Disintegration Page 22

  "Jacob?"

  The doorway led into the kitchen, which was spacious but dark despite the sunny day. She tried the light switch. Nothing. As her eyes adjusted, she made out a metal card table near the refrigerator that was covered in pizza boxes, empty beer bottles, and opened tin cans of food. Under the table sat a white Styrofoam cooler. Someone had been staying here.

  She tried to count all those times Jacob had been out late, running errands or visiting a job site after hours. After he left the hospital, he'd disappeared for a few weeks. He'd claimed he'd been sleeping in the woods, but his memory had been damaged by the drinking. Maybe his fugue states were the ultimate cover story. After all, you couldn't be caught in a lie if you didn't remember where you had been. Or whom you were with.

  Maybe Jacob had taken up smoking again.

  She went through the hall to the stairs. The daylight was weaker here, the surrounding rooms walled off from the sun by thick drapes. The house smelled of must, stale smoke, and old cooking grease. Cigarette ash dotted some of the tin cans and butts lay scattered on the tiled floor. She paused and listened, wondering if Jacob had heard her arrival and was now hiding.

  Renee started up the steps. She watched where she placed her foot, careful not to make the wood creak. If Jacob were up to something, better to catch him in the act. She took two steps, and then grabbed the railing to distribute her weight more easily. Her hand touched something slick and moist.

  She pulled her hand back and put it near her face. Even in the bad light, there was no mistake.

  Blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Dark.

  Where the Sock Monster lived.

  And all the other beasts, the hundreds of creatures that had once crawled from beneath the bed and clutched at him, digging into his flesh, pulling him to pieces.

  That's what Jacob had told the first doctor, shortly after his mother died.

  No, not "died, " came the Sock Monster's voice from an unseen corner of the closet. She was killed.

  The original diagnosis had been an identity disorder, attendant paranoia with an underlying persecution complex. But the doctor consulted with Warren Wells and agreed to change the diagnosis to "adjustment disorder," a temporary failure in the coping mechanism. That way, Jacob could recover and go about his business of becoming a Wells.

  Two years later, on the lost Saturday, Warren Wells had found his son unconscious in the barn, surrounded by the headless corpses of two dozen guinea hens, a bloody hatchet by his side. That time, the doctor had suggested a borderline personality disorder with sociopathic tendencies. Warren Wells had trumped it with his own diagnosis: "Boys will be boys."

  And that was the last doctor, until Rheinsfeldt.

  A couple of the trailers in the migrant camp had burned down the next year, but that was in the late winter, when most of the Mexicans had gone to the coast to work soybeans and cotton. The only family living in the camp had been Carlita's, but she and Joshua had recently married and moved to Tennessee. Jacob slipped out of the big, frigid house that night, tired of the brooding air that surrounded his father after his "only son" had married outside his own ethnic group. Jacob had spent the evening with a stolen bottle of tequila, sipping in the shed and staring at the blank, black window of one of the trailers.

  The fire wasn't his fault. It was like anger, or seeing red, something that burned so hot inside that it caught fire to things on the outside, too. A match that lit itself.

  Then off to college, where excessive drinking brought endless rounds of fugue states. Except those were easily explainable, and as far as Jacob knew, he never committed any violent acts during them. Sure, sometimes he'd wake up with blood in his mouth, or bits of broken glass in the creases of his clothes, but he'd never been arrested. Then he'd met Renee and the rage dissolved.

  But she didn't know Joshua.

  The half of him that could be neither restored nor excised.

  In the dark, Joshua was always with him, whispering, taunting, tempting.

  Jacob had never been able to explain it to the doctors. Even shrinks like Rheinsfeldt were too smart for their own good, thumbing through their thick manuals looking for Latin words to describe him. If they had only listened, they would have known it wasn't his words he spoke. He only said what Joshua would say.

  Carlita understood that part. Carlita was primal, carnal, an animal spirit. She saw that Jacob and Joshua were the same, and could love them both. Not even their mother and father could do that. Where everyone else tried to pull them apart, make them separate beings, Carlita accepted them the way they were.

  She was the only person Jacob could ever trust, the only person who seduced him into letting down his guard.

  And, like all mistakes of love, this one carried a deep price.

  Now, curled in the darkness, his nose in the dust and mildew, he knew he was foolish to ever think he could escape Joshua. Even if he killed his brother, the voice wouldn't go away. Even if he paid him millions of dollars, and Joshua moved to Mexico, Jacob would still be wed to his twin. Joshua was part of him. Sometimes he even thought he was more Joshua than he was himself, because only Joshua would be afraid of the dark like this.

  Not Jacob.

  Because Jacob was brave, wasn't he? Jacob took care of business. Jacob did the dirty work for both of them.

  Had he really hit Joshua, just before the closet door had slammed shut? He spread his fingers and moved them slowly across the floor. He touched the heavy eagle head of the cane. The hooked beak was slick and wet. He lifted the cane and smiled.

  You didn't have to be afraid just because you were in the dark.

  When there were two of you, you were never alone.

  Right, Joshua?

  Footsteps.

  Coming up the stairs.

  Mother. You've had a terrible fall. Why don't you lie down and rest?

  He giggled in the dark, the sound swallowed by the dead air of the closet. Your imagination could get the better of you if you weren't careful. As Dad always said, "Dreams are for dreamers, but the rest of us have to live in the real world."

  The footsteps came closer.

  It must be Joshua, that other one that lived outside his head, coming to taunt him some more. Or demand more money.

  But Jacob would be ready this time.

  He gripped the cane.

  Kill him then burn the house down.

  Closer footsteps.

  Then her voice. "Jacob?"

  His stomach clenched.

  Her. Did she know?

  He'd kept Joshua a secret because she wouldn't understand. They never did.

  And he had sacrificed everything for her, hadn't he? Moved back to Kingsboro, took over the Wells holdings, tried to build up some momentum in a tough market. All so she could say she had made him successful. Gave her children so she would find the ultimate female fulfillment, the most obvious and unbreakable sign of commitment.

  But even those commitments could be broken.

  He loved her, and when you loved somebody, you owed them everything.

  Carlita understood that, but Renee never would.

  "Jacob?" She was across the room now, probably near the window. Or the bed.

  He raised himself onto his hands and knees. He heard the swick of fabric as she parted the curtains, and a sword of light appeared at the base of the closet door. How long had he been here? Days?

  No. The blood would have dried. He hadn't forgotten anything. This wasn't a fugue state.

  He was… confused, that was all.

  That silly Joshua stuff was the kind of thing a scared kid would dream up. He was a grown man, his own man. He called softly through the door. "Carlita?"

  The sword of light was broken by her shadow. "Jacob? Are you in there? Are you okay?"

  "Yes. Joshua locked me in here. Let me out."

  "There's blood everywhere."

  How many times had he hit Joshua? He couldn't remember. Obviously not enough, or Joshua's
body would be lying in the room.

  The door handle turned then the door rattled in its frame. "It's locked."

  Jacob stood the cane in the corner. No need for her to see it, or the blood that spattered the eagle head of the handle. She wouldn't understand. They never did.

  He raised himself on his knees and fumbled for the eye-hook he'd installed as a teenager, so he'd have a place to hide from his family when the barn was too cold. Nobody ever expected a closet to be locked from the inside. Joshua had found out, though, and had installed a latch on the outside, too.

  "The door swings both ways," Joshua had said. "You can lock me out, but I can also lock you in."

  Jacob pushed the metal latch up and it fell against wood. As the door opened and the sudden daylight blinded him, he stared up at the figure before him. Blinking, he said, "I did it for you."

  "What, Jake? What did you do?"

  Not her. It was the other one.

  Renee.

  Blood dotted the floor like the footprints of a rabid animal. The sunlight made crazy rainbow diamonds on the window glass. The sky was a mirror, the sky was a mirror, the sky was a mirror.

  "I did it for us," he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  "What's going on, Jake?" Renee asked, patting Jacob's shoulder. Her husband was wild-eyed and pale, on his knees, clothes wrinkled. Why had he locked himself in the closet?

  "It's Joshua," Jacob said. "He's the one who burned the house down. He's the one who killed Mattie."

  She tried to comprehend the words but couldn't. Mattie died in an accident. Even Davidson had said so. If you repeated the story often enough, it became true.

  She looked around the room, saw the twin beds, their blankets tangled. One of the sheets was stained with rust-brown circles.

  She drew back, but he reached and grabbed her hands and looked up at her, a bizarre mockery of the moment when he'd asked for her hand in marriage. "He took the insurance money," Jacob said. "He said Dad cheated him out of his inheritance."

  "Jacob, we'd better get you to a doctor."

  "We have to find him, or he'll tell."

  The trail of blood spots that led out of the room and downstairs. Jacob didn't appear to be wounded. "No. We can call the police on your cell phone. If your brother's hurt, we can get help for him."

  Lord, Jakie, what did you do to him? Are you so obsessed with Carlita that you'll assault your own brother?

  She needed time to figure things out. If Jacob was in trouble, they'd get through it together, just like they always had. She pulled Jacob to his feet.

  "Come on," she said. "Are you hurt?"

  "No." He looked past her through the window, and she turned to see the afternoon sun bathing the family cemetery and the barn beyond that. "The camp. That's where he went."

  "Did you hurt him?"

  "We should call the police."

  "No police. We'll take care of it ourselves, the way we always have." She took his hand and led him into the hallway, listening for footsteps. If Joshua was in the house, he would have heard her calling. Unless he was unconscious. Or dead.

  Her hand went cold at the thought that she might be touching a murderer.

  No. This was no murderer. This was her husband.

  Wasn't it? Because this was the real world and Jacob loved only her. Sure, they'd had their tragedies, but everyone did. It came with the territory of breathing. Things would make sense once they got away from this place. She wondered if Joshua had insured the Wells home and how briskly it might burn with all that woodwork.

  As they descended the stairs, Jacob said, "He would have killed her."

  "Killed who?"

  "Mother. That's just the way he is."

  "She died in an accident, Jacob," she said, then realized this was where it happened. She had slipped on the stairs and tumbled down, her brittle bones clattering against the railing. A broken neck. Nobody's fault.

  "Yeah," Jacob said, though his eyes gazed down the flight of stairs as if the body were still sprawled there. "That's just what Joshua said. An accident."

  When they reached the landing, she told Jacob to wait for her in the truck.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to look for Joshua."

  "I told you, he's gone to the camp."

  "I know, honey. But you're confused right now."

  It's for his own good. He's safer that way. And it's my job to protect him. For the family.

  She waited for Jacob to pass through the kitchen and into the sunshine. After he was around the corner, she closed and latched the door, then entered the living room. Books were askew on the shelves, some of them lying open and face down on the floor. Figurines, many of them now reduced to shards of plaster and ceramic, were scattered across the stone hearth. A beer bottle lay on its side by one of the chairs, a pool of dried amber surrounding it. The fireplace contained layers of fine black ash, as if someone had burned stacks of paper. Jacob's cell phone was a melted pile of slag in the center.

  She glanced between the curtains and saw Jacob in his truck.

  Renee checked the dining room. She could almost see the ghost of Warren Wells sitting at the table, lording over his family, demanding clean fingernails and perfect place settings and food of the proper temperature. She could understand his desire for perfection. She shared it. Perhaps that was what Jacob had seen in her, what he had fallen in love with. It was something Carlita or no other woman could give him.

  A drive to be absolute.

  She had dared him to be a Wells, and he became one. She was the success story as much as her husband was. Others might measure success by acres developed, income realized, charities supported, or community awards received. But her success was internal, eternal, spiritual. She had saved him from himself.

  But at such a great cost. Still, sacrifices were necessary.

  And she couldn't lose now. Not when the payoff was so close.

  A Wells never fails.

  She entered a room that appeared to have been Warren Wells' study. It was dark, with heavy curtains blocking the one slim window. A desk sat in the middle of the floor, a lone piece of paper on it.

  She picked it up, carried it to the window and read it through the slit of leaking light: "IOU eight million dollars for pain and suffering." The "eight" had been crossed out, and beneath it "two" had been scrawled in pencil.

  It was signed "J." Just like note she'd shown Jacob in the hospital, the same one Davidson found at the scene of their burned-down house. The letters slanted to the left.

  Eight million. That was roughly the value of Jacob's inheritance, including the Wells share of M amp; W Ventures.

  "I don't reckon we've met. At least not formal-like."

  She spun, crinkling the paper. He stood in the doorway, in silhouette, with the living room window at his back. She recognized the voice. The one from the woods behind her destroyed home, from the thicket in the cemetery, the one she'd heard on the phone. Even though it had been disguised before, the timbre of the words were plain, close enough to Jacob's to be startling, yet in a flatter, lazier accent.

  "Joshua?"

  He stepped into the room, and it had to be Joshua, because he resembled Jacob so much that she had to look twice to note the differences. The main one was the gash above his right eye, raw and wet, needing stitches. His grin was harder, more cynical, and his teeth were chipped and stained yellow. His hair was oily, slicked back and uneven. This was her brother-in-law, the man who bore the same blood and had sprung from the same seed as her husband.

  This was family.

  Joshua wiped at his eyebrow then cleaned his hand on his trousers. "Your husband got a mean streak in him," he said, in an exaggerated drawl. "I don't know where in the world he got it from."

  "I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but we're calling the police."

  "That'd be just fine with me, ma'am. Then I can tell them all about what Jacob done."

  "He hasn't done anything."<
br />
  Joshua limped forward. "He done plenty."

  Now the light caught his face, and his eyes were moss brown and somber like Jacob's, his chin and cheeks in the same geometric proportions, his build of the same angular strength. Except for the cruelty in his eyes, he was as handsome as her husband.

  "Stay away from me, or I'll yell for Jacob."

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you. 'Cause you might need me to save you from him."

  "You're crazy. Jacob told me about you."

  "Not nearly enough, I'll bet. Did he tell you about when we were kids? About how he managed to blame everything on me, how he'd steal all my toys? How he turned Dad against me until they drove me out of the family?"

  Renee maneuvered so the desk was between her and Joshua. She didn't like the crease of his smile, the mad sparks in his pupils. Jacob must still be sitting in the truck, waiting for her.

  "What about the eight million dollars?" she said.

  "Fair's fair," he said. "That's what Jake stole from me, and that's what he's going to give me back."

  "He didn't steal anything. I saw your father's will. Jake got the money and you got the house and land."

  "It shoulda been mine. Jacob got it all turned around."

  "We can't give you any more money."

  "That ain't the way this works. Two million more or I tell all of it."

  "You're the one who started the fires. They're talking a murder charge now."

  He moved forward, winced, and supported himself by leaning against the desk. His breath reeked of stale beer and smoke, and the odor of perspiration rose from his clothes. He was feral, desperate, beyond law and order.

  Boom-boom-boom. The hollow echo of fists pounding on the back door. Jacob's unintelligible, muffled voice came from outside.

  "Two million," Joshua said to her. "Ain't you got any more people to kill? Ask him about his mother."

  He turned and limped out of the study, pausing once, stained teeth gritted. The wound over his eye had broken open again and a large red tear rolled down his cheek. "And ask him about my kid."