Black House (Page 189)

All of this is plausible, but it does not alter the message blasting from Jack’s nerve endings. Go! Leave! You don’t want to be here!

He calls Henry’s name again, and his response is the silence he expects.

The transcendent mood that had carried him down the valley has already disappeared, but he never noted its passing, merely that it is a thing of the past. If he were still a homicide detective, this is the moment when he would unholster his weapon. Jack steps quietly into the living room. Two strong odors come to him. One is the scent of perfume, and the other . . .

He knows what the other one is. Its presence here means that Henry is dead. The part of Jack that is not a cop argues that the smell of blood means no such thing. Henry may have been wounded in a fight, and the Fisherman could have taken him across worlds, as he did with Tyler Marshall. Henry may be trussed up in some pocket of the Territories, salted away to be used as a bargaining chip, or as bait. He and Ty might be side by side, waiting for rescue.

Jack knows that none of this is true. Henry is dead, and the Fisherman killed him. It is his job now to find the body. He’s a coppiceman; he has to act like one. That the last thing in the world he wants to do is look at Henry’s corpse does not change the nature of his task. Sorrow comes in many forms, but the kind of sorrow that has been building within Jack Sawyer feels as if it is made of granite. It slows his step and clenches his jaw. When he moves to his left and reaches for the light switch, this stony sorrow directs his hand to the right spot on the wall as surely as if he were Henry.

Because he is looking at the wall when the lights go on, only his peripheral vision takes in the interior of the room, and the damage does not seem as extensive as he had feared. A lamp has been toppled, a chair knocked over. But when Jack turns his head, two aspects of Henry’s living room sear themselves onto his retinas. The first is a red slogan on the cream-colored opposite wall; the second, the sheer amount of blood on the floor. The bloodstains are like a map of Henry’s progress into and back out of the room. Gouts of blood like those left by a wounded animal begin at the hallway and trail, accompanied by many loops and spatters, to the back of the Mission sofa, where blood lies pooled. Another large pool covers the hardwood floor beneath the long, low table where Henry sometimes used to park his portable CD player and stack the evening’s CDs. From the table, another series of splashes and gouts lead back into the hallway. To Jack, it looks as though Henry must have been very low on blood when he felt safe enough to crawl out from under the table. If that is the way it went.

While Henry lay dead or dying, the Fisherman had taken something made of cloth — his shirt? a handkerchief ? — and used it like a fat, unwieldy paintbrush. He had dipped it in the blood behind the sofa, raised it dripping to the wall, and daubed a few letters. Then he’d repeated and repeated the action until he had wiped the last letter of his message onto the wall.

HELLO HOLLYWOOD CUM GET MEE

CK CK CK CK

But the Crimson King had not written the taunting initials, and neither had Charles Burnside. They had been daubed on the wall by the Fisherman’s master, whose name, in our ears, sounds like Mr. Munshun.

Don’t worry, I’ll come for you soon enough, Jack thinks.

At this point, he could not be criticized for walking outside, where the air does not reek of blood and perfume, and using his cell phone to call Sumner Street. Maybe Bobby Dulac is on duty. He might even find Dale still at the station. To fulfill all of his civic obligations, he need speak only eight or nine words. After that, he could pocket the cell phone and sit on Henry’s front steps until the guardians of law and order come barreling up the long drive. There would be a lot of them, at least four cars, maybe five. Dale would have to call the troopers, and Brown and Black might feel obliged to call the FBI. In about forty-five minutes, Henry’s living room would be crowded with men taking measurements, writing in their notebooks, setting down evidence tags, and photographing bloodstains. There would be the M.E. and the evidence wagon. And when the first stage of everybody’s various jobs came to an end, two men in white jackets would carry a stretcher through the front door and load the stretcher into whatever the hell they were driving.

Jack does not consider this option for much longer than a couple of seconds. He wants to see what the Fisherman and Mr. Munshun did to Henry — he has to see it, he has no choice. His grim sorrow demands it, and if he does not obey his sorrow’s commands, he will never feel quite whole again.

His sorrow, which is closed like a steel vault around his love for Henry Leyden, drives him deeper into the room. Jack moves slowly, picking his way forward the way a man crossing a stream moves from rock to rock. He is looking for the bare places where he can set his feet. From across the room, dripping red letters eight inches high mock his progress.

HELLO HOLLYWOOD

It seems to wink on and off, like a neon sign. HELLO HOLLYWOOD HELLO HOLLYWOOD.

CUM GET MEE

CUM GET MEE

He wants to curse, but the weight of his sorrow will not permit him to utter the words that float into his mind. At the end of the hallway to the studio and the kitchen, Jack steps over a long smear of blood and turns his back on the living room and the distracting flashes of neon. The light penetrates only three or four feet into the hallway. The kitchen is solid, featureless darkness. The studio door hangs half open, and reflected light shines softly in its window.

Blood lies spattered and smeared everywhere on the floor of the hallway. He can no longer avoid stepping in it but moves down the hallway with his eyes on the gaping studio door. Henry Leyden never left this door yawning into the little corridor;he kept it closed. Henry was neat. He had to be: if he left the studio door hanging open, he would walk right into it the next time he went to the kitchen. The mess, the disorder left in his wake by Henry’s murderer disturbs Jack more than he wishes to admit, maybe even more than he recognizes. This messiness represents a true violation, and, on his friend’s behalf, Jack hugely resents it.