Darkhouse (5 page)

A white ’85 Ford Fiesta van stood out from the shiny rows, battered, dull and cheap. Duke walked around it, looking through the windows, then came back around to the bonnet, leaning on it with both hands. He pushed himself upright.

‘You take cash?’ he asked.

‘I do,’ said the dealer.

Duke handed over the money and scribbled a signature on the forms. He sat in the van, reached up and yanked a swinging pine tree from the rear-view mirror. He threw it out the window as he pulled away. After a twenty-minute drive, he stopped at a petrol station and bought a black felttip pen and a map. He circled where he needed to go, then traced his finger along the route. He turned the key in the engine and headed for Limerick. On the outskirts of the city, he stopped at a Travelodge, slept and showered.

It was dark by the time he was on the road again, this time on a busy stretch to Tipperary. He was soon caught between two huge sixteen wheelers; he twitched at the wheel, swerving right to find an opening. The line of cars ahead was constant. He pulled back and saw a large sign for a town called Doon. Turning the wheel sharply, he took a last-minute left onto a narrow, winding road. His headlights picked up a black and white sign for Dead River. He crossed its stone bridge and drove through pitch black into the small town. He took a right at the corner onto Doon’s main street, a tidy row of houses, shops and pubs. It was eleven-thirty p.m. and deserted. He kept driving, then brought the van to a stop alongside the iron gates to a field. He clung to the steering wheel and breathed deeply. Then he got out to
walk back towards town. He wanted a beer. But another opportunity presented itself.

The driveway was long and curved, bordered on each side by tall sycamores. Giulio Lucchesi was waiting for his son in the marble foyer. He was fit, tanned and groomed, his grey hair combed glossy and neat. His navy blazer was crisply cut, his pale blue shirt and beige pants perfectly pressed, his suede loafers brushed.

‘Joseph,’ he said, clipped and anglicised.

‘Dad.’ They shook hands.

‘You remember Pam,’ said Giulio.

‘Yeah, hi,’ said Joe. ‘It’s great to see you again. Can’t believe he’s finally got you to say yes.’

She smiled.

It was no surprise that Giulio Lucchesi’s second wife was nothing like his first. Pam was tall, thin and subdued, a Nordic blonde. Maria Lucchesi was dark and fiery.

Giulio stepped back. ‘I’ll show you to your room.’

‘I think I can remember,’ said Joe. He took his suitcase and went alone up the stairs to a room he hadn’t seen in twelve years. He opened the door on the hotel minimalism that had never welcomed him before and didn’t welcome him now. From the age of fourteen to seventeen, he caught a ride with his neighbours to Rye to spend August with his father. And each September his
mother would run down the steps of their little Bensonhurst apartment to welcome him back home.

Pam led Joe to a vast cherrywood dining table. She went to the kitchen and came back with three small plates of blackened asparagus in balsamic vinegar.

‘Put some parmigiano on that,’ said Giulio, pushing a small bowl towards Joe.

‘This is good,’ said Joe, raising his fork. ‘Is Beck supposed to be here? I couldn’t get hold of her on her cell phone.’ Beck was Joe’s name for his older sister, a movie locations manager.

‘Rebecca is on set,’ said Giulio. ‘Quite fittingly, in a lunatic asylum.’

‘We’re one big let-down,’ said Joe to Pam. She looked away.

Giulio ignored him. ‘How’s Shaun?’

‘He’s great, settling in—’

‘—until he’s uprooted in a few months to come back home.’

Joe looked at him. ‘Maybe it’s in his genes.’ He turned to Pam. ‘I spent my childhood in Brooklyn, then we all moved when Dad got his job at Louisiana State, then I had to come back to Brooklyn with my mother when they divorced, then split my time between there and Rye when Dad bought the apartment and then this house. I went back to LSU for a few years, then back to New York. And now of course, there’s Ireland.’

‘Wow,’ said Pam. ‘That’s a lot of moving. You went to the same college as your father? I didn’t realise.’

‘Briefly,’ said Joe. Giulio cleared his throat.

After dinner, they moved into the living room with its thick carpets, ornate white and gold tapestry sofa and heavy velvet drapes. Anna’s worst nightmare.

‘So, you looking forward to the wedding?’ said Joe.

Giulio and Pam exchanged glances.

‘We already got married,’ said Giulio. ‘In Vegas. At the weekend.’

‘In Vegas.’

‘I know,’ said Pam. ‘It sounds so tacky. But it was wonderful—’

‘Jesus, Dad; you know, I’ve never actually been invited to a wedding where the bride and groom have gone ahead and married before I got there. This is really something. A real special day for all of us.’

‘What’s done is done. I’m glad you came all this way,’ said Giulio.

‘Great,’ said Joe. ‘Look, goodnight, OK?’

He put down his drink and went to his room. He lay on the bed and flicked on the TV. Later, when he heard his father’s bedroom door shut, he got up and went to the kitchen for coffee. He took his mug and wandered down the hallway,
drawn to the study. He looked across the shelves at books that traced his father’s career: texts from the sixties on general entomology – introductions and field guides, then agricultural entomology – tabanids, mosquitoes.

Joe had just turned four when Giulio started college at Cornell. He was twenty-seven years old and worked three jobs to pay his way through an entomology degree. He was the only father in the neighbourhood who stayed in at the weekends to study. Joe felt an unfamiliar stab of pride. He forgot the boy in the garden bouncing a ball off the wall so he could swing a bat at it.

The rest of the books covered Giulio’s final specialism, titles just as familiar to Joe –
Time of Death, Decomposition and Identification: An Atlas, Entomology & Death – A Procedural Guide, Forensic Entomology: The Utility of Arthropods in Legal Investigations
, then four copies of
Learning to Tell The Time: A Guide to Forensic Entomology
by Giulio Lucchesi. Row after row of books about insects and forensics. At the bottom of a fallen pile, Joe recognised the navy binding and yellowed pages of a thick manuscript that made his heart flip. He pulled it out and wiped down the cover.

Louisiana State University: ‘
Entomology and Time of Death: a field study
.’ Three names were printed beneath. The one that leapt out at him was his own. It was 1982. He had been nineteen years old, a sophomore. Because of his father’s friendship
with Jem Barmoix, LSU’s medical entomology professor, Joe had been invited to join the team for a groundbreaking new research project.

‘Regrets?’ said Giulio from the doorway. Joe jumped.

‘No, Dad. No.’

‘I don’t think you appreciate what you had.’

‘I don’t think you appreciate what I have.’

‘But Jem—’

‘I know. I know how much the research meant. But instead of squinting down a microscope all day, I’m the one who goes out and finds the fuckers who create the corpses in the first place. No corpses, no decomposition, no maggot and fly timeline. But no murderers, no corpses.’

‘
Found
the fuckers.’

‘What?’

‘You said you find the fuckers who commit murder, but shouldn’t you have said
found
? Aren’t you on a break? What are you now, Joseph? Anna tells me you’re a carpenter. How biblical.’

‘What the hell is your problem?’

‘You could have been an academ—’

‘Listen to yourself.’ Joe jabbed a finger at his father. Then he stopped and took a breath. ‘You know something? I’m not gonna bother. We both know what’s going on here. I’m not rising to it, the same conversation over and over.’ He threw down the paper and walked out of the room.

Pam made a wasted effort over breakfast. Joe gave short, sharp answers through teeth he had been grinding all night.

‘I hate to leave on your wedding day,’ he said, getting up from the table and walking out to the bags he had left in the hall. Giulio followed him.

‘There’s no need to go after one night.’

‘I came for your wedding,’ said Joe. ‘which is now over. Which was over before I got here. Congratulations. Pam is a lovely woman. I’m now going to spend some time with Danny and Gina.’

‘As you wish.’

‘As I wish. Sure.’

It was dark when Anna went out to close the gate at the end of the lane. She was about to turn back to the house when she saw the tip of a cigarette light up across the road. John Miller raised a hand for her to stop.

‘I
definitely
lost last night,’ he said, walking towards her with his head hanging, looking at her with sad eyes. He was freshly showered, dressed in a clean but rumpled rugby shirt and jeans.

She looked at him, confused. Then she remembered. The first night they met, twenty-one years earlier, he was celebrating. France had beaten Ireland by one point in a rugby match in Paris. At the start of the night, John was mourning the loss, but by the end of it, he was drunk and jubilant that the Irish had come so close.

‘Whiskey doesn’t agree with me,’ he said, leaning his arms on the gate, staring down, kicking at the loose gravel.

She shook her head and sighed.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking up. ‘I really am.’

‘It’s fine,’ she said and tried to walk away.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Please.’

‘What do you want me to say? It wasn’t a nice introduction after all this time.’

‘I wish I hadn’t met you last night.’

‘And how would you have been if you met me today?’

‘I’d be sober and you’d still be beautiful.’ There was a familiar sparkle in his eyes.

She couldn’t help smiling. ‘I better go back,’ she said, nodding towards the house. She locked the front door behind her. When she went into the den, Shaun swung around in his chair.

‘Check this out, Mom. I’m live.’

She leaned over his shoulder and saw Shaun’s smiling face on the screen, beside his G.I. Joe photo.

His name was printed underneath with a list of vital statistics.

‘Your favourite movie is
While You Were Sleeping
?’ said Anna.

‘What?’ said Shaun, panicked.

‘Gotcha,’ said Anna.

Shaun looked at her, deadpan. ‘You’re such a dork.’

‘I know,’ she said.

She read that Shaun’s favourite food was anything American, his favourite drink was Dr Pepper, his favourite sport was baseball, his favourite place was Florida.

‘I see you’re becoming a real Irish man,’ said Anna, pointing to the screen.

‘Ah, but my favourite girl is Irish,’ said Shaun. ‘That’s the difference.’

She scrolled down further and saw question marks in the career section.

‘Don’t you know what you want to do?’ said Anna.

‘No,’ said Shaun. ‘It’s like I look at my future and it’s blank, you know? Like living on the edge of this cliff, but not being able to see a thing.’

‘Have you been watching
Dawson’s Creek
again?’

Stinger’s Creek, North Central Texas, 1979

Flakes of rust flew from the battered white pickup as it lurched from side to side along the twisted road out of Stinger’s Creek. It was after midnight and Wanda Rawlins was slumped, disorientated, against the passenger door, her skinny legs splayed under the dashboard. Her face was pale and her white blonde hair with its dark roots lay in damp strands across her cheeks. Duke’s eyes flickered open. The sickly smell of pine air freshener flooded his nostrils. He looked up at his mama, his fingers clawing listlessly at her arm. He could see flashes of light across her face and black pools of mascara under her eyes. She was staring out the window. He tried to speak, but his throat was dry and raw from screaming. The only colour on his face was the redness that flared at the centre of his forehead. Slow throbs pulsed through his head and a
cold tingling sensation moved in waves down his arms to his fingertips. Darts of pain spiked beneath him and he slowly shifted his tiny frame onto its side, his navy shorts twisting around him. He passed out with the effort.

‘I think he moved, I think he moved,’ cried Wanda. ‘Come on, baby, come on, baby, come back to me,’ she began to sob. She clutched his head to her stomach, spilling tears onto his face. She got no response.

‘What’s happening to him? What’s happening to him?’ she screamed, shaking Duke’s shoulders, too wasted to know any different.

‘Calm down, Wanda,’ said the driver, ‘calm the fuck down or we won’t be taking him any further than the end of this road.’

Wanda sat in silence for the rest of the journey, rocking Duke jerkily back and forth, his bare legs dangling over the seat edge.

Ten minutes later, they screeched into a parking lot and came to a stop. Wanda pushed open the door and hauled herself out, pulling Duke with her, taking his limp body in her arms. She staggered through the double doors in front of her into a brightly lit hallway. Duke’s eyes opened again, fleetingly. Hospital, he thought.

‘What the fuck you doin’ bringin’ him through the house, you dumb bitch?’ hissed Hector Batista, pulling shut his living room door behind him. His accent was thick. ‘Told you to bring him around
back. Who you think you are?’ He glanced down at the vomit on Duke’s T-shirt, shook his head and grabbed Wanda’s elbow, guiding her roughly out the door she came in. Hector nodded at the driver of the pickup to follow them around.

A fluorescent light pierced the darkness in the filthy room, swinging low over a metal table at the centre. Wanda lay Duke down and began to sob again, spreading herself across her son’s body. Hector pulled her aside and reached over to lift the boy’s eyelids, shining his light in.

‘Pupils OK,’ he said. ‘What happened to him?’ No-one answered.

‘You say on the phone he hit his head. Is that all I look for?’ said Hector.

‘Yeah,’ said the driver.

Hector wrung cold water out of a grimy cloth at the sink and turned back to place it on Duke’s forehead. His eyes opened.

‘Can you remember what happened?’ asked Hector.

Duke tried to shake his head.

‘You know what day it is?’ asked Hector.

‘Friday,’ whispered Duke.

‘Tell me who is your president.’

‘He wouldn’t—’ said Wanda.

‘Jimmy Carter,’ said Duke, proud.

‘He’s just fine,’ said Hector. ‘Little concussion. Wake him up some times during the night, make sure he don’t get any worse and keep him away
from jumping around for the next weeks. He must rest.’

Duke moved his head slowly to look at his mother. From behind her, the driver of the pickup stepped out. Duke’s eyes shot wide in alarm and he opened his mouth to scream. Hector’s hand was quick as he clamped it over the little boy’s cracked lips. Duke was writhing underneath the pressure, his eyes darting everywhere. He couldn’t breathe.

‘You stop, I let go,’ said Hector, his face two inches from Duke’s. He held his hand firm until Duke calmed down, the energy draining from his shuddering body.

Hector leered at the driver.
Los niños pequeños hacen mucho ruido
,’ he said.

‘No speaky the Spanish,’ said the driver.

Hector walked over and whispered to him: ‘Little boys make lots of noise.’ He laughed.

Duke had curled into a ball on his side and began to cry. He felt the hand of the driver in the small of his back.

‘No more boo-hoos, Dukey. No more boo-hoos.’

Duke shivered. All he could remember was Boohoo coming into his room. What he couldn’t remember was the man’s weight bearing down on him, pushing harder each time, slamming his forehead into the wall over and over again, until he crumpled and lay face down, unmoving on his bed.

Wanda Rawlins heard a faint knock on the screen door and pulled it open carefully. Smoke billowed out around her. She flicked her hand at it.

‘Mornin’, Mrs Rawlins,’ said Donnie. ‘Duke about?’

‘Duke had an accident yesterday, he’s resting.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothin’ much. He had a knock to the head.’ She smiled. ‘You boys. You sure know how to scare the livin’ hell out of a mother.’

‘Can I see him?’ asked Donnie.

‘For a few minutes,’ said Wanda, stepping back to let him in.

Donnie walked in to the kitchen and was hit with a smell that caught at the back of his throat. The oven was wide open and a baking tray lay diagonally across the folded-down door. Cracked black circles steamed on the surface. More had fallen to the floor.

‘Tray was hot,’ laughed Wanda. ‘And I didn’t quite make it in time,’ she said.

‘Well, I’m sure they’ll taste just fine,’ said Donnie.

Wanda laughed out loud. ‘And I’m Julia Child.’

Duke lay on his side, covered by a thin sheet. His face was pale and beads of sweat gathered on his forehead.

‘Hey,’ said Donnie. ‘How you doin’?’

Duke tried to talk, but his lips stuck together. He wiped his mouth.

‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘My throat hurts.’

‘How’s that?’ said Donnie. ‘I thought you hit your head.’

‘Just does,’ said Duke.

‘You fall from a tree?’

Duke hesitated. He opened his mouth, then closed it just as quick.

‘Yup. What an idiot.’

Wanda slid her thumb under her nose and pushed herself up from the kitchen chair, slipping her feet back into her mules. She picked up the baking tray and went to the doorway of Duke’s room.

‘Look what I made for you, sweetie,’ she laughed, her eyes wide. ‘To cheer up my little soldier.’ Duke lifted his head to see her. She looked crazy. ‘They didn’t quite work out,’ she explained looking down at the cookies. ‘Mama fucked up.’ She laughed again.

‘I’m talkin’ to Donnie,’ said Duke.

‘Aren’t you even gonna thank your mama?’ she pouted.

‘Thank you, Mama,’ he said flatly.

‘Aw,’ she said, walking over to the bed. She let the tray hang by her side, dropping the cookies onto the floor. She leaned down to look at them and picked something up.

‘Found you a chocolate chip!’ she said, holding
up a burnt cookie crumb. She put it up to Duke’s mouth. He buried his head back into the pillow.

‘No!’ he said. ‘I don’t want it.’

‘Jeez, Duke, no need to shout. You want this, Donnie?’ she said as it crumbled between her fingers. ‘Oops!’

Then she held up her hand. ‘Shush,’ she said, trying to focus. ‘Shh.’ They heard twigs cracking as someone walked up to the front of the house. A shadow passed over the blind in the bedroom.

‘Donnie, you stay right where you are, sweetheart. I have myself a visitor,’ said Wanda, smoothing down her hair, leaving black crumbs on the blonde.

She left the room and went to the kitchen. Westley Ames stood at the door.

‘Hey, Wanda,’ he said. ‘Is this a good time?’

‘You know, Westley? You shoulda called, but I guess it’s OK.’

‘I have some excellent produce for you,’ he said and she could see his hand flex in his jacket pocket. ‘You look mighty interested,’ he chuckled.

‘Duke’s taken a knock, Westley,’ she said. ‘He’s resting.’

Westley’s eyes flashed anger and the smile disappeared. He clenched the bag again. Wanda looked up at him.

‘Come back tomorrow, Westley,’ she said and closed the door. She turned back. ‘Or later tonight,’ she shouted from the open window.