The ashes, p.17
The Ashes, page 17
Coming to the top of the stairs, he hooks a quick right and finds himself speed walking to the office, the leather soles on his cordovans clip-clopping on the old, stately marble floor. Entering the office, he finds a big wood counter. A bell like you might find on the desk of an old motel is set on top of it. He slaps the bell, and a man walks out of a back room.
“Detective Miller?” the short, balding man says.
“That’s me,” Miller says.
Short Man grins. “You must have flown here.”
“I’m the law,” Miller says. “It’s okay if I speed.”
“You own the road I guess,” Short Man says, his face pleasant and friendly. He holds out his hand. “I’m Mel. You were interested in the Garfield Road properties. I’ve already pulled the maps out. Hang tight.”
He heads back into his office, comes back out with several maps that have been rolled up. He sets them down on the counter, spreads them out with his hands, places the bell on one side and a stapler on the other so that the maps don’t roll in on themselves.
Miller peers down at the topographical map of squiggly lines combined with straight lines and coordinates that might as well be Greek to him.
“What am I looking at?” he says.
Mel says, “This is the most recent properties map on record. It’s from five years ago when the mayor called for an entire county reassessment of property taxes.”
“Sub-divisions?”
“As you can see, Detective,” Mel says, “there are none listed. At least, none listed on Garfield Road in the vicinity you’re interested in.”
Miller stares down at the map. It takes a long moment or two, but eventually he recognizes the Underhill property and Sam’s beside it. Also, the cornfield. Behind that, the undeveloped second growth forest which now covers the old Whalen property along with Mount Desolation in the background.
“When we spoke on the phone a few minutes ago,” Mel goes on, “you asked me if there were any abandoned houses or trailers or even basements that might be occupied by a squatter.”
“That’s right,” Miller says.
“So I’m assuming you’re looking for somebody in particular.”
“Maybe.”
Mel tosses Miller a wink of his eye like he’s about to one up the old detective.
“Well, take a look at this,” Mel says, lifting the bell, and allowing the old map to roll up all on its own.
Miller stares down at a property tax map that is clearly far older than the map from 2011. In fact, when he examines the far corner of the map, he can see that the date printed on it is May 1965, the same year he entered his freshman year at Albany High School.
While the shape of the road snaking through the rural area is the same as the 2011 map, the properties carved out are not. In fact, the property where the cornfield exists is now separated into dozens of square parcels with a road in the center that ends in a circular turnaround or what’s sometimes known as a cul-de-sac.
“What’s this?” Miller says, pressing his finger down on the turnaround.
“That, my friend, is a subdivision.” He taps one of the little squares and rectangles that’s been drawn in the center of each small subdivided lot. And these are all the nice little houses that were supposed to be built on them.”
Miller feels his blood coursing fast through his veins.
“Did any of this get built?”
“Not at all,” Mel says. “Records indicate that the property owners put up a fight to bar that kind of suburban sprawl from ever tainting what to them was an idyllic country setting. In the end, the investors went belly up.”
Must be Trooper Underhill fought the subdivision and won, Miller thinks. Underhill and his then neighbors.
“However,” Mel says, raising his hand, extending his index finger like he’s about to make the revelation of the century. “Some construction did begin on the property after the court extended a temporary right-of-way to the contractor. From what I understand, the basement on what was to be the showcase home was constructed along with the overhead flooring. Also, a series of sewer lines were excavated and the pipe laid. Deep lines that potentially run anywhere from a mile to three miles, all the way into the city of Troy, east of downtown Albany.”
“Where is this basement you speak of?”
“If I had to guess, it would be located in this vicinity here.” Mel brings his finger down on top of the location, on the house that would have been located at the very southern end of the subdivision on the circle.
“That’s in the middle of the cornfield,” Miller mumbles to himself. “Maybe one hundred feet behind Rebecca’s house. Holy Christ almighty.”
“Excuse me?” Mel says.
“You’re sure the records indicate that the flooring for the first floor of that one house was installed prior to the project going bust?” Miller says, peeling his eyes away from the map.
“That’s what the notes indicate.”
“Can you get me a copy of this portion of the map, with the subdivision?”
He makes a circle of the area he wants using his extended index finger as a pointer.
“No problem,” Mel says.
“Also, do you know who the contractor was on the job? The one who built the road and the basement for the one house?”
“I can find out for you,” Mel assures him.
Mel disappears into the back room with the maps. When he comes back out, he’s got the copy that Miller requested. There’s a yellow Post-It-Note stuck to it. He hands it to the old detective.
“Contractor was a man by the name of John Jersik. Long retired. Still lives in Troy up near the engineering college. Comes in now and again to get information on little side projects he might be doing for someone. Just to keep himself busy. His name, number, and address are there on the Post-It-Note. Just give him a call.”
“I will, thanks.”
“Hope you find whoever it is you’re looking for.”
Miller bites down on his bottom lip.
“To be perfectly honest,” he says, “I almost hope I don’t.”
Skinner eyes her through the darkness.
Her trembling, nearly shattered existence. Her still baby-like face, her big brown, tear-filled eyes, her smooth hands, one of them holding a knife. How delicious she looks. How tasty. How inviting. His little kitten. He wants to sing to her. Ring around the Rosie . . .
But for now, he simply wants to watch her from inside the hole in the wall. The darkness is his friend, his ally, his camouflage. When the time is right, he will use the darkness to his advantage and spring himself on her. He will take her back to his home in the ground and then he will have all his little kittens to himself. He will watch them dance together.
Their faces will become his own.
The closer I come to the figure seated in the chair, the more easily I can make out his identity. My insides go entirely south, and my heart breaks. I reach once more into my pocket for my lighter and produce a tall flame that lights Sam up in an orange glow. His body is attached to the chair with duct tape. The thick tape has been wrapped around his mouth and all the way around his head making it impossible for him to make any kind of sound other than a very low moan.
His eyes are open wide but not from the blood that is dripping into them. Instead, they are opened wide because he no longer possesses eyelids. He no longer possesses a nose, or ears, or hair. In the orange glow of the lighter flame, his under-skin is pale white and streaked with the blood that is pouring from capillaries and exposed veins, and it makes my teeth ache just to look at him.
But I look at him nonetheless, not as a good friend or lover, but as something that is entirely foreign. Something no longer human. I am caught up in a state of paralyzing disbelief. It’s almost impossible for me to shift my gaze from what used to be his face past his blood-soaked shirt down to his lap. There, resting on two thighs taped close together against the chair, I make out his semi-automatic. It’s been placed upon another sheet of green construction paper.
Killing the flame, I wipe the tears from my eyes, attempt a lucid thought. The Skinner has been expecting me the entire time. Is it possible the creep is looking at me right this very second? That he lurks in the dark shadows of this old, insect-infected basement? Maybe the goosebumps that have popped out of my skin are not due to the creatures that thrive down inside this horrible space, but instead, the result of those eyes focused on me, watching me, waiting for me.
I once more flick the lighter on with my thumb, take another couple of steps forward until I’m standing over Sam. I reach down into his lap, slide away the drawing, peer down at it. It contains another image that has been sketched by my son. It shows he and Molly seated beside a body that is also taped to a chair just like Sam.
Robyn.
In the picture, the two children are wiping tears from their eyes with their hands. Michael Jr. has drawn the tear drops so that they aren’t falling but pouring out of their eyes. He has also drawn the blood that is dripping from the chair-bound body onto the floor.
I grow dizzy, and for a beat or two, I’m convinced that I am about to faint on the spot, my body collapsing onto the damp floor like a sack of bones and blood. But I cannot —will not —allow that to happen. I must do what I can to stay awake, stay alert. Not while the beast has my children.
Breathing, slowly, steadily, deeply.
Dear God, please wake me up from this dream . . .
Words are written beneath the drawing. Words I would rather avoid altogether. Because the words are as sickening as the picture itself.
The words say, “KILL ME.”
The tears flow from my eyes as fast as the tears depicted in Michael Jr.’s drawing. I stare into Sam’s exposed eyeballs, and I am convinced his own tears are combining with the blood that continually pours out of him along with his moans and groans.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do?!” I scream. “What the hell do you want from me, Skinner?! What do you want from us?!”
The flame on the lighter is burning my thumb, blistering it. But the hurt is nothing compared to the severe pain in my chest and in my heart.
“Oh, Sam,” I say through my tears. “How could this happen to you? How could I have let it happen? Pulled you into this nightmare?”
His moans are louder now, more forced. He’s moving his head in a circular motion like he’s telling me to put him out of his agony.
With a trembling hand, I reach for the pistol. I grip it, lift it up, feeling its heavy, solid weight. I thumb the safety off and aim for Sam’s bleeding, skinless face. I place my finger on the trigger. I’m crying so hard my vision has become entirely blurred. But I’m so close I can’t miss.
His moans are becoming screams, his head bobbing back and forth. He’s telling me to do it.
You have to do this, Michael whispers into my ear.
Bec, just get it over with, Molly says. For his sake. He’s gone already.
“Dear God in heaven, please forgive me.”
I pull the trigger.
Sam’s head slumps forward. Now, there is no more moaning coming from his taped mouth. No more painful gyrating of his skinned head. The blood drips from his face onto the packed gravel floor, and even that will cease very soon.
“Please forgive me, Sam,” I whisper.
Then a noise. A scraping sound, like rock moving against rock. I once more thumb the lighter, ignite the tall, orange flame. What I see is as unbelievable as it is frightening. A door-sized section of the wall is opening up, revealing a room or a tunnel on the opposite side. There’s a light coming from the space on the other side of the wall. It silhouettes the man or creature that is standing in the center of the open door. When he takes a step forward, and the orange light of the flickering flame strikes his face, I recognize the man entirely.
He is the man I killed.
He is Sam.
Detective Miller pulls into a short driveway belonging to a two-story bungalow that must be eighty years old. With its front porch, solid wood door, and big brick fireplace, the home is not all that different from the one he grew up in on Albany’s west side. He grabs the map off the cruiser’s passenger side seat and proceeds up the drive, hoping that the occupant is home.
Maybe I should have called first, he says to himself. But then why give them a chance to deny me a much-needed conversation?
Crossing over the stone pathway, he climbs the steps to the porch, approaches the wood door, and knocks three times. Waits. When he makes out footsteps, he knows the occupant is indeed home.
The door opens, and a small, somewhat portly, balding gray haired man answers the door. The man is still chewing whatever he took a bite of before opening the door.
“Help you?” he says looking up at the tall detective.
Miller pulls out his badge from the interior pocket of his blazer, flashes it, then returns it to the pocket.
“I’m Detective Miller from the Albany Police Department,” he says. “You’re Mr. John Jersik, I understand?”
Jersik nods.
“Mind if I come in for a minute, Mr. Jersik?”
“The misses and I just sat down for supper,” he says swallowing. “We like to eat early, get to bed early.”
“Early bird catches the worm, right?”
“Take it from an old contractor. You don’t begin the day with the sun you fall irreparably behind. And that costs you money.”
“Turns out that’s what I need to speak with you about,” Miller explains.
“I’m sort of retired.”
“I don’t need you to build something for me. I need you to take a look at a map and recall a project you were contracted to construct five decades ago.”
Eyes wide. “Five decades. Jeeze, I can’t remember what I ate for lunch yesterday. What’s this for?”
“It could be a matter of life and death for an entire family,” Miller says. “And that’s no exaggeration.”
Eyes wider. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“I just did.”
He pushes the door open and Miller steps inside.
The house is lived in but tidy with a couch pushed up against the far wall under a picture window, just like it was in Miller’s childhood home. The aroma is wonderful and makes the Detective’s mouth water.
“Take a seat there on the couch,” he says, heading back into the kitchen. Miller does as he’s told. Sitting there, he can’t help but glance up at the photos displayed on the fireplace mantle. A younger Jersik standing in the center of a group of business-suited men and women, each of them wearing green Jersik hard hats and holding shovels, the soles of their respective right feet pressing down on the blade in preparation to break ground for a new building. Another picture of he and the entire family standing on a sandy beach, the ocean looking blue and inviting behind them. By the looks of it, two little boys and a pretty wife. Then, two pictures of each boy, now handsome young men, on their college graduation days.
“One doctor and one lawyer,” Jersik says, stepping back.
Before I can respond to what he’s saying, a late middle-aged, gray-haired woman pokes her head out. She’s wearing an apron.
“I’m Jeannie,” she says. “We’re having meatloaf if you’d like to join us.”
Meatloaf. Is there no more succulent word in the American culinary archives? Miller thinks. He recalls coming home from work on a cold, rainy, snotty day, a meatloaf set out in the middle of the dinner table, a corked bottle of wine to go with it. His wife was one hell of a cook.
He purses his lips, gently shakes his head.
“That’s very kind of you. But I’ve already eaten.” He’s lying, and he senses from the look in her eyes that she knows it.
“Well, suit yourself,” she says. “How interesting it would be to speak with a police detective over dinner.”
“Perhaps another time,” he adds.
“I’ll keep yours warm, John,” she says, stepping back into the kitchen.
John awkwardly sits himself down in an easy chair that swivels on a hinge so that he can either face the couch or the fireplace. In this case, he’s facing Miller on the couch.
“That wife of mine,” he says. “Still doting after all these years.”
“You’re a lucky man,” Miller says. “You said something about your sons?”
“Oh yes,” he nods. “One’s a doctor now, and the other went into law. Had hoped they would go into business with me, but after a whole bunch of summers spent in the field laboring in the muck and the crap, they’d had a belly full.” He cocks his head to one side, reflectively. Maybe even regretfully. “I thought my being tough on them would build character, make them earn the respect of the other construction workers so that when they finally earned a spot in the office no one could say they didn’t work for their white collars. But, I’m afraid, all my strategy succeeded at was making them hate the construction business.”
Miller feels a little sorry for Jersik. For a man who seems to have everything a man his age could want, at least in the form of a healthy wife who still takes care of him, he still seems lonely. Or disappointed, anyway.
“But enough about me,” Jersik says. “You said you have some questions about a property I was hired to develop back when LBJ was smoking cigars in the White House?”
Miller retrieves the photocopy from his blazer pocket, lays it out onto the coffee table. Jersik pulls his reading glasses from the plastic case that’s shoved into the chest pocket on his gray button-down, slips them onto his nose while leaning forward.
“Garfield,” he says, the memories clear on his face. “Yah, I remember that project all right. Just about killed me. Garfield Estates, it was called. It was worth ten or fifteen million back in mid-1960s money. Big Manhattan developers. What they envisioned was not only a huge sprawl of contemporary housing units but also a small commercial district to go with them.”
