The Watcher in the Wall, page 18
< 81 >
Gruber found a roll of duct tape. Taped Donovan to the computer chair, wrists and ankles. The kid was bleeding where Gruber had slashed him, a couple deep cuts to the stomach. He’d soaked through his shirt, made a mess of the floor.
“Good thing I never liked that carpet,” Gruber told him. “Shit, I think you might need an ambulance.”
Donovan moaned, something unintelligible. Gruber laughed, patted the kid’s head. Tested the tape, made sure his limbs were bound tight. Then he closed the curtains. Stood back and tried to work through his options.
The police had tracked Dylan. They would track him down next. He would need to come up with a plan.
Gruber knew he could disappear. He’d done it before, in Cleveland, and he could do it again. Vanish from this place by tomorrow morning, find somewhere new, somewhere better. Montana, maybe. Colorado. Start over. Lie low. Fly under the radar, so the cops couldn’t find him.
He could do it, but it would be difficult. He was still flat freaking broke. He didn’t have enough money for food, let alone a bus ticket. Let alone a new stake at a better life. Anyway, something Donovan had said earlier was sticking with him. Something a little more important than just making an escape.
Gruber scanned the pictures on the wall, Sarah and Dylan and the others, scanned until he’d found Earl’s mug shot. The thug had mentioned something about Rico Jordan paying Earl a visit.
Gruber set the revolver down on the computer table. Picked up the knife and stood over Donovan. Slapped him a couple times, hard, relished the way the kid flinched and drew back.
“Now listen to me,” he said. Held the knife up so Donovan could see it. “We just proved this whole violence kick isn’t really your game, so you play nice with me, and I’ll go easy on you, understand?”
Donovan didn’t speak, but he nodded a little. Gruber figured it was as good as he was going to get.
“You said your boss checked in on my stepfather,” he said. “I need you to help me find him.”
Donovan moaned again. Looked down at his stomach, his crimson-soaked T-shirt. “I don’t know, man,” he said. “I don’t know anything about that dude.”
Gruber rolled up the sleeve of the kid’s T-shirt. Took the knife and drew a stripe down his arm, long and deep. Donovan screamed. Gruber slapped him again.
“My stepfather,” he said. “Somebody in your crew knows where to find him. I want to know what they know.”
Donovan panted. Gasped, tears in his eyes, snot and drool and whatever else. “Rodney,” he said, low and desperate. “My boss. He knew a guy who did time with your old man. You call him.”
Gruber patted the thug down. Found his phone in the front pocket of his jeans. Pulled it out, swiped it unlocked. “You call him,” he said. Held up the knife again. “Don’t say anything stupid.”
< 82 >
Victor Rodney’s phone was ringing. The call display read DONOVAN. He answered. “Took you long enough.”
A long silence. A ragged breath. “Rodney.” Donovan’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Shit, man, I’m sorry.”
Rodney snapped his fingers, and Marcus looked up from his magazine, his brow furrowed.
“What the fuck happened to you?” Rodney asked Donovan. “Where are you? What’s going on?”
Donovan didn’t get a chance to answer. Someone else had the phone, the same guy who’d called Rodney the first time around. Gruber. The whack job. This was bad news.
“I want to know about my stepfather,” Gruber said, his voice January cold. “You tell me what I need to know, I’ll go easy on this kid here.”
Marcus was watching. Caught the expression on Rodney’s face, shot one back, like, What gives? Rodney shook his head, said nothing.
“You’re this kid’s boss, aren’t you?” Gruber asked. “He said someone in his crew looked up my stepfather. Earl Sanderson. You know someone who knows him?”
Rodney blinked back to the moment. Found his voice. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, dude, that was me.”
“So where the shit did you find him?”
Rodney hesitated again. Pictured Donovan in Gruber’s hands, barely more than a kid. Supposed to be an easy job, hell, initiation to the crew. He swallowed.
“Louisville,” he told Gruber. “Indiana side of the river. Town called New Albany, just across the bridge.”
“I know New Albany,” Gruber replied, as if Rodney should know that. “I grew up twenty miles from there. You got an address?”
“Hell no, I don’t have an address,” Rodney said. “Was a shitty little apartment building, real close to the bridge. Some bar on the first floor, something called the Rusty Nail.”
“An apartment,” Gruber said. “New Albany.”
“Yeah,” Rodney said. “Third floor, I remember. Last door on the left.” He paused. “You going to give me back my boy, or what?”
“Yeah, you can have him,” Gruber said. Then he laughed. “Come get him.”
The line went dead.
>>>
Donovan was watching Gruber as he ended the call. He seemed a little more alert, a little more awake.
“You told them where you’re going,” the thug said. “They’ll just send more guys down to meet you.”
Gruber laughed. “Let them come. If they’re all as hard as you, I shouldn’t have a problem.”
He picked up the knife again, relished the way Donovan’s eyes went wide at the sight of it. Was about to try and coax another scream out of him when his own phone buzzed, loud, on the computer table.
A text message, from DarlingMadison. Where r u? I’m worried. Let me know you’re okay.
Gruber’s eyes found DarlingMadison’s picture on the wall above the computer, sullen and shy, pretty and vulnerable, hiding herself from the camera. Had an idea, a two-birds, one-stone situation. Madison wanted to see him. She was worried. Maybe they could meet after all, after he looked in on Earl.
If the police had found Dylan, they could find Madison, too. Gruber would have to move quickly to keep the girl safe. She was special. He didn’t want to lose her, not before they’d had their fun.
Gruber turned back to Donovan. Advanced on the kid, watching him struggle.
“I’m sorry,” Gruber told him, though he wasn’t, not really. “Anyway, you brought this on yourself.”
He plunged the knife into Donovan’s stomach once, then again. Put the knife to his throat and cut across, like in the movies. Stood over the chair, and watched Donovan die.
It was fun, he decided. The doing was fun. It was probably just as fun as the watching, maybe more.
< 83 >
Madison was walking when her phone began to vibrate. She was tracing the banks of the Hillsborough River through Tampa, enjoying the sunset, about the only place she could find any peace and quiet and calm in her new hometown.
When she’d first started coming here, to the river’s edge, she’d thought about jumping in, filling her pockets with stones like Virginia Woolf, drowning herself. She’d walked for hours, plotting her demise, until one day she realized she didn’t actually want to die here at all, that she really just enjoyed being close to nature, the stillness of the water and the lush, quiet forest that lined the banks. She liked it here, she realized. It was a strange feeling to have.
She blamed her change in attitude on Brandon, whom she blamed for just about every positive change in her life. Madison didn’t hate herself when she looked in the mirror anymore, found reasons to smile now, collected funny and weird stories to pass along to him when they talked, told him about her classmates, her mother and her sisters.
There’s this guy in my class who I think has a crush on me, she’d told him. Paul Dayton. He’s always following me around, asking about you.
What do you tell him? Brandon wondered.
Just that you’re cooler than anyone here, Madison said. And that I can’t wait to meet you and run away with you.
I can’t wait, too, Brandon wrote. But tell this Paul guy to mind his own business, k?
Oh, I do, she wrote back. I make sure he knows his place.
• • •
Anyway, her phone was buzzing. Madison pulled it from her purse, checked the screen. A phone call, from Brandon. She smiled as she accepted the call. “Hey, you.”
“Hi.” There was an edge to Brandon’s voice, a breathlessness, something off. “Are you alone? Can we talk?”
Madison found a clearing overlooking the river. Sat down. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, of course. What’s up?”
“I’m sorry I’m calling like this,” Brandon said. “It’s just . . . something happened.” He paused. “My parents found out about us. What we’re planning to do. They’re trying to stop us.”
Madison felt a sudden hollowness in her stomach, an empty sort of panic. Everything she’d hoped for, all the ways this crazy boy from Iowa had changed her life, had made her happy, and now he was going to tell her it was too good to be true.
Well, obviously. Madison fought the urge to cry, to kick something, to throw her phone in the river. “Okay . . .” she said.
“They found my account on the suicide forum,” Brandon said. “They read all our messages and they know about our plan. They tried to call the doctors on me, the straitjacket people. They want to hospitalize me and drug me up so everything’s numb and normal and awful. I don’t want that.”
“No,” Madison said. “No, none of it, never. I’d rather die.”
“Exactly,” Brandon said. He exhaled. “Anyway, I got away. I’m calling from the road, but they know I’m coming for you, Madison. They’re probably calling the Tampa Police Department right now. You have to get away.”
Shit.
Madison looked around. The river barely moving, the trees hanging over the banks, dark shadows beneath, the last light of day disappearing fast. The muted noise of the city in the distance, the hum of traffic. A siren.
“They’re coming for you, Madison,” Brandon was saying. “Sooner or later, they’ll show up at your house with a straitjacket and a suitcase full of pills, and they might as well be giving you a lobotomy. You’ll be done.
“We have to run,” Brandon continued. “Both of us. You have to meet me somewhere safe, okay?”
Madison felt like she was drunk, or high or something, suddenly weightless and drifting and floating off the ground. Couldn’t parse what Brandon was trying to tell her.
“Meet you,” she said. “Yeah, okay. But where?”
“Kentucky,” Brandon said. “Louisville. I have a friend there who can hook us up with fake IDs, money, whatever we need. We meet there tomorrow night and then we drive off together. Disappear. Go out with a bang, okay?”
Tires squealed behind Madison. She flinched, spun, watched an old pickup truck lurch around a corner. Realized her palms were sweating. Louisville, Kentucky. Tomorrow night.
“You have to go now,” Brandon said. “You can’t go home again, do you understand? It’s too risky.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Couldn’t believe it was true. And at the same time, she figured she’d always known it would come down to something like this. Something crazy. Nothing about her relationship with Brandon was normal.
This, though, was bona fide bonkers.
“I need you, Madison,” Brandon said, and she could hear it in his voice. “If you don’t come with me, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Madison blinked back to the present. Barely hesitated. Skip town to save the boy of her dreams, or stay put and let him suffer alone?
“I’m in,” she told him. “Don’t do anything scary, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
< 84 >
Gruber ended the call. Pocketed his cell phone and walked out of his house. Came back an hour later with a jerry can full of gasoline, set it down beside him and composed a text message.
See you tomorrow, he told Madison. Can’t wait. P.S. Buy a burner cell phone at the drugstore and text me the number. Then ditch your real phone. Otherwise, they can follow you. They’ll go crazy when they find out you’re gone.
He pressed send. Then he went into his living room and rifled through Donovan’s pockets until he found the kid’s wallet. A couple hundred bucks in cash, an Ohio driver’s license, a buy-nine-get-one-free coupon to some Cleveland sandwich shop. Gruber took the cash, stuffed the rest back. Tore Earl’s picture off the wall, stuffed it in his pocket with the cash. Deleted everything on his computer, wiped the hard drive as clean as he could, every chat log, screenshot, saved password and username. All of the evidence, gone.
Then he picked up the jerry can, unscrewed the lid, and poured gasoline all over the machine. All over the rug, the table, the living room couch, all over Donovan’s body. Made a trail with the gasoline through the kitchen, into his bedroom, the fumes overpowering, wafting through the house, making him light-headed and dizzy.
When he’d doused the whole place in gasoline, he set down the empty can. Walked to the front door and surveyed the living room, Donovan in the computer chair, his arms and legs still taped tight, the blood everywhere on his clothes, his eyes still half open. And around him, the litter everywhere, old junk-food and candy bar wrappers, soda cans, the fumes from the gas making Gruber’s eyes water. The house had been his prison for too many years. He wouldn’t miss it.
He took a lighter from his pocket, a cheap gas station Bic. Flicked it until the flame appeared. Knelt down to the carpet and touched the flame to a wet spot, a puddle of gasoline, jumped back as the puddle ignited.
“Whoo.” Laughing now, his eyebrows singed, the heat fast and intense, the flames starting to grow. He stepped out onto the lawn, watched the place go up, black smoke and roaring flames, the cheap little house a firetrap to begin with, never mind the accelerant.
Satisfied that the house would burn to bare ash, he turned away and crossed the lawn to the sidewalk, where Donovan’s old white Lincoln sat waiting by the curb, Gruber’s suitcase beside it, stuffed with those few belongings he valued: some clothing, a picture of Madison, his voice disguiser, and the knife.
Whistling to himself, unable to contain his excitement, Gruber picked up his suitcase and chucked it into the passenger seat of the Lincoln. Turned the key in the ignition and idled away down the street, left the house burning behind him. He would find Earl tomorrow. By nightfall, he’d be with DarlingMadison. He couldn’t wait to show her the real Brandon.
< 85 >
The burner phone more or less exhausted Madison’s meager savings.
She unpacked the phone from its casing, powered it on. Spent twenty minutes stealing electricity from an outlet in a McDonald’s, waiting for the phone to charge to full power. Texted Brandon the new number, and a few minutes later the burner phone buzzed.
This is me, the text message read. Text me when you get on the bus. I’ll be waiting in Louisville.
Kk, Madison wrote. See you soon. She powered off the phone to save the battery and left the McDonald’s.
She couldn’t go home. If Brandon was right, the police in Iowa would have already called Tampa. They could be trying to find her. She wouldn’t risk going back to her house, not with so much at stake, but she needed money; she was broke. She needed some way to buy a bus ticket to Louisville.
Madison stood in the parking lot outside the McDonald’s and thought about it. Watched traffic stream by, headlights, cars pull in and park, people climb out of their cars and walk into the restaurant. Couples, families. Single men.
She could rob someone, she supposed. She would need some kind of weapon, and let’s face it, she wasn’t exactly the robbery type. Hell, the thought of riding a bus all the way to Kentucky by herself was scary enough. She didn’t need to be committing any felonies.
So, no robberies. Madison walked away from the McDonald’s, the new burner phone weighing heavy in her purse. She thought about texting Brandon back, asking if he could send her some money for the ticket, through Western Union or PayPal or whatever. But that would create a paper trail, wouldn’t it? If people were really looking for them, they would figure out where Madison was headed pretty quick.
Anyway, she kind of wanted to show Brandon she could make it to Kentucky on her own. Prove she was someone he could count on, independent and resourceful, a good partner. That left only one option.
Madison pulled out her old phone and opened Facebook. Typed a name into the search box and found who she wanted.
Need to see u, she wrote in a private message. Urgent. Can we meet?
< 86 >
Dylan Price didn’t know much that Stevens and Windermere hadn’t already figured out.
They found him gathered with his family inside their handsome brownstone, an FBI special agent with them, a woman from the local office named Pickford. Stevens had been in touch with her from Phoenix, asked her to keep an eye on the situation before he and Windermere arrived.
Douglas Price stood by the window, looking like he’d paced a track in his expensive carpet. He was a large man, imposing, his wife and son much smaller. Dylan sat, sullen, on an easy chair, staring anywhere but at his father. Windermere could see the bruises on his neck from the noose.
“I’m sorry I hung up on you,” he told Windermere, his voice flat. Hollow. “I know you were trying to help.”
Windermere studied the kid, figured he was probably pretty pissed off at her, ruining his big plans and keeping him around on this earthly plane a little longer. “I’m just glad it worked out,” she told him. “I know you don’t feel it right now, but we’re glad you’re still with us.”
Douglas Price snorted from the window. “He’ll be paying for the doors your officers kicked down,” he said. “He knows it, too. First thing tomorrow, he’s finding himself a part-time job. What a mess.”
