Bad People (46 page)

It took everything he had to keep the cell phone in his hand from falling loose onto the floor. “So are you like Luke’s girlfriend or something?”

“I don’t know. Something, I guess. I can’t explain it. I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” said S/D.

He turned and went to his room. He knew the way. Even in the dark. “All right,” he said. “Then fuck it.”

“Just call your Mom, okay. And we’re leaving. I’ll get Luke to leave with me. And we’ll be gone, okay. I promise. I’ll get him to leave with me. And we will go away. So you don’t have to call anyone else okay?”

“You mean, like the cops?”

“You wouldn’t do that, would you? You don’t have to, because I promise I’ll make sure Luke leaves you guys alone. I promise I will. You don’t have to call the cops. I’m trusting you not to, okay? Will you trust me to make sure Luke leaves you alone?”

“Yeah,” said S/D. “You can trust me. Fuck it. Fuck you both. I don’t care. Just go away and leave me alone.”

“S/D,” she said. “Come on, S/D.”

He went into his old bedroom and shut the door. Eventually he heard her footsteps going back down the hallway and then the staircase. In the empty house, he even easily heard the unbolting and creaking open of the front door, and it shutting again. And then he was alone inside.

Now his head throbbed even harder than before, and he felt too hot, as if the climb of a flight of stairs had been too much for him. He let his jacket fall off his shoulders and his arms. He must have a concussion or something. His head felt soft on the side the shovel had hit. He pressed it, and bone seemed to move under his scalp. Was his skull cracked? Broken? He sat on his windowsill and stared off down into the driveway. It crossed his mind to jump, but from this height the fall alone wouldn’t do anything.

Maybe if he did a header into the pavement, and opened his skull the rest of the way. Maybe. Or maybe he’d end up half a vegetable. Even that would be okay if he didn’t
know
he was alive. But that would make him an even greater burden to his Mom, and as much as he resented her right now, he knew that nothing that had happened was her fault.

Hard not to blame her, some ugly feeling inside himself wanted to blame her for everything. The feeling shamed him, because he knew she was a good person. Dad had turned out to be a world-class asshole, shooting heroin and gambling away on the sly in Vegas, like some pathetic loser in an independent film, but Mom was okay. S/D himself would probably turn out to be as prime a jackass as Robb Hart had secretly been, but S/D would at least kill himself, directly, honestly, and he’d make sure he didn’t drag anyone else down with him. He had to wait a year, at least a year, until he was an adult and away from home. Then it wouldn’t hurt anyone so bad.

He looked at his phone, saw all the calls tonight from his Mom. He knew he should call her, and tell her what he knew about Luke. Or what he thought he knew. But it would wait until he went home. She wouldn’t like it if she found out he was in the old house. It would cause her pain. She was trying to forget the murder and the house, and he hadn’t helped her much. And this lead to her dating an asshole like Luke.

She probably didn’t know about Ardiss. Luke had done a number on both of them. There was something bad about him, something really bad, if he could only put his finger on it. He had almost had it downstairs, almost had it standing in the kitchen, standing and staring at the entrance to the garage.

It had almost felt like when he had stood there that night in the summer, and had had the weird feeling that something terrible had happened and that he didn’t want to go into the garage, but that he
had
to go into the garage.

S/D vomited so suddenly and violently he barely had time to lean forward and miss his own shoes.

He knew who Luke was. He hands trembled as he dialed his Mom’s cell. She wasn’t answering and then he all of the sudden knew why.

He knew the sound of her Jetta from his time in the house; the street was always quiet, even before it had been abandoned. Her engine in driveway.

The sound of the garage door going up.

S/D raced through the dark hall. She was here. Tires squealed in the garage, and there came an explosion, like a shotgun, but that was impossible, and the sound of the engine stalling out.

S/D ran down the stairs, he stumbled at the bottom. Running had made him incredibly dizzy, but he willed himself to stay upright. He ran toward the kitchen, the garage door. Almost there, he stopped. The door handle turned. The door burst open.

Chapter 53: Connie

Connie’s heart pounded as she turned onto the old street. S/D’s car was there.

So was Luke’s red Datsun.

She swerved into the driveway.

The garage door came up. The beam from her headlights revealed the shoes and trousers of the person pushing the door up.

Luke.

Then she could see the end of the barrel of the shotgun. She floored the gas pedal.

Luke let the garage door go and pointed the shotgun at her in one motion.

She ducked.

The noise of the shotgun blast and the impact of her car’s front end ramming the back wall of the garage, came at her as one overwhelming sensation.

She looked up but could see nothing. Her windshield had crumpled into a white matrix of cracks.

Connie jumped from the car, not waiting to see how hard she’d hit Luke.

She dived right for the door into the house
.
She crashed through it, and Stephen-David was right there, right in front of her, miraculously. He was standing. He was okay. She grabbed him, hugged him, called his name. “We have to go,” she said. “You have your keys?”

He felt his pockets. He didn’t. “They’re in my jacket,” he said, realizing it. “Where’s my jacket?” He had left it upstairs. “I’ll get it,” he told her.

“No! We’ll both go.”

“Where is he?”

“In there,” she told him, meaning the garage. “I hit him. We have to get away from here.”

She turned him and guided him before her toward the stairs. They ran up the stairs. She expected to hear Luke coming through into the house at any second. She should have checked to see where he was, once she’d hit him, or thought she hit him, but it was too late now.

Halfway up the stairs Stephen-David started to stagger. He slowed down and then he slipped. She picked him up. Was he all right? They made the rest of the steps but he suddenly stopped, then sat down at the top of the staircase.

“I hit my head,” he said. She put her hand to the side of his head that he gestured toward, what she felt horrified her. She couldn’t see it in the dark, but the side of his scalp was wet with thick blood.

She couldn’t let that bother her now. First the keys, then get out of the house. Get him to a hospital, she told herself. He would be fine. He would be safe. They both would.

“Come on, honey,” she said. “Just a little farther.” She didn’t dare leave him here, alone.

“I need to rest a minute, Mom.”

“No honey. No you don’t. Not yet.”

He tried to lay down. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I was fine a minute ago.”

Connie tugged on his shoulders to right him. His head lolled back. She wanted to shake him, but fought off that urge too. His wound was severe and he probably shouldn’t be moved at all, let alone manhandled.

“Stand up,” she told him.

“Can’t keep my eyes open.”

“You don’t have to, Stephen-David. It’s dark anyway. Stand up, keep your eyes closed. It’s okay. I’ll lead you. Where’s your coat?”

“In my room. And I was sick in there.”

She now became aware of the smell. He
had
been sick, all over his shoes and lower pant legs.

The room was only a few feet down the hall. “All right,” she said. “Stay here, stay here!”

Connie bolted down the dark hallway. The door to Stephen-David’s old room was at the end, and was open. Moonlight came in from his window. Easy.

The coat lay on the floor. She snatched it up, slipped in vomit, but turned and kept going. Stephen-David’s car keys jingled in one of the pockets. The most beautiful music she had ever heard.

She got back to the top of the stairs.

Stephen-David was still sitting upright. She hugged him from behind. “Okay, honey, down the stairs,” she said.

He stood.

“You can walk,” she said.

A loud blip of a siren met her ears. Looking down, she could see a splash of red light across the living room floor. Police lights! The police were out front!

In almost the same instant came the shout, an order for someone to put his hands behind his head.

So she hadn’t hit him, hadn’t killed him, but no matter, he was caught. Then the blasts came, two of them, separate but in almost instantaneous succession.

She dragged Stephen-David into his old room. The window faced front, and she saw the unmarked car with the red siren on its roof, turning, turning. She saw the body of a man on the passenger side of the car. Even at this distance and even with its head gone she was sure that it was the body of Detective Starvold.

Luke came into her view from down the driveway. He was walking strangely, not exactly limping, but stiff-legged, and monstrously, artificially erect, as if his whole body was broken yet kept straight by force of will.

She had hit him, at least glanced him with her car, but she hadn’t stopped him.

He advanced on the police, pulling the spent shells from the shotgun.

He shook his hand, the shells burned his fingers. He reached into his pocket, pulling out new shells and shoving them into the twin barrels. Connie gasped at this scene. But it could not have been audible, certainly not all the way down to the driveway, that was near impossible.

Nevertheless, Luke turned as if he had heard something. He looked up. She stepped back, pulling Stephen-David with her. Luke fired, both barrels together this time, and the spray hit the side of the house just below the window, like a freakish hale.

She already heard the front door opening again, and Luke’s footsteps echoing in the living room below. There was no other way down; by going upstairs for the keys, and now letting herself get spotted, she had backed Stephen-David and herself into a corner.

They fled to the master bedroom. “Shh,” said Connie to her son. The roofed part of the patio was below the window. If they could get out that way, and shimmy down somehow. But first they had to get ahead of Luke.

Connie and Stephen-David leaned against the wall, behind the open door; the best cover she could think of at the moment.

Luke’s footsteps pounded to the top of the stairs, then stopped. She heard him break open the barrel again, and the empty shells being dropped to the floor. Then Luke’s footsteps disappeared into Stephen-David’s bedroom. Next he would check the hall bathroom, and then maybe the closet. When he finally came to the threshold of her room she would slam the door against him with all her might, try to pin the shotgun or one of his arms in the door, and tell Stephen-David to run for the window, while she held Luke off as long as she could. Not a good plan. Next to no plan at all.

She tried hard to control her breathing and make it silent.

“Connie,” Luke said.

Could he hear them breathing? His voice came from down the hall.

“Connie,” he said again. His voice chilled her, because it sounded impossibly casual.

She heard the doorknob of the hall bathroom door turn, and the door itself creak open. A moment later, she heard the shower curtain in there being pushed back, and the sound to the curtain rings sliding along the shower rod.

It seems odd, and insignificant but frustratingly invasive detail. Why had she left a shower curtain up in the old house?

“Connie,” said Luke again. The sound of his voice now enraged her. Did he expect her to give herself over to him?

Besides the shotgun, was he still carrying her revolver? She knew that she didn’t possess the physical strength to take the shotgun away from him, even if she managed to rush him and get hold of it. Maybe she could get under it though, and if he had the gun in his jacket, or stuffed into his belt, she could snatch it and shoot him at close range.

Next to her, she could feel Stephen-David’s knees start to shake, and then almost to buckle. He was about to pass out. They needed to try something now, before he did.

She swallowed. If Luke could sound calm while he hunted her and her son like animals, then she could do it to.

“Back here Luke,” she said. Stephen-David stiffened. She squeezed his wrist to try and signal to him that she knew what she was doing. She whispered: “when I slam the door, go straight for the window,” she said, “and then shimmy down to the patio.”

She waited for Luke to speak, or for him to start walking in her direction. He did neither. “Luke,” she said again. “I’m back here.”

Luke was silent a moment more. Finally he spoke. “Come out,” he said. “Come out here, Connie.”