A Blind Eye (23 page)

S
arah threw her bike on top of her sister’s and started up the kitchen stairs. Two steps up, she stopped. The inside door hung open. She opened her mouth to call but quickly changed her mind. Instead she stood still, cocked an ear, and listened. Nothing. Not a sound. And then…she heard her mother’s voice coming from down the hall, talking to herself in that singsong voice Sarah hated so much, the one she used when she thought nobody else could hear. Only this time it was different, like she was doing something else at the same time. Something hard. Something she was straining to do. “Come on now,” she was saying. “Just gonna move you out here. Come on now. Easy does it. That’s it. Come on….”

When the words suddenly got louder, Sarah panicked and stepped behind the kitchen door. She waited for a second and then peeked around the corner; her mother was bent over, backing into the room, dragging something. Somebody! Dragging somebody by the feet. The air stuck in Sarah’s throat. She clapped a hand over her mouth and watched in horror as her mother pulled the rest of the body into the room and the door swung shut with a clatter. She shrank back into the corner. As she flattened herself against the wall, her hand came into contact with something cold and hard. She looked to the left and saw the big pipe Papa made for the new stove leaning against the wall. Then she peeked around the door again.

The body had a white Meijer’s bag taped over its head. No matter, though. She knew the shirt. Mama May had given it to Papa last Christmas. Sarah choked back a sob and pulled her head back behind the door. Mama was talking again. “Just gonna lay you down right here,” she was saying. “Make it look like you was working on the stove when something went wrong. Something with the gas. Just a terrible tragedy. Killed the both of you.”

As she listened to the sound of her mother’s voice, Sarah could feel her anger rising. Feel the heat as it colored her neck and then her ears, until she could hear the power of her own blood and feel her heart beating in her temples like a drum.

And then the noise. The loud hissing. And almost at once the stink of gas filling the room. Sarah peeked again. Her mother had her back to Sarah’s hiding place. She had a dish towel mashed against her face as she pulled tools from the red metal box. Sarah’s eyes began to water. She stifled a cough.

When Tommie de Groot bent down to heave his captive into the trunk, Corso uncoiled himself and head-butted him in the face, sending Tommie down onto the seat of his pants. Tommie got to his feet, rubbed his face, then kicked Corso in the head. “You gonna pay for that later, you son of a bitch,” he said. “As god is my witness you will.” He pulled back his foot again and kicked Corso in the solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs, sending Corso into near convulsions as he gasped for air through his tape-covered mouth. Tommie grabbed the shuddering Corso by the lapels and managed to heave the upper half of his body into the trunk of the car. He paused to rub his face again, then grabbed Corso’s feet and swung the rest of the body over the rim. The car rocked on its springs as Corso fell down into the cavernous trunk.

She was running blind. No headlights. Flying down the long washboard driveway. One hand on the wheel, the other pressing the cell phone to the side of her head. “Could I have your name, please?” the police dispatcher said for the third time.

“Please,” Dougherty said, “it’s an emergency. I’m at two-seven-six-five-four RFD Ten. M. Fulbrook is on the mailbox. Send somebody please.”

“I can’t dispatch until I—”

Dougherty dropped the phone onto the seat. The tinny voice coming through the speaker grew more urgent in its squawking. She reached over and pushed

STOP
until the light went out.

Another quarter-mile and the house came into view. Wasn’t until she saw the house that she realized she didn’t have a plan. Didn’t have a clue what she might be walking into, so she turned off the engine and silently coasted the last hundred yards. She used the last of her momentum to wheel the car in a wide circle. Grabbed the poster from the passenger seat and left the car facing back toward the road. Just in case. Got out and carefully pressed the door closed. Lights were on both upstairs and down. The room at the downstairs front of the house showed the flickering kaleidoscopic images of a television bouncing off the ceiling and walls. She moved that way. Wincing as the rocks in the driveway cut into her bare feet.

She stepped over a brick border into a flower bed, got up on tiptoe, and peeked into the room. The gas fire burning in the fireplace added to the flickering in the dimly lit parlor, where an older woman lay stretched out in a black La-Z-Boy, her mouth hanging open, her arms limp. Dougherty took two steps to her right and checked the TV.

Survivor
.

Corso lay on his side, staring up at the gray night sky. His senses were fading. He knew he was in danger of drifting off into a blank nothingness from which he would never return, so he worked hard to hear the gurgling of gasoline being poured into the tank. Forced himself to count the number of times the gas cans spewed their contents down the hole. And forced himself to notice the sound of the empty cans being tossed aside, and the tuneless whistle and the scrape of boots on the ground. He flared his nostrils and inhaled the heady gasoline fumes, hoping the odor would help bring him around. He had no doubt whatsoever. To drift off was to die. And then the light wavered, and Tommy de Groot was there looking out from his little head, down into the trunk at Corso, before tossing in a pick and shovel and slamming the lid.

E
mily’s throat was on fire. Her eyes burned like the time she rubbed poison oak into them on a camping trip. The room was sideways. Spinning. Everything seemed like it might come apart and float off like in the cartoons. She stuck one foot out of bed, and before she knew it, she fell on the floor, dragging her bedcovers with her. She lay on the floor, trying to blink her vision back to normal, but the room still looked like a fun house. Her head spun as she thrashed her way out of the covers and crawled across the carpet to the door. From downstairs, she could hear a loud roaring and the sound of her mother’s voice. She tried to get to her feet but couldn’t, so she crawled down the hall on her hands and knees. At the top of the stairs, she again tried to rise and again was unable to get her legs to cooperate. “Papa,” she croaked. The roaring from the kitchen seemed to get louder. Louder even than the roaring in her ears as she tried to back down the stairs on her hands and knees, only to lose her grip and go sliding to the bottom on her belly, where she landed in a tangle of arms and legs. Her lungs felt as if they were frozen. Tears rolled down her face. She couldn’t stop coughing as she crawled toward the back door.

The limp was gone. Mama May came down the stairs at a lope. “They’re not upstairs,” she said, her face a mask of concern. “Must have snuck back home while I was napping.” She shouldered her way out onto the porch and stood beside Dougherty. She pointed out over the fields at a brightly lit house in the distance.

“That’s my son’s place over there.”

Dougherty didn’t wait. She turned and began running for the car, with the older woman hard on her heels. They jumped into the rental car together. Mama May was still trying to close the passenger door when Dougherty threw the car into Drive and went peeling out toward the highway. Wasn’t until they bounced out onto Route 10 that Mama May realized she was still clutching the poster in her gnarled hand.

Sarah tiptoed out from behind the door, holding the pipe in front of her like an offering. The sound of rushing gas filled the room, masking her footsteps as she crept across the linoleum. The smell of the propane was overwhelming now. It burned in her chest like cold fire as she moved across the room. Her mother was coughing and wheezing as she worked. Her hands shook as she peeled the tape from the bottom of the Meijer’s bag and pulled the plastic sack from Papa’s head.

Must have been a change in the light. Or maybe some vestigial survival instinct kicked in right at the last moment. Either way, Teresa Fulbrook looked up for the last time and made eye contact with her oldest daughter just as the pipe began its swift descent. The first blow seemed merely to stun her. She rocked back and then reached for the top of her head as if to assess the damage. She was still in that position when the second blow hit her full in the face, shattering her nose and both cheekbones, sending her sprawling to the floor with a look of disbelief etched on her bloody face. Sarah brought the pipe down again and again, beating her mother’s head to jelly, until she was no longer able to breathe. At that point she used one hand to clutch the pipe to her chest and the other to cover her nose and mouth as she grabbed the car keys from the hook next to the refrigerator and staggered off toward her bike in the backyard.

Tommie de Groot dusted his hands together. He pulled open the driver’s door on the Pontiac and got into the car. The seat was set for Teresa, so he had to find the handle and move it back to accommodate his long legs. Wasn’t until he reached to start the engine that he realized he didn’t have the keys. “Dumb shit,” he muttered to himself as he got back out, slamming the door hard in frustration. He stopped alongside the car and pulled a plastic baggie of tobacco out of his back pocket. He pulled a rolling paper from the baggie and shook it full of tobacco. He set the baggie on the trunk lid and used his free hand to tamp the tobacco into place before running his tongue along the edge and using the side of his finger to roll the package into a perfect cigarette. He stuffed the baggie back into his pocket and started for the house. “Be smokin’ wherever the hell I want now, won’t I, Gordie baby,” he said to himself with a chuckle as he walked up the flagstone walk toward the kitchen door. “Don’t gotta listen to none of your no-smokin’ bullshit no more, now do we?” He bounced the hand-rolled cigarette in his palm as he walked. “Son of a bitch got what was comin’ to him,” he said with a smile.

S
arah burst through the back door and threw herself onto the brown winter grass, her chest heaving, her eyes burning and so full of water the world was little more than a kaleidoscope of broken glass. She gulped air like a marathon runner. Wiped her eyes with her sleeve just in time to notice she wasn’t alone. Emily.

Clad only in a T-shirt and underpants, her sister tottered around the corner of the house and disappeared from view. The question screamed in Sarah’s brain. “Did she see? Did she see?” Over and over. Each time louder than the time before, until Sarah scrambled to her feet and started after Emily. Then stopped and ran back. Picked up the car keys and thrust them in her pocket. Then picked up the pipe and followed her sister around the corner.

As he strutted up the walk, Tommie de Groot tried to remember what movie the line came from. Something he’d seen while he was in the marines. In his mind’s eye, he could see the crazy guy’s face. Famous guy. Big muckety-muck movie star. Had an ax in his hands. Head stuck through a hole in a door saying, “Honey…I’m home.” Who the hell was that? he wondered as he pulled open the screen door and stepped into the kitchen. In one smooth motion, he flipped the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and flicked the top of the match with his thumb. His central nervous system had an instant to record the scene…to see the woman, her head a pulp of blood and broken bone, stretched out on her back beside Gordie on the floor. Just enough time to send a message to his brain before the world exploded and the terrible wave of blue flame washed over him like the lava fires of hell. His last thought and his last word were the same.

“Mama,” he cried as he burst into flame. “Oh, Mama.”

Dougherty jerked the wheel violently to the right, sending the car skidding onto the loose gravel. Wasn’t until she regained control that she noticed the bank of red lights glued to her back bumper and heard the screaming of the police car siren above the engine noise. The old woman sat ramrod straight in the passenger seat, holding the overhead handle in a death grip, her face the color of cement.

When Meg Dougherty snapped her attention back to the driveway, she had only a second to take it all in. The car with the trunk open. The white pickup truck. What was that at the rear of the car? Girls? And then—in an instant—the scene erupted—the house went up in a ball of blue flame. The force of the explosion sent a tall figure staggering backward out the side door. Completely engulfed in flames, the figure ran in a tight circle, wildly flapping his arms, like he was trying to take off, and then falling to the ground where he continued to burn. Wasn’t until the police car killed the siren that she could hear the continuous high-pitched scream coming from the burning ember of a man writhing in the driveway. And the hissing…the awful hissing of frying meat. Dougherty began to sob.

D
ougherty struggled with the wheelchair. As she pushed Corso along, wiry tufts of winter grass sent the front wheels spinning, changing her course, forcing her to lean her weight on the handles and make constant corrections.

“At first I thought it was you,” she said. “Burning to death, right there before my eyes.” He heard her breath catch. “You actually could hear him hiss…like frying bacon. It was…” The words escaped her.

Corso closed his eyes. He could see it all…feel it all…like it was naked and pressed against his skin. The warmth spreading all over his body as he lay in the darkness. The sound of Tommie de Groot talking to himself as he walked away from the car. Then the trunk lid unexpectedly opening, blinking his eyes, and the girl looking down at him in amazement. The way her face changed from fear to wonder and then to—what was that look on her face as she raised her arms above her head? Was it terror? At the time it had seemed the most malignant expression Corso had ever seen, feral and full of fury as she raised what seemed a silver sword, trembling with anticipation, fey with the prospect of splitting Corso’s skull like a piece of rotten fruit. And then the whoosh of the explosion swept her away, like the swipe of a giant hand, rocking the car, clattering debris all over the metal skin, before the tempest gave way to the wail of the siren and finally to the single high-pitched scream of agony that seemed to linger in the air like cannon smoke.

“I came to terms with it,” Corso said out of the blue.

“With what?”

“Dying.” He could feel the hitch in her stride. “Lying there in the trunk…I don’t know how to say it, but I had some sort of cosmic experience…some-thing where it was okay with me that I was about to die. Like I was going somewhere I’d been before, and it was okay with me. As long as it didn’t hurt too much or take too long, I was ready to go.”

She didn’t trust herself to say anything. For the past week, he’d been more morose and withdrawn than she’d ever seen him. She’d attributed it to the effects of shock and trauma, but somewhere in her heart, she’d had a niggling that Corso had been forever changed in some fundamental way. That the man they’d pulled from the trunk of that old car was not the same man who’d gone in.

“Don’t talk like that,” she said finally. “It scares me.”

“No…it’s a good thing,” he said. “There’s a kind of peace to it…like maybe everything’s going to be all right after all…like…”He stopped. Laughed at himself. “Listen to me,” he said bitterly. “I should know better. The only experts on death are the dead, and they been kind of quiet lately.”

She pushed harder now, forcing the chair forward across the uneven ground. They crested a small rise. The graveside assembly came into view. Dougherty stopped.

“We keep ending up in the graveyard,” she said.

“Almost like we belong here,” Corso added.

She smacked him in the back of the head. “Cut that out.”

A gathering of about fifty people stood sad and stately beneath the trees. The grave diggers had lined the hole in the ground with canvas. A flower-strewn bronze casket was to be Gordon Fulbrook’s final vault. The crowd parted for Special Agent Molina, who detached himself from the gathering and ambled over to Corso and Dougherty. “Good to see you’re still with us,” he said to Corso.

“What are you hearing?” Corso wanted to know.

“I’m hearing it’s the damnedest crime scene anybody’s ever processed.”

“How’s that?”

Molina checked the area. Bent at the waist and spoke into Corso’s ear. “Nothing makes sense,” he said. “The hubby died of asphyxiation. No burning of the lungs, which means he was dead before the place went up. No scarring either, which means he didn’t breathe propane before the place blew up.”

“You’re saying the husband was dead before the whole thing even started?” Dougherty said.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Molina said. He looked around again. “With our girl Sissy, or Teresa, or Louise, or”—he waved a disgusted hand—“whoever the hell she is, things get even weirder. She had four separate skull fractures, a broken nose, and both her cheekbones collapsed.”

“Somebody beat her to death,” Corso said.

“Somebody beat her bad enough to kill her, but ended up just leaving her unconscious. Official cause of death was having her lungs incinerated by breathing burning propane.” Dougherty winced. “No…no…” Molina chided her. “Now we get to the good part.” He pointed at Corso. “The car he was in, right, that old Pontiac…”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Out behind the car, they find a four-foot length of galvanized pipe, fittings at each end. A real sturdy piece of plumbing, about the size and weight of a baseball bat. The local supplier says Gordon Fulbrook was do-it-yourselfing himself a new stove.” He waved a hand. “Anyway, the lab goes over the pipe, and guess what they find?”

“It’s what caved in Mommy’s skull,” Corso said.

“Bingo,” Molina said. He looked up at Dougherty and furrowed his brow. “Did I mention the younger daughter? Emily?”

“I don’t believe you did,” Dougherty said.

“She was found unconscious in the grass. Right behind the car Corso was in. Big-time skull fracture to the top of her head. Forensics says she was dragged around the side of the house to the position she was found in.” He held up a finger. “Her blood and hair were also present on the piece of pipe.”

“How’s that work?” Corso asked.

“You tell me,” Molina said.

“She well enough to talk?”

“Spoke to her myself.”

“What’s she say?”

“She says she sneaked home from Grandma’s to see her papa. Says her mother made her take a couple of pills and sent her to bed. All she remembers after that is waking up, not being able to breathe. She thinks she fell down the stairs. Last thing she remembers is coming around in the backyard. After that, it’s all a blank to her.”

“Get any prints off the pipe?”

“Everybody’s—Papa, Mama, Tommie, the older daughter, the salesman who sold it…” He threw up his hands in resignation. “Seventy-some-odd prints on the damn thing.”

“What about the older daughter?”

“Sarah.”

“What about her?” Dougherty asked.

“She’s the hero. Saved her little sister from the fire. Had her picture on the front page of the local paper the other day. I hear she’s got a CNN interview scheduled for tomorrow.”

“What’s the official version gonna be?”

“We’re leaving that to local authorities,” Molina said.

“Which means what?”

“Which means we can’t come up with a scenario that satisfies us, so we’re gonna keep out of it. We’ve closed the Rosen case. That was our end of the business.”

“What are the locals saying?”

“They like Tommie de Groot for the pipe wielder. They’re thinking he had a falling-out with his sister and clubbed her to death. They’re thinking Tommie maybe thought the little girl had seen and tried to off her too. Maybe broke a gas pipe in the process. Next thing he knows, the whole thing goes kablooie.”

“I don’t think so,” Corso said. “Tommie was outside with me. Gassing up the car. Unless I passed out or something, I don’t think he had the time.”

Molina studied the horizon. “Tell the locals.”

“I’ll be here another month.”

Molina shrugged. “The holidays in the heartland,” he said with a smile.

“It’s starting,” Dougherty whispered.

She was right. A priest in full regalia had arrived at the gravesite and begun to read from a Bible. Molina gestured toward the wheelchair.

“May I?” he asked Dougherty. She stepped back and allowed Molina to take hold of the handles. The three of them arrived at the graveside just as the priest was getting warmed up. His voice rose as he described the heavenly paradise for which Gordon Fulbrook was bound. Across the semicircle of mourners, May Fulbrook was seated in a metal folding chair. She held a lace hankie to her face as the priest spoke. On her right, seated in an identical chair, her granddaughter Sarah was holding up remarkably well for a kid who had just lost both her parents. As the priest droned on, her head turned toward the newly arrived trio. Corso removed his sunglasses and set them in his lap. When he looked up again, Sarah Ful-brook was staring at him, her pale eyes cold and steady. Not a hint of grief. Not a hint of anything.

Could be he was wrong. Could be the strain of the past week had colored his vision, but…in that thirty seconds of eye contact before she turned her head away, Corso could feel her disdain. Feel her mocking them all for their weakness and stupidity. A chill ran down his spine like a mouse. It got worse when she turned those white eyes on him again and nearly smiled. This time, it was Corso who turned away.

Twenty minutes later it was over. The mourners drifted away in threes and fours, until only Molina, Dougherty, and Corso remained. A pair of grave diggers arrived on an orange backhoe.

“Nice service,” Molina said. They all agreed. He shook hands with Dougherty first and then Corso. “I’m betting this is going to be a book,” he said as he shook Corso’s hand.

For the first time in a week, Corso smiled. “Count on it.”

Corso and Dougherty watched as Molina walked down the drive and disappeared from view. Corso bent forward in the chair and scooped a pair of acorns from the ground. The driver raced the backhoe’s engine, sending a plume of oily diesel smoke into the air. Dougherty grabbed the handles and began to push Corso across the grass.

She watched as he picked the outer shell from one of the acorns, until all he had left was a smooth little oval with a pointy top. “Storing nuts for the winter?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I was thinking how acorns never fall far from the tree.”