Crooked House (21 page)

“Hey
Sarah!”

Nothing
. He was about to call again when he heard the sound of somebody walking around upstairs and the faint sounds of laughter.

“Nice
. Think it’s a fucking game, huh? Okay. Okay, fine.”

Jay went up the stairs and rounded the corner
. The east wing stretched out before him. It was empty. No one walking, no more laughter. Had they heard him coming up? For the first time, he felt uneasy. This was stupid. He needed to get out of here and go back to the front door.

But as he turned around he saw a half open door and little girl clothes on the floor at the foot of the bed.

“Angela?” he said.

He pushed the door open
. There was no one inside, but that wasn’t what he noticed first. His eye was drawn to the little video camcorder in the far corner of the room. He’d seen these on set last time he had a call back on a commercial. They were cheap, portable, easy to use, and took good digital images. He went over to it and turned it over. It was plugged into the wall and running, and from where it’d been, it must have been capturing the whole room.

“That perverted son of a bitch,” he said.
“Filming a little girl.”

He threw the camcorder down and went out to give Robert Bell a piece of his mind.

*

Robert was coming down the stairs when he heard footsteps on the landing
. He turned, and saw Jay coming out of the east wing.

“Jay?” he said
. “What are you doing in my house?”

Jay’s eyes went to the bat in Robert’s hand, then a smile spread across his face
. “Whatcha got there, Robert?”

“Get out of my house
. Get out right now!”

“Or you’ll what.
” He pulled his shirt up to show the gun tucked into his waistband. “What are you gonna do with that bat, Doc?”

Robert stopped climbing the stairs
. Jay seemed to sense his fear and hesitation and his smile grew wider. He crossed the landing and stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at him. Even from six feet away, Robert got a whiff of the odor of stale beer and cigarette smoke that hung about him. There was a mad look in his eye that called forth an old fear in Robert. The man he faced back in that Florida diner all those years ago, the one who’d been only seconds away from putting a bullet through his eye, had looked at him with those same wild eyes.

“Please, just leave my house.”

“You know, you’re a sick fuck.” He took a few steps forward. Robert swallowed, his heel catching on the back of one of the steps, causing him to teeter, and then stagger down two steps. “What kind of goddamned pervert puts a camcorder in a little girl’s room? You into little girls, Doc? Is that it?”

“What
? No, those cameras, they’re...”

“What
? What are they for, Doc? Come on, tap dance an answer for me.”

He took two more steps toward Robert.

“No? Nothing?”

Another step.

Robert raised the bat. “Don’t do it. Don’t come any closer. You need to get out of my house right now.”

“How about I take that bat away from you and put the sweet spot right there on your ear
. Right there on the meat of the bat.”

The words sent a chill over his skin, and he glanced toward the landing, expecting to see James Crook up there, leaning against the railing in his tuxedo with a hug
e
I told you s
o
grin on his face. But the landing was empty and dark.

From somewhere off in the east wing, he could hear a woman sobbing.

Jay was on him then.

Robert let out a startled whine of surprise
. He’d only looked away for a second, but Jay was ready when he did. He got over him, using his higher position on the stairs for leverage to push Robert off balance. Jay pulled the bat away and Robert clutched at it, but he was already teetering on the edge of the stairs. He shot a hand out toward the wall, but there was nothing for him to grab on to and he went tumbling down toward the entranceway, the bat rolling down after him.

He hit at the bottom and folded with a groan.

When he looked up, Jay was coming down the stairs. “You and that wife of yours, you’re a real pair, aren’t you?”

Robert
’s nose was bleeding. He was in a puddle of his blood, and when he tried to stand, he slipped in it and hit the marble. Jay got a little closer. Robert reached for the wainscoting and this time was able to pull himself up to his knees.

“The one I feel sorry for is Angela,” Jay said
. “Poor thing, her Momma’s a whore and her Daddy’s a pervert that likes to film her when she gets undressed. How can a child be expected to have any kind of future with folks like that? I look at it as my duty to get her out of this den of iniquity.”

He was close to the bottom of the stairs, the bat at his feet.

Robert gauged the distance, then lunged for the bat. He got his hands around the handle, but he wasn’t fast enough. Jay already had one foot across the middle of the bat.

“You just don’t learn, do you?” said Jay.

“I told you to get out of my house.”

Robert snaked a hand out and grabbed Jay by the ankle
. For a moment, Jay was too startled to react, and that gave Robert the time he needed. He pulled as hard as he could, yanking Jay’s feet out from under him. Jay landed on his butt with a grunt of pain. He arched his back and winced like the edge of the stair had caught him on his spine.

Robert came up with the bat
. “I told you,” he said, grunting as he swung the bat down on Jay, “to get out o
f
my house
!
  This is my house!”

Jay raised one arm in a futile attempt to block the blow
. The bat caught him just below the elbow, shattering the bone with a crunch that echoed around the enormous entranceway.

“My house!” Robert screamed at him, and brought the bat down again
. “My house!” Another blow. “My house!” And another. “My fucking house!” And another.

Blood spattered against the white walls
. Two of Jay’s teeth skittered across the wooden stairs and went tumbling over the side like dice. Robert slapped the bat across his Jay’s stomach and made him vomit. Jay rolled over onto his back then and raised a trembling hand to Robert.

“Stop
. Don’t.”

“You don’t tell a man what to do in his own home, friend.
” Jay crawled up the stairs and Robert walked after him. “Don’t you know that
,
frien
d
. A man’s house is his castle. A man has responsibilities to protect his family, and his home. You come into a man’s home with evil in your heart you better expect to get the horns.”

Robert swung again, a glancing blow that bounced off Jay’s shoulder and crashed i
nto the balustrade, sending two of its slats flying into the air above the entranceway.

Jay rallied then and scrambled up a few steps, leaving clumps of deep red arterial blood behind him like bread crumbs marking his progress to the landing
. With his right hand, which was caked in blood but unbroken, he reached for the gun in his waistband.

“You did this to my family, you bastard.”
Another swing. “We were happy before you came back into out lives.” His face was twisted with rage and self-pity. “But you turned me against my wife.” Another ferocious downward swing that took a big chunk out of the lip of the tread plank between Jay’s knees. “You turned my wife against me. I used to love her, and now I can’t even look at her. But you wouldn’t be satisfied with that, would you?”

Another swing, this one cracking across Jay right knee.

“Would you? Answer me, you son of a bitch!  Would you?”

Jay got to the top of the stairs and rose to one knee
. He managed to get the pistol out just as Robert reached the landing and lifted it toward his attacker. But Robert was delirious with rage and he charged into the gun, already swinging. He connected with Jay’s gun hand just above the wrist, shattering Jay’s hand and sending the gun skittering across the floor.

Jay tried to limp away, toward the east wing, but Robert got in front of him.

“Not so fast,” he said. “There’s gonna be a little joy in Muddville tonight. The Mighty Casey isn’t gonna strike out this time.”

From a left-handed stance, Robert swung for the fence, putting the meat of the bat right across Jay’s balls.

“And that one is
gone
!”

Jay slumped to the floor with a groan and lay there bleeding.

“This is my house, mother fucker
.
My house
!
”

*

Jay stirred a few moments later, but by then Robert had already dragged him into his study, slipped the noose over his head, and propped him up on the side of the desk. It wasn’t much as far as a gallows went, but it would do for the likes of Jay Carroll.

Jay looked down and started to panic
. His hands weren’t tied but that didn’t matter. They were both so badly cracked up all he could do was paw at the noose. He looked like he could barely breathe already.

Robert came around the corner of the desk so he could look Jay in the eye
. “I wouldn’t move around too much if I were you. You slip off the corner of that desk and you’ll swing, but your neck won’t break. I’ve read in books it can take up to twenty minutes for a man to die if his neck doesn’t break. Twenty minutes is a long time to think about your crimes.”

“I
– I didn’t do nothing.”

“You didn’t...
” Robert couldn’t believe the gall of the man. He almost kicked the desk away right then. Then he tightened his grip on the bat, twisting it and twisting until he could talk again. “But you did, Jay. You made my wife do that horrible movie. You put that filth on film. Do you really believe I’m gonna let you leave this house alive? Do you?”

Jay was panting now, sweat running down his face
. He looked pale, his lips an unhealthy pallid blue.

He started to shake his head
. He was crying now.

“No,” he said
. “I didn’t. You got it wrong, Doc. It wasn’t me. I didn’t make that movie. I got it through a guy I know.”

“A guy
? That’s it. That’s all you got to say?”

“Dude, please don’t
. I got it – I got it here. It’s in my pocket. I got it right here.”

“Got what?”

“The 2257 records. It’s how I – It’s how I tracked the movie down. The guy who made it, his info’s here in my pocket.”

Robert was interested now
. “Which pocket? Show me.”

Jay turned his hip so Robert could get into his wallet
. Robert removed the billfold and started emptying out the contents onto the floor. “I don’t see anything here,” he said.

“A slip of yellow paper
. With the money.”

And there it was
. A yellow slip of card stock paper torn from the back of a DVD case.

Title 18 U.S.C. 2257 records maintained

by the Custodian of Records,

Thomas Horner, at Tramp Studios,

1424 Masello Road Suite 2200,

New York, NY 10027.

“Thom Horner?” Robert said.

“Yeah,” Jay said. He was breathless, but suddenly hopefully. “Yeah, that’s the guy. Oh please get me down. Please please please...”

He looked at the paper again, and couldn’t believe it
. That was Thom Horner’s address back when they were living in New York. Robert had gone there thousands of times. He knew the address by heart.

“Thom Horner,” Robert said again
. He looked up at Jay. He was stricken. His whole body felt numb with shock and rage and betrayal. “This isn’t possible.”

“Dude, I swear
. I swear.”

“Shut up!” Robert roared, and in his rage kicked the desk away
. Jay dropped, the rope going taut with a snap, the rafters creaking under the sudden strain. He began to twitch and gag, his body jerking and twisting in ways he couldn’t control. His eyes bulged and sought wildly for Robert, even as his ruined hands groped at the noose.

Robert sat down in his chair, still within arm’s reach of Jay, and read the yellow slip of paper again
. He didn’t want to believe, but it seemed impossible to deny. Thom had always had a lot of money, a big house, new cars. Robert just assumed he came from a moneyed family.

But Thom Horner was a pornographer.

...sometimes fortune throws you a curve ball, doesn’t it? One you just can’t hit.

“Yeah,” Robert muttered
. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Robert’s
head was spinning, thinking over the years he’d known Thom. He must have found out somehow that Sarah was doing topless dancing while she was working as his secretary. Had he used that as leverage against her? Robert looked around in dismay. The house, the job, the years of friendship...all of it was based on the corruption of his wife. And what of this job, and what of his continued attempts to get Sarah to come back to work for him?