You're Next Page 17

  The multicolored jump rope lay on the asphalt, limp and snakelike.

  His shirt plastered to his body, he dashed over, spinning circles, shouting his daughter’s name. He crashed to his knees over the jump rope, hard ground tearing his jeans, and lowered his head.

  Through the cacophony in his brain, he thought he heard her voice, high and pure. Daddy?

  And then again, ‘Daddy!?’

  He turned. She was on a picnic bench at the edge of the quad, the nurse crouched before her, tending to a bloody knee.

  It couldn’t be true.

  He was running to her, but he wouldn’t believe it until he touched her.

  The nurse stood, startled, as he approached.

  ‘Hey, Dad – your knee’s cut up. Just like mine.’

  He gripped Kat’s arms, clutched her to him.

  ‘Ow. Dad. Dad. My knee. That hurts.’

  ‘How did this happen?’ he said.

  ‘Kids skin their knees on playgrounds,’ the nurse replied dryly.

  ‘No, there was a grown man who knocked her over.’

  ‘How did you see?’ Kat asked. ‘He was huge. He just kept walking. Didn’t say sorry or anything.’

  ‘We’re having some work done on the gymnasium,’ the nurse said. ‘I’m sure one of the workers accidentally—’

  Mike hurried Kat off the playground, through the stunned-silent front office, and around his crash-parked truck to the passenger door.

  Tires screeched as a vehicle barreled into them. Mike swept Kat behind him out of the way and met the lurching hood with a spread hand, Superman holding back a bullet train. The acrid scent of burning tire. The metal grille of a van, hot against his palm. Two feet more and he’d have been under the carriage.

  The color of the van – white – dawned slowly. With a slow-burning terror, Mike lifted his gaze to the windshield. William at the wheel, his pupils jittering, a slash of a grin breaking the sallow oval of his face. In the passenger seat, his eyes fixed on Mike, Dodge raised two forked fingers to his throat and jabbed them into the pale skin above his trachea.

  The engine revved, and Mike strong-armed Kat all the way up onto the curb. As the grille shoved forward, he rolled off the side, catching a glimpse of Dodge’s face, staring out at him, expressionless.

  ‘Holy crap, Dad, that guy almost killed us.’

  Hidden behind his back, Kat hadn’t registered who was driving.

  ‘Buckle in,’ he said. ‘We gotta go.’

  ‘It’s just a knee, Dad. I don’t have to go home.’

  ‘We’re gonna take the day off, honey.’

  ‘Is this more of what—’ ‘I need you to trust me right now. I’ll explain everything to you later.’

  He sped out of the parking lot, dialing home. Voice mail.

  In the mirror he watched Kat’s expression as she worked through her worries and moved on to other matters. ‘So today in class, Kyle Safranski wouldn’t be quiet during reading group, and he kept talking, and finally Bahar was like, “Shut up, Safartski!”’

  Redial. Voice mail. Hearing Annabel’s calm voice on the recording, he was hit with a flood of remorse for venting about her decision on the previous message – Goddamn it I knew we should’ve kept her out of school.

  ‘I got her,’ he said into the phone. ‘She’s okay. We’re coming home.’

  ‘Like Safranski, but with fart.’

  He scanned the road ahead, checked the mirrors, but the white van was long gone. ‘Yeah, I got that honey.’

  The image kept flashing in his mind: Dodge pressing two fingers into his neck, indenting the flesh, those shark eyes black and inscrutable. It was a prison sign, its meaning obvious: You are marked.

  He adjusted the rearview, checked the oncoming traffic. He couldn’t wait to get home, behind locked doors, calling in Shep, shoring up their defenses.

  ‘—spilled her grape juice all over Sage’s leg. Shouldn’t she?’

  He dug in the center console, reached back with the headphones. ‘Honey, do you want to watch a show?’

  ‘Out of school early and I get to watch Hannah Montana?’ She pulled the headphones on and settled back contentedly.

  His hands drummed the steering wheel at the stoplight. Finally he was turning onto their street, pulling in to their driveway. Annabel’s car was there in the garage. She must’ve just gotten home, was probably listening to his messages now.

  He waited for the garage door to close safely behind them, then turned to face Kat in the backseat. ‘You want to stay and watch till your show is over?’ He didn’t want her to get scared when he explained to Annabel.

  ‘What?’

  He leaned over, lifted a headphone away from her ear, and asked again. She nodded and slipped back into a TV-induced haze.

  He stepped out into the garage, wiping his palms on the thighs of his jeans, working out how to tell Annabel. The door from garage to kitchen swung open on well-greased hinges.

  He gulped in the scene at once, undigested.

  His wife’s purse and satchel bag, dumped on the kitchen counter beside the omelet pan. Way across on the family-room hearth, a man crouched, unaware, his bowed back facing Mike. A blood-streaked knife jittering in a fist at his side. A horrible wheezing from beyond. A pale feminine leg poking into view around the man’s left haunch, a familiar tan sandal strapped to the foot.

  Annabel, bleeding out on the family-room floor.

  Chapter 28

  Noises filtered through the shock.

  Annabel, wheezing. A ragged sound that seemed to come not from her mouth but directly from her body.

  The agitated murmur of the man’s voice. ‘Shit oh shit. Look what you made me do.’

  The faintest creak of the doorknob, clenched in Mike’s frozen fist.

  And then smells.

  Dish soap.

  Men’s deodorant.

  Cordite.

  Mike’s .357 lay in view, nestled in the carpet by the fireplace rocks. The man, facing away, was rocking slightly, agitated, cursing. Still, Mike couldn’t see Annabel’s head and upper torso. His angle was offset so he could make out only the faintest edge of the man’s profile. The guy’s cheek was raked open, fingernail gouges so deep they looked like claw marks. He was William and not William. The features seemed too even, the musculature too formidable. His arm looked to have been nicked by a bullet, a pencil-thick groove of skin bored from the curve of his biceps where presumably Annabel’s shot had skimmed him.

  Bunched on the floor to the side of them was, surreally, a plastic drop cloth. Mike’s spinning brain couldn’t yet attach meaning to it, couldn’t fasten onto the ramifications. He remained motionless a half step into the house, one hand still behind him on the doorknob, his hip a few inches off the kitchen counter, the handle of the omelet pan poking his forearm.

  The man fell to his knees, the jolt shuddering his shoulders, and Mike caught a glimpse of Annabel’s blanched face above his shoulder. Then the man shifted, and only her arm and hip were in view, her sleeveless shirt hiked up from her fall, bra strap misaligned. Ink gurgled from a slit in her left side, just below the ribs.

  ‘You couldn’t just listen and sit on the couch and wait for him to get here.’ At first it seemed the guy was whispering like a lover, but then Mike caught the tension – no, fear – in his voice. The man reached forward, working the bra strap like a rosary, his skin wet and shiny, stress popping out of his pores. ‘This is too messy, too messy. We were supposed to wait. I wasn’t supposed to . . . What am I gonna . . .? What am I gonna tell . . .?’ Eyes squeezed shut, he twisted his head back and forth, a child’s vehement no.

  In total, maybe three seconds had passed.

  Surreally, the silence was split by a Muzak version of ‘The Blue Danube.’ The man dug a shitty plastic phone from his pocket, the ringtone ceasing when he clicked to answer. ‘Hello?’

  His voice jarred Mike from his stunned suspension. Grabbing the protruding handle of the omelet pan, he closed the distance in fou
r or five massive strides and tomahawked the disk of stainless steel at the man’s head. The guy registered Mike’s footsteps late, his head craning around to look over his shoulder, his eyes flying open a second before impact. He emitted a terrified noise like a whinny.

  Mike caught him at the corner of his jaw with all his force, the momentum twisting his head back around his neck the wrong way, the brutal sound like the snap of a stick wrapped in wet cotton amplified ten times over. The guy toppled over, body hitting carpet as a single rigid piece and giving off a deadweight vibration.

  Sobs flashed across Annabel’s face – downturned lips, then normal, a strobelight of pain. Her mouth came open, but there was no sound. Air moved through the hole in her side. Mike clamped both hands over the wound. She pawed at his shoulder, missing, missing, and then hooked his neck. He leaned over, pressed his forehead to hers.

  Mike took her hand and firmed it over the wound. ‘Hold this. Hold this tight.’

  To her side lay her attacker, his eyes turned to glass, one boot obscenely touching her calf. His shitty cell phone, an untraceable throwaway model, lay on the carpet where he’d dropped it. Mike pulled back, Annabel’s fingers trying weakly to hold him there, and snatched the phone off the floor, remembering only now that there had been a live call going. The connection had been severed, and he wondered who had—

  —but then he was dialing 911, not giving a shit about alerts, which agency suspected him of what or how this would play, not giving a damn about anything except—

  ‘—an intruder stabbed her bleeding everywhere get someone here our address is—’

  —her fingers were loose over the hole, though the stream had stopped, and then he had his hands, wet with blood to the wrists, back on her and—

  Annabel rested a hand against his cheek. He was, he realized, choking back sobs, his breath seizing in his throat. With a groan she tilted her head to take in the blood slick that had robbed the carpet of its texture. ‘Oh, Jesus. This isn’t gonna . . . work.’ The words leaked out of her, breathy, hoarse. Her legs cycled against the floor, one sandal loose at the heel, the other kicked off.

  ‘Where’s Kat? Is she—’

  ‘She’s fine she’s okay I have her in the truck.’

  ‘I got your message. Sorry I . . . didn’t listen and keep her . . . home.’

  ‘It’s not your fault didn’t mean what I said not your fault.’

  Jesus, she’d listened to his message blaming her, the last words she’d heard before—

  ‘. . . said he was a cop,’ she murmured. ‘I thought he had news about Kat. Opened to check his badge—’

  ‘None of that matters you didn’t do anything wrong.’

  If he hadn’t left the message, she wouldn’t have been worried enough to open the door to someone who said he was—

  ‘Where’s my baby?’

  ‘The garage she’s in the garage.’

  ‘I don’t want her to see . . . to remember me like . . .’

  ‘It’s okay you’ll be okay don’t talk like—’

  ‘Get her away from . . . all of . . . Leave . . . with her . . . now. Promise me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you to the hospital and—’

  She grabbed his face in both hands, a burst of strength. ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I promise.’

  Her hands fell away from his face.

  She said, ‘I’m scared.’

  He was breathing hard, pressing uselessly. ‘It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.’

  ‘But I am scared.’

  He stilled. Looked at her. Held that gaze, those eyes. ‘I know,’ he said.

  She lay back, shuddered, and was motionless.

  Her lips were bluing already, or was it just a trick of the eye? His vision dotted; he reminded himself to breathe.

  Wrist. No pulse.

  Neck. No pulse.

  Chest. No pulse.

  His own heart seemed to halt in stunned sympathy. He heard a low, frustrated bellow – from his own mouth? – and then leaned over and vomited on the rug.

  No pulse.

  He squeezed her cheeks, her lips opening with a faint pop. Was it breathe breathe then push? Where the hell were the –

  The cheery three-note chime of the doorbell.

  He shoved himself up, sneakers losing their purchase on the bloody carpet, and sprinted around the corner to the entryway. Shards of glass gleamed on the floor tile; it took him a moment to piece them together as the empty vase that used to sit on the accent table. Ripped from the front door, the slide catch dangled from the end of the security chain. Both dead bolts remained unfastened. Annabel must have opened to the length of the chain – no peephole – and the man had kicked in the door, knocking down the table. She’d fled into the house, turned, and gotten off a shot. And then he’d stabbed her. Flying over the glass, Mike reconstructed the event with one part of his brain while the rest hummed with senseless panic.

  No pulse.

  He flung open the front door. A man with thick black hair and stubble so dense it looked as if his skin changed shade around his mouth and cheeks. Average height, compact build crammed into a rumpled suit. Deep wrinkles split his forehead like cracks. In the midst of the nightmarish chaos, those wrinkles were something Mike could fasten onto; they said this was all real.

  The man wiggled a badge in front of Mike’s nose. ‘Rick Graham.’

  ‘You’re not the ambulance where’s the ambulance?’

  ‘Dispatch sent a request. I was the closest responder—’

  Mike grabbed him, pulled him inside. ‘Help her in here do you know CPR?’

  Graham jogged back, keys jingling in his pants pocket. He came around the corner and drew up, grimacing at the dead man’s head, twisted around on his neck at that impossible angle. ‘Jesus, Mary, and—’

  Mike steered him down to a knee. ‘Here she needs . . . she needs—’

  As Graham checked her vitals, Mike glanced at the door to the garage. Kat out there, plugged into her TV show. He could see the light of the screen flashing on the windshield. He had to get this on some kind of footing before she—

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Graham stood, rubbing his hands together in what seemed a misplaced show of humility. A new network of lines knit that empathetic forehead. He was older than he’d appeared at first glance, maybe early fifties, with some gray threaded through his black hair and puckers at the edges of his lips. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘She’s not,’ Mike said. ‘She’s just got no pulse.’ Tears were gliding down his cheeks, but his breathing stayed smooth, not fitful – a statue draining through the eyes. If he didn’t move, if he didn’t breathe, it wouldn’t be true.

  ‘I’m sorry. You’re in shock. The paramedics’ll be here any minute to take care of you. But right now I need to know . . .’

  The voice faded off in Mike’s head, as if someone had lowered the volume. He looked down at Annabel, his stomach clutching. Her skin had gone dusky, her fingertips mottled gray tinged with mauve, like the edge of a bruise. The blood flow from the stab wound below her ribs had ceased, leaving a distinct black cigar-burn hole.

  Graham placed a hand on his elbow, shook him a little, and Mike heard his voice like a tinny echo. ‘Is anyone else here, sir? I need to know if anyone else is—’

  ‘My daughter. She’s . . .’

  Graham said, ‘I’d better safe the house.’

  It hadn’t occurred to Mike that there might be other intruders. Nothing had occurred to him.

  Graham drew a Glock from his hip holster and moved cautiously down the hall, out of view. Mike turned an agitated circle. His wife at his feet. His daughter in the garage, still mercifully unaware. He looked down at the blood smears marking his shirt, his hands, even the bulge of the dead man’s cell phone he’d shoved into his pocket. Kat couldn’t see this. She couldn’t find out by seeing him painted with her mother’s blood. He tore himself away from his wife’s side. Pulling off his shirt, he staggered to the kitchen sink, bla
sted his hands with hot water, running it up his forearms, scrubbing at his jeans, dripping everywhere. The swirling water, against the porcelain, was tinged salmon pink. A gym shirt was balled up on the phone table by the oven. He pulled it on, thrust open the curtains over the sink, but still there was no ambulance.

  Something seemed wrong with the view, but his overtaxed brain couldn’t lock on to what. It was the same view it had always been – stretch of curb, row of cypresses, Martins’ throwback porch. He glanced at the oven clock, realized that though an eternity had passed since he’d entered the house, less than six minutes had actually gone by.

  Rick Graham had arrived with impossible speed.

  It struck him, abruptly, what was wrong with that stretch of road in front of their house.

  No vehicle at the curb.

  Why would Rick Graham have parked out of view?

  Down the hall Mike heard a closet door thump open. He could have sworn that Graham was a cop; twelve years at Shady Lane had taught him to read that vibe. But the badge Graham had flashed – Mike couldn’t recall which agency it belonged to. He was about to shout back to ask when a chill froze the question in his mouth.

  He reached down to his pocket, withdrew the disposable cell phone he’d taken off the body. Phone book empty. Outgoing calls wiped. There was one incoming call, seven minutes ago, the one the guy had answered.

  Mike pressed “call back” with his thumb, a rim of crimson showing beneath the tip of his nail. The ringing came through the cell phone’s receiver. Once. Twice.

  And finally it was matched by a flat-toned version of ‘The Blue Danube’ from deep in the house.

  Rick Graham’s voice came in concert through the walls and in Mike’s ear. ‘Hello?’

  Graham had gone back there not to safe the house but to wipe out any witnesses.

  Mike looked longingly at the revolver lying beside Annabel’s waxy arm, but already Graham’s footsteps were headed back down the hall toward him. Mike moved swiftly to the rear door, throwing it open hard enough that it banged against the side of the house. The distant sound of sirens rode the breeze. He retreated and hid behind the kitchen island, peeking out as Graham bolted into the family room, lowering from his ear a cell phone – a match for the throwaway Mike had just dialed from.