The People Next Door Page 26

  More importantly, if something had happened to the accountant, Mick needed to know what it was before he went to the authorities. After all, the motive – some three hundred thousand dollars in stolen funds – pointed directly to Mick Nash, struggling business owner.

  Finally, not knowing was worse than knowing. Mick started the engine and drove around the block slowly, whistling to himself. He turned onto Pine Knoll Lane, then into the driveway and parked in the roundabout, beside a berm of Virginia’s annuals. They were wilting, the flower bed bone dry and cracked in geometric shapes like salt flats. It had rained a few nights ago, but the Colorado sun was relentless. Maybe they hadn’t been home for a while, or weren’t feeling well enough to do their watering chores. Maybe, but probably not. He exited the truck.

  The Sapphire residence looked like a brick castle that had been stepped on, pushing the wings out in a wide single-story chain of rooms and long hallways that was absurdly spacious for a couple nearing retirement. The lights were off. He walked calmly up the six concrete porch steps, glancing around at the neighboring homes. The lots were an acre or more, with good privacy, and it was dark. He doubted anyone was watching him or could see anything beyond the general shape of his truck. No children on their bicycles passed, no couples were out pushing a stroller or walking the dog. Even though he had damn good cause to be here, Mick felt like a burglar casing the house. He reminded himself that, whatever they had done, these people were old. They were either guilty or not guilty, but it wasn’t going to turn into a shoot-out. Stealth was not a priority.

  Mick pounded oak with the underside of his fist. He repeated the knocking in hard cycles, growing impatient. He rang the bell again and again. He walked around the side of the house and peered through the garage windows. Sapphire’s Lexus and Ginny’s white Benz were sitting there in the dark. They had to be here. He felt it in the pit of his stomach.

  Virginia had been going a little batty the past few years and Mick knew that her husband feared she was sliding into early senility. The accountant had a nose for details, saved (and stole) and invested wisely. He was the kind of man who never forgets his keys but wants to be sure there’s a spare handy, especially if his wife had a habit of locking herself out of the house.

  Mick searched under the doormat, in the milk box, checked for loose bricks along the window sill. No key. He looked for any carefully placed flat rocks in the garden area, kicked over a clay toad. He was about to give up when his eyes landed on the drainpipe running from one of the eaves, elbowing onto the lawn. Mick’s own father had used a magnetic box to hide his spare key under the bumper of his Scout, and the drainpipe was the perfect location for the same rig. He ran his palm along the underside of the pipe and stubbed his thumb on something that slid but did not fall off. He pried the small box off, popped the plastic lid, and a brass Kwikset KW-1 fell into his palm.

  The key fit both the knob and the deadbolt, and the door opened. He found it hard to believe Sapphire, or anyone with a house like this, would not have an alarm – but none sounded. He searched the foyer wall anyway and found a flat black box with a green LCD readout of today’s date and time, but no other blinking lights. He did not think the alarm was activated and he guessed it didn’t much matter now.

  ‘Hello? Sapphire? Hello? Virginia? Anybody home?’

  No one answered. Mick shut the door and flicked on a few of the deeper interior lights. A hall, the kitchen. He made a quick circuit of the central rooms, including an atrium at the center of the house with a glass roof and sunken hot tub surrounded by ferns and ceramic lizards and parrots, then headed down the east hall, poking his head into two guest rooms, a small reading room, Sapphire’s office, two bathrooms, and the garage again. The center and east wing of the house were empty.

  In the western wing, he flipped on the hall light and searched two more bedrooms, a sewing and crafts workspace Virginia had set up, a large guest bathroom, another small computer room, and three closets. All were empty.

  All that remained was the master suite at the far end. Mick remembered touring it during one of the holiday parties, the knotted pine four-poster bed and other cabin-style furniture, the jacuzzi tub and dual shower, Virginia’s exercise bike and the flatscreen mounted above the gas fireplace. But he couldn’t see any of that now because the door was closed.

  He stopped just outside the door and listened. The air conditioning was not on and it had to be over eighty-five degrees inside, the house pregnant with the day’s heat, and yet Mick was chilled by the silence.

  Well, they were either not here, sleeping, or dead. He had come this far and he had to know. Mick rubbed an arm over his face, shook his fingers loose, took the knob in hand, and stepped inside.

  Orange curtains spread free of their matching sashes tinted the room with muted flames of streetlight. The scents of lilac and chemically cleaned carpet enveloped him. His eyes went immediately to the bed, which had been made, with the sheets turned back over the duvet.

  Eugene and Virginia were lying on their backs, holding hands on top of the covers, staring up at the ceiling. Dressed in everyday weekend wear, shorts and oxford shirts with the cuffs rolled up, feet bare. Even in the dim room he could see that the bedding was clean, free of blood. He walked to the accountant’s side, turned on the bedside lamp, and looked down into the open eyes. Both Eugene and Virginia’s were filmed over with a whiteness that seemed closer to dry cotton than fluid. Their death faces offered no expression, only that of peaceful rest. Eugene’s mouth was closed, but Virginia’s lips were parted, enough for Mick to see the small pink tip of her tongue pressed against her yellowing front teeth. He stared at the bosom. He stared at Eugene’s rib cage beneath the shirt, their nostrils, but nothing moved.

  There were no bruises around the neck, no staved-in skulls. Neither body was locked in a state of heart-clutching anguish, the paralyzed frenzy of stroke. It was if they had lain down together, hand in hand, knowing it was coming for them and had accepted their fate, perhaps even welcomed it together. The punch had been drunk, the pill swallowed, but in the name of what cult? What cause? There wasn’t an explanation that made any kind of sense.

  Mick turned away from the bed and walked into the attached master bath, bumping his left shoulder on the toilet alcove partition. He fell to his knees, lifting the lid just in time. He hadn’t eaten today and nothing came up, but his mind didn’t know that and it was in full revulsion, forcing his body to go through old habits. The heaves racked him to tears and cramped the muscles of his abdomen, burning his throat, bursting the capillaries around his eyes. Trembling, he wiped his mouth with a swatch of toilet paper and, out of habit, flushed. He walked slowly to the basin sink of Mexican tile and ran cold water over his hands, his face, washed his mouth.

  He reached for a towel and froze. Hanging on faux-bamboo rings to his right was a pair of cream monogrammed towels. E and V, embroidered with looping script. In the coming days, someone – most likely Gene’s daughter, Anna, who lived in Wheat Ridge with her husband Peter, also an accountant – was going to have to come and pack those towels up in a box. Mick wiped his hands on his shirt and closed his eyes.

  This isn’t happening. It cannot be happening.

  Somebody had put them down like dogs, in what appeared to be an almost humane way. Render’s knowing look when he scoffed at the idea of Mick calling the police pushed the sense of guilt back to the surface. The man was fearless, killed wantonly. He’d done it last night with those boys and, by some mysterious means (poison, a lethal injection, suffocation with a pillow), he’d done it recently to these sad, crooked old people. The work had been all Render’s, but the motive still belonged to Mick. The psychotic fuck had saved Mick’s life on the lake, recouped his missing funds, saved his ass in the parking lot. What else had he done? And for the love of God, why?

  I didn’t do this. I didn’t ask for this and I am not responsible for this. I won’t take the blame. I won’t have any of it.

  What about joint sui
cide? Maybe Render merely confronted them, they gave up the money, but couldn’t live with what they had done.

  Invigorated by this unlikely possibility, Mick walked back to the bed, on Virginia’s side, avoiding peering down at them, and searched her nightstand for a note, a calling card, anything that could have been planted. He checked the other side, but both tables and the drawers were clean.

  He moved to the bay window, where a thick orange pad that matched the curtains topped the reading bench. There was nothing here, nor on the fireplace mantle, except for photos of the children and grandkids. Mick parted one of the curtains. A shaft of streetlight caught him in the chest and face and he squinted, examining the view. One house perhaps a hundred feet to the west, another slightly north. With lights on in both. Normal people inside. Suddenly he regretted very much his decision to come here, that his truck was parked in the driveway. Anyone could have driven by now, noticed the truck. He would be questioned, evidence would be gathered.

  But what did it matter? It would all come out eventually. He wasn’t about to cover up anything here. Two people had died, or been killed. It was time to talk to the police, call an ambulance. There was a cordless phone on one of the nightstands. All he had to do was turn around and dial. His conscience said, Yes, do it, it is the only thing to do. But the voice of self-preservation was stronger. He didn’t understand all the angles. If he made the wrong move, he could wind up in prison. He needed to talk with a lawyer. His old high-school buddy, Cy Ferris, was a hotshot defense attorney in Denver. He would know what to do. But when was the last time Mick had talked to Cyrus? Could he trust an old high-school acquaintance?

  Between the sashes, where the bedside lamp was reflected dimly in the window glare, a blade of darkness shifted. Mick dropped the curtain and turned to see Eugene Sapphire sitting up. The old man was upright, facing the fireplace directly beyond the foot of the bed.

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’ Mick staggered back and the reading bench buckled his knees, forcing him to sit. He clamped a hand over his mouth, a physical necessity to prevent him from screaming. For a moment the old man did not move, only sat rigid, as lifeless as he had been lying down, only now he had risen. It was an intolerable thing to witness, but Mick could not move or look away. The scream locked inside his mouth leaked out in a whimper.

  Eugene Sapphire’s head turned slowly toward him and it was not the same face Mick had peered down at only minutes ago. It belonged to the same man, but this face was opening as he began to move his mouth, razored lines in the cheeks appearing as if the man were somehow unhealing. As the accountant lifted his chin, stretching his sagging neck wattles, a clean gash appeared from ear to ear and a wide skirt of thick slow blood began to saturate the oxford shirt. The accountant’s right hand raised itself from the bed until his arm was extended in a salute and his first two fingers pointed crookedly. The gray, filmed-over eyes found him and the arm began to shake while a dry, ugly moan of distress began to fill the room.

  The moaning was coming from Virginia. She started to writhe and mewl beside her husband, the two of them groping at air as Mick leapt up from the bay window seat and backed away, toward the door. The bedding around her waist and shoulders was turning red. Lacerations split her face as her eyes searched blindly for the source of the disturbance.

  Mick bounced off the door frame and turned. The hallway was a shaking blur. The foyer seemed to retreat from him, the house elongating. He imagined the two corpses falling out of bed and then dragging one another to their feet as they followed his scent, shambling down the hall with increasing speed as their excitement drove them to new levels of coordination.

  He slipped on the area rug and slammed into the front door, but caught the knob just in time to keep from falling. He threw it open with a quivering bang as it rebounded off the spring doorstop, and then he was leaping over all six stairs, flying from porch to lawn. He landed in the grass and his left ankle (the same one he had twisted falling into the Render’s yard) failed him again. He collapsed and rolled away from the house, swatting at the air, making bizarre sounds and thrashing as if on fire. He sprang to his feet and glanced back at the open front door.

  Eugene and Virginia Sapphire were not in the foyer.

  ‘Sir, I’m going to ask you to stop right there, right now!’ a man said.

  Mick yelled again and turned to see a tall and whip-thin young man in blue work pants, a white button-down shirt with a gold tag, and blue baseball cap, holding a Maglite the size of a baseball bat over one ear. Behind him was a small white car with a blue badge magnet on the door, a little orange toy siren on the top, not yet flashing. Neighborhood security, some private outfit. The kid was probably not old enough to buy alcohol and he was definitely scared. Mick put his hands up and glanced from the kid to the front door and back.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Mick said, his words jumbled, coming too fast. ‘I know them, they’re sick, it’s awful, something horrible happened, you have to—’

  ‘Sir! Calm down, sir, and stay right where you are!’ The kid did not lower the Maglite. If he had a gun, Mick knew, it would be aimed at his chest. With his free hand, the kid reached for a microphone clipped to his epaulet.

  ‘D Unit six, this is Troy,’ the kid said. ‘I am at 22 Pine Knoll with possible intruder. Confirming ident, please stand by.’

  The shoulder mic squawked. ‘Ten-four, Troy. You need back-up?’

  ‘I said stand by, Dallas.’

  ‘Okay, tough guy,’ Dallas said.

  ‘Intruder?’ Mick had a vision involving real police cars and policemen with real guns arriving to lock him up. ‘No. I know them. I am, I was a friend of the Sapphires. He works for me, but listen, something awful happened. They’re supposed to be—’

  Troy the security guard regarded Mick perhaps one per cent less suspicion. ‘What is your business here tonight, sir? Did you get permission to enter this residence?’

  ‘Permission?’

  With his free hand, Troy removed a small canister from a Velcro pouch at his waistline, probably mace. ‘Our office was not made aware of any visitors and I am responding to an alarm.’

  ‘I’m telling you, I know them, but those people—’

  ‘What is your relationship to the occupants?’

  ‘He’s my accountant. One of my father’s best friends.’

  ‘Does Mr Sapphire know you were stopping by?’

  ‘He didn’t, but he wouldn’t mind—’

  ‘Why were you running?’ Troy interrupted.

  Mick blinked dumbly at Troy. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What don’t I understand, sir?’

  ‘They … I saw … they’re in there.’

  ‘Who? Sir, are you telling me someone’s in the house now? Why didn’t they come out? Is someone hurt?’

  Mick had become untethered. Reality was a balloon on a string and it was floating away. He was struck with the realization that he could not possibly have seen what he had just seen. The Sapphires had been transformed by something …

  ‘Sir? Who did you see, sir? Is there someone in this house?’

  Mick turned to the door. ‘Check the house.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Check the house. I saw someone in the bedroom, at the end of the hall.’

  Troy reached for his shoulder mic, thumbed the switch, then released it. He stared at Mick with a new kind of unease and stepped back a few paces, as if he were afraid of catching whatever this intruder was carrying.

  ‘What was it you saw, exactly?’

  Mick knew what he had seen, but saying it out loud was impossible.

  ‘H-hey, how did you get inside, anyway? We make sure the doors are locked.’

  ‘I used a hide-a-key,’ Mick said.

  ‘And how’d you know where to find that?’

  ‘I’ve been here before.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what did you say your name was again?’

  ‘Render. Vince Render.’ It came to him without thought.

/>   ‘Okay, Mr Render. You want to tell me exactly what happened?’

  Mick almost laughed, but it wasn’t funny. ‘I’m not sure I can do that, Troy.’

  ‘See, I have to call this in one way or another.’

  ‘Are you going to look inside?’ Mick said.

  ‘That is standard procedure. Should I expect something or someone inside?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘Sir, if you don’t mind my saying, you don’t look well. Would you like me to radio for an ambulance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I have to file a report,’ Troy said. ‘I need you to stay here while I inspect the house. If you flee, I will be forced to call the police. Probably have to call them anyway, but you won’t be doing yourself any favors.’

  ‘Just check the bedroom. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Afraid I can’t allow that.’

  Mick rubbed his eyes. ‘Fine, fine. I’ll wait.’

  ‘Do you have any weapons on your person?’

  ‘What? No.’

  Troy spoke into his shoulder mic, apprising his coworkers of the situation. ‘The intrude — uhm, the visitor is cooperating. Give me a minute here, Dallas.’

  He gave Mick a final look of warning.

  ‘I’m not going to make trouble for you,’ Mick said. ‘Just be careful.’

  Troy the security guard swung his flashlight around and entered the Sapphire residence. Mick stood on the lawn and counted to one hundred before joining him.

  Island Living

  I bolted awake but could not bring myself to move as the screams split the night like lightning. There were breaks in between, some as brief as twenty seconds, others as long as six minutes. A scream, then silence. A scream, then silence. Four or five in a row … and then nothing for ten or fifteen minutes.