The Dead Room (10 page)

19

Jamie’s eyes shifted away from the grave to a cardboard liquor box. Her scalp tightened and a prickling sensation shot its way across her damp skin as she stared at a collection of human bones stained brown from their long time buried in the soil. Several of the longer bones had been snapped in half so they’d fit inside the box.

Among the bones were two human skulls. One with long hair was wrapped inside a plastic bag.

The upstairs door opened. Heavy footsteps thumped across the floorboards directly above her head. The door shut and another pair of footsteps followed.

Two people. Two people were inside the house and one of them was walking across the kitchen – the basement door was open, the light on.

She couldn’t hide behind the armoire. There was a foot-long space between the floor and the bottom of the armoire. When they came downstairs – and they would, they would – they’d see her sneakers and the cuffs of her jeans. Find a place to hide, then take them by surprise. But where?

She swung her attention to the opposite corner. An ancient black oil tank and hot-water heater sat in the shadows. It would have been a perfect hiding spot, had the two tanks not been sitting six inches away from the wall. No way to get behind them. No space behind the washer or dryer. She looked at the furniture stacked next to the armoire.

A chest-of-drawers, long and wide, sitting flush against the floor. Hide behind there, lie flat and wait.

Standing behind the chest, she grabbed one edge, hoping to God the drawers weren’t weighted down with stuff. The chest lifted with ease off the floor and without a sound. Carefully she dragged it a few inches across the dirt. There. Now it would conceal her.

‘Ben, you down there?’

The male voice sounded like a marble-mouthed Kermit the Frog. This voice, Jamie was sure, didn’t belong to the man who had called to Ben from the bottom of her stairs.

Jamie lay on her back with her knees bent, the backs of her sneakers pressed up against her rump. The Glock, gripped in both hands, rested between her knees. She stared at the cobwebs strung between the copper pipes and wooden floorboards, listening to the heavy footsteps descending the stairs. Now they were moving across the basement. They stopped somewhere near the armoire.

Craning her head, she looked through the two-inch gap between the wall and the corner of the chest and saw a pair of white high-top basketball sneakers and a bright floral shirt hanging over jeans. Curly grey hair. Ben’s driver.

The second person came downstairs. Jamie listened to the approaching footsteps. They stopped on the other side of the chest.

‘You’ve got to be shitting me, Pete. You think my basement’s bugged? That I got, what, cameras installed down here?’

Jamie heard something placed on the top of the chest.
Click
and a high-pitched whine filled the room, then disappeared.

‘Your house was bugged once before.’ A light, airy voice with a slight lisp – the kind of man who fought with his fingernails. ‘You always play it safe. When you don’t, mistakes get made and that’s when you get caught. You should know that better than anyone.’

‘Something wrong with your wrist? You keep rubbing it.’

‘I sprained it playing tennis.’

The footsteps moved away from the chest, stopped.

‘Who’s in the box?’

The man with the effeminate lisp – Peter. She couldn’t see him or Ben’s driver. He had moved away.

‘Linda Burke and some other broad whose name I forget,’ Ben’s driver said.

‘I’m surprised your mother didn’t smell anything.’

‘We buried them deep and covered them with lime.’

‘Burke… I remember the mother. Dianne. She moved out of town, what, a year or so after her daughter disappeared?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Whatever happened to her?’

‘We buried her next to her daughter.’

‘Lovely.’

‘How about we skip the trip down memory lane and get down to business?’

‘Have you talked to Jack?’ Peter asked.

‘No. I decided to lay low, wait for you guys to call me. Where is he?’

‘Watching the house. Tell me what you saw last night.’

‘I wasn’t anywhere near the house. I was parked up the road, on Claremont. When Kendra’s Honda pulled on to Walton, I called Ben and gave him a heads-up. Then I sat in the car and waited for the call. Next thing I know there’s a squad car pulling on to the street. What did Tony have to say?’

‘Not much. When he called, he said someone shot their way inside the house. Got hit twice in the chest and was bleeding out. He thought the shooter was a woman.’

Jamie blinked the sweat from her eyes and flipped the switch on the Glock to semi-automatic fire.

No, not yet. Wait. Listen
.

‘I wouldn’t put too much stock in it,’ Peter said. ‘The guy was delirious from blood loss. He called again to tell me he was in the woods. By the time Jack and his team arrived, Tony was dead.’

‘He didn’t say anything about Ben?’

‘No. Has he called you?’

‘Not yet. You?’

‘Neither Jack nor I have heard from him. We need to find his body.’

‘Ben’s alive.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘There’s a puddle near the front door, and the basement light is on. I turned it off when I left this morning. I gave him a set of keys to the house. He was going to hang here for a day or two before heading back to Phoenix or San Diego or wherever he’s living now.’

‘He should have called one of us by now.’

‘Maybe he lost his mobile. All the numbers are programmed in there.’

‘There’s a GPS unit in his phone. The phone keeps turning on and off at odd intervals. The signal doesn’t stay on long enough for us to track him.’

She had been right about Ben’s mobile. It had a GPS unit and they were trying to track it.

‘Maybe it’s broken,’ Ben’s driver said. ‘Or maybe Ben’s playing it safe. He’s old school. He never trusted mobile phones, thinks the signals are too easy to pick up. I agree with him. You can buy the equipment you need at a RadioShack.’

‘Those mobile phones are encrypted. There’s no way anyone can randomly listen.’

‘You need me to take care of Tony’s body or did Jack take care of it?’

‘Jack took care of it. When was the last time you spoke to Tony?’

‘After I dropped him off at the house,’ Ben’s driver said.

‘When you saw the police, did you call him?’

‘What do you think?’

‘How many times did you call?’

‘I don’t know, Peter, I wasn’t keeping track. And what were you thinking, busting into the kid’s hospital room like that?’

‘If the Sheppard boy ended up talking to that McCormick woman –’

‘Who?’

‘Darby McCormick,’ Peter said. ‘Thomas McCormick’s daughter.’

‘What was she doing there?’

‘She’s the head investigator for Boston PD’s Criminal Services Unit – and she’s the one who heard Tony’s phone ringing in the woods. Her training is in forensics. Not a good development, Kevin.’

Ben’s driver, Kevin, didn’t speak.

A long silence followed.

‘It couldn’t be helped,’ Peter said. ‘I had to do
something
.’

‘So you say.’

‘She doesn’t know who I am. And there’s no way she’ll find out either. My actions last night proved to be beneficial. The McCormick woman taped the conversation with Sean. I confiscated the recorder. Sean didn’t tell her anything. She thinks his name is John Hallcox. There was no mention of Kendra. Personally, I don’t think the boy
knew
anything.’

‘Where he’d get the gun?’

‘I don’t know yet. Why did Kendra come back here? Do you know?’

‘Nope. I want to listen to the tape. Ben will too.’

‘You should have followed her.’

‘We didn’t have much lead time. Jack had to get his gear and –’

‘Then you should have waited. You never were good at operation planning. Or patience.’

‘It was Ben’s call, and Tony went along with it.’

‘I’ll remind you,
again
, that
you
work for
us.
What happened last night in Belham, what happened here in Charlestown and in this basement – this
glorious
blight is because of two people. You and that serial killing psycho.’

‘Glorious blight,’ Kevin repeated. ‘Are you a K-Y cowboy, or did they teach you to talk that way at Yale?’

‘All that time standing on the side of the fence has really warped your brain.’

‘What are you going to do about Big Red’s daughter?’

‘We’ll figure something out.’

‘Yeah, and you’ll have Ben and me clean it up. You Ivy League pricks don’t like getting your hands sticky.’

Someone – Peter, Jamie suspected – started jingling change and keys.

‘Whatever you’re going to do, don’t take too long to decide,’ Kevin said. ‘I’m planning on going to the Caribbean next week after I put my mother’s house up for sale.’

‘I’ll tell you when you can leave.’

‘Yes, sir. Is there anything else, sir, or may I leave now? I’d like to go to the Tap.’

‘The what?’

‘The Warren Tap. It’s a bar. Not the kind you’d hang out in, mind you, but back in the day, if Ben had a problem, he’d leave a message there for me. Don’t worry, it’s in code. All that secret shit you guys like.’

Footsteps moved across the floor.

‘Here, take this,’ Kevin said.

‘What’s this for?’

‘It’s a shovel. You use it to dig up things. There’s one more in that hole. Get to work and I’ll help you with the other one when I get back. You can use those gloves there on the workbench so you don’t ruin your manicure.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Your boss offered your burial removal services,’ Kevin said. ‘Welcome to my side of the fence, champ.’

20

The front door slammed shut. Jamie listened to the man breathing somewhere near the armoire as she replayed fragments of the conversation. The man named Peter had tried to visit the boy named Sean and ended up speaking to this McCormick woman from the Boston PD. How had he gained access to the room? Had he posed as a cop?
Was
he a cop?

Enough thinking. Time to act.

She was about to sit up when she remembered the keys and phone tucked inside her jacket pocket. If she sat up too fast or moved too quickly, the keys would make noise. If the man heard anything, it might give him enough time to reach for his gun – or swing his shovel.

He started digging. She lifted her head, looked through the gap: she saw tanned hands gripping a shovel, and white shirt cuffs with gold cufflinks sticking out from a blue suit jacket. She couldn’t see his face.

Too close
, she thought, panic fluttering against the walls of her heart.
The moment I stand up he’ll see me
.

I’ll be back in a few minutes
, Kevin had said.

Jamie placed one hand on her right pocket, feeling the keys and phone beneath the nylon fabric. Hugging her body close to the back of the chest, she slowly moved up to a sitting position. A pins-and-needles sensation worked its way through her legs.

Peter kept digging.

Do it now and do it fast. If he reaches for the gun or tries to run, drop him
.

She got to her feet fast, blood rushing to her head, making her dizzy.

‘Freeze.’

The man jumped, dropping the shovel. He was taller than she expected – his lisp and soft, effeminate voice had conjured up an image of a short man with flabby arms. The middle-aged man standing in front of her had a lean build. He wore a dark blue suit without a tie. The jacket was unbuttoned and she could see a shoulder holster.

Using her hip, she pushed the chest to one side.

‘Floor,’ she said, stepping over the grave. ‘Get… ah…’

Don’t stutter your way through this: just say one word at a time.

‘Flo… Floor. Now.’

His brown eyes blinked, then narrowed. ‘I know you.’

‘
Floor.
’

‘Okay, okay. Just take it easy… it’s Julia, right?” He hiked up his trousers before kneeling. Then he clasped his hands behind his head. ‘I remember reading about you in the papers.’

She slammed him down against the floor, pressed the Glock against the back of his head. He breathed in dirt and started coughing.

‘Don’t… ah… ah… move.’

He turned his head to the side and said, ‘You have my word.’

She pulled back his suit jacket and reached for the shoulder holster.

‘Since you were hiding down here, I think it’s safe to assume you heard my conversation with Mr Reynolds.’

She tossed the nine into the grave.

‘And I’m assuming you’re the one who shot up the Belham house last night.’

She ran a hand across his belt. No handcuffs. She needed something that she could use to tie him up. She looked at the workbench. Paint cans and tools covered in dust.

You need to find something to tie him up and gag him – and you better do it quick before Kevin comes back.

‘What happened to your husband and children, I didn’t have anything to do with that. You have to believe me. That… that was all Kevin and Ben. You know Ben, don’t you? He was at the house last night. Did you speak to him? What did he tell you?’

There was nothing here with which she could tie him up, nothing at all.

‘I can tell you everything you need to know, but I need to sit up. I have asthma and I’m finding it hard to breathe. I need my inhaler. I’m going to sit up, reach inside my pocket for it, and then we can talk, okay?’

He spoke calmly. She didn’t like it. Was he going to try to stall her until Kevin came back? Did he think she was that stupid?

‘If you want me to talk, I need to use my inhaler first,’ he said. ‘If I don’t, I’m going to pass out.’

You’ve wasted too much time. Kevin will be back here any minute and then what are you going to do? Shoot your way out of the house? If you die, Kevin will bury your body someplace where it’ll never be found. The kids will be left wondering what happened to you as they’re shipped off to foster homes. Cut your losses and get out of here.

She stood.

‘Ben’s… ah… partners. Two men… ah… at… ah… my house.’

‘Let me get my inhaler.’ Breathing hard, wheezing. ‘I’m going to reach into my pocket –’

‘Names… ah… first.’

‘Just give me a second, okay?’ Slowly he reached inside his jacket pocket.

She shot him in the chest.

The exit wound sprayed the back wall with blood. He put out his hands and said, ‘Wait, please,’ and she pressed the trigger and held it down, the Glock’s semi-automatic action kicking in, spitting spent shells into the air.

Jamie wrapped the jacket’s nylon hood around her head, tying it off underneath her chin. Ears ringing, she ran up the stairs to the front door and looked out of the oval window. No one outside. She tucked the Glock inside her shoulder holster, zipped up her jacket and opened the door. No one coming. Her gloved hands inside her pocket, she jogged across the street, which was still pounding with summer rain.