John Saul - Brain Child

Valerie tried to scramble away across the red quarry tile of the foyer, but it was too late.

Alex’s fingers closed around her neck, and he began to squeeze.

“Venganza …” he muttered once more. And then again, as Valerie Benson died: “Venganza …”

*

Alex stepped through the door of Jakes and glanced around. In the booth in the far corner, he saw Kate Lewis and Bob Carey sitting with Lisa Cochran and a couple of other kids. Carefully composing his features into a smile, he crossed the room.

“Hi. Is it a private party, or can anybody join?”

The six occupants of the booth fell silent. Alex saw the uneasy glances that passed between them, but he kept his smile carefully in place. Finally Bob Carey shrugged and squeezed closer to Kate to make room at the end of the booth. Still no one said anything. When the silence was finally broken, it was Lisa, announcing that she had to go home.

Alex carefully changed his expression, letting his smile dissolve into a look of disappointment. “But I just got here,” he said.

Lisa hesitated, her eyes fixing suspiciously on Alex. “I didn’t think you’d care if I stayed or not,” she said. “In fact, none of us thought you cared about anything anymore.”

Alex nodded, and hoped that when he spoke his voice would have the right inflection. “I know,” he said. “But I think things are starting to change. I think …” He dropped his eyes to the table, as he’d seen other people do when they seemed to be having trouble saying something. “I think I’m starting to feel things again.” Then, making himself stammer slightly, he went on. “I … well, I really like you guys, and I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

Once again the rest of the kids glanced at each other, their self-consciousness only worsening at Alex’s words.

It was Bob Carey who broke the embarrassed silence. “Hey, come on. Don’t go all weird on us the other way now.”

And suddenly everything was all right again, and Alex knew he’d won.

They’d believed his performance.

But slowly, as the conversation went on, he began to wonder, for Lisa Cochran still seemed to be avoiding talking to him.

Lisa herself was not about to tell him that she was wondering exactly what he was up to.

Long ago, before the accident, she’d heard Alex stammer and seen him look away when he was talking about his feelings.

And always, when he did that, he’d blushed.

This time, everything had been fine except for that one thing.

This time, Alex hadn’t blushed.

“Come in with me.”

Bob Carey couldn’t see Kate’s face in the darkness, but the tremor in her voice revealed that she was frightened. His eyes moved past her silhouette, focusing on the house beyond. Everything, he thought, looked normal. Except for the gate.

The patio gate stood open, and both he and Kate clearly remembered closing it when they had left earlier in the evening.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he assured her, trying to make his voice sound more confident than he was actually feeling. “Maybe we didn’t really latch it.”

“We did,” Kate breathed. “I know we did.”

Bob got out of the car and went around to open the other door for Kate, but instead of getting out, she only gazed past him at the ominously open gate. “Maybe … maybe we ought to call the police,” she whispered.

“Just because the gate’s open?” Bob asked with a bravado he wasn’t feeling. “They’d think we were nuts.”

“No they wouldn’t,” Kate argued. “Not after …” She fell silent, unable to finish the thought.

Bob wavered, telling himself once more that the open gate meant nothing. The wind could have done it, or Mrs. Benson might have gone out herself and left the gate open. In fact, she might not even be home.

He made up his mind.

“Stay here,” he told Kate. “I’ll go see.”

He went through the open gate into the patio and looked around. The lights flanking the front door were on, and the white walls of the patio reflected their glow so that even the shadowed areas of the little garden were clearly visible. Nothing seemed to be amiss, and yet as he stood in the patio, he sensed that something was wrong.

Bob told himself the growing uneasiness he felt was only in his imagination. As soon as he rang the bell, Mrs. Benson would come to the door and everything would be all right.

But when he rang the bell, Mrs. Benson did not come to the door. Bob rang the bell once more, waited, then tried the door. It was locked. Slowly he backed away from the door, then hurried to the car.

“She’s not here,” he told Kate a few seconds later. “She must have gone somewhere.” But even as he spoke the words, he knew they weren’t true. He started the car.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to call the police, just like you wanted to. It doesn’t feel right in there.”

Fifteen minutes later they were back. Bob parked his Porsche behind the squad car, then got out and went to the patio gate.

“Stay in your car,” one of the cops at the front door told him. “If there’s a creep in here, I don’t want to have to worry about you.” Only when Bob had disappeared did Roscoe Finnerty reach out and press the bell a second time, as Bob himself had done only a few minutes earlier. “She probably just took off somewhere,” he told Tom Jackson, “but with these two, I guess we can’t blame them for being nervous.” When there was still no answer, Finnerty moved to a window and shone his flashlight through into the foyer. “Shit,” he said softly, and Tom Jackson immediately felt his stomach knot.

“She there?” he asked.

Finnerty nodded. “On the floor, just like the other one. And if there’s any blood, I don’t see it. Take a look.”

Tom Jackson dutifully stepped to the window and peered into the foyer. “Maybe she’s just unconscious,” he suggested.

“Maybe she is,” Finnerty replied, but both men knew that neither of them believed it. “Go ask the Lewis girl if she’s got a key, but don’t tell her what we’ve seen. And when you ask for the key, see how she reacts.”

Jackson frowned. “You don’t think—”

“I don’t know what I think,” Finnerty growled. “But I sure as hell know Alan Lewis didn’t do this one, and I keep thinking about the shit that came down in Marin a few years back when that girl and her boyfriend killed her folks, then went out and partied all night. So you just go see if she has a key, and keep your eyes open.”

“Is she all right?” Kate asked when Jackson approached the car.

“Don’t even know if she’s here,” Jackson lied. “Do you have a key? We want to take a look around.”

Kate fumbled in her purse for a moment, then silently handed Jackson a single key on a ring. “Stay here,” Jackson ordered. He started back to the house, wondering what he was supposed to have been looking for. Whatever it was, he hadn’t seen it — all he’d seen were two kids who’d had a horrible experience only a few days ago, and were now very frightened.

“Well?”

Jackson shrugged. “She just gave me the key when I asked for it. Asked if the Benson woman’s okay.”

“What’d you say?”

“I lied. Figured we should both be there when we tell them.”

Finnerty nodded, and slid the key into the lock, then pushed the door open and led his partner into the silent house. One look at Valerie Benson’s open eyes and grimace of frozen terror told him she was dead. He called the station and told the duty officer what had happened, then rejoined Jackson. “Might as well tell them.”

From then on, the long night took on a feeling of eerie familiarity, as Finnerty replayed the scene he’d gone through less than a week earlier when the same two kids had found the body of Martha Lewis.