Evil Behind That Door (3 page)

Chevy snatched her ball as soon as I got up. She's a border collie that thinks life is one long fetch. I tossed the ball as I walked toward the barn. I heard the phone ringing and thought of not answering it. I almost never get phone calls from real people. But then I thought of the cottagers. A new job would hold off Aunt Penny.

It was Barry Mitchell.

“Jeez, O'Toole, where are you?”

“I went yesterday. You weren't there.”

“I know, I know. I got held up. Lawyers. Cops. Never ends. But I'm here now.”

“I don't know, Barry. Not sure it's worth fixing up.”

“Let's at least put some nails and a few licks of paint on it.” His voice took on a whine. “Help me sell it.”

“I got a couple of jobs lined up.”

The whine edged up a notch. “Rick, I'm sorry. I gotta get out of this town. I'll never get a break here. Yesterday they brought dogs out here, for fuck's sake.”

I held my breath, waiting for the rant. But none came.

“Gave me the creeps,” was all Barry said. “There's a thousand bucks in it for you if you help me sell this place.”

I looked out the window at my dirt bike parked where the truck should be. Before I knew it, I was caving.

In less than an hour I was back at his place. I was glad to see he was sober. Even smiling. I guessed the cops hadn't found anything.

“We're going to work on the kitchen today,” he said, heading inside. “My lawyer says that's where you sell the house or not. So first thing, we're going to get rid of that hole in the ceiling.”

I looked at the rusty wires sticking out of the hole in the kitchen ceiling. They were almost touching. One small power surge and
pow
!

“You got any caps for those wires?”

“I figured we'd just shove them back in the hole and put a patch over it. I got the patch.”

“But—”

“I'm not fixing up Buckingham Palace here, Rick!”

His face was turning red, so I shrugged. I grabbed a rickety stool. “Fine. We'll cut the power off at the panel and I'll tape them. Can you go down—?”

“I'm not going down there!”

I was up on the stool by this time, so I decided not to argue. His smile had been paper thin.

“You know what?” I said. “I'm in the mood to paint. Let's start on the cabinets.” I find painting calms me down. I was hoping it'd do the same for Barry.

We worked away without talking for a while, taping and sanding. It was peaceful, and Barry even began to smile again.

“Aunt Penny was talking about your folks yesterday,” I said. “Remembering when we were kids, all our friends…”

“I never had no friends, Rick.”

I had no good comeback for that. Barry had scared off just about everybody. So I kept going. “I even remember your little brother. What was his name?”

Barry stopped, paint brush dripping. “Louie.”

“Louie, right. Little blond kid. Must have been hard on your folks.”

Barry grunted. Went back to his painting.

“You must have missed him too.”

“I don't hardly remember him.”

“I would have liked to have a little brother like that.” I actually had an imaginary brother growing up. Not as good as the real thing, but all I would ever get. “Did you visit him when he was…you know, sick and all?”

His paint brush went all squiggly on the cabinet door. “I don't know. What are you asking about him for?”

“Just passing the time, Barry. No big deal.”

“No.” He threw down his brush. The green drops on the tile didn't improve the look any. “What the fuck you sticking your nose in for, O'Toole? What you saying?”

“I'm not saying anything. Just that it kind of explains things, you know? About your folks.”

“It was thirty fucking years ago! Louie was here, then he died. I got over it.”

I shut up. Bent my head and moved to another cabinet farther away. Barry picked up his brush again, gave a few good swipes at the cabinet door. Green paint smeared the fridge. He cursed, wiped it off, got it on his pants and tossed his brush in the pan.

“Fuck it! I've had enough.”

I held up my hands. “Okay, maybe we can—”

“Don't be a wuss, Tool. You're always such a wuss. I'm going out! You do whatever the hell you want.”

The whole place shook when he slammed the door.

CHAPTER
SIX

I
let out my breath. I hadn't even realized I was holding it. Keeping one step ahead of Barry could make a guy dizzy.

Painting is not something you can leave midway through, so I finished the first coat on the cabinets and cleaned up. It was peaceful without Barry. Afterward I explored the house. If Barry came back and asked what I was doing, I'd tell him I was figuring out our next job.

But I was really looking for clues.

Upstairs, the master bedroom was over the kitchen. In these old houses, that was the warmest place. The sheets looked like they hadn't been washed in a year and the place stank of old socks and piss. Pete's underwear and clothes were all over the floor. Connie's drawers hung open. Underneath the jumbled clothes I found a stash of empty Valium bottles. On her dresser, a small velvet jewelry box lay open. Empty.

In the back under the eaves were two more bedrooms. They'd be cold as an arctic cave in winter. One had a mattress and electric heater on the floor, and a few clothes piled on a homemade bookshelf under the window. The room was full of empty beer cans and frozen-dinner boxes. Barry's cave.

The other bedroom was a junk room, so packed you could hardly open the door. Broken chairs and lamps, a cooler, an old
TV
with a smashed screen. I discovered a baby crib almost buried by boxes and garbage bags. I poked through these. Nothing but magazines, old clothes and broken dishes.

The crib was the only hint that a child had ever lived here. There were no old Fisher- Price toys in the whole house. No trikes or LEGO or rocking horses.

No pictures anywhere. Even my mother stuck my school photos up on the fridge with an Elvis magnet. It was as if Louie and Barry hadn't grown up here.

As if Louie had never existed.

When my mind gets stuck on something, it doesn't let go, so I searched the rest of the house. Lots of broken old stuff that even I wouldn't keep, but not a single trace of the kids. I found Connie's stash of Demerol and Pete's hidden vodka bottles. I found stacks of romance novels,
Soap Opera Digest
and gossip magazines. Old porn movies stuffed behind the couch. I backed away. It felt wrong to peek into dead people's lives.

Outside I took deep breaths of the clean air. The sun was shining, melting the last of the snow from the boats, quads and snowmobiles in the yard. The barn roof had caved in, but the big shed beside it looked newer. Its door hung open a crack. I opened it wide to let the sunlight in. It looked like Pete's workshop. Tools were hung on the walls, and a pine workbench ran across one end. Boxes of supplies and hardware were stored under the bench.

The workbench was cluttered with junk. Tools, bits of wire, loose screws, empty oil cans and greasy work gloves. Had Barry been in here? Had he been working on something? Or had Pete done this?

There was a book open facedown in the middle of the junk. Curious, I picked it up. It was a repair manual for the 1996 Wildcat 700 EFI, open to the page showing the wiring diagram and the electrical system.

I knew Pete owned a few snowmobiles but the Wildcat 700 was the fastest. It was an old sled that had seen a rough life and had probably been rebuilt several times. I knew the clutch and the battery could be problems. Was that sled the one they had taken that day? Had the battery finally failed, stranding them in the backwoods? Or had Pete screwed up the repairs?

Back in February when they disappeared, everyone in town had gone out on their sleds or snowshoes to join the search. They had checked every backcountry trail in the county. They had waded through the thick forest on either side. The cops had interviewed everybody and pieced together their last day. Pete and Connie hit the bar for Valentine's dinner and stayed on to party. Around midnight the party turned ugly. At two thirty in the morning, the bartender finally threw them out.

It was snowing hard outside, making it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead in the dark. The snowmobile headlight would have been worse than useless. Everyone figured they'd headed home and lost their bearings, but no one knew what trail they might have taken. It was two days before Barry reported them missing. By then the snow had wiped out all their tracks.

The rumors about Barry started right away. He'd had lots of run-ins with his father since he'd gotten out of prison. Once he showed up in town with two black eyes. Said he'd walked into a door. It would solve a lot of problems for him if Pete and Connie were out of the way. Even the cops thought so.

I knew they'd been out to search the farm several times before yesterday. They'd tromped through the fields, the barns and the back woodlot looking for bodies. Always without any luck. But I wondered if they'd noticed the repair manual in the shed. And if they had, did they know what it meant? That something might have gone wrong with the sled Pete was driving?

Once again I thought of Constable Swan. She'd listen. She might not even think I was crazy. With my mind on a roll, I crossed the muddy yard and followed the path down to the lake. In shady spots, I could still see snowmobile ruts in the melting snow. It looked as if Pete drove this path often. I stood on the shore and looked across the lake. The pack ice was still solid in the middle of the lake, but it was melted around the edges. Open water was beginning to shine through in sunny spots. Soon it would be gone altogether.

The village of Lake Madrid was just a jumble of specks on the far shore. I could see the white marina, the blue tarps of boats stored over the winter and the steeple of the Catholic church poking through the trees. At the near end of the village, I could see the open water where Silver Creek fed into the lake.

When I was a kid, there was a sawmill on the creek, back in the days before global warming and farm fertilizers turned it into a weedy swamp. Half the village had worked at the sawmill, including Pete. Now the sawmill was a bar, the Lion's Head. It was still home to most of the guys who'd worked in the mill. Even more than the Legion, it was where people got together. They'd come by boat from all along the lake and in winter by snowmobile.

Everybody knew the ice near the creek was tricky. The water ran fast enough that it never really got thick, even in February. People would still go across it. They liked the challenge. Skimming on thin ice, even open water, was a village sport. But you had to know what you were doing, and you needed to see ahead of you. To judge just when to gun the throttle and pull the sled up. It took some skill. And a clear head. Every year a few idiots stoked up at the Lion's Head before trying their hand at the open water. Live and learn.

Standing on Pete's beach, I could see that the fastest way to get from his farm to the Lion's Head was straight across the lake by the creek. Pete likely did it all the time. But that night, in the pitch black with two people on the sled and a brain full of booze, that was asking for trouble.

Especially if the electronics cut out and killed the engine.

As I stood there, I noticed some tiny dots out on the open water near the creek. Boats? Not moving, just bobbing in place. I squinted. Other, smaller dots floated on the water. I caught my breath. Divers?

Back when the Mitchells disappeared, the police had sent divers under the ice to search the lake bottom off the Lion's Head. In the dark and cold, they found nothing. There was even talk of bringing in sonar from the city, but that never happened. Not enough evidence to justify the cost, they said. Instead they turned their sights on Barry.

But now that the ice was melting, were the police taking up the search again?

CHAPTER
SEVEN

I
walked back up to the house. Barry's old pickup was parked crooked in the drive, inches from my dirt bike. I hadn't heard him come back and my heart skipped a beat. The shed door was ajar, just like I'd found it. But had I moved anything in the house? Could Barry tell I'd searched it?

The front door was wide open. I poked my head in. Silence. I tiptoed into the hall and listened. I heard thumps and curses coming from the basement. I was about to sneak away when he came roaring up the stairs, red-faced and swaying. Booze breath hit me from ten feet away.

“You been in the basement, Tool!”

I shook my head. “I finished the kitchen.”

“You opened that door, didn't you?”

I don't like lying. My mother used to lie as easily as breathing and I hated it. My face goes all red and my tongue ties in knots. But admitting the truth to Barry right now didn't seem like a good idea either. So I tried to stickhandle through the middle.

“I went down to look at the electrical panel. That knob and tube needs to be replaced.”

“I told you not to open that door! Now bad things are going to happen.”

“What bad things?”

“There's evil behind that door! You shouldn't have let it out, Rick!”

He teetered on the top stair. I didn't want to grab the guy, because I figured in his mood he'd knock my head off. But I needed to get him away from the stairs. I walked toward the kitchen. “Barry, it's just a door. It's been shut for thirty years.”

He didn't follow me. Instead, he balled his fists.

“How do you know how long it's been shut?”

“I don't. I-I just guessed.” I eyed the distance between him and the front door. Luckily it was still open. If I moved fast enough, I could get past him before one of those fists connected. “Listen, I gotta go. We need some primer for the walls.”

I started into the hall. Barry whirled to slam the basement door shut. “Evil!” he roared.