Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) (33 page)

Oh, stupid,
stupid.

It was not the car radio. A dock connection must be loose. That would explain the erratic music. When the last wire had been torn away, the old iPod had worked off the juice of its own battery. He smashed it into plastic bits, hammering beyond the need to only break it and MAKE IT STOP!

He pulled back from the car. The hammer fell from his hand. His eyes closed. Loss of control was new to him. Just tired is all. Yeah, that was it. In his pocket was a small vial of pills for times like this.

Or maybe a nap before the wetwork? Yeah, sleep was what he really needed.

He left the garage by the door to the kitchen, and he locked it behind him. Then he checked all the other locks in the house. After setting an alarm clock, he lay down in the dark, but sleep would not come. This was the fault of all those pills taken over the last two days. How could he have botched every hard-learned lesson on drugs?

His eyes opened.

There was something in the room with him. Old houses had noises of their own making, but had there been any sound? No, only a feeling, a prickle and shiver of flesh. He switched on the bedside lamp to find himself alone. His legs were lead-heavy when he shifted them off the mattress. Bare feet slapped the floor as Iggy clomped through every room, turning on all the lights, checking the locks
again.
Even the windows had locks that required a key to open them from the inside—a recent precaution of turning his home into a meat locker for the boy.

When every light was burning, he stayed his hand before double-checking the lock on the last window. And he said to no one, “This is crazy.”

Only crazy people did this, or scared people, and that was never him. The jangled nerves and the misfire of his survival instinct—that was the pills. And so, as he walked back to his bed, every odd thing was explained away one more time.

—

DETECTIVE BROGAN
, the senior man on the protection detail, stood between the mayor and his aide.

Andrew Polk watched the detective frisk Samuel Tucker, going first for the pockets, and then running his hands down Tuck’s pant legs in the little joke that this dorky kid might be carrying a weapon. The aide was pronounced clean and allowed to accompany the mayor up the grand staircase.

When they had climbed to the upper floor and the door to the private office was closed behind them, Tuck unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a square brown envelope taped to his chest, the one area that had not been patted down in the search. So this kid had a brain. Who knew?

Tuck handed over the envelope, still sealed. “Someone put it under my door.”

That might be true. There were innocent explanations for the faint stink of fear that rose off Tuck’s skin and the damp of his shirt. Maybe this fool had raised all that sweat in a fast run to the mansion—so eager to lick the hand that fed him.

Andrew Polk tore the seal open to find a note that said, “I’M WAITING.” There were no samples for comparison. The previous notes and package wrappings had been burned in the fireplace. These block letters could have been printed by the same hand—or just as easily by someone else’s. Should he rethink his aide’s idiocy? Was this note a ruse of Tuck’s to get back inside the mansion? Or could it be something cooked up by cops?

Did he care? No. The mayor nonchalantly struck a match and set it afire.

There was no knock before Brogan and his partner entered the private office. And what had prompted this sudden boldness? The smell of smoke? That suggested that they had been standing outside the door. Ears pressed to the wood?

The unhappy detectives stared at the envelope turning to ash in the fireplace.

Andrew Polk winked at them. “Old love letter from a hooker.” Did they believe this? No, they were probably not that stupid. Were they likely to admit to superiors that something else might have gotten past them? Absolutely not.

—

ALL WAS QUIET
on the floor above Jonah’s head. On the other side of the laundry-room door, the only sound was a low, rhythmic whistle of a wheeze. The pit bull was asleep.
Finally.

Dog and master were so in sync, Cigarette Man must have gone to sleep, too.

Slowly, gently, Jonah turned the knob to open the door.

Resistance.

He knew the bolt had not gone into its slot, but it must be overlapping the door frame. By how much? Jonah pushed harder and heard the bolt move, grating against the wood. He stopped. He held his breath the better to listen, but the dog’s breathing was unchanged. The boy exhaled. He reached out to try the door again, but it had swung open of its own accord.

His sneakers dangled by the tied laces strung around his neck, and the mop handle was in his right hand. In barefoot silence, he crossed the threshold, turned to a position of ten o’clock and softly padded the sixteen paces across the cool cement floor. Before reaching out to touch the banister, he knew he was at the foot of the stairs leading up to the kitchen door. The fourth step would creak and so would the ninth. He must step over them or the dog would be on him, shredding his skin in a bloody horror fest.

Go for it,
said Aunt Angie.
Life is so worth it. Life is everything. I wish I could’ve stayed a little longer.

 
20

His favorite bar was dismally unsuccessful and delightfully uncrowded, assuring him of attention at the crook of a finger. He liked that
so
much.

Dwayne Brox sipped brandy as he read the final passage of a novel by Franz Kafka, a rare German departure from his love of Russian classics. When his regular cocktail waitress returned, he planned to impress her with his critique of the author as a comedian of sadism. She would flatter him and smile, as if his affect did not repulse her, thus earning herself a generous tip. And this was his idea of a date. Like most attractive women of his acquaintance, she would never go out with him—never go home with him. But that was a call girl’s job, not hers.

He closed his book and turned to the window on the street. Out there at the curb, a familiar asshole was exiting a taxi. Dwayne had detested him since they were boys. Oh,
really
. For this occasion, the fool wore a tie with the colors of their alma mater, Fayton Prep. The former classmate approached the street door, all nerves and tics, jerking his head this way and that, as if he suspected that someone,
anyone,
might care to follow him around town. Upon entering the bar, he walked toward Dwayne’s table, extending a hand in the spirit of schoolboy camaraderie. So needy. Always begging for a sign of acceptance.

Not in this lifetime.

“Hello, Tuck.”

And goodbye?

Samuel Tucker’s outstretched hand fell to his side as he took one step back, and then he ceased to move at all.

Mildly curious, Dwayne waited for the man to blink.

Oh
,
my!
There was Detective Mallory standing outside close to the window and looking in—at Tuck. She pointed no gun at him, nor was there anything disagreeable about her, but she evidently had a Medusa knack for turning fools to stone.

Good
job.

Tuck came alive again—nearly alive. Oh, dear, so pale. He spun on one heel and raced for the door. At a slower pace, Dwayne followed him out of the bar to linger on the sidewalk. He watched Tuck run down the street, calling out to a slow-moving cab, and chasing that car down as dogs were wont to do.

The pretty cop now stood beside Dwayne, and her eyes were on the car chase when she asked, “Friend of yours?”

“I don’t have any friends.”

Detective Mallory stepped off the curb and rounded a small silver convertible to slide in behind the steering wheel. A Volkswagen? Well, that make of car would not work with her wardrobe
or
her psyche. No, not at all. Now,
that
was interesting.

—

JONAH COUNTED HIS WAY UPWARD
, his bare feet passing over the two cellar steps that creaked. He stopped to concentrate on the wheezy whistling of the sleeping dog below. He had no faith in the light mop handle as a weapon against a pit bull.

Next step, last step.

He reached out for the knob, but the kitchen door was wide open.
Was this more of Cigarette Man’s carelessness? Or did he always leave it that way so he could hear the dog bark? Jonah entered the kitchen. Five steps to the table. He skirted it and turned left to face the living room. His feet remembered the way, and, ten steps in, he rounded an armchair, continuing on to the far wall to graze it with fingertips and find the way out.

One hand closed on the ball of a doorknob, and it turned easily, but the door would not open. So there would be a deadbolt to undo—just like home. His fingers lightly climbed the frame to find a small piece of rounded metal that would open the bolt at a twist. This done, he tried the knob again. No good. Uncle Harry had three locks, and now Jonah searched for another bolt. Higher up the frame, he touched a thick plate with a protruding chunk of metal—nothing to twist, no chain to slide. Fingertips sensitized to reading dots of braille traced the shape of a ragged crease in the metal.

An opening to fit a key? Yes, he would need a damn key to unlock this door from the
inside.

Abandoning that escape route, fingers traveled along the wall in search of a window. His hand brushed over curtains to find the glass, the frame, and now two metal handles near the sill. Hard as he pulled, he could not raise the sash. His hands slipped up the glass to undo the catch at the top, and he found another key-creased bit of metal like the one on the door. This was not the way out. Breaking glass would wake the man—and the dog.

But right this minute, a ringing telephone could rouse them both and end all his chances.

Jonah leaned the mop handle against the door. He did not dare to use it as a cane, not where he was going. It might connect with something hard and noisy. He made his way around the room, searching the floor by touch of toes. Guided by memory of the dog’s toenails clicking on a hard surface, he knew the hallway would be on the other side of the television set and past the edge of the carpet. Hands outstretched,
he found the opening. Arms wide now, his fingers grazed close walls on both sides of him. He found a door and opened it. Only a closet of shelves. A few steps farther down the hall, he heard light snoring. The bedroom? Was this door open? Panic was a fluttery thing in his chest, ice in his heart, his blood, and he was scared stupid.

Reason kicked in.

If Cigarette Man should wake, his eyes would tell him nothing at this time of night when the lights were out.

Back home, Jonah always left his wallet and keys on the nightstand by his bed, and he guessed that Cigarette Man would also keep such things close by. Bare feet found a slight rise of wood, and toes grazed it to recognize it as a threshold. The boy lightly dropped down to hands and knees on a hardwood floor. He moved forward in an awkward dogtrot, one arm extended, fingers reaching out to where a bed might be, and he found one thick leg of furniture.

Above his head, he heard the squeak of mattress springs. The snoring stopped. The man—so close—was turning in his bed. Waking? Jonah stopped breathing.

The snoring started up again. The boy drew a breath and crawled on to find a shoe. A bit of cloth. A rug. Moving slowly on this softer surface, he reached out to touch a thinner leg of furniture. The nightstand? Up on his feet now, feather-light fingers explored its surface, and felt
the
heat of a lightbulb.

The lamp was lit! If the man should wake—

Jonah fought down the urge to run, to crash through a window and run for his life. Hysteria was climbing up his throat, and—

Then his fingertips picked out the shape of keys on the nightstand.

—

THE CAB HAD NOT DROPPED
him off at Gracie Mansion, as expected. Instead, the mayor’s aide had gone home, that place of retreat
to lick wounds. The address was on a bleak side street at the fringe of money, where no one went walking long after dark. Samuel Tucker’s small apartment was one window up from the ground. He could not afford the higher floors where the light lived.

It was trash night in this neighborhood, and all along the curbs, garbage bags writhed with the slitherings beneath their plastic skins as rodents ate their innards. Kathy Mallory
hated
rats. This old grudge was a holdover from a childhood of cutting them with broken bottles and banging them with bricks, enraged because the bolder ones were too stupid to be afraid of her, a little girl who could not bed down without her shoes because rats liked the taste of toes.

The car windows were rolled up, but she could still hear them, the mechanized peeps, high-pitched and alien.

She watched her dashboard computer and waited for the first signal blip of an active cell phone or the track of a landline call to the mayor. Her keystroke bug on Tucker’s laptop had yet to give up any messages sent out by that route. She turned her eyes to his unlit windows. Black. Not even the glow of a TV screen.

What was he doing in there—in the dark?

The street door opened, and Tucker walked out. He stood by the curb, lifting his face, as if to count stars—then bowing to cracks in the pavement. Now the man paced the sidewalk, never straying far from his apartment building. He paused to raise a hand and hail an oncoming cab. But then that hand was jammed into his pocket in a change of heart.

He went back inside.

To hide?

No report to the mayor?

No, of course not. Tucker could hardly admit to his runaway abortion of tonight’s mission. How would he explain police interest in him, a cop
following
him? Just the sight of her had frightened him even more than the bogus arrest, and he would never want Polk to
find out about that station-house interview—the trip-up questions asked and the
screwup
lies he had told.