From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (39 page)

"
Yes?" he asked.

"
Mr. Kaplan?"

A curt nod.
"Who are you?" He looked slightly annoyed as he appraised the man on his stoop, as if Finch had pulled him away from an important business meeting or a football game.

"
My name is Thomas Finch."

"
Finch?"

"
Daniel's brother."

Anyone who believed the theory that death forged a bond between those left to grieve had obviously never met John Kaplan. With a sigh he stepped back into the hall.
"I suppose you want to come in?"

"
I won't take up too much of your time," Finch said and entered the house.

Everything about the Kaplans spoke of money: from the gleaming silver Mercedes in the driveway and Tudor house set at the end of a long winding flower-bordered drive
, itself a half-mile from the main road, to the sprawling yards, which looked vigilantly maintained, as if Kaplan feared his competitors would take the first trace of overgrowth as a sign of weakness. And then of course, there was John Kaplan himself. As he led him through a short, oak-paneled hallway with polished floors, Finch detected an air of intolerance about the man, as if he reserved his interest only for people who could benefit him or his bank account. He wondered if what he had come to say might change that, but then for a man supposed to be grieving, Kaplan looked awfully composed.

The hall ended and opened out into a large foyer stuffed to bursting with vegetation. Planters hung on chains hung from the vaulted ceiling
, spidery green legs trailing down to meet the explosion of growth from what looked like a variety of wild and frenzied shrubs anchored in a huge rectangular marble tomb. Tall thin plants with glossy spade-shaped leaves and bamboo sticks lashed to their stems stood guard in the corners, struggling upward to where a segmented glass window threw squares of light against the wall.

Kaplan didn
't spare the jungle a glance as he turned left into another narrow hall. Finch followed close behind.

"
Take a seat," John said, as they entered a small but impressive lounge. In here sat a brown leather armchair, positioned at a right angle to a matching leather couch, as if the Kaplan's interior decorator had aspirations of becoming a psychiatrist, or specialized in decorating for them. Sports and hunting magazines sat in a tidy pile atop a glass coffee table. The walls were lined with oak bookshelves, but Finch didn't bother to scan the titles. He wasn't much of a reader, and doubted anything he'd see there would be of interest.

"
You'll have a drink," Kaplan said, and although it sounded more like a statement of fact than a request, Finch nodded and took a seat on the couch. The cushions yielded beneath him with a soft hiss. The lounge smelled faintly of cigar smoke.

"
Scotch?"

"
That'd be great, thanks."

As Kaplan poured the drink from a crystal decanter into two smoked glass tumblers
, Finch wondered how rehearsed and tired this whole practice was for the guy. How many people interested or connected in some way to the murders had stopped by here to console, or seek comfort in a kindred spirit over the past couple of months? Finch envisioned Kaplan leading the latter kind to this room, perhaps with the intent to numb them enough with alcohol that they'd be left with the false impression that he had somehow eased their pain for a time.

Kaplan set Finch
's drink down on the coffee table, then took a seat in the armchair. He sighed and took a sizable draw from his glass before studying his guest. "So, Mr. Finch. What can I do for you?"

Finch sat forward and clasped his hands.
"I'm here to talk about what happened to the kids. To my brother, and your daughter, and their friends."

"
Why?"

"
Because we need to."

"
I disagree."

"
That so?"

"
It is."

"
Well if it's all the same—"

Kaplan sat back and crossed his legs. He held up his glass
, examining its contents as if it was something he had never seen before. "Mr. Finch—"

"
Thomas."

"
All right, Thomas. It's not my intent to be rude—though you'd be far from the first person to leave this house with such an impression of me—but I'm a busy man. If you've come here to reminisce about how great our kids were and how they had such a good time together, and to tell me as if it's breaking news how goddamned awful it was what happened to them, I'm afraid all I can say is amen to it all and see you out. Does that seem cold?"

Finch set down his drink.
"Until I can see my breath, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."

Kaplan smiled tightly.
"I have to meet with my attorney at noon, Thomas," he said, making the name sound like punctuation, "so the sooner you cut to the chase, the better your chance of a less terse reception."

"
I'm here to tell you my plans, so you know what they are, and to hear what you think. Maybe even to get your blessing."

"
Almost sounds like your asking for my daughter's hand," Kaplan said. "But as you know, I'm all out of those. My wife will be coming on the market soon though, if you're interested."

That explains the attorney
, Finch thought, his estimation of Kaplan dropping the longer he listened to the man speak. There was no emotion in his voice, none at all. Even the words he chose—
I'm all out of those
—suggested a man who either wasn't too torn up about his daughter's death, or wasn't yet fully aware of it, his mind protected from the horror by an impenetrable wall of shock. But
no
, Finch decided. This didn't look like shock. The man appeared fully in control, and eerily calm.

"
I'm sorry to hear that," Finch said.

"
Don't be," Kaplan replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "This has made an addict out of her. If she's not popping Valium, she's out fucking the gardener. This has been a long time coming. At least something good came of Katy's death."

Finch frowned
, embarrassed by the man's candor, and quickly scooped up his drink.

"
See your breath yet?" Kaplan asked, amused.

Finch ignored him.

"My wife and I haven't loved each other in over ten years. In all that time she stayed with me for my money, fully aware that if we divorced she'd stand to get very rich very quickly and have her freedom on top of it. I stayed with her for Katy. But now Katy's gone, and I can afford to lose millions."

"
Why?"

"
Are you married?"

"
No."

"
Then you don't yet know what it's like to have the person you swore to love until the end of your days become your enemy overnight, to watch them with other men as they plot to destroy you. In my line of work, you expect to come up against predators and backstabbers every single day. But you expect to leave it there when you come home. Instead, it becomes everything. You get paranoid and you seek out the only thing you've got left. For me, that was my Katy. She resisted every effort Linda made to corrupt her. She stayed loyal to me, and I loved her for that."

He leaned forward and put down his drink.
"Now she's gone, so what else is there to lose? Money? I can afford to lose it if it means getting that bitch out of my life. The only reason to keep this pretense, this
sham
, going is dead and buried."

"
And what about you?"

He seemed surprised by the question
, but considered it. After a moment he sighed. When he sat back again, the cuffs of his pants rode up a little and Finch noticed something odd. Despite the man's apparently flawless dress and perfectly manicured appearance, his socks didn't match. It seemed significant somehow, as if he was being shown the man's true nature, a glimpse behind the facade at the frightened and slowly crumbling creature that cowered behind the armor.

"
I'll do what I always do," Kaplan replied. "Persevere."

Finch imagined this man at night
, alone and weeping, his eyes bloodshot from a cocktail of barbiturates and alcohol as he looked down at a picture of his daughter. Even when he'd professed his love for Katy, his voice had retained the same lack of emotion that seemed to characterize him, but Finch was no longer so sure that's who he really was. The other parents he'd met had all displayed the expected pallor and vulnerability that death leaves in its wake, and he had recognized it as an accurate reflection of his own, but though Kaplan stood out in his apparent callousness and calm, Finch guessed that, even though it might take a year, or ten years, sooner or later the grief would claim him, if it hadn't already. And the longer he looked, the more he saw in Kaplan's eyes the defiance, the struggle to remain standing as currents of suffering tried to sweep his legs out from under him.

"
So, what's your plan?" he asked Finch, after a moment of contemplating something beyond the arched window at the far side of the room.

Finch drained his glass.
"I'm not letting it go," he said. "What they did to the kids. I'm not letting it die."

"
Is that so?"

"
It is."

"
What are you going to do?"

Finch told him.

*

Afterward, Kaplan did not offer to see him out, so Finch left him sitting in a chair that suddenly seemed bigger, as if it had gorged itself on the man's restrained emotions, and made his way out. Before he exited the lounge, however, Kaplan mumbled something.

Finch hesitated at the doorway and looked back at him.
"What?"

"
I said you let me know if you need anything." Then he added, "My vampire bride hasn't drained me yet. I still have money."

Finch nodded.
And no amount of it is going to buy you back what you've lost
, he thought, but said, "Thank you," and left.

As he sat into his car
, his cell phone chirped, startling him. He hated the goddamn things and had successfully avoided them all his life, but had realized the need to have one almost as soon as he'd spoken to Beau about the plan. With a sigh, he removed his hand from the car keys, reached into his inside pocket and grabbed the phone, fully expecting to see Beau's name and number displayed on the small rectangular LCD screen as he flipped it open.

But it wasn
't Beau calling, and Finch felt himself go numb, a not entirely unpleasant tingling capering through him as he studied with feverish interest and a modicum of disbelief the name that flashed on the display.

Gray letters against glowing green.

He told himself to be calm,
just
be cool hoss
, and pressed the small round button to answer the call.

"
Hey you," he said, immediately wincing at how forced the casual tone had sounded.

"
What the hell do you think you're doing?" Kara asked.

"
What do you mean?"

"
You know goddamn well what I mean. I saw you outside our house the other day. Are you stalking me or something?"

"
Don't be ridiculous."

"
Then what were you doing there?"

Excuses were appallingly slow to present themselves
, so he opted for the truth. "I wanted to see Claire."

"
Why?"

"
To see what they'd done to her. To see how she looked."

"
Who are
they?
"

"
The men who did this to her."

Her sigh sounded like thunder in his ear.
"There is no
they
, Finch. The
man
who did this to her is dead and buried. Don't you dare try to make us believe anything different."

"
Who said I was going to?"

She laughed dryly.
"Your door-to-door conspiracy meetings. Ted Craddick was here last night and we heard all about your little crusade."

Finch nodded to himself. He was not at all put out by this
, had expected it in fact, and welcomed the word spreading among the families as a means of giving everyone a heads up, so his visits would not come as a cold hard slap across the face when they already had enough to worry about. He hadn't relished the thought of dispelling the illusion the police had given them, but so far they had greeted the revelation with grim resignation rather than rage. Though they were of course eager to see the true culprits held responsible for the murders, the fact remained that their children were still gone, and no amount of justice would ever return them. There were no hysterics, only silent assent at what he had proposed, or as in Kaplan's case, offers of financing.