Dark Debts (16 page)

Evil.

She didn't know what that meant, or if she even believed in such a thing. Still, the word came to her like someone was whispering clearly in her ear.

She looked around the room, taking it all in. Jack seemed to understand (or at least be willing to indulge) her need to do that. He stood in silent patience. He followed her when she moved on.

The living room was even drearier than the kitchen. The same beadboard in a worse state of peeling. The sofa and chairs were covered with dusty sheets. Randa couldn't imagine why Jack would feel the need to protect the furniture, or that there was anything under the sheets worth protecting. The end tables were probably halfway decent antiques, under about twenty coats of black varnish. There were a couple of fringed Victorian lamps and even framed photos on the tables, mostly various school pictures of the boys. (Randa spotted a gap-toothed six-year-old Cam grinning up at her.) Overall, the room looked as if the family had just gone out of town for an unknown period and simply never come back.

There was a hallway on the other side of the room. Randa glanced down it and could see an open door and a little bit of a bedroom that seemed to have similarly depressing decor.

“My parents' room,” Jack said, answering her unspoken question. “Our rooms are upstairs.”

“It's very . . . dark.”

Jack nodded. “It always was, no matter how many lamps you turned on. The rented places were nicer, but my father liked it that way.”

“Why?”

“He wasn't exactly a cheery guy. Cam may have mentioned that. I think he was attracted to the house's history, too.”

“The man who murdered his family?”

Jack nodded. “His name was Bennett Reece. I think he was Will's hero.”

“
Because
he murdered his family?”

Jack nodded. “I think Will admired him for having the guts to do the full job. Anyway . . . have a look around. I'll wait outside.” He went out the back door, leaving it open behind him.

Randa was not at all happy about being in the house alone, but she didn't blame him for wanting to be away from all the reminders, and she wasn't about to relinquish this opportunity.

She stood in the doorway of the master bedroom and stared at a double bed with a wrought-iron headboard. She wondered how any woman could lie down and go to sleep beside a man who routinely sent her children to the emergency room. What sickness had bound the two of them? She knew it was too late for questions like that to be answered. It was too late for them to even matter.

When she returned to the living room, Jack was still outside. She could see him in the front yard, walking aimlessly, gazing out at the land. He didn't look her way as she headed for the stairs.

The old wood creaked in protest under her weight. The stairs were sunken in the middle from too many years of use, and the entire stairway, wall included, listed toward the left side of the house. About halfway up the stairs, the beadboard ended, and Randa was amazed to find that the remaining walls were unfinished. The planks were gray-brown and weathered like the side of a barn, and there were cracks between them on the inside walls. At the top of the stairs were three tiny rooms; all still had small beds and dressers. Twin beds and a small dresser filled the middle room, leaving no space for anything else. Randa assumed this was the room that Jack and Tallen had shared.

She felt a lump rise in her throat as she thought of Cam and Jack, and even the ones she didn't know, living up here in what was barely more than an attic. She thought of them lying in bed, listening to their parents try to kill each other in the rooms below. Cam had told her he was the only one of the four who'd ever ventured downstairs to try to break up the fights. The rest of them had either put their heads under their pillows or climbed out windows and gone off into the night, looking for trouble they could control.

She made her way back down the stairs slowly. She stopped when she saw Jack. He was standing just inside the door, staring at an empty spot in the far corner of the room. He didn't show any sign of noticing her.

“Jack?”

He broke out of his trance and saw her looking at him. “Sorry. I just . . . flashed on something.”

“What?” she asked, as she eased down the last two steps.

“The day they killed Tallen,” he said in a quiet voice. He breathed deeply, collecting himself before he continued. “He didn't want any of us there, so my mother and Cam and I were sitting here the next morning . . .” He nodded toward the corner. “There used to be a TV over there, and we were watching the news. This sports—”

He stopped; laughed to himself, a bitter laugh. “I almost said sportscaster.” He shook his head; took another moment.

“This reporter was interviewing people on the street about the execution . . . and there was this woman . . . she had on this
hat.
I don't know why it matters, but something about that hat just irked the hell out of me. Anyway, the reporter asked her if the execution made her feel like justice had been served, and she said that it did, then she said, ‘Some people are just animals, and you kill rabid animals, so what's the difference?' ”

He stopped again and took yet another breath, upset by the memory.

“My mother had this antique iron she used as a doorstop. I grabbed it and . . . kind of . . . hurled it through the TV screen.” He smiled sadly.

“That couldn't have been good for the TV,” Randa said, trying to lighten the mood.

“No, but it sure felt great.” He chuckled, looking at the corner again. “Glass flew everywhere. Smoke, sparks, the works. My mother screamed.”

“What did Cam do?”

Jack's face clouded over. “Saint Cam was not pleased. He just picked up his suitcase and walked out the door. Went back to LA. I didn't see him again until my mother's funeral a year later.” Jack looked out the window, as if he were watching Cam go.

“That seems like a cruel thing to do to your mother. Just walking out, on that day?”

He paused for a second, letting the anger pass.

“My mother,” he continued, “was so far gone by that point. Tallen's death was really the last straw.” He took a few steps away from Randa, as if he needed the distance. She could see his face go taut with pain. “Have you ever read a detailed account of what happens when someone is electrocuted?” he asked.

“No,” Randa answered, without admitting that she'd tried to once and hadn't been able to get through it.

“I read every one I could get my hands on. I hunted for them. It was like a compulsion. I just had to know.”

Randa prayed he wasn't going to share any of it with her, but she knew what was coming.

“They shave the person's head, you know, so they can attach the electrodes. And then they have to rub this gel in—something that helps conduct the electricity. The gel has to be rubbed in really well; takes about forty-five minutes. Imagine sitting there for forty-five minutes while someone rubs gel into your head so they can kill you easier. But that's really nothing compared to the rest of it.”

Randa wanted desperately not to hear the rest of it, but she sensed he needed to tell her. She braced herself.

“The body reaches a temperature of about nineteen hundred degrees—there have been cases where a body was so hot it melted the electrodes. The skin turns bright red and stretches, almost to the point of breaking. The brain reaches the boiling point of water. The eyes pop out of the sockets and end up resting on the cheeks. Witnesses say there's this loud sound, like bacon frying, and it smells—I don't know, like however it smells when you cook a person. Smoke comes out of the person's head, sometimes flames. And this is all if everything goes
well
. I read about this one where something went wrong and it took twenty minutes and three separate jolts of electricity to kill the guy. He stayed conscious for a while, and in between jolts, he was begging them to hurry. By the time he was finally pronounced dead, the body was so hot they had to wait an hour before they could even touch him to move him out of the room.” He stopped for a moment, but he wasn't done. “In one of the articles I read, a doctor described it as ‘setting a person on fire from the inside.' ”

Randa nodded. She wanted to tell him he was preaching to the choir, but there'd be time for that later.

“Can you
imagine
having all that happen to someone you love? Your brother? Your
child
?”

“No,” Randa said quietly. There was no way she could imagine it.

“Well, if it does, there's no way you can
avoid
imagining it.” He took a breath, then: “So . . . if you want to know how my mother was . . . that's how she was. The warden might as well have strapped her in next to Tallen. When she finally killed herself, it was just a formality.”

Randa didn't know what to say, yet the silence was too sensitive to bear. Jack stared at the floor, unable to meet her eyes. She had a strong urge to go over and put her arms around him, but she couldn't imagine him letting her (or anyone) do that.

“I'm really, really sorry.” It sounded ridiculously lame, but she didn't know what else to say. “For what you went through.”

He looked at her, frowning. “For what
I
went through?”

“All of you. The whole thing.”

He just stared at her, not knowing what to make of it.

“Why don't we go,” she suggested. She was uncomfortable under his stare, and he needed to get out of the place, whether he knew it or not. He nodded, looking enormously relieved. He turned and headed back through the kitchen. Randa followed. She reached up and put her hand on his back. She felt him flinch under her touch; she pulled her hand away.

Outside, he locked the door behind them. Then, after staring at her face for a brief moment, he reached for her hand. Randa wouldn't have been any more surprised if he'd slapped her, and she doubted she was doing a good job of hiding that fact. He led her back toward the car, gripping her hand tightly, as if they'd come to some kind of an understanding. When they reached the car, he stopped. He looked at her as if he had something important to say, but didn't speak. Then she noticed that he was leaning closer. Was he . . . was he going to kiss her? She hadn't had time to wonder how she felt about it when he quickly pulled away, and his head jerked in the opposite direction.

“What was that?” he asked.

“What?”

He cocked his head and squinted, as if reacting to a sound. “That!” He looked at her. “You didn't hear that?”

She shook her head. “I didn't hear anything.”

He took a few steps toward the house, listening. After a moment, he turned and hurried back to her. “Let's get out of here,” he said, and got into the car. Randa, left with no option, followed.

“What is going on?” she asked, slamming her door.

“Nothing. It must have been the wind.” He was gone again, back inside his shell. And there was no wind, but Randa knew it would do no good to point that out.

Neither of them spoke on the ride back into town. Randa didn't know what to say, and Jack just stared out the window. He asked if she would drop him off at his place, and she pulled up in front of the boardinghouse and turned the engine off.

“Look, why don't we go out to dinner tonight?” she said, pressing her luck. “We can relax, talk some more.” She stopped. A look had come over his face, as if she'd just told him the tumor was inoperable.

“Dinner? You mean, at Tillie's?”

“No. Someplace nice. Someplace with dim lighting and a liquor license.”

He looked out the window. “I don't know.”

A thought occurred to her. “Is it that you don't have anything to wear?”

He looked at her. “Did you go through my closet, too?”

“That's not an answer,” she said, avoiding the accusation.

“Neither is that,” he said with a slight smile. “No, it isn't because I don't have anything to wear. You can't belong to my family without owning a suit; there's a funeral every other week.”

“Then what is it?”

“You know. I don't do things like that.”

“Yeah, it seems to work, too. You're obviously happy.”

He looked out the window and didn't answer.

Randa tried again. “One night isn't going to kill you. It'll be good for you. You might even have fun. Or is ‘fun' something else you don't do?”

“All right,” he said. “Uncle. But I'm not drinking, and you're not getting anything out of me in dim lighting that you wouldn't get out of me at Tillie's.”

“We'll see. I'll come back at six to pick you up,” she said.

“Whatever,” he said, either resigned or feigning resignation. He held the door open but didn't make a move to get out.

Uh-oh . . . he's coming up with an excuse . . .

“
Did
you go through my closet?” he finally said.

“Don't worry. I didn't touch a single skeleton.”

“I don't understand why I don't hate you,” he said, and got out of the car.

A
s she soaked in the antique claw-foot tub in her bathroom at the guesthouse, Randa took stock of her life. She'd been valedictorian of her high school class. Graduated magna cum laude (fifteenth in a class of 929) from a college that prided itself on an impossible curriculum and a high suicide rate. She'd moved to Los Angeles to set the world on fire, win a Pulitzer, and marry some fascinating man who adored her—preferably another writer. They'd buy a Greene & Greene bungalow in Pasadena, just off the parade route, and every year they'd throw a New Year's Eve party that people would live in terror of not being invited to. She and Mr. Perfect would both have offices at home, on opposite sides of the house, and they'd write all day. At night they would sit in front of a fire and drink brandy and read poetry aloud, or talk about their work. (Mr. Perfect, of course, would be far too secure to be jealous of her accomplishments.) Eventually, they'd have a couple of gorgeous kids and a politically correct dog, and in between carpooling and trips to the vet, she'd write the Great American Novel.