The Killing Lessons (33 page)

Fifty-two-year-old Ellinson Sheriff Tom Hurley, divorced, was not a believer in fate, nor, by extension, the
tempting
of fate, but he couldn’t help blaming himself when, ten seconds after he’d thought,
Jesus, I hope no one calls
, someone called. He’d just poured himself a cup of coffee (he was driving over to the Westcotts’ for Christmas lunch later, Leonard Westcott being his friend of more than thirty years and himself an honorary member of the Westcott family; they had him over every Christmas, since the divorce ten years ago) and put his feet up in front of the TV. He was channel surfing for something shiny and inane. A Christmas morning Bond movie, maybe, those heartbreaking girls with the glossy legs and cruel faces. He almost didn’t pick up the call. His son was spending Christmas in Pueblo with his mother and would still be asleep. His sister (who got the brains, and who’d been teaching Renaissance Studies at Columbia for the last twenty years) wasn’t due to call until this evening. And since that was the limit of his living family, it could only be work.

‘Sheriff Hurley?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank God. It’s Meredith Trent. Rowena Cooper’s mom. Something’s wrong.’

Tom came work-alert, instantly. Excitement and unease in equal measure. He’d met Rowena’s mother several times when she’d been up from Florida to visit her daughter and the kids, but they’d never exchanged more than a couple of minutes’ polite conversation.

‘Hey, Mrs Trent, what can I do for you?’

‘Look, this might sound like paranoia, but I’ve been calling Rowena’s place since yesterday evening and there’s no answer. Same with her cell phone. I called Sadie Pinker on her cell, but she’s with her family in Boulder. I don’t have a number for anyone else there. I’m sorry, but I’m really going crazy here. It’s Christmas Day and there’s no way they wouldn’t be there. Could you check on them?’

Tom grabbed the pen and the jotter he kept by the phone. The wind outside was running riot. A horror movie sound effect. ‘When was the last time you spoke with Rowena, Mrs Trent?’

‘Four days ago. But I mean we don’t speak every day or anything. It’s just that we said we’d speak as normal on Christmas Day. Please, Sheriff, I’m very worried. She’s so far from everything out there.’

‘OK, Mrs Trent, don’t you worry yourself. I’m going to go on over there and check on her myself, how’s that sound?’

‘Oh gosh, yes please. Thank you. It’s just not like her to go silent like that.’

‘I understand, absolutely. Most likely she’s lost her cell and maybe there’s a problem with the landline, but I’ll take a ride out there anyway. Now do you have a pen handy? I’ll give you my cell phone number.’

‘Are you going to go right now?’

‘Right now, yes, ma’am. You ready for the number?’

Driving out to Rowena’s place through the racing snow, Tom thought how small-town life simplified everything, including – unfortunately – your ability to work out when something was wrong. He imagined a New York officer getting the same call from a worried mother with a daughter living alone in the city. The number of possible explanations for why someone wasn’t answering her phones. A place the size of Ellinson reduced all such explanations to unlikelihoods. He knew Rowena and the kids. She was a good woman. If he’d been ten years younger… Good kids, too, from what he’d seen. The boy, Josh, was quiet, protective of his mother, which Tom liked, and the little girl, Nell, was a funny, smart little thing. Landline down
and
cell phone out of action? Optimism. An accident. These roads in this weather. He was preparing himself, en route, for rounding a bend and coming face to face with a car wreck. Christmas Day, a vehicle could lie overturned on one of these back roads for twenty-four hours or more, upside down, burnt-out, spilling oil and smoke and shattered glass and blood.
Jesus, please don’t let it be bad. Please don’t let it be bad.

Xander parked the Dodge a little way past the house, where trees overhung the road. It was a dull morning now and the snow was turning blizzardy. His first thought was to cut off the road and track back through the woods, but the snow was too deep. He’d be wading up to his thighs. He’d have to use the road and hope no one came along.

It was very cold, which soothed him, briefly (he wore only a windbreaker, jeans, the poorly washed sweatshirt, shitkickers), but within twenty paces, head down, it had him shivering again. He’d lost count of how many painkillers he’d taken. His guts didn’t feel right. It was a long time since he’d eaten. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten, in fact. He felt very distant from food, as if he’d gone past the need for it. He only had thirst left to him, apparently. He wished he’d brought a bottle from the van.

Strange to see the house again. He thought he’d been expecting to see the place yellow-taped off, a crime scene. And yet when he didn’t, he wasn’t surprised.

The Jeep Cherokee was still where it had been, tyres snow-chained. That was a good thing. When he was finished here he could switch vehicles. The keys would be in the house somewhere. A Jeep would be better in this weather, the chained tyres biting through the drifts. He could get high up. He’d be able to breathe, to think clearly with the world sprawled out beneath him.

When he’d finished here
. What did that mean? He kept approaching it in his mind, but all he got was the sense that he’d know what to do when he got there. He’d planned on bringing the kite and the lemon and the monkey. But walking across the house’s front yard he found he’d brought all the bags. Their soft plastic handles cut into the palm of his good hand. There seemed to be more things in them than he remembered buying. He was afraid, now, to look at what
was
in there. He’d seen a hammer. Hadn’t he already done the hammer? That was one good thing about Paulie and the iPad videos: they helped him keep track. They helped him keep the things in place. And where would he go when he
had
finished here? Every time he thought about the bitch cop and the patrolman in his house, in his rooms… He looked over his shoulder. No one. He wanted to get into the house now just to get out of the cold. It was soft gloom under the trees.

Ran all the way through the woods. You didn’t even know she was there. You fucked it up.

He knew now how he knew Paulie hadn’t been lying. Paulie had fucked his knee up. Paulie said he thought he saw someone but it was a deer. It wasn’t a deer.

But if that were true, why hadn’t he known Paulie was lying at the time?

Because he’d been… Because it had gone wrong. And he’d been searching for the jug. He’d had his mind on the jug, trying even then, even
then
(the thought made him jam his teeth together) to put it right. The whole fucking thing was Paulie’s fault.

The kitchen door was unlocked. He opened it and went in. He had the fish knife in his back pocket and the automatic tucked into his jeans. It was warm inside. Heating on a timer. He set the bags down on the kitchen floor. They made a noise but it didn’t bother him much. The house didn’t feel… The house was still. A big solid thing unmoved by the turbulence outside. And there was the smell: rich diarrhoea and rotten eggs. Still, he took the gun out. He’d never tried to fire a gun with his left hand. He didn’t like the feel of it, but when he transferred it to the injured right he found he couldn’t make his fingers grip.

The kitchen opened into the corridor that led to the bottom of the stairs and the front door. The bloodstains were still there. He followed them to the living room, where he’d dragged her. The memory of it twitched, the feel of his fist wrapped in her hair, a fish-flicker in his cock.

She was still there, of course. She was as he’d left her. The room stank. Flies hummed. There was a Christmas tree. Its lights winked on and off. He’d kept seeing Christmas decorations when he’d been shopping. It hadn’t registered on him properly. He didn’t remember Christmas much. He remembered the days when it was over. People’s trees and gift wrap stuffed in their garbage. It was like the world was laughing at how dumb it had all been, at what a mistake all the lights and tinsel and presents had been.

He was hard, so he undid his pants and stood with his cock positioned over her blotched face and sticking-out tongue. The flies murmured, agitated.

But after a few minutes he gave up. She had nothing in her. The jug would have made her… The violin – no, the kite would… But it was too late now. His head filled up with something. His eyes felt like hard-boiled eggs. He’d thought he would know what to do. The living room’s objects were trying not to look at him. It was like the things in Mama Jean’s house. They went tight and didn’t want to look, though they had to.

Upstairs, the kid was as he’d left him too. Still with his big headphones on. Still with the TV on mute. Funny to think of all the shows and commercials that would have run, with the kid lying there.
Extreme Makeover
was on now. A woman in a hospital bed with her face swollen and her nose taped. Looked like she’d been beaten half to death. The amplifier gave off an annoying noise, like a very quiet wasp. Xander reached out to twang the guitar strings – something he’d never done in his entire life – but couldn’t bring himself to touch them. Instead, he backed out of the room.

The smell was everywhere. It was in the woman’s room at the front of the house, mixed with the scent of her cosmetics and perfume and clean laundry. It was in the bathroom, with its smell of warm towels and toilet cleaner. It was in a spare room full of neatly stacked clip-tight plastic crates (Xander glimpsed a baseball glove, a tennis ball, cotton reels, CDs, magazines).

And it was in the half-painted room, across the hall from the boy’s.

Ran all the way through the woods. You didn’t even know she was there.

Xander sat down on the edge of the bed. Through the swirls and jabs and flashes of the objects and the fizzing mix of rage and panic a part of him was working things out. If she was alive, how come they hadn’t been here and found the bodies? She would have told them. Maybe she was dead? Maybe she fell and broke her leg in the woods and froze to death? Or she was hiding somewhere, too scared to come out?

It didn’t help him. He was hot and confused. He got up, dizzy, and wandered back into the woman’s bedroom. For a while he poked around opening drawers and cupboards, his mind blank, sinking in and out of the pain in his hand. The wound felt busy. He thought a fly must have crawled in. He unwrapped the bandage. He couldn’t see anything, but he could feel something moving around under the ruptured skin. He thought of that story about the guy trapped in a crevasse who’d had to cut his own arm off to get out. He rewrapped the bandage. He couldn’t imagine himself cutting his own arm off. But the flies. He wanted more painkillers. And water. He’d left the first-aid kit in the car.

You’re not fixing this, dumb-ass
.

Shut up. Shut up.

He had to think.

Find her
.

He had to
think
, goddammit.

The bathroom. Medicine cabinet. Painkillers. Water.

But on his way to the door, he noticed the photograph on the bedside table. A framed colour print of the woman with her kids. They were standing on a snowy porch in winter clothes, quilted jackets and woolly hats. The boy had one of those dumb ones with ear-flaps. The woman had one in silver fur that made her look like a Russian spy. The little girl wore a blue and white one with toggles hanging down below her chin. That and a red quilted jacket. They were all smiling. Icicles hung from the porch’s pitched roof. The little girl looked like her mother.

He couldn’t manage the tricksy metal tabs on the back, so he smashed the glass and pulled out the print. He didn’t have a single photograph of himself. He didn’t like the idea any more than he liked mirrors. It still did something weird to him when he saw himself on the iPad videos. He never completely believed it was him.

In the bathroom he found Advil, took some and drank a lot of water from the tap.

Through the woods
.
It won’t be properly fixed until you find her.

Downstairs, he brought the shopping bags from the kitchen into the living room. There were more things in them than he remembered buying. Big hardware nails. A pineapple. A wristwatch. A yoyo. A doll wearing a crown. The objects were like the flies on her, easily disturbed.

But it was the kite. He was sure the kite came after the jug.

Sheriff Tom Hurley parked his Explorer on the driveway and walked, shoulders hunched against the driving snow, up to Rowena Cooper’s front door. He’d noted the Cherokee, undamaged, outside the open garage. If they were in an accident, it wasn’t in their own car. But he’d also noticed that the depth of the snow on and around the vehicle said it hadn’t been driven in a while. If you weren’t going anywhere, why not leave it
in
the garage? Never mind. They could have been out driving with someone else. A surprise Christmas Day visit. A relative. A friend. Hell, maybe Rowena had a boyfriend. Maybe some guy who’d met her passing through and couldn’t believe his luck. Town gossip was reliable, but it wasn’t omniscient.

He rang the doorbell.

No answer.

Tried a second time.

Ditto.

He drew his gun and switched on his flashlight. Sweep. Check all the downstairs windows. It wasn’t a car wreck. Fuck. Don’t panic. Procedure. You don’t know anything.

But of course he did know.

The first window he checked was the living room’s bay. The curtains were open. Christmas tree lights blinking on and off.

Illuminating the half-naked body of Rowena Cooper, twisted on the blood-darkened floor.

When did you last speak with Rowena?
he’d asked Meredith Trent.
Four days ago.

She looked at least four days dead. Christ. Shit.
Shit
. His professional machine whirred – the kids, get in and check, they could be alive, bleeding, you might have minutes, seconds – while his human self, father, ex-husband,
person
, fractured with sadness: he’d seen Rowena a couple of weeks ago in town. Hey, Sheriff. Hey, Rowena. She’d been coming out of the post office. Late Christmas cards.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
She’d been heading to the diner across the street where the kids were waiting for her in a booth. All that life. The rich history and the glimmering future. All the conversations she’d had. Kisses, laughs, quiet moments watching the weather, reading a book, all the thoughts and the wondering. The big events of her heart. Her husband’s death. The kids. The love. The loss. A person. Gone. A sudden, obscene subtraction from the world.
Mrs Trent, I’m sorry, I have bad news
… The mother would never recover, not properly. She’d be deformed inside for the rest of her life.

All this went through his head while he made his way back to the front door, slipped the flashlight into his belt, tried the handle, found it unlocked, pushed it open, quietly with his left hand, the gun held tight and not nearly steady enough in his right.

The smell hit him immediately. Like nothing else on earth. Death’s unique stink. He fought back vomit. His legs drained.

He wanted both hands on the gun, but he had to see. He reached for the hall light switch – stopped.
Prints. Don’t touch anything. Basic. Fuck. Calm down.
He took the flashlight in his left hand.
Call for back-up. But the time. Minutes, seconds. The kids. The kids first. Jesus let them be alive. Please God let them be alive.

Four downstairs rooms: living room, dining room, kitchen, utility.

Rowena had something protruding from a gash in her abdomen. It took him a few seconds to unscramble it in his head, and even then he wasn’t sure. It looked like the top half of a kite. One of those crappy little things you knew wouldn’t work properly. Half the cellophane wrapper was still twisted around it.

Why? Never mind why.

Dining room, kitchen, utility.

Clear.

Halfway back down the hall he saw them: wet bootprints.

Jesus Christ – was he still
here
?

It played out, mentally, quick and grotesque: the killer moving in with the dead family. Making coffee. Watching TV. Revisiting the corpses. Talking to them. Fucking them. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. The world contained individuals for whom that would
be
the most natural thing in the world. Once you knew the possibilities you couldn’t but consider them. You couldn’t but expect them. All the things you knew that you wished you didn’t.

He went up the stairs.

Front bedroom clear.

The wind dropped. He heard the crackle of electricity when he was just outside the second bedroom. It gave him a rush of hope.

Then he looked inside.

Oh dear God.

Josh.

Oh. Dear. God.

The turgid guts sprawled. Something… A soft toy jammed…
Fuck
.

He swayed, fought off sickness a second time, managed to get his back against the doorframe. The flies on the corpse lifted, irritated, traced urgent figure eights, resettled. Even in the midst of his nausea a small part of his mind was thinking: Flies? Winter? But the heating maybe. The disgust. The Lord of the Flies was the Devil. This was why. It took him a moment.

You don’t have a moment. Move. Move.

The room across the hall was in the process of being decorated. Furniture removed.

She could only be in the bathroom. He had an image of her small body, naked and bloated in the tub’s long-cold dark red water, hair floating, insides bobbing at the surface.

He backed out of the room and turned.

A man with a bandaged hand was standing in the bathroom doorway, holding a gun.