The Heavens Rise (16 page)

So John Coltrane and a quick scotch would have to do, but as soon as Danny closed his hand around the bottle of Balvenie, he was swallowed by a wave of silent darkness.

•   •   •

His first thought when he came to was,
I’m having a stroke
. He was in the front parlor. It was still light out, the Audubon bird prints were still safely in their frames.

The last thing he could remember was holding the bottle of scotch. Had he downed the whole thing? Was this the end of some alcoholic blackout?

But there was no headache, no sour stomach even. No pain of any kind. And for some reason, that scared him more than anything else—the fact that this feeling of complete disorientation, this sense of having lost time completely, wasn’t accompanied by any physical sensations at all.

It was like he’d literally been plucked out of time and moved to a different . . . second? Minute? Hour?

Some kind of weight was tugging against his right arm. When he looked down, he saw he was holding one of the massive candleholders his wife kept on the mantel. The thing was solid glass, the base a fat pillar, the platform still matted with the waffle-print residue of those high-end beeswax candles Sally loved.

A brain tumor? Wasn’t this how it started with Jake Bensen? No, that wasn’t it. The guy had tripped. One day he was walking across his bedroom and it was like his right foot wasn’t quite attached to his ankle. MRI. Inoperable. Four months. Just four months from diagnosis to—

A car engine distracted him from this quickening panic. Then he heard another sound: someone breathing, someone standing a few feet away.

Before Danny could turn or scream—and he started to do both at the same exact second—the darkness returned. And this time it felt like great pincers rising up from under his feet, closing high above his head, sealing him inside an obsidian tomb.

•   •   •

His office. He was standing in the middle of his office and the flat-screen computer monitor was turned around so he could see it. He blinked and tried to focus.

The candleholder was in his right hand still. He dropped it and it hit the hardwood floor with a deep, fatal-sounding thud. His entire body was sore, the same kind of bone-deep ache he used to feel after the gym.

The glowing computer screen looked grainy. He took a step toward the screen, fearing for a second or two that his legs wouldn’t respond to his commands. But they did. He was back inside his body, and whatever was on his screen wasn’t part of the plain blue wallpaper he’d opted for in a quick, distracted moment.

It was blood splatter.

His desk chair had been turned to face the window so he couldn’t see who was sitting in it, just the coil after coil of bloody nylon rope that had been used to tie them down.

Against his will, Danny Stevens reached for the back of his desk chair so he could turn it around and see who it was, because whoever it was, they weren’t moving. He’d heard a car engine outside in those last few seconds before the darkness returned, so whoever was in his chair, they had to be—

“Don’t do that yet,” someone said.

Danny bellowed and landed ass-first on the floor.

Marshall Ferriot stepped forward from the band of shadow beside the double doors to the hallway. The last time Danny had laid eyes on the guy had been six months earlier, on the same computer screen that was now smeared with blood. The kid called the house one afternoon, right after they’d sent Allen Shire after him and his sister, and a dumbfounded Danny had refused to stay on the phone for more than a few seconds without some kind of proof the caller was who he claimed to be. Skype: that had been the kid’s suggestion, the same thing he and Sally often used to talk to Douglas when he was up at school. And so, stunned and slack-jawed and wishing he could hide the emotions passing over his face, Danny had listened intently that day as Marshall Ferriot made his pitch.

He hadn’t just listened. He had given in, completely.

And it had all gone perfectly since then. But now, Marshall was in his office and there was blood everywhere, so maybe it hadn’t gone so well after all. The kid seemed to have no trouble moving around but he looked gaunt and ghostly. How long had it been since he’d come to? Six months. What had he said at that time?
I need time to get my bearings. And a fresh start. After what I’ve been through, I think I deserve a fresh start, don’t you, Mr. Stevens?

And so, as far as anyone at Cypress Bank & Trust knew, Marshall Ferriot was still a vegetable, still being cared for in seclusion by his dutiful sister. Danny had taken care of everything: submitting fake medical reports to the trust committee, setting up a new account to receive the disbursements, which he and Marshall could both access—Marshall under a new identity Danny had provided for him, Henry Lee. He’d been handling Allen Shire himself, so there weren’t a lot of questions to answer on that front.

The split was a little more than fifty-fifty, weighted more generously in Danny’s favor. That had been the kid’s proposal, not Danny’s. And he’d never taken out a penny more than he was supposed to. So why? Why was this happening? Why was there blood everywhere? Why was the kid
here
in his house?

When Danny tried to ask this question, he tasted blood on his lips. He rubbed at his mouth and the back of his hand came away dark red. Suddenly all he could do was wheeze and groan for a minute or two while Marshall studied him patiently.

“I did . . . I did everything you asked . . . Everything we ag-agreed to . . .”

“I know.” But he didn’t sound grateful.

Marshall crouched down next to him and Danny looked into his eyes for the first time in his life. He’d only seen them in photographs. At first, their large size made them oddly welcoming, but then he saw they were utterly expressionless; staring into them felt like being invited to dive headfirst into an empty swimming pool.

“Please,” Danny wheezed. “Please . . . tell me . . .” He gestured toward the chair.

“Oh, I get it. You want to know who it is?” Marshall asked evenly. “Your wife, or your son?”

A sob exploded from Danny’s chest.

“I know, I know. It’s a real mind fuck, isn’t it? No pun intended. But the whole thing—it kinda makes sense, don’t you think? My gift, I mean. After the way my sister dragged me around like a rag doll just so she could keep getting her checks. It’s gotta be some kind of poetic justice. . . . Hey, you know what’s also interesting, Mr. Stevens? How you never asked about her.”

“Wh-who?”

“My sister. I guess you assumed she just walked away? No trust, no checks. Nothing in it for her. Was that it?”

Danny nodded. It was total bullshit, but Danny nodded.

“Uh huh . . . okay. And the private detective that you sent to find us? Allen Shire?”

“Well, I never heard from him again. I figured he’d—”

“No one ever heard from him again.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Yes, you do, Mr. Stevens. You know exactly what I’m saying.”

“I figured you paid . . . paid him off, I guess . . . Both of them . . . I th-thought—”

“Did you really? Or did you think I killed them?”

“Now I do.”

Marshall cackled and clapped his hands together.

“Very good, Mr. Stevens,” he said once he caught his breath. “Excellent. In all seriousness, though, Allen Shire was a big help. Huge. Thanks for sending him. Eight years without moving your legs, well, it takes you a long time to learn to walk again. And I needed someone with me every step of the way. So thank you. Thank you for not sending the cavalry after him and causing a big mess for everyone. ’Cause
there were other things I needed to learn too, you see? And he was very, very helpful.”

Marshall tapped the side of his head with one finger and smiled broadly, and that’s when Danny realized there was something in the kid’s head, something that defied everything Danny had believed to be true about the world, something that had covered his office in blood while it thrust Danny into some corner of darkness inside himself.

“But you can’t . . . I mean, that doesn’t . . .”

“Doesn’t what?”

“Just ’cause . . . My family . . . Just ’cause of what you did to them, that doesn’t make it right for you to hurt my family.”

“Silly rabbit! I didn’t hurt your family, Mr. Stevens.
You
did.”

Marshall stepped behind the desk. A few keystrokes later, a surveillance image from the hidden camera Danny had installed in the office filled the screen. He’d put the camera in after he and Marshall came to terms, and for one purpose only: to make sure no one was accessing his computer without his knowledge. But Marshall had clearly put it to another use.

There was his desk, clean, well lit, unbloodied. There was his empty chair. There was his computer monitor. The only thing that looked off was the window shade; it had been pulled and Danny couldn’t remember drawing it himself.

Then, in a flash of movement that blurred and pixelated the low-resolution image, he and Sally erupted into frame, a tangle of limbs. His wife’s arms pinwheeling, the glass candleholder arcing through the air, striking her in the jaw so hard Danny thought her head might rip from her neck. And then, slowly, the realization, rising up within Danny on a hot tide of bile, that he was the one bludgeoning his wife. That he was the one hurling his wife’s rag doll body into the desk chair, barely waiting for her to slide limply to the floor before he brought the candleholder down on her again and again and again. And he knew the only
reason he couldn’t see the blood lashing onto the desk was because it was a cheap camera. But it was there when he looked down, black and oily in the dull sunlight coming through the shade.

Marshall spun the chair around. Sally was beaten beyond recognition, the border between blood and bruising impossible to distinguish anywhere on her skin, the stained flaps of the gray hooded sweater she’d been wearing squeezed by coil after coil of nylon rope.

Danny screamed. Marshall’s gloved hand closed around his mouth and gathered a clump of Danny’s hair in his other first, forcing the man to watch the monitor.

“Look what you did, Daniel J. Stevens.”

In his mind’s eye, which he had retreated to with a suddenness and entirety that froze his sob, Danny saw his son, Douglas, blowing past the entrance booths to the causeway in his Jeep, windows down, singing along with the radio.

“I told you it was a gift,” Marshall said.

He wanted to sink his teeth into the bastard’s gloved fingers, but he knew that would just bring the darkness back. Because that was how this thing worked; the darkness came and then you woke up in a hell of your own making, of Marshall’s making.

“I’m sorry. I know you probably think it doesn’t mean anything. But I am, Danny. I’m truly sorry. You see, some things, they’re just bigger than you. Bigger than me. Bigger than everyone. And this is one of them. I didn’t ask for this. It came on . . . well, almost like an infection. At least I think that’s what happened . . . anyhoo . . . the point here, Danny, is that I have a lot I need to get done in a very short time. And it’s gonna be easier for me if everyone thinks I’m dead. Now, before you think I’m a complete bastard let me be very clear about something. A bad thing
is
going to happen to your son tonight. But you get to decide just how bad it’s gonna be, Danny. Are you with me?”

The knowledge that he couldn’t run, that if he cried out for help or made a mad grab for something heavy, the darkness would return in an
instant, filled Danny Stevens with a kind of drunken, floaty feeling, a sense of complete powerlessness and surrender. But images of Douglas walking through the front door, calling out to him, were like jagged chunks of glass underneath his splayed palms, spiking him back into his body, preventing him from floating away to join his wife in whatever heavenly place she’d just escaped to.

“Danny? Are you listening to me?”

Danny nodded.

“Good. Because I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to answer honestly, okay? ’Cause if you do, the worst thing that’s gonna happen to your son is that he’s gonna come home to find his parents dead. Which is very sad, I know. But my parents are dead too. So, boo-hoo. Join the club.”

A silence fell, and Danny could hear the sounds of his own heavy breathing as if from far away.

“Ask me what’s going to happen if you don’t tell me the truth, Danny.”

“Wh-what’s going to–”

“If you lie to me, the police will find Douglas chewing your neighbor’s face off.”

“I won’t. I won’t lie. I promise I won’t oh God please—”

“Okay. Okay. Christ, easy. Enough already. Chill. Just chill out and listen, okay?”

Danny nodded.

“Does anyone else know about our little arrangement?”

“I didn’t tell anyone. Just like I promised. I mean, Sally didn’t even—” Just saying his wife’s name aloud squeezed the breath from him. Marshall shot the woman’s bloodied corpse a quick glance, like he thought he might have gone too far but would consider that possibility later, after a beer.

“All right, fine. You didn’t tell anyone. But do they know? Does anyone suspect anything? Anyone. Take your time. Think about it. Because
believe me, I don’t want to come back for your son, but I will if I have to, Mr. Stevens. I will.”

Several minutes later, after he had finished a litany of silent prayers asking for forgiveness from a God who now seemed more remote than ever, Danny Stevens spoke the person’s full name. And after studying his face for a bit, Marshall thanked him, nodded politely, and brought the darkness back for the last time.

NEW ORLEANS

B
en had been looking for Marissa all morning, but he only checked the dive bar a few blocks from her house because he was getting desperate. He’d actually forgotten about the place altogether; there was no sign out front and if you drove past it too quickly, you could easily mistake it for just another one of the Faubourg Marigny’s brightly painted shotgun houses.

They were a few blocks from the French Quarter’s jolly chaos, but it was just past ten in the morning, so Marissa was one of only three customers inside, and the only one sitting at the bar. Her hands were resting palms down on either side of a sweating, half-empty rock glass—rum and Coke, Ben figured, her usual, but not so early in the day—as if she were trying to levitate it with her mind.