A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) (31 page)

Sweat rolled into my eyes and my head and face throbbed from the punch I'd taken. I blinked the sweat away and ignored the pain while I kept watch on the back windows, looking for movement, shadows, anything. After two or three minutes, I took a deep breath and then motioned Kransky to follow me as I stalked to the end of the property to get a different angle. The maple--which did a decent job of hiding us--also blocked our view, leaving us blind.

I looked at Kransky. "We have to go in. You ready?"

With his eyes locked on the back of the house, he nodded, a sharp bob of his head.

My fingers were numb, almost dead at the ends. I shifted my gun to the other hand and rubbed them together, then shook my whole hand to try and get some feeling back. I gave up, took a new grip on the SIG, then slipped through the fence and into the backyard, Kransky on my heels.

We kept under the shade of the maple in case Lawrence was on the second floor looking down, but eventually had to break cover to pull up against the house. I counted to three, then crossed the five or six yards quickly. I didn't run, trying to keep my movements quick but steady. I got to the house and put my back to the off-white siding. I listened.

Nothing.

The back door was probably locked, the windows were too loud and too noisy, and there was no simple way into the basement. I eased down the side of the house until I could see around the corner. A white panel van sat in the driveway. Its passenger's side window gave me a marred, shadowy reflection of the front door, which hung open. I could see the frame was splintered around the lock.

I froze as a car came up Willow, made the right onto Macomb, and moved on. When my heart slid back down my throat, I peered around the corner again.

Nothing.

I wiped my face, gripped my gun in both hands, and was getting ready to slip up to the porch when Kransky barreled past me like I wasn't there, knocking me off balance, and headed straight for the front of the house.

I squatted there, stunned. He moved through the door before I could say "Kransky!" in a hoarse whisper, my teeth clenched. Ignoring me, he darted through, his gun up and ready. By the time I sprinted after him and got inside--crouched, gun swinging to cover the doorways left and right to the living and dining room--his back was disappearing down the hall towards the steps to the second floor.

I followed, whipping my SIG back and forth, hoping Ferrin wasn't right here on the first floor, ready to lean out from behind a door and take both of us out with double taps to the back of the head. I jumped as a scream tore through the house, coming from the second floor.

I chased down the hall towards the steps, picking up blurred impressions of sleek, modern furniture and bland colors on the walls as I ran. The decorations were different, the smell and feel completely changed, but the general layout had remained the same and I had trouble remembering if it was me, now, or me, twelve years past. I shoved the memories away and hit the steps running, taking them two at a time. There was a long hall at the top, with four doors along its length, two to a side. The first two were shut, the last two open. The one on the right had been Brenda Lane's bedroom. A trail of blood led into it.

Another scream split the air and followed by a sob. Kransky, already at the end of the hall, turned into the bedroom on the right. I followed.

A man, tied and gagged, lay bleeding in the far corner of the room. The trail of blood led directly to his body. A middle-aged woman, also bound with her hands behind her back, lay next to him, screaming, "Jerry!" A piece of duct tape dangled from one cheek, waving crazily as she cried.

The room had been torn apart. It was still a bedroom, but it was obvious the furniture wasn't right. The bed had been shifted so that the headboard was against the far wall, and a chest of drawers had been pushed into its place. A memory tugged at me and in that instant I saw myself standing there, twelve years earlier, with my finger held in front of me like the barrel of a gun. The bed now occupied the same spot as the bed then. The chest of drawers that blocked my view into the room now was in the same spot the stereo had been a dozen years ago.

On the bed, turning the memory to nightmare, was Amanda. She appeared to be alive, but gagged. The right side of her face was bright red where she'd been hit and a thin line of blood ran from above her cheekbone to her jaw. She was bound in a painfully intricate position, her head falling off the edge of her bed and her arms sprawled across the pillows in an awkward pantomime of sleep or death. The job had been done with clothesline, so much of it that she looked as if she'd been caught in a spider's web. It was an elaborate but sloppy job, done in haste. Yards of it crossed the room and hooked onto door knobs, furniture, and bedposts, tied so tightly that she couldn't move her head or arms. Only one foot was free to move a few inches and she kicked at the sheets, but it didn't do anything to dispel the illusion: she was bound in exactly the same position as her mother the night she was killed. Dozens of white petals dotted the room, covering the bed, Amanda, the floor.

Kransky was halfway across the room, maybe to help Amanda, maybe to untie the couple, when he stopped and turned, eyes darting, scanning the room. I had started to move as well when it crystallized for me--Amanda, the recreation of the murder scene, the trail of blood leading conveniently into the room--in the space between heart beats. At the end of that one second interval, I began to turn, knowing we'd been had.

And froze when the touch of a gun barrel to the back of my neck--so cold--told me I was too late. Way too late.

"Easy, Marty," a voice said. "Take it easy. There are good ways to die and bad ways to die, right? Don't be stupid."

"Lawrence," I said.

His lips made a wet sound as he spoke. "This whole thing would've been a lot easier, Marty, if you would've just stayed retired."

My heart drummed in my chest. It took everything I had not to go for the gun pressing into my spine. It would've been suicide. Lawrence knew what was in my head as much as I did. Kransky was no help; he'd half-turned when I'd entered the room, but he was stuck, like I was, helpless. "Sorry to disappoint," I said.

"Kransky, too?" Lawrence said. "This is getting better and better. If only Mike was still around, we'd have ourselves a reunion."

I said, "Nice setup, Lawrence. Like Wheeler did it, that night."

"Wheeler?" Lawrence laughed. "I guess you still haven't figured that one out. Still playing at being a detective, Marty? Star of the MPDC? Only now you don't have the badge, just the gun."

"Why don't you fill me in?"

"I think you've probably guessed most of it out." His breathing sped up, moist and hot on the back of my neck. "My tastes are simple. I only wanted Amanda. She's all I ever wanted. Thinking about her, dreaming about her. It's what got me through ten years, hard time. Not easy, being a cop on the inside. But I had something to look forward to, right?"

His voice changed again, dropping to a growl. "But, Mike, now, Mike had a real thing for the mom. Showing up at all times of the day and night. He was as creepy as they come. But, it's funny, for all that attention he paid her, it wasn't Mike she was getting it on with."

"Shut your mouth," Kransky said. His eyes were like pieces of glass.

"See, this is what drove Mike crazy. The bitch obviously had a thing for cops, but she wouldn't give Mike the time of day. It was Kransky that she jumped into bed with. Mike couldn't stand it. He dragged me over there with him that night, talking big like he always did, bigger than he could act. When it came down to it, though, he couldn't do it. So, here's the big secret, the one we've all been waiting for." He leaned forward, so close his lips brushed my ear while his gun rested against my neck, and said, "Mike didn't do it. I did. I killed her. I killed Brenda for him."

Wet lust filled his voice. I could feel the thrill in him, the carnal satisfaction he had both in the killing and in revealing it to me, transferred from his mouth to my ear. I tilted my head away and he laughed, then grabbed my hair with his free hand and twisted it, yanking my head back. "Thing is, Marty, I realized after I got out that loving Amanda is where everything went wrong. I'd always been sick. But it was Amanda that brought the sickness out. I could've lived with it, hidden it, led a normal life. Instead, the whole ugly side of me that I'd been trying to punch down for all those years...it blossomed when I saw her. And my life has been nothing but misery because of it. The longing and the frustration and the imprisonment. But if I get rid of her, here and now, I get to set things right. I get to start over. Right…where…it…all…began."

I felt, rather than heard, the hammer being cocked on the gun in his hand, the cylinder turning. And I felt his excitement and his expectation of a new life thrumming through him, coming to me by way of the obscene connection of the gun barrel to my skin. I closed my eyes.

But he was so keyed on the scene in front of him, so utterly absorbed with himself and his plans, that he was deaf to everything else. A voice from the hall yelled, "Lawrence!" and he shifted his weight, as if to turn. The tip of the gun left my neck.

I was frighteningly lucid. I could feel the indentation in my skin where the barrel had pressed. I could feel my blood pulse through my body, my breath coming in quick gasps, the sweat trickle down my spine. And what became clear to me in that infinite moment is that, ironically, a man with cancer has more options than one that doesn't. Having already stared my own mortality in the face, I couldn't really be threatened with death. I lunged down and to the left.

As I fell, I saw Kransky's arm swung up. I could tell he was calculating, making the minute corrections that would turn a wild snap-shot from the hip into something more than a prayer. But the barrel of his gun was only halfway to level when a deafening clap exploded next to my ear and a blood-red rose bloomed in the center of Kransky's chest. His hand spasmed and the gun went off once, twice into the floor as he was knocked backwards with a look of sad surprise on his face.

From the ground, I twisted to face Lawrence, trying to bring my gun up. It was incredibly slow, infinitely clumsy. I knew it was futile. You could be the fastest draw in the West, but there is no way to beat the speed of a finger pulling a trigger. I could almost taste the bullet that surely had to be on its way through my face and out the back of my head, sending me on my descent into darkness right after. But as I swung the barrel around--so slow--I heard a sharp electrical
crack
from the hallway. Lawrence screamed.

Images of his face and body imprinted themselves on my mind, details I would only remember later. His head was shaved bald and his body was thin to the point of emaciation. An indigo prison tattoo of a web ran up the side of his neck and over part of his head. His eyes were wide, the irises a manic blue, the whites bloodshot and veiny. Black jeans and a t-shirt emphasized his pallor; the shirt clung so tightly to his chest that I could see his sternum through the fabric. Two thin wires trailed from his back like marionette strings. He stood there, his face contorted and twisted, hoarse screams coming from his mouth while his body shook like a tree in a storm.

From the ground, I pointed my gun at him. Lawrence's arm twitched at his side and the black barrel of his gun jerked upwards. We shot at the same time, the mingled reports sounding like two schoolbooks hitting a classroom floor. My shot took him low center mass, knocking him backwards into the hall and out of sight, but pain erupted in my left shoulder like it had exploded from the inside out. The SIG dropped from my hand as I was punched back to the floor by the force of the shot. I contracted into a ball, cupping my shoulder. I gasped, dragging air in through my open mouth and making animal noises while tears flooded my eyes.

The pain was all I had for what seemed a long time, but then I became aware of a shape coming close. I raised my head, expecting to see Lawrence, who had somehow survived the shot. But the image resolved into someone else, a forty or fifty-something guy with salt-and-pepper hair. Taylor. My mouth opened, trying to form words, to ask for help. Taylor looked at me, his face devoid and as emotionless as a snow bank. He stayed that way for a moment, as if searching for something, then left my field of view.

Time collapsed inward. I thought I heard sirens, once a welcome sound, now unknown. Amanda screamed through her gag--maybe had been screaming the whole time--and distantly I knew that she was experiencing her own personal hell, a sickening re-run of the worst event of her life. The woman on the floor was sobbing words and sounds. The screams and the cries and the wail of the sirens braided together oddly and I felt like someone should be doing something to help them before they both went insane. But Kransky was gone and I was bleeding onto the rug of the nice people who owned the house and there wasn't much I could do for any of them as I went into shock, wondering listlessly how many cancer victims died of a gunshot wound before their disease had a chance to claim them.

The house was thirty minutes north of downtown DC in the town of Potomac, the land of newly minted internet and real estate millionaires. The old money, disturbed by the invasion of the noveau riche, had left for horse farms and polo grounds in central Virginia, Kentucky, or Tennessee. New money spent as well as the old, though, and my taxi drove past gates and wrought-iron fences so far from the homes they protected that I had to guess that there actually
were
homes somewhere at the end of those long, serpentine driveways.

The precise rows of pines and swards of dead grass rolling by the window had a calming effect on me, though the Demerol I was popping every few hours probably had more to do with my pleasantly fuzzy outlook than the scenery did. The only distractions from the view were my ultimate destination and the fact that my shoulder was held up by one of those metal props so that it stuck straight out from my body, making it hard to get comfortable. The brace was to keep my shoulder immobilized, or so the doctor who had reconstructed it said.