The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(59)

On his way back to his car, Mason saw a man and a woman walking in through the front door of the restaurant, going inside to sit down and have a nice dinner. Normal, happy people. Diana was inside, doing her job.

I need to tell her, Mason thought. She needs to know about the wolves. Tonight. After I do this.

Mason got back in his car and headed down the street. He took a few breaths, thought about where he was going, and tried to imagine what he might find when he got to Harris’s house.

What could this woman have that every dirty cop in the city would want so badly? As he got onto the Dan Ryan Expressway, a squad car came up behind him. Mason tensed up and ran through his options. Gun it and try to make the next exit. Or look for a break in the median so he could turn and go in the opposite direction. But then the squad car blew by him.

Mason let out his breath and kept driving.

When he got to Fuller Park, he slowed down to a crawl as he approached the house. The street was just as empty as the last time he was here, the night he had followed Harris. There were no lights on in the house itself. Both black Chrysler 300s were parked out front, but there was nobody sitting in either of them. No need to provide security for Tyron Harris anymore. He was probably still lying on a metal table somewhere downtown.

Mason watched the house for a while. Then he turned and parked a block down one of the side streets. He turned off the interior light in his car and waited a few minutes. Let your eyes adjust to the dark, he told himself. When you get out, move fast, but not too fast. Look like you belong here.

Mason took out the flashlight from the glove compartment. Then he eased open his door, got out, and closed it quietly behind him. He walked back toward the house—a long minute of feeling exposed and vulnerable.

His cars are here, Mason thought. So where are his men? The house looks deserted.

An old chain-link fence, half-collapsed in on itself, bordered the backyard. He looked up and down the street and then found a spot where he could step over it. Mason went to the back door, gave another look in every direction, then tried the knob. It was locked.

The door window had nine panes of glass. Mason hit the bottom right pane with the heel of his hand, felt the glass break, and heard it falling on the floor inside. Then he reached through to unlock the door.

He pushed the door open an inch and listened. Nothing.

Absolute silence.

He turned on the flashlight and covered most of the lens with his hand so that only a thin beam of light was cast into the kitchen. The first thing he saw was the wreckage. Both doors of the refrigerator were open and all of the contents had been spilled out onto the floor. Every cabinet was open, every dish broken.

Taking another step, he felt a shard of glass break under his foot. He stopped and listened until he picked up on a noise from somewhere above him. A creak. Then another. Could be the house settling, he thought. Probably makes sounds like that all day and night.

He stayed still and waited. He didn’t hear another sound. Then, as he swung his flashlight, he saw the door that led down to the basement. He opened it and shone his light down the stairs. The smell of damp air and mildew came rushing up at him.

And something else.

The four bodies were all piled up at the bottom. All black.

Mason knew exactly who these men were.





29




Mason had to confirm that Angela was not among the victims. He went halfway down the stairs, just close enough to see each man’s body, how it had landed and gotten tangled up with the others. There was no woman here.

Quintero said they were looking for her, Mason said to himself. If she was here, then they must have taken her away after killing every single one of these men.

Meaning I got here too late. And now it’s time to get the hell out of here.

As Mason went back up the stairs, he mentally retraced his steps through the house, thinking about every surface he might have touched. He didn’t think he’d put his hand anywhere except for the back door itself. Simple enough to wipe down the knob on his way out, which was the one direction he was now headed. He grabbed a dish towel from the kitchen.

He opened the back door and was just about to wipe the knob. That’s when he heard the voice.

One more thing about these old houses—they have the ventilation system that runs in open ducts between the floors. He could remember living in old pieced-out apartments in shithole houses in Canaryville when he was growing up and how sometimes you could actually see through the vents to the apartment below you. Interesting if the person down there was worth looking at. Not so interesting if it was some drunken * in his underwear yelling at his wife.

He heard the voice again. Hoarse and strained, almost unintelligible. It might have been the whimper of an animal. An alarm clock was already going off in Mason’s mind. He’d been here too long. Being in the same house for more than a few minutes with four dead men piled up in the basement seemed like a violation of one of his rules. Or, in any case, a really bad idea.

But he had to find out where the voice was coming from.

He started into the main part of the house and saw the ghostly shadows of upturned furniture. The dining room table on its side, all of the chairs thrown around the room and broken. A cabinet of drawers emptied.

Mason stood and listened again. Then he went into the front room and saw thin threads of blood woven together on the floor. Bullet holes in the walls.

He went up the stairs.