Family Murders: A Thriller (11 page)

The gun clicked and jammed hard with the slide back.

"Lucky for you this is a cheap piece of shit," he said. He worked the slide back and forth, muttering to himself. Eric rolled over onto his belly and started trying to pull himself up the cement bag, dragging himself over loose tools.

"You shouldn't strain yourself there, buddy. You'll just bleed out faster."

"Fuck you." Blood foamed out of Eric's mouth along with the obscenities.

"OK, I'll be back," Ted said. "Looks like this will get to be a knife thing after all. Maybe I'll run into Julie too! Don't you two go anywhere." He laughed and walked out the door.

Angela looked down at Eric. His face was down on the floor, nearly between her knees. She could only think of one thing to say.

"I'm sorry I didn't believe you."

He labored with his breath for a second, then said: "I'm sorry I killed your dog. I just…I needed to be able to get to him."

Angela had loved that dog, shuddered, but still nodded.

"We're going to die," she said.

"Probably." Blood was frothing out of his mouth even when he wasn't talking now. "When I say so, can you flip that switch?" He used his eyes to indicate a toggle on a black box.

Angela was about to ask for what, but ended up just nodding as Ted walked back in, now holding another knife out of the kitchen block.

"So, it comes down to this," he said. "You thought you could turn your pathetic revenge fantasies into some kind of reality. And now you're—"

Eric grunted something and blood spattered across the floor.

"What was that?" Ted asked.

"I said," Eric wheezed in air before finishing his sentence, "shut up."

Ted turned red, then purple, and blew his top. "You said that to me once before, ten years ago, and I gave you what you deserved. I told you then you'd never say that to me again. Now I'm going to prove it to you."

Ted stepped over Eric's prone body. From between Ted's legs he nodded at Angela who reached out with her less-numb arm and flipped the switch. The box roared to life. From the sound of the rapid clacking she identified it as an air compressor she'd heard the contractors using.

Ted looked surprised, but put on another smile and reversed his grip on the knife so that the blade pointed down. "Whatever you're trying, it's way too late. I'm going to—"

Eric rolled off the nail gun he'd been laying on, then used the floor to lever the business end upward.

"Shut up," he said again, and pulled the trigger.

The nail shot up vertically and went through the soft underbelly of Ted's jaw and up through his mouth, neatly stapling his tongue to his brain stem. The man who had been her husband registered just a moment of confusion. Then whatever light was in his eyes went out, and he fell quietly backwards though the hole in the floor.

Angela gave some kind of mental cheer, and passed out.

12

"Mommy, why did that man call me Gabby?"

Angela was tucking her daughter into bed as the lights flickered and the wind pounded the walls outside, both heralding Hurricane Marco's imminent arrival.

The police, with Frank Cooper in the lead, had shown up about fifteen minutes after Angela gave in to unconsciousness. It turned out Julie hadn't followed instructions exactly. Instead of hiding she had run out the front door and down the street, and then another quarter-mile to the next house. The nice older lady who lived there had called the police almost immediately.

The puncture wound to Angela's torso was long but shallow. The knife had been forced in to its hilt, but the blade had ridden along the outside edge of her ribcage and stayed away from any organs or major blood vessels. After thirteen stitches—and against doctor's orders—she had checked herself out, collected her daughter, and gone home.

The new addition was sealed off by police tape, but Angela didn't want to go in anyway. She hoped the whole thing would get razed to the ground. For the time being, considering her medical condition, the police had agreed to put off the interview. She had an appointment with Frank Cooper here at the house tomorrow, and she had a lot to organize in her head, a lot to tell him.

Before leaving the hospital, she had made one visit. The room was guarded by two officers in uniform, but they knew who she was. They let her in.

Eric had been connected to a lot of tubes and monitors, but a respirator wasn't one of them. He could breath on his own, and even though they had dug one bullet out of a lung, he could talk. But Angela just looked at him.

"I don't know what to to say," was what finally came out.

"So don't say anything," he had said.

And for a long time they had sat in silence, each thinking their own thoughts, both wondering where they might overlap.

"I think I understand everything that happened," Angela said, "but I do have one question. How did you find the locket? I mean, I know you must have dug twenty holes, but even that wouldn't be enough to find it—it was tiny."

"After I saw the article and found the house," Eric said, "I started watching. It came out earlier in the national papers. Only after they picked it up did your local paper grab it too, so I was there pretty early."

He looked off into the distance.

"And I didn't have to wait very long before I saw him bury something. You all went out somewhere that night, and I dug it up."

"The locket?"

"No. It was a bracelet, or maybe an anklet, I'm not sure. But there was a family murdered that week in San Antonio, and something similar was listed as missing."

"No, that can't be right. Look, I accept that Ted did what he did to your sister ten years ago, and he had some kind of psychotic break tonight, but in between…" Angela trailed off.

"I've been reading every paper I can for years, searching for things that smell like him. It doesn't take much effort to find one."

"How can you know?"

Eric turned and looked right at her again. "When I realized what that bracelet was, I put it back in the ground. But it gave me the idea: if he really collects mementos, and if the yard is where he keeps them, maybe my sister's missing locket would be out there too."

"And it was."

"Yes."

"But still, how did you find it?"

"When I came back the night of the last storm, I didn't only bring a shovel—I brought a metal detector too."

"Oh. But wait, it still doesn't make any sense. If you had a metal detector, then why dig twenty holes?"

"Because it kept going off, Angela. It went off again and again and again." Eric turned his head stared off into space.

"I don't believe it," she said.

"He sure did spend a lot of time out in the yard, didn't he?"

"I don't believe it."

"You don't have to. I left everything else where I found it, just kicked a little dirt on top."

***

Angela had left then, found her daughter, gone home and ended up here, tucking her in.

"I don't know, sweetie," she said, answering Julie's question. "He had a sister named Gabby a long time ago, and he wanted to help her. But he couldn't."

"So he helped me instead?"

"That's right, Julie. He helped you instead."

"That's good," she said, and rolled over and went to sleep.

Angela went downstairs, poured herself a drink, and stood at the glass door looking out at the yard and watching the storm. Even now, she couldn't believe it. Ted made a mistake, but it was ten years ago. He was still a human being, not some monster. She couldn't imagine leaving her daughter with a man like that, couldn't imagine
having
a daughter with a man like that. She couldn't believe it. She wouldn't.

Rain lashed hard against the glass. All over the yard, mounds of dirt were starting to dissolve. The holes were filling up with water. Something caught her eye.

Ignoring the storm, she opened the sliding door and stepped outside. Rain started coming fast down her forehead and into her eyes. Almost instantly, she had to start wiping it away. But she kept walking towards the edge of the deck, kept trying to get a better look.

There it was, right in middle of the yard. At the center of one of the holes, something was floating.

A sealed plastic bag.

She wouldn't believe it. She couldn't have been helping him all these years. A hand went to her mouth. The rain kept falling. One by one, one after another, they bobbed to the surface.

The End

Keep reading for an excerpt of Henry Carver’s new thriller,
BLOODSTAINED
.

THE GRAVE yawned into the darkness.

Above it, a mosquito buzzed through the humid night air, homing in on Alvin Farris’s carotid artery. It touched down lightly and went in for the kill, fattened itself up on rich blood, then retracted its proboscis and made ready to take flight, full and happy.

It nearly made it.

Alvin slapped the side of his neck. A small thrill of satisfaction ran up his spine. It was a tiny enemy, but squashing it gave him a sense of power and control and undeniable pleasure, things all too rare the past few months. His fingers came away stained a dark red and he wiped them on the side of his jeans. More of it was probably running down his neck and under the collar of his dirty white t-shirt, but he didn’t particularly care. He couldn’t feel it, that was for sure. Even four hours after sunset, the legendary humidity of the Florida panhandle persisted. His skin had glazed over with sweat about a minute after leaving the house that morning, and dust and grime had been sticking to him all day.

What was a little blood?

He leaned against the backhoe and dug into the front bib of his overalls, looking for his Luckies. Once he had one lit he stared down along the rows of the orange grove and wondered just how those mosquitoes always managed to find him in the inky blackness of rural night.

Truck tires crunched their way across gravel somewhere nearby.

He pulled hard on the cigarette and it burned quickly all the way down to his fingertips. The cherry flared and he could feel the heat. He let it burn him for a second before throwing it down and grinding it under the toe of his boot.

A truck crested the rise. It was a Dodge Ram with the crew cab and big aggressive aftermarket tires. The top of the truck had a roll bar slung across it, and attached to the roll bar were a series of huge round lights. Alvin had some of those on his own truck, though not as big. Used them to spotlight deer. The stupid things froze in the light and you could take your time shooting at them.

The truck came to a quick stop in front of him and rocked back and forth on its suspension as it fell into park. The driver’s door opened. No one got out. Instead, the lights on the roll bar flared to life.

Alvin shielded his eyes, then turned his head. These lights were a lot brighter and a lot whiter than the ones on his truck. Their shallow angle made the back hoe and the pile of earth cast huge, long shadows out into the trees.

The hole in the ground seemed darker than it had before.

Bottomless.

Boots crunched as two men got out of the truck. Alvin couldn’t see their faces back there behind the lights.

“Marty, that you?” Alvin said.

“Yeah,” Marty said.

He walked forward into the light—a short man, once muscular but gone to seed. Middle age and hard living had chewed up what muscle tone he’d had. He wore a leather vest, no shirt underneath. Flab squeezed through the arm holes and his stomach strained against the cheap plastic buttons.

Behind him stood a man Alvin had never seen. Blonde, six and half feet tall, immensely strong looking. And young: much younger than Marty or Alvin. In his early twenties.

Marty caught him staring at the blonde mountain.

“This is Cowboy,” he said.

Cowboy wore motorcycle boots on his feet and a black leather jacket covered with chains and zippers. His blonde hair was long clean-looking, surfer casual. There was an earring in his left ear, a tiny silver skull with red eyes. He grinned at Alvin with a mouth full of perfect white teeth.

“He doesn’t look like any kind of cowboy,” Alvin said.

“No,” Marty said, “he sure doesn’t.”

“So why’s he here? Usually we do this alone.”

“Why do you think? He’s here to do the heavy lifting so us old guys don’t have to. Don’t worry about Cowboy. He’s a full member. We can trust him.”

Cowboy walked around the hole in the ground, the one Alvin had used the backhoe to dig just after sunset. There was a shovel with its spade jammed into the pile of fresh earth. Cowboy grabbed the upright handle and picked up a shovelful of loose dirt, tossed it into the hole experimentally.

“Hey, not yet big guy,” Alvin said.

Cowboy just stared back at him, his face smooth and unmoving, blank, like he hadn’t understood the words.

“Too soon,” Marty said.

“Sorry,” Cowboy said, and held up a hand, palm out, in apology. He slung the shovel his shoulder walked back around the hole to join them.

“Guys like us,” Marty said, patting his paunch, “getting too old for stuff like this. Good to have some young blood around.”

“Sure, whatever,” Alvin said. Privately, he thought Cowboy seemed pretty stupid. “I thought Parker would be here.”

Marty visibly froze at the mention of Parker’s name. Slowly, he shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. This thing you did, it’s a big deal.”

“But Parker didn’t bother to show up,” Alvin said, pressing him.

“It’s not that big a deal,” Cowboy said, twirling the shovel, pretending to use it to take down invisible attackers.

“Hey there, Cowboy, shut your mouth,” Marty said. To Alvin: “Sorry about that. What he means is, Parker is confident you and I can work this out, right here, right now. You gonna prove him wrong?”

Alvin scratched at the dirt with the toe of his dirty canvas boot. This thing had gone on long enough. Time to start mending fences.

“Naw, Parker’s alright. He’s always stood by his word.”

“You bet.” Marty patted him on the shoulder. “And I’ll tell you what, Alvin, nobody blames you for what you did. Anyone would have done what you did. Word around the club is you’re a real shrewd negotiator.”