The Storm King(100)
Owen snapped his fingers in front of Nate’s face. “Care to share with the group?”
“They’ll know it’s you,” Nate said. “The vandals have been able to hit so many places at once because they split into groups. James divvied up last night’s targets among his crew, and Maura and Pete were paired up. James knows where they were supposed to go. They were supposed to spray-paint Grams’s house, but I scared them off. James thought I’d killed Maura because Grams’s house wasn’t damaged. He assumed they never made it any further down their list. But Grams’s wasn’t the last place those two went. This was. Sooner or later, James and the others will come by and see that broken window, just like I did. They’ll figure it out. I’d get out of here while you still can.”
The whisper Nate had heard earlier from the bright end of the basement surfaced again, this time cresting into the threshold of intelligibility. “No, you can’t go, you’d never go, you’d never leave—”
Nate squinted, and the dimensions of the room became clearer. It didn’t expand into forever, as it had seemed when he first woke. That was just how his hazy brain had interpreted a large alcove with walls lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. With the unblinking ceiling fluorescents reflected endlessly against these mirrors, that section of the basement blazed. But something large and dark twitched near the center of this kaleidoscopic pocket. Nate’s vision still wasn’t perfect, but he saw this bulk reflected across the facets of the walls and echo into infinity.
Like the mirrored alcove it originated from, the wispy stream of words never seemed to end.
“He’s a liar, always was, always will be—”
“What is that?” Nate found his own voice pared to a sliver of itself.
Owen slapped him again, this time with the porterhouse of his open palm.
When the pain arrived, it crashed like a breaking wave. The inside of his cheek felt shredded against his molars. Blood pooled behind his teeth. All he could think was that this was the hand that had squeezed the life from Lucy.
“You are a liar. You’ll say anything to get out of here.”
Nate spat a gob of blood onto the floor. One of his incisors felt loose. The man was as strong as he looked. He forced himself to focus on Owen and not the voice from the far end of the basement. “I can tell you what you want to hear, or I can tell you the truth.”
“All right, Nate. Lay it on me.” Including Mr. Liffey and Mr. Vanhouten, Owen was a murderer at least four times over, with two more victims bound in his basement. Any sane person would be unraveling in panic, but not Owen. Something burned in his eyes, but it wasn’t fear.
“The truth is that you’re screwed. Getting away with killing Lucy was pure luck. You’ve got no clue how much luck. The chief buried evidence because he’d been protecting Tom. Now there’s another dead girl. They have Maura’s body, and they’ll find something that ties her to you.”
“Doubt it. She was a mess, but I stripped her down, washed her up, first with soap and water, then with bleach. Trimmed her fingernails, scrubbed real well under them, burned her clothes.” He brought his face closer to Nate’s. “How do you know so much about the girl and the other kids?”
“People tell me all kinds of things. I’ve got one of those faces.” Nate wasn’t strong enough to break free of the ties that bound him, but if he positioned himself just right, and if he could get Owen to hit him again—
“You must have talked to them. At the funeral?”
“Look at the Porker, trying to use his little piggy brain.” As insults went, it was a softball, but that didn’t mean it didn’t connect. Owen’s upper chest and neck darkened into red splotches.
“You’re trying to make me angry. Maybe you think I’m going to slip up and tell you something I shouldn’t, but if you have a question all you gotta do is ask. Today, to you, I’m an open book.” He smiled. Because soon, what you know won’t matter is what his smile told Nate. Soon all the things that you want and fear and love won’t matter to anyone.
“Did you have a thing for Lucy from the beginning?”
“Everyone did.” He grinned at Nate.
“And then you told her how you felt.” Nate shook his head. “That was brave of you, O. You must have known she’d turn you down. I mean, just imagine her with you.” He chuckled as if holding this image in his mind evoked even a crumb of mirth. “The Princess and the Porker. There’s a fairy tale to scare the kids away from refined sugar.”
The flush on Owen’s neck climbed to his face. Just for a moment Nate saw the boy Owen had been at the time of their graduation: a young man whose large size had made him an unmissable target during the most vulnerable years of his life, a shy boy who’d just sung the hottest girl in town the paean of his soul, only to have her laugh in his face.
The whisper sounded again from the other end of the basement.
“She didn’t deserve you, that whore, that filthy girl, you are so much better, you are the most handsome—”
By now, Nate knew where the voice came from. A part of him had known since the first time he’d heard it. But that didn’t mean he was ready to face it and all that it implied.
“Shut up!” Owen screamed, whirling to address the voice. His fury flared with terrifying suddenness. When he turned back to Nate, his teeth were bared like a wild animal’s. But after a moment, this grimace twisted into a smile.