Desert Places

  I let the bathroom door close, immersing myself in darkness. Closing my eyes, I took steady breaths until the banging in my chest subsided.

  Suddenly, I remembered—walking up the steps, I’d seen a red box with the word Fire on it.

  I opened the door. Orson’s was still closed, so I ran from the hallway into the stairwell. The fire alarm was mounted on the wall, and I stopped and looked back down the hallway. Now the only light came from Jack’s office.

  I pulled the white handle and the alarm screamed.

  Back inside the bathroom, the darkness now riddled with blinking lights, I found my way into a stall and sat down on the toilet. The door opened, someone shouted, and then it closed again, the darkness assuring whoever had entered that the men’s room was vacant. After thirty seconds, I walked to the door.

  The floor vacated, most of the doors were open now, brightening the hallway considerably. I ran toward 209 as the alarm rang. Empty. Rushing inside, I shut the door behind me and moved to the window. Outside, a crowd was gathering at the building’s entrance, people staring up in wonder, looking for the smoke. It was snowing hard now, sticking to the grass, melting on the brick. I wondered how long it’d take the fire department to arrive.

  There were no filing cabinets. I opened the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk and found it stuffed with graded papers and tests. The drawer above it overflowed with supplies—pens, pencils, several legal pads. Two roll books and two packs of note cards filled the drawer in the center, and the left-hand drawers were both empty. No trophies. No photographs. But this did not surprise me. He was too careful to keep them here. I’d known it, but I had to check.

  A monitor, processor, and keyboard stood separately on the floor—an old Tandy 1000 with the letters and numbers worn completely off the keys. There was a bookshelf on either side of the window. I glanced at the titles but found nothing peculiar. They were history texts, most on ancient Rome and Greece. A poster of Athens and a framed photograph of Orson standing in the Coliseum hung on the wall in front of his desk.

  A stack of unopened envelopes lay on top of his desk, and I picked them up. Of the four, three had been addressed to his school office, the other to 617 Jennings Road, Woodside, Vermont. Yes. Grabbing a pen and a sheet of paper from the supply drawer, I copied down the address. Then I looked through the drawers once more to make sure I hadn’t disturbed anything. Orson would know.

  The fire alarm stopped ringing. Stuffing his address in my pocket, I opened the door. Though still quiet in this hall, there were firemen on the floor below—I could hear their shouting and heavy footsteps. Rushing to the stairwell on the right, I looked down, then, seeing nothing, descended the steps. At the bottom, I saw two firemen in the first-floor hallway disappear into different rooms. There was an exit at the side of the building, and I bolted for the door and sprinted down stone steps into snowy grass. After fifty yards, I slowed to a walk, and glancing over my shoulder, saw the people still waiting in front of the building, Orson among them.

  The snow had let up and was now falling in big downy flakes. Exhilarated, I walked through frosted grass back toward the town. Walter and I still had to dig Orson’s hole before dark.

  23

  WE waited until 6:30, when the cloudy sky darkened into slate. I drove the Cadillac onto 116, a lonely stretch of highway that shot through the wilderness between Woodside and Bristol. Little snow remained in the valley now. The temperature had hovered in the upper thirties throughout the evening, melting the half inch of wet snow that had fallen in the early afternoon.

  Pines blitzed by on both sides of the road. I could smell them even from inside the car—a clean, bitter scent. We passed several picnic areas and a campground, all part of the Green Mountain National Forest. But I wanted land where people never walked. The campgrounds were empty now, and their trails offered easy access to the woods. But if the weather turned warm again, which undoubtedly it would do before the ground froze for the winter, people would flock to these trails, some with dogs. I didn’t have the time or energy to dig that deep a hole.

  I’d been driving for ten minutes when the shoulder widened to two car lengths. Slowing down, I swerved off the road, and the tires slid to a stop in the muddy grass. I turned off the engine and the headlights and looked through the windshield and the rearview mirror. The highway stretched on, dark and empty.

  “You think this spot is safe?” Walter asked.

  “Safe as any,” I said, pulling the keys from the ignition.

  I opened the door and stepped down into the cold, wet grass. The sound of our doors slamming resounded through the woods. Opening the trunk, we each took a shovel and a pair of leather gloves to keep our hands from going numb.

  I led us back into the trees. We didn’t go far, because it’d be difficult to find this place on a moonless night. We’d be carrying Orson, and stumbling through the woods with him would be hard enough. The white pines dripped snowmelt, and within moments, I was shivering and miserable, thinking of the fireplace at the Woodside Inn.

  Forty yards in, I stopped. The trees grew so close to one another that the highway was now invisible. I drew an arrow in the pine needles, pointing toward the road. If we somehow became disoriented in the forest, we could wander out here all night looking for the highway.

  “Let’s dig,” I said, motioning to a level space between the trees.

  I stabbed my shovel through the pine needles, and it cut into the moist earth below. The work was initially difficult because we were cold, but the exertion soon drew sweat. In no time, I could feel only the biting chill in my ruddy cheeks.

  We traced the outline first. Then we began to dig, and with the two of us working, we’d soon gone two feet down. When I thought it was sufficiently deep, I lay in the hole and Walter measured how far an animal would have to dig to reach me: There’d be a foot of earth between Orson and the forest floor.

  I climbed out and brushed the dirt from my jeans, now damp and mud-streaked. Walter leaned against the trunk of a red spruce and lit a cigarette. In the blue dusk, there was no detail in his face, but I could tell that he stared at me strangely, the tobacco cinder glowing and fading.

  “What?” I asked, but he shook his head. “No, what is it?” I’d begun to shiver again.

  “We’re actually going to kill a man.”

  “Not a man, Walter. The man who’s threatened to sic a psychopath on your family.”

  “You might not be scared, Andy, but I’m shitting my pants. I hardly slept last night. I can’t stop thinking that a million things could go wrong tomorrow. He could escape. Kill us. He might even know we’re here. You considered that? He’s a psychopath, and we’re fucking with him.”

  A twig snapped in the distance.

  “Aren’t you doing this for your family?” I asked. “Think about them when you’re scared. What it’ll feel like to see the animal who threatened Jenna bleeding in that hole.”

  The woods had become unnervingly dark.

  “It may get rough tomorrow,” I said. “We may have to …do things to him if he won’t tell us what we need to know. You up for that?”

  “I will be.”

  Walter started in the direction of the highway. I picked up my shovel and followed him, counting the steps from Orson’s grave to the edge of the forest. When we emerged from the trees, the highway was silent, and a cold fog was descended from the high country. I could only see a hundred yards down the road now—beyond, an impenetrable black mist.

  I left my shovel leaning against the largest pine tree I could find. We would need some marker to find this place at night. As we climbed back into the car and the interior lights came on and the seat belt warning beeped, something sank inside of me. Walter was wrong. Perhaps the foggy dusk intensified it, but I was afraid. Driving back toward the inn, my hands trembled as they gripped the steering wheel. I wondered in the back of my mind if I could do it. In spite of everything he’d done, Orson was my brother. My twin. There was a bond.

/>   Walter and I didn’t speak. I imagined our silence might be analogous to that which develops between soldiers who have a bloody task ahead of them. No place for superficial chatter. Only an intense focus on the coming hours, and mental preparation to do a horrible thing.

  24

  FRIDAY, early afternoon, as the sun reached its apogee and crossed into the western sky, my bed resembled a small arsenal: my subcompact .40 Glock; Walter’s full-size .45; two boxes of Remington .40-caliber 180-grain semijacketed hollow-points; two boxes of Remington .45-caliber 185-grain semijacketed hollow-points; two extra magazines for each handgun; a pair of Amherst RS446 walkie-talkies; eighteen vials of benzodiazepines; one vial of antidote; three hypodermic needles; latex gloves; leather gloves; a penlight; handcuffs; and two mechanic’s suits I’d purchased from an Army-Navy surplus store in Davidson.

  The benzodiazepines had been tricky to come by. Walter’s mother-in-law suffered from a panic disorder, and among the sundry medications she stockpiled was a medium-acting sedative called Ativan. He’d helped himself to thirteen 1-mL vials. According to our on-line research, this would be sufficient to keep Orson sedated for a couple of days if need be. The downside, however, was that the onset of Ativan took upward of twenty minutes, and I needed something that could knock Orson down in less than two.

  So I’d done a very bad thing.

  Horror writers get away with murder in the pursuit of realism, and over the years, I’d befriended attorneys, detectives, and professionals in various fields, all of whom had graciously consulted with me on the accuracy of my novels. The investigative and courtroom procedures in my stories are religiously unerring. I always get the gun right. A coroner friend of mine even let me sit in on an autopsy, just so I could nail the olfactory experience in the opening chapter of my latest book.

  There’s a vignette in Blue Murder where the protagonist steals drugs from a hospital. So in the course of my research for the book, I’d asked my doctor, “If you wanted to steal narcotics from a hospital, how would you do it?” Writers can ask these questions, and no one suspects their motives because “it’s for the book,” and they show up in the acknowledgments.

  He told me exactly what to do, and goddamn if he wasn’t right. His advice: “Raid the recovery room. It doesn’t matter if the narcotics are locked up, as long as the keys are left in drawers that aren’t. Pray for incompetent nurses. Know where the cameras are. Acquire a janitor’s uniform, and stay busy long enough to see where the keys to the narcotics cabinet are kept.”

  Thanks to careless, unobservant nurses in the recovery room, two days before we left for Woodside, I walked out of Mercy Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, with five 1-mL vials of the short-acting benzodiazepine, Versed. Used for sedation in surgical procedures, when administered intravenously, it can render someone unconscious inside of ninety seconds. Unfortunately, it also has the potential to induce respiratory depression, so I’d stolen a vial of its antidote, flumazenil, as well.

  In addition to my larceny, I’d extensively researched intravenous and intramuscular injection. I knew the dosages and monographs for Ativan and Versed. I’d done my homework, had reliable firearms, and a well-devised plan. As Walter and I sat on opposite love seats, pushing the brass-shelled hollow-points into the magazines, a calmness settled upon me. We’re actually doing it, I thought. Who does this kind of thing? Pretty fucking gutsy. It’d make one hell of a book.

  While Walter took a catnap, I went downstairs. Dirty dishes and empty wine bottles cluttered the dining room table—casualties of lunch. I walked back into the kitchen and asked the chef if he would make me a turkey sandwich. He didn’t want to. Lunch had already been served. But reluctantly, he agreed and said I could wait by the fire.

  I sat down in a rocking chair. In the brick hearth, a fire was in the process of burning out. I imagined it had been blazing in the early-morning hours, before the dusting of snow had melted, as other guests planned their day. It still warmed the snug sitting area, though now halfheartedly. As I waited, I stared at the only remaining log. It glowed underneath, the embers slowly eating it away, turning the wood to ash and smoke.

  In the nearby lounge, a TV blared. I heard the voice of Agent Trent, discussing recent developments in the search for the Heart Surgeon.

  A couple walking by on their way to the front door glanced curiously at my outfit. A gray one-piece mechanic’s suit was anomalous attire for this upscale inn.

  Jennings Road branched left off of Main Street, a mile beyond the college. Leafless sugar maples and birches shielded the road from the sky as it climbed a hillside. There were mounds of leaves along the sides of the road. I pictured them in full, fiery color, littered across the street and through the lawns, turning this small New England neighborhood into a mystical universe all its own.

  Near the top of the hill, on a black mailbox in slanted white numbers, I saw 617. Walter slowed the car, but I told him to drive casually by and park a ways up the street. As we continued on, I gazed at Orson’s home, disbelieving I’d actually found it. From the outside, it was modestly elegant. A white two-story house, with dormer windows protruding from the second floor, larger bay windows from the first. A split-rail fence enclosed the front lawn, and flowers grew along a brick walkway that curved from the driveway to the front porch. There was no garage, and there were presently no cars in the driveway.

  We crested the hill and Walter parked near the curb, scattering a pile of leaves. He turned off the engine and looked warily at me as I reached under my seat and grabbed the walkie-talkies.

  “Channel eight, subchannel seventeen,” I said, handing one to Walter. We adjusted our frequencies accordingly. “We passed a diner before we turned onto Jennings. Wait there. This car looks conspicuous sitting up here, especially with an out-of-state tag. You’ll get the first communication at the diner. I’ll say, ‘Go, Papa.’ That’ll mean he’s home, so get your ass up here and start circling the neighborhood. The second communication will be ‘Bring it home,’ and that means come to six seventeen and back into the driveway. I’ll want you to open the trunk for me and get back in the car. When you’re inside and the trunk’s open, I’ll bring him out. He’ll be unconscious. I’ll put him in the trunk, and you’ll drive us to his hole on One sixteen. Any questions?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t break radio silence unless it’s an emergency. If you have to, call me Wilma. I’ll call you Fred. You never know who might be listening. Also, don’t forget the channels. Eight and seventeen. Write it on your hand.” I clipped on my walkie-talkie and lifted the cumbersome fanny pack from the floorboard. Then I strapped it around my waist, opened the door, and stepped out into the cool afternoon.

  “It’s only four-thirty,” I said, “so it may be several hours before you hear from me.” I shut the door, and he drove on down the mountain, disappearing around a bend in the road.

  I walked back up the hill, and as I passed over the crest, the town of Woodside appeared before me. I wondered if in spring or summer, when leaves fattened the trees, it would be difficult to see the town, hundreds of feet below. But the naked trees revealed the foothill community—Main Street, the college, even glimpses of the downtown a mile and a half north. A lovely neighborhood. There might be hundreds like it in the New England countryside, thousands across the country itself. Who’d ever suspect the Heart Surgeon lived here, among these pastoral dwellings in Woodside suburbia?

  I walked up Orson’s driveway to a chest-high white fence that picketed the backyard. As I scaled and then straddled it, I wondered if he owned a dog. When my feet hit the grass on the other side, I stayed on all fours, scanning the lawn for a doghouse, listening for the jingle of a chain. Nothing moved in the beautiful grass. A northern white cedar overshadowed the backyard, but there was no dog.

  I walked around the corner. A stone patio with white plastic lawn chairs extended from the back of the house. I moved across the grass onto the patio, where French doors led into a solarium. Creeping
up to the doors, I peeked through the glass. No lights were on, but peering through the shadows, I could see beyond the sunroom into the kitchen. The house seemed empty. I tried the door, but it was locked. There was no dead bolt, though, and I was relieved I would have to break only a single pane of glass.

  I withdrew a pair of leather gloves from the fanny pack and grabbed a baseball-size rock lying in a flaccid garden adjacent to the patio. When the gloves were on, I shoved the rock through the pane nearest the doorknob. There was a concussive crack, and splinters of glass spilled across the floor inside. Still holding the rock, I listened for the sound of an alarm, but the house remained silent. I dropped the rock and turned the lock.

  The warm breath of central heating caressed my face as the doors swung open. I stepped inside, removed the leather gloves, and put them back in the fanny pack. After wiping my fingerprints off the outside doorknob, I squeezed my hands into a pair of latex gloves and pulled the doors closed behind me.

  I distrusted the silence. Standing in a sunroom, I noticed the fading light filtering in through long, curved panels of glass. Wicker chairs had been placed somewhat erratically across the brick-patterned linoleum floor, and potted plants lent the room the earthy bouquet of a greenhouse. I moved cautiously across the floor, my footfalls crunching bits of glass. Taking my Glock from the fanny pack, I chambered the first bullet, praying I wouldn’t have to fire the unsilenced weapon in this tranquil neighborhood. Walter and I had been unable to locate black-market silencers.

  From the solarium, I proceeded into the kitchen, which was decked out with white appliances on miles of counter space. I examined pictures on the refrigerator of a white-water rafting trip, and of Orson and a woman I’d never seen before, standing arm in arm on the barren summit of a mountain.