Page 60 of A Talent for Murder

“You’re going to die, Ethan,” I said, my throat raspy.

Blood was coursing through his fingers, and he let go of me and fell to the floor, his head thumping against it. I sat up on the bed and we looked at each other. I’d already thought about this moment, thought about having a chance to say something to him, so I said it now.

“When I get out of here, Ethan, I’m going to go to your house and find your list of homicides and I’m going to burn it. No one will know what you did. No one.”

Who knows if he heard me or comprehended what I was saying, but I like to think that he did.

Chapter31

Just before dusk Henry drove through town one more time. He hadn’t heard from Lily’s mother, which meant that Lily hadn’t been found, and even if she was somehow still alive, he didn’t think she’d survive another night with Ethan Saltz or Robert Charnock, whatever name he was going by.

Still, he drove. There wasn’t really any choice in the matter.

Earlier, after leaving the Covered Bridge Bar, he’d found the house where he thought he’d seen the car under the tarp, but maybe he’d remembered wrong, because there was only a Kia parked out front. Well, either he was wrong or someone was using the other car. It was getting dark, so he decided to take one more look at that particular house, slowing down along the street in front of the property. There were no streetlamps, but there was enough light left in the sky for Henry to see that there were now two vehicles out front. He parked, cutting the engine, then removed his snubnosed .38 revolver from the glove compartment. He got out of the car and slid the gun into his jacket pocket. When he got to the driveway he saw that one of the cars was definitely a vintage Jaguar. He removed the gun, told himself to breathe, and went to try the front door. He was scared, but the fear was more about the fate of Lily than the presence of Saltz. The door was locked.

He thought of ringing the bell or knocking but decided to look at the back of the house first. He went around the garage, along some crumbling paving stones. A motion-sensor light flicked on and Henry’s heart seemed to stop for a moment. But he kept walking, turning the corner to see that one of the ground-floor windows was lit with interior light. He found the back door and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.

Inside of the house he could hear nothing. He was in a back mudroom with open doors on either side. Peering through one door, he could make out what looked like a dining room. The other door led to a back hall. Henry took out his phone and hit the flashlight function. The first step he took down the now-illuminated hall produced a creak from the floorboard. He stopped moving, then heard a voice yell out, “Hello?”

“It’s the police,” he said in what he hoped was a confident voice.

“Down here,” came the voice back, and he knew it was Lily.

He sped down the hallway. An open door led to a set of basement stairs, light coming from below. “Lily?” he shouted down.

“Henry, I’m down here. It’s safe.”

Still holding his gun in front of him, he descended into a finished basement flooded with harsh light. When he reached the bottom step, Lily said, “I’m over here.”

He turned. She was sitting on a cot against the far wall. She was soaked in blood, half her face entirely coated. There was a man on the floor in front of her, also covered in blood, but he wasn’t moving.

“Is he dead?” Henry said, still holding his gun.

“He is.” Lily actually smiled. It looked ghoulish, that smile, something Henry would remember for the rest of his life.

He put the gun back in his jacket pocket and moved over to her, getting a better look at the man on the beige carpet. “Ethan Saltz?” he said.

“Yes. I can’t believe you found us.”

“He was going by the name of Robert Charnock,” Henry said. “I think I found you too late.”

“No,” Lily said. “You were right on time.” She kicked out her leg and he saw that she was chained at the ankle. “The key’s not on him. I’ve checked. I thought I was going to starve to death down here while he rotted on the floor.”

“Jesus,” Henry said, more of an exhale than a word. And then he took the first real deep breath he’d taken since coming down the basement stairs, his nostrils filling with the smell of blood.

Lily, seeing Henry go pale, quickly said, “It’s all okay now. Let’s find the key to these cuffs and get out of here.”

Chapter32

Henry found the key hanging on a hook near the basement stairs. After I was unshackled, we sat together and made a plan. Then we searched for a place to put Saltz’s body. There was a large pantry through a flimsy door in the basement. It was musty inside, with old shelving on the walls, and a dirt floor that looked like it had once been covered with cement that had given way to roots and frost heaves. There was a plastic tarp on the floor and when I moved it, I found that a grave had already been dug about three feet deep. On the shelves were bags of calcium oxide.

“That was for me, I guess,” I said.

Seeing what was going to be my permanent resting place made my stomach turn. I told Henry I was going to go upstairs and use the bathroom. While I was up there I tried to be sick. The bathroom was cheaply outfitted but clean, and the medicine cabinet was full of products, soap and Q-tips and ibuprofen. I washed my face in the sink, then stripped off all my clothes and stepped into the shower and scrubbed my whole body clean. Then I dried off and wrapped the towel I used around me. I found a box of Band-Aids plus a tube of antibiotic cream and worked on my ear for a while. I took four ibuprofen, swallowing them with water directly from the tap.

In the kitchen I found a large garbage bag and put my clothes in it, then I went upstairs to the second floor. The room where it looked as though Ethan Saltz occasionally slept had a similar feel to the downstairs bathroom. Cheap furnishings but neat. The single bed was made and there were a few paperback novels on the bedside table. Old stuff. A V. C. Andrews book. Stephen King’s It. Underneath the books was a copy of New York magazine. I flipped through it and found an article with Saltz’s byline. It was called “A Teenage Guru in Terlingua, Texas.” I suspected there were other relics from Saltz’s past throughout this house, but I wasn’t particularly interested in finding them.

I looked through his closet and found a pair of old skinny jeans plus a flannel shirt, and pulled them on. They were too big for me, but they’d do.

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