Cracked (37 page)

“I’m not much of a joiner,” I said. “I’m a bit of a lone wolf, to be honest. Besides, I’ve got quite a lot of my own birth family to be taking anybody else on board.”

Chandler nodded. “The life isn’t for everybody. Jeanette isn’t nuts about all our company all the time. Are you, dear?”

“No,” she answered clearly.

“Of course not.” Chandler took a sip of wine. “No one is going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. There’s been too much of that, in my opinion. I’m getting old! Look at me!” He laughed. He was the only one. “It’s simple: you sign over Jack’s estate to a charitable foundation that I control. All but ten percent. You keep ten percent. Lock, stock and barrel. Done. Finis. And we all go on our merry way.”

“A reverse tithe,” I said.

“Exactly!” Chandler said, pleased.

“And if we don’t?” Fred said.

Chandler nodded, taking another sip of his wine, savoring it. “Yes, you have to know every part of the deal I am proposing. Well of course, first of all, if you decline the offer, neither of you will get out of here alive. I know what you’re thinking!” he said, putting his hand up as though we were interrupting him. “But, Michael, buddy, sure, we can promise you the world and as soon as you let us go we’ll go to the FBI.” He leaned back. “But first of all, of course we can do this all here and now. Internet transfers and what have you. I assure you, we’re quite set up for this. Oh, but, Danny? The timing isn’t fantastic on your end. Scott’s – Jack’s will has to clear before you have access to anything. This will take a little while. You’ll recuperate here with us until that happens. Then when the money is in your name, with a few clicks on a keyboard, you can have all this over with.”

“I don’t want to speak for Danny,” Fred said. He shifted a bit and Jeanette watched him carefully. “But you’re talking to a couple of people who have lost the people they love most in the world. What if I don’t want to play this game anymore? I don’t much care if I don’t make it out of here.”

It hit me then. Fred didn’t know the twins were alive. He hadn’t seen Luke. He might have thought the boys were killed when Jack and Lola were.

“And maybe, just maybe, I don’t want to reward the people who killed my family.”

Chandler looked as though someone had spat in his Tuscan wine. As though it was distasteful, during such a pleasant convivial evening, to mention such things.

“You think I haven’t thought of that, Fred?” He looked at me. “Both of you. You’re not seeing the big picture. How about the twins? If you decide to refuse my offer, then you have a promise from me. And I don’t make promises lightly.” He shook his head. “You have my promise that anyone you ever loved will be… affected by the Family. In the same way that the people in Jack’s life were – you two, and dear sweet Ginger of course.”

“And Gene,” I said quietly.

“Who?” Chandler looked genuinely confused.

“Her boyfriend in Toronto,” Jeanette said. “We paid him a visit.” She grinned at me and shrugged her shoulders as if to say,
whoops! I’m such a bad girl.

I looked at Fred. He had heard what Chandler said about the twins. He had realized that his sons were alive.

“Ah, then you see,” Chandler said. “If you opt out, as it were, then you two will have disappeared into these beautiful Maine woods, and no one will ever know where you went. And then the Lindquists and the Clearys – and most specifically your other son, Fred, because of course we have Luke with us – will get visits from my Family over the next years. In various guises, of course. I mean I haven’t worked out all the particulars yet.” He laughed. “I’ve been a bit busy lately.”

I looked at Fred. He was looking at Chandler with a face that seemed to be unable to register that yes, there is even greater evil than you thought. It
can
get worse.

But your sons are alive. Fred closed his eyes and I could see him get stronger. It could have just been the crack screwing with my perceptions, but I could swear the knowledge strengthened him.

“And if we agree to pay? Is that the end of this? Will we ever see you again?” I lifted up the pipe, holding the end so Jeanette, who was closest, couldn’t see how much or little crack was in it. I would still get a little smoke, and a little buzz, from the remainder that was in there from last time. But I had seen her eyeing the rock next to me. She either wanted some, or she was wondering why I hadn’t taken a hit in quite a while.

“I’ve made my case for you joining us, Danny. But once your part is played, you’re free to go,” Chandler said. “Good Lord, Danny. I’m a man of my word.” He took a sip of his wine. “Of course, you know that if you tell anyone about any of this, what I said earlier applies. About your family getting visits from mine.”

I lit the pipe and inhaled. There was more crack in there than I had thought. I had to hold it but I tried not to take it too far into my lungs.

I exhaled and the world was bright again. But I still felt clear.

“Where do I sign,” I said. I twirled the pipe in my fingers and tilted my head back.

Chandler clapped his hands together. “Wonderful! Danny, I knew you’d see sense. Fred? You on board? Should I open something really special? This might call for a toast.”

Time stood still for a moment while we all looked at Fred expectantly.

He opened his mouth to speak.

Then, faster than I would have ever believed he could move, Fred had grabbed the corkscrew from the coffee table, and plunged the business end of it into Chandler’s eye.

Before I could think, I yelled for Fred to hold him, while I threw myself off the chair towards Jeanette, using the armrests to propel me.

She was fumbling to get a grip on the gun. It had taken me a second to register what Fred had done. I could ignore the pain in my ankle. I would have to. Chandler had wrapped it well, and the furniture was grouped tightly around the fire. I didn’t have far to go.

I still had the metal crack pipe in my left hand and when I knocked Jeanette over, her head close to the open fire, I saw Ginger’s face, and Jack’s.

I punched the pipe into her eye. It was strong. Sitting in the chair, I had tested it, trying to see how much pressure it could take while I held it in my hand. Funny that Fred had had the same thought. I heard something breaking, and the two men both yelling, and I felt Jeanette’s eye pop like a fat grape under my hand. I pushed the pipe in as far as it would go. Blood and ocular fluid flowed out of her eye and onto my hand. I picked her head up off the floor by her hair, and smashed it as hard as I could into the hardwood floor.

I grabbed the gun. Chandler was gone, and Fred was on his knees trying to breathe. His asthma.

“Where did he go, and where’s your inhaler?” I said. I was surprised to hear that I was yelling. My lopsided hearing made sound so imprecise. Fred pointed out the back door. It was open. Chandler would have a gun in his car, but if there were more in easy reach in the house I don’t think he would have left. “Inhaler, Fred, point,” I said. He was bent over, trying to suck air into his lungs. He pointed under the couch. I was on one foot, trying to hold the gun, listening for Chandler to come behind me and registering that Jeanette was stirring. I hadn’t knocked her out fully. She started to scream.

I threw myself down and pushed my arm under the couch. It was a mid-century modern-looking thing, and fairly low to the ground. I couldn’t see anything and with the sound of Fred’s breathing growing more and more labored and panicked, I shoved the gun under the couch to fish around for anything. Fred was dying. I had to get the inhaler. I had to get a phone. I had to get an ambulance, and the police. I had to get everybody.

I felt the barrel of the gun slide against something and as I used the gun to slide the plastic inhaler in Fred’s direction I heard something behind me. At the same second I saw Fred grab the inhaler and suck on it, something sharp and heavy landed on my bad ankle. I screamed, thanked God for the crack – I would have blacked out from the pain without it – and flipped myself over with my good leg.

Jeanette was on her knees behind me, one eye socket a mess of gore, blood down her face. For the first time since this all began, I felt a moment of real pity for her. She hadn’t had a chance. She had been raised in that house. Her body had probably been sold to who knows how many men.

But when she raised the fireplace poker to hit me again, I shot her with the AK-47. I was just relieved I had known how to fire it.

The blast sent her across the room, with her head and shoulders in the huge fireplace. I gagged and turned over in case I vomited. Fred pulled the gun from me, gently.

He was still trying to breathe properly, but his color was back.

“Get him, Fred.”

I wanted to say, don’t kill him. Don’t have that to live with for the rest of your life, like I do. Like Darren does. Find a phone, call for help, lock the doors, hold onto the gun. No more killing. But I didn’t.

Fred ran outside to find Chandler while I lay on the floor and watched Jeanette burn. I couldn’t move. I wanted to pull her out of the fire and ask her for forgiveness. I crawled closer but I knew that if I found the strength to drag her out, there was the danger of sparks or fire catching something, and we could all go up. So I left her where she was, closed my eyes, and said a prayer. I hoped somebody was listening to me.

Someone came in the back door. I grabbed the gun and pulled myself back behind the couch. My jeans had been cut by the fireplace poker and I looked at the wound. If my leg had been able to support some of my weight before, I doubted it would now.

Fred called out before he entered the room. “He’s gone,” he said. “It’s me.” He walked in, carrying an axe, covered in melting snow. “The car is gone.” He stared at Jeanette. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

“I know.”

Fred ran up the stairs, I knew to look for Luke. I watched Jeanette burn. I felt nothing.

Minutes later Fred came back down and said something about Luke sleeping. Drugged but sleeping. He didn’t want to carry him down and see this, he said. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a fire extinguisher. “Under the sink,” he said. He sprayed in the direction of the fire, and Jeanette, and kept spraying. He was crying. There was white foam everywhere, and the smell of burnt hair, and worse. Fred sat down on the couch so that I was at his feet, and he patted my head. I put my head on his knee, and we sat like that for a long time.

I heard sirens in the distance and I let myself close my eyes. Finally.

I got out of the hospital a couple of weeks later.

I needed surgery to pin my leg back together again. My ankle and tibia were shattered by the fall down the stairs at the old house, and then Jeanette’s attack. The doctors said I might always have a degree of hearing loss in my right ear, but in the grand scheme of things I wasn’t going to worry about it. However, apparently the stitches Chandler-slash-Michael had given me were of professional quality. He wasn’t lying about his time in the Army medical corps.

I was in a wheelchair when Laurence took me from the hospital. I didn’t quite have the strength to move well on crutches.

Skipper and Marie had flown back with Matty. They were worried that I wouldn’t want to come to their house, but they needn’t have bothered. I was happy to be alive, and I felt like something at the house had saved me. I was just relieved that they were in Toronto when hell was unleashed at their house.

It could have been much worse. In my bad moments – which were far more than my good ones – I tried to remember that.

Darren was still in the hospital, and the doctors said he probably would be until at least New Year. But he was up, and every day he was able to walk for a few minutes. The arrow had, as I had suspected, punctured his lung, but the ambulance had reached him in time to save it. His back was wonky – it didn’t hurt, he said, but he couldn’t feel parts of it. The doctors said that with the injuries he had received, numbness was a blessing.

He was in shock, they said, when the ambulance had reached him, lying on the ground in front of the old house. Had it been twenty years ago, he wouldn’t have made it.

“Remind me to donate to medical research,” Darren said to me in the hospital the day I was released.

“Donate some cash to medical research, why don’t you,” I replied, and he tried to laugh.

I hadn’t talked to Gene, who was still at his mother’s, recuperating. When I got back to Ontario, I would go up and see him. I wasn’t ready yet to tell him what I’d been through. Laurence had managed to track down his mother’s information from the hospital, and phoned to inform them that I was in hospital in Maine, recovering from some injuries.

I told the Maine State Troopers everything, nearly every detail. I didn’t tell them about Lowell, but Darren did. It was decided that there weren’t grounds to prosecute; in the extraordinary events that unfolded, our claims of self-defence were widely believed.

In the local Maine news, I was identified as “a private investigator from a prominent local family.” The state licensing board wanted to know all about that, but I assured them that I had never represented myself as an investigator, private or public. I was a private citizen, and planned to stay that way. As private as possible.

Amelia French sent me flowers in the hospital, and a nice note. It was Miller, of course, who had shot her. She had finally remembered, though the damage he had done to her meant that she was relearning how to walk. She said she wanted to have lunch if I ever found myself back in Southern California. She felt bad that she hadn’t seen Miller for what he was, and blamed herself for what had happened.

She’d have to join the club on that one. And no offense to her, but I planned to never go near Southern California, ever again.

Chandler York, aka Michael Vernon Smith, has not been found. The FBI put him on their Most Wanted list. Thorough searches of his home in Orange County and the cabin in the Maine woods uncovered a quagmire of banking details which were going to take a while to unravel. But in the meantime, the authorities froze all assets they could find.