The Broken Ones (41 page)

She had him place down the Taurus and she put it in her pocket. She made him take off his jacket. She checked the pockets. She patted him down. Then she clicked the semiauto’s safety back on, took the lantern and went around the room, looking in the dusty vases, under the tabletop, in the kitchen cupboards.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“Bugs. Recording devices.”

It made Oscar wonder. He let her go.

Maybe we’ll both discover something, he thought.

She sat on the table, cross-legged.

“You should sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”

She laughed. Her teeth were white; her eyes were sharp.

“You’re alone, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I told you. My partner was killed.”

“Why doesn’t anyone else trust you?”

He watched her carefully. “I think they think I’m going mad.”

“Are you?”

He thought about that a long time—about the creature in the garage, its claws and the smell of the dead.

“I hope so.”

Her eyes narrowed.

It was after ten. He watched her while he lit candles and disconnected the gas cylinder from the lantern and screwed it to a heater element. The space between them warmed.

“What did you see at Elverly?” he asked. “Tell me about Frances White and Taryn Lymbery.”

She held his pistol in her lap but said nothing. Growing warmer, she undid her jacket. Beneath, she was thin, but not as thin as he’d thought.

He found the phone and called the hospital.

“He’s just gone in for surgery,” the cardiology nurse said. “Call back in a few hours.”

Zoe watched him.

She returned to the couch, and he to the window. He watched the street. Rain fell softly, a whisper. No cars. The dead boy stood under the bus shelter across the road. When he raised a hand, Oscar tentatively raised his own. Then he turned around and saw that Zoe was asleep.

He went to his room and found a blanket, returned, and put it over her. She didn’t stir.

He heard the sound of a motor. A car was turning into the street. Oscar froze and listened. The vehicle went slowly past. He hurried to
the candles and puffed them out. The room was lit only by a warm, red glow of the heater. He went to the window.

The car had gone. He watched for a long moment. The rain was almost silent. Across the road, the dead boy was still beneath the bus shelter, but he wasn’t looking at Oscar; he was staring down the street. The boy seemed to feel Oscar’s gaze and glanced across the road to him. Slowly, the dead boy raised an arm and pointed down the street to a deep pool of shadow under a large satinash tree.

Oscar went to Zoe and carefully pulled the Taurus from her pocket.

He crept down the back stairs and into the rain. He climbed his neighbors’ fences and cut across their backyards, traveling parallel with the street, through spiny pumpkin vines and gardens and spiderwebs. He was ashamedly grateful that Terry/Derek was dead. In a backyard six houses down from his own, he turned and struck up toward the street, holding the silver Taurus in one hand.

On the footpath, the dead boy was waiting. When he saw Oscar he nodded and pointed again. Behind the boy, under the satinash, was a dark sedan. This one had plates. Oscar could make out a figure behind the wheel of the car, staring up the street toward his house. The figure shifted, and Oscar felt his feet and hands tingle. The driver held a shotgun.

Oscar licked dry lips. He wiped one hand on his trousers, got a better grip on the Taurus, and strode across the footpath. He flung open the passenger door, darted inside, grabbed the stock of the shotgun, and pressed the silver pistol’s muzzle against the stranger’s neck.

“Fuck!” called the figure.

The car’s dome light was bright, and Oscar blinked. The man behind the wheel was Anthony McAuliffe.

Emotions wrestled on McAuliffe’s gray, unshaved face. Fear, embarrassment, anger, and his dirty teeth chattered. The air in the car stank of cheap alcohol.

“Mariani,” he said.

“What are you doing?” Oscar asked.

McAuliffe looked from Oscar to the pistol to the shotgun. “I’m leaving,” he said.

Oscar saw a taped-up cardboard box and a patched, fraying suitcase on the backseat. He watched the former professor.

“And what did you want to say to me?”

McAuliffe said nothing, but his thin hands still gripped the barrel of the shotgun.

“What about Megan?” Oscar asked.

“You’re losing your job,” McAuliffe said. “I rang, asked for your unit. It’s closed. You have no job. Megan’s screwed anyway.”

Oscar stared, his heart beginning to pound harder. “And after me? Was she your next visit?”

McAuliffe tried to pull the shotgun away. His two hands were stronger than Oscar’s one. Oscar thumbed back the Taurus’s hammer.

“What are you going to do, Mariani? Kill me like you killed her?”

The men stared at each other. Rain tapped on the roof.

“Mr. McAuliffe?”

Zoe stepped up to the driver-side window, into the glow of the car’s inner light.

Oscar looked up and watched her green eyes take in the pistol, the shotgun, the two men.

McAuliffe looked from Zoe to Oscar.

“You two?” McAuliffe asked.

Oscar yanked the shotgun away. The man seemed to deflate without it—he sagged against the steering wheel.

“Hurt your daughter and I will kill you, McAuliffe.”

The man shook, and Oscar could see that his cheeks were wet.

“Get out,” McAuliffe whispered.

Oscar did.

McAuliffe’s car started loudly, and a moment later it disappeared up the street.

Chapter
29

O
scar lay on one side of the bed, clothed, holding the shotgun and listening to the house shift and creak. When he felt Zoe’s weight press on the other side of the bed, he didn’t move. He listened.

For a long time, they were both silent and still.

Finally, she spoke so softly that Oscar wondered if he was dreaming her voice.

“Franky,” she said.

“Franky?”

“Frances White. But she liked to be called Franky. She had Fragile X syndrome. Learning-impaired; she had lots of trouble with remembering things. Little problems would get her upset. But such a sweet girl. Tall, but not very strong, always anxious. But so sweet. She
loved
her pencils. Loved to line them up, just so. Very shy. She had agoraphobia. She wouldn’t run away.” As she spoke, he heard her fingers move on the grip of the pistol she held. “It was five in the morning. Pretty dark. I’d just finished work and was outside on the street, about to walk to the train when I saw a car come by. Big black car, dark windows. I stepped into the shadows till it went past. And I saw it switch off its headlights and drive into Elverly. My next shift, I was told Franky had run away.”

Oscar waited.

“And Penny?” he asked finally.

Zoe let a breath out through pursed lips.

“I was on shift. I was supposed to be in B-Block, at the back. Everyone was asleep. I went across the lawn to A-Block, the old building, and broke into the kitchen. I was in the pantry. They don’t pay us very well, you know?”

“I know.”

She nodded. “Elverly is on a slope, and the kitchen is half-underground, yeah?”

“Like a basement.”

“Only with some windows, high up, so you can just see out of them. They’re level with the drive almost. Well, I saw a little flash of light outside, out those windows. And I climbed up on the bench and looked out. And there was a car. The light I saw was the one that comes on inside when the door opens. I just saw the door close, and the car drove off. No headlights. I checked all my kids in B; they were fine. But the next morning Penny was missing.”

“You told Chalk?”

“I told her I thought I heard a car in the night. I didn’t tell her where I was when I saw it.” He felt her roll toward him. “It was a cop car,” she said.

Oscar felt a chill ride up his neck.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“It had the little lights on the back parcel shelf. The red and blue lights. It was an unmarked cop car.”

Oscar rolled and looked at her. Her face was a carved mask in white and black: pale skin and shadow.

“Come with me,” he said. “Come into headquarters; I’ll take a formal statement.”

“No.”

“We can subpoena vehicle records for the last month—”

“No.” She shook her head. Unrushed. “You knew a cop was involved.”

“I have no proof,” he said.

“Neither do I. But they know we know.”

Oscar shifted, and he felt the muzzle of the gun she held against his ribs. Then the metal pulled away.

They lay still for a long time. Eventually, he heard her breathing become slow and deep. It was hours, though, before he slept.

Wind rushed like a foaming ocean in his ears, and the world beneath charged up at him like a crushing wave. Then he was caught—great fingers wrapped around his head, and iron spikes drove into his spine and
through his cheek. The momentum of his body swung it through and his neck snapped like celery, and the last thing he heard, as the mighty fingers squeezed his head and ground bone against bone and his skull crushed like an egg, was the steady beating of monstrous wings.