Unhinged Read online

“Fred,” Darren started to say, but Fred held his hand up.

  “Sometimes a guy’s self-esteem just can’t take another hit.” He left the room, and Darren and I looked at each other but said nothing. We watched the documentary, and Fred waved on his way back down the hall after changing for his run. I kept my eye on our security monitor, watched Fred leave through the front door.

  “Are we shits?” I said. I paused the TV.

  “It’s possible,” Darren said.

  “Not everybody grew up like we did. We all have pretty thick skins.”

  “And the same sense of humor.”

  “Which Fred does not,” I said. “It’s easy to forget, sometimes. He is outnumbered, really.”

  “Things obviously didn’t go well for him in California, and we weren’t exactly sympathetic.”

  “No.” We sat in silence for a minute. “When’s his birthday?” I said suddenly. “Fred’s.”

  Darren looked at me. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “So we’ve probably been here with him on his birthday and didn’t even acknowledge it.”

  “Well. Shit.” Darren ran downstairs to ask the boys when their father’s birthday was, and I sent Fred a text:

  We are awful humans, and we’re sorry you have to put up with us. We’re just sorry.

  I thought for a second, then added:

  xo

  I waited for him to text back, and glanced through the newsfeed on my phone. I had no idea what was going on in the world. I was afraid to see my name somewhere, or even something about Helen of Troy. After the time that had passed, though, I was sure there were newer atrocities.

  My phone rang, and I jumped. I usually had my phone off, and not many people called me. It was Belliveau.

  “Do you think that Darren and I would be difficult to live with?” I said by way of greeting.

  “What? Danny, listen to me. I have to tell you something, and I have to tell you right away,” he said. I heard the sounds of traffic and rain in the background.

  “What is it?” I said. I was standing. I didn’t remember standing.

  “A body was found on Cherry Beach late this afternoon. It matches the description you gave for Ann Saulnier.”

  “Oh no,” I said. My eyes welled up. That poor girl. That poor kid.

  “Danny, there’s something else.” He yelled something at someone and then came back on the line. It sounded like he was getting into a car. “There were words carved on her abdomen.” There was silence, during which I dug my fingers so hard into my palm that I opened the wound there.

  “Just tell me, Paul. Spit it out.”

  “Hi, Danny,” he said. “That’s what was carved there. ‘Hi, Danny’.”

  The same words that had been written in blood on the mirror nearly two years ago, when I woke up in a motel room in California with a dead man in the next bed.

  “It’s him,” I said. “Michael Vernon Smith.” I looked around frantically for my Percocet. I couldn’t afford pain.

  “It looks that way,” Belliveau said. “You guys do what you do. Your security protocols. I’m sending people to sit out back and in front, and I’ll be there when I can. He’s showing his hand, Danny. Whatever he’s playing at, there has to be a reason he chose her, and a reason he chose now.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Or it could be just to drive you crazy,” he said. “Make you prisoners in your own home.”

  “Yes.”

  I heard somebody talking over his cop radio. “Danny, I’ll be there when I can.”

  “Fred’s not here,” I said. “He’s gone for a run. He’s out there on his own. And Dave’s gone; he had to fly to Florida today.” I was babbling. What was taking Darren so long? Why was it so quiet in here? It was never quiet in here.

  Belliveau swore. “I’ll get it on the radio for patrol to look for him. You call him. And, Danny, stay calm. You know what to do.”

  He hung up. I walked to the wall and pushed our “Code Orange” alarm – two short rings. Everyone in the house could see which room it was coming from, and we could – kids included – broadcast from the video monitors to all the other rooms in the house.

  I made a mental note of the time. It was ten p.m. on the dot.

  “Everybody come up to the TV room, please. Now,” I said. I tried to sound calm, and found that I actually was. “Urgent news about Smith, but don’t panic. Rosen, outdoor protocol and armed, please. Darren, bring all the boys. Marta and Mama, this means you too.”

  Within ten seconds, floodlights lit up every side of the bakery. There would be no skulking in darkness for anybody who might be looking for a way into this building. I heard movement downstairs, and Darren’s voice. Then I breathed. I quickly moved the lamp in the corner and grabbed the loaded pistol that was secured behind it.

  Only the adults knew the location of most of the firearms in the bakery, but all three of our kids had been drilled in firearm safety so often and thoroughly, they’d never touch a gun unless they had to. I dialed Fred’s number, but it went right to voicemail.

  I tucked the gun into the back of my jeans and pulled my t-shirt down over it.

  I was about to dial Fred again, when glass shattered somewhere downstairs, and Marta screamed.

  The “Code Red” alarm activated.

  TWENTY-SIX

  This. This was why we’d had monitors installed everywhere.

  Marta’s kitchen window had been broken from the outside.

  Our supposedly unbreakable glass was very broken, presumably by someone on the fire escape.

  I did what we were meant to do, and stayed where I was. The TV room was our equivalent of a safe room. A safe room in what was supposed to have been a very safe building. It had no windows and a large closet with food, water, emergency supplies, and weapons. The entrance to the room was a sliding steel door that would take a bomb to open without the correct biometrics.

  But, then again, we’d thought our windows were unbreakable.

  The boys came running in, first Eddie, then the twins. My gun had found its way into my hand in the last few seconds, and I kept my eyes on the monitors.

  “Boys, into the closet, please,” I yelled. The alarm was deafening. “Now.”

  We called it a closet, but it was really a small room, with an external ventilation system. It was a panic room within a safe room, for situations exactly like this one – the boys were safe before the rest of us were, or if the rest of us couldn’t make it there. I wasn’t closing the safe room door until everyone else was inside.

  Marta and Mama came in next, probably twenty seconds later. For once, Mama wasn’t carrying her chair. Instead, she was holding a very lethal-looking machete. Marta was shaking, but she had a baseball bat in her hand.

  “Ladies, closet with the boys. Go. Lock the door until you see we’re all in here.” There was a monitor in the closet that showed the rest of this room, but none of the rest of the house.

  Right now, I cursed that failing.

  I looked back at the monitors. Rosen and Darren were in Marta’s kitchen, both with guns drawn. Rosen pulled down the emergency shutter – a steel covering that could be drawn down from the ceiling, similar to the security shutters you see covering the windows of stores in bad neighborhoods after dark. He gave the monitor the thumbs up, and a few seconds later he and Darren were in the TV room. Darren slid the steel door shut.

  We were locked in.

  And if the rest of the windows in the bakery had been installed with the same glass – obviously not the space-age unbreakable, bullet-proof glass that we had paid for – then this was the only safe room.

  Fred was still out there somewhere, but the rest of us were safe.

  Darren deactivated the alarm, and there was blessed quiet for a moment.

  The closet opened, and the Garcias and the twins came out.

  “Where’s Fred?” Matty said. He was in his pajama bottoms, a t-shirt, and bare feet. All the boys were.

  “Gone for a run,
” I said. “The police should be here in moments, and Belliveau is having people look for him. His phone was off, but try him again, Matt.” I tossed Matty my phone.

  “I walk into the kitchen, and it exploded,”

  Marta was saying. “Marta, sit down,” Rosen said. He moved the two women gently into chairs, and Darren grabbed a few bottles of water from the closet and handed them out. Rosen pulled a throw from the couch and wrapped it around Marta, who had started to rock back and forth.

  “There’s no signal,” Matty said. His voice sounded higher than usual. “I can’t get a signal.”

  Darren and Rosen both pulled their phones from their pockets, and the looks on their faces said the same. Mama stood and slid her hand deep into a pocket that she’d obviously sewn inside her skirt, and pulled out what looked like the newest model iPhone.

  I was beginning to wonder if the next surprise I’d discover about Mama Estela was that she’d been a CIA operative.

  She poked at it a few times, and shook her head.

  “My phone worked in here five minutes ago,” I said.

  “Someone is jamming cell transmissions,” Rosen said. “But I cleared the second floor. No one came in.”

  “No one there,” Marta said, nodding.

  “No one was there two or three minutes ago,” Darren said. He looked past me at the wall, and his face changed.

  Fear touched my spine, like a cold finger running down my back. I turned, and looked at the monitors.

  They were blank. Black. Well, two of them were black, and the rest were just static.

  “Fuck me,” I whispered. If somebody was somehow messing with our systems, they could be disabling the biometric sensors at the doors – everything.

  Including the door to the room we were in. I could see Rosen and Darren figuring that out just as I did.

  “Closet, everyone. Now,” Rosen said. He scooped Eddie up and threw him over his shoulder, like it was a game. He tickled Eddie, who giggled uncontrollably. That sound made me feel fifty percent better. Rosen knew what he was doing.

  The door to the closet was the only door in the building that didn’t have a biometric override attached. Once inside, it was like the door to a walk-in freezer, with a steel core and an enormous deadbolt, with smaller ones at top and bottom.

  This small room was not built for comfort. Darren and I pulled out blankets from shelving we’d put up, and tried to make the Garcias comfortable, while Rosen picked up the landline phone. When we were planning the space, Dave had stressed that while landlines might seem archaic, they were a necessity in an emergency – if, for example, a crazy person had managed to break past your defenses and jam your cell signals, and you found yourself crammed into a closet with four adults and three adolescent boys.

  Rosen replaced the phone in its cradle and shook his head slightly. I knew he didn’t want to overly worry the kids. I wasn’t surprised it was cut. Our security systems were shot and our cells weren’t working. This had taken planning, and it was too much to hope that a landline would be overlooked.

  Luke and Matty sat down on the floor cross-legged. They were quiet for the time being, though I could feel the fear coming off them, mixed with perhaps some small excitement. They had Darren and me and Rosen, not to mention the Garcias. They had a very impressive steel door protecting them from whatever was out there, and plenty of food and water. Plus, they’d heard me say I’d talked to Belliveau. This could, to a nearly thirteen-year-old, seem in some small way like an adventure. Mama Estela was curled up in the corner watching us with great interest. She looked perfectly comfortable, and very alert. Marta had taken the machete from her mother, and was licking her thumb and testing it against the blade. She had a determined frown on her face. She was sitting on her haunches, with Eddie crammed behind her against the wall. She was the very picture of mama bear protectiveness, and I almost wanted to smile.

  The room was twelve feet by ten feet, and it had been added very much as an afterthought. With the security we’d constructed the place with, not to mention the large comfortable room just beyond the door, it seemed beyond the realm of possibility, back then, that we’d find ourselves in this situation. For one thing, there was no plumbing into this little room. No running water, no toilet. I crouched down by the farthest shelf and pulled out a five-gallon bucket that contained an assortment of emergency foods that didn’t need heating or water to prepare – pouches of tuna, protein bars, jerky – and dumped it all out on the floor. I set the bucket in the corner, empty, and put the lid back on loosely.

  “Welcome to our luxurious en suite facilities, ladies and gentlemen.” Rosen half smiled, Darren wasn’t paying attention, and everybody else looked at me like I was speaking Dutch. “If you have to go to the bathroom…” I waved my arm at the bucket. “One at a time, please. The rest of us will turn our backs and hum a tune.”

  Mama cackled, and Marta put the water bottle she had just picked up back on the floor. Eddie looked like he was going to cry.

  I just love making children cry.

  I sat down on the floor beside him, squeezing in between his grandmother and him with my back to the wall. “Don’t worry, Eduardo,” I said quietly. “Remember, I talked to Sergeant Belliveau on the phone just a little while ago. He said he was coming over as soon as he could, and that he was sending other police too. So, really, it’s just a matter of waiting until Paul gets here. He knows about this room, remember?” Eddie had actually conducted part of the tour for Paul and Joanne Belliveau. He’d been very proud of his new home.

  “Oh yeah,” Eddie said. His little face relaxed. “Okay.”

  “So why don’t you close your eyes and pretend you’re on a camping trip.”

  “Danny,” Eddie said, as though that was about the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.

  “Hmm. You’re right. This isn’t much like the woods.”

  “I liked the woods,” Eddie said. He’d gone up to the Belliveaus’ cottage with us. It was Eddie’s first time in any kind of landscape like that. He’d come to California from Mexico when he was a baby, and his only trip since then had been to Toronto.

  “Me too,” I said. “We’ll go up there again soon, I promise. Maybe at Thanksgiving.” I sat and wished we’d bought a big property up north somewhere after all. Though this would just have happened there, and we’d be further away from help.

  I played with Eddie’s hair for a few minutes, and soon he shut his eyes. I’d noticed that he always calmed down when someone touched his head. He was at that age where he could be a little boy one minute, and a brave warrior the next.

  Mama, curled up on the floor on my other side, poked my hip. “Have one, girl,” she said. “Baby.” She nodded significantly at my lap, in the vicinity, I presumed she meant, of my ovaries. “Old.”

  I barked a laugh, and she cackled.

  Who knew Mama Estela would turn into the member of my household who always knew what to say?

  Eddie turned over and faced the wall. He was sleeping, or nearly.

  I got up and rummaged through the small bin of entertainment things I’d put in here, and found what I was looking for. An old iPod of mine, and I found the “Sleepy Time” playlist I’d made for myself years ago, before Jack and I split, before crack. I put the headphones gently over Eddie’s ears and turned the music on low. Marta turned and smiled at me, machete in hand.

  I needed to tell the others what Belliveau had said on the phone, and Eddie didn’t need to hear about words being carved into dead girls.

  Rosen and Darren were perched next to the boys. I got up and moved a few feet, with my back against the door. I wanted to be able to see everyone.

  “Boys, what I’m going to say is scary and very gross,” I said quietly. “You don’t really need to hear it, and I’d rather you didn’t. But you’ve both been through a lot, and you know why we’re in the situation we’re in.” I waved my hand, indicating the building as a whole, rather than the fact that we were all shoved in a closet. “If you
’d rather not hear it, I can find headphones for you. I know there are a bunch in here. But I’m leaving it up to you.” I looked at Darren. He looked at Matt and Luke with such sadness, I felt like my heart would break.

  I knew Matt would want to hear it, and I was pretty sure Luke would not. They looked at each other and communicated silently.

  “We can handle it,” Luke said. Darren put his hand on Luke’s shoulder.

  Quickly and quietly, I told them about Ann’s body being found. And about the message carved into her abdomen. I had to stop there and close my eyes. All I could see was that young girl’s face when the man in the club was assaulting her. Matty grabbed my hand.

  Darren then explained, better than I could have, about the incident, nearly two years ago, when a man had been killed by the same people who had killed my sister, and how the people who did it had written the same thing – “Hi, Danny!” – in blood on the mirror.

  Marta had her hand over her mouth, and Mama Estela said a bunch of stuff in Spanish and nearly hit the floor with the machete, but Marta stopped her, nodding at Eddie. Luke looked sick, but like he was trying to be brave. Matty just stared at my face. He could read me almost as well as Darren could.

  “This is the reason why I wanted to get everyone up here,” I said. “But then, a second later, the window was broken.”

  “You think Smith is about to make some sort of move, then,” Rosen said.

  “Well, I think he has.” I nodded at where we were. “I just don’t know how, or what he wants.” Or whether he’s right outside this door, I wanted to say, but the twins’ presence stopped me.

  Darren had gotten up and was looking through what entertainment and electronics we had put in the closet. He found the boys’ old handheld video games they’d grown out of, and headphones.

  “Guys, you know we trust you. But I want to talk to Rosen and Danny privately now, okay? Put the headphones on. The police will be here soon enough.”

  Once he was sure the boys were set up, Darren looked at Rosen and nodded, and then at me.

  “Danny, I don’t want you to freak out,” he said.