My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(104)

Tracy swept the remaining bits and pieces of concrete that she’d chipped from around the bolts holding the plate to the wall into the hole she’d created while unearthing Sarah’s metal spike. She covered them with dirt and patted it flat. A clattering and banging arose from the other side of the wall as she aligned the piece of carpet with the others.

The door banged open.

House entered with his back to her, grunting as he struggled to drag something heavy into the room. He dropped his kill near one of the vertical wood beams in the gray light from the doorway. The shadows prevented Tracy from making out the body’s face with any clarity. She assumed it to be Parker.

Next, House threw a length of chain over the nearest horizontal beam, gripped it, and stepped back. He pulled on the links of chain hand over hand, as if he was raising a boat’s sail. The body rose, arms extended overhead. House continued to pull until it hung like a slab of meat in a butcher’s window. He gave a final grunt and slid a link of the chain onto a hook protruding from the vertical beam, holding the body up. Finished, he fell back against one of the other posts, hands on his knees, bent over and breathing heavily. After a minute to catch his breath, he jabbed at the air with a fist, staggered forward, and fell to his knees. Tracy could hear his labored breathing as he cranked the generator handle. The filament pulsed and glowed, the drone becoming louder. The circumference of light took back the shadows, slowly revealing the body.

Roy Calloway hung by his wrists, slumped against the vertical beam, the horizontal beam not high enough for him to hang free. As the light fell across Calloway’s face, Tracy thought he was dead. Snow and ice clung to his face and clothing. The light filtered down his body, and over the .357 still in its holster on Calloway’s hip. Farther down, the light revealed his right leg sticking out at an odd and twisted angle just below the knee, where the metal teeth of the bear trap gripped his leg. His pants were torn and saturated in blood.

Tracy got to her knees and moved toward Calloway, but there was not enough slack in the chain to reach him.

House stopped cranking the handle of the generator and fell back against the table, chest still heaving. Sweat and melted snow matted his hair to his head and dripped down his face. He pulled off his gloves, unzipped his coat, and shook it free, throwing everything onto the bed. His long-sleeved shirt stuck to his chest. He stood staring at Roy Calloway as if to admire a prize elk. One he was about to gut.

Calloway moaned.

House reached out and grabbed his face. “That’s right. Don’t you dare die on me, you son of a bitch! That would be too good for you. Death is too good for any of you. You’re all going to suffer in a way that will make twenty years feel like they were nothing.” House turned Calloway’s head to face Tracy. “Take a look, Sheriff. All your efforts and lies and you still failed.”

“You’re an idiot,” Tracy said.

House released his grip. “What did you call me?”

Tracy shook her head derisively. “I said, you’re an idiot.”

He came toward her, though still out of her reach.

She said, “Have you really thought this through?”

Calloway shifted his legs, tried to stand, and screamed in pain, regaining House’s attention. House leaned an arm against the beam, his and Calloway’s noses nearly touching. “Do you know what solitary confinement is like, Roy? It’s like someone stuck you in a hole and deprived you of all your senses. It’s like you don’t exist, like the world doesn’t exist. That’s what I’m going to do to you. I’m going to keep you in this hole and make you feel like you don’t exist. I’m going to make you wish you were dead.”

“You really are a first-class f*ckup,” Tracy said.

House pushed away from the beam. “You don’t know shit. If you did, you wouldn’t be here.”

“I know you screwed up, twice. I know you got caught, twice. And I know you ended up in jail, twice. Did you ever stop to think maybe it’s because you aren’t as smart as you think you are?”

“Shut the f*ck up. You don’t know anything.”

“A smart man learns from his mistakes,” she said, mocking him. “Isn’t that what you said? It doesn’t look like you’ve learned shit to me.”

“I said shut up.”

“You brought the Sheriff of Cedar Grove here. How f*cking stupid can you be? Parker is still alive, Edmund. Do you think Calloway came alone? They know where you are. You’re going back to jail. Strike three. Three strikes and you’re out, Edmund.”

“I’m not going anywhere until him and me are finished. After that, I’m going to take care of you.” House lifted the generator onto the table and turned it around. The back of the crate was open, revealing wires protruding from large battery cells just as Tracy had suspected.

He loosened the wing nuts and fastened stripped-copper wires around the bolts projecting out of the top of the battery. When he turned to speak to Tracy, the ends of the wires inadvertently touched, causing a spark. House grimaced and flinched at the shock. “Goddamn it.”

“Jesus, you’re stupid.”

He took a step toward her, still holding the wires. “Do not call me stupid.”

“How do you think he got here? Did you stop to think about that? They’re coming for you, Edmund. You’re going to lose again.”