I wonder if Hill had a maid.
The hall is short and opens at the end, where to the left, an arched doorway leads to the heart of the house. To my right, a set of stairs—as dust-free as every other surface I’ve seen so far—rises up and around behind me, running past the oval stained glass window above the door, and on to the second floor, the landing of which is overhead, and manned only by shadows.
It occurs to me that the sharp smell of polish and the immaculate cleanliness of the place don’t make the place seem homely, but preserved. The kind of smell you get in a museum, or anywhere else you go to look and admire, but not touch.
At this point, I should call out for Kyle, just in case he hasn’t heard me coming and does something rash because I’ve startled him, but there’s a noise now, coming from somewhere beyond the arch; a shuffling sound, barely noticeable over the thumping of my own heart in my ears. Papers, I’m guessing. That’s what it sounds like. The same sound the newspaper used to make when my father rustled it at the supper table. His way of telling us to shut up. For a few years I thought he was human only from the waist down, his upper half made of paper and black print.
I make my way into the darkness of the arch and on, into another short hallway, this one just as pristine as the last. There are windows to my right, and though the glass is regular, not stained, and clean, the morning sun seems to be straining to get through. On the opposite wall there are three doors, the middle one open. I cross to that side and poke my head in. It’s a bathroom: sink, toilet, bath, no shower, and it’s deserted.
The sound comes again, as if it’s meant to draw my attention, to direct me, and it’s coming from the room I’ve passed to get to the bathroom, the first door in the row from the arch.
My pulse quickens. Blunt pain taps at my right temple like an icepick. I go to the door, open it, half-expecting to feel a bullet rip through me before I get the chance to see who’s holding the weapon.
But no bullet comes, and there’s no weapon.
I’m in what I guess is the living room, and there’s a man sitting on a brown leather couch across from two matching armchairs. I guessed right, he’s reading a newspaper, but I don’t have to wait for him to lower it to know it isn’t my son.
“Took your time, Tom,” Cadaver says in a hoarse whisper, as he closes the newspaper, folds it in half and sets it on the arm of the couch. He looks at me, expression grim, and motions for me to sit in the armchair opposite him. For a moment I don’t comply, just watch as he retrieves his little microphone and jams it to his throat.
“Where’s my son?”
“Sit,” he commands. “This is how it’s supposed to go. So do what I say.” A sympathetic look crosses his ancient face. “Please.”
Oddly enough, there is no mockery in his tone. The plea is a sincere one, so I take the seat, feel myself sink into it. Might be comfortable if I wasn’t wired to the moon right now. “Where is he?”
Cadaver sits forward, one hand on his knee, the other holding the mike to his throat. “Upstairs,” he tells me.
I start to move.
“Wait.”
“What?” I’m already on my feet, impatient to be gone from this room.
“You ain’t ready to see him.”
“The hell I’m not.”
He gestures at the seat again. “Please. I ain’t fixin’ to keep you from seein’ him, but now’s not the right time. You need to listen first.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear what you have to say.”
“Maybe so, but it will help you.”
“And why would you want to help me?”
“I ain’t your enemy.”
“I seem to recall Hill said the same thing.”
“Hill was an idiot.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“Please…sit.”
I don’t move. Can’t. The door’s not that far away and I’m standing.
“Kyle ain’t goin’ nowhere, Tom. He’s restin’.”
Resting? Here? Of all the ways I imagined finding Kyle when I got here, taking a load off sure isn’t one of them. I can’t tell if Cadaver’s being straight with me. He managed to fool me for three years into thinking he was a harmless old man, and there’s not much hope I’ll be able to figure it out just by looking at him, so I do as he asks.
“Why is he here?”
“We made a bargain.”
“I know: a one-way ticket out of here, right?”
Can’t fault the kid for that. I don’t think I’ve met anyone in this town who didn’t dream of leaving it far behind them. But if that was what he got for his efforts, then why is he still here?
“That’s right.”
“In exchange for what?”
“I think you already know.”
I do, but I want him to say it, to bring the gavel down on what I’ve been told, and what I feel deep down in my gut.
“Tell me.”
“In exchange for you.”
There’s a glass-fronted bookcase behind the couch. In it I can see my reflection, but the gaunt overweight creature staring back at me with hollow eyes isn’t someone I recognize. I bring my gaze back to Cadaver. “My life for his escape?”
“I offered to bring back the woman he loved. I offered to bring back Flo and grant him safe passage from this town.”
“That’s quite an offer. I’m flattered you thought it would take so much for him to sell me out. He’d probably have done it for a six-pack.” I can’t keep the ugly tone from my voice.
“You don’t know your son very well, Sheriff.”
“Either do you, apparently.” I draw my fingers down my face. “So if he made the deal, how come I’m still breathing?”
“It interests me that you assume he did.”
“What?”
“Situations reversed, would you have accepted the terms?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong about that.”
“I want to see him.”
“I understand, but let me have a few more moments of your time.”
I also want a drink, but even though there’s a fancy decanter in view on one of the bookshelves, I’m not going for it. I don’t want to be drunk for whatever’s coming, and I don’t want anything Hill might have touched. So I wait, and listen, and picture Kyle in a room somewhere above my head, sleeping, unaware that his father’s downstairs, chatting with the devil.
Or whatever he is.
“Is this what you do for fun?” I ask.
He looks surprised, maybe even a little insulted. “Fun?” He scoffs. “Hell…I wish that were the case, Tom.”
“Then why?”
He scoots forward a little, an intense look on his face, one eye like a white marble, the other in shadow. “I don’t enjoy what I do anymore than you enjoy livin’ in your own skin when your spirit’s already shriveled up and died inside it. I do this because I have to, not because I want to.” He sits back, drums his fingers on the arm of the couch. “You want to know what I am. I can’t tell you that, and not because I ain’t allowed to, but because no one’s ever explained it to me. What I can tell you is what I used to be. It may surprise you.”
I shrug as if I couldn’t care less, but I’m interested. “A preacher?”
He grins and his cheeks vanish. “A salesman.”
“Let me guess—bibles.”
“You need to abandon the religious angle, Tom. I was a door-to-door carpet products salesman. Damned good one too. In my spare time I liked to paint. Still life’s mostly.”