The Shore (13 page)

“This is the only room in the house that’s honest, isn’t it?” she asked him softly. The light played across a complicated knot.

The piece of rawhide still dangled from his hand. Abruptly, he wrapped it around one of the hooks and yanked.

“What are you doing?” Sudden perspiration crawled coldly at the roots of her hair.

He tugged harder. With a groan, he strained against the cord, the muscles of his arm and neck bulging visibly.

“Please? You’re scaring me.”

When he let go of the cord, it raveled harmlessly on the floor.

“What is it?” She trained the beam on his face. His flesh had gone a leaden gray, and moisture stood out like pellets on his forehead. “Have you been here before?” She let the light slide past him and play along the wall. On the crude shelves of raw pine, objects had been spaced evenly—a candle, oddly molded at the base, a long-necked wine bottle, smeared with something oily, a box of fireplace matches, a length of rope—the spacing and arrangement seemed strangely formal, almost ritualistic.

“This room.” His voice startled her. “I know…what it…I’ve seen…”

A miserable heat suffused him, and she felt it radiate from his face, from his glittering stare. She watched him stumble away to grip the door frame, and the light flitted after him. The bones of his knuckles stood out white, and she saw a tensing shock tremble through him. After a moment, he turned to her.

“You don’t have to tell me now.” She reached out, stalling his tremor with a brush of her hand. “Come on, we’re leaving.” She pulled him toward the door. “Here, hold the flashlight.” She led him into the hall. “What?”

His lips writhed silently.

“Tell me later,” she said. “Take it. Hold the light steady.” She guided him down the creaking stairs.

Shadows blanketed the walls now, enfolding the parlor in sliding layers that overlapped and deepened on the floor. “No, not the front,” she said. “Let’s go back out the way we came in.” The light moved ahead of them, uselessly picking out the dust on the glass coffee table, the fur of grime on the petals of the plastic blossoms.

“Listen,” he hissed.

They stopped moving, and the sound filtered to her—a softly grating slither. It came from beneath their feet.

“The basement,” she whispered. The damp noise rasped like broken glass against her flesh. “We never checked the basement.”

He touched her wrist. Though he moved as cautiously as a soldier in a minefield, a floorboard groaned beneath him.

She couldn’t make her feet move, and she held one hand across her mouth as he drifted away from her. The room seemed to stir, and the rustling noise drifted up from beneath her feet with a soft rush. Finally, she lurched forward.

“Kit!” He caught at her as she pushed past him into the kitchen.

Gloom had settled through the jagged glass, and the basement door stood in the deepest corner. She gripped the revolver with both hands now.

He kept one hand on her shoulder. “We don’t mean to hurt you.”

Her spine went rigid. For a terrible moment, she thought he spoke to her; then she realized the soft clamor below had ceased.

“We want to help.” He called through the basement door. “Do you understand? I know what you are.”

“Jesus.” Suddenly, the revolver weighed too much for her to hold it steady.

“We saw the room upstairs.” In front of her now, he edged closer to the door. “Can you hear me? I know what they did to you, and I understand why.” Gently, he pressed the palm of his hand to the wood. “Let me help you.” His voice splintered, went ragged. “Let it be over. There’s a place I can take you.”

Behind them, wind hissed through broken glass.

“Don’t open that door, Barry.”

“Can you hear me?”

“I’m warning you. I’ll shoot anything that moves.”

“Do you understand me?” As he twisted the doorknob, a scrambling noise receded. “I’m coming down now.”

“No!” Her revolver trembled wildly.

“Don’t be afraid.”

The hinge shrieked. The corrupt damp of rotting timbers seeped into the kitchen, slowly at first. Then it poured upward, a geyser of stench, unpurified by frost, issuing up from the pit.

“This is the real house, isn’t it?” Her voice became almost inaudible. “Like that room upstairs.”

“I’m coming now.” He angled the flashlight downward, but the faint oblong only spilled across the first few steps, revealing corroded wood and crumbling plaster walls. At the bottom, filthy darkness writhed.

Her face had hardened into a numb mask, and she seemed to have lost all feeling in her arms and legs. No sound reached her ears save a tiny scrabbling. It climbed, growing louder, a terrible murmur that struggled toward clarity, and she knew she’d been hearing it all along, ever since she’d entered this house, aware of it only on the edges of her consciousness.

The steps sagged softly beneath his tread. In the beam, tiny creatures seethed and darted, soft, bloated bodies hopping off the stairs as the light found them. The boldest one stood its ground on the bottom step, its quivering snout smeared with foulness. Dainty paws dug at the feast.

The pistol hung uselessly at her side. “Oh dear Jesus.” She was conscious of making a wheezing sound, of blood circulating in the veins of her scalp.

He pounded his fist on the wall until the squirming gray mass receded, exposing the thing they’d gorged upon.

Over his shoulder, she glimpsed it: the snarling teeth, the blackened talons held up as though it were still trying to defend itself. Rigid darkness looped through the exposed ribs. And Kit began to scream.

“I always wondered how I’d handle a real crisis.” Pacing into the wind, she sipped coffee through a hole in the plastic lid. “Now I know.”

Below them, a pipe cut across the narrow beach into the surf, and receding waves revealed a slime trail in the mud.

“You did okay.”

“I froze.”

“You’re not the type that freezes. You’re more dangerous than that.”

“Well, I’m freezing now.” Shivering in the early morning light, she tried to laugh.

“Charging in that way. Typical rookie maneuver.” He shook his head. “Trying to prove something. Good way to get killed.”

“I…”

“Think about it. Why did you go to that house alone?”

“Why did you?” She grinned. “Exactly. It’s my job too. The difference is I don’t do mine very well.”

“You did okay.” By now his words had become a comforting litany, having been repeated over and over since the previous evening. After their grisly discovery in the Chandler basement, she’d seemed to go numb, calmly allowing him to lead her back outside. She’d even surprised him by insisting—in a faint monotone—that they pay a call on the closest neighboring house. He’d thought it best not to argue. After a flash of Kit’s badge, an elderly woman had peered nervously into the twilight. The woman told them she’d seen no one entering or leaving the Chandler house in months but had indicated she found nothing unusual in this. “They mostly come and go at night, and, Officer, the sounds from that house, the noises.” Then she’d clapped a hand over her mouth.

Kit sipped her coffee, and the wind stung at her from across the boardwalk. “We haven’t any choice now.”

“We’ve been all through this.” He stalked around her. “You said it yourself. He’s got a hostage. He’ll kill her if he sees uniforms. How many more times can I say it?”

Her voice rose sharply. “But the body…”

“Could have been anyone, Kit. Even Ramsey himself.”

“No—he called me.”

“How much could you really tell about whoever called you?”

“It was him. It had to be.” Her fingers went to her temples, as though she could push away the headache. The previous night came back in vividly chaotic flashes: she could remember the sudden rush of cold when he’d gotten out to retrieve his own car from its hiding place off a side road; then blankness settled. She recalled nothing of the drive home, except perhaps for his headlights, icy and remote in the mirror. Reflexes alone must have guided her. By the time they’d reached the duplex, the shaking had started, and she remembered his arm around her shoulder, helping her up the stairs. She’d barely resisted when he made her take the last of the Xanax he found in her medicine cabinet. He’d spent the night on her sofa. Vaguely, as from a dream, she retained some impression of his making a phone call in the middle of the night. Before dawn, she’d come anxiously awake to find him sitting at her kitchen table with the cat glaring at him from the windowsill. That’s when they’d decided to head out to the boardwalk. She couldn’t remember why.

“Was it you who broke into Chandler’s office?” she asked. Bleak sunlight glimmered down on them, and despite the chill, she suddenly needed to walk. “Before me, I mean?”

“Somebody broke in?” He met her stare. “No, I swear it wasn’t me.”

“I don’t believe you,” she told him simply as she moved to the rail.

“Kit…”

“Look at that sky. It’s going to be a pretty day. You think it might warm up a little?” She squinted toward the end of the jutting pier. “I can remember watching the old men fishing out there when I was little.” Like fragments of mica, sunlight glinted from the water. She sipped more coffee, then tossed the remnants of a doughnut at the scattered pigeons. With a rapid slapping, the birds rose at her movement, then settled back, twitching along the walkway.

He also surveyed the dock and turned his collar up against the wind. “Why does it go so far out?”

Beyond the edge of the dock, gulls wheeled.

“Didn’t used to.” Shading her eyes, she watched the birds. “It’s even low tide now. The sea gains a little ground every year. I used to play right underneath here, right where the water is. Can you believe it? I remember the sand always felt cool, like a slice of winter. And the old men had to fish from the very end.” She paced along the rail, the wind blowing the short curls of her hair into a bright tangle. “You’ve been lying to me all along.”

A tern shrieked, and the laughter of gulls echoed from the beach.

“Kit, I…” He seemed to concentrate on getting the lid back on his coffee. “Uh…why are you looking at me like that?”

“I was just thinking—I’ve never seen you out in the sun before.”

“What’s the verdict?”

“Your eyes are almost the same color as the sky. What?”

“Nothing. Just I don’t much like this sky.”

“Me neither. Don’t look at me like that. You’re still the prettiest man I’ve ever seen. It’s no particular accomplishment. On the other hand, you’re the biggest liar I’ve ever met. That took some work.”

Clutching the rail, he stared downward. At the edges of the mud, the underbellies of dead fish showed white, and farther down the beach, signs warned bathers to avoid the area. Gulls swarmed. “I can’t help it.” The words seemed to drop away from him, to leave him lighter. “I don’t even know if I can explain.”

“Try.”

He sighed. “This isn’t the world we were born for.”

“All right.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

He brought his fist down on the rail. “Is it any wonder they…?” His mouth moved silently.

“Get it out.” She took hold of his sleeve. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to tell me.”

On the beach, several of the gulls lifted until a gust kited them closer. They shrieked with reptilian ferocity. Rage squeezed wheezing cries from their bodies, and two of the largest screamed to a landing, then jabbed their way through the pigeons. Gray and filthy, another lighted on the rail nearby. A wet morsel dangled from its beak.

“Why do I feel like Tippi Hedren all of a sudden?” She turned her back to the wind. “And I’m freezing. Let’s get out of here.”

But his gaze swept along the sand to where more gulls descended heavily. “There must be someplace we could live, someplace that doesn’t make you feel like life is just…an infection on the planet.”

“Somewhere
we
could live?”

“Some days, nights really, when I can tell the days from the nights, I think about how I have nothing to show for my life, about how easy it would be to just end this. But they’re counting on me.”

Now terns and gulls swarmed across the sand below. A few slate gray pigeons bobbed amid the horde; then a gull raced forward, wings canted, beak hooking, and the pigeons pattered rapidly away.

“The waves sound so far away,” she said. “Like in a shell. Don’t stare at the beach like that. You’re making me nervous. I didn’t report that corpse. All right? I’m in this. I’m in it good now. Don’t you think it’s time you trusted me?” She watched a muscle twitch below his left eye. “Don’t you want to talk about it, Steve?”

It took a minute. “What did you call me?” Heat worked to his face.

As she marched away, the gulls rose, wings slapping like banners.

He caught her arm. “How long have you known? How did you…?”

“Give me some credit. After all, I’m a cop too. Kind of.” She shrugged away. “Besides, it wasn’t as difficult as all that, not that big a deal.” She turned up her collar. “Just took a little digging is all. Barry Hobbes is one of five people known to have been killed by Ernest Leeds three years ago. This morning I made a few phone calls. It seems Officer Hobbes had a partner. Tall, blond, name of Steven Donnelly. Apparently, Officer Donnelly vanished shortly after being exonerated in his partner’s death.” She released a fractured breath. “How’m I doing?”

They walked slowly. The wind groaned.

“Is that it?” he asked at last.

“One other thing. Ernest Leeds was blown to pieces in full view of over a dozen state troopers. Yet these recent killings bear all the earmarks of the murders attributed to him…and now you’re here. It can’t be a coincidence. Don’t you think it’s time you told me what the hell is going on?”

“Your lips are practically blue.”

The drawer coughed open in a snarl of socks and shirts, one glove, a ski mask.

“What are you looking for? Perry? Answer me.”

The boy’s glance skimmed in her direction. She still wore the same old sweater she’d had on for days, all stretched out and soft-looking. If she could stand up, it would hang to her knees, but now it had twisted itself around her, the neck pulled so that one pale shoulder poked through. He looked away. “I can’t find that jogging suit with the hood, you know, the blue one.”

“That’s because it’s such a mess in here.” She forced herself not to tug against the ropes. From where he’d positioned her chair, she could just see a corner of the mirror. She found she couldn’t look away from the snarl of her hair, the puffy flesh, the way her complexion took on an almost greenish hue in this light.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “What? How come you’re staring like that?”

She made herself face him. “You’ve lost more weight. And those pants are too short now.”

“So?” His frayed flannel shirt wouldn’t stay tucked in. He’d made additional holes in his belt with a nail, and the extra length of it dangled from his belt loop.

“You should let me help you straighten up. Perry, did you hear me?”

He didn’t answer, but a moment later he began picking things up off the floor and tossing them into the bathroom, quickly creating a heap of soiled clothing. Then he shoved a different heap into the closet and slammed the door. “I’ll straighten up and stuff,” he muttered, his eyes slanting to the bed. For a moment, he struggled to smooth it into shape. “I’m so achy.” He sprawled on the wrinkled bedspread. “The backs of my legs feel frozen.” He turned onto his back and stared down the length of his jeans at her, while he tried to push down the rumpled corner of the bedspread with his foot.

“You were out too long,” she told him. “You should let me make the bed.”

He peered at her uncertainly, bunching up the sheets with one hand so she wouldn’t see the stains.

“You’re such a boy. Please, let me. This place needs a good cleaning.”

He turned his head as though watching something beyond the walls. She was accustomed to that look, to that strange attention to a world beyond the one she could see. She even knew he might suddenly resume speaking an hour from now as though no pause had taken place. She knew too many things.

He turned over on his stomach and mumbled something into the pillow.

“What? Perry, what?”

He barely lifted his face. “I said it’s clean enough.”

“You can trust me. Where could I go?” She saw his hand tighten around the bedpost. “You can untie me.”

Propping himself on one elbow, he turned and stared, calculating. “Maybe later. I got to wash your hair again. I’ll heat up some water.”

“It’s all right.”

“Such long hair.”

“Your fingernails are filthy.”

“Such a pretty color.”

“Don’t start anything. Please. Anyway, yours is long too.”

“I want you to feel better and stuff. I mean it.”

“Why were you out so long today?” She smothered the panic in her voice. “Perry?” He turned his back to her, but she saw the tension in his shoulders: it made her stomach clench.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Suddenly, he bounded off the bed and lunged into the other room. “Where’s my jacket?” He hurried back in. “I brought you all this stuff the other night, but I didn’t give it to you ‘cause you were…you know.” He fumbled through the pockets, dumping things on the bed. “See? There’s a new comb and perfume and stuff.” He stood in front of her, holding up each small item in turn for her to see.

“The perfume is opened.” Her voice broke. “Oh God, whose is it? What did you do? Where did you get this?”

“What do you mean? Don’t talk about that! Just…!”

“No, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean it!” Pressing her head back against the chair, she wept. “Don’t hit me! Please! Oh please, don’t hurt me. Oh God, why doesn’t somebody help me?”

“You’re so pretty.” All the light had drained from Steve’s face. “I’ve never known anybody with eyes like that before,” he went on. “Sometimes I think they’re blue, sometimes I think…”

“They’re a muddy green, and now you’re really making me nervous.” Kit tossed the Styrofoam cup into a trash bin. Slowly, they headed across the boardwalk toward the jeep. “Please don’t think you have to handle me every minute, all right? I’m on your side. Would it be so hard to just tell me? Just straight out?” She crammed her hands deep into her jacket pockets.

His gait slowed even further, and he leaned on one of the weathered benches. “I don’t expect you to understand this.” He sank heavily onto the bench. “Or to believe it. Not at first.” The wind stirred, and his hair fluttered heavily across his forehead.

She saw a few gray streaks, and the morning sun revealed lines in his face she’d never noticed. “You know I’ll…”

“No, don’t say anything. Not yet.” His shoulders tensed. “Not till I’m finished. It’s the only way I’ll be able to get it out.” Suddenly, his teeth chattered audibly. “You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to tell somebody. Anybody. For years now.” The wind seemed to tear his words away, to fling them along the boards. “To begin with, Ernie Leeds was a demented creep who tortured and killed at least six people that I’m aware of, but he didn’t kill Barry Hobbes.”

“Then who did?”

He watched gulls caught in the upward sweep of the wind. “Me.” The cries of the birds scrambled overhead, and the cold stung him to tears.

She wanted to shout at him not to tell her, but her lips formed no words.

“I left him unarmed, stranded in the pines. Knowing what was out there, I left him.”

“What do you mean?”

He rubbed a gloved hand across his face. “We got into a fight. I jumped in the car and drove around till I cooled off. Maybe half an hour altogether. When I went back for him, I found his body—didn’t even know what it was at first.”

She touched his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.