The Neighbors (22 page)

The house was hauntingly quiet without Mickey around. Somehow, even when he’d locked himself in his room, the place hadn’t felt as empty as it did now. Drew sat on the couch, the silence humming in his ears, staring at his reflection in the convex curve of Mick’s old TV. He wondered whether Mickey was going to come back, wondered whether his sudden departure was Drew’s fault as well.

But the thing that unnerved him the most was Harlow’s cold shoulder. It was completely unlike her. The flippant wave of her hand had been enough to crush him. She had told him he was a wonderful worker, a good person; they had made a connection. And yet there she was, unrelenting, motioning for him to go home like a cranky old woman shooing schoolkids off her lawn. It wasn’t fair. He hadn’t done anything but what she had asked him to do.

Staring at his hands, he considered calling home again. His mother had been happy for him the night before—and in less than twenty-four hours, everything had gone to shit. Mickey had taken off, Harlow had shoved him aside, Red had decided Drew wasn’t worth his time. If Mickey didn’t come back, who knew what would happen. His being gone meant not paying the rent, and not paying the rent meant that the bank would come knocking on the door. Drew would be out on his ass, right along with all of his crappy furniture and his stash of pudding cups.

Standing up, he looked around the room with his arms at his sides. His mother, Harlow, Mickey, Red: they were gone, and Emily was little more than a memory.

He was completely alone. Abandoned. And it made him want to scream.

M
ickey Fitch sat at the edge of the bed in an old motel room that smelled faintly of mold—the kind of scent a room took on after it flooded, the odor of decay, spores colonizing between the carpet and the floor. It was hot, and the air conditioner that dangled from the window was broken, half in the room, half out; a lot like Mickey—balancing on the sill, not sure which way to tumble.

Harlow spent nearly all her time sitting in the front room of her house, staring out the bay window like a cat stalking birds. She had inevitably seen him toss a suitcase into his Pontiac before roaring into the sunset, tires squealing, smoke rising from the pavement. He’d gotten away, but it didn’t mean he would go unfound, and it didn’t mean he wouldn’t end up going back on his own. Harlow kept a tight leash on the finances. Other than pizza and beer, she bought him his groceries, leaving them in the tunnel between 668 and 670 Magnolia Lane. He was like a child living off a meager allowance, forced to present receipts for anything above and beyond his normal expenses. Harlow was a hawk. She would find him. He didn’t know how; he just knew she would.

His nostrils flared against the unnerving scent of mildew. He was on edge, waiting for Harlow to kick the door in with a pair of red pumps, to fling off her Jackie Os and slice his throat from ear to ear. She had assured him that if he ever took a misstep, if he so much as looked at her the wrong way, he was as good as dead. Sure, there had been times when Mickey had tried to convince himself that, even if she tried to blame him for her own crimes, the police would figure it out—they’d arrest them both. But there was always that shred of doubt. It scared him into submission every time.

And then there was Red.

Mickey had seen something unidentifiable in Red’s eyes the first time he met him. It was the dead of night, a few weeks before Christmas, and it was his first glimpse of who the Wards really were. He stood in the doorway of an upstairs bedroom, one that looked more like a shrine than a room anyone was meant to live in. There on the bed was Trevor Thorne, the guy Mick had called his roommate for nearly a month. Trevor had been cool—strait-laced and friendly. He had escaped an abusive stepfather out in Oklahoma and hoped to eventually make it clear to New York City.

Had it not been for all the blood, Mickey’s former housemate might well have been sleeping, dreaming of the Big Apple and endless opportunities.

Harlow watched from the hallway as Mick hesitated, his heart twisting in his chest. He had thought it weird when Trevor started going next door more and more often; odd when he started eating there on a regular basis. Trevor and Harlow had been a strange pairing, but Mick hadn’t interfered. He hadn’t stopped to consider that Trevor could possibly end up like Shawn Tennant. Somehow, he had convinced himself that Shawn was a fluke, a special case, something that would never happen again—not in his wildest dreams.

With Trevor’s body wrapped in a sheet and tossed over his shoulder—nothing but an old friend helping a drunk comrade
get back home—Red watched Mickey work from the base of the stairs. For a brief moment, they made eye contact, and Mick saw something dangerous in Red’s eyes. It was envy, as though Mick’s job of disposing of Harlow’s prey elevated him in some way, making Red less important in the scheme of things. Red was seeing something he wanted to be a part of but didn’t dare touch. That evening, Mick realized that Red was as wicked as his murderous wife. Because even if Red didn’t get his hands dirty, he was just as ensnared in the game as Mick was. The difference between Mickey’s involvement and Red’s was that, at one point, Red had made a choice; he had embraced this lifestyle, while Mickey had been blackmailed into compliance.

Rather than dragging Trevor’s body down the sidewalk, he stepped across the Wards’ kitchen to the basement door. It was the first time he’d accessed the tunnel that connected the two houses together, the first time he’d set foot in the room inside his own home—stripped of carpeting, devoid of windows, hidden behind a locked door. There was a table bolted to the floor in the center of the room. Channels ran along its metal surface, gently sloping toward a drain that emptied onto the floor. Mickey lowered Trevor’s body onto cold steel. That night he spent hours dismembering the body of his twenty-year-old roommate, tossing limbs into thick plastic bags between bouts of vomiting; tossing those bags into floor-standing freezers until he figured out what to do with them. He’d spend the next three months burying them in various parts of Kansas and Nebraska. Oklahoma had been an option, but Mick had driven a few hundred extra miles to avoid it as a dumping ground. Something about Trevor being buried in the state he had run from didn’t sit right with him.

He felt like it was the least he could do.

When the alarm clock buzzed at six in the morning, Red swung his arm over the side of the bed and slapped the snooze bar. He hadn’t slept a wink, but had faked it when he heard Harlow rise an hour before. She was downstairs, banging pots and pans against the kitchen counter the way she always did when she was mad. Red had spent most of yesterday sitting at a local park, plotting. She had refused to speak to him when he returned, which was just as well. He knew what he had to do, and though it would test his constitution, he was determined. Harlow thought he was useless, but he’d prove her wrong. He’d show her that he was just as able as Mickey Fitch; and once he was covered in blood, Harlow’s heart would flutter at the sight of him—Red Ward, her husband, her one and only love.

He curled his toes against the cold floorboards, wandered to the bathroom, and executed his morning routine. He took extra time to shave his face, splashing aftershave onto his hands and patting his cheeks. Plucking stray eyebrows out with Harlow’s tweezers, he leaned into the mirror and inspected himself. He felt good, looked even better. Today would be dedicated to his own personal renaissance: the first day of the rest of Red Ward’s new, sadistic, bloodstained life.

Descending the stairs, he spotted Harlow standing in her usual spot in the front room, gazing out the window. If she heard him come down, she didn’t let it show. With her back to her husband and her eyes on Andrew’s bedroom window, her attention never wavered. Her obsession was growing by the day.

It was time to put an end to it, time to remind her where her loyalty truly lay.

After a solitary breakfast of grapefruit, granola, and a cup of coffee, Red climbed into the Cadillac and cruised into town. He had bought that Caddy in the summer of ’83. Despite the contempt he held for his sales job, Red had earned himself a promotion. That day he walked out of his boss’s office, climbed into his tan Volvo station wagon, and drove straight to the Cadillac
dealership before ever coming home. Harlow had been dumbstruck when he pulled into the driveway. He had always asked her permission for everything, but this decision had been his alone.

Patting the steering wheel of his aged Caddy much like an owner would pat a trusty old dog, Red stopped by the barbershop and got a haircut.

Then, guiding that boat of a vehicle into the True Value parking lot, he reevaluated the shopping list he’d put to memory before casually walking inside.

Bill Jacobson greeted him with a wide smile once Red’s shopping was complete.

“Hey there, Red,” he said with a grin. “How’s the wife?”

Bill and Red had known each other since the Wards had moved into town. There was no question as to Red’s status as Bill’s most valued customer; he had spent thousands over the years on renovation supplies. Every time Harlow had a new project—and a new boy to do them—Bill was the one who sold Red the required materials to keep his wife happy.

“Fine, fine,” Red replied, angling his cart so he could unload his purchases onto the counter: one blue tarp, fifty feet of nylon rope, a roll of silver duct tape, and a pack of Wrigley’s gum.

“What’s the wife having you do now?” Bill asked as he rang up the items. “Kill somebody?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if she did.” Red chuckled, and Bill laughed in return.

“Women,” Bill quipped with a grin. “At least you’ve got yourself a looker, Red—pleasant to look at after a long day of home improvement, eh?”

“That’s right,” Red said, “at least there’s that.”

“Now, don’t go showing up on the news,” Bill teased, handing Red his receipt. “Or I’ll be halfway responsible, selling you all this.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Red said cheerfully. “I’ll get away with it.”

“I bet you will.” Bill chuckled. If they had been buddies at a barbecue, Bill would have socked Red in the shoulder with a laugh.

Drew was reluctant to go to the Wards’ that morning; he couldn’t get the memory of Harlow waving him away out of his mind, though it had already gone fuzzy around the edges, like an old photograph, overexposed and blurry. But he made his way across the yard anyway, bound by what could only be described as allegiance.

There was something about her that comforted him, something that kept him coming back. He had been sick with worry over what he might or might not have done to make Harlow upset. He’d spent hours thinking about it, staring at the white picket fence, studying the rosebushes he’d pruned two days before. He wondered whether the grass would need cutting soon, considered whether the window trim looked brighter than it had before he had painted it, or whether it looked the same.

He wanted to please her, because there had never been any pleasing his mother. He wanted to win her over, because she was lost just like he was—because she was losing Red just like he had lost his father. He was sure that Harlow
wanted
to be pleased, that she was waiting for Andrew to prove himself. She had just had a particularly rough night. Her mood swing had nothing to do with him; at least, that was what he was desperate to believe.

As he crossed the yard that morning, he decided he was ready. He was going to show her that he was worth her time, that if there was a missing link in her life, he was it.

He put his knuckles to the door and knocked.

When Harlow answered, a cheerful smile spread across her face.

“Good,” she said with a grin. “I’m making pancakes.”

And just like that, everything felt right again.