The Dead Man

Chapter Sixty-eight

Fifty years later, the door was still unlocked, opening without complaint, the top edge clanging against a bell hanging from a rod bolted to the wall, loud enough to tell anyone inside that they had company. A gust of wind followed me across the threshold, the icy air biting the back of my neck.

I swept the entryway with the Maglite, holding the shotgun level, my finger on the trigger. A chandelier missing half its lightbulbs hung from the ceiling. A wall switch made a hollow click without turning anything on.

The entryway opened into rooms on my left and right, pieces of broken furniture littering the floors. A rat ignored me, chewing on the remnants of an upholstered chair. A hallway ran from the entry to the back of the house, a steep flight of stairs breaking into the middle of the hall on the right.

I stood at the foot of the stairs, listening, the only sound coming from the roof as it groaned against the wind. I shined the Maglite up the stairs, the beam bouncing off warped hardwood and peeling wallpaper. The first stair creaked under my weight, as did the second and third. I stopped, waiting for a sign or sound of life, starting again when no one called out, asking who's there or begging me to hurry.

There was a closed door at the top of the stairs. I opened it a fraction, enough to taste the bitter, coppery smell of blood. I raised the shotgun, eased back on the trigger, steadying the stock under my arm, dropped to one knee, and shoved the door open.

Janet Casey and Gary Kaufman lay side-by-side in a four-poster bed, naked, bound, gagged, and dead, their throats cut, their torsos slit open, their intestines gleaming under my flashlight. I stood and leaned against the wall as tremors ripped through me, muscle spasms snapping me at the waist, twisting me to the floor. Using the shotgun as a crutch, I got to my feet and stumbled into the hall.

A dim light shone from beneath a door at the other end of the hall. I staggered toward it, aiming the barrel chest high, and kicked the door off its hinge, stepping into another bedroom. Double-wide French doors on the back wall leading to a balcony swayed open in the wind.

Maggie Brennan stood on the far side of a double bed wearing a nightgown soaked in crimson, her bloody arms hanging at her sides, her hands empty.

"What took you so long?" she asked me.

"Don't move."

A shaded lamp on a nightstand next to a rumpled bed provided the only light. Her gray overcoat lay on the bed, pockmarked with dark stains I was certain were remnants of Anne Kendall's blood. A throw rug was piled in the center of the hardwood floor, three narrow planks, their bent nails aimed at the ceiling, lay alongside the rug, leaving a six-inch by twelve-inch hole in the floor. She took a step toward me.

"I said, don't move."

"I won't."

Her voice was quiet and cold, her face flat, her expression resigned but unafraid. I knelt next to the hole, catching glimpses of a thick book punctured by a bullet, a jeweled tennis bracelet, a severed finger and ear, a knife flecked with flesh and blood, and a single sheet of pink stationery in familiar handwriting, the first words reading Dear Daddy, I'm so sorry. I shook again as my heart slammed against my chest. She took another step.

I forced myself to my feet and aimed the shotgun at her chest. "Don't make me tell you again."

I choked on the words, my breath coming hard. She stayed where she was, watching me until the tremors passed.

"Souvenirs," she said. "If you think about it at all, it's the one really stupid thing I did. Especially taking your daughter's letter. But Milo Harper sent the e-mail about you and then I found the letter and it made such sense, it seemed so orderly. Then, when you walked into Anthony's office last week, I knew you were the one."

"What one?"

"The man in my nightmare, the one that would kill me."

"Your aunt said you dreamt that you would die the same way as your parents did. A man didn't kill them. You did."

"You can't blame me, can you? What was I supposed to say? That I dreamed of killing them again? They'd have put me away. I told the sheriff that a man had come and murdered my parents so my dream had to match the story. You know the funny thing about it?"

"There can't be one."

"Ironic then. That became my nightmare. I kill my parents and, afterward, a man comes to kill me. I assume you saw Janet and Gary. We've done our parts. I trust that you will do yours."

"What happened to you? Did your parents abuse you?"

She laughed. "That would make it easier, wouldn't it? You might almost forgive me or at least feel badly for me."

"Did they?"

"No. They couldn't have loved me more and I couldn't have felt it less. I realized that I was different when I was very young and my mother would hug me and I felt nothing. I started experimenting, trying to feel something, anything. I'd do something good and get nothing out of it. So I tried more intense experiments. We lived on a farm and there were always plenty of small animals around. That was no better but at least it was interesting. Killing my parents settled it for me though it was years before I understood why I have no emotions. There's something missing in my brain, in the ventromedial frontal cortex and the amygdala."

"That's a poor excuse."

"I'm a scientist and scientists don't make excuses. We explain the physical world."

"By killing people? What were they to you? Lab rats?"

"Not in the way you imagine, but in my world, yes. The study of trauma will only take us so far in understanding the brain. The real lessons come in controlling and observing the moment of death. Most of my subjects were tortured and tormented long before I chose them."

"How did you choose them?"

"The ones who'd been traumatized when they were young produced the best nightmares. Milo Harper asked Anthony for some good examples and Anthony let me choose them. I put them to a better use than he would have with his silly lucid dreaming nonsense."

"So you killed them in the name of science?"

"You mock me, but, no. Not all. Some were in the name of necessity, like Anthony Corliss. He told me that Gary suspected I was the killer. Gary even made a list with Tom Delaney, Regina Blair, Walter Enoch, and Anne Kendall's initials and gave it to Anthony as if that was somehow proof. I assured Anthony that Gary was more likely the killer after what he'd done to that poor woman's cat. Anthony suggested the four of us meet at the Art Gallery to clear the air. I brought my gun, knife, duct tape, and rope. The rest, as they say, is commentary."

"How many others were there?"

"Let's just say that it's a statistically significant sample of the weak and pathetic." She raised her hands. "And this house is the biggest and best souvenir of them all. This is where it began and this is where it will end."

She turned and walked out to the end of the balcony, her hands on the waist high wooden rail.

"It's over. Come inside."

She ignored me, rising up and down on her toes as if readying to jump. I crossed the space between us, the shotgun under my right arm, and reached for her shoulder. She whirled around, holding a knife in her right hand that must have been laying on the top of the rail, hidden from me, driving it toward my chest in a short, powerful stroke.

I dropped the shotgun, grabbing her wrist with both hands, the blade slicing through my jacket, piercing my chest. She clawed my face with her left hand as my grip slid along her right arm, slick with blood. Spinning again, she broke the grip of one of my hands and pressed her back into me, jerking the knife downward toward my side, jamming it in my thigh. I held on to her wrist with one hand, forcing the knife out of my leg, using my knee to separate us and pushing my other hand against the small of her back, trying to pin her against the rail when the wood snapped and she plunged to the ground.

"Jack!" Lucy called, running from the barn.

I watched from the balcony as Lucy knelt next to her, rolling her onto her back, shining her flashlight on the hilt of the hunting knife sticking out of Maggie Brennan's lifeless chest.