“How long ago?”
“Let me check the log-”
“Forget it. Open the gate, Jorge.”
“It’s opening, Mr. Conover.”
And so it was, glacially slow. Inching open.
“Can you speed it up?” Nick said.
Jorge smiled apologetically, shrugged. “You know this gate, I’m sorry. Also your friend came by.”
“My friend?”
“Miss Stadler? She came by too. Hour ago, I think.”
Did the kids call Cassie to come over? he wondered. Why didn’t they call me? They know how to reach me. More comfortable calling Cassie, that it?
“Goddammit,” Nick shouted in frustration. “Speed this fucking thing up.”
“I can’t do that, Mr. Conover, I’m sorry.”
Nick floored it, the Suburban lurching forward, hitting the solid iron bars of the gate, a crunch of metal that he knew wasn’t the gate. Even the goddamned Suburban is a fucking tin can, crumples like a wad of aluminum foil. Front-end work. Fuck it.
It didn’t budge the gate, which continued its stately pace, oblivious, arrogant, taking its goddamned fucking time.
Jorge’s eyes widened. Finally the gate was open just enough, Nick calculated, to get through. He gunned it again, the squeal of metal against metal as the car scraped against the gate but got through, just barely.
SPEED LIMIT 20, the sign said.
Fuck it.
No fire trucks on the street or along the driveway. No police cars either.
Maybe this was nothing. He was overreacting, no emergency at all, no gas leak at all, a false alarm.
No. A false alarm, there would have been an answer, one of the calls he’d made.
Gas leak for real. Eddie came by, got the kids out of there and Cassie too, saved them all, thank God for that traitorous bastard, a bastard but my bastard, maybe turned out to be a real friend after all, maybe I owe him an apology.
Eddie’s GTO in the driveway, parked behind the van. Cassie’s red VW convertible too. It didn’t compute. Cassie came over, Eddie too, both of their cars here, the van here too. That meant no one drove the kids away, thus the kids are still here and Eddie and Cassie too, so what the hell, then?
He raced up the stone path to the house, noticed all the windows were closed, the house sealed tight as if they were already out of there, on vacation, and as he approached the front door he smelled rotten eggs.
The gas smell.
It was for real. It was strong too, if he could smell it out here. Very strong. That odorant they add to natural gas so you know if there’s a leak.
Front door was locked, which was a little strange if everyone had just run out of there, but he didn’t linger on that, totally single-minded. He grabbed his key ring, got the door open.
Dark in here.
He yelled out, “Hello? Anyone here?”
No answer.
The rotten-egg smell was overpowering. More like skunk, maybe. A wall of odor, sharp as a knife, nauseating.
“Hello?”
Faint noises now. Thumping? From upstairs? He couldn’t tell, the house was so solid. He entered the kitchen, but no one there either.
Distant bumping sounds, but then footsteps nearby, and Cassie appeared, walking slowly, looking worn out, a wreck.
“Cass,” he said. “Thank God you’re here. Where are the kids?”
She kept approaching, one hand behind her back, slowly, almost hesitant. Her eyes sleepy, not looking at him, her stare distant.
“Cass?”
“Yeah,” she said at last. “Thank God I’m here.” Flat, almost affectless.
He heard a high-pitched mechanical beeping coming from somewhere. What the hell was that?
“Where is everyone?”
“They’re safe,” she said, but something in her tone seemed off, as if she wasn’t sure.
“Where’s Eddie?”
A beat. “He’s…safe too.” She drew out the words.
He stepped toward her to give her a hug, but she stepped backward, shook her head.
“No,” she said.
“Cassie?”
He felt the twang of fear even before his brain could make sense of it.
“You’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to open some windows, call the fire department. Jesus, this is incredibly dangerous, this stuff is unbelievably combustible. Where are Luke and Julia?”
The high beeping was getting faster, higher in pitch, and Nick realized the source was a device on the kitchen counter he’d seen before, a small yellow box with flexible metal tubing coming out of it. What was it, and what was it doing there?
“I’m glad you came home, Nick.” Her eyes were smudged, looking like black holes. They darted from side to side. “I knew you would, though. Daddy protects his family. You’re a good daddy. Not like my daddy. He never protected me.”
“Cassie,” he said, “what is it? You look so frightened.”
She nodded. “I’m terrified.”
He felt his skin go cold and goosefleshy. He saw it in her eyes, that same absent look he’d seen before, as if she’d gone somewhere else where no one could reach her. “Cassie,” he said in a gentle and firm tone, hollow inside, “where are my children?”
“I’m terrified of me, Nick. And you should be too.”
With her left hand she reached into the pocket of her denim shirt and pulled out an object that he recognized as Lucas’s Zippo lighter. The lighter decorated with a skull crawling with spiders and surrounded by spider webs, a real stoner lighter. She flipped the top off, one-handed, and her thumb touched the flint wheel.
“No!” Nick shouted. “What are you doing, are you crazy?”
“Come on, Nick, you know I am. Can’t you read the writing on the wall?” She began singing softly, “Oh, I ran to the rock to hide my face, the rock cried out ‘No hiding place.’”
“Where are they, Cassie?”
The electronic beeping, rising all the while in pitch, had now become a steady high squeal, almost ear-piercing. He realized where he’d seen that yellow box before: in the basement, placed there by the gas company serviceman. A combustible gas detector. Supposed to warn you about gas leaks. Beeping got higher and faster as the concentration of gas in the air increased. A steady squeal meant dangerous amounts of gas. Combustible levels. Someone had taken the device upstairs from the basement, and he now knew who.
“I told you, they’re safe,” she said in a flat voice, and her other hand, the one she’d been keeping behind her back, came around to the front now, gripping the huge carbon-steel Henckels carving knife from the kitchen knife rack.
Heart thumping a million miles a minute now. Oh sweet Jesus, she’s out of her mind. Dear God, help me.
“Cassie,” he said, moving closer, his arms outspread to give her a hug, but she raised the knife and pointed it at him, and with her left hand she held up the lighter, thumb on the wheel, and said, “Not another step, Nick.”
The guard’s face appeared behind the tempered glass of the security booth at the entrance to the Fenwicke Estates.
His voice squawked through the intercom. “Yes?”
She flashed her police badge. “Police emergency,” she said.
The guard looked at it through the glass and immediately activated the security gate.
“Jesus, Cassie, please don’t-”
“Oh, I really don’t like this part,” she said, and at that instant he noticed the red slick on the knife blade, still wet.
108
The high wrought-iron gate began to open, but so slowly, so agonizingly slowly. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and finally she said, “Please, speed this up. There’s no time to waste.”
“Sorry, I can’t make it go any faster,” the guard said. “That’s as fast as it goes. I’m sorry.”
“Put the knife down, Cassie,” Nick said, all forced calm, voice soft and wheedling.