Edge of Midnight (McClouds & Friends #4)(114)

The door stopped closing. It opened a crack. Ivers’s eye appeared.

“What murdering sons of bitches?” he called out.

“The ones that did this to you.” Sean gestured at the yard, the dogs, the garbage. The festering despair that permeated the place.

Ivers opened the door and stepped out onto the tiny crooked porch. “What the f*ck do you know about what they did to me?”

Sean thought about the nightmares, about staring at the ceiling with a hole in his belly every four AM for fifteen years. About what he had done to Liv, in the jail. “They did it to me, too.”

Ivers looked him over, slowly, and snorted. “Yeah. Sure they did.”

“I mean to rip those murdering motherf*ckers limb from limb for what they did.” He held the man’s gaze. “But I need your help to do it.”

Ivers rubbed his stubbly face. He looked lost. “I can’t help you with anything,” he said. “I’m no good to anyone anymore.”

“We’ll see,” Sean said. “Please. Let us come in and talk.”

Ivers shrugged. “Aw, what the f*ck.” He shuffled down the steps, and grabbed the dogs’ collars. “Get inside. I’ll hold them until you’re in.”

The interior of Ivers’s home was much like the exterior. Dingy, reeking, with tattered thrift store furniture, an unbroken mass of clutter. Every surface was coated with a skim of oily dust and grime. There was a sour-sweet smell of spilled beer, dog urine and pot smoke.

Liv nudged a heap of junk mail gingerly off the cleanest looking sofa cushion, and perched right on the edge. Sean sat next to her.

Ivers shuffled in, and stared at them for a moment, as if two space aliens had sat down on his couch. “Uh, want a beer?”

He fetched himself one when they declined, and fell down with a crinkle onto a sliding heap of magazines on his sofa. He popped open his beer, glugged half of it down, and wiped his mouth. “So. What have you deluded yourself into thinking that I can do for you?”

“You wrote this article, fifteen years ago,” Sean said, holding up the photocopy. “I just want you to tell me what happened afterwards.”

Ivers closed his eyes, shook his head. His larynx bobbed in his lean, stubbly throat. “Look, you’ve got to understand. They can do what they want to me, I don’t give a f*ck. But I’ve got kids.”

“I won’t put your kids in danger,” Sean promised quietly.

Ivers rubbed his wet, trembling mouth. “I was working on a follow-up article,” he said. “I’d poked around, found two more names. One kid from Washington State, the other from Evergreen.”

“How did you find out about the Colfax Building?”

“Ah. That was a stroke of luck.” He laughed. “Good or bad, depends on how you look at it. If I hadn’t talked to Pammy, maybe I’d still have a family. Maybe I’d still be a man. Not a piece of shit.”

“Tell us about Pammy,” Sean suggested gently. He had practice steering disturbed people gently away from the dead-end grooves in their minds, after all those years of trying to manage Crazy Eamon.

“She was the girlfriend of one of the missing boys. Craig Alden. She told me that he’d been doing drug experiments, getting paid good money for it, three hundred bucks a pop. She was into mind-expanding stuff like that, so he brought her up to the Colfax to see if he could sign her up. Double their money. To support her other drug habit, I expect.”

“And?” Liv prompted. “Did he? Did she?”

“No,” Ivers said. “The guy running the experiments didn’t want Pammy. She said the guy was pissed at Craig for bringing her there. Not surprising. She was a meth head. I wouldn’t have wanted her, either.”

“Did she remember the doctor’s name?” Sean asked.

Ivers let out a derisive grunt. “Like it could be that easy. All she remembered was that he was tall, dark and handsome. Helpful, huh?”

Sean shrugged. “It narrows it down a little. Go on.”

“So a couple weeks later, Craig didn’t come home. She figured he’d gotten bored, run off with some girl. I was curious at that point, so I followed up. The building was closed. I tracked down the janitor who’d worked there, but he didn’t know anything. I kept digging, found out the building was owned by Flaxon Industries. Big pharmaceutical company. I tracked down the local company rep. Guy told me there had never been any drug trials conducted there to his knowledge, so I figured Pammy had been dropping acid. But that night…” He stopped, rubbed his mouth. “Jesus,” he muttered. “I’m slitting my own throat.”

“No, you’re not,” Sean said patiently. “What happened that night?”

Ivers covered his eyes. “I woke up,” he rasped. “A guy with a mask was holding a knife to my wife’s throat. He told me I was going to stop writing articles, stop asking questions, or he’d cut her in front of me. Then he’d start in on my kids. Make it look like I’d done it. Three and six years old, sleeping down the hall. Those sweet, innocent little kids.”

Liv leaned forward and put her hand on the guy’s arm, making him jump. “I know how you felt,” she said.

He yanked his arm away. “How would you know?”

“He had that knife at my throat two days ago.” She nodded towards Sean. “He saved me. Or I’d be in a hole in the ground now.”