Bad Things (44 page)

these
guys? Ten minutes later we’re sitting in the bar, waiting for

324 Michael Marshall

you to call like we’re a bunch of jerks ready to party and waiting on

our ride. What’s
that
about?”

“Money,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, it’s not. You ask them. You ask
them
if

they’re feeling—”

“That’s the last thing I’m going to do. You ever
met
any male

humans, Becki?”

She sort of smiled. “Yeah, funny. But you’re not leaving me here.

Build a bridge and get over it, work on Plan B.”

Plan B turned out to be them coming in the SUV with Bill and

me, while the other guys followed in their own vehicle. I put Bill’s

sweatshirt on, picked up the guns, and looked around at the other

people holding weapons.

“You up for this?”

The two black guys nodded.

Bill shook his head. “Never a dull moment with you,

Henderson.”

He waited until we were outside and in the car before asking the

obvious question. “What happens if we’re going in the wrong direc-

tion?”

“We . . .” I realized he had a point. “Get me a number for the

Robertson house, then hand me the phone.”

He dialed and then handed his phone to me. “Signal’s not great,”

he said.

There was no answer for a long time. Then it was picked up, to

silence. I could hear someone breathing.

“Brooke?”

“No,” a female voice said, rich and strangely sexual. “I’m afraid

she’s not at home.”

“I know that’s you.”

“You’re mistaken. This is the Seattle Public Library. Who’s call-

ing, please?”

B A D T H I N G S 325

“Brooke, listen to me. If anything happens to Carol or my son,

then yours will be the last generation of Robertsons to walk the earth.

Do you understand me?”

She laughed, so suddenly and so loudly it was painful over the

phone.

“You’re a funny guy,” she said, and hung up.

I started the car.

“We’re going in the right direction.”

The rain had slackened a little, but only because it was heading fast

toward sleet. I wanted to jam my foot down and drive hard, but I

knew these roads well enough to understand that dropping ten miles

off your speed in this weather made it half as likely you’d end up spin-

ning off the road. It also made it easier for the other guys to follow.

The car was very quiet. Bill stared straight ahead out of the wind-

shield. I have no idea what he was thinking. I wanted to thank him

for being there, for coming, but didn’t know how to start. In the

rearview mirror I could see Becki and Kyle sitting well apart. Becki

was also staring into space. Kyle appeared to be watching the forest

as we passed.

“It’s cold,” he said suddenly.

“Always there with the weather report,” I said.

“I mean,
really
cold. And . . . it smells weird.”

I was about to dismiss this just as fl ippantly but realized he was

right. The heater had been left on in the SUV when I took it from

Collins’s driveway, and I hadn’t changed it, but the hot air it was blow-

ing didn’t seem to make any difference. And there defi nitely was an

odor, too. Sweet, spicy, but a little sickly, something like cinnamon.

I looked around for evidence of an air freshener in the car, but there

wasn’t one, and so I cracked the window open an inch. The car didn’t

seem to get any colder, but the smell lifted a notch.

326 Michael Marshall

“Is that coming from the woods?” Becki asked.

“No idea,” I said, but I knew I’d smelled it, or something like it,

more than once since being in Black Ridge.

We drove in silence for another fi ve minutes, before Kyle spoke

again.

“Something’s out there,” he said.

“Shut
up,
” Becki snapped.

“You actually see something?” Bill asked.

Kyle was silent for a moment, his face pressed up close to his win-

dow. “No,” he said eventually.

“So there’s probably nothing to worry about,” Bill said. And

maybe he was right, but the farther we drove the more a low nausea in

my stomach seemed to warn me otherwise. Partly it was simple fear,

or anticipation. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done, when

you’re in the company of weapons you know you’re stepping closer

to the veil between being alive and dead. I had been in that situation

before, strapped on a gun as a matter of course for years of my adult

life. It’s never a trivial matter.

I was afraid for Carol, too, and for Tyler, but the feeling I had

wasn’t merely these things. There was something else. I didn’t know

whether it was out there, or inside me, but there was something else.

A sense of bad things close at hand, and getting closer.

From fifty yards down the road we could see that the gates to the

Robertson compound had been left open.

“Not sure that’s a great sign,” Bill said.

“They snatched me for a reason,” I said, tapping on the brakes to

indicate to the car behind that we were stopping. “I got away. They

let me in, they get me back.”

“And how is that a good thing?” Becki asked.

I pulled over, got out, and walked back to the other car. Little D

rolled down his window. His face looked gray and pinched.

B A D T H I N G S 327

“This is it,” I said. “You okay?”

“Just cold, yo.”

He looked convincing, but something told me he was feeling what

I had as we got closer to this place: a strong impression that turning

around and heading in the opposite direction would be a safer idea.

Switch killed the engine, pulled a nine out from under his seat.

“How’s this going to be?”

“Follow me.”

I went back to the SUV and stuck my head in the open door. “You

two are staying here,” I said. Becki started to protest but I talked

straight over her. “I mean it this time.”

She looked down at her hands.

“I’d like you to get in front, though. Lock the doors. Anyone ap-

proaches who you don’t recognize, drive away and drive fast, okay?”

Bill got out the other side, holding the shotgun. He looked up as

thunder broke, somewhere over the mountains. The rain/sleet gusted

harder, chilling cold.

“Harsh fucking night.”

“Better cover for us.”

“Never fi gured you for an optimist.”

We shut our doors and walked toward the gates, the two other

guys in step behind, their guns already out and in their hands. Bill

held them back as we approached the bottom of the drive, and I

crouched low and trotted through the gates and up toward a soft

white glow up ahead.

When I crested the rise I saw the lights in both houses were on,

as if someone was trying to attract the attention of overfl ying aliens. I

kept close to the right side of the drive, staying among the small trees

and bushes, looking for signs of movement. Couldn’t see anything, so

I crept back and waved the other guys forward. We collected at the

left side of the drive.

“Bill and I will take the main house,” I said, having to lift my

voice against the rain. “You check that other one.”

328 Michael Marshall

Switch looked across at the building where Ellen had once lived.

“And what if?”

“You fi nd a woman and a boy, get them out and come fi nd us right

away. Once we’ve got them we’re out of here, right away, nothing else

to do. You see anyone else, be very suspicious. And if anyone draws

down on you, just shoot. We hear noise, we’ll come running.”

A single upward nod, and he and Little D loped off into the rain.

Bill and I got our handguns out.

“Never seen something that looked more like a setup,” he said

cheerfully as we ran toward the house. The closer we got the better

lit we were. “You got someone with a rifl e and a sight a hundred yards

away, we’re toast.”

Half the lights in the house fl icked off at once, then, before com-

ing straight back on again.

Nothing else happened before we ran up the steps onto the porch,

however. We went low and cased the front of the building, peering

in windows. Each room appeared deserted. We returned to the front

door and took a side each. I reached around with my hand and turned

the knob. It was unlocked.

The door opened. We gave it twenty seconds, then Bill nodded at

me and we turned and kicked it in together, guns in front.

Inside, a clock was ticking.

We turned in slow half circles in the hallway, hearing nothing

else. Bill winced. You got it as soon as you stepped in the building.

The heating was up full blast in here, and the air smelled bad. Like

we’d noticed on the way, but more curdled, sickly-rich, as if cloves had

been boiled in fat for many hours over a smoky fi re, in the company

of ingredients normal people are not supposed to eat.

I gestured Bill toward the right-hand side of the house, and took

the left, quickly moving through areas that Cory had shown me dur-

ing a visit that felt like it had taken place weeks before.

The big sitting room with the kind of straight-backed chairs that

B A D T H I N G S 329

are meant to be looked at rather than sat on. Magazines spread across

glass-topped coffee tables. A fi replace that had burned at some point

during the day, but had been let run down. Every single ceiling light,

lamp, and wall sconce was turned on.

I went through the door at the back that gave onto the library,

the major addition on this property, and then through the door on

the side that led through to the breakfast room. Clean, silent, empty.

A window at the back, but it was too dark to see much beyond glass

smeared and pattered with driving rain.

The clock was on a mantelpiece in here. It was the loudest clock

I’d ever heard, unless something was going wrong with my hearing. I

didn’t remember it being anything like this loud the previous time I’d

been here—didn’t even recall noticing it at all.

A door at the other end of the breakfast room led to the large

kitchen. It felt mothballed, like everything else in this house, as if

the occupants never did more than stand in a corner of each room,

in suffocating silence: as if it was a monument to a family rather than

anywhere people might actually live.

I emerged into the hallway at the same time Bill arrived back

from the other side. He shook his head—pointed at the staircase with

a questioning look. I nodded, and he went up fi rst.

We took the sweeping curve slowly, guns ready, but reached

the top in silence. The lights fl ickered again, twice, but then stead-

ied. We searched the right side together fi rst, Cory’s side. Nothing

and no one in there, though when I passed the photos of him with

his hunting buddies, this time I knew I’d seen at least one of them

since.

I picked up one of the frames and looked closer, and I got it. Got

them
, in fact.

Richard Collins, on the far left.

And right next to Cory, arm slung around his shoulders, was

Deputy Greene.

330 Michael Marshall

We went back out across the hallway and toward the door that led

to Brooke’s half, the fi rst uncharted territory in the house. Bill put up

his hand to hold me back for a second, and leaned toward the window

to look down over the front lawns.

He turned back at me and shrugged—evidently no sign of the

other two guys.

I reached out and carefully undid the door.

Beyond was a mirror image of Cory’s half, at least at fi rst. A short

corridor on the left, leading to a master suite. The bedroom beyond

was immaculate, done up in neutral colors and muted shades. It looked

like a hotel room designed for someone who needed everything just

so. There was no one in there or in the bathroom off the side.

I rejoined Bill and let him turn the handle of the door at the other

end of the hallway. It was locked—the fi rst barrier we’d encountered

the entire time we’d been in the house.

I threw my shoulder at it, suddenly irrationally convinced that

Carol and Tyler were on the other side. The door took the impact

without noticing.

Bill moved me to one side and took his turn, dropping his shoul-

der and jogging it up at the last moment. He had more weight and a

much better technique. The frame still wasn’t budging, but the pan-

els in the middle splintered, and another two tries had it broken.

When it was open, you could see immediately how this side of the

house differed from the other. The addition below had been extended

up on this level, too, making Brooke’s sitting room perhaps twice as

long as Cory’s, in an L-shape with a wide window at the end. There

was a fi replace, cold. Three seating areas, and two long walls lined

with drawers, from fl oor to ceiling.

Hundreds of them.

C H A P T E R 4 4

“Christ,” Bill said, quietly. “What’s all this?”

We split to opposite sides and went along the walls. The units

that held the drawers looked as though they’d been constructed over

a very long period. Many were as you might expect to fi nd in an

old-style apothecary, or museum storeroom, hand-drafted in dark