A Tap on the Window (33 page)

After a week had gone by, Phyllis and Richard knew they had a real problem on their hands.

They’d waited too long to call for help. How were they going to explain their actions? Letting a man fall down a full flight of stairs and not calling for help? It was a bit late to start claiming self-defense. If what Richard had done had been to save his mother’s life, they could have called the police that night. After all, as a spanking-new police officer, Richard would have a pretty good idea what constituted self-defense.

But they didn’t.

And while Harry Pearce was a little groggier than he used to be, every time Richard descended those stairs to see how his father was coming along, the man would raise one arm weakly, point at him, and say, “You. You son of a bitch.”

Meaning that pretty damn literally.

Getting him medical attention now posed a considerable risk to Phyllis and her son, but particularly to him.

And at work, people continued to ask, “How’s Harry? Where the hell is he? When’s he coming back?”

“What are we going to do?” Richard asked one night as the two of them sat at the kitchen table, listening to Harry snoring downstairs.

“I don’t know,” his mother said.

“People are going to keep asking and asking where Dad is,” he said.

“We have to stop them from asking,” she said. “This needs to end, somehow.”

Richard leaned back in his chair. “What are you saying? You’re not thinking we should—”

“No, no, of course not. But everyone needs to think something has happened, something permanent, so they won’t be asking where he is anymore.”

“Like, maybe he went to see his cousin,” Richard said. “In Calgary.”

Phyllis shook her head. “People would keep asking when he was coming back. No, we need to tell a story that will stop people from asking questions once and for all.” Her mouth tightened. “I went to the library today. I found out something interesting. I found that over the years, quite a few people who’ve fallen into the river accidentally and gone over the falls—some of them were never found.”

“Wait,” Richard said. “I thought you just said you weren’t saying we’d do anything like that. We’re not going to send him over the falls. We can’t . . . I mean, he’s my father. Okay, not my real father, but that’s what he’s been to me for a hell of a long time.”

She reached out and held his hand. “I know that. But I was thinking, if we could make people think he went over the falls, then we can just keep looking after him. Right here.”

“For how long?”

“As long as we have to.”

“But he might . . . what if he actually gets better? Well enough to, you know, walk up those stairs and out the door?”

“Richard, he’s not going to get better. His spine is broken. Something’s happened to his head, too. He’s gone a bit simple. He’s not even obsessed with things the way he used to be, other than still writing down what he eats in that stupid book. I’m telling you, he’s not going to get up and walk out of the house one day and tell everybody what happened to him.”

They came up with the boat idea. That Harry got drunk one night, decided to take his boat out into the river. They’d leave his car and trailer at the river’s edge. Leave the oars in the car so later, when the boat, and its empty tank of gas, was found downstream from the falls, the authorities would be able to put it together. They’d search for his body, maybe for a few days, before they gave up.

And that’s what they did.

There was an article in the paper, an item on each of the local stations. CNN even picked up the story. There was a funeral, even though there was no corpse to bury. Phyllis wept. Richard held her and consoled her.

A lot of attention for ten days or so.

And then everyone moved on. No more questions about what was up with Harry.

Richard got his own apartment soon after. He couldn’t bear to be in the house twenty-four/seven. But he returned nearly every day at some point—usually before or after his shift—to check on his stepfather. Brought him meals, helped with his toileting needs, cleaned up after him, found books and magazines for him to read, but mostly magazines, since Harry found it hard to concentrate on books.

Everything seemed to be going along okay.

Until one day Phyllis came home late one night after closing down Patchett’s, and there, ten feet from the door, dragging himself across the living room carpet, was Harry.

Nearly gave her a heart attack.

Another twenty minutes and he’d have been on the front porch. Another ten after that, and he’d have crawled down to the sidewalk, where anyone might have seen him.

From that day forward, a lock went on the door of his room in the basement.

You had to do what you had to do.

“What happens,” Richard asked once, “when he really does . . . you know, pass away?”

It was something Phyllis had definitely thought about.

“We’ll take him out into the woods,” she said, “and dig a nice hole for him and cover him up, and we’ll have our own little private funeral for him. That’s what we’ll do.”

But today, after seven years, Phyllis has determined that process may have to be sped up a bit.

Because it’s only a matter of time before someone starts putting things together, comes to the house armed with a search warrant, finds Harry down in that room.

Now, it’s all about getting rid of the evidence.

Harry is the evidence.

If the police show up, claiming to have been told some cockamamie story about keeping Harry in the basement, she can say, “What are you talking about? Go down there, have a look. That’s just crazy talk.”

The only one who’s seen him down there is Dennis. And Dennis will have told Claire. The good news is, Richard has taken care of both of them. The only things left to worry about now are that detective, and the book.

Phyllis is betting he has the book. If she can take care of both those matters at once, she might find a way to get out from under all this. For herself, and for her son.

Soon, she’ll put in a call to Cal Weaver. But not just yet. There are more immediate concerns.

“What are all these boxes?” Harry asks when she wheels him out of his room and past the washer and dryer.

“I’m moving you upstairs,” she says. “With you out of the basement, I can store some more stuff in there.”

“Where? What are you talking about?”

“I thought I’d give you Richard’s room. It’s been empty a long time. You’ll have a window and a view and a fresh breeze when you want it.”

“I don’t know what to say— Really?”

“You wait here for a few minutes while I deal with your old room.”

“I won’t be going back in there?”

“I can promise you, Harry, you won’t be sleeping another night in there.”

She feels something catch in her throat. She goes into the room with a garbage bag, stuffs it with anything that says “Harry.” Clothes, adult diapers, scraps of food, a bag of cookies, used tissues, bedding.

She forces the rollaway back together, pushes it into a corner of the room, piles some boxes in front of it. Brings in a few more boxes that she’s been storing in other rooms. Sprays some air freshener, takes a sniff, concludes that it’s not that bad. Working feverishly it takes her the better part of twenty minutes to do it all, but she is a strong woman. Attributes it to years of lugging cases of beer.

“Okay, we’re good to go,” she says, closing the door and locking it, more out of habit than anything else.

“I’m going to need help on the stairs,” he says.

He wheels the chair up to the bottom step. Phyllis gets her hands under his arms, lifts. He grabs onto the railing with his right hand, and with Phyllis on his left, he manages to get to the kitchen. He crawls onto the floor and stays there while Phyllis runs back down, folds up the wheelchair, and brings it up one flight.

“That’s a new fridge,” Harry says, scanning the kitchen.

Had to grind up sleeping pills and put them in his food the day they replaced the old refrigerator when it conked out. At least that was upstairs. That time the furnace went out in the basement, she not only drugged Harry, she tied him down to the bed and taped his mouth, just in case he woke up, which, thank the Lord, he didn’t. When the washing machine broke down, she got Richard to research it on the Internet and fix it himself. Still leaked a bit, but it did the job.

Phyllis gets him back into his chair, steers him toward the back door. “Aren’t we going out the front?” he asks.

“It’s easier to get you into the car this way,” she says.

She realizes, as she grips the handles of the wheelchair, that her hands are shaking. She gets ahead of the wheelchair, opens the door, then gets around behind him again and pushes the chair outside. Phyllis tips the chair back slightly to ease it down the two steps.

The car is there, backed right up to the bottom step. The trunk is open.

Harry says, “Why you got all that plastic lining the trunk, Phyllis?”

It has a low lip, this trunk. Phyllis tips Harry forward, like she’s emptying a wheelbarrow. The top half of his body falls in. He throws his hands forward, trying to brace himself.

“The hell are you doing, Phyllis? Damn, I hit my head.”

“Sorry, honey,” she says. “Can’t have anyone seeing you on the way to Baskin-Robbins.”

“For Christ’s sake, I can scrunch down in the seat!”

She tips the lower half of his body into the car, pulls the chair away, folds it, and puts it into the backseat of the sedan.

“Phyllis! Get me the hell out of here!”

“One second,” she says, and runs back into the house, opens the kitchen drawer where she keeps her knives.

“I’ve been good to him,” she tells herself, her eyes starting to fill with tears. “I’ve done the best I can.”

Phyllis grabs the knife she always uses to carve the Christmas turkey and runs back outside
.

SIXTY-THREE

“Phyllis
must have moved him,” I said to Augie. “She had to know we were coming, so she got him out of here.”

“This is insane,” Augie said.

I shifted some boxes around. “I think this stuff was just moved in here. There’s no dust on the floor around the boxes. And—hang on. There’s half a sandwich down there, and the bread’s not moldy. Would you come eat a sandwich in this room if you didn’t have to?”

“I can barely breathe,” my brother-in-law said. “Wait a second.” He left the room.

“What?” I said.

“Marks on the floor,” he said. “Like something was wheeled through here. Went through some water on the floor, leaking out from under the washing machine . . .”

“A wheelchair,” I said.

“Maybe.”

“I’m not making this shit up,” I said.

“Let’s go back up,” he said. We rendezvoused in the kitchen. “Think Phyllis drives a Crown Vic. Tan-colored one. Looks sort of like a cop car without the bells and whistles.”

He got out his phone, told the Griffon police dispatcher to have everyone looking for Phyllis Pearce’s car. “Try Patchett’s first. If you see it, don’t do anything. Just let me know.”

He put the phone away and said, “We might as well head over there anyway.”

“I need to talk to you about this other thing.”

Augie pulled back a kitchen chair and plopped himself down. He gestured for me to do the same, and I did.

“Go ahead,” he said wearily.

“I think Ricky Haines killed Scott.”

I’d found, over the years, it was nearly impossible to shock Augustus Perry. Provoke, yes, but not shock. Even if you managed to say something that surprised him, he’d do his best to remain stone-faced.

He wasn’t able to hide his reaction this time.

“What?” he bellowed. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Haines was searching Claire Sanders out back of Patchett’s one night. Used it as an excuse to give her one hell of a patdown. Scott saw it happen, threatened to report Haines—maybe to you—for assault. Every time he saw Haines around town, he referred to him as a pervert. Haines had it in for him.”

“Come on,” Augie said. “Maybe Claire’s making it up.”

“Scott actually told us this story, although he never said which cop it was. Looks like Scott was a constant thorn in Haines’ side. One night, Haines had a chance to deal with it.”

Augie was slowly shaking his head. “I still don’t buy it.”

“You think it’s just a coincidence that the night Scott goes off the roof of Ravelson Furniture, it just happens to be Haines who finds him? Haines wasn’t answering a call. It wasn’t someone else who found Scott. Haines found him. And then came to our door with the news. Something else that’s bothered me. Haines must have known you were Scott’s uncle. You’d think, if you’ve just found the body of your own chief’s nephew, that you might put in a call to him. Maybe even bring him in to break the news to the family. But he didn’t want to bring you in. Probably too rattled to do that.”

“Jesus,” Augie said.

“I might not have believed it before,” I said, “but now I know what Ricky Haines is capable of. I think he murdered Hanna Rodomski. I know he murdered Dennis Mullavey, and tried to kill me and Claire. He planted tracking devices in my car so he could follow me to where Dennis and Claire had been hiding out. He wasn’t expecting me to get picked up for threatening the Tapscott kid. He even offered to call my lawyer for me. He needed me free, to lead him to Claire and Dennis.”

Augie winced. “It was Ricky who told me you were in custody. Just before I came and lied my ass off for you.”

“He and his mother have been keeping a prisoner in this house for seven years. You telling me someone capable of all that couldn’t have thrown my son off that roof?”

That left him with nothing to say. I watched his cheeks grow red. “The bastard,” he said finally. “Why the hell didn’t Claire Sanders come forward?”

“Seriously? With all the shit going down between you and her father? She figured she didn’t need any part of that. She said if she’d reported it, you’d just say her father put her up to it to make you look bad.”

He sighed. “Shit.” He pushed the chair back and stood. “We’ve got to get Haines and his mother, bring them both in, sort all of this out. Believe me, if that fucker killed Scott . . .” Augie made a fist at his side. “I loved him, too, you know. He’s my sister’s boy.”

“I know,” I said.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this. I swear to God.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I intend to.”

“Let’s go find them,” he said, and started for the door.

My cell rang. I grabbed it from my jacket pocket, saw that it was home calling.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi,” Donna said. Her voice was flat, lacking animation.

“What’s going on?”

“I need you to come home.”

“I’m kind of—I’m with Augie, and we’re right in the middle of something.”

“Still, I need you to come home,” she said. “I’ve got a visitor.”

“A visitor? Donna, just tell me what’s going on and—”

I heard the phone being jostled, then a different voice came on the line. “Mr. Weaver? Phyllis Pearce here. We have some things we need to discuss. You’re going to help me out, because if you don’t, it’s going to be your fault what happens to your wife.”