Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

“Lily, be quiet now.”

“And down will come-”

“Lily!” Harry shouted.

Her lids dropped shut, and a tear slipped out of each eye.

“Harry,” Ezra said. “What’s-what’s going on?”

“Nothing. She’s crazy, remember?”

“But she’s crying. Why’s she crying?”

Wearily, Harry got up from the table. “She’s crying about a girl,” he said, and walked out of the room.

Upstairs, Geiger stood in the shower, head bowed, palms flat against the wall. He had run the water cold to inhibit fresh bleeding, but as the water circled the drain it had a light pink tint. The shower tiles were a bilious green, and Geiger idly wondered if Corley had chosen the color, or acquiesced to someone else’s desire, or declined even to take part in the process.

Geiger stepped out and dried himself carefully with a towel. In the oval mirror above the sink, he could see a full-length glass on the door behind him. He turned around to his reflection.

The extent of the damage made it difficult to take in the whole body at once-the separate wounds all competed for his eye’s attention. The garish red circle with the central puncture in his left cheek; the ugly welts across his chest and quadriceps; the trio of long, stitched gashes in his thigh, their puckered edges already gleaming with fresh blood. His gaze bounced from one to another, and a hot sweat pushed its way up through his pores.

Growing dizzy, he found the sink with a wavering hand and lowered himself onto the toilet seat. The mechanism of memory was turning slowly, grabbing moments from his mind’s black room and hauling them up into the light: a fire-lit blade in a swollen fist, droplets of blood on a rough-hewn floor, lupine silhouettes ripping flesh from bone…

For a moment, Geiger focused all his energy on the tile floor’s mosaic of small octagons. The maze of black lines held fast, anchoring his sight, and the maelstrom faded away.

Hall found a spot where he could turn off the road. He pulled fifty feet into the woods, cut his headlights, and turned off the engine. He and Mitch pushed their window buttons and the dark glass slid down with a hum that was instantly overridden by a wave of cicada whirs and cricket chirps. A hoot came down from a nearby branch.

“Jesus,” said Mitch. “When was the last time you heard a fucking owl?”

Hall reached into the glove compartment, took out a silver earbud with a two-inch-long stick mike, and fit it in his left ear. Mitch dug into a shirt pocket, pulled out his bud, and did the same. Then they took out their guns and checked the clips. Hall ran down the to-do list in his head and nodded.

“Okay, once things take off, you follow my lead.”

“Right.”

They slapped their clips into place, got out of the car, and headed west.

“When we go in, guns out,” said Hall. “But no triggers unless we have to.”

“Right.”

They walked through the woods in silence. As they approached Corley’s house, they came to a clearing and stopped. From this point on, it was comparatively open ground-a meadow two hundred feet in diameter dotted with a dozen trees and large bushes, and the house perched in the middle. Light from the windows and the ground lamps leading up to the front entrance created an apron that stretched thirty feet from the house.

“Okay,” said Hall, and pointed. “Phone lines come in the back. Get them before you go in, just in case.”

“Right.” Mitch winced and smacked his neck. “Fucking mosquitoes.”

“Let’s make sure the buds work before we go. Stay put.”

Hall headed off, staying inside the tree line. While sitting in the car, he had made up his mind about how to play this. He would walk right up the front steps. If the door was locked, he’d ring the bell. No tough stuff, no gun-better to keep the temperature down, at least at first. He’d tell Geiger to get everyone together, and then he’d ask for the discs; they were stolen property, and he needed them back. And if this didn’t fly, well, there was always Plan B.

He waved off a mosquito. “Mitch, you hear me?” he said softly.

“Crystal. You hear me?”

“Just fine. Okay, when you take out the phones, let me know and I’ll move.”

“Right.”

“Go tree to tree, Mitch. There are a lot of windows.”

“Richie, I’ve done this kind of thing before, you know?”

“Go.”

Hall watched Mitch slip from the trees and start for the back of the house in a crouch, moving across the clearing from one isolated tree or bush to the next. Hall took his earbud out, put it in his shirt pocket, and closed his eyes. He wanted to bring his pulse down before he made the call, so there would be no bumps in his voice, not even a ripple of concern.

He pulled out his cell and dialed a number.

“Yes?” said the voice.

“It’s Hall, sir.” He took the silence as a prompt to continue. “We’re on target. An isolated house in Cold Spring, New York. I’m looking at it now. The discs and four people inside. We’re about to move in. We’ll have the discs very soon.”

Hall felt a chill before he understood why. As he spoke, he’d heard a faint echo of his own voice coming back at him through the line, meaning that the phone on the other end was on speaker. The man had others with him in the room; they were listening in, most likely because he wanted them to advise him about a decision he was mulling. Hall knew that couldn’t be good.

“Four inside?” asked the man.

“Yes, sir. Four.”

“This started as a single-target event, Hall. You’ve turned it into something very different. You’ve got five in the mix now, including Matheson. That’s a big number.”

Hall stared at the house; its many windows were growing brighter as the night grew darker. “You’re right, sir.”

“Five X’s walking around when this is done,” said the man. “That’s too many. Everything has to finish clean on your end tonight. No loose ends. And then we’ll find Matheson. Understood?”

Hall saw Mitch dart across open ground to an unkempt bush near the house. “Yes, sir.”

“And, Hall… if there are any loose ends, that makes you one, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

The call cut off. Hall put his cell away and stuck his earbud back in place. He could hear Mitch’s huffing, but it was almost drowned out by the thumping of his own pulse at the base of his skull.

They wanted everyone in the house dead.

Geiger and Ezra leaned on the porch railing. In the west, beyond the river, the sky just above the darkened hills showed a faint trace of coral where the sun had disappeared. Geiger had found a pair of Corley’s gray sweatpants in a bedroom dresser and put them on. Ezra looked down at the row of ground lamps beneath the porch. Mosquitoes and moths spiraled around the spikes, smashing themselves into the bright glass.

“Ezra,” Geiger said. “I saw your father today.”

Ezra jackknifed up straight. “When? Where?”

“Just before I came back. In Central Park.”

“How did you-?”

“It’s a long story. But he’s all right.”

“Did he ask about me?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t he come back with you?”

“He wanted to see you. I wouldn’t let him.”

“Why not?”

“I told him that from now on he couldn’t see you without your permission. That it was up to you.”

“You did?”

“Yes. So when this is all over, you’ll decide when you want to see him- if you want to see him. Okay?”

“Well…” Ezra shook his head. “Okay, I guess.”

“And something else.”

“Yeah?”

“I have what those men are looking for. In my bag. They’re discs. Videos. I got them from your father. No one’s going to bother you now that I have them.”