The House of Broken Backs: A Joanna Mason Novel

by Amy Cross

  "It might do," I reply, closing the notebook. It's clear that Claire, for all her keenness to assist in the investigation, knows very little about her father's hidden life. If my suspicions are correct, she's soon going to have to deal with the horror of learning the truth, and if we capture the guy alive, she'll also have to endure years of media coverage as the trial gets underway. There's no way she's going to be able to hide from all of this.

  "I thought he was having an affair," she says after a moment.

  "You did?"

  She smiles weakly. "I knew he was up to something, but I thought he'd just got another woman. That was, like, the worst thing I could think of, and I hated him for it. I wanted to expose him for it and get my Mom to leave him. I never really liked him, so I thought we could get away and be happy someplace else."

  I try to think of something to say, but words seem to be failing me right now.

  "I hope he dies," she says eventually. "Can you do me a favor? Promise me that when you catch him, you won't arrest him. Pretend he attacked you or something, and just kill him right there and then." She fixes me with a determined stare. "Please," she whispers, as if she wants to make sure that no-one overhears us. "I want him to die."

  "I can't promise you that," I tell her.

  "But you could do it, couldn't you?" she continues. "If you catch him when there's no-one else around, and no cameras, you could just put a bullet in his head and end it."

  We sit in silence for a moment as I try to find an appropriate moment to leave.

  "I'll do it," she says eventually, staring into space. "If I ever see him, I'll kill him. If you're smart, you'll do the same. Just blow his brains out and make sure he can never hurt anyone else ever again. Some people just don't deserve to take another breath."

  John

  "Come on," I mutter, as I root through Leonard's desk drawers. "Where the fuck did you leave them?"

  It's almost 4am and I've spent the past half hour looking for the master keys to the main shed. Having checked Leonard's pockets and even rolled him over in an attempt to see if they were hanging off his belt, I've ended up taking the whole goddamn office apart as I try to find the damn things, but there's still no sign of them.

  "Fuck!" I shout, slamming the last drawer shut. "Fucking cock-sucking asshole!"

  I take a deep breath.

  My whole body is trembling. If I don't calm down soon, I'm liable to start making mistakes, and that's when the risk will start to rise.

  And then I realize that although the keys weren't in the drawer, there was something else that I should have double-checked.

  Opening the drawer slowly, I stare at the ragged manual that appears to be a guide to a tracking device. Gently taking the manual and flicking through it, I quickly realize that it's for the exact same type of device that I found on the underside of my car. It wasn't Claire who planted that thing; it was Leonard. Staring at the manual with white hot fury in my veins, I start to understand that I had no need to kill Barbara, or to try to kill Claire. I could have let them live. Claire only thought that I was having an affair. There was no need to go this far.

  "Great," I whisper, getting to my feet and walking over to the spot where Leonard is groaning on the floor, with blood still seeping from his damaged features. I stare down at him for a moment, before taking a step and then kicking him in the face so hard that several of his teeth fly across the room.

  Chapter Five

  Joanna Mason

  "Nothing?" I reply, shocked by the news. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

  "Nothing for now," Carver replies, his voice sounding a little scrambled over the line. "John Sutter's car was found abandoned outside the house. There were some items in the trunk that make us think he was planning to make a getaway, but for some reason he abandoned the car and left on foot. We think he might have made his way through neighboring gardens, so we're checking to see if any of the residents have cameras that could have picked something up."

  "He was chasing Claire," I point out, looking over my shoulder and watching as a nurse enters the girl's room. "By the time she escaped, it was too late for him to go back for the car, so he had to try something else."

  "So he can't have got far."

  "Unless he jacked another ride," I continue, turning back to look out the window for a moment. The lights of the city are bright, but in the distance there's a vast band of darkness; even in the twenty-first century, there are plenty of places for someone to hide. "You need to check for anyone missing in the area," I continue, "anyone at all, especially if their car's also disappeared. This guy wouldn't risk public transport, but he'd also want to get the hell out of town. Unless he's got an accomplice in the area who could pick him up at short notice, I think he'd probably try to force someone to give up their car."

  "We're running facial recognition programs on various databases," he continues. "This guy can only change his appearance so many times. Once we've got a few results, we'll go check every single possibility until we've ruled them all out. Or not, as the case may be. We've also checked out the claims made by Susan Pierce, and I'm fairly confident that her husband John Pierce is the same guy as John Sutter and John Benson, so we've now got three completely separate identities that this asshole was using. God knows how many more there might be. I've got some guys at the Pierce house now, waiting to trace him if he tries to contact her."

  "He won't."

  "You don't know that."

  "I know he's smart," I reply. "Calling one of his other wives would be insanely dumb right now."

  "Sometimes smart people do dumb things," he points out.

  "Maybe," I mutter, "but we can't rely on it. I pause for a moment as I try to work out a common theme in this guy's activities. "He sure likes the name John," I say eventually.

  "It's probably his real name," Carver replies. "I figure a guy with lots of different identities is going to try to simplify things as much as possible, so he probably wants to avoid the confusion of being known by lots of different first names. As for his real surname, we're still working on that. If we can cross-reference the visuals and maybe get some additional hits, it's possible that we can make an educated guess and zero in on this guy's real identity."

  "Good luck," I mutter. "He's probably left it far behind."

  "I'll find it eventually," Carver replies. "Don't worry about that. I'll get this guy and haul him in, and I'll fucking have his real name if I have to squeeze it out of his goddamn throat."

  "I think a lot of people would be very relieved if you did just that," I point out.

  "Trust me," he continues. "Once I get this asshole in an interrogation room, I can break him. I've dealt with some tough sons of bitches over the years, and I've managed to get through to all of them eventually. This guy probably thinks he's the smartest fucker in the room, but give me a day or two with him and I'll have him vomiting the truth onto his own shoes. There's no-one in the world who can withstand a face-to-face confrontation with Jordan Carver."

  "I'll call you later," I reply, turning back to look over at Claire's room, I see that the sedatives have finally kicked in and she's out cold. "I have a few leads to chase up," I add. "Some ideas, that kind of thing."

  "Care to share them with me?"

  "Not really."

  "I'm the senior -"

  I cut the call and switch my phone off before he has a chance to call back.

  "You're the senior asshole," I mutter, heading along the corridor. Jordan Carver's doing all the right things, and it's useful to have his input as back-up. However, this isn't the time for plodding, procedural detective work; I need to come up with something, and time is definitely running out. If we don't find this guy soon, he's going to disappear into the crowd and we'll probably never have another chance. Reaching into my pocket, I pull out some of the crumpled maps I've been examining. All I need is one lucky break, one moment of inspiration, and I think I know just how to kick-start the process.

  Jordan Carver would n
ever approve.

  John

  "Sun's coming up," I mutter as I drag Leonard's still-bleeding corpse across the yard. "You see that? Take a good look, 'cause it's the last sunrise you'll ever get to watch. I guess it's pretty beautiful, if you like that kind of thing."

  It's almost 7am and having spent the past few hours trying to work out my best course of action, I've come up with a plan that I think will ensure I can get the hell out of this place and start again somewhere else. My original aim was to get to Susan's house, but it's clear that I can't take that risk; she's probably suspicious by now, and I wouldn't even be surprised if she's talked to the police. Hell, they're probably sitting at her home right now, waiting for the phone to ring so that they can track my location.

  No fucking chance.

  I won't give those dumb, smug assholes the satisfaction. I'd rather die than let them catch me.

  Reaching the steps that lead to the barn door, I drag Leonard up with such force that he lets out a pained groan. Leaving him on the deck for a moment, I head over to the door and pull out the keys that I finally found hidden behind the safe. God knows why Leonard hid them there, but then again he was clearly more suspicious than I'd realized; after all, the asshole had placed a tracking device under my car. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been planning to rip me off, in which case I have no reason to feel bad about what I'm about to do. We were going to double-cross one another, and it's not my fault that I happened to be smarter and more careful.

  "I always had my suspicions about you, Leonard," I continue as I struggle with the padlock. "Hell, I was surprised you stuck around for so long. You never really had the stomach for this kind of thing, though, did you? That was always the biggest challenge for me. I just couldn't find anyone else who really understood the moral side of things."

  Although he tries to reply, Leonard can only manage a faint gurgle.

  "The empire," I mutter, as the rusty padlock springs loose and I finally manage to get the door open. The stench from inside is overwhelming, and it's clear that the hundred or so men in the place haven't been cleaned for a while. Reaching around the corner, I flick a switch, and seconds later some small lights flicker into life along the walkway that runs down the length of the building. I can already hear the assets groaning as I turn and grab Leonard's body and start hauling him into the shed. If I had a spare hand, I'd cover my mouth and nose, but as things stand I guess I'll just have to put up with the stench. Still, it's shocking to realize how low the human body can fall when it's left in a place like this. It's as if these sons of bitches have no sense of dignity whatsoever.

  "No -" Leonard whispers as I dump him on the narrow walkway.

  Ignoring him, I look out across the shed and marvel for a moment at all the hunched, naked figures. These are my assets: they were just babies when I acquired them, in the days when I started out by paying drug-addict mothers a pittance in order to buy their newborns; once I brought them here, they were chained up and kept alive, and then they were occasionally cleaned so that they could be taken into town and given a check-up by a dentist or a doctor. Once their existence had been established, their backs were broken, they were chained up for good measure, and we began to wait for customers to come along. All I needed to do was to ensure that each and every one of the assets had some kind of presence in official systems; they all have social security numbers and credit histories, which means that their identities are valuable and worth selling. It's hard to put a precise figure on their value, but there's easily a hundred million dollars of human stock in this barn.

  And now it's all going to be wasted.

  "What good is an empire," I say after a moment, "if it has to be kept in the dark? What good is a great man, if he can't step out of the shadows and accept the plaudits that are due to him?" Looking down at Leonard, I see that he's slowly trying to crawl away. He won't make it, of course, but it's amusing to see him making the effort. "One day," I continue, walking after him and keeping pace as he heads for the door, "I'll be revered as a great businessman. I'll reinvest all the money from this operation into something laudable and legitimate, and no-one will ever know that I started out doing something like this. But I promise you, Leonard, that when they come to write my story, there'll be no mention of you. Not even a footnote. Do you know why?"

  He cries out in pain as I step on his hand.

  "Because you're not like me," I add. "You were always just a hired assistant, paid to keep watch on things and born to be forgotten, just like the idiots we kept chained in this barn. You did a decent enough job most of the time, but now I feel that I must let you go." I crunch down harder on his hand, and seconds later I feel his bones cracking and snapping. He tries to scream, but I simply kick him in the side and send him tumbling down off the walkway and into the main area of the barn, where the assets are tied up.

  I can't help but smile. After all, it's no more than he deserves.

  One by one, the nearest assets start to notice Leonard. They approach him, dragging themselves through the dirt, and some are on long enough chains to reach him. They seem suspicious at first, almost animal-like in their aversion to a possible threat, but I watch in delighted horror as they begin to cautiously paw at him, and although he can't get up and pull himself free, the poor old fool has enough about him to call out for help. Slowly, however, the assets start to pin him down; one grabs a leg and tries to pull him closer, while another does the same with an arm. I don't know if they're acting out of some primordial desire to kill, or if they're starving and will eat anything, or even if they recognize him as one of the architects of their misery, but whatever the explanation, they soon begin to tear at him. Although I usually hate to witness violence first-hand, I can't help but watch and enjoy the experience as Leonard tries desperately to get free. Soon, the beasts have begun to dig their teeth into his belly, and blood starts to flow onto the filth-encrusted concrete floor.

  "Goodbye," I whisper with a smile, as I watch one of the assets reach into Leonard's chest cavity and snap several of his ribs away.

  Not wanting to witness any more of this squalor, I turn and head to the door. After flicking the lights off, I make my way outside and push the door shut, before walking over to the storehouse. There's enough sunlight now to be able to see pretty well, so I don't even need a torch as I search for the gasoline canisters I stored here a few years ago. Once I've found them, I take them back to the main door and unscrew the lids in order to make sure that there's enough left to get the job done. Satisfied that I'm prepared for the next phase of my plan, I head to the office and open the filing cabinet. Pulling out the catalogs, I take them to the desk and sit down. It's going to take me a while to find an identity that I can steal, since the assets are all so much younger than me, but I'm convinced that I can find something that'll be useful.

  In the distance, Leonard lets out a cry of pain.

  I flick through page after page, discounting scores of faces until finally I come across one that looks as if it might just be good enough. Slipping the photograph out of its plastic cover, I take it over to the mirror in the corner. It's not a great likeness, but this particular asset has a similar facial shape to me, and similar hair, plus we share the same color eyes and more or less the same height. It'll take some work, but I think I can pass for him. Turning the photograph around, I check the details written on the back.

  "Brian Cantard," I whisper, a little disappointed by the ugliness of the name. "Brian Cantard." I stare at myself in the mirror and practice saying the name over and over, hoping to get used to it. "Brian Cantard," I mutter, before tilting my head a little in order to get a better view. "Brian Cantard," I say again, and finally I realize that I can definitely do this. Within a few hours, I can change my appearance enough to pass for this Brian Cantard individual, and then I can take Leonard's old truck and hit the road. I have no idea where I'll go, but with the cash at my disposal, my choices are more or less unlimited. Of course, I can't just take that money and shove
it into a bank account; I'll have to be much more careful, and I'll have to start from the bottom again, but I can begin to build a new life, and no-one will ever be able to link me to my old identities.

  John Noone is dead.

  John Benson is dead.

  John Sutter is dead.

  John Pierce is dead.

  Brian Cantard, however, is about to have a whole new lease of life.

  Any man can build an empire, but I think I might just be the first person in human history who manages to build two.

  In the shed, in the distance, Leonard is still screaming.

  Joanna Mason

  "You sure about that?" the barman asks.

  I nod, preferring to avoid conversation as I stare at the screen of my laptop. I've come to this out-of-the-way dive in order to get away from dumb questions, so I sure as hell don't appreciate having my every decision queried. After a moment, realizing that I'm being watched, I glance over at the barman and see that he's eying me with suspicion.

  "You don't want my money?" I ask.

  "It's 8am," he replies. "Are you sure you wanna be -"

  "Yeah," I say firmly. "I'm sure."

  He smiles politely, but I know what he's thinking.

  "It's the only thing that works," I tell him, although I instantly realize that it was a dumb thing to say. I sound like one of those chronic alcoholics you see standing outside a liquor store, coming up with all kinds of excuses to explain their behavior, except that in my case it really is the only thing that works: I'd normally go and shoot the breeze with Dawson and come up with ideas while he talked, but he's probably sleeping off his heavy night and I figure my next best option is to just sit here, drink a few whiskeys, and hope that inspiration strikes me when I'm least expecting it.