Night Work (27 page)

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, felt my throat almost closing from the pure physical thirst. As I tried to swallow, I would have gladly traded all the air in the room for one glass of water.

With ice in it.

Or orange juice. Yes, a tall glass of orange juice. I don’t even need a splash of vodka.

Okay, enough. Don’t torture yourself. Focus on the next minute here, and what you have to do to make it to the one after that.

Either Maurice comes to get me out of here, or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, then somebody else has to find me. Preferably while I’m still alive.

Nobody knows I’m here, is the problem. Howie might be able to figure it out, if he looks at my list and sees where I’ve been these past few days.

Wait a minute. I only gave him the names of the clients I couldn’t find, so he could try to track those down for me. I didn’t give him the other names. So he has to find my master list…

Which is sitting on the passenger seat of my car.

I reached down and felt for my car keys. They were gone, along with my watch and my cell phone. Meaning that Maurice had probably moved my car into the barn, where nobody would see it. So that even if somebody happened to come up the driveway, looking for me …

“No,” I said, with what was left of my voice. Nothing more than a coarse whisper now. “No, please. Come on.”

I pounded on the door again until my hands felt numb. Then I slid back down with my back against the door. I drifted in and out of a haze for a few more minutes. Or hours. I opened my eyes when I thought I heard the sound of footsteps.

There was a thin line of light around the door now. I sat up and put my face close against it, looking for one slight crack where I might get a glimpse of the outside world. I kept listening, but there was nothing more than my own heartbeat.

“Hello,” I said, my voice like a faraway thing. Something totally alien to me. “Is somebody out there?”

Nothing.

“Hello.”

I sat back down, still listening. As the light grew stronger, I finally started to see the space I was in. The walls gained their features. The ceiling appeared above me. I saw the dirt on the floor, the spiderwebs in the far corners.

Then, finally, I began to see the writing.

Scratched into the metal wall across from me, in letters a foot tall … FUCK YOU AND DIE. Then more words above and below that, on the other walls, even on the ceiling. Every obscene word in the language. Every form of violence and pain imaginable. SUICIDE. KILL ME. CUT OUT THEIR EYES AND FEED THEM TO THE DOGS.

Then the pictures. The crude drawings of sex and death and torture. Every inch of exposed metal covered with them. These hieroglyphics of madness.

I ran my finger along one of the letters, feeling where someone had pressed hard and gouged the line with something sharp. A knife, maybe, or a screwdriver.

Someone else has been here. The first obvious thought. Then the next … Someone else spent a lot of time here, enough time to do all this.

Brian Gayle. My client. The kid I was trying to set straight. If this was him, then I never had a chance to help him.

Then the next thoughts, the kind of thoughts you feel all the way down into your guts …

Who are these people? What kind of place is this?

And for the love of God, no wonder Brian tried so hard to burn the whole thing down.

I was still trying to make sense of it when a bright shaft of light burst into the room. I put my hands up against the assault. Squinting and blinking, I made out what looked to be a small door in one of the side walls. I hadn’t seen it before.

There was a movement, and something obscured the light for a moment. Something silver, coming through the opening. It was a bucket, suspended at the handle by a man’s hand.

“Maurice,” I said, “is that you?”

As I moved toward the door, the bucket was lowered to the floor of the shed.

“Maurice, you’ve gotta let me out of here.”

The hand withdrew, and for one instant I saw his
face in the bright light, backlit like the whole thing was some kind of angelic apparition.

“Come on,” I said. “Open the other door.”

His eyes met mine for less than a second. Then he slammed the door shut again. I could hear the click of the padlock on the outside.

“No, Maurice!” I said, pounding on the small door. “Come on, talk to me!”

I pressed my ear to the wall and listened.

“I know you’re still there,” I said. “You have to talk to me, Maurice. Tell me what the hell’s going on here.”

A long silence.

“Why am I in this thing? Just tell me.”

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “It’s just business.”

“What do you mean, it’s just business? What are you talking about?”

I heard his footsteps then.

“Maurice!” I yelled, my ear still pressed to the hot metal. “Get me out of here!”

“Just sit tight, Joe.” His words growing fainter as he walked away. “This will be over soon.”

I scrambled over to the main door, nearly knocking over the bucket. I caught it just in time to splash water onto my pants. As I looked down at what was left, I forgot everything else in the world for a moment. I put my head into the bucket and tasted the water. It was cold. I plunged my face in and drank as much as I could until I was starting to strangle myself on the edge of the bucket. Then I lifted the bucket and poured another pint or so into my mouth. No cold beer, no fruity rum cocktail, no lemonade on a hot day ever tasted as good as that water did.

When I was done I put the bucket down and rubbed my face with my wet hands. I took a few long breaths and then looked around the place, my eyes adjusting to the semidarkness again after the sudden burst of light. I felt along the edge of the little side door. It looked like someone had cut it with a hacksaw and then hinged it from the outside. I tried to get a good angle so I could kick it, but the door was too strong. Not that I could have fit through the opening anyway.

I stood up and banged my head on the ceiling. It was a few inches too low for me. The least of my problems, but still it was annoying to have to bend to walk around. I went back to the main door and gave that a few kicks. It was hard to get much leverage on it. When I had thrown myself around the shed a few more times, I sat back down in the dirt.

“Okay, now what?” I said. I went through all the possibilities again. The odds that Howie would know to go through my files and reconstruct my list, and then that he’d come out here and somehow find me even though my car was in the barn.

Or the odds that Shea and Rhinehart would simply assume that I had felt them closing in on me and that I had run away. Just another guilty man running from the law.

“I think you’re officially out of luck,” I said. I could feel the shed getting hotter now that the sun was up. Another long day cooking in this thing, either starving to death or running out of water and dying of thirst. Whichever came first. That’s what I had to look forward to.

Or hell, maybe the silence would kill me first. I spent so much time playing music, the louder the better, just to keep myself out of my own head. Now I had no choice but to just sit here with my own company. My own thoughts and my own memories.

Yeah, that’s great, I thought. Never mind all this crazy stuff scratched into the walls. A few more hours
of this and I’ll really be able to show them some insanity.

I leaned back against the door and closed my eyes.

I
drifted in and out of a feverish haze, as the sun turned the shed into a radiator. I could feel it through my back as the sweat dripped down my face. Moisture from my body that I couldn’t afford to lose.

I drank the rest of the water. Somewhere in the back of my mind, an article I had read, long ago. When you’re stranded and you don’t have much water left, just go ahead and drink it. It’s better to store it inside you than anywhere else.

With my thirst held at bay for a while, my hunger took over the show. That was the devil that was growing stronger in my body now. A cheeseburger, I thought. That would be perfect. With onion rings. When’s the last time I even had onion rings? Or pancakes? Or a slice of homemade apple pie?

I started seeing things, shapes moving in the corner of my eye. Or hell, maybe it was mice. I found myself fantasizing about becoming one of them, making myself small enough to fit through a hole no bigger than my thumb. Dig right out of here and run away to freedom. Even if I had to stay a mouse for the rest of my life. I’d take it.

The hot air kept oppressing me, suffocating me. I sat there with my hand against the bottom of the bucket, the last cool spot in the world until finally that too was glowing with heat. It felt like the life
force was literally draining from my body, melting from the inside out and pouring down my face with the sweat.

Then the side door opened again. There was another blast of intense light as Maurice poked his head inside to look at me. I looked at him without moving, without saying a word. I didn’t have the strength.

“You still alive in here?” he said.

I blinked slowly.

“She sent some food out this time. I guess she doesn’t want you to starve.”

Food. The word gave me the will to move. I pushed myself forward, crawling through the dirt.

“I’ve got some more water, too,” he said. “You’re probably sweating a little bit in there.”

You’re probably sweating a little bit in there, I thought. He said that. To a man sitting inside a blast furnace he actually said those words.

“Here,” he said. He passed in a gallon jug of water. I took the top off and drank until I was almost choking on it.

“And this.” He threw in a paper lunch bag. I reached into it and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

“It’s peanut butter and jelly,” he said. “It’s like the only thing she knows how to make. She’s a terrible cook, I have to say.”

I unwrapped the sandwich and took a huge bite of it. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but it was suddenly
my favorite food in the world. I could almost feel the protein in the peanut butter giving me strength, like Popeye and his spinach. The sweet grape jelly on top of that made the whole thing perfect.

He stood there and watched me eat for a while. When I’d finished off the first sandwich, I reached into the bag and pulled out the second.

“Okay,” I said. I kept eating as I talked. “Tell me what’s going on here.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Those women who were killed,” I said. “Marlene … Sandra …”

Don’t say Laurel, I thought to myself. If you say her name out loud you will completely lose control of yourself.

“That real estate woman,” I said. “All of them. Does this mean … Does this mean it was
you
?”

Nothing from him. He was a statue.

“Tell me,” I said. “Just tell me.”

“You’re not gonna get any of this, Joe.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not going to understand.”

“Try me. You’d be surprised.”

“You carry a badge. I know you’re supposed to be Mr. Understanding and all that. But you carry a badge.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” I said. Time for a new angle. “That makes this pretty serious, you realize.”

He smiled and shook his head.

“They know where I am,” I said. “They’ll be coming for me.”

“They don’t know.”

“They do. I swear. If you let me out, I’ll help you.”

“I know for a fact that they don’t know where you are, Joe. I was at the gym today. Those men were there.”

“The BCI guys? Who cares about them? I’m talking about my friend Howie. You know he’s a Kingston detective. I’m surprised he’s not here already.”

“Nice try, Joe. It’s not gonna work.”

I crumpled up the wax paper with both hands. I wanted so much to reach through the little door and to grab him by the neck. Just get out of here first, I thought. Just get out of here and then you can worry about the rest of it.

“Maurice,” I said. “You know this is crazy, right? You can’t keep me in here.”

“Not forever, no.”

“Mrs. Gayle’s son … He spent time in here, right?”

“Brian? Yeah, he sure did. When his father put him in here, she’d send him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, too.”

“You know the family, I take it? I mean, the fact that you’re here …”

“I’ve been here a while, yeah. I live here.”

“What do you mean you live here? All the times I came out here to see Brian, I never once saw you.”

“There’s a little house out back. That’s where I stay. I’m the caretaker.”

“That tattoo on your arm …”

“Is Agnes, yes. My angel. I owe her everything. She’s the one who saved me.”

“Saved you from what?”

“From what I would have become if she hadn’t taken me in. I know you know all about kids in trouble, Joe. That’s your job. Although I doubt you ever had somebody like me.”

“And now …” And now you kill women in your spare time. I couldn’t say it.

“And now I know how to take care of business.”

“This ‘business’ you take care of,” I said. “If it’s about me … I mean, if Mrs. Gayle is mad at me because of what happened to her son … These women…”

Do not say it, Joe. Do not say it.

“If it’s about me, then why don’t you just come after me and get it over with? These women that I don’t even know …”

Do not say her name. Do not think of her. Do not picture her face in your mind or you will fly into a thousand pieces.

“The last one,” I said. “The real estate woman, who I talked to for three minutes, whose name I cannot for the life of me even remember right now …”

Easy, Joe. God damn it, get a grip on yourself.

“I told you,” he said. “You don’t get it.”

“So explain it to me.”

“Maybe Agnes will.”

“Fine. Let me talk to her.”

“You’re not going to talk her out of this, if that’s what you’re thinking. I can guarantee you that.”

“I just want to talk to her, okay? Can you get her for me?”

“I think she’s occupied at the moment,” he said. “But don’t worry. You’ll be seeing her soon enough.”