Unspeakable (48 page)

“Your daughter, where is she?”

Walt shrugged helplessly. “She said she was headed to—to Mount Baker someplace. She's supposed to call me when she goes there.”

“Get away from that drawer,” the man said, eyes narrowed at him.

Walt shut the drawer with his hip and held up his hands for a moment. But he didn't move away. “Why do you keep asking about my daughter?”

“I want you to pick up that phone, and call her,” the man said, casually leaning back in the chair. “Tell her your friend upstairs has taken a turn for the worse and you need her to come home right away.” A tiny smile crept over his face. “Oh, and by the way, he will indeed be taking a turn for the worse, you know.”

All at once, a loud crash resounded from the front hallway.

It even took Walt by surprise. He almost forgot to swipe the potato peeler off the counter.

Startled, the man leapt up from the bar stool, tipping it over behind him. He rushed toward Walt and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. He jabbed the gun against the side of his head. Walt grimaced in pain as the barrel scraped along the skin. The man started to pull him toward the front of the house.

He balked at the sound of glass shattering. A thunderous boom followed it. As the man hauled him at gunpoint toward the front hall, Walt couldn't help thinking the last sound had been Ian upstairs collapsing.

 

 

Olivia listened to her father's message on her cell phone. She kept a hand over her other ear to block out the traffic noise. She stood beside her dad's Mercury Sable, which she'd parked across the street from the slightly dilapidated, stately, old white stucco. The lawn and bushes were neglected. It looked like a haunted house. Olivia could see the choppy gray water beyond the trees. A brief flash of lightning illuminated the darkened sky.

“He's bragging about killing tourists at the World's Fair,”
her dad continued,
“he and a fellow named Andy. I don't know if it's true or not, but it's pretty disturbing stuff. And now I'm suddenly worried about you. So call me as soon as you get this. . . .”

She knew she'd heard it right:
“. . . he and a fellow named Andy.”

She clicked off, and dialed home. She anxiously counted the ringtones, and realized after the fourth, it was going to voice mail. She listened to the familiar greeting and then the beep. “Hi, Pop,” she said. “I got your message. Are you there? I wish you'd pick up. Now, suddenly, I'm the one worried about you. Listen, thanks for letting me know about the tape. Whatever you do, don't erase it or anything. The ‘Andy' he talked about is Andrew Stampler, Collin's grandfather. I think he's somehow responsible for the fire that killed the Pelhams—and the murder of a teenager named Fernando Ryan. I'm here in Ballard, trying to track down Collin. I think he might have found out about his grandfather and run away. He told me about this place, a tiny shack in the woods near the beach. The trail's beside an old, white stucco—5818 Gilman—off Seaview. I'm about to head down the trail now. I think Collin may be hiding there. I'm probably running out of time here, so call me. Thanks, Pop. I love you.”

She clicked off the cell and shoved it in her pocket. With the car lock device, she popped the Sable's trunk open and dug out the tire iron. After closing the trunk, she hurried across the street to the chain-link fence. She found the narrow path alongside it. With all the overgrown vegetation, she couldn't have seen it from the street.

Starting down the crude trail with the tire iron in her fist, Olivia glanced over at the seedy old house again. As she wove through the trees and foliage, deeper into the woods, her sweater collected burrs and bits of dead leaves. Swiping away something that had landed in her hair, she wasn't sure if it was a bug or what. She reached the end of the fence and could smell the beach. The air seemed to get colder and damper. In his directions, Collin had said there was a trail to the right.

Delving farther into the thicket, she wished like hell she had a flashlight. Overhead, tree branches swayed in the wind and leaves scattered. She felt so horribly alone—and lost. She hoped the shack was nearby, and Collin would be there.

Olivia came to a huge, towering pine. She remembered it as a landmark from Collin's directions:
“And just off the path, there's the little shack. It's safe. No one can find us there. . . .”

She spotted his little hideaway. It looked like a large toolshed. Made up of brick and wood, it had one small window. There was no light coming from inside it.

Olivia tried the door, but it was secured with a padlock. The cracked window on the side had chicken wire in the glass. She peeked inside, but it was too dark. Then she glanced around the gloomy woods. It was pretty obvious she was alone here. She'd come all this way for nothing.

Olivia pulled out her cell phone and tried her dad again. But
No Signal
came up on the screen. She figured all the trees were screwing up the reception. With a sigh, she turned to start back up the path.

But she stopped dead at the sound of twigs snapping and bushes rustling. The noise seemed to come from somewhere up the hill on the other side of the shack. Through the trees, she could see a shadowy figure staggering down the hill.

She wasn't alone here after all.

The contractor kept him in a choke hold—so fierce he could hardly breathe. Walt twisted and contorted to keep up as the killer dragged him into the front hallway. He felt the blood from the deep scratch the gun-barrel had made. It left a warm, wet trail down the side of his neck. His attacker didn't seem to notice that he'd stashed the potato peeler in his pocket. But Walt wondered what good it would do up against a Glock 38.

Over the TV, the sports announcer on ESPN was shouting his description of a touchdown. Walt caught another glimpse of Hank in the study—slumped back on the sofa, so motionless, the blank stare, and his mouth still open in shock. The light from the TV flickered across his dead face.

In the foyer, Walt almost slipped in a puddle of water on the hardwood floor. He noticed shards of glass, and guessed they were from the tumbler Olivia had left on Ian's nightstand. He also recognized a clunky, heavy baseball bookend from Rex's bedroom.

“Well, look who's here, trying to be a hero again!” the contractor announced. He yanked Walt to one side and crammed the gun barrel into his ear.

Walt let out a sharp cry. Wincing, he looked at Ian on the stairs. About halfway up, his young friend was sprawled across the steps with one of his legs impossibly twisted to one side. Sweating and gasping, he clung to one of the banister posts and glared down at the man. Walt guessed he must have collapsed after hurling the bookend down the stairs.

The telephone rang. Walt felt the man's grip around his neck slacken. The killer froze at the sound of the answering machine clicking on in the kitchen. But the gun barrel was still lodged in Walt's ear, grinding away at the skin.

“Let him go,” Ian said weakly. “I'm the one you're after. . . .”

“Shut the fuck up,” the man hissed.

Catching his breath, Walt listened with his good ear as Olivia left a message:
“. . . I'm here in Ballard, trying to track down Collin. I think he might have found out about his grandfather and run away. He told me about this place, a tiny shack in the woods near the beach. The trail's beside an old, white stucco—5818 Gilman—off Seaview. I'm about to head down the trail now. I think Collin may be hiding there. I'm probably running out of time here, so call me. . . .”

“Well, now how about that?” the killer chuckled as Olivia finished her message. He tightened his grip around Walt's neck. “Your sweet piece of a daughter just went and told me where I can find her. And she's right, you know. She's running out of time. You too, old man, you've just become expendable. I don't need you for anything anymore.”

“Wait!” Ian shouted. “Listen to me for just a second—”

The killer took the gun barrel out of Walt's ear. “You're right,” he said, pointing the gun at Ian. “I'll kill you first. Goddamn pain in the—”

The man didn't get another word out—just a gasp as Walt thrust the potato peeler right below his Adam's apple. He plunged it all the way to the handle.

The stunned man fired his gun, hitting a light fixture on the ceiling. Bits of glass rained down on them. Dropping the 38, the man clutched his bleeding throat. He tugged out the peeler, and it fell to the floor. He stumbled back toward the doorway. A scarlet gush came from the hole in his neck, saturating the jacket that wasn't his. He slipped on his own blood and toppled across the threshold. Spasms racked his body, and from his throat came a strange gurgling gasp.

Gaping at him, Walt staggered toward the stairs and clutched the newel post. He turned and looked up at Ian, who looked as if he was ready to pass out. “You okay, my friend?” he asked, out of breath. He nodded at Ian's bent, twisted leg.

Ian clung to the railing. “We better get that address where Olivia went,” he said weakly. “Send a cop car over there. . . .”

In the distance, they could hear a police siren.

At the threshold of the charred front door, Andy Stampler's killer-for-hire twitched one final time. Then he was perfectly still.

An ice pick rolled out of his jacket pocket.

 

 

Olivia recognized the moaning sound Collin sometimes made as he slipped into a trance.

Hiding behind the thick trunk of the towering pine, she watched as Andy Stampler emerged from the shadowy thicket. He walked backwards along another trail, staggering and stumbling as he dragged his half-conscious grandson closer to the little shack. He kept stopping every few steps to gasp for air and readjust his hold on Collin, who might have been so much deadweight. Around Andy's wrist was a plastic bag from an AM/PM minimart. It kept swaying back and forth, hitting Collin against his arm.

Clutching the tire iron in her hand, Olivia tried to figure out what Andy Stampler was doing. She thought about him and Wade Grinnell committing those horrible murders together. Somewhere along the line, Andy must have betrayed him. She remembered her first session with Collin. She'd asked his Wade persona how well he knew Collin.

“I've been here with him for a long, long time—years in fact,”
he'd said.
“I've just been waiting for the right time to come out. This is working out exactly as I wanted. I'm scaring the shit out of him. But I've barely gotten started. I'm really gonna mess with his mind—and then I'll kill him.”

She'd asked him,
“How will you do that without killing yourself?”

He'd chuckled.
“You don't get it, lady,”
he'd said.
“You don't get it at all.”

But she understood now. Wade didn't care about Collin. All this time, it was Collin's grandfather whose mind he was “messing with.”

If Collin—at a young, impressionable age—had heard Wade's voice in a taped confession, then for years and years, he must have buried in his subconscious what he'd heard about his loving grandfather. Wade hadn't come back from the dead. Collin had unwittingly brought him back.

The child actor had no idea about the role he'd taken on.

“We're here, kiddo,” his grandfather said, leaning him against the shed. He braced himself against the cabin, and started wheezing and coughing. Asleep on his feet, Collin stirred. He groaned sluggishly. This close, Olivia could see a red welt in the corner of his forehead. He wasn't in a trance. It looked like his grandfather had clubbed him.

Andy Stampler was still panting as he reached into his pocket and took out several keys. He tried a few on the padlock, but he had to keep tipping the half-conscious Collin back against the shed so he didn't fall on his face. Finally, he found the key to open the padlock. Removing the lock, he pushed open the door. It squeaked on the hinges.

Collin opened his eyes briefly—as if he recognized the sound. But he still looked dazed.

His grandfather took him by the arms and led him inside the shed.

Olivia couldn't figure out what Stampler was doing. She heard a clatter—like someone had fallen in that little hut. Collin groaned loudly.

She watched his grandfather back out of the shed. He took the plastic bag off his wrist, reached inside it, then pulled out a blue and white rectangular tin. The empty plastic bag caught the wind, and fluttered toward her, brushing against the pine tree for a moment before it blew away again.