Four Live Rounds (12 page)

In five minutes, I’d reburied the body and
the marker. I took a small chunk of granite from the shore and
placed it on the thicketed grave site. Then I returned to the
house. It was quarter to eight, and there was hardly any light left
in the sky.

Two hours later, sitting on the sofa in my
living room, I dialed the number on the slip of paper. Every door
to the house was locked, most of the lights turned on, and in my
lap, a cold satin stainless .357 revolver.

I had not called the police for a very good
reason. The claim that it was my blood on the woman was probably a
lie, but the paring knife had been missing from my kitchen for
weeks. Also, with the Charlotte Police Department’s search for Rita
Jones dominating local news headlines, her body on my property,
murdered with my knife, possibly with my fingerprints on it, would
be more than sufficient evidence to indict me. I’d researched
enough murder trials to know that.

As the phone rang, I stared up at the vaulted
ceiling of my living room, glanced at the black baby grand piano
I’d never learned to play, the marble fireplace, the odd artwork
that adorned the walls. A woman named Karen, whom I’d dated for
nearly two years, had convinced me to buy half a dozen pieces of
art from a recently deceased minimalist from New York, a man who
signed his work “Loman.” I hadn’t initially taken to Loman, but
Karen had promised me I’d eventually “get” him. Now, $27,000 and
one fiancee lighter, I stared at the ten-by-twelve-foot abomination
that hung above the mantel: shit brown on canvas, with a
basketball-size yellow sphere in the upper right-hand corner. Aside
from Brown No. 2, four similar marvels of artistic genius
pockmarked other walls of my home, but these I could suffer.
Mounted on the wall at the foot of the staircase, it was Playtime,
the twelve-thousand-dollar glass-encased heap of stuffed animals,
sewn together in an orgiastic conglomeration, which reddened my
face even now. But I smiled, and the knot that had been absent
since late winter shot a needle of pain through my gut. My Karen
ulcer. You’re still there. Still hurting me. At least it’s you.

The second ring.

I peered up the staircase that ascended to
the exposed second-floor hallway, and closing my eyes, I recalled
the party I’d thrown just a week ago-guests laughing, talking
politics and books, filling up my silence. I saw a man and a woman
upstairs, elbows resting against the oak banister, overlooking the
living room, the wet bar, and the kitchen. Holding their
wineglasses, they waved down to me, smiling at their host.

The third ring.

My eyes fell on a photograph of my mother-a
five-by-seven in a stained-glass frame, sitting atop the obsidian
piano. She was the only family member with whom I maintained
regular contact. Though I had relatives in the Pacific Northwest,
Florida, and a handful in the Carolinas, I saw them rarely-at
reunions, weddings, or funerals that my mother shamed me into
attending with her. But with my father having passed away and a
brother I hadn’t seen in thirteen years, family meant little to me.
My friends sustained me, and contrary to popular belief, I didn’t
have the true reclusive spirit imputed to me. I did need them.

In the photograph, my mother is squatting
down at my father’s grave, pruning a tuft of carmine canna lilies
in the shadow of the headstone. But you can only see her strong,
kind face among the blossoms, intent on tidying up her husband’s
plot of earth under that magnolia he’d taught me to climb, the blur
of its waxy green leaves behind her.

The fourth ring.

“Did you see the body?”

It sounded as if the man were speaking
through a towel. There was no emotion or hesitation in his staccato
voice.

“Yes.”

“I gutted her with your paring knife and hid
the knife in your house. It has your fingerprints all over it.” He
cleared his throat. “Four months ago, you had blood work done by
Dr. Xu. They misplaced a vial. You remember having to go back and
give more?”

“Yes.”

“I stole that vial. Some is on Rita Jones’s
white T-shirt. The rest is on the others.”

“What others?”

“I make a phone call, and you spend the rest
of your life in prison, possibly death row....”

“I just want you-”

“Shut your mouth. You’ll receive a plane
ticket in the mail. Take the flight. Pack clothes, toiletries,
nothing else. You spent last summer in Aruba. Tell your friends
you’re going again.”

“How did you know that?”

“I know many things, Andrew.”

“I have a book coming out,” I pleaded. “I’ve
got readings scheduled. My agent-”

“Lie to her.”

“She won’t understand me just leaving like
this.”

“Fuck Cynthia Mathis. You lie to her for your
safety, because if I even suspect you’ve brought someone along or
that someone knows, you’ll go to jail or you’ll die. One or the
other, guaranteed. And I hope you aren’t stupid enough to trace
this number. I promise you it’s stolen.”

“How do I know I won’t be hurt?”

“You don’t. But if I get off the phone with
you and I’m not convinced you’ll be on that flight, I’ll call the
police tonight. Or I may visit you while you’re sleeping. You’ve
got to put that Smith and Wesson away sometime.”

I stood up and spun around, the gun clenched
in my sweaty hands. The house was silent, though chimes on the deck
were clanging in a zephyr. I looked through the large living room
windows at the black lake, its wind-rippled surface reflecting the
pier lights. The blue light at the end of Walter’s pier shone out
across the water from a distant inlet. His “Gatsby light,” we
called it. My eyes scanned the grass and the edge of the trees, but
it was far too dark to see anything in the woods.

“I’m not in the house,” he said. “Sit
down.”

I felt something well up inside of me-anger
at the fear, rage at this injustice.

“Change of plan,” I said. “I’m going to hang
up, dial nine one one, and take my chances. You can go-”

“If you aren’t motivated by
self-preservation, there’s an old woman named Jeanette I
could-”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Sixty-five, lives alone, I think she’d love
the company. What do you think? Do I have to visit your mother to
show you I’m serious? What is there to consider? Tell me you’ll be
on that plane, Andrew. Tell me so I don’t have to visit your mother
tonight.”

“I’ll be on that plane.”

The phone clicked, and he was gone.

LOCKED DOORS

Published July 2005 by Thomas Dunne Books

DESCRIPTION: Seven years ago, suspense
novelist Andrew Thomas’s life was shattered when he was framed for
a series of murders. The killer’s victims were unearthed on
Andrew’s lakefront property, and since he was wanted by the FBI,
Andrew had no choice but to flee and to create a new identity.
Andrew does just that in a cabin tucked away in the remote
wilderness near Haines Junction, Yukon. His only link to society is
by e-mail, through which he learns that all the people he ever
loved are being stalked and murdered. Culminating in the spooky and
secluded Outer Banks of North Carolina, the paths of Andrew Thomas,
a psychotic named Luther Kite, and a young female detective
collide.
Locked Doors
is a novel of blistering suspense that
will scare you to death.

Crouch quite simply is a marvel.
Locked
Doors
is as good as anything I’ve read all year, a
stay-up-all-night thriller that will have you chewing your fingers
down to the nub even as you’re reading its last paragraph. Highest
possible recommendation.
BOOKREPORTER

Palpable suspense. Non-stop action.
Relentless and riveting. Blake Crouch is the most exciting new
thriller writer I’ve read in years.
DAVID MORRELL

Excerpt from Locked Doors…

The headline on the Arts and Leisure page
read: Publisher to Reissue Five Thrillers by Alleged Murderer
Andrew Z. Thomas.

All it took was seeing his name.

Karen Prescott dropped The New York Times and
walked over to the window.

Morning light streamed across the clutter of
her cramped office--query letters and sample chapters stacked in
two piles on the floor beside the desk, a box of galleys shoved
under the credenza. She peered out the window and saw the fog
dissolving, the microscopic crawl of traffic now materializing on
Broadway through the cloud below.

Leaning against a bookcase that housed many
of the hardcovers she’d guided to publication, Karen shivered. The
mention of Andrew’s name always unglued her.

For two years she’d been romantically
involved with the suspense novelist and had even lived with him
during the writing of Blue Murder at the same lake house in North
Carolina where many of his victims were found.

She considered it a latent character defect
that she’d failed to notice anything sinister in Andy beyond a
slight reclusive tendency.

My God, I almost married him.

She pictured Andy reading to the crowd in
that Boston bookshop the first time they met. In a bathrobe
writingin his office as she brought him fresh coffee (French roast,
of course). Andy making love to her in a flimsy rowboat in the
middle of Lake Norman.

She thought of his dead mother.

The exhumed bodies from his lakefront
property.

His face on the FBI website.

They’d used his most recent jacket photo, a
black-and-white of Andy in a sports jacket sitting broodingly at
the end of his pier.

During the last few years she’d stopped
thinking of him as Andy. He was Andrew Thomas now and embodied all
the horrible images the cadence of those four syllables
invoked.

There was a knock.

Scott Boylin, publisher of Ice Blink Press’s
literary imprint, stood in the doorway dressed in his best bib and
tucker. Karen suspected he was gussied up for the Doubleday
party.

He smiled, waved with his fingers.

She crossed her arms, leveled her gaze.

God, he looked streamlined today--very tall,
fit, crowned by thick black hair with dignified intimations of
silver.

He made her feel little. In a good way.
Because Karen stood nearly six feet tall, few men towered over her.
She loved having to look up at Scott.

They’d been dating clandestinely for the last
four months. She’d even given him a key to her apartment, where
they spent countless Sundays in bed reading manuscripts, the
coffee-stained pages scattered across the sheets.

But last night she’d seen him at a bar in
SoHo with one of the cute interns. Their rendezvous did not look
work-related.

“Come to the party with me,” he said. “Then
we’ll go to Il Piazza. Talk this out. It’s not what you--”

“I’ve got tons of reading to catch up--”

“Don’t be like that, Karen. Come on.”

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to have this
conversation here, so . . .”

He exhaled sharply through his nose and the
door closed hard behind him.

Joe Mack was stuffing his pink round face
with a gyro when his cell phone started ringing to the tune of
“Staying Alive.”

He answered, cheeks exploding with food,
“This Joe.”

“Hi, yes, um, I’ve got a bit of an
interesting problem.”

“Whath?”

“Well, I’m in my apartment, but I can’t get
the deadbolt to turn from the inside.”

Joe Mack choked down a huge mouthful, said,
“So you’re locked in.”

“Exactly.”

“Which apartment?” He didn’t even try to mask
the annoyance in his voice.

“Twenty-two eleven.”

“Name?”

“Um . . . I’m not the tenant. I’m Karen
Prescott’s friend. She’s the--”

“Yeah, I get it. You need to leave anytime
soon?”

“Well, yeah, I don’t want to--”

Joe Mack sighed, closed the cell phone, and
devoured the last of the gyro.

Wiping his hands on his shirt, he heaved
himself from a debilitated swivel chair and lumbered out of the
office, locking the door behind him.

The lobby was quiet for midday and the
elevator doors spread as soon as he pressed the button. He rode up
wishing he’d bought three gyros for lunch instead of two.

The doors opened again and he walked onto the
twenty-second floor, fishing the key ring containing the master
from the pocket of his enormous overalls.

He belched.

It echoed down the empty corridor.

Man, was he hungry.

He stopped at 2211, knocked, yelled through
the door, “It’s the super!”

No one answered.

Joe Mack inserted the master into the
deadbolt. It turned easily enough.

He pushed the door open.

“Hello?” he said, standing in the threshold,
admiring the apartment--roomy, flat-screen television, lush deep
blue carpet, an antique desk, great view of SoHo, probably loads of
food in the fridge.

“Anybody home?”

He turned the deadbolt four times. It worked
perfectly.

Another door opened somewhere in the hallway
and approaching footsteps reverberated off the hardwood floor. Joe
Mack glanced down the corridor at the tall man with black hair in a
black overcoat strolling toward him from the stairwell.

“Hey, pal, were you the one who just called
me?” Joe Mack asked.

The man with black hair stopped at the open
doorway of 2211.

He smelled strange, of Windex and lemons.

“Yes, I was the one.”

“Oh. You get the lock to work?”

“I’ve never been in this apartment.”

“What the fuck did you call me for--”

Glint of a blade. The man held an
ivory-hilted bowie. He swept its shimmering point across Joe Mack’s
swollen belly, cleaving denim, cotton, several layers of skin.

“No, wait just a second--”

The man raised his right leg and booted Joe
Mack through the threshold.