Evil Behind That Door (7 page)

“See anything?” A woman's voice, dim in my ears. It sounded like Constable Swan.

I tried to lift my head. Tried to speak. “I'm here,” I said. But I don't know if the words came out.

“No. It's dark.” A shaft of light came through the door. It fell on my face. “Fuck!” The ax went back to work. It was the last thing I heard.

Voices all around me. Pulsing lights. The stink of smoke and the hiss of wet coals. The crackle of a radio. People running. My head ached. My throat was on fire and something pressed down on my face. Nearby someone was crying. Who would cry for me?

I lay still, wondering if I was dead. A finger lifted my eyelid and flashed a light in my eyes. I jerked away.

“He's coming to!”

I blinked. Floodlights lit the whole place like day. The brightness hurt my head. I wanted to sleep. Maybe for a hundred years. But someone was squeezing my arm.

“Rick? Rick! Can you hear me?”

I opened my eyes. Saw the blue uniform of a paramedic and the worried face of Jason Renfold. I'd been at school with Jason, but he'd done a whole lot better than me. Right now I was glad of that.

I tried to move my lips. Cracked and stiff.

“Water,” Jason said, snapping his fingers. Next someone was holding a bottle to my lips. Most of the water ran down my chin. I coughed and wished I hadn't. It was like raking a sword up my throat.

“Do you know where you are?” Jason asked.

I squinted around me. Above the bright lights, I saw the darkening sky. I saw smoke and steam hissing from the black skeleton of Barry's house. Nearby I saw cops and firefighters and lots of townspeople. Fires bring the whole town out to help.

I nodded. “Mitchells',” was all I could say. More water was poured down my throat.

I lifted my head. Nearby was a cop car with its door open. I saw Barry inside. He had a blanket over his shoulders and he was crying. Loud and noisy. He stopped when he saw me looking at him. He got out of the car and started toward me. Shoulders hunched, head down, like he was dragging the world. Right away a bunch of cops surrounded him and held him back.

Constable Swan leaned over me. I saw she had a black smudge on her face and bandages on her hands. But she was smiling. “How are you feeling, Rick?”

“Peachy,” I said. For that moment, I was.

“Are you up to answering some questions about what happened?”

Jason held up his hand. “We need to get him to hospital. Smoke inhalation can be dangerous. And he has some second-degree burns that need treatment.”

“Of course,” Swan said. “The questions can wait. The main thing is, you're safe, and the fire is almost out.”

Barry blundered forward, a bunch of cops hanging off him. “I told them where you were. I heard you hollering. You always said the wiring on the house was a fire waiting to happen. Right, Rick?”

I looked at him. I could see the fear in his eyes. The hope. I couldn't nod. Couldn't shake my head. I just wanted to sleep. So I shut my eyes.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

I
woke up the next afternoon. I was in a hospital room, with flowers and teddy bears and even a big box of chocolates on the table beside me. It had a card beside it. From Jessica Swan.

Aunt Penny was by the window, talking quietly. I twisted my head to see who she was with. Constable Swan, picture perfect in jeans and blue pullover. With her blond hair loose, she looked like the morning sky. I felt like one big bandage from head to toe. I had an iv line in my hand and an oxygen tube stuck up my nose. I stank like a burning house.

They stopped when they saw me move. Aunt Penny leaned over, her lips tight. “That was a close one, Rick. We spotted the fire from the beach in town, but we all thought the place was empty. If it hadn't been for Barry calling nine-one-one…”

I tried to clear my head. To decide what to say. But it seemed like too much effort, at least for today.

Aunt Penny's lips tightened even more. You'd think it wouldn't hurt the woman to show she was happy.

“What were you doing down there anyway?”

“Um, the bones. I was…”

Aunt Penny sucked in her breath. “The skull. Little Louie.”

I nodded. Constable Swan was all business. “What bones? What skull?”

I moistened my lips. It would be a long story, especially for Constable Swan, who hadn't grown up in Lake Madrid and didn't know the family.

Aunt Penny put a hand on my arm. “Don't,” she said. “I'll tell her.”

So she told Jessica Swan about Louie's death and the cancer story the family made up.

“It seems the little boy's body was in the root cellar all those years,” Aunt Penny finished.

“How did he die?” Swan asked. She had taken a notebook out of her purse and was writing things down.

Aunt Penny answered again. “Who knows? It looked to me like the skull was cracked.”

Swan frowned. “You saw it?”

“I showed it to her,” I forced the words through my raw throat. I wasn't letting Aunt Penny take the heat for this. “I was going to show you yesterday, but then the divers found Pete's body and…”

“And now we may never know,” Swan snapped. She pulled out her cell phone and went out into the hall. I could hear her passing the story on to her boss and telling him what the fire investigators should look for.

When she came back in, she still looked mad.

“The fire destroyed pretty much everything, but once the place is cool enough, we'll search it. What does Barry Mitchell know?”

“He was five years old. I don't think he knows much.” I felt nervous. Barry was a loose cannon. God knows what he'd tell her under pressure. “But I had a good look around. I think Pete Mitchell hit his son in a fit of rage because he stole some Valentine's chocolates. I don't…” I tried to remember my theory from last night. “I think he was still alive when they locked him down there. But they thought Pete had killed him, so they made up the story about the cancer.”

Swan's blue eyes were boring through me. “So he died…down in that hole. Because of some Valentine's chocolates.”

I tried to shrug. It hurt every muscle. “That's what I figure. I saw some Valentine's chocolates down there. Pete and Connie disappeared on Valentine's Day, exactly thirty years later. It got me thinking…”

The blue eyes narrowed even more. “Thinking what?”

I was on really thin ice here, unless I dragged Barry into it. “That maybe… maybe…”

“Maybe the deaths are connected?” Swan asked. She was frowning and I could see her mind working. “I had a quick chat with the Ident guys this morning, and it looks as if someone tampered with the kill switch. The switch was still on, but there was a wire connected to it under the hood and running along under the bench. Looked as if someone rigged it to short-circuit the kill switch by pulling the wire.”

I remembered the stuff on Pete's workbench. The tools, the bits of wire, the greasy work gloves and the snowmobile manual, open to the wiring diagram.

I was too tired to explain. But Aunt Penny was on the ball.

“So one yank,” she said, “and the snowmobile would have died. In the middle of the lake.”

Swan nodded. “If you timed it right. The Wildcat is a very heavy sled. No question, with that keg on the back, it would go down if the ice was thin.”

“Then it had to be someone on the sled,” Aunt Penny said. “Pete's been going downhill for years, since losing his job and his child. Maybe he couldn't live with it all anymore and decided to end things for both of them.”

“That's what I thought,” Swan said. “Until Rick told me about their little boy. Maybe they both decided they couldn't live with their consciences any more. And made a Valentine's Day suicide pact.”

I could have left it at that. It tied things up neatly. But the Mitchells came off almost as heroes. There were no heroes in this story. So I called up all my strength. “Why would Pete rig up a wire? If he wanted to stop the sled, he'd just hit the kill switch itself. It's right beside his hand.”

Swan pursed her lips in thought. Just then her cell phone rang, and she went back in the corner to answer. But Aunt Penny was still on a roll. “Okay, maybe it was Connie who couldn't live with him anymore, or the memories of what they'd done. This explains why Valentine's Day was such a big deal to them, and why she'd pick that day.”

Sure it did, I thought. And the freezing water would make a pretty painless death. A perfect end. As long as you really wanted to die.

But before I could say anything about the missing jewels, Barry himself filled the doorway. His face was red from the fire and his eyebrows were gone. His eyes looked huge. “Have you found my mother yet?”

Swan was on her cell phone. She looked up, startled. No one had heard Barry come in. She hung up and I could see her sizing him up.

“Not yet, Barry,” she said. “It's tricky with the weather and the lake currents.”

“But you'll keep looking for her, right?”

Swan gave me a look. It said a lot. I knew she'd figured it out too. How easy it would be for Connie—sitting behind Pete on the sled—to hook his jacket on the seat, jump off the sled and pull the wire as she jumped. Especially if she'd been pushing booze down his throat all evening. I bet she even got Pete to put the keg on the back of the sled too, with a promise of more partying at home. Connie had thought the whole thing out.

“Of course we'll look, Barry. Believe me, we'll look,” Swan said. She looked grim. “A person matching your mother's description bought a used snowmobile online on February 12. To be delivered out back of the Lion's Head the evening of February 14. Cash on delivery.”

The last piece fell into place. The used snowmobile would've been waiting for her once she'd waded back through the snow. Her final, biggest, escape.

Barry looked confused. I didn't think he'd figure it out on his own. Not now, maybe not ever. I felt sorry for him, but I wasn't going to help him understand. Not for his mother's sake. Not because she'd suffered all her life and finally escaped. Not for his father's sake. That bastard had killed one son and let the other carry the blame for thirty years.

Not for their sakes, but for Barry's.

What was I supposed to say?
No one will
find your mother. Unless they look in Florida,
LA or New York City. Somewhere as far from
this hardscrabble life as her jewels can take her.
Somewhere she can disappear without leaving
a trace. And without sending you a single sign
that she's okay.

Leaving you to carry the bag. Again.

Next to that, my mother was a peach.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A writer does not work alone. Many people played a role in bringing this book to print. First I am indebted to Bob Tyrrell and Andrew Wooldridge of Orca Book Publishers, not only for their belief in my work but, more importantly, for their vision and commitment to publishing books for reluctant and emerging readers. I'd like to thank my fellow writers Mary Jane Maffini, Sue Pike, Linda Wiken and Joan Boswell, as well as my son Jeremy Fradkin, for their thoughtful critiques of early drafts, and my editor Alex Van Tol for making the final draft the best it could be. Thanks also to Shawn Beckstead of Allan Johnston Repair and Sales in Metcalfe, Ontario, for sharing his expertise on snowmobiles.

Most of all, I owe a huge debt to my parents, Katharine and the late Cecil Currie, for filling my childhood home with books. Without them, I might never have discovered a love of books and a passion to write.

BARBARA FRADKIN
is a child psychologist with a fascination for how we turn bad. She is best known for her gritty detective novels featuring Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green, which have won two Arthur Ellis Best Novel Awards.
The Fall Guy
(2011) was her first book in the Rapid Reads series featuring handyman Cedric O'Toole.