Someone savage a thrille.., p.1
Someone Savage: A Thriller, page 1
SOMEONE SAVAGE
MIKE MCCRARY
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Mike McCrary
CONTENTS
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part II
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part III
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
If you liked this book…
Also by Mike McCrary
Acknowledgments
About the Author
It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost. - Stephen King
PART ONE
ONE
Few people live after meeting Edward Frakes.
The rare few who’ve lived long enough to talk about the meeting can be counted on the tips of a person’s fingers. Been times when they could be counted on one hand.
Frakes has stopped a lot of heartbeats. A special brand of violence that erases unwanted relationships before they can begin. He’s also broken the lives of others he’s never met or ever will meet.
Two of the few still breathing are here, only a few feet from Frakes, huddled inside a small, rusted metal shed nestled amongst the trees. A sprawl of mountains just outside its locked door framed under the moonlight.
Frakes presses his ear to the shed.
Impatience makes his skin crawl like a thousand ants under his flesh. Racing along his bones. Maybe he hears them breathing inside the shed, maybe he doesn’t. Hard to parse those delicate sounds from the night noise that hums throughout the woods surrounding him. The whispering of the trees, the soft symphony of katydids and crickets swallows his senses whole. This place at night can trick a man into hearing all kinds of things.
Wait.
Is that…
Are they laughing at me inside there?
A pulse of anger thumps. He slaps the shed. The metal rattles and creaks before settling back into the quiet harmony of the night. Doesn’t realize he did it until his hand drops back down by his side. Sometimes the anger pulse makes him act before his thoughts can register as rational.
“You done?” He pounds his meaty hand hard on the shed door. “Learn your lesson in there?”
Stepping back, he waits. His darting, smallish eyes—perhaps only small compared to rest of his hulking skull—scan the stars that pepper the night sky.
A cool breeze drifts across his large frame, blowing what little hair he has left. Trees that seemingly stretch a mile high swaying like slow metronomes keeping time with the evening’s soothing rhythm. He breathes in the smell of the trees. Maybe pines and ash, Frakes isn’t sure. Mama would know things like that. There’s a kind of calm to this place. A peace that resides here in the woods at night, if only Frakes could let some of that calming peace inside his mind.
There’s a way to peace if you can simply let it in, someone once told him.
Or maybe it was in a movie or he heard it on one of those television shows Mama likes so much. Religious preachy-prose-bullshit, maybe? Frakes shakes his head hard. Those thick thoughts drop down, dipping into the darkness. Falling into that cold, pitch-black pit dug into his brain where he oddly finds the most comfort.
“You hearin’ me?” Spit flies.
Rage accessed in a snap. Always near. Never drifting, never leaving.
The metal shed shudders and shakes as he beats harder on the door. The whole thing could bust apart any second, sending sheets of metal to the ground if he keeps at it too long. Chunky confetti the color of dried-blood brown falls off the door as he slaps the shed with his fat palm again and again. Stopping, peeling back away from the frail structure, Frakes sucks in a deep breath searching for the strength to find some of that calm. He squeezes his fists tight, then tighter, until he feels his fingernails dig into his skin, then releases them quick. Repeats. Fighting to dull the pulse.
It’s quiet inside the shed, but he can hear them moving now.
The sounds of quick, frightened breathing are now unmistakable.
Disgusted with himself, he shakes his head, remembering they won’t answer him no matter how hard he slams his stupid hand against the metal. One of them doesn’t talk at all and the other one usually only speaks in one-word responses. Three words max. Can’t believe he forgot those things about them. His mind, it’s been cloudy lately. There’s been a smoothing to the edges he used to have. The sharpness he needs in this life. Mama’s voice starts banging around inside his head. Her gravel-and-gravy voice pours her lifetime chant over his brain.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid Eddie Frakes.
Turning his head to look back, as if on cue Mama stands a few feet behind him.
“They’re just gonna try that shit again.” Mama snuffs out her cigarette into the dirt and flips a fresh one between her lips. “But you better let ‘em out. Don’t want a bigger mess than you’ve already done.”
His head dips down. A massive man made small.
She fires up her fresh smoke with what could best be called a handheld propane torch. Mama has supper ready. Frakes can smell it through the open door to the main house. It’s waiting for him. Waiting for everyone. Her cooking is like home. A shitty home, he knows, but home nonetheless.
Frakes looks back to the shed.
Knuckles pop. He knows his appearance frightens them but there’s not much he can do about that. His thick hands are marked with scars from struggles won and lost. A fat pinkish scar runs from below his left eye to his throat. Care of a near-death experience a couple of years ago. A complete death experience for the other fella. Frakes keys the lock and yanks the door open. The door creaks with a metallic wail.
Two children sit huddled on a torn blanket.
The girl is eight. The boy is seven.
They hold one another, then release quick. The moonlight cuts a faint shaft of light through the open doorway. Their eyes are hard. Much harder than they should be at this age. Faces blank. Their small bodies vibrate at the sight of him as if they are holding back, not wanting to show him how scared they truly are.
Frakes stands outside, his head tucked down, keeping his face in the shadows. He thumbs back toward the house. A silent instruction that it’s time to come inside. Mama huffs, turning away and walking back into the house through the back door.
The house is dark save for a few candles and a light with a bright-colored, daisy-decorated shade that hangs above a busted-up table. Dirty pots and pans are piled high in the sink. Plastic yellow plates with half-eaten meals have cemented themselves to the surface of the kitchen counter. Mama takes a seat amongst the filth, smoking like a chimney. She opens her arms wide in half-hearted, half-assed attempt to seem welcoming. Smile broken and false.
There are four plates set out with forks and spoons waiting.
The boy and the girl shake their heads, refusing to come inside.
“Come on now.” Frakes talks slow and thick, like he’s speaking with a mouthful of Jell-O.
He slips from the shadows into the moonlight. There’s a spray of crimson across his face. Almost completely dry and starting to flake. He offers his one uncovered hand to them, still holding the lock to the shed. Hopes they’ll come out and join them for supper without him having to be mean about it. A rubber glove covers his other hand. The thick blue glove is pulled up to his elbow, slick and shiny with blood that looks dark purple in the moonlight.
“Been working all damn day,” Frakes says. “Tired. Hungry as hell. Sure you’d appreciate a bite to eat too.”
He looks to the children.
The children stare back. Giving him nothing.
Booming silence.
“Alright then.” Frakes begins to shut the door, shaking the lock back and forth for them to see.
“No,” the girl says. There’s no begging in her voice. A command, not a request.
“No?” Frakes’s eyebrows raise his chubby face. He rubs the scraps of facial hair he likes to think of as a beard. “Any chance you two littles can be good? Friendly, even?”
“No.” Not an ounce of fear in her two-letter response.
The girl tosses a cheap, plastic cell phone at his feet. One of those kid cell phones—they call them dumb phones—that can only talk or text with one number. Frakes’s number. He couldn’t completely turn off access to emergency numbers like 911 and so on, but he made it borderline impossible to make that call using this phone. Buried deep in the settings is a feature designed to keep a kid from misdialing 911 by accident.
Frakes smiles. Can’t help it.
“Suppose friendly is a lot to ask.” Frakes looks back to Mama. She shrugs. He knows she’s growing impatient too. Supper getting cold and all. Turning back to the boy and girl, he says, “You gotta eat, so I’ll tell you what, then. As a peace offering—or something—Mama here is going to bring you a plate to share.”
Mama rolls her eyes, then picks up a plate from the table and starts spooning something steamy from the stove.
“That work?”
The girl and boy offer only a stare in response to the proposed bargain.
Mama moves out from the kitchen like a cannonball, steaming plate of mush and a glass of water in her hands. Doesn’t bother with the utensils.
Frakes steps away from the door as Mama delivers the meal to the shed’s dirty floor, then rushes back to the house. He knows the boy and girl will come around. Been through this before. Last night, even. They’re tough but not superheroes.
His mind shifts back to his work.
Closes his eyes tight. Punches his thigh hard. Upset that he forgot something. Distracted by this situation with the boy and girl. Mama is getting into his head too. Making him forget the details, and the devil that lies in those details. He’s already made mistakes, can’t keep making them. His face flushes red. Heartbeat rises. Everything, all of the time, inside his head.
Frakes needs to finish up with a mess from work. The mess sitting in the trunk of his car. Frakes did good today, did some good work, but he needs to finish up. Those men from the job this morning are dead as the dodo, sure, but they still require his attention. Two men he was told to take care of. Was told to make go away.
All the way gone, is what was said.
What’s left of both of them is still resting in his trunk. Frakes knows he needs to do what he’s told. Never half-asses a job—Full-on Frakes they call him sometimes—but those dead men will have to wait until after supper. Mama will be mad if she has to wait a single minute more.
Battles gotta be chosen in this life.
“Damn.” Frakes grunts as he locks the shed door.
TWO
“Amazing, right?”
Grace Jennings slow-waves her presenting arm, showing off the perfectly framed view of the scenic mountains and endless sea of trees.
“All this and still only an hour and a half drive to New York. Philadelphia too. Hard to imagine being this secluded yet still so close to all the crazy of the city, right? Did you just drive in this morning?”
Nicholas Hooper had asked people around New York for some references to help him find a place to rent out here. Grace Jennings was the name that popped up as the top real estate agent in the Poconos.
A few people at Hooper’s publisher had worked with her on their vacation homes and such. He talked to her twice on the phone. She did most of the talking, actually—he listened, or pretended to—but he liked most of what he heard. He knew the in-person appointment was going to be a much bigger show.
Pushing his round, wire-framed glasses up, Hooper gives a half-smile with some fake-attention nods as he rides the rolling waves of her pitch. The glasses have become a bit of a trademark for the author. Hooper likes to think they give him a young John Lennon appeal. His sister says it’s more like an old-ass Harry Potter. Not a bad thing, Hooper loves the books and the films, but still not the same as the musical voice of the universe.
Grace keeps on at selling the place, unaware of the mental distance between Hooper and her flawless pitch. Hooper’s instructions about what he wanted in a house were simple but specific. As he drove up to the place, he knew Grace had done her job well. No matter how painful listening to her over-the-top spiel was going to be.
This place just might do.
There’s a long, tall mirror off the living room near the front door. Hooper catches a look at himself as they walk in. Didn’t realize the change in his appearance until now, but he hasn’t really looked at himself lately.
Is that possible? Or have I just not paid attention?
Either way, he’s looking himself over now and can’t help but notice the weight loss. They said that would happen. Fighting back a smile, he thinks about how he can get back on the carbs now that this unsolicited diet plan is upon him. Pros and cons to everything, he supposes.
“Used to be an inn, did I tell you that already? This huge property used to be a bed and breakfast too. Now, it’s been converted to an amazing rental opportunity. Total of eight bedrooms and eight and a half baths, three bedrooms on the first floor, five bedrooms upstairs. There’s a lovely little library space. Great deck off the master.” Grace stops. Thinks, looking Hooper over. “Are you planning on entertaining often. Family? Friends?”
“No.” Hooper sips his coffee. Found a local place not too far away in the tiny town nearby that makes a damn nice cup of coffee. That’s important to Hooper. “Not really the entertaining sort of dude.”
“Oh. I mean it’s such a big place. I thought maybe—”
“Well, my sister will probably be coming and going. If she can stand me and my mountains of shit, as she lovingly phrases it. Most of the time it will only be me and my gorgeous, broken brain.”
Why can’t I talk like a human being to other human beings?
Hurts to hear myself speak sometimes.
Hooper almost breaks his eyes trying to keep them from rolling. He pulls off his skull cap and rubs his fresh buzz cut. Still working on getting used to it. Only fuzz, really, cut so close to the scalp. Grace nods, keeping her big, fake smile turned on full blast. A pro no matter who or what comes her way.
Hooper gets lost for a moment in her bright, lifeless, always-be-closing eyes.
Thoughts plume into a mushroom cloud. Thoughts of why he came here. He’s planned a lot. Not his strong suit, but he does have a plan. Wrote some of it down. Not an elegant plan by any stretch, but it’s what he’s got. Playing out a situation he never asked for.
Blinking, smiling back, Hooper holds on loosely to the delicate art of being pleasant while waiting for a conversation to lose steam. He’s already made up his mind on this place but doesn’t want to rob Grace of her moment to shine him on with her skills. She seems to love it. It’s obvious she’s run through this routine many, many times in her professional life, but she does have a certain natural flare that’s hard to walk away from.
Hooper resets.
Knows he doesn’t owe her an explanation for why he’s renting this massive home for only himself, but for some reason, he feels he needs to try again. His mother always pushed hard on having manners and giving respectful responses to everyone. Even with his mother’s sharp wit and an even sharper tongue, she still found a way to use it only when needed.
Hooper has simply just let it fly most of his life without much thought for what his words might do. He’s gotten away with it, he knows, because of his perceived status in life.
People want to please. People want something from him. Always, all the time.
His sister is much better at this sort of thing. She’d be great with super real estate agent Grace Jennings, even though his sister owns some of the sharpest tools of them all.
“I’m taking some me time. Spending some time seeking the counsel of my own company type of thing. Wanted a big space to do it in style.”
A slightly better response.
