"Jesus Christ."
"A nice set-up if you want to vanish somebody."
Lowell had said the same thing. "Why were you in?" He simply shrugged.
"Shut that damn window, Nick. How did you get out?"
"I wasn't crazy, just had a period when I drank too much and didn't handle it well. Made me talk to myself. But I wasn't on Harnes' shit list, or anybody else's for that matter. Not really. So they couldn't keep me in for long."
"But you dealt with Shanks."
"Oh, yes," Nick Crummler said, and the honed blade of indignation slid into his tone. "I dealt with him."
The foothills of High Ridge came into view, rising levels falling back farther and higher into the mountainside. Only when I passed the statue of the lonely revolutionary war hero did I realize I'd been on auto-pilot and heading toward Alice Conway's home the whole time.
Nick reached for the CD player, checked Pachelbel's "Canon and Other Baroque Favorites," and gave a satisfied grunt. "Good taste in music. You really know how to use those hand controls well."
"It didn't take long."
"Yeah," he said. "You can get used to almost anything."
Alice Conway's brooding house showed through behind the thick line of oak and hickory, that same single foreboding yellow light shining in the darkness. The chipped and rutted driveway tossed gravel up against the grille. Caught in the heaving wind, those rotting leaves spun wildly against the porch. The rain gutters on the east side of the house had torn loose completely and lay on the lawn along with piles of crumbled wooden shingles.
"Why are we here?" he asked.
"I think Teddy Harnes might still be alive and hiding inside."
"I never did buy that cutting the face off thing. There has to be a reason for it." He changed tracks on the CD until he came to Vivaldi's "Concerto in C major: Minuet.”“Harnes is out of his mind, so it makes sense his kid might be, too. Okay, so you think the ME is in on it, too?"
"No, but he may have been duped, and the sheriff didn't ask many questions."
"No reason why he should, when you think about it. So who's the corpse then?"
"I have no idea. A friend he double-crossed. Somebody helping him out until things fell through."
"Doesn't sound like you really believe it."
“I don't."
"Well, you know how to play the string out anyway. Why here? This his girlfriend's house?"
"Yes."
We stepped up on the porch; the stairs creaked loudly beneath me but remained silent under Nick Crummler. I thought I saw a blur of activity in the living room, like someone dropping back out of sight. Nick kept so low beside me that when I turned it took me a moment to spot him, hunkered below my shoulder. His coat snapped in the wind and he seemed at complete ease, as if nothing ever fell outside the reach of his own experiences.
I put my hand out to knock on the door, and he grabbed my wrist and held me in a rigid, impressive grip. Everybody was doing that to me lately and everybody was a hell of a lot stronger than me, too.
I said, "What?"
"You didn't hear that?"
"No, I didn't hear-"
"Shhh."
"What?"
"Shhhh."
It took a few seconds to focus past the rain pummeling the porch roof and the rustling of overgrown brush pressing hard against the railings. I stepped closer to the front door and heard a soft but anguished groaning. I thought of Alice Conway's look of desperation as she attempted to talk to Harries tonight, and could clearly see her being forced to choose sides: Teddy hiding in the house, arguing with her, Frost fighting and beating him, and Alice going to Harnes to tell him that his son had escaped his influence and was still alive.
"I'll go around back," Nick said, reminding me how much like a cop he sometimes acted. I nodded at nothing-he'd already slipped away into the storm. I waited a minute but the groaning became louder, more intense, until I was sure Frost was killing Teddy this very moment. I tried the door and found it locked, but the wood of the jamb was so rotted that all I had to do was lean heavily on the knob and the door popped open. Splinters shot against my legs.
I stepped into the foyer and the harsh sharp stink of blood smacked me in the face like it had been hurled from a bucket. I moved toward the living room. Moonlight sporadically cut through the windows and sliced the house apart into the great black-and-white slats. Dark clouds frothed and the front rooms filled with silhouettes, curling black shapes, and gray murkiness.
Brian Frost lay in the center of the floor, tied to an overturned chair. Frost's face had been pulped, his teeth broken, and his nose so shattered that it leaned too far to the left and the right at the same time. Blood hung from his eyes and ears. He tried blinking at me but couldn't quite do it. It looked like I'd interrupted somebody from doing the same thing to Frost as had been done to the guy in the cemetery, except this time there'd been no shovel handy. I kneeled beside him and rested a hand on his chest as he gurgled his pain. Despite it all his breathing remained slow and regular.
I faded backward to the wall, listening for Nick and whoever had done this. A creak from a kitchen floorboard caused my ears to prick up. I sniffed, but didn't smell the hors d'ouevres. It wasn't Nick. I hadn't heard a door or window open, so he might still be outside.
Another footstep. The house was cold and damp and the rafters groaned and the house shifted mightily with parts of the roof tapping and ringing like a kettle drum. I didn't know what kind of play to make. Frost probably wasn't in any real danger from dying of his wounds, but I didn't want to leave the kid lying in a ring of his own drying blood like that.
I progressed through the living room. From what I remembered there was hardly any furniture to worry about tripping over. Moonlight kept throwing my vision off, one moment lighting the room and ruining my night-sight, the next casting the place back into total blackness. Another footstep, somewhere behind me. I thought I'd take a lesson from Nick and hunker down, holding my breath, hoping not to misstep on a bad spot on the floor and give away my position. It worried me that he didn't care about the creaking; it meant that I didn't worry him.
He was moving around from the kitchen to the dining room, maybe trying for the foyer or heading for the back door. Could he see Nick waiting for him back there? Would he circle right into me? Bottled, he'd have to either head upstairs or make a launch for the front door. Was it Teddy Harnes? Or somebody looking for Teddy? And might Teddy still be in the house?
My cell phone rang.
Behind me, Freddy Shanks, my old pal Sparky, said, "Now that was goddamn stupid."
I agreed with him as the phone tweeted again and I spun, and a blackjack with one edge of its leather covering showing glinting metal beneath from so much continuous wear struck me low on the back of the skull, his exposed tooth shining with that ragged lip raised in a blissful snarl, his laughter loud in my head stuffed alongside the sudden black agony and knowledge that I deserved this for being so goddamn stupid.
ELEVEN
I staggered and scrambled and he hit me some more, moonlight flashing off his tooth and sick eyes, as he struck down with splitting, glancing blows again and again, on my crown and just over the top of my right ear. He liked to toy with his mark, taking his time to inflict the most damage. Shanks had mastered his technique in the rooms of Panecraft, using the sap for maximum pain but without allowing me to pass out. His shadow spun around me, the blackjack gliding in first from one side and then the other.