The Night Visitors

Chapter Twenty-Five Alice

BLOOD SPRAYS ON my shoes and over my legs, and a smell like copper pipes hits me in the back of the throat.

“Why’d you do that?” I cry.

I’m not sure if I’m going to throw up or pass out. Mattie squeezes my arm so hard that the pain helps keep me from doing either. I look at her and see that she’s pale but her jaw is set and she’s staring at Davis like he’s a science experiment.

“Too much trouble to keep track of the three of you,” Davis says, his mouth stretched into something between a grin and a snarl. “Besides”—he looks up, his eyes glittering like he’s got a fever—“he was gonna mess with you. You two should be thanking me. And you can start by getting me something to eat and a nice cold beer. Woo-hee! Killing’s thirsty work!”

My stomach turns. Davis looks like he does when he’s playing World of Warcraft. The reek of blood hits my throat again and I gag.

“Let’s get upstairs,” Mattie says, propelling me forward. “There’s nothing we can do for Jason.”

“You sound almost sorry for him,” Davis says as he follows us up, holding the gun to my back. “Maybe the idea of a man breaking into your house turns you on. Maybe that’s why you leave all your doors unlocked. I mean, when was the last time you got laid?”

Mattie flinches and I instantly regret that I wondered the same thing when I went through her bedroom. The thought that living with Davis for two years has made me anything like him sickens me almost as much as seeing what happened to Jason. Only Mattie’s grip on my arm keeps me moving up the stairs.

Davis holds the flashlight so we can see our way but the beam is dim and flickering. At the top of the stairs he moves the beam over the darkened kitchen and I catch a flicker of movement in the doorway leading to the front door. My heart stops at the thought that it could be Oren, but Davis keeps moving his flashlight over the kitchen counters so he must not have seen what I did.

“We need to get a fire going in the woodstove,” Mattie says. “It’s right over there.” She points at the corner opposite to where I saw the movement. Maybe she saw it too and wants to make sure Davis doesn’t.

“Okay,” Davis says. “Here’s the plan. Allie and I are going to sit down here at the kitchen table while you get that stove going and warm us up something to eat.” He pulls out one chair with his foot and pushes me toward it, then sits in the one next to it. As soon as I’m seated he presses the cold barrel of the gun to my forehead. “If you do anything stupid I’ll blow her brains out. Understand?”

Mattie turns to Davis and looks him straight in the eyes. Her face looks awful in the beam of the flashlight—haggard and old—but she doesn’t look afraid. She looks pissed. “Yes, I understand,” she says. “I just need to get those matches on the table by your elbow.”

Davis switches the beam to the table to find the matches. As he looks away from Mattie she reaches behind her to the counter and slips something into her pocket. Another knife, I’m betting. Now she’s got two.

“What the fuck is this?”

For a second I think Davis has seen what Mattie did, but when I look at him I see he’s training the flashlight on a plastic figurine standing beside the matches on the kitchen table. It’s an Ewok with a Post-it note stuck to it.

“Oren left that there before,” I say, even though I am sure that it wasn’t there before. “He was playing a game.”

Davis rips the note off the Ewok and reads it aloud. “‘Don’t worry. The rebel alliance is on the way to help. May the Force be with you!’ ” He crumples the note up and throws it on the floor, his mouth twisted with disgust. “More of that Star Wars fantasy shit you’ve been encouraging him to believe. It’s time the boy grew up and learned the way the world really works. DO YOU HEAR THAT, OREN? THERE’S NO REBEL ALLIANCE ON THE WAY SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL COME OUT AND KEEP YOUR OLD MAN COMPANY.” He pauses, waiting for an answer, then tosses the matches at Mattie. “Get that stove going.”

Mattie catches the matches handily and turns toward the stove, but Davis barks, “Wait, light these lamps first so I can see what you’re doing over there.”

I can see by the slump in her shoulders that Mattie is disappointed. I bet she’d been counting on being able to work in the dark. But she comes back to the table and lights the three kerosene lamps that she’d put there earlier. They’re real old-fashioned lamps that cast a surprising amount of light. One’s a square hurricane lamp with metal reflectors that sends out a beam like a lighthouse.

“Take that one over to the stove,” Davis says, pointing at the hurricane lamp, “and put it on the top so I can see what you’re doing over there.”

Mattie gives Davis a look like he’s a simpleton but quickly washes that expression off her face. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to leave kerosene on top of a lit woodstove,” she says tentatively. She’s treading carefully around Davis’s temper, as I have learned to do over the last two years, and though it makes me feel sick to watch her do it—and to realize how second nature it’s become to me—it works. Although a muscle twitches in Davis’s eye, he waves her away as if such details are beneath him.

“Yeah, whatever, you women always worry about shit like that.”

I catch the hint of a smile before Mattie turns away with the lantern. She places it carefully on a counter two feet from the woodstove, then kneels beside the basket of wood and begins putting logs, paper, and kindling into the stove. Travis and Lisa had a woodstove and it was always a bitch to light, but Mattie’s got a real nice fire going in a few minutes.

“I could get the chili from the stove,” I offer, itching to move around.

“That’s nice of you, Allie,” Davis says, “but I feel better with only one of you gals up and about.”

“I’ll get it,” Mattie says, standing up and brushing wood shavings from her pants. “Is that okay with you, Davis? Can I go to the stove and get the chili?”

“Knock yourself out,” Davis says, grinning. He’s enjoying ordering around one woman while I sit captive beside him. He leans back, tipping the chair off its front two legs, resting his hand with the gun on the table.

“So,” Mattie says as she puts the chili on top of the woodstove and stirs it. “You certainly made good time getting here.”

“Ha!” Davis barks. “I was already on the Thruway when I got Allie’s call. I figured she’d head upstate. She was always yammering about the crap foster homes she lived in up here, so I figured she must have some connections. When I got into town I spotted that charity place on Main Street right off the bat and figured she’d have gone there. I went in, pretending to be shopping at the free store, and overheard a couple of college kids talking about Mattie Lane taking a DV case home. Did you know you can google a person and find their address on the internet?” He taps his forehead. “Smart, huh?”

Mattie nods. “I can certainly see where Oren gets his brains. He’s such a bright, sweet boy. I hated to see him land in a shelter.”

“You’re right there,” Davis says, thumping his chest with his hand. He’s left the gun lying on the table. “He sure as hell didn’t get his smarts from his idiot meth-head mother, who didn’t have enough brains to keep herself from OD’ing.”

“Oren mentioned his mother was away a lot. Rehab, I guessed. It must have been tough being left with a kid on your own like that.”

“Tough?” Davis slaps the table, the two front legs of his chair hitting the floor, the gun jumping a few inches in my direction. “You don’t know the half of it. Your lot were no help. When I signed up for the food bank I got a lot of nosy questions about bruises on Oren’s arms, like kids aren’t always getting themselves scraped up.”

“That must have been painful,” Mattie says gently, “to feel suspected of hurting your own child when you were only trying to do your best by him.”

“No shit, Sherlock!” Davis says, leaning back again. “You social worker types, you don’t trust men. A single mother, you’re all over her trying to help, but a single dad? You look at him like he’s a pervert.”

“I always tell my volunteers and interns to check their biases at the door, to give everyone who comes to us the benefit of the doubt. But it can be hard—seeing all the things we do—not to sometimes suspect the worst in people.”

“I get that,” Davis says, nodding his head. “Hey, you got any beer?”

Mattie turns from the stove and smiles. “I think I’ve got a couple of Coors stashed in the back of the fridge.”

“No kidding? I would have figured you for a white wine kind of gal.”

“Nah,” Mattie says, walking to the refrigerator and opening it. It’s dark inside and I’m hoping that she has a gun stashed there with all the bottles she’s rattling around. “I like a cold beer in summer and a snort of whiskey in winter. Here—” She pulls out a bottle and brings it into the light of the table, twisting the cap open and handing the bottle to Davis. While Davis leans forward to take it from her, Mattie cuts her eyes over to where the gun lies on the table and then to me. “I bet that chili’s real hot now,” she says to Davis, still looking at me. “Are you ready for a bowl?”

“Damn yes,” he says, leaning back in his chair, the front legs coming off the floor again. I always tell Oren not to do that because the chair could slip out from underneath him.

I look back at Mattie. She’s ladling chili into a bowl, steam rising up from it. It is hot. She’s going to throw the chili in Davis’s face to give me a chance to grab the gun. As she turns from the stove I nod at her to let her know I understand and that I’m on board.

“You know, Mattie,” Davis says as she approaches. “You’re not so bad—”

I lay my hand on the table and tense, ready to grab the gun.

“—it’s too bad your father was such a corrupt asshole.”

“What?” I say, and then curse myself for saying anything.

Davis looks at me and then at my hand. He rocks forward and snatches up the gun. “Your new friend didn’t tell you about that, Allie?” he says. “Her father was a corrupt judge. I found out while I was poking around his office before. He was being investigated for taking kickbacks to put juvies in a private detention center owned by one of his cronies.” Davis laughs. “Ironic, huh? He could have been one of the judges who locked you up, Allie. Only he killed himself and his family before the scandal could come out.”

“That’s not true,” I say, turning to Mattie, but I can see on her face right away that it is.

Davis laughs. “You were always too naive, Allie.” He waves the gun at Mattie. “Let’s eat and then we’ll go have a look at those papers in your daddy’s study. Wait’ll you see, Allie. I think you’ll be surprised at what your new friend has been hiding from you.”