Cul-de-Sac (22 page)

No one showed at the back door, Camel starting around for the front again when he looked down a flight of concrete steps to a basement door. He went down there and saw that the door had been jimmied. Pushing it open he caught a funny smell. Sincerely wishing he had Eddie’s .45 with him, Camel entered the basement and saw what looked to be red paint on the floor. He knelt. It was dried blood leading to a washing machine and dryer which also had blood on their lids.

Careful not to leave tracks or fingerprints, Camel walked over there and used a handkerchief to lift those lids … Mr. and Mrs. Rainey.

Fascinated by Growler’s predicament, by this terrible thing she’d somehow managed to accomplish, Annie hadn’t yet grabbed her blouse or run from the room … as if hypnotized she continued watching even as Growler reached down inside of himself where seven years of revenge burned, finding there the energy and madness he needed to grab his ankle and pull, Growler screaming mouth open and teeth bared as the head of that spike nail ripped flesh all the way through his foot and out the bottom.

Annie fascinated by this too … stunned and fascinated and
still there in the room
even as a voice from some logic compartment in her brain urged her to leave, run, go,
now
.

Growler was looking at his bleeding foot, then turned a red-wrath face toward Annie and promised her, “I’m going to cripple you.”

She believed him, Annie believed this promise more sincerely than she believed any promise a man had ever made to her.

He kept both arms out for balance, putting weight on his right foot, allowing only the heel of that mangled left foot to touch the floor … leaving bloodprints across the floor.

Annie finally did what she should’ve done those critical few seconds ago, running from the room … no time to grab her blouse
now, Annie running onto the balcony around the atrium, running for the stairway.

Growler followed … limping, dragging his foot, screaming further terrible promises to her.

She made it down the stairway without tripping, to the front doors which were locked. Must be a way to open them from the inside but in her panic and with Growler bellowing his way down the steps Annie couldn’t figure it out … rushing back through the corridors the way she came, to that storage room, out the window, feeling no self-consciousness about being naked to the waist, too scared for modesty, running around to the side of Cul-De-Sac, to the truck, getting seated behind the wheel … and only then remembering she’d tried to open that chest with the truck key and then left it on the floor upstairs.

Annie looked at Cul-De-Sac, no sign of Growler yet. Paul used to keep a spare key in a magnetic holder stuck under a fender … was it the left front fender? She got out and searched, kept glancing at the building … which way would he be coming from, the front, the back, out the side door? Where is it, where is that little key box, under the other fender? No,
here
. She slid back the top, dropped the key, picked it up just in time to see Growler opening a door to the side of Cul-De-Sac no more than twenty feet from where she stood.

Annie got into the truck, fumbled getting the key into the ignition, told herself not to flood the engine, thank God it started on the first crank … one more quick glance at the hobbling Growler, he was almost to the truck as Annie dropped the transmission into gear and hit the gas, popped the clutch, throwing gravel as she swung around and headed out the lane.

When she checked her side mirror she didn’t see Growler back by the side of the building, where’d he go? She looked into the rearview mirror and got her answer: the naked son-of-a-bitch was there on the bumper trying to get his wounded left foot up over the tailgate.

Annie jammed the accelerator hard to the floor but it was too late, Growler already aboard.

Camel drove to a pay phone and called in an anonymous tip to the Arlington police, telling the dispatcher what could be found in the washer and dryer in the Raineys’ basement and also in the closet upstairs. At another pay phone he called the Nefferings but got the answering machine … Mary and Eddie must’ve already left to take Annie to The Ground Floor for lunch.

Camel got back into the Fairlane and checked Kenneth Norton’s address, he could swing by on the way back to The Ground Floor. Except maybe that wasn’t smart. The safe thing to do would be go have lunch with Eddie, Mary, and Annie. Camel started the engine and listened to the sound of the exhaust, underwater rumbling. He pulled away from the curb wondering if he’d ever learn to do the smart, safe thing.

Camel was getting accustomed to the heavy old Ford with its oversized steering wheel, and although he liked the car’s afterburner acceleration he drove carefully in deference to how much the Fairlane meant to Eddie.

Knowing the general area around Norton’s address, Camel still couldn’t find Lee Street so he stopped at a convenience store where the long-haired pimply young clerk offered a heavy-lidded
bored look over the top of an illustrated swimsuit catalog … until Camel asked, “Isn’t Lee Street around here?”

The clerk put the catalog down and stood up behind the counter like a soldier coming to attention. “One block up, take a left, Lee Street’s two blocks over.”

Camel told him thanks and the clerk responded with a crisp, “You’re welcome sir.”

He drove to the apartment complex, found the building, went up to Norton’s apartment, and knocked on the door. Camel waited, didn’t get an answer. The smart thing, just leave. He shouldn’t be getting involved in any of this, not when he’s out on bail for a manslaughter charge … but ever since Annie showed up, since he started working on this case, Camel felt more alive, more juiced, hungrier and hornier than he had in years. He wasn’t going to leave until he had a look in Norton’s apartment.

Camel went downstairs to see the building manager, a man in his late sixties, dressed in a blue shirt and tan slacks, smelling of cologne, obviously proud of his long white hair which he had combed with a sort of double wave all along one side. Camel flashed his license but put it away before the guy had time to memorize his name.

“I wondered if someone would be by to check on Mr. Norton,” the manager said after he stepped back into his apartment to get a set of keys, the masters.

“Why’s that?”

“I had two noise complaints filed against Mr. Norton.”

“When?”

“When was the noise or when were the complaints filed?”

“The noise.”

“Last night around eight. Mr. Norton is normally such a good tenant, never a complaint against him since he moved in. That’s why I was wondering if there had been … foul play.” Using the term embarrassed him.

At the door to Norton’s apartment the manager knocked and called Norton’s name. “We never go into a tenant’s residence unless we have a compelling reason.”

“This is compelling believe me.”

The manager unlocked the door and opened it a crack. “Mr. Norton! Oh Mr. Norton!”

Camel pushed the door the rest of the way open … first thing he and the manager saw were red stains streaked in a path across the white carpet.

“Oh my … Mr. Norton had this carpet installed at his own expense, I can’t imagine—”

Camel interrupted him with an arm across the manager’s chest, easing him back out into the hallway as Camel went into the apartment. A naked man presumably Norton was tied to a chair in the kitchen, his back to Camel. From the dining alcove it looked as if Norton’s head must’ve been hanging forward, that’s why Camel couldn’t see it. Then he stepped into the kitchen and saw Norton looking up at him from the floor.

Camel went through the apartment before returning to the hallway.

“Everything okay?” the manager asked hopefully.

Camel told him everything wasn’t okay, the apartment needed to be locked up again and the police needed to be called.

“Is Mr. Norton in there?”

Yeah in two pieces. “Call nine-one-one and report a homicide.”

“Oh my.”

“Don’t let anyone in this apartment until the police arrive.”

“No I won’t. Where are you going … I mean in case the other officers ask.”

“I’m officially out of my jurisdiction here, I need authorization before I can start processing the crime scene.”

The manager nodded his head so vigorously at this gibberish that the waves in his white hair shook … but did not dislodge. “What’s your name again, I didn’t quite catch it on your badge.”

“Parker Gray … state police.”

“Oh yeah I remember now.”

Halfway out the lane Annie jammed both feet on the brake pedal slamming the truck into a gravelly skid that succeeded only in throwing Growler farther into the truck bed … and there he held on one-handed to a side rail, crouching like an evil troll naked and wild-eyed and bloody-footed.

When he started crabbing forward, Annie locked her door and hit the accelerator again, knocking Growler off his good foot and onto his bare ass. She weaved violently side to side, rolling him around back there, smearing blood, the determined bastard managing to get up and crawl forward until he was at the cab’s back window, pounding on it with the butt of his palm.

Annie sped out of the lane hitting one of the brick pillars a glancing blow as she made a screeching right turn that again rolled Growler but failed to eject him from the truck.

She was on a county road, no traffic, when she checked the rearview mirror again and didn’t see him … then,
Christ
, there he was right at the driver’s window, standing one-footed on the running board, holding one-handed to the side mirror, demented face pressing against the glass, black hair blowing in the airstream. Annie had neglected to lock the triangular vent window, Growler pushed it open and reached in with his left arm.

He was trying to grab her, she screamed and slapped at his hand, he went for the steering wheel … and that’s when Annie once again used both feet to lock the brakes.

Growler flew forward, his arm catching in the vent window. Annie heard the bone break like cracking a green stick wrapped in a blanket and she saw the unnatural way that arm bent when it was pulled from the vent window by Growler’s forward momentum … as if the arm had two elbows, one bending toward his body, one bending away.

He lay on the road, he could’ve been dead was how quietly he lay on the road. Annie drove away checking repeatedly to make sure that Growler was still back there in the road, then she picked up speed and headed for civilization. She was shaking from adrenaline and relief and the cold, Annie’s hand so trembly she could barely work the truck’s heater controls … the day that had once been filled with so much sun and sky was cloudy now and cold.

When she began encountering traffic Annie didn’t know exactly what to do, should she just stop and flag someone down or wait until she sees a police car? In a crazy way she almost wished Growler was still back there in the truck bed because then she wouldn’t have to explain why she didn’t have a blouse on, what she was running from … Growler would be all the explanation she needed, no one would doubt he’d been trying to kill her. But now, without Growler, she’d have to tell the whole complicated story.

Because the truck’s cab rode high, people in cars couldn’t see the extent of Annie’s predicament, but when two young men in another pickup started to pass, the passenger did a double take and their truck slowed to keep pace with hers.

Annie rolled down her window, the passenger in the other truck did the same. He was grinning, twenty years old … blond hair and a sunburnt face.

“I need help!” Annie shouted. “I need to get to the police!”

“Nice tits!” he shouted back.

Furious, Annie accelerated and lost the other truck in traffic. She kept searching for a patrol car, didn’t know where the nearest
police station was, didn’t want to get out of the truck to make a phone call. She considered alternatives, a church, a fire station, a hospital, but didn’t see any of those and continued driving aimlessly, numbed by what she’d been through, until she began recognizing certain landmarks and realized she was only a few miles from the shopping center where Teddy had his office … that’s where she’d go. Teddy might still be in jail but Eddie Neffering would be at his bar, The Ground Floor … Eddie would help her.

Annie turned into the shopping center’s vast parking lot, while she was looking up trying to remember which high-rise was Teddy’s her pickup broadsided a late model Lincoln.

She hadn’t been traveling more than five or six miles an hour but the collision threw her forward, bumping her head on the windshield which didn’t break. She sat there trembling.

The driver of the Lincoln emerged, reached back into the car to help his wife out, then slammed the door with both hands. The couple were in their late fifties, well-to-do.

He came over to Annie’s truck, the man holding his peace only to make sure she wasn’t injured then he intended to release a tirade, irresponsibility would be its theme … but when he saw she was naked from the waist up he forgot everything he was going to say.

Annie leaned back in the seat and touched her forehead. Her fingers came away sooty but no blood on them. She looked curiously at the man’s very white face.

His wife came hurrying up to the truck just as the man was opening Annie’s door. “Good God,” the woman said. “What’s going on here!”

The husband stammered as if he and Annie had been caught in a compromising position.

“I’ve been …” Annie started to say. But she decided not to launch any explanations, she simply told the astonished couple, “I need help, get the police.”

They continued standing at the open door, other drivers were getting out of their cars and coming over for a look.

Aware of an audience the woman suddenly demanded of Annie, “What are you, some kind of … 
freak
?”

This moved her husband toward sympathy. “Are you hurt?” he asked, reaching out to Annie.

“
Phillip!
”

He withdrew his hand.