So far, their scheme had gone entirely to plan. The first man targeted was a married, fifty-something conventioneer in Boston. It had been almost too easy: a couple of drinks, some flirtation, a little chat about how he reminded Corrie of her favorite uncle, one on whom she’d always secretly had a crush, then back to his hotel room. When the knock came on the door – which Corrie made sure she answered, permitting the two masked men to enter – the mark was already down to his boxers, with a hard-on from which he could have hung a flag. Corrie was in a similar state of undress, and stayed that way while BB showed the conventioneer the gun, and explained how it was going to go down. They photographed his driver’s license, which he kept in his wallet alongside pictures of his wife, kids, and first grandchild. They noted his address before, at gunpoint, taking pictures of him in a series of suitably compromising positions with Corrie. Finally, they got him to reveal the PINs for his debit and credit cards, after which Corrie got dressed and withdrew cash to the daily limit on each card, then went and had a cup of coffee until just after midnight, so she could take a second run at them. When she returned, they gave the conventioneer back his wallet, debit card, and one of his credit cards, and told him not to report the second card missing until a further twenty-four hours had elapsed. They assured him that his bank would cover any losses, and it wasn’t like they could do too much damage anyway with a $5,000 credit limit. If they encountered any problems using the card, then his wife would find out just what he’d been doing on his free night in Beantown. No violence had proved necessary, which was just the way they liked it, and they’d netted a total of $3,000, and a number of laptop computers bought on the second card, which they’d sold for twenty-five cents on the dollar.
Afterward, Corrie ditched her cheap wig, and they pulled the scam twice more in Boston and its environs before heading slowly north: Portsmouth, Concord, and now Portland. Brown hadn’t wanted to net that night’s sucker, though. He felt that it was time to give the operation a rest and lie low for a while. They had enough cash to get them comfortably through the winter, and he was convinced the last mark – a salesman in Portsmouth, who’d required a tap on the head to curb his indignation – might take the risk of not remaining silent about what had happened. It was TP who had argued for one last effort, and Corrie had agreed, just because it was TP who was asking.
But Brown and Corrie had recently spoken together at length for the first time in weeks – maybe even the first time ever – without TP present, and it was clear to Brown that Corrie was growing increasingly uneasy about their business enterprise. Brown wasn’t surprised. She was the one taking the major risk. True, he and TP were always on her heels, and they made sure to let only the minimum amount of time go by between Corrie and the mark entering the hotel, and their knock sounding on the door. But suppose they were stopped by security, or their car broke down, or they just screwed up, none of which was beyond the bounds of possibility? Then, my friends, Corrie would most assuredly be on her own, and the big ‘r’ word – rape – was never far from her mind.
Corrie and TP were staying in one room of a motel out by The Maine Mall, and Brown was across the hall. It meant that he couldn’t hear them screwing, which was a relief on a lot of levels. He’d been forced to listen to them when they’d all shared a small one-bedroom apartment down in Quincy, Brown already struggling with sleep thanks to the sadistic springs on the sleeper couch without TP’s grunts and Corrie’s cheerleading as a soundtrack. When they’d first been on the road, and watching their cash, he’d taken the second bed in the motel rooms, or sometimes just slept on the floor, and TP would gesture to the door when he wanted some quality time with Corrie, leaving Brown to wander until they were done, or smoke and read a book while sitting on a plastic chair, maybe catch a movie if there was a theater nearby. Brown hated having to do that. It made him feel about nine years old, and an inch tall.
Brown was in love with Corrie. It had taken him a while to realize this, and attempt unsuccessfully to come to terms with it. He was self-aware enough to speculate if one of the reasons why he’d suggested using her as bait was to punish her for sleeping with TP and not him, but now that they were deep in the whole mess, Brown was starting to regret ever involving her. He could see the strain it placed on her. She was more jittery than before, and he knew that she was having trouble sleeping. He’d tried pointing all this out to TP, but TP was enjoying the money, and, as he pointed out to Brown, it wasn’t like they were whoring Corrie out.
Except they were. That was the truth of it, but TP either wouldn’t, or couldn’t, recognize it. Just because he and Brown intervened before the main show had to commence didn’t make it any less demeaning and dangerous for Corrie. And so, after talking with her that evening, Brown was determined to find another way for them to make a little easy money. He knew some guys up in Bangor, and he and TP now had enough ready cash to be able to buy a decent quantity of blow. Screw weed: the economy looked like it was improving some, and to Brown that meant the demand for coke would increase. You just had to hang out in the right bars, and make the right connections with the Friday night asshole set, the young men in suits who started drinking straight out of the office, and were already whooping it up by eight p.m. Brown had begun laying the groundwork with TP as they waited for Corrie and the mark to emerge, and he thought that he’d made headway.
Then Brown saw the guy with Corrie, and alarm bells began ringing in his head.
‘Hey,’ he said to TP.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t like what I’m feeling here.’
‘Not again. Come on, I told you: I’ll think about the coke thing, and we already agreed this would be the last one for a while.’
‘Seriously, man: that dude is wrong.’
‘Everybody’s wrong to you.’
‘He’s not drunk.’
‘He looks drunk to me.’
It was true that the mark was walking a little unsteadily, but Brown wasn’t convinced. He’d caught a glimpse of the guy’s eyes as he passed their car, and they’d resembled pools of polluted mud. And the way he’d looked at Corrie, like one of those slaughterhouse workers who enjoy torturing the pigs before they die …
‘I say we call it off,’ said Brown.
‘You’ve got to be kidding. They’re at his car.’
‘We drive up, we call out to Corrie, and we offer her a ride,’ said Brown. It was something they’d come up with at the start. Corrie always wore a scarf. If they saw her take it from her neck and put it in her bag, it was a sign that something was wrong, and she wanted to bail. So far she’d done that only once, with a company executive who’d whispered in her ear about what he was going to do to her once he got her back to his hotel room, and it wasn’t anything that Corrie wanted done to her, not even by TP.
Scarf into bag; TP and Brown rolling up alongside, shouting out ‘Hey, Linda!’ – the name she was using that night, because she never used the same one twice – ‘What you doing? Want to hang with us?’; Corrie apologizing to the executive, because she had to go with her friends; the executive objecting; TP getting out of the car, the executive still mouthing off; TP just about keeping his temper in check, knowing that it could be bad news if they attracted the attention of a passing cop; Corrie getting in their car; driving away; Corrie telling them what the guy said to her; TP insisting on going back and giving the executive a beating he wouldn’t forget, and only the best combined efforts of Corrie and Brown convincing him that it would land them all in jail.
‘She hasn’t taken off her scarf,’ said TP.
He was right. She hadn’t.
‘It doesn’t have to be her call,’ said Brown.
‘If she’s okay with him, so am I.’
‘TP—’
‘I said no.’
TP hadn’t raised his voice – he rarely did – but Brown knew the tone. The discussion was over.
Now here they were, watching the house in front of which the car was parked, the trees
masking it from the road so they couldn’t even see what was going on.
A house, thought Brown. Not a hotel, but a house. We’ve never tried it in a house before.
He told himself that it might be simpler than a hotel because there would be no security.
But what about an alarm? And what if the guy isn’t alone in there?
TP took the gun from under his seat and tucked it into the waistband of his pants. Brown didn’t own a gun. He didn’t much care for them. But he was glad, just this once, that TP had no such qualms.
Then TP said something that he’d never before said to Brown.
‘You were right,’ he said. ‘We should have called it off.’
13
TP and Barry Brown entered the yard of the house, Brown leading, skirting the car and van in the drive, moving quickly to the back of the property where they had the best chance of gaining access without being spotted. They hadn’t even discussed the possibility of a simple knock on the door, not since TP had recognized that Brown might have been right about the mark, which meant Corrie had become the mark instead. Now, in unison, each pulled down his ski mask, obscuring his features. Brown hoped that TP didn’t find cause to use the gun. They were in enough trouble as it was.
Brown heard a slapping sound as they reached the backyard, which caused him to tighten his grip on the bat he was carrying. He’d made the bat himself, wood turning being one of those skills that he just had, and from which he thought he might someday be able to make a living, or supplement a regular income. Brown’s view was that a gun did only two things well – it threatened, and it fired – while a baseball bat had a multitude of uses, and, unlike a gun, was capable of inflicting harm in subtle increments.
TP paused beside him. There was a stirring in the yard, but TP’s eyesight wasn’t great at the best of times – although, thanks to the miracle of self-diagnosis, his condition was not yet serious enough to merit glasses or lenses. It was left to Brown to pick out the tarpaulin over the pool before them. One corner of it had come loose, and the sound of its flapping had gradually risen in tempo and volume as the wind increased. Brown figured that the tarp must have become detached recently, because the noise was loud and annoying, the kind that came between a person and sleep. It would even have been persistent and distracting enough to draw the attention of neighbors had the house not been comparatively isolated and sheltered.
He risked a glance around the corner, and saw that, as at the front of the house, the drapes had been drawn across the windows. Glass patio doors led to a deck, and farther along was a wood door with a small glass window, possibly leading to a kitchen or utility room. Brown could see no sign of illumination within, and the rear windows on the second floor were also dark.
To his right, that damned tarp kept flapping. It was possible that it might draw someone from inside, which would be good, especially if both the patio and secondary door were secured. He glanced at the area of the pool revealed by the tarp and saw that it still had water in it. Brown didn’t know much about pools. His family had never owned one, and neither had the kinds of families with whom they’d associated. He assumed that pools had to be drained for winter, but perhaps the people here hadn’t managed to get around to it yet, or were holding out for one last warm weekend. Good luck with that in Maine.
Sections of the backyard were lit by solar-powered lamps, one of which stood not far from the exposed corner of the pool. It cast a little light on the water, and Brown thought he caught a glimpse of something lying at the bottom of the shallow end. It was strangely regular in form, and he experienced the immediate sense that, whatever it was, it had no business being there.
He drew closer to the pool. Behind him, he heard TP whisper.
‘Hey, where are you going?’
Brown was exposing himself to anyone who might happen to glance out a window, but he didn’t care. Curiosity had snagged him with its hook, and now it was drawing him in. What was that?
He stood at the edge of the pool and looked down. A television set, one of those big, expensive flat-screen models, lay on the tiles. Lengths of rope or cable crisscrossed it, binding it tightly to what was beneath, anchored by the TV to the bottom of the pool.
Brown was looking into the eyes of a dead boy.
14
Corrie returned to consciousness to find herself lying facedown on a couch in an unfamiliar room. Her hands had been pulled behind her back and secured with what felt like metal cuffs. She could feel them biting into her wrists. Her legs wouldn’t move, and she saw that they were held together with wire. She had been gagged with a length of cloth.
She tried to control her panic. TP was on his way, and Barry with him. They had to be close. Any moment now she would hear the ringing of the doorbell, or the breaking of glass, and then Henry the Asshole would wish that he’d never made his way to Portland. She hoped Barry would break his legs, and maybe his arms too, just before TP killed him and his creepy friend.
She heard movement behind her, and Henry appeared to her left. He was holding a pistol in his hand. Of the other man, there was no sign.
Henry put the muzzle to Corrie’s left eye. She just had time to close it before she felt it pressing hard against the eyelid. The click of the hammer locking caused a little part of her to come loose inside.
‘Not a sound,’ said Henry. ‘Not a movement.’
The boy in the pool had dark hair. He was probably not yet a teenager, to judge by his size, although the distortion caused by the water made it difficult to tell. He hasn’t been down there very long, Brown thought. For the most part he looked undamaged, apart from the way his mouth bulged. Brown couldn’t be sure, but it appeared that a ball had been jammed into it. The ball was red. It protruded from between his upper and lower jaws like a half-eaten apple.
Brown gazed down at the boy, and the boy gazed back. The gentle lapping of the water in the pool caused his hair to move. One of his hands was visible, but Brown couldn’t see the other. He wondered if the boy had somehow managed to get his left hand free, and tried to push against the big TV as he drowned. That assumed, of course, that he’d been alive when he went in the water. If he was, did whoever was responsible for throwing him in the pool stay to watch him die?
Brown felt the weight of the bat in his hand, and the grain of the wood against his skin. It brought him back, and with that he thought of Corrie. She was in the house with whoever had killed this boy.
Now Brown was really glad that TP had his gun with him.
He turned to speak to TP, who was staring at him from the back wall of the house. Brown pointed at the pool, but TP just shook his head. He didn’t want to see whatever was down there, because it didn’t matter. Only Corrie mattered now.
TP moved to the patio doors.
Upstairs, on the second floor, Henry’s companion left the bedroom he’d been cleaning and stepped into the hallway. His name was Gideon, although it would be many years before that fact became known. For now, like his companion, he was sailing under a false flag. He was, as Corrie had quickly surmised, both excessively tall and excessively thin, like a stick insect given human form. His eyes were very small, and partly obscured by heavy lids, making him virtually blind in the upper visual fields on the lateral gaze. The hair on his head was a uniform half-inch in length, and already gray, even though Gideon was only in his thirties. He also suffered from asthma, gout, a peptic ulcer, and undiagnosed pancreatic cancer. He was a creature of the shadows and the depths.
Gideon had slept on a bed while they were in the house, but he always remained fully clothed, and the plastic garbage bag in his left hand now contained the pillowcase and the cover from the comforter, as well as the used towels from the bathroom. Earlier he’d poured bleach down the drains in the bath and the sink, although both he and Henry had been careful to use a drain stopper to catch any stray hairs. They had also worn double-layered plastic gloves and shower caps during their entire time in the house. While Henry was away, Gideon had va
cuumed and cleaned, doing his best to ensure that they left as few traces of their presence as possible.
He passed by a second bedroom to his right. A dead woman was tied to the bed. Gideon had used her, but he’d been careful to wear a rubber. He’d cleaned her, too, after he killed her. Gideon was also responsible for killing the boy at the bottom of the pool. He had lost his temper when the boy attacked him. He had no idea why he chose to toss him into the pool with the TV to weigh him down, except that Gideon didn’t like TV and didn’t like the boy either. Henry had been absent from the house when Gideon murdered the boy, but he hadn’t said anything when he came back, although he’d been surprised to find the boy in the pool. The tarp had held until the wind picked up. Gideon thought that he’d better retie it, even though they were about to leave.
The woman had been too old to keep. She was the boy’s mother, but he must have been born when she was already in her forties, because her driver’s license said that she was fifty-four. Her husband was five years older. Henry had killed him. He’d shot him in the chest, and he was now lying in the basement, where it was cool. It had been Gideon’s decision to keep the woman alive for a while. Henry didn’t have the same obstacles to intimacy as Gideon. Women liked Henry. They most assuredly did not like Gideon, so he took his pleasures where he could.
This trip – or ‘range’, in their parlance – had produced a good haul: some designer clothes; jewelry; cash; a collection of coins and stamps; a couple of expensive phones; a handful of transportable electronic items, including some tablets; even a collection of old books that Henry thought might be worth something. Most of it was in the van, with the more valuable items hidden in a pair of compartments under the driver and front passenger seats. It was a shame that the woman had been so old, but Henry had made up for that. The girl downstairs would do just fine, although Gideon wouldn’t be given a chance to spend time with her, except maybe right at the end. He was glad that he’d used the other woman while he could.