The Watcher in the Wall (20 page)

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75
>

Dylan’s attic.

A different view through the webcam portal, cardboard boxes and dusty furniture, heavy timber crossbeams running the length of the room. Darker than Dylan’s bedroom, just hazy daylight coming in through a couple of low windows, the roof peaked and angled. And Dylan, bleary-eyed and hollow, his movements clumsy and unsure.

“Now loop the rope over the crossbeam,” Gruber told him. “Make sure it’s tied tight and secure. You don’t want the knot to slip when you put your weight on it.”

On-screen, Dylan did as he was instructed. He’d already formed the noose in the thick yellow rope, told Gruber he’d practiced last night until he got it right. Gruber was pleased to see the kid didn’t seem scared.

“I’m sure glad you’re here,” Dylan said. “Even if you’re not, like,
here
. I don’t think I could do this without you.”

“I’ll be here,” Gruber told him. “The whole time. We’ll do it all together.”

Dylan tied off the end of the rope. Surveyed his work, tested the knot, the strength of the line.

“Looks good,” he said, turning back to the webcam. “I mean, I
think
it looks good. How does it look from there?”

Gruber stared through his screen at the noose. Behind him, Donovan muttered something, walked out of the room. Gruber watched him go.
Not everyone can do what I do,
he thought.
Not everyone can be an angel of death.

Then he turned back to the screen. “It looks magnificent,” he told Dylan. “You’re doing great.”

>>>

Dylan studied the rope.
Wondered how he was supposed to feel.

He’d expected his heart to be pounding. Sweaty palms, nervous shakes, the whole gamut. He’d anticipated feeling terrified. Instead, he just felt numb.

It would hurt, probably. It would be unpleasant for three, four, maybe five minutes. Maybe longer. He would probably wish he hadn’t done what he was doing. That was a pussy response, Brandon said. That was the reaction of a baby who couldn’t take the pain, who wanted the easy way out.

There’s no easy way out,
Brandon had told him.
You’ll suffer, one way or another. The only question is, do you want to suffer for years or for minutes.

Dylan wanted to suffer for the least amount of time possible. He wanted his suffering to be over.

He would do this. Brandon would help.

He leaned down and picked up the noose end. Tested the knot one more time. It felt good.

<<<

“Three minutes,” Stevens said,
the phone to his ear. “First patrol unit took a wrong turn somewhere.”

Windermere felt a numbness, an inevitability, like everything was playing out how it was supposed to play out. Like Dylan Price was already good as dead, and all that remained was to work out the details. She leaned against the wall, stared at her computer. Felt about a thousand pounds heavier.

“We got a webcam feed or anything?” Stevens asked. “Any way we can hack into Dylan’s broadcast?”

Windermere shook her head. “No way to swing that now. We’re just waiting and listening.”

Stevens studied her, like he was waiting for her to do something. She didn’t meet his eyes. Stared straight ahead until Stevens picked up his phone again.

“I need you at that house,” he told the Baltimore PD dispatcher. “I need units at that boy’s house
yesterday
.”

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This was it.

Dylan thought about his dad as he stepped onto the chair. Hoped the stupid prick would be the one to find him, wished he could see the look on his face. Would he be sad when he discovered the body? Angry? Would he see his son’s suicide as just another failure, the final disappointment?

Fuck you, you miserable shithead,
Dylan thought, tightening the rope around his neck.
I hope this ruins your life.

He turned around on the chair, felt it teeter a little bit as he maneuvered to face the computer and the webcam.

“Okay, dude,” he called out. “I hope you’re ready for this.”

Somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded.

>>>

Gruber felt his heart racing.
This was it. This was the moment.

Donovan was in the bathroom. Gruber could hear the sink. He wanted to miss the show? So be it. Gruber regarded Earl’s picture where it hung above the computer.
You’ll be watching, won’t you, Earl? You’ll see how special I’ve become.

“Ready,” Gruber called through the microphone. “Do it for me, Dylan.”

Dylan looked around the attic. Exhaled, his breath ragged. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to do it, I guess. Good luck, Brandon.”

Gruber leaned closer, his heart racing. “See you on the other side.”

“Yeah,” Dylan said. He seemed to hesitate for one final moment, and Gruber wondered if this was it, if the kid had it in him, or if he would wuss out at the end like so many of the others.

Do it,
he thought.
Do it, Dylan. For me.

The moment didn’t last. Dylan turned back to the webcam. He kicked the chair away. Then he dropped.

<<<

“PD’s at the house,”
Stevens told Windermere. “They’re pulling up outside.”

Windermere grabbed the phone from his hands.
“Get those freaking cops inside,”
she told the dispatcher.
“Find the kid. Now.”

There was a silence. Then: “Ma’am, we’re—”

“Now,”
Windermere repeated.
“You hear me? Now!”
She thrust the phone back into Stevens’s hands. Kept pacing, seeing Dylan Price, the kid in the profile picture, gasping and choking for air, slowly dying.

“You heard her,” Stevens was telling the dispatcher. “You tell your guys,
Move
.”

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“Do you see, Earl?
Do you see what we’ve become?”

Donovan came out of the bathroom, saw Gruber rocking back and forth in his chair, staring rapt at his computer. Couldn’t see the image on the screen, but knew from the expression on Gruber’s face that it wasn’t good.

“I’m an angel of death, Earl, you twisted bastard. I turned this one like I turned your daughter, like I turned them all. Do you see what I’ve accomplished?”

Donovan felt his stomach turn. Sick, this was sick, and he was a part of this now. He reached for his uncle’s Smith & Wesson, thinking, fuck’s sake, he couldn’t stand by and watch this.

Rodney would want his money, though. Rodney would want to know why Donovan had pussied out.

Think you can roll with this crew, but you can’t take a little snuff film?

Shit.

Donovan slid the revolver back into his waistband. Turned around, walked to the front door. Opened it and stood out on the stoop, the sky pissing rain above him, listened to the trains down the block and tried to drown out Gruber’s maniac voice.

<<<

Dylan heard
banging somewhere, footsteps. Distant, his mind foggy, choking, no air, the rope tight around his neck, cutting into his skin, the sounds like a dream from a thousand miles away.

The pain was worse than he’d imagined. He felt his hands at his throat, his feet swinging, none of it on purpose, his movements on autopilot. His body was fighting to live, he realized, not that it mattered. He’d be dead soon. His vision was going dark. He could feel his life slipping away.

Then something
CRACKED
near him, loud as a gunshot, and at first Dylan thought the attic crossbar had given way. But he was still hanging there, still slowly strangling. He was still dying.

It would all be over soon.

<<<

Gruber’s breathing was heavy.
He was panting. Hyperventilating. He closed his eyes and saw Sarah, dancing on the end of that rope. Felt his hand creep, unconsciously, to the front of his pants.

Then, on-screen, something
cracked
, loud. Gruber opened his eyes.
“No,”
he said, leaning forward. “No, no, oh
no
.”

<<<

The weight disappeared.
The pressure on his neck vanished. Dylan opened his eyes just as a pair of strong hands grabbed hold of him. Hefted him up, bore his weight, released the strain on the rope and the noose and his neck and his windpipe.

A police officer, Dylan saw, big and strong and worried. More behind him, at the door to the attic, the little hatch in the floor. They’d broken it open to find him. Somehow, they’d saved him.

Dylan gasped for air, gulped it down, too relieved to be breathing again to feel anything but grateful.

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>

“No!”

Gruber clawed at his hair, rocked forward violently, watched on the computer screen as the first police officer burst up through the hatch of the attic and dashed toward Dylan, lifting him up easily and slacking the tension in the rope on Dylan’s neck.

“No, no, no, no, no.”
Gruber could hardly speak, the words blurring into one another, desperate and incoherent.

More cops appeared, crowding the room, filling it, cutting Dylan down from the rope and cradling him, carrying him to a mattress at the corner of Gruber’s screen. Gruber rocked, clawed, watched through his hands as the cops loosened the noose around Dylan’s neck, as they lifted it over his head, freeing him.

“What the hell are you
doing
?” Gruber screamed.
“Don’t you understand? He
needed
to die. You’re ruining everything!”

A couple of cops glanced at the computer screen. Someone reached over, fiddled with the volume. Gruber could hear the police talking to one another, the boots on the stairs as the paramedics came up to tend to Dylan.

“No,” Gruber repeated, slamming his hands on the keyboard. “No, no, no, no,
no
!”

Then it all dissolved, and he felt his vision go dark, felt his words slide together into one long, animal moan.

Gruber’s sounds
belonged to a wild being, some tortured, dying soul. Stevens shuddered as he listened through the speakerphone, a Baltimore PD officer’s radio relaying the connection from Dylan Price’s computer.

<<<

“My God,” he said. “This guy’s a monster, Carla.”

Windermere didn’t answer. Was barely listening. Still wasn’t sure she believed Dylan Price was all right, figured she’d need to meet the kid in person before she could accept he was safe.

“Apparently, the parents are at a conference in Washington, D.C.,” Stevens was saying. “Baltimore PD is getting ahold of them as we speak.”

Windermere blinked. Felt her world come back into focus, little by little. “He timed it so they’d be away,” she said. “No chance of being interrupted.”

“Except he forgot about the FBI.”

“Sure didn’t make it easy.” Windermere listened to the chatter through the speakerphone, the Baltimore cops, the paramedics. Gruber’s disintegration fading off in the background. She couldn’t hear Dylan, though.
What if they’re wrong? What if they made a mistake and Dylan Price is dead?

Stevens caught her expression. “He’s safe,” he told her. “We saved him, Carla. It’s over. He’s fine.”

Windermere didn’t look at him. Kept her eyes on the phone, straining for some sound from Dylan, Some proof that he’d lived.

Stevens came over. Put his hand on her shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “This guy is still out there. Let’s figure out how we’re going to find him.”

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Dylan Price’s webcam
was turned off when Gruber pulled himself from the floor.

Dylan was gone. The police and the paramedics had taken him away. They would monitor him and analyze him and keep him under guard. They wouldn’t let him back on a computer. They would never let him come back to Gruber. Dylan wouldn’t die for Gruber. And Gruber wouldn’t get paid.

The front door slammed open. Gruber heard footsteps. The thug, Donovan, walked into the living room. Looked at the computer screen, looked at Gruber. Tilted his head.

“What the fuck’s all the noise about, man?” he said. “Is it done, or what?”

Gruber wet his lips. Swallowed. Drew himself up and tried to put on
a front. “It didn’t work,” he said. “Didn’t go through. Not my fault. Bad luck.”

Donovan relaxed, just for a moment. Then his face twisted, hard. “The hell do you mean, it didn’t go through?” he said. “I thought you said this thing was a sure shot. What about my man’s fucking money?”

“Never mind about the money,” Gruber told him. “The fucking
police
were there. They knew what Dylan and I were planning, and they
ruined
it. They freaking
ruined
everything.”

This was bad. This was worse than just a thug with a gun. Gruber had endured failure before, but never in such a spectacular fashion. The police bursting through the door like in an action movie, the drama and theatrics, the kid so damn close to the end. How had they known?

Gruber worked through the permutations in his head, the meaning. If the police had been watching, they were on to him. They knew his MO, his game, and they would come after him. They would find him. It was only a matter of time.

Donovan looked like he was working through some permutations of his own. “So the kid’s alive,” he said slowly. “You couldn’t get him to do it. He’s alive.”

“Were you listening?” Gruber asked him. “The fucking
police
.”

“He’s alive.” Donovan stood there for a moment, rolling the words around in his mind. Then he straightened and reached for that big revolver.

“Well, shit, man,” he said. He was smiling a little. “If the kid’s still alive, I guess we have to do this the other way, huh?”

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Gruber stopped thinking
about Dylan Price. About the police, and whether they could track him to this house. Stopped worrying about anything else besides surviving the next five minutes.

Donovan had the revolver out. There was no hesitation in his eyes, no willingness to negotiate. Not even any fear, not this time. He was too far from Gruber for the knife to be of any use. The room was too small for Gruber to escape.