The Husband (6 page)

12

M
itch was aware that a kind of madness, bred of desperation, had come over him. He could bear no more inaction.

With the long-handled lug wrench clutched in his right hand, he moved to the back of the garage where steep open stairs in the north corner led in a single straight flight to the loft.

By continuing to react instead of acting, by waiting docilely for the six-o’clock call—one hour and seven minutes away—he would be performing as the machine that the kidnappers wished him to be. But even Ferraris sometimes ended in junkyards.

Why Jason Osteen had stolen the dog and why he, of all people, had been shot dead as an example to Mitch were mysteries to which no solutions were at hand.

Intuition told him, however, that the kidnappers had known Jason would be linked with him and that this link would make the police suspicious of him.

They were weaving a web of circumstantial evidence that, were they to kill Holly, would force Mitch to trial for her murder and would elicit the death penalty from any jury.

Perhaps they were doing this only to make it impossible for him to turn to the authorities for help. Thus isolated, he would be more easily controlled.

Or, once he acquired the two million dollars by whatever scheme they presented to him, perhaps they had no intention of releasing his wife in return for the ransom. If they could use him to knock over a bank or some other institution by proxy, if they killed Holly after they got the money, and if they were clever enough to leave no traces of themselves, Mitch—and perhaps another fall guy that he had not yet met—might take the rap for every crime.

Alone, grieving, despised, imprisoned, he would never know who his enemies had been. He would be left to wonder why they had chosen him rather than another gardener or a mechanic, or a mason.

Although the desperation that drove him up the loft stairs had stripped away inhibiting fear, it had not robbed him of his reason. He didn’t race to the top, but climbed warily, the steel bar held by the pry end, the socket end ready as a club.

The wooden treads must have creaked or even groaned underfoot, but the chug of the Honda’s idling engine, echoing off the walls, masked the sounds of his ascent.

Walled on three sides, the loft lay open at the back.

A railing extended left from the top of the stairs and across the width of the garage.

In the three walls of the loft, windows admitted afternoon light into that higher space. Visible beyond the balusters—and looming above them—were stacks of cardboard boxes and other items for which the bungalow provided no storage.

The stored goods were arranged in rows, as low as four feet in some places, as high as seven in others. The aisles between were shadowy, and every end offered a blind turn.

At the top of the stairs, Mitch stood at the head of the first aisle. A pair of windows in the north wall directly admitted adequate light to assure him that no one crouched in any shallow niche among the boxes.

The second aisle proved darker than the first, although the intersecting passage at the end was brightened by unseen windows in the west wall, which faced the house. The light at the end would have silhouetted anyone standing boldly in the intervening space.

Because the boxes were not all the same size and were not in every instance stacked neatly, and because gaps existed here and there in the rows, nooks along each aisle offered places large enough for a man to hide.

Mitch had quietly ascended the stairs. The Honda below probably had not been running long enough to raise significant suspicion. Therefore, any sentinel stationed in the loft would be alert and listening, but most likely would not yet have realized the immediate need to be elusive.

The third aisle was brighter for having a window directly at the end of it. He checked out the fourth aisle, then the fifth and final, which lay along the south wall in the light of two dusty windows. He found no one.

The intersecting passage that paralleled the west wall, into which all the east-west aisles terminated, was the only length of the loft that he had not seen in its entirety. Every row of boxes hid a portion of that space.

Raising the lug wrench higher, he eased along the southernmost aisle, toward the front of the loft. He found that the entire length of the last passage was as deserted as the portions he had seen from the farther end of the building.

On the floor, however, against the end of a row of boxes, stood some equipment that should not be here.

More than half the stuff in the loft had belonged to Dorothy, Holly’s grandmother. She had collected ornaments and other decorative items for every major holiday.

At Christmas, she’d unpacked fifty or sixty ceramic snowmen of various kinds and sizes. She’d had more than a hundred ceramic Santa Clauses. Ceramic reindeer, Christmas trees, wreaths, ceramic bells and sleighs, groups of ceramic carolers, miniature ceramic houses that could be arranged to form a village.

The bungalow couldn’t accommodate Dorothy’s full collection for any holiday. She’d unpacked and set out as much as would fit.

Holly hadn’t wanted to sell any of the ceramics. She continued the tradition. Someday, she said, they would have a bigger house, and the full glory of each collection could be revealed.

Sleeping in hundreds of cardboard boxes were Valentine’s Day lovers, Easter bunnies and lambs and religious figures, July Fourth patriots, Halloween ghosts and black cats, Thanksgiving Pilgrims, and the legions of Christmas.

The gear on the floor in the final aisle was neither ceramic nor ornamental, nor festive. The electronic equipment included a receiver and a recorder, but he couldn’t identify the other three items.

They were plugged into a board of expansion receptacles, which was itself plugged into a nearby wall outlet. Indicator lights and LED readouts revealed the equipment to be engaged.

They had been maintaining surveillance of the house. Its rooms and phones were probably bugged.

Confident in his stealth, having seen no one in the loft, Mitch assumed, upon sight of the equipment, that it was not at the moment being monitored, that it must be set to automatic operation. Perhaps they could even access it and download it from a distance.

Simultaneously with that thought, the array of indicator lights changed patterns, and at least one of the LED displays began to keep a running count.

He heard a hissing distinct from the idling Honda in the garage below, and then the voice of Detective Taggart.

“I love these old neighborhoods. This was how southern California looked in its great years…”

Not just the rooms of the house but the front porch, too, had been bugged.

He knew that he had been outmaneuvered only an instant before he felt the muzzle of the handgun against the back of his neck.

13

A
lthough he flinched, Mitch did not attempt to turn toward the gunman or to swing the lug wrench. He would not be able to move fast enough to succeed.

During the past five hours, he had become acutely aware of his limitations, which counted as an achievement, considering that he had been raised to believe he had no limitations.

He might be the architect of his life, but he could no longer believe that he was the master of his fate.

“…before they cut down all the orange groves and built a wasteland of stucco tract houses.”

Behind him, the gunman said, “Drop the lug wrench. Don’t stoop to put it down. Just drop it.”

The voice was not that of the man on the phone. This one sounded younger than the other, not as cold, but with a disturbing deadpan delivery that flattened every word and gave them all the same weight.

Mitch dropped the club.

“…more convenient. But I happened to be in your neighborhood.”

Apparently using a remote control, the gunman switched off the recorder.

He said to Mitch, “You must want her cut to pieces and left to die, the way he promised.”

“No.”

“Maybe we made a mistake, choosing you. Maybe you’d be happy to be rid of her.”

“Don’t say that.”

Every word matter-of-fact, all with the same emotional value, which was no value at all: “A large life-insurance policy. Another woman. You could have reasons.”

“There’s nothing like that.”

“Perhaps you’d do a better job for us if, as compensation, we promised to kill her for you.”

“No. I love her. I do.”

“You pull another stunt like this one, she’s dead.”

“I understand.”

“Let’s go back the way you came.”

Mitch turned, and the gunman also turned, staying behind him.

As he began to retrace his steps along the final aisle, past the first of the southern windows, Mitch heard the lug wrench scrape against the boards as the gunman scooped it off the floor.

He could have pivoted, kicked, and hoped to catch the man as he rose from a quick stoop. He feared the maneuver would be anticipated.

Thus far, he had thought of these nameless men as professional criminals. They probably were that, but they were something else, too. He did not know what else they might be, but something worse.

Criminals, kidnappers, murderers. He could not imagine what might be worse than what he already knew them to be.

Following him along the aisle, the gunman said, “Get in the Honda. Go for a ride.”

“All right.”

“Wait for the call at six o’clock.”

“All right. I will.”

As they neared the end of the aisle, at the back of the loft, where they needed to turn left and cross the width of the garage to the steps in the northeast corner, something like luck intervened by way of a cord, a knot in the cord, a loop in the knot.

At the moment it happened, Mitch didn’t perceive the cause, only the effect. A tower of cardboard boxes collapsed. Some tumbled into the aisle, and one or two fell on the gunman.

According to stenciled legends on the cartons, they contained Halloween ceramics. Packed with more bubble wrap and shredded tissue paper than with decorative objects, the boxes were not heavy, but an avalanche of them almost knocked the gunman off his feet and sent him stumbling.

Mitch dodged one box and raised an arm to deflect another.

The falling first stack destabilized a second.

Mitch almost reached toward the gunman to steady him. But then he realized that any offer of support might be misinterpreted as an attack. To avoid being misunderstood—and shot—he stepped out of his enemy’s way.

The old dry wood of the railing at the back of the loft could safely accommodate anyone who leaned casually on it, but it proved too weak to endure the impact of the stumbling gunman. Balusters cracked, nails shrieked loose of their holes, and two butted lengths of the handrail separated at the joint.

The gunman cursed at the storm of boxes. He cried out in alarm as the railing sagged away from him.

He fell to the floor of the garage. The distance was not great, approximately eight feet, yet he landed with a terrible sound, and in a clatter of broken railing, and the gun went off.

14

F
rom the toppling of the first box to the concluding punctuation of the gunshot, only a few seconds had passed. Mitch stood in stunned disbelief longer than the event itself had taken to unfold.

Silence shocked him from paralysis. The silence below.

He hurried to the stairs, and under his feet the boards released a great thunder, as though they had stored it up from the storms that long ago had lashed the trees from which they had been milled.

As Mitch crossed the garage on the ground level, past the front of the truck, past the idling Honda, elation contested with despair for control of him. He did not know what he would find and therefore did not know what to feel.

The gunman lay facedown, head and shoulders under an overturned wheelbarrow. He must have slammed into one edge of the wheelbarrow, flipping it over and on top of himself.

An eight-foot fall should not have left him in such a profound stillness.

Breathing hard but not from physical exertion, Mitch righted the wheelbarrow, shoved it aside. Each breath brought him the scent of motor oil, of fresh grass clippings, and as he crouched beside the gunman, he detected the bitter pungency of gunfire, too, and then the sweetness of blood.

He turned the body over and saw the face clearly for the first time. The stranger was in his middle twenties, but he had the clear complexion of a preadolescent boy, jade-green eyes, thick lashes. He did not look like a man who could talk deadpan about mutilating and murdering a woman.

He had landed with his throat across the rolled metal edge of the wheelbarrow tray. The impact appeared to have crushed his larynx and collapsed his trachea.

His right forearm had broken, and his right hand, trapped under him, had reflexively fired the pistol. The index finger remained hooked through the trigger guard.

The bullet had penetrated just below the sternum, angled up and to the left. Minimal bleeding suggested a heart wound, instant death.

If the shot hadn’t killed him instantly, the collapsed airway would have killed him quickly.

This was too much luck to be just luck.

Whatever it was—luck or something better, luck or something worse—Mitch didn’t at first know whether it was a helpful or an unwelcome development.

The number of his enemies had been reduced by one. A tattered glee, frayed by the rough edge of vengeance, fluttered in him and might have teased out a torn and threadbare laugh if he had not also been at once aware that this death complicated his situation.

When this man did not report back to his associates, they would call him. When they could not raise him on the phone, they might come looking for him. If they found him dead, they would assume that Mitch had killed him, and soon thereafter Holly’s fingers would be taken off one by one, each stump flame-cauterized without benefit of an anesthetic.

Mitch hurried to the Honda and switched off the engine. He used the remote control to shut the garage door.

As shadows closed in, he switched on the lights.

The single shot might not have been heard. If it had been heard, he felt sure that it had not been recognized for what it was.

At this hour, neighbors would not be home from work. Some kids might have returned from school, but they would be listening to CDs or would be deep in an Xbox world, and the muffled shot would be perceived as another bit of music or game percussion.

Mitch returned to the body and stood looking down at it.

For a moment, he was not able to proceed. He knew what needed to be done, but he could not act.

He had lived for almost twenty-eight years without witnessing a death. Now he’d seen two men shot in the same day.

Thoughts of his own death pecked at him, and when he tried to repress them, they could not be caged. The susurration in his ears was only the sound of his rushing blood, driven by the oars of a sculling heart, but his imagination provided dark wings beating at the periphery of his mind’s eye.

Although he was squeamish about searching the corpse, necessity brought him to his knees beside it.

From a hand so warm that it seemed death might be a pretense, he removed the pistol. He put it in the nearby wheelbarrow.

If the right leg of the dead man’s khakis had not been pulled up in the fall, Mitch wouldn’t have seen the second weapon. The gunman carried the snub-nosed revolver in an ankle holster.

After putting the revolver with the pistol, Mitch considered the holster. He undid the Velcro closures, put the holster with the guns.

He dug through the pockets of the sports coat, turned out the pockets of the pants.

He discovered a set of keys—one for a car, three others—which he considered but then returned to the pocket where he’d found them. After a brief hesitation, he retrieved them and added them to the wheelbarrow.

He found nothing more of interest other than a wallet and a cell phone. The former would contain identification, and the latter might be programmed to speed-dial, among other numbers, each of the dead man’s collaborators.

If the phone rang, Mitch didn’t dare answer it. Even if he spoke in monosyllables and the man at the other end briefly mistook his voice for that of the dead man, he would give himself away by one slip or another.

He switched off the phone. They would be suspicious when they got voice mail, but they would not act precipitously on mere suspicion.

Restraining his curiosity, Mitch set the wallet and phone aside in the wheelbarrow. Other, more urgent tasks awaited him.