The Man from Primrose Lane: A Novel Page 38

  Tanner leaned back and looked at his father with brown eyes the size of half dollars. “So the bad man and his cat couldn’t get in.”

  What the boy said struck me as so odd it took me a full five seconds to sift any meaning from it. Then I understood. Part of it, at least.

  David did, too. He set Tanner down. When he spoke, his voice was calm, for his son’s sake. Only I knew how much fear he must be feeling. “Tanner. I want you to listen to me. Don’t ask any questions. Just do this. In a second I’m going to leave and get Aunt Peggy. When I do, I want you to close the door behind me. Lock it. Then crawl under your bed and cover your ears. No matter what happens, do not come out or open the door for anyone but me. Promise me you will not come out, okay?”

  Tanner didn’t say anything. He’d seen enough before we arrived.

  Somehow, David managed a smile. “I love you,” he said.

  “Love you,” said Tanner.

  And then we all heard it—the sound of heavy boots on finished wood, approaching from the East Wing.

  I stepped into the hall and wrapped my fingers around my cane. David shut the door behind him. Katy took David’s hand in hers and stood between us.

  It was then that we heard a low, a soft, a very soft mew. The sound of an old tomcat playing with a stunned mouse.

  “Easy,” said Trimble, from the darkness of the hallway. “Easy, Beezle.”

  EPISODE EIGHTEEN

  BEEZLE

  When it came down to it, it was Time that screwed everything up again.

  Sometimes you simply overplan.

  The day before Katy was to be abducted, I had Aaron fill the tank of my car. I got plenty of sleep that night. I ate a good breakfast. I packed a bag of emergency supplies—Fix-A-Flat, ID, money—in case something happened to the car along the way. When it got to be half-past noon, I called Aaron to come pick me up and drive me to Coventry, to Big Fun. There should have been plenty of time. Katy wasn’t abducted until three p.m. We’d be in Coventry by two p.m., even if there was traffic. I had been so focused on the hundreds of variables that could affect our arrival that I didn’t consider the constant in the equation. I didn’t consider time. I had forgotten it could change, too.

  I forgot daylight savings.

  We listened to NPR on the radio on the way up to Coventry and somewhere along Route 8 out of Akron the station gave a local news update. “It’s currently two-oh-five in the afternoon,” the announcer said at the beginning of his sign-off.

  “What did he just say?”

  “Hmm?” asked Aaron. “I wasn’t listening.”

  “What time did he say it was?”

  “A little after two.”

  “You mean one.”

  “No, boss. It’s two.”

  I checked my watch. It said one o’clock. And then I remembered.

  “Oh, man, did you forget to reset your watch?”

  “Yes, Aaron. It’s very important we reach Coventry by three p.m. I can’t tell you how important. It is essential we get there by three.” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice.

  Aaron looked at the congested traffic along Route 8, which was not built to handle commuter traffic to begin with and shrank to a single lane up ahead because of construction. I realized if we sat here long enough—say, eleven years—there would be an extra lane and traffic would no longer be an obstacle.

  “I’ll do my best,” he said.

  “Drive on the shoulder if you need to. Just get us there by three. Please.”

  * * *

  As the eclipse of time approached, I began to second-guess my research. What if Katy was abducted at ten till three instead of three on the nose? What if she was already long gone? Not the end. Not yet. But it would be no solace to Katy that I still had one opportunity left to catch him; by staking out the location where he dumps her body.

  The car lurched into a space up the street from Big Fun at precisely 2:57. I rolled out of the back door and onto the pavement, my cane tumbling some distance away from me. Aaron came around, helped me up, and put the cane in my hand.

  “Let me help you,” he said.

  “No. You have to stay here. Just wait for me.”

  I hobbled down the sidewalk toward the toy store, scanning the faces of the people walking on the other side of the street. Then I saw her: Katy. Katy as a young girl. Katy at ten. She was twirling on a lamppost like Gene Kelly, her free hand splayed in the sun as if to catch the light, her long hair trailing behind her like some special effect. And I saw him. His back was to me, but I knew it was him, the man I had hunted for four decades. Even from here, I could see his bushy hair blowing in the breeze. He was going to get to her first if I didn’t hurry. I picked up the pace, ambling as fast as I could, sure I was about to fall and break my neck and watch this happen in front of me as I died. But I didn’t fall.

  He was about ten feet from her when I plowed into him at top speed, slamming us both into the brick wall of Big Fun. He gave a yelp of surprise and looked at me as if I were about to slap handcuffs on him.

  “Got you, you motherfucker,” I said.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he whispered.

  “You were going to kidnap that girl,” I told him.

  “No. I wasn’t. I don’t even know her.”

  “Liar!”

  “Let go of me.”

  “You’re coming with me,” I said. “You’re going to talk to the police. We’re going to get your fingerprints. How much you want to bet you left them at the scene of some other murder?”

  The man’s eyes went blank. His mind retreated somewhere deep inside for just an instant. It must be the way he looks when he’s committing rapes and murders. Total lack of empathy, those eyes warned. A killer’s eyes. And then he came back to himself and kicked me, hard, in the groin.

  I doubled over and in that instant he fled past Katy and down the sidewalk. I watched him run into Tommy’s Diner. By the time I got to the restaurant’s doors, Aaron was once again at my side. I let him lead me in and we looked for ten minutes, but he was gone. Through the kitchen, maybe. Out the back door. Gone.

  I had lost my answer. I had let him get away. He was free to kill again.

  But Katy was alive.

  * * *

  I followed her, again, for a couple years. Softball games. School plays. Swim meets. I looked like a grandfather. No one questioned me.

  Sometimes I had Aaron drive me to malls during the holidays, when they were packed with people. I spent days looking for him in the crowds.

  But I never saw him again.

  * * *

  I got bored. I started hanging out with the Man from Primrose Lane during the afternoons when he wasn’t expecting his own Sherlock ruffian to swing by. Aaron would drop me off around the corner and I would shuffle up the street toward the house. Later, Aaron would pick me up at the same location. I made sure to wear mittens when I visited. To neighbors it appeared like it was just the old hermit out for a walk.

  We played a lot of chess. But we never got any better. I think it’s a little like playing both sides of the board. Mostly the games ended in a draw.

  Many days I sat beside the Man from Primrose Lane, reading one of his paperbacks or writing short stories while he dabbled with his oil paintings. Landscapes from National Geographic, at first. Then portraits. We were both impressed with his natural ability. And here’s the strange thing—I never really cared for painting. And when I did try, I wasn’t especially good at it. How do you explain that one, if we both have the same DNA?

  Sometime around 2001, after the towers fell, one of us got the idea—I think it was him—to collaborate on a book about our adventures and to sell it as mind-blowing fiction. Hey, what else did we have to do, you know? It might even freak the killer out enough to scare him away.

  Eventually we settled that I would write it, using my notes from Katy’s case and his own from Elaine and Elizabeth’s. He would paint the illustrations. The main characters, at least.

  The
n things got weird.

  I passed you on the street, David. You and Elizabeth must’ve just moved into your place on Palisades. You were out for a walk, your arms around each other’s waists. I was walking away from the house on Primrose, to Aaron’s car around the corner. I turned around before you noticed me. But, well, that sort of changed everything.

  I returned to the house and told the Man from Primrose Lane what I’d seen. It frightened him. It was weird. Weird that the two of you would find each other. That you would be drawn to her, even in this world where she was alive. It’s strange enough to force you to reexamine your idea of the universe, of fate and happenstance. What happened was the Man from Primrose Lane became obsessed again. Obsessed with finding out how the two of you found each other and what it meant in the larger picture.

  Some of the details he was able to ferret out of your email accounts; we, of course, knew you used a specific Stephen King novel as a key to all your passwords because we had done the same in our youth. We reread the emails Elizabeth sent you over the years. We discovered how your lives intersected in that college music class.

  The Man from Primrose Lane became obsessed mostly over one unanswerable question: if Elaine and Elizabeth had never been murdered in his timeline to begin with, would events have played out this way? He wanted to know if it had been his destiny to be with Elizabeth. He wondered if maybe he had felt that on some level that was the real reason behind his obsession with her cold case.

  I tried to point out to him that I had become obsessed with Katy’s murder. It’s like our brains were programmed to lock on to some mystery and pick it apart, bit by bit, over an eternity. Forget the question of destiny. I’ve often wondered if maybe we’re in hell. That’s the discussion I wanted to have.

  Anyway, he had this feeling that your relationship was jinxed, that it could not possibly work out well for her, especially given the fact that we knew, eventually, you would find your own obsession. That was your destiny. And Elizabeth was in the way.

  So he went on your honeymoon, booked a room on your ship, to watch over her. It’s a good thing he did. She was halfway over the balcony when he found her. He was there to save her life a second time. And maybe that’s what did the trick. Because it seemed to break some kind of spell.

  Suddenly all these great things started to happen. You found your case, but solved it before it claimed your soul. You and Elizabeth lasted. And we were allowed a friend. Me and the Man from Primrose Lane. After he saved her for the second time, he had to tell her the truth. And somehow, that truth made her stronger. She was our coconspirator. Yes, she came to the house often. She squeezed in visits while running errands, on trips to the grocery store, or when you were at work late at night. We played gin rummy. The three of us. We talked about your life and career. We gave her advice on how to handle your dark moods. I think, if I were to guess, the Man from Primrose Lane’s obsession somehow negated her parents’ neglect. She felt balanced, that much was obvious. Of course, she became quite fond of the Man from Primrose Lane.

  Were they romantic? I don’t believe so. It wasn’t that sort of friendship. But he would paint her. She allowed him that. And they would do it in private so she could undress. He showed me one of the better ones, a picture of Elizabeth posed on his bed, lying on her back, her legs trailing across the sheets, a milky-white palm resting against the headboard. She loved you, David. She saw the older you in the Man from Primrose Lane and loved what she saw there. She couldn’t wait to grow old with you, she told him.

  Eventually it got to a point where I felt like a fifth wheel. Her affection and gratitude always made me feel odd. It seemed wrong, I think. I stopped coming by. When I returned one day in 2008, the Man from Primrose Lane explained that he had asked Elizabeth to stay away. When I asked him why, he wouldn’t tell me.

  I think it’s possible that he knew he was being watched. How he knew, I don’t know. He was more paranoid than I had ever seen him. He’d always worn those mittens, said it was “insurance.” But when I returned, he was on this cleaning kick. Scrubbing every inch of the house. Said he was worried he’d left fingerprints somewhere. I think he felt fate catching up to him, finally. He may have been preparing for his murder.

  I’m sure, now, that the first place Elizabeth went after leaving the hospital was his house. Was the killer waiting in the bushes? Had he come to the home, expecting to catch the Man from Primrose Lane alone, only to surprise Elizabeth? Or had he spotted Elizabeth somewhere, stalked her, and followed her back to his house before killing them both? I don’t know how it played out.

  There’s only one question that matters: does the murderer know what we are? Because if he doesn’t, he thinks he’s killed the only man who knows his secret. And that means he thinks he’s free to kill again.

  * * *

  He wore a thin shirt over a shrunken and shallow chest, his hipbones jutting out like wings. He held a long white gun in one hand. He stank like a gutted deer.

  “Oooooowee,” said Riley. “We got everyone here. Nice. Come. You really must see what I’ve done with the place. Come.” He motioned to them with the gun, swinging it in the direction of David’s office. “Bring your kid, too.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Trimble licked his lips and looked from David to the bedroom door and back again. Then he waved his free hand. “You’re right. This is grown-up time. I can play with the kid later.” He winked at David.

  “I’ll—” David began, but Trimble smacked him in the nose with the gun and he went silent. Katy let go of his hand as he stanched the blood that dripped on his hallway carpet.

  “Move,” said Trimble.

  I led the way. I didn’t want to be in that hallway any longer. If there were any means of escape, they would not be found in that hall with a gun trained on us. David followed closely behind, with Katy between us.

  As we drew closer, my vision grew focused. The heightened stress was causing a kind of tunnel vision I hadn’t experienced since the more frightening moments of my childhood. I expect it was the same for David.

  Trimble had turned the room into a work of art for some grotesque exhibition. Something fitting William Blake, perhaps. Or Jeffrey Dahmer.

  In the middle of the room, the Edmund Fitzgerald desk lay on its side. Trimble had scraped a word into its top. BEEZLE. To the right of the desk was a woman of grandmotherly size, sitting in a chair, blindfolded, gagged, handcuffed, and dead. Her throat was cut at the jugular and she had bled out, quickly, on her blouse. Her head hung backward, making the wound look like a wet and gaping mouth.

  “Peggy,” said David softly. “Ah, Christ. Peg.”

  To the left of the desk a man was constrained in a similar manner but very much alive. Above his blindfold made of … sackcloth?… was a full head of bushy gray hair. He wore a button-down white shirt and a pair of jeans. He whimpered around the gag. Dean Galt.

  There was a low guttural sound from behind the captain’s desk and then, so suddenly it caused me to lurch backward, a cat appeared, jumping onto the desk from behind the dead woman. It was an old cat. I had never seen one so ragged and worn, its hair mottled, grayish, sickly. The color of the absence of color. It was minus a few whiskers and one ear had been ripped clean from its scalp, leaving nothing but a gangrenous hole. It tilted its head at us and hissed.

  “Beezle, shhh,” said Trimble.

  “A cat?” asked David. “Beezle’s a cat?”

  Trimble pushed us back by pointing his gun and slowly walked toward his familiar. “Not just a cat,” he said.

  “You’re insane,” said Katy.

  “Shut up, you are!” he said, then laughed. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out two pairs of police-issue handcuffs. He tossed a pair to me and the other to David. “Do yourselves up nice or I’ll have to.”

  “No,” said David.

  The shot was immediate and loud. The echo of the gunfire made my ears ring. To my left, David collapsed to the floor, clutching his kne
e. Beezle growled loudly. The blindfolded man screamed into his binding. Trimble even seemed a little stunned. “Fuck,” he said. “That was really loud.”

  Katy went to David’s side. “Are you okay? Jesus, David.”

  He didn’t say anything. Instead, he handed the cuffs to Katy, who reached around a radiator and secured her left hand to David’s right. Trimble pointed the gun at me then and so I went to Katy’s side and cuffed my left hand to her right, around the same cast-iron radiator.

  “Good,” said Trimble, hunkering down so he was on our level. Then he looked at me. “Now, first things first. Who. Are. You?”

  “I’m David’s uncle.”

  Slowly and deliberately, Trimble turned the gun sideways in his hand and then punched me with it, hard, square in the forehead. It felt like running into a steel door.

  “Why does it matter?” asked David.

  “Because I have a gun and I say it does.”

  “I’m him,” I said. “Him. I’m David, you dumb motherfucker.”

  And then Trimble did something that sent a fresh wave of fear up my spine. He turned to Beezle, who was perched on the desk behind him, and waited for some reply. The cat looked over to me, and when it did, my heart was filled with such dismay. It was the darkest, deepest sadness and it seemed to turn on inside my head the moment our eyes made contact. I heard a voice, a deep husky voice, that said, You have failed. You were, in fact, always a failure. Everything to which you have devoted your life is as empty and worthless as your soul. There is no grace. No meaning. No balance. Only me. Only the Dark.

  Trimble turned back to me. “How?”

  “How do you think?” I said.

  “Time travel?”

  “Yes.”

  Trimble looked back to Beezle, then at us. He laughed and slapped his knee hard enough for me to think he might accidentally set off the pistol. “No way! That’s rad, man. That’s totally rad. Fuck. Listen to this. I get to kill you twice!” He pointed the gun at David. “One.” And then at me. “Two.”

  He looked at Katy.

  “And you already knew, didn’t you! Ah. You little rascal,” he said. “I love smart girls. Too bad you’re all grown up. I bet you were a cute little thing, huh? Yeah. You were. I can tell. I bet you let your little boyfriends feel your flat chest, didn’t you? Play a little doctor?” He started to lean toward her and I thought he meant to kiss her, but then Beezle meowed and he stopped short. “Right,” he said. He shook his head to clear it, then he stood and walked to the man in the chair.