The Devil_s Garden

FORTY-THREE

Michael parked the blue Ford on Creekside Lane. He had stopped on the way, pulling off the road about a mile from his house, back into the part of the woods that had once been a campground. He left Omar Cantwell’s body there, covered in leaves and compost. The man was still alive.

As Michael walked through one of the still-vacant lots in the new development south of his house, he saw a man he knew only as Nathan. Nathan and his wife had just moved into the neighborhood a few weeks ago. Michael waved; Nathan waved back.

There was something in Michael’s stride that told Nathan there would be no stopping and chatting today. As a prosecutor, Michael knew well that everything that had happened this day, everything that would happen this day, went into a timeline, a continuum of impressions, facts, assumptions, interpretations. And, ultimately, testimony.

I spoke to Mr Roman at the motel, the officer would say. He seemed very agitated.

I saw him walking through the woods, Nathan would say.

Moments later Michael reached the top of the hill, just a few feet from the property line behind his house, his blood burning in his veins. He tried to banish from his mind the possible horrors of what had happened here, what he might find.

If you come here, Mr Roman, you will drown in your family’s blood.

The back of the house offered no clues. He could see Abby’s car in the driveway, but no further. But that didn’t mean there were no other cars. There were a pair of turnarounds about twenty feet from the garage.

He was just about to go back down the hill, and circle around to the side of the house, when he saw something to his right, a flash of gold in the late afternoon sun. He turned, his hand moving to the weight of the pistol in his pocket.

It was Charlotte. Charlotte was standing right there. She was picking dandelions, putting them into a little jar. Right in front of him. For a crazy moment, Michael thought he might be hallucinating. How could this be? Had it all been some kind of insane hoax? No. He had seen Viktor Harkov’s body. That was real.

Michael put the revolver into the back of his waistband. He edged to the top of the hill, slipped behind a tall maple at the rear of the property.

Charlotte looked up, saw him. “Daddy!”

Charlotte dropped the dandelions and ran across the yard. Michael got down on his knees and embraced her.

“Baby!” he said. He felt the tears well up in his eyes. It had only been a few hours, but it seemed like years since he had seen her. He pulled back, looked into her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I am,” she said. Formal, proper Charlotte.

“Where are Mommy and Emily?”

Charlotte pointed over her shoulder, toward the house. Michael took her by the hand, positioned the two of them behind a hedge, so that they would not be visible from the back windows. “Are they okay?”

Charlotte nodded.

“What about… the man?” Michael asked. He did not know how to put this. He did not want to make things worse. “Is that man still here?”

Charlotte thought for a moment. It looked as if something passed behind her eyes, something dark. Then she brightened, nodded again.

“Is it just him?”

“Yes,” she said. “The other man left, I think.”

“Okay, baby,” Michael said. He held her again, taking a quick inventory. There were no visible bruises. It did not appear as if Charlotte had been crying, nor did she pull back because something hurt. “Okay.”

Michael stood, held his daughter’s hand. He glanced around the yard. Everything appeared to be the way he had left it that morning. He peered around the hedge. There was no movement. Michael decided he would take Charlotte to the car, and come back.

“Let’s go for a walk, okay?”

Charlotte glanced at the house, back. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to see Shasta. You like Shasta, right?”

“I do.”

“Do you know exactly where Mommy and Emily are now?”

Charlotte shook her head.

“What about the man? Do you know exactly where he is?”

Charlotte seemed to zone out on this question. Michael was just about to ask again when he saw a shape appear near the left side of the house, next to the garage. Michael got down low, peered through the hedges. It was Emily. She was standing at the corner of the house, looking out toward the woods. A few seconds later Michael saw Abby.

Before he could stop himself, Michael stood, took a step out from behind the hedges, bringing Charlotte along. Abby saw him. She shook her head. Michael could see her mouth the word no.

A second later a man stepped around the corner. Michael knew it was Aleks. He was tall, broad shouldered. He wore a black leather coat.

The two men saw each other and, in that moment, knew each others’ souls.

Michael looked at Abby. He could see the tears coursing down her cheeks. For a sickening moment the three of them looked like a family – father, mother, daughter. They looked like a suburban family in the yard of their suburban home, perhaps getting ready to leave for a day at the beach, or a picnic.

Then Michael saw a gleam of silver. There, in the man’s hand, just a few inches from Emily’s head, was a large knife. The man pulled Emily close to him. Michael’s blood ran cold.

He did not know how long they stood there on opposite ends of the property. No one moved. Michael had to make a decision, the hardest of his life. He did not know if it was the right decision, but it seemed to be the only one.

He scooped Charlotte into his arms, lifted her into the air, held her close, and began to run down the hill. He almost slipped when they reached a narrow section of the creek, his leather-soled shoes slipping on a slippery rock. He found his balance as they forded the shallow water. Michael was certain he heard footsteps approaching rapidly behind them, the snapping of fallen branches and plodding on leaves, but he knew he could not stop.

Moments later they reached the back of the Meisner property. Michael put Charlotte down, and together they ran across the backyard, skirting the garden. They reached the back patio and the sliding door. Michael banged on the glass. Within moments Zoe came into the dining room, looked at them. At first it appeared as if she did not know Michael, but soon recognition dawned. She crossed the room, slid open the glass door.

“Michael,” she said. “How nice.”

Zoe Meisner was a widower in her sixties. She lived for her garden, her dog, and community fundraisers. In that order.

Shasta came loping up. She was a big golden Lab, and when she reached the end of the living-room carpet, momentum and a hefty diet propelled her across the quarry tile of the foyer, sliding, trying to maintain balance. She stopped just short of knocking Charlotte over.

The dog wagged its tail and began to lick Charlotte’s face. Charlotte giggled, and it loosed something in Michael’s chest. The sound of his daughter laughing. He realized he had all but begun to think he would never hear that sound again.

Michael caught his breath, tried to appear normal. “Uh, Zoe, I was wondering if I could ask you a small favor.”

“Of course,” she said. “Why don’t you come on in? Would you like some tea?”

“No,” Michael said. “No thanks. I was wondering, could you watch Charlotte for just a few minutes?”

Zoe looked him up and down, perhaps for the first time noticing the clothes he was wearing, and the dirt and mud along the cuffs of his maroon golf slacks, slacks that Michael found himself unconsciously hitching every few seconds. He hoped the gun did not fall out of his waistband.

“Are you all right?” Zoe asked.

“I’m fine,” Michael said. “Just kind of a… crazy day.”

In addition to being the town’s resident expert on all things organic, Zoe Meisner was the repository of neighborhood gossip. She gave Michael a skeptical glance, then looked at Charlotte, who was busy petting the dog.

“Of course,” she said.

“I won’t be long,” Michael said, half out the door already.

“No hurry,” Zoe said. “Take your time.”

Michael crossed the yard, and headed back up the hill.

The backyard was empty when Michael again reached his house. This time he came in on the southern end of the property, in the area behind the shed and the garage, from where he could see the side door. He saw no one. He glanced at the windows. The drapes behind the large picture window in the back of the house were closed; the horizontal blinds in the window over the kitchen sink were lowered. He saw no lights, no shadows. The vertical blinds, which hung over the sliding glass door, were only half drawn. He glanced at the side of the house. In order for him to see if Abby’s car – or any car – was still in the driveway, he would have to move across the yard. He would be visible from any and all windows in the back.

Michael tried to slow his breathing, his heart. For a few mad moments he could not remember the layout inside his own house. It seemed to be blocked.

Moreover, he did not know how many people were in his house. He did not know if Aleks and Kolya were the only two people doing this to them. But he knew he could no longer wait.

He sidled up to the northern edge of the property, then along the side of the house. He edged up to the window in the first floor bedroom, the bedroom they used as an office. He saw no one inside.

He inched along the back wall of the house, pushed open the sliding glass door, drew the weapon, then thought better of it. He put it back into the waistband of his slacks. He stepped into the house.

The kitchen was empty. Two juice glasses sat on the table. Michael glanced around the room, trying to take it all in. He wanted to call out, but stopped himself. He looked at the refrigerator magnets, the letters and numbers he and Abby often used to teach the girls new words. It was a pretty strict rule, a daily routine. Every day Abby would choose a word, and she and the girls would go over it, sometimes looking it up online or in the big dictionary in their home office. Abby would always leave the word in place until Michael got home. Many times the girls would be waiting for Michael at the door when he returned from work, dragging him excitedly into the kitchen to teach him the new word.

Today there were no words spelled out. The letters were all bunched together at the top of the door, a jumble of nonsense. A pair of numbers had been dragged to the bottom.

Michael sidled up to the living room, peered in. Another empty room. One of the dining room chairs had been positioned in front of the sliding glass door.

A lookout position? Michael wondered.

He crossed the foyer, moved silently up the steps. He peered into the bathroom. The shower curtain was pulled open. The room was empty. He looked into the girls’ room. The beds were made, the room tidy as always. He edged down the hallway and caught a whiff of something at the back of his throat that tasted like warm brass. He looked into the master bedroom.

The room was covered in blood.

“Oh my God. No!”

The bed sheets were bunched in the middle of the bed, the TV had fallen off the dresser, things were scattered all over the room. There was blood on the walls, the ceiling. The room where he slept, where he made love to his wife, was an abattoir. He steadied himself against the wall. He saw a thick rut of scarlet leading from the foot of the bed over to the closet. He took the gun in his unsteady hand, eased open the closet door.

There, inside, was Kolya. There was no point in trying to determine if he was still alive. His face was a bloated plum, crusted with blood. There was a gaping wound in his neck.

Michael ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, the madness all but overtaking him. He quickly crossed the living room and was just about to enter the kitchen, when he almost tripped over something on the floor. He stopped, looked down. It was the body of Desiree Powell.

He lurched into the kitchen and vomited in the sink.

Aleks had Abby and Emily. Gone. And his house was strewn with corpses.

Michael looked out the front window. At the bottom of the hill, just visible through the trees, he could see a car turning into the drive, the unmistakable dark blue of a city police car.

Michael knew that even if the police believed him – and there was little chance of that, considering that Michael himself, if the positions were reversed, would have a hard time believing he had nothing to do with these crimes – it would cause two courses of action. One, he would be taken into custody. Two, the police department, not to mention the FBI and the Crane County sheriff’s office would kick into high gear to locate Abby, Emily, and the man who was terrorizing his family.

And who knew what would happen if the police found Aleksander Savisaar?

No. He would turn himself in, but not until Abby and Charlotte and Emily were with him. He had to be in the same room with his family. He would never believe in the world again until that moment.

He glanced out the window. Marco Fontova was just getting out of his car. The good news was that he was alone. He had not brought in the troops. Not yet.

Michael ran to the back door, looked around the yard, the area behind the house. No cops. He heard the doorbell ring as he slipped outside, the revolver now a dead weight in his pocket, his mind a jumble of dark scenarios.

There was no way to lock the sliding glass door from the outside. He would have to leave it open. He glanced back into the house. He could see Desiree Powell’s feet from the patio, and knew it would be all the probable cause Fontova would need to enter.

Michael sprinted across the yard, ran down the hill, leaping over fallen trees. He forded the creek at a low point, being careful not to slip on the rocks, all the while expecting to hear a gunshot. A few moments later he made it through the woods to the Meisner house. He picked up Charlotte, telling Zoe Meisner nothing. She would hear the sirens soon enough.

Five minutes later, with Charlotte strapped into a seatbelt in the front seat with him, he left Eden Falls, and headed for the 102, and Ozone Park. There was only one place to go. There was only one man who could help him.