Strong 03 - Twice (38 page)

The more he thought about it, Maura Hodge’s residence was probably the last place Annabelle would go. Sitting, freezing his ass, he’d recalled the conversation he’d had with Chief Clay, how the old man had told him the cops wouldn’t go near the Ross home, how they thought it was haunted. He thought of the old house, sitting gated and avoided by the police, and wondered if maybe, were he Annabelle Hodge, it might not be a half-bad place to hide temporarily.

Ford had never heard such silence. Maybe if it had been summer there would have been crickets singing or something. But as he pulled the car onto the side of the road across from the gate leading to the Ross estate and killed the engine, the silence was so loud it felt like a presence. He looked longingly at his cell phone. He even had one of those things that you plug into the cigarette lighter to power it. Malone had given him one after the last time his phone had died. But he’d never used it. It sat still in its stiff plastic packaging in his desk. It just seemed so self-important to have a cell phone, to be so
concerned about it and who might be calling you or who you should be calling that you’d have a little rig in your car. But it didn’t seem quite as foolish right now.

He got out of the car and shut the door. Even though he’d tried to do it quietly, the click of the door closing and the crunching gravel beneath his feet seemed to echo through the night. He crossed the street and stood before the gate, noting that it was unlocked and, in fact, ajar. He pushed it open and it emitted a long, slow screech.

As he walked up the long narrow drive, the house rose out of the trees. As he grew closer, he saw that it was completely dark, no sign of life or movement. But he drew his gun anyway. Something about it, its black windows and towering copulas, its shutters hanging askew, its sagging eaves, the great dead oak beside it communicated menace to him. The house seemed to be regarding him with disdain, seemed to bear its teeth. Ford felt the thump of adrenaline in his chest, felt it drain the moisture from the back of his throat.

What the hell are you doing, old man?
he thought.
You shouldn’t be here alone. What are you trying to prove? That you’re a good cop after all? That it will all have been worth it, everything you threw away for the job, if you can just prove to yourself that you were a good cop?

He heard the conversation he had with Lydia play in his head again.

I don’t even know what I am if I’m not a cop
.

Maybe it’s time you figure that out
.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs leading to the house and the silence around him grew louder. The moonlight dappled the porch, cast the spindly shadow of the dead oak across the shingles.

Inside that door, he might find the answers to the Tad Jenson and Richard Stratton murders. Jenson, one of his cold cases, and Stratton, maybe his last case. The thought of solving them both felt like closure to him. Maybe then he could walk away from the job, from that basement office, and feel like everything he’d forced Jimmy, Katie, and most of all Rose to endure might have some
meaning after all. Justice had meaning, didn’t it? It was worth a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice, if it was truly served.

Then he heard a child crying. It was soft and low, just like the owl, but without the peaceful, mournful rhythm. He looked around him and the sound seemed to come from the sky and the trees, not from inside the house. He walked around back, slowly, gun in his hand, staying close to the house. He could see in the moonlight that a path cut into the trees and again heard the sobs of a child. He thought of Nathaniel and how he’d cried that day about the bogeyman. It sounded like him, but Ford couldn’t be sure. With his gun drawn and his heart in his throat, he headed toward the sound.

“
J
effrey,” Lydia yelled, struggling to her feet. “He’s getting away.”

The echo of Jed McIntyre’s footsteps had faded. She ran to the doorway and saw that it led to a stairway into nothingness. She could still just barely hear his footfalls on the metal steps and started to head down after him when Jeffrey emerged from the darkness and came to her side.

“I thought I was never going to see you again,” he said, putting what looked like her Glock in his waistband and taking her into his arms. Relief washed over her, as she let it sink in for a second that they were both safe. But then she pushed herself away from him, as relief was replaced with panic.

“He can’t get away, Jeffrey,” she said, listening to his footfalls fading. “I can’t live like this anymore. Not for one more day.”

“All right,” he said simply. He didn’t offer the usual arguments for why he should go and she should stay, seemed to recognize that they needed to go after him together.

“Where does this staircase come out?” he said.

“How should I know?” she answered. But then she realized he wasn’t talking to her.

Jeffrey motioned with his head behind her and she turned to see what amounted to a small army of men and women. Maybe twenty or thirty people had gathered around them. She remembered what Jetty had called them, the mole people. They were the most beautiful sight Lydia had ever seen. One man stood apart, ahead of them,
looking at once regal and strong, in spite of his torn and tattered clothes, the dirt on his face. His gray hair was like a dusting of snow on dark earth and in his eyes Lydia saw wisdom and an inherent goodness.

“This is Rain,” said Jeffrey.

Lydia reached out a hand to Rain, and when he shook it, his hand was callused and rough.

“The staircase leads to other, smaller tunnels, other catwalks beneath the electric wires, there are maybe twenty offshoots from the main stairwell,” said Rain. “But as far as I know, this doorway is the only way back into the main tunnel system. He’s trapped. I’ll take you down. The others will stay here and watch the entrance.”

“All right, let’s go,” said Jeffrey. They stood aside and let Rain pass in front of them.

F
ord moved into the trees and the darkness seemed to come alive around him, the shadows and dark spaces in the woods seemed to shift and move, seemed to have life and substance. The ground beneath his feet was soft, covered with dead leaves still wet from the last rain or snow, and it allowed him to move quietly toward the sound. He felt like he’d been walking forever and the sound never seemed to grow louder. Then it ended abruptly. The silence that followed was more frightening than the cries and Ford picked up his pace to a light jog. Up ahead he saw a dancing orange light and smelled the scent of wood burning.

He came to a clearing where he saw several ruined structures, shacks with tin roofs, all but one of which had toppled, grown over with weeds and moss. A wood fence sagged around the area, most of it rotted, eaten by termites. The shacks were arranged in a half circle and in the center was a fire, crackling and smoking. Trees stood all around like an army of dark soldiers. Ford paused, not seeing any movement. He thought of the story Lydia had told him about Annabelle Taylor, about her murdered children, about the curse she’d cast on the Ross family. Standing in the silent, wooded night alone watching the fire burn, looking at the tumbled shacks, he could almost believe it. He was gripping his Smith and Wesson service revolver so hard his hand was starting to hurt.

“Nathaniel!” he yelled suddenly, shattering the silence like a thunderclap. “Lola!”

He felt better, like he’d taken control of the night. Until a dark form appeared in the door of the only shack still standing. He took a step back, unlatching the safety on his gun. The figure stepped into the light.

“Put down the gun, Detective,” she said.

Ford McKirdy sighed, strangely comforted by the sight of the gun in her hand. At least she was human.

“I can’t do that,” he said. “Where are the children?”

“The gun or the children die,” she said, her voice dead and flat. She reached into the darkness and pulled Lola out of the shack by the hair. The little girl shrieked, her face a mask of fear. Nathaniel leapt out after her, clinging to her legs.

“No-no-no-no-no-no,” he cried, his little voice broken by sobs.

She thrust the gun to Lola’s temple. “You think I don’t mean it? You think I give a shit about either one of these brats?”

Lola shrieked again and Ford felt like someone had a hand over his heart and was squeezing without mercy. He inched closer to Annabelle and saw that she was as frightened as the kids; Ford could see it in her shifting eyes, hear it in the quaver of her voice. Lola started a quiet whimper and Nathaniel joined in. He could see tears in Annabelle’s eyes, too.
Christ
, he thought,
they’re all children
.

“Annabelle, listen to me,” Ford said, his voice soft and coaxing. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” His voice was steady, but his mind was racing, turning over his options. If he didn’t put the gun down, Lola could be dead. If he put the gun down, they all could be.

“Yes, it does. Don’t you see that? It
always
had to be this way. Before I was even born she had this whole thing planned. I never even had a choice.

“It’s my
destiny
,” she went on, practically spitting the word. “You think the Rosses are cursed? They got
nothing
on me.”

“You have a choice now,” he said rationally. “Let’s all walk away from this together. I can help you, Annabelle. I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t mean it.”

He wanted her to see a way out, but he wasn’t sure she could hear it. She was in a black place and he could see something dark in her expression; he was afraid it was a loss of hope. More than menace, more than terror, it was the most dangerous thing you could see in an adversary’s eyes.

“You can’t help me. No one can,” she said. His heart pumped, hearing the echo of Julian Ross’s words. “He’s come for all of us.”

“Who has, Annabelle? Tell me and I can make it all stop.”

The night was filled now with the sound of the children crying. The three of them were before him, lit by the orange glow of the fire, the fear in each of their eyes burning bright and wet. There was a moment when he saw her expression shift, when he thought he’d reached her. It was the last thing he saw before he felt a terrible pressure on the back of his head and a curtain of darkness fell before his eyes.

J
ed could hear them coming for him, hear their clumsy steps on the metal stairs he had just descended. So he crouched in the darkness and waited. He’d left his flashlight up above, not that he could use it. His eyes had adjusted to the new level of blackness and he felt comfortable in the cold air. Light did, unbelievably, travel down here and the eye found it after a few moments of adjustment.

He sighed and his voice echoed throughout the cavernous space, a maze of walkways below electric mains and who knew what else. A giant mess of veins hung suspended from the ceiling, stories of ledges and narrow walkways connected by ladders. He had gone as far as he could go before he realized that there was no other exit. Now he hid at the uppermost level of the final chamber connecting to the stairway. There was a ten-story drop below him. He was trapped, but he was in the catbird seat. He’d see them before they saw him and he had three bullets left.

He was disappointed in Lydia Strong. He never imagined her to be such a foul-mouthed bitch. When he’d looked into her eyes he’d seen only hatred and anger, not the connection he’d imagined them to have all these years. His plan had been thwarted, but it might not have worked anyway. He’d wanted her to see him kill her love and her only friend. He’d hoped that in her grief, she’d turn to him. But he had the sense now that she might still have rejected him even if she’d had nothing left. There was that defiance to her. It was not an attractive quality in a woman.

He was uncomfortable and shifted. In doing so, he knocked some unseen piece of debris and it fell loudly, bouncing off metal, clanging, and then hitting the floor. A silence followed and Jed McIntyre held his breath.

T
he three of them stopped in their tracks on the stairway at the sound. The flashlight Lydia held in her hand flickered dramatically and recovered, though the light was dimmer still.
Figures
.

Lydia opened her mouth to talk, but Rain put a silencing hand on her shoulder. He motioned for them to follow; they tried to be as quiet as possible moving toward the sound. After a moment, he took the flashlight from Lydia and turned it off, laying it on the stairs beside them. They were plunged into blackness and it took a few minutes for their eyes to adjust.

Following Rain, they turned off the stairwell into a cavernous chamber, a maze of walkways crisscrossing across the height of it, some ten stories tall or more. Lydia’s eyes scanned the catwalks.

“I can hear you breathing,” said Rain suddenly, loudly, and his voice echoed off the concrete. They were answered by silence. Rain moved in close to Jeffrey and whispered, “I’m going to draw his fire. When he shoots, you’ll be able to see where he is.” Jeffrey nodded and Rain moved toward one of the ladders and started to climb. He moved quickly with grace and strength.

“You better stay where you are,” came a voice from high above them. But Rain kept moving; he was already at the third level.

A shot rang out and the blast from the gun revealed Jed’s position, high and in the far corner of the room. He was trapped like a rat, and from the tone in his voice, he was starting to realize it. He was not getting out of this room a free man.

“You’re trapped, McIntyre,” said Lydia. “And you only have two rounds left.”

Lydia surmised that Rain was still out of Jed’s range, but he wouldn’t be for long. Jeffrey and Lydia started up after him. When
Rain was on the fourth level, Jeffrey opened fire in the direction from which Jed’s shot had come. He let three rounds go. Judging by the sparks and the sharp sound of the ricochet, it sounded like two of the bullets hit concrete or metal. But the third shot … she couldn’t be sure. The darkness around them seemed to hold its breath, and all three of them crouched low in their positions waiting for return fire. But none came. For a brief second hope bloomed in Lydia’s heart that Jed McIntyre was dead. It was an ugly feeling and she was ashamed of it; but she felt it nonetheless. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, a low groan came from above them.