Seldom Seen in August

CHAPTER FIVE

At the foot of the stairs, he stepped on the doll and gave a start when it emitted the sound of a woman quietly sobbing. He had no wish to give this further consideration and so stalked through the house until he had reached the living room and the sliding doors he had used to gain entry.

Wade was no idiot. He knew that walking out there with the cops on his tail was likely to be the last thing he ever did, at least as a free man. But he couldn’t stay here either. Not while there was someone hiding in the house who knew him, knew what he was and what he had done, someone who was having just the grandest time tormenting him with sideshow trickery. It all felt a little bit too predestined for his taste.

No. He was going, and he would just have to be careful once he crossed the threshold. He did not want to think about Cartwright and the money, and what it meant for his chances of a future. All that mattered now was getting gone.

Resolute, he stayed down and moved in a crouch to the curtains, parted them with a finger and felt his breath catch in his throat.

There were two cops in the yard, and they were heading toward the house, guns drawn.

“Great.” Wade backtracked to the hall, then hurried into the kitchen where he flexed the fingers of his free hand, the sweat oozing from his pores, and tried to think. In seconds the cops would knock on the sliding door. After seeing the gate they wouldn’t be so easily persuaded that nothing was amiss. They would force the door and they’d have him.

Keep it together, man, he told himself. You’ve still got a weapon. You’re not done, yet.

But despite his own encouragement, he felt done.

Cartwright was gone.

The money was gone.

The pigs were at the back door and his hidey-hole was filled with spiders.

Check the front.

The rapping of hard knuckles against solid glass echoed through the house, each knock sending a jolt of electric fear up his spine.

Wade ran to the kitchen window, looked outside.

Two cruisers were parked at the curb, lights flashing. The trio of cops standing around them was the only sign of life on an uncannily empty street. If the sight of police hadn’t lured the curious out of their homes, then it was quite possible that nobody lived in them after all. It put him in mind of the fake homes filled with mannequins the military set up in the desert as targets for nuclear testing.

His head hurt. Things had gotten way more complicated than they should have been. Rob the bank, nobody gets hurt, split up and meet later to divvy up the score. That was it. A simple plan. Instead, people had died, victims of Cartwright’s itchy trigger finger, Wade was stuck in some kind of sick-joke carnival funhouse designed from blueprints straight out of his head, and now Cartwright was in custody and telling the cops…

Still looking out onto the street, he frowned.

Just what did Cartwright have to tell them? That he hadn’t robbed the bank by himself? There were ample witnesses who’d testify to that, and if not, there were the security cameras. There wasn’t much else he could give the pigs that they could use. Cartwright didn’t know him well enough. He wouldn’t, for instance, be able to tell them where he was likely to hide, or whom he might seek sanctuary from. In fact, Cartwright didn’t know jack. So, assuming Wade had properly understood the text message, what exactly had he “TALKED” about? Who exactly had he “TALKED” to?

Then it clicked.

Not the cops, but the instigator of this little ghost house tour that had been set up in his honor. Whoever the Wizard behind the curtain was, he would need to know everything about Wade to be able to pull this off and had, it seemed, enlisted Cartwright’s help in constructing the charade. Which in turn explained why the only “ghosts” Wade had seen had been ones he had managed to forget over the years. The minor transgressions. The puppet master of the house hadn’t had access to his deeper, darker secrets or the show might have been an altogether more gruesome one.

He smiled. Figured you out, you fuck.

Glass shattered in the kitchen.

“Wade Crawford,” one of the cops called. “This is the police.”

You don’t say, Wade thought and crossed the room, shoving his back up against the wall beside the kitchen door.

His phone hummed.

Christ, now what?

“Wade, we’d like to do this quietly if at all possible. We don’t want anyone to get hurt, and that includes you. We just want to talk.”

Wade hadn’t fired a shot since he’d arrived at the house, out of fear that it would alert the cops to his position, but that was hardly a concern now. Fortunately, it meant he had a full clip now together with the extra one in his jeans pocket. He could hold them off for a little while, at least until a better option presented itself.

He took out his phone, slid his back down the wall until he was sitting, and peeked around the corner. There was nobody creeping up on him, but it wouldn’t be too long before they would, right before the SWAT team arrived to teargas his ass. He checked the phone. Another message from Cartwright, and just as cryptic as before:

He studied the message for a brief moment before pocketing the phone. He didn’t know if there was a basement in the house or not, and didn’t much care. Basements were not traditionally famed for being good escape routes unless they had a series of intricate tunnels leading elsewhere. They were traps. And even if he’d chosen to overlook that glaring fact, he wasn’t about to take advice from Cartwright now that he knew he was in on the whole thing.

So no, to hell with the basement.

An attic on the other hand…

It would still be trapping himself, but better the high ground than the low, and it would be difficult for anyone to get at him without getting a bullet to the head.

He almost laughed at the image of himself, knees drawn up, shooting a succession of cops one after the other as they poked their heads up into his hideout.

It wouldn’t work. The only option then was to shoot his way out and hope for the best.

Movement in the hall made his shoulders tighten. He leaned out and saw a young, fresh-faced cop doing the same thing. Only the cop looked surprised.

Even more so when Wade shot him in the head.

The cop fell back against the wall.

There was stunned silence for a second.

Then all hell broke loose.

More glass shattered, men shouted commands, furniture was overturned, more crashing, hammers were ratcheted back, static exploded from radios.

Wade grinned. “Get the message, you assholes?” he called out.

“You’re a fucking dead man,” one of the cops shouted back and was quietly reprimanded by another.

From one of the upstairs rooms came the sound of footsteps. They were penning him in, as if he wasn’t already penned in enough.

As he prepared to rise into a crouch and make a break for the stairs, his plan to intercept whoever this latest unwelcome visitor was before the option was taken away, he noted that the doll torso had somehow found its way into the kitchen. It lay between his legs, eyes open and staring at him.

He rose onto his haunches.

“You hear me, Crawford?” the angry cop yelled at him, his voice cracking. “You’re not walking out of here.”

It was clear the young cop’s death had hit the guy hard. Boo-hoo, Wade thought.

“What? You mean like that kid out there missing the top half of his head? Like him, you mean?” he called back.

The humming sound came again.

A quick check told him it was not his phone.

He tried to filter out the clamor from the cops as they tried to talk some sense into their incensed comrade.

Hunkered shadows moved past the kitchen window.

Shit.

He put a hand on the floor to steady himself, his mind buzzing.

Gotta be a way—

His fingers brushed against the doll and he recoiled. Was it his imagination or had the doll appeared to be shivering when he’d touched it? He returned its unwavering stare for a moment, until he realized he’d found the source of the humming sound.

The doll was vibrating.

Gunfire made him duck as a chunk of plaster and wood the size of a fist exploded from the doorway mere inches above his head. Gray dust rained down on his shoulders.

“Hear me now, you prick?” the cop roared at him.

Rustling in the hall again. The cop the shot had been meant to cover, he assumed.

Well, this is it, he thought with curious calm, and took a deep breath, bracing himself to swing out around the kitchen door and plug another dumb cop. He cast one last look down at the doll and smirked.

The doll smirked back.

Wade flinched.

The doll opened its Cupid’s bow mouth wide. Wider. Something glinted inside, and despite the horror, despite the urgency of the situation in which he was currently mired, Wade leaned forward and peered into that open plastic maw.

The doll began to hum again.

Needles, Wade realized, it’s got needles in its mouth, and jerked back a second too late to avoid their trajectory as the doll winked and spat them into his face.