The Midnight Road Page 2

  The last door led to a cellar.

  Flynn had twenty-seven minutes to live.

  He didn’t like the look of it. There were two sets of locks, both open. His bad juju detector was already blaring. He pulled out his pocketknife, worked the hinge pins free and put them in his coat pocket. The way the door hung, it looked exactly the same, but nobody would be able to lock him down there.

  He was playing it all wrong but something kept telling him this was the only way to play it.

  His dead brother’s presence felt so strong around him now that he could imagine spinning fast enough to catch sight of Danny.

  Flynn didn’t have any evidence for the cops or his boss, Sierra, who was already going to read him the riot act for the way he was botching this case. He’d be lucky to stay out of the pokey himself.

  But some things couldn’t be helped. You decided on your course, and you saw it through.

  Flynn hit one of several light switches and descended the stairs.

  The outlandish house had thrown him once more. It wasn’t a cellar, but a damn nice basement that had been turned into a guy pad. It was the kind of room that men without sons spent a lot of money on while awaiting the arrival of their first boy.

  A flatscreen high-definition television sat high against one wall. Shelves were packed with DVDs. An ample L-shaped leather sofa made Flynn think this was the place where all Shepard’s friends watched the Super Bowl and the World Series every year. There were sports collectibles in glass cases all around. Signed photos, footballs, catchers’ mitts, boxing gloves. Mark Shepard had invested a good chunk of change and really liked to show off his collection.

  It would’ve been a hell of a nice place if not for the guy in the cage in the middle of the room.

  Flynn just stared for a second.

  Sometimes you needed an extra breath to help you decide where it was you wanted to go next.

  The cage was pretty small, the size of a boarding kennel for a German shepherd. Bars were half-inch steel, and the frame had been welded together with precision. The door was padlocked.

  Inside sat a naked man with a misshapen head, as if someone had flung him against a cement wall as an infant. His slack lower jaw bent too far to one side and threads of drool slid down his chin. Thick, knotted scars and brandings cross-thatched his entire body, even his inner thighs. His left arm had been broken, poorly set, and now tilted slightly backwards at the elbow. He was still humming, and his gentle brown eyes, which were about an inch too far apart, just kept on watching Flynn.

  “Hey, hello there,” Flynn said, trying to make his voice sound as natural as possible. “I’m your friend. I’m Flynn. Can you talk to me? Can you understand me?”

  The man grinned, his gaze full of bewilderment and delight. Something started to crack in Flynn’s chest. After all he’d been through, the guy was still glad to see another person, still singing. The nerve throbbed so painfully through Flynn he had to put his hand against the bars of the cage to steady himself.

  Zero appeared at Flynn’s ankle with the plastic hamburger in his teeth. The booties did a good job of soundproofing his paws. The cellar door creaked and slipped off one of the hinges. Up there, the girl let out a small cry of surprise. Zero circled the room and Kelly appeared on the stairway. She held a handful of cookies wrapped in a napkin.

  She walked down the steps, saw Flynn, but showed no surprise, just a smidgen of irritation. “Did you break the door?”

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “You found Nuddin. He’s my uncle.”

  Bending to the cage she handed the cookies through the bars. Nuddin accepted them and chewed them down with joyous noises. He only ate half of each one, then offered each remaining half to Zero, who ate from his hand.

  Nuddin?

  Nothing?

  “How long’s he been here?” Flynn asked calmly.

  “Since before my last birthday.”

  “Okay. When’s your birthday, Kelly?”

  “June. June 15. I was seven. I’m seven and a half now.”

  More than six months the man had been down here.

  Flynn had seen it twice before. Mentally challenged children locked up in back rooms, imprisoned in chains, but that had been in the south Bronx. In areas that looked like they’d been invaded, blitzed, nuked, where the rules dried up and things got savage, and superstitions burned out of control. Roosters ran wild in the streets, kept on hand for Santeria rituals. Maybe it was Santeria. New religions were being born every day in the slums. Flynn had seen a lot in his time, but you just didn’t expect a retarded man to be caged in the basement of a million-dollar house out on the North Shore.

  “Kelly, where’s the key?”

  “My mother has it.”

  “We need to get him out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s wrong to keep people locked up like this.”

  “Well, yes, I know that. It’s often bad, that’s usually the case, but this is different. I bring him cookies…and fudge…and cake sometimes. I gave him a big piece of my birthday cake, it even had a rose on it.”

  “You’re very nice.”

  “My mother says he can’t leave, he might hurt himself. I wouldn’t want that. He’s not only my uncle, he’s my friend.”

  Zero dropped the burger at Flynn’s foot and started pawing at his shoe, trying to get him to play some more. Flynn started back for the stairs, hoping he could get the drop on Christina Shepard, but she was already there, perched halfway down, holding a Smith Wesson .38 trained on him.

  He was beginning to think that the rules he was supposed to handle his business with were really very fucking stupid.

  “He’s my brother,” she said.

  “Jesus Christ, lady.”

  “I love him. I love him too much to let him go to one of those homes. You know what they do to them there?”

  “They don’t lock them in three-by-four cages.”

  “My father has been ill the last few years. He couldn’t care for Nuddin any longer. My brother became my responsibility. It came down to me to shoulder the burden. We take such things seriously in my family. Our name is important. Our history.”

  “You’re living in the Middle Ages. Where’s the key, Mrs. Shepard?”

  “We don’t abuse him! We let him out sometimes. He plays. We let him play. You don’t understand. We’re protecting him.”

  “From what?”

  “From the world. From temptation.”

  She didn’t look like a religious nut, but then again, what did a religious nut look like? He’d seen them in all shapes. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You can’t understand.”

  “You’re right.” Always keep someone with a gun pointed at you talking if you could. “What about all his scars?”

  “That’s from—” She clamped her mouth shut, then took a step closer, the revolver aimed at Flynn’s belly. “We let him play. My daughter gives him cookies.”

  “I told him,” Kelly said. The kid was taking it in stride. Her mother holding a gun on a stranger couldn’t rate all that high on the Holy Shit Barometer if your own mentally handicapped uncle lived in a cage in your basement. Was that just another sign of practicality?

  “He has a good life,” Christina Shepard went on. “Believe me, considering the choices, he has nothing to complain about. He plays a lot.”

  This was always the worst part. Listening to their admissions and rationalizations, their explanations about why they do the terrible things they do. No accountability. Blind denial of their ugliest behavior and intentions.

  Flynn said, “I want the key. Now.”

  “It’s not here. I don’t know where it is.”

  “He likes it in there,” Kelly said. “He doesn’t want to leave.”

  “You see!” Christina said. The barrel of the gun wavered. “You see? He likes it in there. We don’t abuse him.”

  Flynn had met crazy once or twice before,
but nobody had ever poured on the bad juju like this lady. There were rules, and he tried to stick to them, but when it got ugly he tossed them to the curb. It was pretty ugly right now. He stepped up, grabbed the woman, shook her hard. It was like putting your hands in the ocean. The immense power could rise up and crush you at any second.

  She raised the pistol and shoved it under his chin.

  He thought maybe he had a death wish like his brother Danny.

  “Where’s the key to this damn cage?” he said. It was tough talking with a pistol barrel jabbed into your jaw.

  “Don’t take him away! You don’t understand—my father, he’ll—”

  Footsteps pounded upstairs and Flynn knew things were about to get even more funky. He squared his shoulders and moved to the side of the stairwell so he could try to prepare for whatever was coming now.

  Christina switched gears, reverted back to sweetness, her voice full of honey. But she kept the pistol pointed at his head. She called, “Mark, there’s someone here.”

  Mark Shepard flipped the rest of the light switches on his way down and the basement practically glowed with reflections in all the glass. He stared at Flynn and Flynn stared back.

  Shepard had the eyes of a man who’d been living with a guy caged in his basement for the last six months. He was frayed, his gaze faraway and at the same time way up close, like he couldn’t get anything into focus. He was a couple years younger than Flynn, maybe thirty-five, but he had the look of someone who’d been battling a terrible illness and losing fast. His thin face had grown long with shadows. He stood very still but seemed to somehow be trembling. Flynn knew immediately that Shepard had made the anonymous call himself.

  “You’re late,” Shepard said. “Why were you so late?”

  “The storm,” Flynn said.

  “I was waiting. I should’ve stayed away but I couldn’t.” For a guy who wanted to keep the call anonymous, Shepard was too fried to play the game in his own house. He snapped and gave up the truth without anybody even pushing him for it. He looked at his wife. “Christina, I’m sorry.”

  She gave him a murderous glare. All the dizzy attitude had fled her now, leaving behind only that tension. The gun was still loosely pointed at Flynn, but he could tell she was thinking of shifting it over a little and aiming it at her husband.

  Flynn wondered if she was going to make all three of them get in the cage. It would be cramped. There’d be a death struggle for the cookies.

  She moved in on Shepard. “You did this? But I thought you understood. You told me you understood. You agreed!”

  “I did, Christina, but—”

  “Liar!” she shouted. Flynn had a tough time watching her, those pretty features squeezed together, as if stuck in a vise, deformed by rage. “My father was right about you!”

  “Your father’s never been right about anything in his life, that crazy son of a bitch.” Shepard managed to raise his maladjusted gaze high enough to find Flynn’s eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You made the right choice,” Flynn said. “But she does still have the gun and all.”

  “You’re a fool. You don’t know what’s happening. You have no idea.”

  “Maybe not. So enlighten me.”

  “Nuddin will do that for you. It’s not over. It’s just beginning. I’m not doing anybody a favor, I’m just passing trouble out of my hands.”

  “You should’ve done it sooner.”

  “I know.” Shepard reached into his pocket, and tossed Flynn a key. “Take him and go.”

  Nuddin went, Oh oh oh.

  Christina lunged at Flynn with a nasty intent. He realized he didn’t have that strong a death wish after all. In fact, he was getting a little worried here as the lady got closer and started to cock the revolver. Her husband dodged in front of her. He was fast. They were both very fast. She said, “Get out of my way, Mark.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Get out of my way now. You can’t let him take my brother.”

  “That’s exactly what he’s going to do.”

  Shepard moved as if to embrace his wife, like he was asking her to dance. His hand closed on her right wrist and he spun her around and gripped her in a loving hug, pulling her hands tight against her chest, the gun useless in her fist. She let out a sharp grunt of disgust and anger. Knotted black veins stood out in her neck. Her arms were all corded muscle.

  Flynn had a rough call to make. He still wasn’t certain about Kelly’s safety. This was a buggy house and he didn’t like the idea of leaving the kid behind. But if he tried to take her, Shepard might lose his head and Flynn would have to deal with both these nutjobs. He’d never run from a fight in his life, and he could handle himself pretty well, but the look in Christina’s eyes definitely made him think that if everything went to hell, he’d be leading the train.

  It was a good thought to have. He had fourteen minutes to live.

  He unlocked Nuddin’s cage, reached in and grabbed the guy. He was so light he might’ve been made of balsa wood. Nuddin laughed and pressed a papery hand to Flynn’s face, patted him there. Flynn wrapped his coat around Nuddin, carried him up the stairs, through the house and out to the Charger. They slipped and hit the ice twice. Nuddin got up and sort of loped through the snow, running on the balls of his feet. The blind eyes of the house burned behind them.

  A silver Cadillac Escalade SUV was parked on an angle next to the Charger, as if Shepard hadn’t known what to do with himself—drive into the garage or back out again and take off. He’d been torn in half about even stepping into his own home.

  Flynn wrangled open the Charger’s door and strapped Nuddin inside. He had the driver’s door open when he saw that Zero had followed him outside, and the girl had followed the dog. Zero hopped into the driver’s seat and sat there as if waiting to whip out onto Route 25a. Flynn just shook his head.

  “Get in,” he told Kelly.

  A gunshot punctuated his words. He grabbed the girl by the arm and flipped her into the backseat.

  “Buckle up,” he ordered and climbed in himself, shoving aside the dog. A moment later Christina Shepard broke from the twisted house and ran onto the lawn through the heavy snowdrifts, holding the .38. She moved extremely well, with her arm extended, firing with great precision.

  She got off three rounds. The first hit the front quarter panel, the next ripped a furrow across the hood and the last tore off one of the wiper blades and cracked the windshield directly in front of Flynn’s face.

  She’d snuffed her own husband. And what kind of a woman shoots at a car when her seven-year-old daughter and retarded brother are inside?

  Maybe Flynn had never really met crazy before. Maybe this was his first time.

  He wheeled out of the driveway, onto the dark road, and gunned it. In the rearview he watched her jump into the Caddy SUV and saw it fishtail after him, the head lights coming up fast.

  “Why is my mother shooting at us?” Kelly asked.

  “Because she’s shithouse crazy, kid. But don’t ever tell anybody I said that.”

  “Okay.” She laughed. She was having a good time. He knew the feeling. The speed and bluster and action could be appealing to a kid. Even the gunshots. It brought on a powerful sense of wonder and awe. Flynn remembered his brother in the driver’s seat, four cop cars blaring sirens behind with the old-fashioned cherry tops on them, Flynn just a little boy in the passenger seat, strapped in, smiling just like Nuddin.

  The Caddy had all-wheel drive, all-speed traction. It cost a bundle but was worth it in the winter. Christina was chewing up the distance between them. Flynn turned his head, looked at Kelly in the backseat and felt a vast on rush of pity for the girl. What would’ve happened to her in that house over the next few years?

  The next bullet creased the driver’s door. Just a couple of inches over and it would’ve gone into his spine.

  “She’s a perfect shot,” Kelly said. “Normally.”

  “She is?”

 
“She’s on the range three times a week. She likes skeet too. I go with her if we don’t have choir or violin practice. We went the day after New Year’s.”

  “It’s good for a family to spend holiday time together,” he said.

  “I think she’s missing on purpose.”

  “It would be nice to believe so.”

  Nuddin started singing, La la la la.

  Flynn wasn’t very familiar with the area but knew they were about ten minutes from Port Jackson. He swung out in that direction thinking maybe he could lose Christina Shepard on the town roads, assuming they’d been cleared enough to travel on and he didn’t wipe out along the way.

  He had to admit, there was more to it than saving the girl and her uncle. Even more to it than running for his own life. Behind the wheel his ego went off the chart. He didn’t like anybody trying to outdrive him, even on streets as bad as these.

  He gritted his teeth. Christina Shepard came up hard and smashed into his bumper. The Charger rocked and bounced, and the wheel bucked wildly in his hands. He tightened his grip until the steering column started to groan.

  Flynn had imagined his brother’s death in this seat ten thousand times during the last thirty years, and now it surfaced again. He checked the rearview and saw an old man’s eyes peering back at him. He’d lived to be twice his brother’s age, but still he thought of Danny as the older one, the sharp one, the hip one, the guy with the moves, slick, tough, cool. What did it say about you when you looked up to a ghost already three decades gone?

  Christina laid on the horn and slammed into them again and the hideous noise of tearing metal ripped through the black-and-white night.

  It was ridiculous. He couldn’t get over the feeling that they were all part of a very stupid joke that was going to end with a duck on somebody’s head. Flynn kept flipping it around in his mind, thinking the answer had to be here someplace, but he simply couldn’t see it, just couldn’t find it.