Familiar Lies (12 page)

“Nobody’s been on this road for some time,” Liz said. “That’s why I feel good about it.”

“I don’t.”

“You know what I mean.”

The pitted road seemed to go on forever. They hit a few more serious potholes, most of which Max was able to steer around for the most part. The VW did a decent job, given its design did not lend itself to off-roading.
German engineering
, Max thought wryly.

“There it is,” Liz said, pointing again.

Max looked through the windshield and saw it too. A clearing opened up in front of them, stretching out for as far as the headlights would shine. The cabin sat off the dirt road and to the right, the headlights illuminating a rotting front porch attached to an equally derelict building.

Max drove the car past the cabin and turned around easily in the open area, doubling back toward the cabin. He positioned the headlights on the front of the cabin and brought the car to a stop, lighting up the front of the structure like a stage performer under a spotlight.

The cabin looked like something out of a horror movie. It was the size of a studio apartment with dirty but intact glass windows that reflected light back into their eyes. Rotting wooden shingles lined a roof that appeared otherwise intact and possibly watertight. Its graying exterior showed its age; Max put the place at fifty years old if it was a day.

They stared at the cabin for a long time before speaking.

“We should go in,” Liz said.

Max nodded. While he agreed, he didn’t really
want
to go in. He didn’t want to see whatever might be in that desolate and forgotten building. There could be truth inside, information that he might not want to know about his only son. He suddenly had the mad urge to dash off, to shove the transmission into drive and floor it, speeding away from this awful place while he still could.

Liz opened the passenger door and got out, shutting it behind her. She crossed in front of the car’s headlights as she headed toward the cabin’s front door. That mad urge to flee called to Max again, begging him to run as fast as he could, even if it meant leaving Liz Potter behind. Let her follow this quest to its end. Let her discover the truth about her own daughter. Max had learned enough.

But there would be no going back. No unlearning of what he’d learned. No pretending that he could resume his normal life. Anything resembling a normal life had died along with Josh. His life since Josh’s death had become a repetitious and meaningless existence. He’d just been too sick to see it.

He killed the engine and the headlights. Darkness fell upon them like a choking blanket. With only the partial moon illuminating the area around them, he grabbed his cell phone and got out of the car, trailing behind Liz toward a strange house for the second time that night.

The cabin door had been secured with a padlock, but Max returned to the car and retrieved the tire iron from the trunk. With it, he made short work of the lock. The metal bar slid neatly behind the clasp, allowing Max to pry the screws securing the hasp out of the rotting wood. It also provided Max with the closest thing he had to a weapon.

With the door locked from the outside, he doubted anyone was home. Or at least he hoped not. He retrieved his phone from his front pocket and pressed the home button. He had no cell service. Not a surprise, given how far out they were. He also noticed his battery was at fifty percent. The light would suck the juice quickly, so he had to be judicious with its use.

Max looked at Liz in the moonlight. “Ready?”

Liz nodded.

Max pushed the door to the cabin open slowly, turning on the cell phone’s flashlight and shining the light inside. He stepped carefully through the door. Liz followed closely behind, purse slung over her shoulder.

As he swept the interior of the structure with the phone’s light the beam fell upon a figure standing in the room.

The figure hadn’t been standing in the room after all; it had been hanging. It only appeared to be standing in the darkness of the cabin. Max couldn’t tell how long the body had been there, but it looked horrific. He shined the light on the hanging corpse, following from its feet to the rope around its neck, then up to the ceiling joists where the rope had been tied off.

He trained the light back onto the corpse’s face. A man’s brown mustache sprouted from desiccated, leathery skin stretched tightly over his skull. The corpse’s eyes were gone, rotted away long ago. Combed-over tufts of wispy hair barely covered the corpse’s skull.

“Holy shit…” Liz said.

Max couldn’t speak. Instead, he shut off the light and took a few steps away from the man hanging from the ceiling. He felt his chest tighten. He couldn’t breathe. His heart raced and he felt as if the world was closing in on him. He stumbled and fell to the dirty floor.

“Max, what’s wrong?”

Max panted for air, but it felt like breathing through a straw. Terror coursed through him like a bolt of electricity. He wanted to run, to leave this place as fast as he possibly could, but he couldn’t move. He felt glued to the spot, just waiting for whatever terrible thing that was after him to come and gobble him up.

Liz stooped and held Max’s head. She pulled him close. “You’re having a panic attack. Breathe.”

Max heard the words, but they sounded distant and faint. Liz continued to hold him, rocking him slightly for the next few minutes as he focused on his breathing. Eventually, the overwhelming feeling of terror began to pass. His breathing returned to normal and his heart rate slowed.

Liz helped him to his feet. “Better?”

Max nodded. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened there.”

“It’s okay. I’m freaked out too.” She glanced toward the silhouette of the hanging corpse in the shadows. “What do you make of this?”

“Hard to say.”

“You think he killed himself?”

“I doubt it with the door locked from the outside.” Max shined the light around the room and found a broken window at the back of the cabin. Shattered glass lay on the inside floor. “Unless he climbed in through there.”

“We should check the body. I can do it if you shine the light for me.”

Max wanted to tell her that he would handle it, but he found that he simply couldn’t. Machismo had escaped him altogether, it seemed. He turned on the light and found he still wasn’t prepared to see the corpse’s mummified face again. He looked away while taking deep breaths. It seemed to work.

Liz searched the dead man’s pockets. She found three items of interest.

The first, a note.

The second, a revolver.

The third, a badge.

“He’s a cop,” Liz said.

“Was a cop. I wonder what he was doing out here.”

Liz unfolded the note she’d found in the man’s front breast pocket. It had been folded up and tucked inside, the top pulled out enough to make it easy to find. Max shined the cell phone’s light onto the page and they read the note together.

“I can no longer live with the things that I’ve done,” Liz read aloud from the note. She turned it over. It was blank on the other side.

“That’s it?” Max said.

Liz opened the man’s wallet and looked at his driver’s license. “Andrew Paul.” She held the badge up in the light. “Detective Andrew Paul.”

“A detective. I wonder if he worked with your guy? The detective working Amanda’s case.”

“Name doesn’t ring a bell.” Liz glanced at the corpse. “Do you think Paul was dirty? Maybe he knew what those men were doing to all those kids.”

“And his conscience caught up with him?”

“It would appear.”

Max thought about it. “Maybe this is all for show. What if this wasn’t a suicide?”

“A murder?”

“Maybe they killed him and made it look like a suicide. Maybe he was on to them and followed them here. They caught him and strung him up and then planted a fake suicide note on the body.”

“It’s possible,” Liz said. “But we’d need more to go on than just a theory. By all appearances, this is a dirty cop who killed himself.”

“It could be exactly what it looks like. Either way, we need proof. We need to get pictures of everything; the body, the driver’s license, the badge, the note. All of it. If the same people who cleaned up that basement come back
here
to clean up we’ll have lost everything again.”

“Pictures are better than nothing. It’ll give us something to turn over to the cops.”

They spent the next ten minutes photographing as much of the physical evidence as they could. After getting surprised by Gabe earlier that night, Max felt a sense of urgency about their work. If someone did plan on showing up at the cabin, Max did not want to be there when they did.

When everything had been photographed, Max eyed the cabin door. “We should get moving.”

“Where’s the closest police station?” Liz asked.

“Maybe we should wait until morning.”

“Why wait?”

“We need to be prepared. We have lots of pictures, which is good, but we need a timeline. We need the names of everyone we know is involved. A statement. What we know so far.”

“We can give a statement when we get there.”

“They’ll separate us and try to pit us against each other.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because it’s what cops do. They’re likely to try to implicate us in all this. Our story needs to be straight. A unified front.”

“I don’t like the idea of sitting on this information, Max.”

“We’re tired, both of us. They’ll use that against us. They’ll hold us and question us until we tell them anything they want to hear.”

“You’re paranoid.”

“I’m not. You don’t know much about cops.”

“And you do?”

“I know enough.”

“If we sit on this it gives these creeps time to cover their tracks.”

“They can’t cover up everything, not this quickly.”

“I don’t know…”

“Let’s just get out of this cabin. We can decide later.” Max thought for a moment. “What about the gun? Maybe we should take it.”

“Do you want to get caught with a dead policeman’s service pistol? I’m not paranoid like you, but even I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Besides, I already have one.” Liz reached into her purse and retrieved a small caliber revolver. “I got it after Amanda disappeared.” She looked at it with an expression of gratitude and disgust. “It was a scary time.”

“Is it licensed?”

Liz put the handgun back into her purse. “I have a conceal and carry.”

“That would have been good to know earlier.”

“Let’s just get out of here.” Liz glanced again at the hanging corpse. “This place gives me the creeps.”

They pulled the cabin door closed as best they could, but it remained open a crack without the hasp to keep it closed. It would have to be good enough. They’d tell the cops about busting the lock. Despite Max’s reluctance when it came to the police, he did feel that the truth was their best option, even if that truth meant that he and Liz had broken a few rules along the way.

They climbed back into Max’s car where he placed his phone on the car charger. He was glad to see the little battery indicator turn green and start to go up instead of down.

“When we get back into cell range I want you to text me those pictures,” Liz said. “Both of us should have copies.”

“Good idea.” Max started the car and flipped on the headlights, again bathing the ominous cabin in bright, halogen light. Knowing exactly what was inside made it all the more frightening.

He pulled out and took to the dirt road again, heading away from their gruesome find and back to civilization. After another bumpy ride out the dirt road, they eventually merged back onto the two-lane road from which they’d come. Even as he pulled away and glanced in the rearview he could hardly see the entrance to the cabin road. It was tough to find, even if you knew where to look.

After a few minutes, they got their first traces of cell signal back.

“Two bars,” Liz said. “We’re back on the grid.”

“I never thought I’d be happy to hear anybody say that.”

“A Luddite, are you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not much of a tweeter?”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

Liz chuckled. “Don’t worry, you’re not missing much.”

“I didn’t exactly grow up in the social media generation.”

“Amanda did. She was a net-aholic.”

Max smiled. “So was Josh. He was online all the time.” His smile faltered. “Now I look back and wonder just who he was talking to.”

“Yeah.”

“I wonder how much I didn’t see,” Max continued. “I worked a lot. I guess I missed the signs.”

“Don’t beat yourself up.”

“How could something like this have gone on right under my nose? The stuff Josh was involved in…and I was oblivious.”

“What about your ex-wife? Did she notice anything?”

“I haven’t talked to her about any of this.”

“I see.”

“Things escalated quickly after I found Josh’s letter.” He paused, deciding what he could tell this woman that he’d met only earlier this same day. A stranger, but also a woman who’d suffered the same losses of spouse and child Max had. “I don’t want to bring her into this.”

“She might already be involved.”

“You mean you think she could be part of all this?”

“No, of course not. But you said that somebody stole the video from your house. That means they know who you are, so it stands to reason they could also track down your ex-wife.”

“I hadn’t thought about that. Everything just went bad so fast.”

“You should call her.”

“I will. Tomorrow.”

“I’m serious. Regardless of what happened between you and her—which is none of my business—she has a right to know what’s going on.”

“What really is going on? We have more questions than answers right now.”

“She needs to know to be careful at least.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.” She picked up Max’s phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Give me your passcode.”

“Why?”

“I’m sending those pictures you took to my phone.”