The Wrath of Angels (41 page)

The machine picked up the call, and she heard a voice that was kind of familiar, but she wasn’t quick enough to catch the caller’s name.

The doorbell rang for a second time.

‘Coming!’ she said. ‘I’m coming. God, Grady, you could have a little patience, you know . . .’

She opened the door and the light from the lamp in the hall caught his face. He looked sorrowful and scared. He also looked doped up. He was swaying, and having trouble staying focussed on her.

‘Ah, Grady, for crying out loud,’ she said. ‘No, no. You jerk. You stupid—’

Grady flew at her. She reacted fast enough to step back, one hand instinctively outstretched to ward him off, but he was too big and heavy for her. His weight carried them both to the floor, and her head bounced hard on the boards.

‘Jesus, Grady!’ she cried, trying to push him from her even as he struggled to find his own footing.

Two people appeared in the doorway, a woman and a child. Even in the soft lamplight Marielle could tell that the woman’s face was damaged, and the child, a boy, had a strange, ugly swelling at his neck, and bruising to his nose and eyes.

In the woman’s right hand was a gun.

‘Who are you?’ said Marielle. ‘What do you want?’

But as the woman advanced, Marielle knew who she was. Although she had never met her, Marielle had heard her described. She was no longer beautiful, not with her burned, glistening skin, but enough of her former looks remained for Marielle to imagine her as she once had been, drawing men to her, buying drinks in return for stories of lost planes. Her left eye was a different color from her right: most of the color had gone from it, and it reminded Marielle of a raw shellfish dotted with Tabasco sauce.

Ernie Scollay appeared in the hall. He took a single look at the woman and the boy, then turned to run. Darina Flores shot twice him in the back. Ernie fell on his face and tried to crawl to safety, but the third shot stilled him forever.

Darina and the boy stepped inside and closed the door behind them. The boy locked it and pulled down the blind, cutting them off from the world. By now, Marielle had managed to get out from under Grady. She knelt before the intruders, afraid to move. Blood began to spread from under Ernie Scollay, flowing across the boards and dripping between the gaps into the darkness below. Grady lay against the wall, and she could see him trying to overcome whatever drug was in his system.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t . . .’

While Darina and the boy watched, unspeaking, she went to her brother and held him, and she hardly felt the needle as it entered her arm.

They did not inject her with as much of the drug as they had given to her brother. They wanted her to be coherent, but to present no risk to them. They were a woman and a child in a room with two grown adults, and Darina had to ensure that there was no risk of either Marielle or Grady Vetters fighting back. Once again, they secured their captives’ hands behind them with plastic ties, just to be certain. Darina poured the boy a glass of milk, and gave him a freshly baked cookie from a tray beside the stove. He sat at the dining table and nibbled the cookie, eating around the edges, his small teeth following the line of the frosting, examining his efforts as he went, just like a normal boy.

Marielle lay supine on the couch with a cushion beneath her head. She was watching all that was taking place, seeking any possible advantage, but there was none. Her eyes were just slightly heavy, her responses dulled, but she was still thinking clearly, if slowly. Grady Vetters sat in an armchair beside the TV, his eyes barely open, a string of spittle connecting his chest to his chin. He glimpsed his own reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall, and wiped his chin on his shirt. The effort seemed to bring him more clarity. He sat up a little straighter and tried to find a smile for his sister, but she took no reassurance from it.

Darina pulled up a chair beside Marielle. She held the gun loosely in her right hand, and with her left brushed some stray strands of hair from Marielle’s face.

‘Are you comfortable?’ she asked.

‘What did you inject me with?’

Her words were not remotely slurred. Darina wondered if they shouldn’t have given her a bigger dose.

‘Just something to help you relax. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, or too frightened.’

Behind Darina, Marielle could see Ernie Scollay’s outstretched arm. The rest of his body was hidden by the wall. Darina saw her looking at it, and called to the boy.

‘Move that, would you? It’s distracting.’

The boy put down the cookie, wiped the crumbs from his hands, and went into the hallway through the alcove beside the kitchen. There was a dragging sound as Ernie Scollay’s feet were lifted and his body began to move. The boy was stronger than he looked, and the arm disappeared.

‘Better?’ said Darina.

‘He was just an old man,’ said Marielle. ‘You didn’t have to kill him.’

‘Even old men can run,’ said Darina. ‘Old men can talk. Old men can call the police. So, yes, we did have to kill him, but there doesn’t have to be any more killing. If you answer my questions, and answer them honestly, I’ll spare you and your brother. That’s a basement under the stairs, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s where we’ll leave you, then. I’ll put water and food in bowls, and you can feed yourselves like dogs, but you’ll be alive. We won’t be in town for long: a day or two at most. The more you share with me, the easier our task will be, and the sooner we’ll be gone. I give you my word.’

Marielle shook her head in dismissal.

‘We’ve seen you,’ said Marielle. ‘We know who you are. We saw you kill Ernie, saw you shoot him in the back.’

Grady stirred in his chair again.

‘They killed Teddy too,’ he said. ‘
She
killed Teddy.’

Marielle flinched. Poor, sad, pathetic Teddy Gattle. He might have been irritating, and besotted with her, but he had been loyal to her brother, and he had meant no harm to anyone.

‘He was the one who led us here,’ said Darina, ‘if it makes his loss any easier to bear. It was Teddy Gattle who alerted us to the truth about your father, and the plane.’

Marielle turned on her brother.

‘You told Teddy?’ Teddy Gattle couldn’t hold a secret for longer than it took to draw another breath. He was a human sieve.

‘I’m sorry,’ was all Grady could mumble, again.

‘But my offer stands,’ said Darina. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but I have no interest in killing you. Once that plane is found, and I get what I want, we’ll disappear, and you can tell the police anything you like. You can describe us down to the last hair, and it won’t matter. We’ll be long gone, and we hide ourselves well. I won’t even look like myself any more.’ She pointed a finger at her ruined face. ‘Would you want to stay like this? No, Marielle, they won’t find us. You’ll live, and so will we. All you have to do is talk. I know a lot already, but I want to hear it all from you as well: every word, every detail that your father shared with you, anything that might enable me to find that airplane. And don’t lie to me. If you lie, there will be consequences, both for you and for your brother.’

The boy returned to the room. Marielle saw that he had trailed a line of bloody footprints across the carpet. He was carrying a backpack illustrated with figures from one of those Japanese animation movies that everyone else seemed to like but for which she didn’t much care, all big-eyed children and mouths that didn’t match the English dialog. He unzipped the pack and drew from it a pair of pliers, a heavy boxcutter, and three pocket knives of varying lengths. He laid the tools out neatly on the dining room table, then pulled up a chair and sat, his feet dangling a good six inches above the floor.

‘Now, Marielle, why don’t you begin with the first time you heard your father mention that airplane.’

Marielle told the story, then told it again. Midway between the two tellings, Darina injected her a second time, and her mind grew foggier. She had trouble keeping details straight in her head, and at one point she must have said something wrong, or contradicted herself, because Grady screamed and when she got him in focus she saw that the bottom of his face was bloody and she realized that the boy had sliced off the tip of Grady’s nose. She started to cry, but Darina slapped her hard, which made her stop. She was careful after that to tell the truth, because what did it matter? It was only a plane. Her father was dead. Paul Scollay was dead, and his brother Ernie too. Teddy Gattle was gone. Only she and Grady remained.

‘Who else have you told?’ asked Darina.

‘Nobody.’

‘The old man,’ said Darina. ‘Who was he? What was he doing here?’

‘Paul Scollay’s brother. He knew already. Paul told him.’

‘Who else did you tell?’

‘No one.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘No one,’ she repeated, ‘I told no one.’

Her mind was clearing – not much, but just enough. She wanted to live. She wanted Grady to live. But if they didn’t, if the woman was lying, then she wanted revenge: for her, for her brother, for Ernie and Teddy, for everyone this woman and that terrible child had ever hurt. The detective would find them. He would find them, and he would punish them.

‘Nobody,’ she repeated. ‘I swear it.’

Grady screamed again, but she closed her eyes and her ears to it.

I’m sorry, she thought, but you shouldn’t have told. You just shouldn’t have told.

Deep darkness without, and darkness within, illuminated only by a lamp on the small table beneath the mirror.

Grady was moaning softly. The boy had sliced vertically through his lips with the boxcutter blade, but they had stopped bleeding, at least for as long as Grady could keep from moving his mouth. They were still alive, though, and Darina Flores had eventually stopped her questions. They had ceased when Marielle had come up with one detail, one small half-remembered piece of information from her father’s final days. A fort: her father had mentioned passing a fort as they returned home with the money. She hadn’t told the detective about it because she hadn’t trusted him enough, not then. Now she wished that she’d told him all as she watched Darina use a laptop to check maps and histories in an effort to confirm the truth of what she had just heard.

Marielle must have slept for a time. She couldn’t remember the main lights in the room being turned off, or a blanket being laid over her to keep her warm. She was having trouble breathing. She tried to alter her position, but it didn’t help. The boy was staring at her. His pale, washed-out features repelled her, his thinning hair and his swollen throat. He looked like an old man shrunk to the size of a child. She’d dreamed of him, she realized, and the memory of it made her feel ashamed. In the dream, the boy had been trying to kiss her. No, it was not quite a kiss: his mouth had fixed upon hers like a lamprey attaching itself to prey, and he had begun sucking, pulling the breath from her lungs, drawing the life from her, but he hadn’t managed to do it because she was still here, still breathing, however poorly.

Just a dream, but as she thought that she felt the tenderness of her lips, and there was a foul taste in her mouth, as though she had eaten a piece of meat that was past its best.

The boy smiled at her, and she began to retch drily.

‘Get her some water,’ said Darina, but she did not look up from the screen.

The boy went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. She was reluctant to accept it, hated having him anywhere near her, but better some brief proximity to him than to reject the water and keep that taste in her mouth, so she drank, and the water dribbled down her chin and fell coldly upon her chest. At last, when she could drink no more, she pulled her head back. The boy removed the glass from her lips but remained standing over her, watching.

Marielle’s back ached. She shifted on the couch so that she was sitting upright. A blinking red light caught her eye, hidden before by the table. It was a red number ‘1’ blinking on the telephone answering machine. She remembered the earlier call, and the voice that had sounded so familiar.

It had been the detective’s voice.

She turned her head away too quickly. The boy frowned. He looked over his shoulder.

‘More water,’ said Marielle. ‘Please.’

‘Do as she asks,’ said Darina. ‘Give her more water.’

But the boy ignored them both. He put the glass on the dining room table and approached the answering machine. He put his head to one side, like an animal faced with an unfamiliar object. One pale finger reached out and hovered uncertainly above the ‘play’ button.

‘Please!’ said Marielle again.

Darina glanced up from her screen.

‘What are you doing?’ she said to the boy. ‘This work is important. If she wants more water, then give her more water. Just shut her up!’

The boy stepped away from the machine. He lowered his hand.

Marielle sank back against the arm of the sofa. She drew in an inadequate, shuddering breath, and closed her eyes.

There was a single beep from the other end of the room, and a voice began to speak, deep and male.

‘Hi, Marielle, this is Charlie Parker. I just wanted to let you know—’

The rest of the message was lost in a scream of rage and pain unlike any that Marielle had heard before, made more awful by the fact that it came from a child. The boy screamed a second time. His back arched, his neck straining so far back that it seemed as though his spine must break or the swelling on his throat erupt in a shower of blood and pus. Darina rose to her feet, the laptop falling to the floor, and even over the screaming Marielle could hear the voice of the detective telling her that he was coming up to talk with her, that he just had one or two more questions to ask her and Ernie.

There was a buzzing in the room. Even Grady, immersed in his own misery, heard it. His head moved, trying to find the source of the sound. The house grew colder, as though someone had opened a door, but the air that came through was not filled with the smell of trees and grass but with smoke.

An insect flew across Marielle’s line of sight. She shrank away from it instinctively, but it came back, buzzing a foot from her face. Even in the dim light, she could see the wasp’s yellow and black striped body, and the curve of its venomous abdomen. She hated wasps, especially those that lived this late into the year. She drew up her knees to her chest and tried to use her feet to flip the blanket at it, but now there was a second insect, and a third. The room began to fill with them, and even in her fear she could not understand how. There were no nests nearby, and how could so many have survived?