Too close to home, p.24
Too Close To Home, page 24
part #3 of Thomas Cade Series
The running shape had gone from right to left and scrambled over a pile of unidentifiable debris. Above that debris, a skeleton of brick remained where two walls had met. At the height of the second-story, floorboards jutted like broken teeth from the corner. The shadows up there were solid masses of darkness. Cade’s sights passed over the enfolding darkness down to the debris pile his target had scrambled over.
He moved through the doorway with small, quick steps, keeping to a crouch to reduce the size of the target he offered. Ethan had been armed when he’d attacked Rissa and Ashley in Houston. As Cade sought a position of cover, he caught another furtive movement in his peripheral vision. Spinning to face it, he again saw the crouching shadow running across the space. This time the shot was aimed, spattering into a brick pile just behind the fleeing figure.
Cade moved quickly to where the figure had been. He misjudged a patch of shadow and his left foot caught a gap in the floor. The hole was too small for his foot, but he felt his ankle twist awkwardly as the gap held on while the rest of his body moved. He fell facefirst and, in that moment, a gunshot roared out of the night. A section of wall exploded outward where his head would have been. Cade pulled his foot free and rolled, bringing the rifle around and firing where his instinct told him the shot had come from. Another shot blazed out a few feet to the right of his own. Brick shards spattered across his face as the slug thudded into the ground inches from his head.
Cade swung the rifle and fired from the hip, one-handed. It was a pure gamble, but his luck was in. A man cried out, and there was the sound of a stumbling run. A third shot was fired, but it was wild.
“You better run, you son of a bitch,” Cade called out. Then taking a deep breath he bellowed, “Ashley.”
He thought he heard a weak answering voice calling his name. Clambering awkwardly to his feet, he limped in the direction he thought it had come from. His ankle was on fire, and he could feel it swelling from the punishment it had taken. He called Ashley’s name again and heard a stronger reply. It was muffled, definitely coming from below ground level.
“Keep talking,” he called. “I’m coming.”
Cade had lost any sense of where he was in the sprawling ruin or where his target was in relation to himself. He moved as fast as his ankle would allow. Several times, boards snapped beneath his feet as he passed, and one bent sharply in front of him, giving him mere seconds to throw himself backward before caving in completely. A shape rose up in front of him, emerging from the cover of a pile of rubble. He held a handgun in one hand and an axe in the other. The gun was pointed at Cade, who leaped to the side, momentarily letting his injured ankle take his weight.
His shoulder thudded into a wall as Ethan let loose a volley of fire. The wall shifted. Both Cade and Ethan looked up as a chunk of brickwork ponderously leaned forward before stopping just before the point of no return. Ethan’s eyes dropped to Cade, who could see the smile slowly spreading across the other man’s face.
“I’ve enjoyed the game, Mr Cade. You’ll die quick. She won’t.” He lifted the gun from a range that would make it hard to miss, even in the half-light of the moon.
Cade lashed out at the wall with the rifle stock. It shifted again, like a badly made movie set. From above, the dislodged lump of brickwork made a curiously human groaning sound as it continued to lean beyond the capacity of ancient mortar to hold it. Cade covered his face as it fell, landing inches from his outstretched legs. It raised a cloud of dust that billowed around him, choking him. But Ethan’s clear shot was gone.
Cade fought through the pain in his ankle to get to his feet. He could hear Ethan scrambling around the new rubble pile Cade had created, trying to reach his quarry. Cade moved in the opposite direction, trying to keep the debris in between them until he had the chance of a clear shot. His luck ran out. Between one step and the next there was a sharp crack of breaking wood. Cade was stepping into air and falling into darkness.
The fall was brief, but brutal. Something hit the small of his back first, bending him almost double but in the wrong direction. He heard something crack in his back and screamed involuntarily. Something scraped the side of his face; something else bounced from the back of his head. Then, finally, he lay still. Above him the clear night sky was framed in a jagged hole. A head and shoulders appeared on the edge of that whole, growing larger. Then laughter reached Cade.
“Shouldn’t take on the champ in his own backyard, Mr Detective. I’ve had years to discover every brick and board of this old corpse. There are a hundred death traps just like this that I could have lured you into.”
Cade struggled for breath. A fierce pain radiated from the small of his back, and he felt a tingling in one leg. The rifle was lost to the shadows. His vision swam in and out of focus. He gasped for the breath to speak, trying to anchor his consciousness with words. If he passed out, he was dead. And so was Ashley.
“I know. Who you are. Your name is Ethan,” he managed.
Ethan shook his head, hefting the axe. “Ashley has tried that. It didn’t work. I know who I am.” He let the axe drop and looked at the gun instead. “I would like to come down there and slowly dismember you. But better you are out of the way quickly.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Ethan hesitated.
“I think I know what happened to you. And I’m sorry. I mean it.”
“Shut up.”
“Let it go. You’ve been a prisoner here long enough. Walk away. Far away. I won’t be coming after you.”
“I said shut up.”
“I was a father, son. What she did to you, I can’t even imagine. But it wasn’t your fault.”
Cade meant what he was saying. He felt a terrible grief for the suffering of the innocent child that this man had once been. It didn’t excuse any of his crimes, but Cade felt compassion for the soul that had been twisted into this monster.
“Let me do it.” The voice came from Ethan, but it was different.
“No, it’s mine.”
“Then do it already. Christ, why is he still breathing?”
Cade had seen it before. Seen people who talked to someone who wasn’t there. Had seen men and women wandering the streets locked into their own private hell. Sometimes it was as though they were pursued or even surrounded by an invisible crowd, all talking at once. From the sound of it, though, Ethan only had one other personality to deal with.
“Leave me alone. I’ll do it.” That had been Ethan’s voice. The other was clearly meant to sound older, more dominant.
“You’re weak. You’ve always been weak. That’s why you need me. Get out of my way.”
Cade watched the war raging above him. Ethan’s head whipped from side to side each time he spoke, as though an actor playing two parts at the same time. In a flash of insight, Cade wondered if one of those warring personalities was supposed to be Greg. Had the frightened young child coped with his suffering by creating a strong personality? Which, when he discovered his brother’s existence, he began to call Greg?
“Ethan. You don’t have to do this. Let go of him, son.”
“Shut your motherfucking mouth. Ethan’s not going anywhere,” the deep voice snarled. He aimed the gun, but as he squeezed the trigger, the arm flung itself wide.
“What the fuck are you doing? You’re going to ruin everything.” Again the deep voice.
Cade watched Ethan slam the butt of the gun against the side of his own face, staggering backward. Again, he hit himself. Again. Cade rolled, his back screaming in agony, and got to his feet. He had to drag himself up, fingers digging into masonry and timber. It was too dark to see the rifle, or anything beyond the hole above him.
“Ashley, are you down here?” he called out.
“Tom, I’m here,” came the reply.
The sound had reached him from below. He crouched, crying out against the pain in his back. Collapsed rubble had created a three-foot-high tunnel, on the other side of which he could see movement. The tunnel looked to be about twelve feet long, consisting of large chunks of brickwork and moldering wood. The whole structure could collapse with a breath. He didn’t give himself time to think about what he was doing. Lying on the floor, he began to crawl forward, pulling himself on knees and elbows.
Behind him came a scream of frustration. Cade couldn’t tell which of the personalities fighting for control had made the sound, which had won the battle for control. Shots rang out, exploding chunks of brick at the mouth of the tunnel. The whole structure seemed to shudder, and something large above him shifted an inch. There was now an ominous pressure on his right shoulder that hadn’t been there before. Slowly, he shifted forward, trying to pull his body beneath the new obstruction without disturbing it.
“Tom, thank god. He’s completely insane.”
Cade’s head and shoulders were free of the tunnel. He could see Ashley, tied to what looked like a half-melted bedframe. The tunnel led through to a larger area, enclosed by a huge slab of set concrete that presumably had once formed the floor of the house above. Ashley was illuminated by a flashlight on the floor, which had been left pointing at her. Moonlight filtered through in a distant corner, where the slab was closest to the floor of the basement.
“It’s okay, Ash. Hold on there. I’m almost through…”
He heard a scrabbling behind him then, and the structure above the tunnel shifted further. Something caught at his foot and he kicked free, not knowing if it was Ethan or collapsing debris. The shifting didn’t stop this time. The entire mass was coming down, stone scraping against stone. Cade was free to the waist, then the knees. Dust was raining down and, looking back, he could see a hate-twisted face coming out of the dark, hands reaching. The tunnel was barely two feet high now.
Cade freed himself and hesitated. Then he reached in to grasp one of those hands.
“Take my hand. Take it. Get outta there.”
He pulled on Ethan’s hand, scrabbling for purchase with his feet, ignoring the protests from his back and ankle. Ethan was free almost to the waist when the tunnel collapsed with abrupt finality. A piece of concrete settled itself slowly onto his back. He screamed, then the scream became a squeal. Blood burst from his mouth as the inexorable weight bore down on him, crushing everything that wasn’t capable of supporting it.
Ethan’s hand closed on Cade’s in a death grip. Desperate eyes found the detective’s anguished gaze. Then the grip lessened as the mass of stone severed his spinal cord. A last blood-soaked bubble of breath passed his lips, and his eyes looked through Cade.
Cade held on to his hand for a moment. He put a hand to Ethan’s head.
“It’s all over, son. No more pain. I hope you find some peace,” he whispered, tears choking him.
35
Cade winced at what the medical profession called coffee. He forced a mouthful down before putting the cup aside. In a week’s residence at the Memorial Hermann hospital, he hadn’t yet managed to finish a cup, though his addiction to caffeine kept requiring him to try. Cade had never been good at being a patient. On being tipped off to the questionable state of Cade’s medical coverage, Ashley had stepped in, paying for his treatment in the state’s foremost spinal clinic.
The fall had knocked a disc out of alignment in his back. What Cade later discovered, when within twenty-four hours he had lost all feeling in his lower right side and leg, was that the disc was so far out of alignment it was on the verge of damaging his spinal cord. A Chinese doctor with an unforgiving tone had informed him that taking a speed bump at the wrong speed could have paralyzed him for life.
He now wore a restrictive and irritating brace around his lower back and had undergone surgery. The doctors were cagey about when he would be leaving, which made him scowl. Doctors were worse than policemen for being unwilling to go out on a limb. He reached for the TV remote, scrolling through a range of daytime detective shows before switching it off and tossing aside the control.
A nurse put her head in the door of his private room briefly. “Are you okay for a visitor, Tom?”
“Sure. What else do I have to do around here?” he drawled, giving her a wink.
Ashley walked in.
“Ash. I didn’t expect to see you again… um… so soon, I mean.” Cade found himself floundering.
She beamed, that smile he had seen so little of which made her beauty radiant.
“I was never just going to let you go your own way after everything you’ve done for me, Tom.”
She took a seat next to his bed and took his hand, squeezing it. She looked pale and tired; there was a hint of circles under her eyes. Her bruises were slowly fading. Despite it all, Cade realized she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, Elaine included.
“How’ve you been sleeping?” he asked.
“Terribly. But I’ve been taking sleeping pills. I used to be too afraid to touch them, in case they knocked me out when someone was in my house. I’m not afraid anymore. How about you?”
Cade shrugged. “Ethan just takes his place in line. I got enough demons already.”
“I can’t even bring myself to say his name.”
“He was just a man, Ash. Not even that. He was still a child, I think. Heck, what do I know about it?”
“I can’t feel your compassion,” Ashley said firmly.
Back at the Nelson place, Cade had cut Ashley free, then had to hold her to stop her from attacking Ethan’s dead body. She had collapsed into hysterics, sobbing and screaming, anger, fear, and relief warring through her psyche. They had stayed in that dark hole, holding on to each other for a long time, until they heard Hanover’s voice from somewhere above. With his help, they had crawled out from beneath that looming concrete slab, then up through the moonlit gap that Cade had seen.
Then had come the part almost as hard as the fight for their lives in that nightmarish place: the 911 call and the explanations to the police. Chief Tennant had been disbelieving, but had been put right by the FBI in short order. They were particularly interested in a cyberattack on Texas Child Services and subsequently on mental health institutions’ patient records. Cade was glad that Jacobs and Alvarado had been nowhere to be seen. After Ethan’s killing spree in a Houston park in broad daylight, someone much higher up in the state apparatus had decided to take the case out of HPD’s hands.
Cade let Ashley hold on to his hand. He had considered what the future might hold for a divorced ex-cop and a widowed TV personality, united by their shared trauma. But Ashley’s rage at Ethan had disturbed him. He couldn’t fault it and wouldn’t raise it, but her inability to see the tortured boy in the sadistic serial killer was something that he couldn’t get past. Perhaps it was because he had been a father.
Cade had seen the news report which Ashley herself had delivered, the bruises on her face still livid, a medical dressing covering the slash across her cheek that would leave a scar unless it received medical intervention. It had been the news story that everyone in America watched. It redefined the concept of a strong woman. Ashley Fisher was the face of domestic violence survivors worldwide. But the woman who had delivered that story had talked about justice being done and not once mentioned how Ethan Nelson had become the way he was.
There was a gulf between them now.
“So, what’s next for you?” Cade asked.
“A sabbatical. I’ve got so many people wanting to work with me. Requests for political endorsements, MeToo activists, gender rights, LGBT plus. You name it, they want me to represent them.”
“That’s good. Gives you a platform. Just choose your cause.”
“I’ve been thinking about politics. With the kind of men we have in positions of power right now…”
“Maybe a powerful woman with a global following could do some good?”
“Maybe.” Ashley blushed. “But I just want to take some stock for a while. I’m going out to California, selling up everything here in Texas. I just want to be somewhere new. Somewhere that isn’t loaded with memories.”
“I did that once. You know, you have to come back to it eventually.”
“But not yet. Not for a long time. I’ve done enough looking back at the past. I also wanted to tell you that I’ve transferred your fee. I sorted it out with Riss. I know we didn’t really discuss it, but I think what I’ve paid will be more than enough.”
Cade put on a smile. The talk of fees seemed to put them back to client and service provider. The suddenness of it jarred him.
“If Rissa thought it was okay, I’m sure I will.”
They talked of inconsequential things for a while longer, until the small talk became harder to find. Cade remembered the night they had fallen asleep together in Rissa’s apartment. It was as close as he had been to a woman since Elaine. Now Ashley seemed miles away. Eventually, the nurse returned to advise Cade he had another visitor. Ashley kissed him on the cheek and said goodbye, then hesitated and kissed him on the lips.
“Thank you,” she said, looking into Cade’s eyes.
“Anytime,” he smiled back.
Ashley left the room as Rissa entered.
“Howdy, partner. You two need some more time alone, maybe?” she grinned mischievously.
“Nope. She’s heading for California.”
“Oh.” Rissa sounded disappointed. “I was kind of hoping we’d be seeing a lot more of her. She’d be kind of a sister-in-law.”
Cade gave her a level look. She laughed, pulling a chair close to his bed and looking around.
“So, the good news is that the FBI have got nowhere near us with that cyberattack thing. The fact that Ethan already hacked Child Services to cover up his past seems to be enough for those hounds to be taking off after the wrong hare.”
“Good. You wouldn’t look good in prison orange.”
“No way, Jose. For what it’s worth, I now have a complete medical history on our boy Ethan Nelson. I’ve encrypted it and sent it to your phone. Just don’t have it open if any agents come calling, okay?”
