improve my hearing. I held the framing hammer up by my ear as I turned the knob with the sleeve of my work shirt covering my hand, slow as possible, dreading the smallest noise.
It finally wouldn’t turn any more and I opened the door a crack, dim light spilling through to illumine my hand. After waiting a few seconds I pushed the door just far enough ajar to take a peek through and make sure no one was lurking, then opened it enough to allow me to slink through and close it gingerly behind me.
A short hallway extended in front of me, with doorways to either side. Directly ahead and to the right was a large archway; it would lead to the front room and the front door.
Only two of the hall doors were open, both leading to lit rooms. The light from the doorway closest to me was flickering and dim; the glow from the one at the far end had the steadiness of artificial lighting.
I side-stepped my way to the closest doorway, which was on the left side of the hall. When I got close enough I leaned against the wall next to it, carefully placing my sleeve-covered free hand against the door frame for support. I leaned over to turkey peek around and through the doorway for a split second before pulling back and away as quick as I could.
I took a few seconds analyzing what I’d just glimpsed – a room painted entirely black: floor, walls, ceiling, and even the window panes. The only piece of furniture seemed to be some kind of altar with a statue and burning candles atop it. There’d been nobody in there I could see.
I crossed to the far side of the hall to make it harder for anyone in the room to ambush me. I side-stepped into position opposite the doorway, ready to float away in any direction if the Driver showed himself, or to jump in at him with the framing hammer if he saw me.
I took a better look into the room without moving any closer to the doorway. Two black candles burned on the left side of the altar, and one white candle burned on the right. Shadows pulsed and danced all about the room, created by the candles’ heartless light. Humped on the altar next to the white candle was a freshly severed woman’s breast, its nipple already wilted and pitiful in death.
Smack dab in the middle of the altar was a statue carved out of dark stone, depicting some kind of fantastic creature. It was a hunched miniature monstrosity, a squatting semi-human perversion. What passed for a face was looking to its left, toward the far end of the hallway.
I side-stepped onward to the open archway, and took my next quick turkey peek around. It was a dark empty living room with sofa, coffee table, and dead TV, its normalcy surreal after the altar room.
A wave of relief flooded me when I saw the front door on the far living room wall; it shone like a beacon promising eventual escape from this place. I could feel Sam out there guarding my back, the knowledge warmly comforting.
The smell of mold and decay filled the air, and clumps of mushrooms sprouted between the baseboards and the edges of the living room’s carpeting. Old plastic Revell models cluttered pretty much every horizontal surface; mainly airplanes and cars. Children’s games and toys were stacked on the floor, all decades old and covered in dust.
Were they the Driver’s? Had the boy he’d once been laughed and played within these now decaying walls?
A photo on the coffee table caught my eye, a high school graduation photo of two young men in caps and gowns with arms over each other’s shoulders, both smiling for the camera. One of the boys was a teenage Officer Hoffman; in the picture Rick looked almost human, though that furtive gleeful slyness was already evident in his eyes. The answer to the other boy’s face was a little harder, of the two he’d changed the most in growing up – but after a few more seconds certainty blazed in my mind and I nodded to myself, unsurprised at this revelation.
Next to the high school graduation photo was a box filled with paperwork, and with video and audio cassettes. Even in the gloom I could see something printed on the manila folder on top in my big brother’s almost illegible handwriting.
I wanted to stay there and dig through Karl’s box of evidence and see what he’d died to learn, to touch something he’d touched while alive. But the clock was ticking for Little Moe.
I continued toward the open doorway at the far end of the hall. I moved past each closed door in turn, listening intently as I passed with my war hammer ready and hopeful. But there was no noise, no movement; the rooms behind the doors felt empty as I passed. And then I was at that last open doorway, the light from within spilling out onto the hall floor in a curdled sour puddle.
Chapter 56
I took my lean-over peek and froze in the middle of it: Little Moe lay duct taped to a hospital gurney in the center of a big plastic drop cloth, which was spread across the floor with one edges duct-taped onto the wall partway up as a splash guard. On the floor next to the drop cloth was an open-topped case box half filled with bottles of bleach.
A wheeled operating room table was parked next to Little Moe’s gurney. On it were implements, most of them surgical but some toolbox stuff as well; they looked well cared for; somebody loved them. They glowed with the evidence of their owner’s affections; they smelled of honing oil even through the stench of disinfectant filling the room.
Little Moe saw me right off, his brown eyes pleading above the duct-tape gag. I stood back up straight and leaned against the wall, out of the doorway’s line of sight. I’d seen no sign of the Driver.
A creak came from the direction of the garage and I gulped, but it was only the old house settling.
Fuck this shit, I thought. It’s Clint Eastwood time.
I pushed off the wall and marched through that door with my war hammer up by my ear and at the ready, feeling wild.
That was the instant he made his move. He’d been plastered against the wall inside the left side of the doorway like a big lizard, waiting.
If I’d still had both eyes I would have seen him in my peripheral vision. As it was the only warning I had was Little Moe grunting hysterically past his gag as he pointed to my left with his jerking chin and flashing eyes.
The Driver lunged in, grabbed the wrist of my free hand in a vise-like grip and stabbed a hunting knife up towards my belly in a disemboweling thrust, a snarling grimace on his blond-haired blur of a face. A cry of dismay blurted out of me as I smashed the heavy hammer down onto his knife hand, snapping his wrist bones and redirecting the blade so it missed my stomach and stabbed into my thigh. I hissed at the knife’s bite, and the Driver squealed at his broken wrist as he let go of me and pulled away.
A nonstop ululating yell came out of me as I lunged after him, clumsily due to the knife in my leg. I brought the hammer down onto him once, twice, thrice. I snarled each time the head embedded itself into his chest, shattering his ribs with a series of hollow thuds like I was destroying an overripe watermelon.
The Driver’s arms wind-milled as he thrashed backward to crash spread-eagle on the floor, hitting hard enough I felt the impact through the soles of my feet. Chief Jansen’s breath came in harsh gargling coughs as he lay there with the blond wig dangling off his head, drops of blood spewing from his mouth with each gasp. His left hand pawed at the caved-in dents on his upper chest; his right arm was draped across his waist, the broken wrist bent out of true.
I hovered over Jansen for a few seconds with the hammer, ready to smack him again if he had any more fight in him. But the Chief was through. He was done.
Next to where he lay was a table filled with enough prescription bottles to medicate a zoo. I recognized the names on some of them from prison: Zidovudine and Combivir, Immunitin and Intelence, Agenerase and Fuzeon; a hard-core end run AIDS medication cocktail. I finally understood the Driver’s reckless desperation, why Jansen had been spiraling downward into final rampage.
I turned and limped to Little Moe, then peeled the tape from across his mouth. “How you doing, little man?” I asked.
“Okay,” he whispered, watching Jansen gurgle on the floor.
I shifted over to block Little Moe’s view of the Driver’s mewling agonies and plucked at the duct tape around his wrists. “I’m here to take you home, Little Moe,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be making too many promises if I were you,” Reese said behind me.
