Shimmer (19 page)

He had time to go on writing a while longer, because sunset was not until after eight, and he couldn't do what came next till after dark.

No doubting that he was going to have to do it.

Though he wasn't exactly sure yet how.

But it would happen, one way or another.

It had to.

60

‘
Claudia,' Sam said.

She stood just inside the doorway, half of her face obscured by shadow, the visible half tense and pale in the poor light from within.

Sam tried to read the eye he could see, but it was hard to decipher. Except, that was, for the fear.

‘Are you all right?' he asked.

She took a breath, then exhaled it in a small sigh.

‘Come in,' she said.

‘Wouldn't you rather come outside?' Sam asked.

Since that was what he wanted most, and had promised Grace: to get her sister out of this house.

‘Please,' Claudia said. ‘Come in.'

Nothing so easy then.

‘Sure,' Sam said.

He stepped over the threshold into Frank Lucca's home, and the smell hit his nostrils, made him hesitate.

He
almost
saw the figure as the door shut behind him.

Just a fragment of an impression, no more than that, no time for more.

Because the corner of a heavy old gilt lamp struck him, hard, on the right hand side of his head.

And all the lights went out.

61

‘
I think I should call him,' Grace said.

They'd moved into the kitchen a while back. David and Saul sat at the table, drinking coffee; Joshua sat in his playpen, gazing at Woody, who lay in his bed near the doggy door watching Grace as she paced back and forth over the stone tiles.

‘It's been no real time at all,' David said.

‘You have to give them a chance to talk,' Saul said.

‘First meeting for them, after all,' said David.

‘But if they're just talking,' Grace said, ‘and Claudia's fine, then why hasn't Sam called me by now to let me know?'

Father and son looked at each other.

‘Maybe no one's home,' Saul said.

‘No one answered when the police called,' David said.

‘So Sam's probably not even made it inside yet,' Saul said.

‘Would you both stop,' said Grace. ‘We all know something's wrong.'

‘Nothing Sam can't cope with, I'll bet,' Saul said.

‘I'm going to call,' Grace said, and picked up the phone from the table.

‘You might interrupt a delicate moment,' David said. ‘Who knows?'

‘Dad's right,' Saul said.

‘I know it's hard,' David said.

About to snap at them, Grace stopped herself, knowing that they were very probably right. Because whatever Sam might have walked into, he was, after all, an experienced homicide detective, and the last thing he needed in the middle of
something
was his damned fool wife calling to check on him.

‘I just wish he'd call,' she said lamely.

‘You're not alone there,' David said.

62

‘
Sam.'

The voice sounded as if it was coming at him through fog.

‘
Sam
!'

He told himself to open his eyes, found that he was lying on his back on a linoleum floor in a narrow hallway, and even in the dim lighting, he could see that the ceiling overhead was stained, perhaps by nicotine; though the stench in his nostrils was not cigarette smoke, neither fresh nor stale.

His hands were tied behind his back, and his eyes were stinging, and he badly needed to cough, to rid himself of the stink that was in his throat too.

Pain
when he coughed, in his head and right across his chest.

‘Shit,' he said in protest, then coughed again. ‘God
damn
.'

‘Sam, are you OK?'

Same voice. Female. He turned his head, peered through the semi-darkness and saw his sister-in-law on the floor about a dozen feet away, trussed up to a radiator.

‘Thank Christ,' Claudia said. ‘I thought she'd killed you.'

‘She?' Sam struggled for a moment, trying to gather his scrambled thoughts, then remembered, abruptly, exactly where he was and remembered the figure, too, just before the pain.

‘Roxanne,' Claudia said. ‘She's gone. A while ago.'

Sam's mind sharpened up a little. ‘What about Jerome? And your dad?'

‘I never got to see either of them.' Claudia's eyes grew fearful. ‘I don't even know if they're here. I only saw her.'

‘Nice woman.' Sam listened for a moment, heard nothing, hoped that meant the house was empty, then tried sitting up and groaned with the pain. ‘Not big on welcomes, is she?'

Claudia began to cry. ‘I'm so sorry, Sam. When she let me in, she seemed a little hostile, but she was wearing this old robe, and she just didn't look
dangerous
. I never dreamed . . .'

‘It's OK.' Sam tried sitting up again, made it this time.

‘She took me into that room –' Claudia nodded towards a closed door to Sam's right – ‘and I told her about Jerome, and she told me to wait while she got my father.' Her tears were still flowing. ‘And I had a feeling something wasn't right, so I phoned Grace, but then she came back and she was dressed, and she had a big
knife
, and she dragged me out here and tied me up.' She spoke rapidly, afraid of someone coming. ‘But then when you got here, she untied me and said that if I didn't get you to come inside, she'd kill me and then go after Grace and that she wouldn't stop there.'

Sam tucked down his chin, needing to check himself out, saw that his shirt had been ripped open and that there was blood all over his chest, told himself quickly that however much it hurt, the damage couldn't be too bad because the bleeding was just oozing, not pumping.

Yet that was where the acrid stench was coming from, from his goddamned
chest.
‘What the hell did she do to me?'

‘Sam, I'm so sorry,' Claudia said again.

He fought to make sense of what was going on, to take some kind of control of the situation. ‘Are you all right?' He screwed up his eyes to get a better look at her, saw that despite her pallor and fear she appeared uninjured. ‘Did she hurt you?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I'm OK.'

‘Good,' Sam said.

First things first.

He listened for another moment – still nothing – then shuffled across the linoleum until he was as close as he could get to Claudia, and saw that she'd been bound with some kind of twine, probably the same stuff that was tied round his own wrists. ‘Can you turn a little, so I can try to get you free?'

Claudia tried, but found she'd been tied up too tightly to move. ‘If you get your hands up a little way,' she suggested, ‘maybe I could try untying the knots with my teeth.'

‘I don't know if—'

‘Grace and I both have strong teeth,' Claudia said. ‘Our mom did, too.'

Sam couldn't recall Grace ever having so much as a filling. ‘Go for it.'

It took some time, cost her some pain and a few more tears of frustration before the twine was loose enough for Sam to extricate his hands.

‘Good job,' he said, rubbed them swiftly, then set about freeing her from the radiator pipe.

‘Can we get out of here?' Claudia said. ‘Please.'

Sam glanced back down at the mess on his chest, tentatively touched one of the bloody wounds – and knew, suddenly, exactly what the stench was.

‘Jesus,' he said, totally thrown.

Which was when they both heard the sound.

Moaning.

63

‘
That's it,' Grace said. ‘Not a minute longer.'

No one was arguing.

She picked up the phone. ‘If Sam doesn't answer, I'm calling the Sheriff's office.'

‘Go on,' David said, rubbing his right temple, willing away his headache.

Grace hit the speed dial number.

Sam heard his cell phone ringing.

Not out here in the hallway.

He turned, realized it was coming from behind him, from a room at the back of the house. ‘You stay here,' he told Claudia softly.

‘Be careful,' she whispered.

He opened the door cautiously, saw a kitchen, lighter than the hallway but still drab with sludge green linoleum on the floor, formica and plastic all over.

The ringing was coming from the waste bin.

Sam opened the lid, plunged his hand through coffee grounds, damp paper and unwashed cans, found the phone, saw it was home calling, answered. ‘Grace?'

‘Thank God,' her voice said, breaking a little.

‘We're both safe,' he told her, his voice low, ‘but I'm going to have to call you back.'

‘Sam, I can't—'

He cut off the call, stuck the phone in his pocket, turned and saw Claudia in the doorway, eyes following him like a scared puppy's.

‘Honey,' he said softly, ‘I want you to go wait by the front door while I take a look around, but if I tell you to get out, you go straight to any neighbour's house and call the cops.'

They heard another moan.

From upstairs. No doubt.

Sam went to a drawer, opened it, winced as it creaked, saw nothing he could use, opened the next drawer down and took out a long, sharp knife.

‘Oh, my God,' Claudia said. ‘Sam, be careful.'

‘I guess you never got to see the layout upstairs?' he asked her.

Claudia shook her head.

‘OK,' he said. ‘Now go to the front door.'

He waited until she was in position, then looked up the staircase.

No lights on up there.

Whoever had been doing that moaning hadn't sounded dangerous, but Sam knew better than to take anything at face value – and just because Claudia hadn't seen Jerome Cooper since her arrival did not mean he wasn't up there waiting.

He raised his left index finger to his lips to keep her silent, gripped the knife firmly in his right hand, and began to make his way up the staircase.

The fourth stair creaked.

Sam paused, waited, moved on, hesitated again as the seventh step groaned, then made it up to the half landing. Outside, beyond the narrow window that had, from the street, seemed like a nose in the face of the house, it was raining, the external light of minimal help to him.

He heard no more moans, no other sounds of life.

And took the last few stairs.

The upstairs hallway was rectangular with four closed doors, two to the left, two to the right.

The moaning began again, softer, weaker sounding than before.

It came from the left, Sam thought, from behind the farthest door.

Moving slowly, silently, he opened the first door which led to a bathroom, pushed the door wide open, scanned to left, right, up and ahead, took two steps in to check behind the door, then moved all the way inside and pulled back the shower curtain to see into the empty bathtub.

He moved back out into the hall, silent again now, and crossed to the door opposite.

A single room with a narrow bed, double wardrobe and posters on the walls. One from a Seventies movie that Sam remembered,
The Man Who Fell to Earth
, David Bowie in profile, and facing that two more Bowie posters, one from the Ziggy Stardust era, one of the Thin White Duke.

Jerome's room, Sam supposed, swiftly opening and scanning the wardrobe, seeing a single pair of jeans, one plain white cotton T-shirt, about a dozen naked wire coat hangers and a well-trodden pair of sneakers, all suggesting that Cooper had left home altogether, not just gone to Seattle and Florida on a round-trip blackmailing excursion.

He glanced back at the posters, explored for a few seconds any possible significance in the admiration of that weak-faced, mean-eyed young man for an iconic rock-movie star.

Something jabbed at Sam's mind, something lodged in his memory.

No time to think about it now, he told himself.
Move on.

The second room on that side of the hall was presently unoccupied, but plainly lived in, its bed a small double, neatly covered with an old-fashioned beige candlewick bedspread. Two pine wardrobes and a chest of drawers, a white-painted dressing table with a large circular mirror on a stand, a heart-shaped scented candle, a few jars and tubes of cosmetics and a box of Kleenex on the surface – and Sam knew he'd come back later for a closer look at Roxanne Lucca's belongings, but not yet.

He had the last room to check out first.

The moaner's room.

Someone either in trouble or lying in wait.

Sam stood outside the door, gripped the knife more tightly, listened.

Nothing.

He tried the handle.

The door was locked.

He crouched low, took a look through the keyhole, saw only vague grey shapes, but the acrid smell seemed stronger here, and the connection he'd made when he'd checked out his own wounds was becoming more jarring, more impossibly startling, by the second.

His call to the Sheriff's office was long overdue.

The moaning began again, louder than before.

Male, and intensely distressed.

Someone in need of help,
now
.

Sam used the knife to slide the lock open, heard and felt the blade snap.