Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (39 page)

Horace sat behind the wheel of his Land Cruiser in that worn space between the trees where he always parked. Andrew Thomas’s Jeep passed by right on schedule, village-bound, a
dirtcloud
rising in its wake. On this calm morning it would be almost an hour before the dust of its passage had settled.

Horace closed his purple wire-bound notebook and set it in the passenger seat.

He’d already finished outlining the second chapter of his memoir, tentatively titled
Hunting Evil: My Search for Andrew Thomas
. He was so excited about the book he was having trouble sleeping. It was a concept that couldn’t miss because he might be the only person in the world who knew the whereabouts of the most notorious murderer of the last decade.

Horace had grown up poor.

He wasn’t handsome.
 

Never been popular in school.

Writing was all he had.

He believed that after twenty-four years of having to see his stupid reflection in the mirror he was entitled to wild success.

Horace climbed out of the Land Cruiser and started down the faintly tread path to Andrew’s cabin, making sure he didn’t track through the patches of snow and leave evidence of his presence here.

He soon glimpsed the cabin through the trees.

He reached the front porch.

Turned the doorknob.

His hypothesis was correct: people who live in the wilderness aren’t compelled to lock their doors.

He stepped inside, his heart convulsing epileptically, brain teetering between exhilaration and outright terror. Unbuttoning his down jacket, he slung it over the railing of a daybed and commanded himself to settle down. He would hear Andrew’s Jeep coming down the driveway long before it reached the cabin.

Stepping forward, he glanced once through the monster’s home, committing to memory every detail—the
sinkful
of dishes in the kitchen, the
halfeaten
pie on the breakfast table, ashes steaming in the doused fireplace, the bearskin rug at his feet. The place smelled of
woodsmoke
, baked raspberries, venison jerky, and spruce. The floorboards creaked beneath him. He couldn’t believe that he was actually here.
  

He unlaced his boots, walked in
sockfeet
to the ladder, and climbed into the writing loft. His eyes gravitated first to the poster of Edgar Allen Poe and those stormy melancholic eyes. Then he read one of the numerous Post-It notes stuck to the rafters:

describe the woman in Rock Springs in the puffy pink jacket who heard Orson yelling in the trunk

Stepping carefully over an unfolded roadmap of Wyoming, Horace found himself standing before Andrew Thomas’s writing desk, bookended by bookshelves, cluttered with a typewriter, dictionary, Bible, thesaurus, and
The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees
(
Eastern Region
).

He found what he’d come for in the middle drawer—unbound pages stacked neatly between boxes of red felt-tip pens. Taking a seat in Andrew’s chair, Horace lifted out the manuscript with trembling hands.
What in the world has this man been writing?

The title page:

"Desert places"

a true story by

Andrew Z. Thomas

Horace heard something outside, stopped breathing to listen. He decided it was only wind moving through firs. He turned the title page over on the desk and read the short preface:

The events described hereafter took place over seven months,

from May 16 to November 13, 1996.

***

"And I alone have escaped to tell you."

- Job 1:17

Horace flipped the page to Chapter One and began to read.

On a lovely May evening, I sat on my deck, watching the sun descend upon Lake Norman. So far, it had been a perfect day. I’d risen at 5:00
a.m.
as I always do, put on a pot of French roast, and prepared my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and a bowl of fresh pineapple. By six o’clock, I was writing, and I didn’t stop until noon.

10

IN the North Carolina night Luther shins down the pine. On the ground he checks the time and dusts the bark off his jeans. He shoulders the Gregory daypack that holds the tools of his trade: duct tape, latex gloves, .357, small tape recorder, hairnet, two pairs of handcuffs, four Ziploc bags, sharpening stone, and one very special bowie, constructed of a five and a half inch battle-proven blade and ivory hilt. He appropriated the knife seven years ago from Orson Thomas’s desert cabin. He treasures it and is thinking of giving it a name.

Shortleaf Drive runs for a quarter mile along the shore of the moonlit lake, a cul-de-sac at each end, the houses built on roomy wooded lots, draped in sweet suburban silence.
     

As Luther walks down the road he registers all sounds: the handful of chirping crickets which will be silenced by month’s end, a jet cruising in the darkness overhead, the horn of a distant train carrying across the water.

The
Worthingtons
live in the brick ranch with long eaves, second from the cul-de-sac, surrounded and shaded by tall broad oaks. The house is dark. Because the blinds aren’t drawn he is tempted to sit in the driveway and stare through those windows into rooms he will soon inhabit. But that isn’t how one carries oneself on a residential street at 1:30 in the morning. So he moves on down the driveway past a Volvo and minivan, each adorned with the obligatory bumper stickers boasting of terrific Honor Roll children.
 

He creeps along the side of the house into the backyard. The grass runs down to the water where a pier is rotting into the lake. A monster oak stands in the center of the lawn, an elaborate tree house built twenty feet up upon its staunchest limbs. A rope swing hangs from a branch overhead and on this calm October night is absolutely still, like the minute hand of a watch that no longer keeps time.

Luther kneels down in the grass below the boy’s window, thankful that the old oak shades him from the brilliant harvest moon. He unzips his backpack and removes the latex gloves. After pulling his hair into a ponytail he slips on a hairnet and rises.

The window comes to his waist.

He peers inside.

The boy lies asleep in bed. A nightlight spreads soft orange illumination upon the wall beside the open doorway.

Caricatures of stars shine weakly from the ceiling.

Luther aims the laser pointer and a red dot appears on the boy’s pillow. The laser moves onto his face and holds against the eyelid. The boy jerks his head, rubs his eyes, and is still again. The pinpoint of
bloodlight
finds the eyelid once more. The boy sits up suddenly in bed.

With his middle knuckle Luther raps twice against the glass.

Seven-year-old Ben Worthington regards the dark shape of the man at the window.

The laser shines on Ben’s
pajamatop
.

In the blue darkness the boy looks down at the glowing dot on his chest, then back at Luther, smiling now, remembering.

Luther smiles too.

Ben waves to Luther and climbs down out of bed. He walks in
pajamafeet
through scattered
Legos
to the window.
Sleeplines
texture the left side of his face.

"Hey!" he says at full volume.

Luther touches his index finger to his lips, dangling the laser pointer between his thumb and forefinger.

And boy and man whisper plans to make their rendezvous at the back door.

11

FOUR hours later Horace returned the manuscript to the drawer. He sat for a moment in Andrew’s chair in sheer shock. If he were to believe the preface, that this manuscript was true, then Andrew Thomas was one damned unlucky human being.

He climbed down from the loft, laced his boots, buttoned his jacket, and stepped out into the premature darkness of the afternoon.

On the way back to his Land Cruiser, he couldn’t stop thinking about Orson Thomas and Luther Kite, how they’d destroyed Andrew Thomas’s life.

A splinter of pity worked its way in.

Having grown up with all those terrible stories about Andrew Thomas, that manuscript was hard to believe. Maybe it was full of lies. But why would a man living in the middle of nowhere in assumed anonymity have any reason to lie? What if the monsters were really Orson and Luther?

He was running through the woods now, eyes watering from the cold.

When the idea hit him, Horace laughed.

But by the time he’d reached the Land Cruiser, he knew what he would have to do for his book.

Next time he came out here, he would drive right up to Andrew Thomas’s cabin, knock on the door, and politely ask the alleged serial killer for an interview.

12

BEN Worthington turns the deadbolt as Luther grins at him through a pane of glass. When the boy has opened the backdoor, Luther extends an arm from behind his back and unfurls his long slender fingers to reveal the coveted laser pointer.

"All yours," Luther whispers.

The boy steps through the doorway onto the deck,
bigeyed
as his little fingers grasp what has been foremost on his mind since
midafternoon
.

Luther gently places his right hand against the back of the boy’s skull and his left palm flat against his forehead.

"You’re a bad boy, Ben," Luther says, and twists his little head around one hundred eighty degrees.

The warmth of the house envelops him as he closes and relocks the backdoor. He stands in the kitchen holding the dead boy in his arms, the linoleum Kool-Aid-sticky beneath his feet.

The sink blooms with dishes.

The odor of burnt popcorn permeates the air.

Two greasy Tupperware bowls sit on the Formica table beside him, the unexploded kernels still pooled in the bottom.

The liquid crystal display on the stove turns to 1:39.

He hesitates, listening: the muted breath of warm air murmurs up through vents in the floor. A water droplet falls every fifteen seconds from the faucet into a slowly filling wineglass and in another room the second hand of a clock ticks just on the edge of audible. The refrigerator hums soothingly. As the icemaker releases new cubes into the bin, the sound is like a great glacier shelf calving into the sea.

Luther kneels down, stows the boy beneath the table. Then he moves on into the dining room, turns right, and passes through a wide archway into the den.

Plushycushioned
furniture has been arranged in a semicircle around the undeniable focal point of the room: a gargantuan television with satellite speakers positioned strategically in every corner for a maximum auditory experience. A third Tupperware bowl has been abandoned between two pillows on the floor. Bending down, he scoops out a handful of popcorn and crams it into his mouth.

He walks to the edge of the hallway, eyes still adjusting to the navy darkness. The electronic snoring of the kitchen cannot be heard from this corridor of the house. But there are other sounds: the toilet runs; a showerhead drips onto ceramic; three human beings breathe heavily in oblivious comfort. Beneath this soundtrack of suburban sleep the central heating whispers on and on, safe as his mother’s heartbeat.

Luther stands in the hallway scraping chunks of popcorn from his molars, thinking,
They need this noise. They would go mad without it. They think this is silence…they have never known silence.

He steps through the first doorway on the right, a bathroom. Opening the medicine cabinet above the sink, he takes out a box of grape-flavored dental floss. When his teeth are clean to his satisfaction he returns the floss to its shelf and closes the cabinet. Stepping back into the hall he tiptoes across the carpet into the first room on the left.