Comes a Horseman

  When she reached back this time, he could not duck away. Her fingers found an ear. She twisted and pulled, trying for the life of her to tear the thing right off his head. She had never let her fingernails grow long, but whatever nails she had she pushed into the soft flesh in her grip.

  He screamed, pain making the sound high-pitched and effeminate. She kept twisting and pulling, feeling now the warmth and slipperiness of blood.

  Something—probably the assailant’s forehead—slammed into the back of her head. Her vision swam, dimmed.

  His hands were at the base of her neck, where the ends of the wire came together, she presumed, in two handles. He shoved up with amazing strength, propelling her off of him. Dazed, she was passively compliant. He jerked her up, down, sideways.

  He’s trying to saw the wire through my arm! Then she realized the fierce shaking was merely a by-product of his jostling to get his feet under him, which he soon did, for he suddenly rose, pulling her with him.

  The mirror again. Alicia’s image startled her. She already looked dead, limp and gray, her eyes half-closed, mouth slack, blood everywhere.

  This is not right.

  It was her turn to head-butt. She gritted her teeth and threw back her head. The movement made the wire bite deeper; pain exploded up her arm, pierced her mind in white-hot starbursts. It was worth it: she heard a loud crunch and knew she’d smashed his nose.

  He grunted wetly but refused to relinquish the advantage of having her arm pinned and her throat so near the slicing wire. Perhaps fearing a series of maneuvers of which the nose-breaking head-butt was only the first and weakest, he thrust forward. They went down again, this time outside the tub. She hit the counter hard and continued falling. Her head smacked against the toilet seat.

  The garrote sprang loose. He groped for the free handle. She extended her arm; the handle, hanging from a wire cutting through her arm, followed, and it was out of the assailant’s reach. It was a wooden dowel, about six inches long, an inch round. It was well used, shiny and smooth, darkened by dirty hands and blood. He yanked on the other handle, pulling the wire through the meat of her forearm. She screamed. The loose end slid up to her arm and stopped. Knowing what was coming, she hooked her arm around the base of the toilet. He tugged his end of the garrote. She felt the wire grate against her bone. The handle jerked against her arm but did not pull free. He tugged again. She might as well have had the loose end gripped in her hand instead of imbedded in her arm, her purchase on it was so sure.

  The wire was a taut red line in front of her face. She expected him to wrap it around her head, despite his not having hold of both ends. It would slice into her cheek and eye and nose. What would she do then?

  But he had other plans. She felt him push against her back to rise. She swung her hand to grab at him. He caught it and twisted. She was lying on her side on the cold floor tile—white tile, streaked red with her blood. He had one of her arms wrenched up and back; she tightened her damaged arm around the toilet. She caught a glimpse of her wound, a long U-shaped gash. It looked like a fish’s mouth, drooling crimson.

  Turning, she found a demon standing over her. The grimacing face was a mask of hate. Dark irises in bloodshot eyes. Blood trickled down his jawline from his left ear. Four parallel gouges raked his cheek; blood streamed from his nostrils: she had done some damage. From his scalp, black hair sprang in gnarled profusion, spilling over bony shoulders like the mane of a dying lion. Whiskers grew in splotches on the upper lip, chin, and hollow cheeks. Tight lips pulled back, revealing rows of pointed teeth. What issued from between them was something between a growl and a hiss. Spittle sprayed out and landed in warm droplets on Alicia’s face.

  This man-demon-thing had hold of her wrist and was wresting it around, forcing her to twist on the floor. She realized she would wind up facedown. Not a position she wanted to be in with him standing over her. Then again, he had one foot on either side of her, and that was definitely not a position an assailant should assume. She pulled her leg up until her knee was almost touching her chest and shot her heel into his crotch. Eyes bulging, air escaping his lungs in a great hhhhooooo! he flew up and away, right out the open bathroom door.

  Alicia rose on her arm. Her breath hissed through clenched teeth. The arm gave out, and she collapsed again. She rolled over, pushed up with the other arm, sore from the twisting he’d given it, but usable. Grabbing the toilet, the counter, she rose, expecting a blow to crash down on her, returning her to the floor, where she’d stay until the medical examiner began probing her to establish time of death. A door behind her banged. She spun. The room door had hit the wall and was rebounding shut. She sprang for it, caught the handle before it latched, and was about to yank it open when she was shoved from behind into the door.

  43

  Brady held his bloody palm up to the cop standing in his foyer. His partner, a short woman packed into a blue uniform a size too small, had stepped past Brady and was surveying the living room, her hand resting on the butt of her gun. Her holster was unsnapped. At the door, he had displayed his FBI identification. They were unimpressed. This was a town in which one in thirty residents was an active duty G-man or retired from the Bureau. And since, hard as they tried, agents were human first, feds second, they tended to have as many run-ins with the law as civilians. Consequently, the mystique and prestige of being with the Bureau had long faded from the consideration of local cops.

  The cop talking to him was tall and lanky with close-cropped gray hair. His eyes were startlingly blue: they didn’t so much look at Brady as they did search him.

  “An electric knife?” the cop said, repeating the story Brady had given him. His name badge identified him as Anderson.

  “Pretty stupid, huh?” Brady said, sounding calm despite a slight tremor in his hand. What was he doing? He wanted to dance for these cops, do the Victim Freak-out, in which disbelief, indignation, and relief, fueled by adrenaline, caused uncontrollable shaking and flapping arms as the victim repeatedly pointed to pertinent aspects of the assault, coupled by a pattern of silent reflection and nervous banter along the lines of “What are you going to do about this?” and “In my own home! My own home!”

  He wanted to say, “A serial killer attacked me and my boy! He took off when he heard your siren! He can’t be far off ! Let’s go!”

  What he did say was, “You’d think I’d know better than to hold the ham when I’m cutting it.”

  “You’d think,” Anderson said dryly.

  “Where’s your son now, sir?” the female cop asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

  He hesitated. “He’s, uh, getting ready for bed, I think.” He wondered how that sounded. He knew the cops were trained in neurolinguistic programming, a branch of behavioral science that identified telltale signs of truthfulness or falsehood. When lying, people tended to shift their eyes up and to the right; people searching their memories looked to the left. Liars frequently covered their mouths. And they volunteered too many details, incorrectly believing minutiae equaled truthfulness. In fact, the ability to fabricate details seemed to be wired into the human DNA and was certainly much easier to do than to remember the details of a harrowing event. Most truth-tellers conveyed only pertinent information. But knowing the tics that gave liars away didn’t mean one could avoid doing them. Brady touched his lips, then quickly dropped his hand.

  “We’d like to speak with him, if you don’t mind,” she said.

  Brady held on to his smile, one he was sure cinched these cops’ opinion of him as a simpleton. The whole time he had been holding up his injured hand as though begging for change; all he got was a palmful of blood still oozing from his wound.

  “Could you call him, sir?”

  “Sure, yeah.” He called for Zach, waited five seconds, and called again.

  “What about your wife, sir?”

  “She passed away. Eighteen months ago.”

  “I’m sorry. Girlfriend?”

  Brady shook his head. “There’s no
one.”

  Footfalls sounded on an uncarpeted floor, coming across the kitchen. A moment later, the boy’s shadow rose up on the hallway wall, followed by Zach himself.

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  In pajamas, Zach was the poster child of wide-eyed innocence. Except that his hair was a mess and dust from the shattered wallboard gave him a thick white streak where a part should have been. Brady would have stepped over and casually brushed it out, but the lady cop stepped between them.

  “You’re Zachary?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Who else is in the house?”

  Zach looked startled. “Just me and Dad.”

  “Did you call 911?”

  Zach lowered his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Good boy, Brady thought.

  Anderson said, “You’re not in trouble, son. But can you tell us why you made the call?”

  Zach looked at the cop, at Brady, down to Brady’s hand. In a small, contrite voice, he said, “Dad hurt himself. I heard him yell and ran into the kitchen. His hand was all bloody and . . .” He looked at Brady, then lowered his head once more, silent.

  Brady said, “It’s okay, Zach.” He suddenly realized that he’d committed the same mistake that criminals did with amazing predictability, one that belonged in the same category as providing too many details. He’d fabricated an unnecessarily elaborate cover-up. Why hadn’t he just admitted to making the call and claimed he had been mistaken? Why had he pulled Zach into it? The attack had shaken him up, sure, but that was no excuse. He felt foolish and unworthy of Zach’s trust.

  “Well . . . Dad was saying bad words, real bad words.” He met Brady’s eyes. Tears were pooling on Zach’s bottom lids. Then, in a whisper: “He never talks like that. I knew it had to be terrible for him to say those things. I just . . . grabbed the phone.”

  The lady cop smiled at her partner. Then she asked Zach, “You told dispatch there was an intruder?” He nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Dad always tells me that’s the best way to get help fast, that you guys don’t respond so fast to other calls.”

  That was true, but Brady had forgotten that he’d mentioned an intruder. He was surprised Zach was able to reason so clearly and quickly under the gaze of these cops.

  The two police officers looked at Brady. He smiled sheepishly.

  Eyes locked on Brady, the woman said, “Why did you whisper when you called?”

  It was Brady’s turn to look startled. Was she really calling them on the lie, using the question to tell Brady she knew he’d made the call? Before he could respond—he had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth—she turned away and said, “Zach?”

  “Dad . . . I didn’t want him to get mad, but I knew he was hurt bad and needed help. When he showed me the cut, it wasn’t so bad that I should have called . . . you guys.” He pressed his lips together. “I’m sorry.”

  Anderson chuckled, and tension left the room like air in a pressurized chamber suddenly unsealed. He said, “Well, better safe than sorry, huh.” If the cop had been standing nearer Zach, Brady was sure he would have ruffled the boy’s hair.

  Zach smiled weakly. A tear dribbled down his cheek.

  The woman’s hand came off the gun, and she squeezed Zach’s shoulder. “You did the right thing,” she said.

  Brady watched his son accepting this reassurance. A vague sense of concern stirred like a slumbering dog in his mind. The boy had lied well. He hadn’t expected deception to come so easily. His own naïveté was another reason to feel foolish. He’d be wearing a hat with bells by midnight at this rate.

  “. . . looked at.”

  He turned to Anderson.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Said you better get that hand looked at.” He stepped out the door, and his partner followed.

  At this point in the movies, Brady thought, one of the cops would spot something—an ax buried in the door, a disemboweled animal on the porch—and say, “Now, wait a minute, what’s this?” And the killer would spring out from the bushes and slaughter them all.

  But this wasn’t the movies. The cops nodded, smiled.

  “Thank you, officers,” Brady said and shut the door. He turned to Zach. “You were great! You are such a terrific act—”

  Instead of the big smile he’d expected, his son’s face was wrenched into a mask of sorrow and fear. His lips quivered, and tears now gushed from his eyes. The boy hitched in a deep breath. His arms flew open, and he ran to his father. Brady dropped to his knees. Zach’s arms clamped around his neck. Zach’s face pushed against Brady’s chest, as if the boy wanted to take refuge within his father, to get away from the world into the harbor of his father’s very being. Brady wrapped his arms tightly around his son, coming as close to encasing him as possible. He was aware the blood from his hand had ruined the pajama top, and he didn’t care. He rubbed his face into Zach’s hair, smelling shampoo and drywall dust.

  He whispered Zach’s name over and over. “You’re okay. We’re okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” It dawned on him what the boy’s fear was, and he said, “I’m not going to let anything happen to me.” For long minutes, he squeezed and reassured.

  When Zach’s weeping softened and he was leaning into Brady, breathing deeply, Brady pulled back so they could see each other’s faces. He said, “I’m going to take you to Uncle Kurt and Aunt Kari’s.”

  Zach shook his head. “No,” he said and started to cry again. Kurt and Kari Oakley had moved four years ago to Wilmington, Delaware, two and a half hours northeast of Garrisonville. Brady trusted them implicitly. Zach would enjoy it there, and he would be safe. The chances of anyone—even anyone inside the Bureau—knowing about them was minuscule at best.

  “Zach, I need to go take care of this. I have to make sure the person who attacked us can never come after us again. Do you understand?”

  Zach’s face brightened. “Let’s both go to Uncle Kurt’s. We can stay there. No one will find us.” He sniffed.

  “I wish we could, son. But some monsters in this world don’t go away just because you avoid them. You have to find them and face them.”

  “Like David did with Goliath.” Zach said it, but Brady knew from the smallness of his voice he didn’t want his father to be David. He wanted his father with him.

  “Like that, yes.”

  They soaked in each other’s face, each other’s presence. There was nothing more to say. They hugged again, long and hard.

  “Now go throw some clothes and your toothbrush in a gym bag,” Brady said. His tone said, Let’s do this; let’s do it now.

  Zach seemed more himself. He started up the stairs, stopped, and started back down in a hurry. Brady caught him. “What? Where you going?”

  “Coco!” Zach said, nearly screaming.

  “Zach! Get your things. I’ll look for Coco.”

  Brady retrieved his pistol from the gun safe in the kitchen and turned on the backyard lights. He remembered the dog’s wail and how it had ended abruptly. He stepped out of the French doors by the breakfast table and onto a flagstone patio. Each of the properties in this neighborhood boasted a large lot, with most of the land allocated to the backyard. Perfect for kids. It was the reason Karen had settled on this home and why they had overextended themselves to get it. He looked toward the far fence, which was obscured by darkness and trees. He hoped he wouldn’t have to venture into that blackness, not without backup. Staying oriented toward the far darkness, he sidestepped along the rear of the house, softly calling to Coco. He had walked to the side fence and was about to backtrack over to the other side of the patio when something caught his eye, an unnatural glimmer. Something dark and wet, there, on the leaves of a boxwood bush. He touched the wetness and held his fingers up to the light. Red . . . blood. With more apprehension than he’d felt since coming home to face Zach after sheriff ’s deputies had pried his arms from around Karen’s body on the side of the road, he lowered himself onto all fours.
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  “Coco?” he whispered.

  He dipped his head. His breath stopped. It was dark, but he could see the Shih Tzu’s beige fur just under the branches. It wasn’t rising and falling as it did when the animal slept at the foot of Zach’s bed. He reached out his uninjured hand, touched the fur, pushing gently as if to wake him. No response. He curved his hand around to pull Coco out and hooked his fingers into a mess of warmth and wetness. The sound it made was like stepping in mud. He yanked his hand back, saw it covered in blood. Dirt and leaves clung to it. His breath came out in a whoosh. Before he realized it, he was dragging his hand across the grass, wiping and wiping. He looked at the lump of fur again.

  “I’m sorry, big guy,” he whispered.

  He leaned back to see the second-floor window directly above him. Zach’s room. The blinds were closed. He thought for only a second before deciding to lie and say he could not find Coco. Zach would not want to leave without the dog, but Brady would convince him Coco would be safe; he would tell Zach the Garners next door would search for him and take him in for a few days.

  Soon after Karen’s death, Brady had sat on the living room couch, glass of bourbon in hand, and felt fragile, like a china doll with stress cracks. He knew he couldn’t take another emotional hit, not for a long while. He had no clue what would happen if he did, have a heart attack maybe or commit suicide or go mad . . . something. He realized now time had not diminished that sense of brittleness. This assault on him and Zach made him feel shaky, ready to break. At the same time, Zach’s involvement gave him the will to be strong, to see this through. He could break later, probably would, after Zach was in the clear, after he was safe.

  Despite the boy’s apparent resilience, Brady did not completely trust that Zach was as strong as he seemed. Somewhere inside, his son had to have stress cracks like Brady’s, had to.