Castle of Sorrows Page 25

  Blinding lights filled the world, the soul-destroying blat of a horn, and then they were smashed against the steering wheel, the dash, the Honda tilting on its side like a nightmare carnival ride, going over, the two of them lying broken amidst the steam and the still-blatting horn, which was somewhere far behind them.

  His name was Lars Hutchinson. He was a lawyer of all things.

  Or had been a lawyer. Until the night Teddy’s Honda Accord had crashed into his cherry-red Ferrari Maranello.

  Of course, Teddy hadn’t known this at the time. All he’d known was what his friend, Officer Jeff Catlett, had told him at the hospital. Tanya was in shock, and perhaps that was for the best. She seemed healthy enough, Catlett said, but who knew? When a hotshot lawyer gets drunk and drives too fast, people get killed. Catlett was just thankful it had been the lawyer who’d died and not Teddy or his wife.

  Come again? Teddy had asked. His back was all screwed up, his head muzzy. But as Catlett had spoken, all the fogginess in Teddy’s brain had dissipated.

  Which part? Catlett said.

  The part where you said the lawyer’s dead.

  Died on impact, Catlett said. I’m sorry, Teddy, but it’s his own damned fault.

  Teddy stared at Jeff Catlett, letting that sink in. Teddy said, Hutchins was drunk?

  Hutchinson, Catlett corrected. Well-known accident lawyer. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him.

  Accident lawyer, Teddy repeated.

  Catlett chuckled. I know, right?

  Teddy felt the suffocating noose of dread around his throat begin to loosen. You say he was driving too fast?

  Hell yes, Catlett said. Guy’s been collared twice on DUI charges, and from what I hear that number’d be a lot higher if all the times he’s been pulled over actually stuck.

  Teddy said nothing. As Catlett spoke, Teddy felt a strange emotional doubling. On one hand what he was hearing could very well mean Teddy would get off without a hitch. But for that to happen he would need to get to Tanya before the police did.

  —and the people back at the golf course, Catlett was saying, told the same story. The guy who runs the…what do you call it, the place where they hang out?

  The pro shop, Teddy said.

  Yeah, the pro shop, he says Hutchinson had at least four drinks before he even went out to eat with his buddies.

  Teddy licked his lips. You say Tanya’s still out cold?

  Catlett nodded. She’s sedated, but the doc thinks she’s okay other than maybe a concussion.

  I need to see her, Teddy said, sitting forward.

  Hold on there, buddy, Catlett said, putting his hands on Teddy’s shoulders. Seeing Teddy cringe, Catlett said, Sorry about that, but you need to stay put, let the nurses take care of you.

  Teddy stared Catlett in the eye. Will you do something for me?

  Catlett shrugged. Of course, buddy, you name it.

  Tell Tanya not to say a word about what happened, okay? She’s not to talk to the police until she talks to me.

  Something about Catlett’s manner seemed to stiffen, something bemused or maybe even wary creeping into his open, solicitous face. But he shrugged and said, Sure, Teddy. Whatever you want, right?

  Still, Tanya nearly caved. It turned out she had muttered a few things in her post-accident delirium, which proved enough to arouse some suspicion on the part of the cops investigating the crash, guys who were decidedly not biased toward Teddy Brooks.

  The detectives asked questions, posed theories, hounded Teddy and Tanya day and night, but it all came down to three immutable facts:

  One: Lars Hutchinson was a convicted drunk driver who was known to drive recklessly.

  Two: Lars Hutchinson was undoubtedly drunk the night of the crash. Not only had eyewitnesses corroborated this fact, but subsequent tests on Hutchinson’s mangled corpse had indicated a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit. Hutchinson had been blitzed.

  And three: It had been Hutchinson who’d come around the blind curve at an unsafe speed. The location of the crash and what evidence the investigators could cobble together suggested that Lars Hutchinson had been at fault on that terrible summer night in the mountains.

  Except Teddy knew better. Even worse, Tanya knew better.

  When the investigation was finally closed and Teddy cleared of all wrongdoing, their marriage had disintegrated with startling rapidity. Tanya resented what she termed Teddy’s bullying with regard to her story.

  What about Lars’s family? she sometimes asked.

  What about them? Teddy had challenged.

  Is if fair for them to think Lars was at fault when it was really us?

  First of all, where’s this Lars shit coming from? You didn’t know him from Adam. Secondly, the guy was an asshole.

  Says who?

  Says everybody! Teddy shouted. Guy like that? Richer than hell and a total jerk to his family? His wife was probably dancing a jig at his funeral.

  You wouldn’t know, would you? You didn’t even attend.

  Of course I didn’t attend. Why the hell would I wanna do something like that?

  Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you’re the one who killed him?

  Nothing Tanya could have said would have cut him more. Because she was not only saying he was a liar, or that he’d turned her into a liar; she was saying she didn’t think much of him as a man anymore. That he was a coward for saving his own skin and letting Hutchinson’s family think Lars was the guilty one.

  It ate away at Teddy. His work suffered. He decided, at his captain’s urging, to take a leave of absence. He took to drinking, an irony that did not escape him. He couldn’t sleep. He ate less.

  But Tanya…

  It ruined Tanya.

  The first time he found the needles she wasn’t home. She hadn’t been home much lately anyway, but on this particular night he was really worried about her.

  Okay, in truth he was really pissed off at her. He’d noticed her car—a sweet little Mazda convertible they could barely afford—had a big hole in the front fender, like she’d driven right into a piece of rebar or something. She’d been asleep when he noticed it—when she was home she was usually sleeping. And by the time he’d returned from the liquor store the Mazda was gone. So he got into her dresser to see what else she was concealing, and there, my oh my, he’d found the hypodermic needles, the remains of what could only be a heroin stash. And Teddy’s first thought, though he was ashamed to admit it, was of his job, how if his superiors found out he would almost certainly be fired. Sure, beneath the selfishness there were the feelings of concern for his wife, the sense of loss that came from how far they’d drifted apart. But above all had risen his self-interest, his indignant reproach. So that when she came home at around two a.m. he was waiting for her on the bed, the needles and the baggie in his hands.

  She walked in, stoned on something, at that point it didn’t matter what. She just looked at what he had in his hands with those new dead eyes of hers. He asked her to explain herself. She rubbed a hand over her face, mumbled something about feeling a lot of stress lately, and as she did Teddy noticed the needle tracks in her arms. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed them before. He saw for the first time—really saw—the ashen hue of her skin, the gauntness of her cheekbones and the hollow pits of her eyes. But rather than feeling concern for her he just felt rage and contempt. He didn’t know how it happened but he was shoving her into the bathroom, jerking her by a forearm over to the mirror. Just look at yourself! he shouted over her shoulder. Look at that haggard bitch you’ve turned into.

  Her lips were trembling, something of her old self in her frightened, tear-filled eyes, but it wasn’t enough for Teddy. Not at that point. He was growling out curses at her, telling her what a weak, unappreciative bitch she was. He twisted on the shower and whipped open the curtains. She was crying an
d pleading with him by then, but he wasn’t having any of that shit. He reached down and grabbed the bottom of her silver sequined dress—man, who the hell wore that kind of dress anyways?—and despite her entreaties he thrust it up and wrestled it over her arms and off her head, the armhole actually ripping one of her gaudy faux pearl earrings out. She shrieked in pain, but when he discovered what was underneath the dress, for one measureless moment he lost the ability to think.

  For one thing, there were no panties. That was bad enough because she’d been gone all damned evening and she sure as hell hadn’t been out with him. But what made it worse were the dark purple marks that dappled her belly, her thighs. Even, he saw as she twisted away from him and fell against the toilet grasping her bleeding ear, the cheeks of her ass.

  Tanya? he asked in a voice not his own. What are those?

  Leave me alone, she said, bawling.

  Tell me those aren’t hickeys.

  She mumbled something he couldn’t make out.

  Tanya?

  It’s your fault, she said, her voice clearer this time.

  It’s my fault you’re out screwin’ other men, sticking yourself with these needles?

  You killed Lars, she wailed. You killed him.

  Fuck Lars, he said.

  You killed him.

  I should kill you.

  She turned slowly, a fathomless terror in her eyes.

  I will too, he said. ’Less you get your filthy ass out of my house.

  Her gaunt face stared up at him with fear and regret and longing.

  Teddy, please. I’m sorry, I’ll stop—

  You’ll stop stinkin’ up my house, you filthy whore. Now get the fuck out.

  Whimpering, she packed a suitcase, and ten minutes later, with Teddy standing in the garage, the Mazda pulled away.

  He never saw the car again.

  Never saw her again either, save one time in downtown L.A. It had been a year since he’d thrown her out, and at least six months since he’d left the force. He was grabbing some carryout from a Chinese restaurant he liked.

  On the way in he’d seen an old lady rummaging through the Dumpster out back of the restaurant and hadn’t thought much of it until he paid for his food and returned to his car. For some reason his eyes were drawn to the figure now sitting cross-legged beside the dumpster, a carton of some kind of slop between the old lady’s feet. Absurdly, the lady was using chopsticks to stuff the slop into her mouth.

  Teddy froze.

  It was the clumsy way the old woman grasped the chopsticks that cinched it for him. Teddy had always kidded her about it, but she’d insisted on using them despite how difficult it was for her.

  Tanya? he asked.

  The old woman stopped moving. A pair of rheumy eyes swung up to fasten on his. The skin was worse than ashen. It was the color of stagnant gutter water.

  Oh God, Tanya. I’m so…I’m so…

  Hi, Killer, she said. And as she’d said it, she’d grinned, revealing a mouthful of rotting nubs, a good many of her teeth having fallen out.

  Chapter Five

  Ben and Teddy came over the ridge at the same moment, but Teddy’s eyes must’ve been slightly better because Teddy said right away, “Son of a bitch.”

  A moment later, Ben distinguished what Teddy had already seen. Christina’s yacht, still tied to the dock but now tilted at a morose angle, the thing half swamped and looking like it would only take a good-sized wave to sink it entirely.

  “Shit, man,” Teddy said on the way down the grassy hill leading to the dock. “I didn’t like the boat’s name, but I sure as hell didn’t want anyone to sink the damned thing.”

  Whoever had swamped the Blackie had done a good job, much of the starboard side underwater. Teddy moved onto the dock, Ben trailing. Though Ben was acutely aware of how exposed they were here on the long, weathered strip of dock, he didn’t think any of the three gangsters was lurking nearby. The weather was too inclement to stand still in any one place for long, unless of course the sentinel they’d posted was impervious to the weather.

  Teddy uttered several curses under his breath, hunkered down next to the Blackie. “What’d they do to it? Shoot up the hull?”

  Ben moved past Teddy to the end of the dock. “I don’t know, but this isn’t the worst of it.”

  “Ain’t the worst of it? Man, are you insane? What the hell could be worse than being stuck here with three guys wanna kill us?”

  “Having our only other hope of rescue taken away.”

  Ben was standing at the edge of the dock watching the rain needle the ocean. The black surface of the water looked like it was being machine-gunned, but there was one place where the raindrops deflected, a place where something white floated languidly toward the dock.

  The dock creaked as Teddy moved up beside him. “What is that thing?”

  “A seat cushion,” Ben said.

  “From the Blackie?”

  Ben shook his head. “The helicopter.”

  “There you go again, tryin’ to be Sherlock Holmes.”

  “I held that cushion on the way here,” Ben said. “I have bad associations with helicopters. Because of last time.”

  Ben knelt on the dock, leaned over to fish the cushion out of the water. Straining, he snagged it. Towing it closer, he examined it. Orange on top and bottom with white sides.

  Teddy regarded the cushion dubiously. “Positive I.D., I suppose.”

  “I’m pretty sure, yeah.”

  “Couldn’t be another cushion. In the whole Pacific Ocean there couldn’t be another one like it.”

  “Washing up at this dock at this particular time?”

  “Let me guess,” Teddy said. “The island wanted it to happen.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “The hell you didn’t. All of a sudden this place not only turns people into bloodthirsty maniacs, but it commands the sea too?”

  “I’m just saying it looks like the same one.”

  “What about the Blackie here? Damn thing’s swamped. Couldn’t it’ve come out of that? That makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than some kind of intelligent tide, Poseidon-controlled sea, whatever the hell you wanna call it.”

  Ben sighed, tossed the cushion onto the dock.

  “Look,” Teddy said, “I think we need to start facing the situation as it really is.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Whether the chopper is coming back or not, there’re three guys out there who want us dead. We might think we’re fortified within that castle, but who the hell knows? There could be tons of other ways to get in, stuff we don’t know about. But let’s assume we’re safe in there, I mean really safe. What about when the helicopter comes? We just gonna waltz on out to it with those assholes takin’ aim at us? They could shoot up that chopper so bad it might blow up all over the castle lawn.”

  “The helicopter’s not coming.”

  “All right,” Teddy said. “Let’s say you’re right about the cushion. The chopper’s in the ocean, no one’s comin’ to rescue us and worst of all, your little girl is still missing.”

  Ben looked at him sharply.

  But Teddy stepped closer, the shorter man staring fiercely up into his face. “I’m on your side, don’t you get that? I’m saying what we’re doing is not gonna work. Guarding this, checkin’ on that. What we need is to sort this out.”

  Ben shook his head. “I don’t get you.”

  Teddy grinned, but there was nothing humorous about it. “They wanna kill us, right?

  “They want Christina’s money.”

  “Sure, but they’ll kill us to get it. And they’re the ones with the boat that isn’t sinking.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We go hunting. They’re probably on that boat right now. It’s the safes
t, driest place. Either that or in some cave, and if that’s the case the boat won’t be far. So we get them and take their boat.”

  “‘Get them’?”

  “I need to spell it out for you?”

  “So we walk the coast until we find the boat.”

  Teddy nodded. “Whole damned perimeter. Thing’s bound to be docked somewhere.”

  “Why do I feel like you don’t want to be in that castle at all?” Ben said, searching Teddy’s eyes. “Like there’s something you’re not telling me?”

  Teddy made a disgusted sound. “So we’re back on that again.” He strode away, arms akimbo. “Jesus Christ.”

  “No,” Ben said. “I get what you’re saying. Let’s go get those bastards.”

  Teddy gave him a sidelong glance. “You serious?”

  Ben just watched him.

  “All right,” Teddy said. “Let’s kill us some gangsters.”

  Troy Castillo lay in his room, a melting baggie of ice dripping on his swollen eyes. He thought he was alone at first, but then he noticed a face staring down at him. Christina Blackwood. It was as though she was the lever that controlled the flood of pain. Because now that his bleary eyes distinguished her pretty features, the agony crashed down on him with unspeakable force. And with the pain came the memory of how it had happened, how Ben Shadeland had sucker-punched him and refused to relent until Troy had lost consciousness. Bastard probably continued to wail on him for a good while afterward, had maybe even left him for dead after his gutless attack.

  Troy realized the Blackwood lady was speaking to him. As though rising through the turbid depths of some reeking cesspool, Troy climbed nearer and nearer to awareness so he could understand her.

  He attempted to mumble a question, but his lips were so swollen he couldn’t form the words. His tongue felt furry.