Jonathan Kellerman - When The Bough Breaks

"Hickle," Ray said. "My old man used to work there - spooky place he said. Weird. I think it's on Charlemagne. The old man used to - "

"All right, man." Harm shoved Ray's head down and he returned to his comic book. "They got strange names for streets on the island, Mister. Charlemagne, Alexander, Suleiman."

Conquerors. The little joke of the very rich was evidently lost on those who were its intended butt.

"Charlemagne is an inland road. You go just past the main drag, past the market, a quarter mile - look hard because the street signs are usually covered by trees - and turn, lemme see, turn right, that's Charlemagne. After that you'd best ask around."

"Much obliged." I reached in and pulled out my wallet. "Here's for your trouble," I said, taking out a five.

Harm held out his hand - in protest, not collection. "Forget it, mister. We didn't do nothin'."

Doug, the fat boy, gave him an angry look and grunted.

"Up yours, Dougie," said the boy with the missing teeth. "We didn't do nothin' for the man's money." Despite his unkempt hair and the war zone of a mouth, he had intelligence and a certain dignity. He was the kind of kid I wouldn't mind having at my side when the going got rough.

"Let me buy you a round, then."

"Nah," said Harm. "We can't drink no more, mister. Got to hit the course in half an hour. Be slick as snot on a day like this. Bubble Butt here, drink any more, he could fall and bounce down and crush the rest of us."

"Fuck you, Harm," said Doug, without heart.

I put the money back. "Thanks much."

"Think nothin' of it. You build some houses that don't need union help, you want reliable construction muscle, remember Harmon Lundquist. I'm in the book."

"I will."

Ten minutes before the boat reached shore the island emerged from behind a dressing screen of rain and fog, an oblong, squat, gray chunk of rock. Except for the coiffure of trees that covered most of its outer edges, it could have been Alcatraz.

I went down to the auto bay, got behind the wheel of the Nova and was ready when the man in orange waved us down the ramp. The scene outside might have been lifted off the streets of London. There were enough black topcoats, black umbrellas, and black hats to fill Piccadilly. Pink hands held briefcases and the morning's Wall Street Journal. Eyes stared straight ahead. Lips set grimly. When the gate at the foot of the gangway opened they moved in procession, each man in his place, every shiny black shoe rising and falling in response to an unseen drummer. A squadron of perfect gentlemen. A gentleman's brigade…

Just beyond Brindamoor Harbor was a small town square built around an enormous towering elm and rimmed with shops: a bank with smoked glass windows, a brokerage house, three or four expensive looking clothiers with conservatively dressed, faceless mannequins in their windows, a grocer, a butcher, a dry cleaner's that also housed the local post office, a book store, two restaurants - one French, the other Italian - a gift shop, and a jewelers. All the stores were closed, the streets empty and, except for a flock of pigeons convening under the elm, devoid of life.

I followed Harm's directions and found Charlemagne Lane with no trouble. A thousand yards out of the square the road narrowed and darkened, shadowed by walls of fern, devil ivy and shrub maple. The green was broken by an occasional gate - wrought iron or redwood, the former usually backed by steel plating. There were no mailboxes on the road, no public display of names. The estates seemed to be spaced several acres apart. A few times I caught a glimpse of the properties behind the gates: lots of rolling lawns, sloping drives paved with brick and stone, the houses imposing and grand - Tudor, Regency, Colonial - the driveways stabling Rolls Royces, Mercedes and Cadillac limousines, as well as their more utilitarian four - wheeled cousins - station wagons paneled with phony wood, Volvos, compacts. Once or twice I saw gardeners laboring in the rain, their power mowers sputtering and belching.

The road continued for another half - mile, the properties growing larger, the houses set back further from the gates. It came to an abrupt halt at a thicket of cypress. There was no gate, no visible means of entry, just the forest like growth of thirty - foot trees, and for a moment I thought I'd been misled.

I put on my raincoat, pulled up the collar and got out. The ground was thick with pine needles and wet leaves. I walked to the thicket and peered through the branches. Twenty feet ahead, almost totally hidden by the overgrowth of tangled limbs and dripping vegetation, was a short stone pathway leading to a wooden gate. The trees had been planted to block the entry; from the size of them they were at least twenty years old. Discounting the possibility that someone had taken the trouble to transplant a score of full grown cypress to the site, I decided it had been a long time since the normal human business of living had taken place here.

I pushed my way to the gate and tried it. Nailed shut. I took a good look at it - two slabs of tongued and - grooved redwood hinged to brick posts. The posts connected to chain link fencing piled high with thorny spirals. No sign of electricity or barbed wire. I found a foothold on a wet rock, slipped a couple of times and finally managed to scale the gate.

I landed on another world. Acres of wasteland spread before me; what had once been a formal lawn was now a swamp of weeds, dead grass and broken rock. The ground had sunk in several places, creating pools of water that stagnated and provided oases for the mosquitoes and gnats that hovered overhead. Once - noble trees had been reduced to jagged stumps and felled, rotten hulls crawling with fungus. Rusted auto parts, old tires and discarded cans and bottles were scattered throughout what was now a sodden trash dump. Rain fell on metal and made a hollow, clanging sound.

I walked up a pathway paved in herringbone brick, choked with weeds and covered by slimy moss. In the places where the roots had pushed through, the bricks stuck out of the ground like loose teeth in a broken jaw. I kicked aside a drowned field mouse and slogged toward the former residence of the Hickle clan.

The house was massive, a three - story structure of hand - hewn stone that had blackened with age. I couldn't imagine it as ever being beautiful but doubtless it had once been grand: a brooding, slate - roofed mansion trimmed with gingerbread, festooned with eaves and gables and girdled by wide stone porches. There was rusted wrought - iron furniture on the front porch, a nine - foot - high cathedral door and a weather vane at the highest peak in the shape of a witch riding a broomstick. The old crone twirled in the wind, safely above the desolation.

I climbed the stairs to the front entry. Weeds had grown clear up to the door, which was nailed shut. The windows were similarly boarded and bolted tight. In spite of its size - perhaps because of it - the house seemed pathetic, a forgotten dowager, abandoned to the point where she no longer cared how she looked and sentenced to a fate of decaying in silence.

I forced my way through a makeshift barrier of rotting boards that had been stacked in front of the porte - cochere. The house was at least a hundred and fifty feet long and it took me a while to check each window on the ground floor: All were sealed.

The rear property was another three acres of swamp. A four - car garage, designed as a miniature of the house, was inaccessible - nailed and fastened. A fifty - foot swimming pool was empty save for several inches of muddy water in which floated a host of organic debris. The remains of a grape arbor and trellised rose garden were evident only as a jumble of peeling wood and cracked stone supporting a bird's nest of lifeless twigs. Stone benches and statues slanted and pitched on broken bases, Pompeii in the wake of Vesuvius.