
After a quick, self-conscious grin in his partner’s direction, Hembry said, “Make it to ‘Paul,’ please?”
He handed me a pen, and I clenched it so tightly my knuckles turned bone-white.
TO DETECTIVE PAUL, I scrawled in wide, angry letters upon the title page, DON’T LET THE BAD GUYS GET YOU!
When I was done, I shoved the book back into his hands.
Hembry ogled his newfound prize.
At last I stepped back, preparing to slam the door behind them, but Detective Norton stopped in the threshold. He turned, held up one long, skinny finger.
“There is one last thing, Mr. Holland,” he said.
I kept my hand on the door. Gave him an exhausted oh-boy-there’s-more-I-can’t-wait expression.
“Just to eliminate you as a suspect beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Norton said, that hard, black line above his eyes looking harder and blacker than ever, “you wouldn’t have a problem with giving us a DNA sample, would you? If we were to request such a thing in the next few days?”
I sighed. Shook my head. Stared at the floor. Wanted to scream at them both to get the hell off my property.
He said, “At this point, it’s not something you have to do. But understand that we can get a search warrant, if necessary. Then you would have no choice.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“Of course he’ll do it,” said Hembry, slapping his partner on the back. “Why wouldn’t he?”
They left without another word, their heels clicking down my front steps as they stalked toward their shiny black Buick at the curb.
Officer Keith Whitmire turned to me, nodded but did not speak, before rushing to follow them. He spoke with the two detectives briefly, and then they got into their car.
I closed my front door, tried not to worry about the rest of my neighbors gathered on the opposite side of the street.
I counted a dozen of them out there, give or take. Pointing. Whispering. Watching the detectives leave my home. Shouting troubled questions toward the cop who lived at the end of our block.
Whitmire joined the throng, and he wasted no time obliging them as soon as his superiors drove away.
I realized I did not care at all.
The only thing on my mind at that moment was the bathroom at the end of the hall.
I covered my mouth, made a retching noise as I ran.
For the second time that day, I knew I was about to be sick.
CHAPTER FIVE
Poinsettia Lane was changing.
Once upon a time, my neighborhood had seemed so perfect in every way. Now, the street outside my home had become a serpentine black path upon which I never again wanted to step foot, lest it lead me toward more awful truths. Beneath every immaculately groomed yard was buried an abominable secret, and behind every door lurked another ugly sin.
A child had been raped. Murdered.
I did not want to believe it. None of us did.
Because things like this… they did not happen here.
For several hours after Norman and I found Rebecca Lanning’s broken body, Poinsettia Lane was a maelstrom of activity. Police vehicles sped up and down my block—sometimes with sirens wailing, lights flashing, other times not. Men in dark blue SHERIFF’S DEPT. jackets ran past my house, shouting orders in their walkie-talkies as they went. The distant barking of police dogs filled Harris City Park behind my neighborhood, and occasionally I heard Norman add to the commotion from our backyard, as if pleading with his canine brethren to find the monster responsible for this madness. At one point I felt as much as heard the staccato rumble of a helicopter overhead, like the flapping of gargantuan batwings on the horizon.
Everything was wrong. So wrong.
It would never be right again.
Throughout it all, my neighbors stood watching the chaos from their own patios or from behind screen doors, their faces sweaty ghost-masks of worry. In the bedroom, my phone rang and rang and rang. And then it rang some more. And when the land-line wasn’t ringing, my cell constantly buzz-buzz-buzzed, shimmying across the desk in my office like some agitated bug.
I finally took the old rotary phone off the hook. Killed the cell for the rest of the day.
I tried not to despise those who were trying so hard to contact me. I wished I could be one of them.
At last, I closed my door and locked it when a large white van with squeaky brakes pulled into my driveway. WKLS/CHANNEL 10 NEWS, read the logo on its side.
A few minutes later I heard footsteps on my front porch. A knock, and a sexy female voice called my name.
“Mr. Holland? Staci Gayle-Mathis, from WKLS News. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may. Hello? We know you’re in there, Mr. Holland…”
She knocked again. Impatiently.
“Mr. Holland?”
But I did not answer.
Because somehow, even then… I knew things were about to get worse.
CHAPTER SIX
“I’m so sorry to hear what happened, Andy,” Ben Souther said the following morning, as I hefted a fat bag of garbage to the end of my driveway.
My next-door neighbor startled me at first. I hadn’t seen him standing there in the shade of his front porch, beyond his wife’s massive azalea, lilac, and rhododendron bushes separating our properties.
“Oh,” I said. “’Morning, Ben.”
“I heard you found her. My God, that had to be horrible…”
I said nothing, merely offered him a sad little smile. I turned to head back inside.
“Hey. Andy. Hold up. You, uh, got a couple minutes?”
“What do you need, Ben?” I said.
“I’ve got a cold beer over here with your name on it. Thought maybe we could chew the fat for a few.”
My novel was waiting. My deadline drew closer. Both my agent and my publisher grew more and more impatient. But I knew I was still too shaken to get any real work done.
I shrugged. “Why the hell not.”
Ben had a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon open and ready for me by the time I joined him on his front porch. Beads of condensation dripped off of it onto my hand. It felt good. Tasted even better.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it.”
Ben smiled at me as he eased into his favorite rocking chair, but I couldn’t help thinking his kind expression seemed forced, somehow. Fake. No, surely I had imagined that. I liked Ben. He had always reminded me of one of my favorite uncles from childhood. He was a good man.
He motioned for me to sit. “Take a load off, my friend.”
Ben Souther was about twenty-five years my senior, and while we didn’t have much in common other than a taste for ice-cold brewskis on hot summer days and a love for the Atlanta Braves (at l
east when they were playing well), we had hit if off nicely from the first day we met. Ben was a retired insurance fraud investigator, a well-read gentleman who spoke with a slight Wisconsin accent. He was stocky but not obese, with a full head of curly silver hair most men his age would envy. A faded, barely legible tattoo on his left forearm read U.S. NAVY. Ben favored flannel shirts and blue jeans held up by colorful suspenders, and he always wore thick wire-rimmed glasses that turned a funky purplish-red in the light, a tint so dark I couldn’t remember the last time I had glimpsed more than a hint of my next-door neighbor’s eyes.
“Did you know her parents?” He got right to the point, after I made myself comfortable on his wife’s porch swing.
“No,” I replied. “You?”
“Not really. Marianne’s spoken with her mother once or twice at the salon. Her father’s a lineman for the power company, if memory serves. I don’t know them personally, but… Christ… it sure makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?”
I looked at him over my beer, my brow furrowed.
“It can happen to anyone,” he said. “Anytime. You know?”
“Scary,” I said.
“You’re damn right it is,” Ben said. “Soon as I heard, I had to call my grandkids. All nine of ’em. Just to know they were safe and sound.”
I nodded, took another long pull on my beer. Thought about Samantha and wondered what she was doing at that very moment. I said a silent prayer for her, hoping she was safe. Happy.
“Did you get my messages?” Ben asked. “I called several times, but I guess you weren’t answering the phone.”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry, Ben. Damn thing kept ringing off the hook all day…”
“Looked like a lot going on over there. What a terrible mess. I assume the police were getting some sort of official statement from you?”
“Yeah.”
“It was all over the news.”
“I don’t watch TV,” I said. “But I figured as much.”
Ben stared down at his lap. Brushed an imaginary speck of lint off one knee.
“I, uh, should probably tell you that… they did mention who found her.”
I felt a sharp pang of dread in my gut, but tried not to appear too rattled. “They did.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wonderful,” I groaned.
“Saw the Channel 10 van in your driveway, too,” Ben said. “You didn’t talk to her?”
“Hell, no.”
“Can’t say as I blame you. That’s probably for the best.”
We both peered out over the street for the next minute or two. Drank from our bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon as if the answers to all of the world’s problems lay within their frosty contents. Somewhere down the street a motorcycle engine revved and died, revved and died. A cat meowed. The fattest bumblebee I had ever seen buzzed and flitted about Marianne Souther’s flowerbed a few feet in front of us.
Ben leaned toward me then, and in a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “Word travels fast in a place like this, Andy. I hope you know, a lot o’ questions are probably gonna be coming your way in the next few days.”
“Right,” I said.
“Just thought I’d warn you.”
“I understand.”
Ben cleared his throat, stared down into the mouth of his bottle.
“Something else on your mind, old man?” I asked him.
He chuckled, but an uneasy tremor lurked in my neighbor’s laugh. “Is it that obvious?”
“I guess it is.”
“Well… hell, we’re all friends here, so I won’t beat around the bush. I’ll just come right out and ask.”
“Okay…?”
“I’m not trying to be nosy, Andy. I’m just curious…”
I waited for it. Wasn’t sure what I was waiting for, exactly.
“Is it true,” Ben asked me, “what they said on the news?”
“Regarding…?”
“Something about a, uh… a spot of trouble you got yourself into when you were young…”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “They actually brought that up?”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “They mentioned it.”
I sighed. “I don’t have anything to hide, Ben. But that was nineteen years ago. It doesn’t have a thing to do with that little girl. It was just a stupid mistake I made when I was a kid.”
“Hmm,” Ben said. “What I figured.”
“I can’t believe they brought that up…”
I brought my bottle to my lips, but did not drink. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable, wished I could be anywhere else in the world besides on Ben Souther’s front porch.
“We think we know it all at that age, don’t we, Andy?” my next-door neighbor asked me.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I suppose we do.”
Neither of us said anything for the next few minutes. Ben sat there staring at me for what felt like forever from behind his dark glasses. At least, I thought he was staring at me. I couldn’t be sure. Because I could not see his eyes.
I fidgeted in my seat. The porch swing creaked beneath me.
Finally he looked away, took another quick sip of his beer. Some of the frothy liquid trickled down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of one big hand.
“Person who could do something like that to a child, Andy… he’s not even human. He’s a goddamn monster.”
“True.”
“Then again, I suppose it’s like a wise man once said…”I knew what came next. One of Ben’s trademark quotations. My neighbor seemed to have one for every occasion, and they were always so apt. I often imagined Ben had a special room somewhere inside his home stocked with shelves upon shelves of hefty tomes filled with nothing but famous (as well as not-so-famous) quotations, and that was all he did in his spare time—read them from cover to cover, committing every line to memory so he would have a quote handy whenever and wherever he needed it. Like now. Here. In the context of our troubled conversation.
“ ‘Everyone is a moon,’ ” Ben Souther said, “ ‘and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.’ ”
“Mark Twain,” I said.
He gave me a little “cheers” gesture with his bottle before tipping it back to finish it off.
Again I gazed out over Poinsettia Lane. The sun was bright and hot. The air smelled of honeysuckle and fresh-mown grass. A distant tinge of motor oil. Despite the tragedy that had turned our neighborhood upside-down, this Friday morning had begun like any other. Or had it? I wondered if we were all just going through the motions, pretending we would make it through this. When Joe and Eileen Tuttle passed us in their shiny purple P.T. Cruiser, they did not look our way, though I noticed as they cruised by my house they stared conspicuously in that direction. Doc McFarland jogged by, sans headphones for once, but if he saw us he did not wave. Across the road, Freddy Morgan and his next-door neighbor, Lorne Childress, hammered away at the new deck Morgan had been building out front of his place. The sounds of their construction echoed up and down the street like someone pounding out a sloppy rhythm on a cheap set of drums. Once I caught Morgan squinting in our direction, about the time he stopped to remove his faded Cheap Trick T-shirt and wipe his sweaty face with it, but when I raised my bottle of beer toward the man he returned to his work with an urgency that hinted at something more than an honest desire to finish the project at hand.
I frowned, looked back at Ben to find him staring at me again from behind his purple glasses.
“Those detectives have any idea who did it?” he asked me.
“Not yet,” I replied. “Far as I know.”
“Do you think it could have been someone local?”
“I have no idea, Ben.”
“Our man Keith thinks it was. Says from the looks of things it might even turn out to be—God forbid—someone we know.”
“Let’s hope not,” I said.
When I offered nothing further, my neighbor crossed his arms and said, “Whatever the case, I just hope they c
atch the bastard before too long. And pardon my Japanese, but I hope he fuckin’ fries.”
“You and me both,” I said. “You and me both.”
Across the street, Freddy Morgan had climbed down from his deck-in-progress to turn on the radio in his truck. A classic rock station. Lorne Childress joined him in the driveway a few seconds later, and to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” the two men helped themselves to beers of their own from a cooler in the back of the Ram.
Ben tore his eyes off of me long enough to glance their way.
When he threw up one hand, both men smiled, returning his wave. Morgan shouted a friendly: “What’s up, Big Ben!”
My face grew hot. I felt a lump form in my throat the size of one of Marianne’s prized chrysanthemums.
I stood, finished off my beer in three quick gulps, and slammed the bottle down on the porch railing a bit too loudly.
“Thanks for the beer,” I said. “I gotta go.”
Ben looked hurt. He rose to his feet, wasted no time following me to the edge of the porch.
“What’s the hurry?” he said. “There’s plenty more beer in the fridge.”
“Thanks, but no thanks, Ben,” I said. “I’ve got a book to finish by the end of next month, and I’m barely halfway through the first draft.”
“Hard at work on a new one, huh? What’s this one called?”
“A Feast of Souls.”
“A Feast of Souls,” Ben said. “Classy.”
I slowed, unsure whether or not I had detected a hint of sarcasm in my neighbor’s tone.
“If it’s all the same to you, my friend,” he said, “I think I’ll stick with my Tom Clancy novels.”
I nodded, but did not respond. I just continued on, slump-shouldered, toward home. I stared at my feet as I walked.
“Hey, Andy?” Ben called after me again, as I stepped off of his property and onto mine.
“Yeah?”
“Promise me you won’t take this the wrong way, okay? But at a time like this, I can’t help thinking maybe Oliver Goldsmith was right…”
I swallowed a sick taste in my mouth. Waited for it.
“ ‘Do not let us make imaginary evils,’ ” Ben quoted, “ ‘when we have so many real ones to encounter.’ ”
