The Slab Read online

  The Slab

  Michael R Collings

  The Slab

  Michael R. Collings

  Chapter One

  1

  It was a day made for death.

  Brittle shards from the slanting October sunset stabbed at the quiet street. Brassy gold stained shaggy lawns a murky, coppery brown. The dying light fingered naked limbs of rain-blackened elms and fruitless mulberries and peaches and skeletal jacarandas. It rested heavily on the drooping branches of the occasional valley oaks that had survived construction of the subdivision two years earlier. It tinted vibrant stucco walls not yet faded to earth-mud brown by interminable summers of suns, not yet hidden behind luxuriant passion vines or junipers or the creeping jasmine so popular in this part of Southern California.

  In the odd, quirky light, the Charter Oaks subdivision became an enigma of striated shadows, dead black pinioned against muted October color in the late evening of a day that had been more cloud-ridden than otherwise.

  Ace McCall squinted. The sun sliced through a bank of clouds low over the horizon, as if day were pleading for one last chance at life before giving up and dying painfully into night. Blinking and cursing under his breath, McCall slapped the sun visor down. This place was bad enough in the summer, he grunted to himself, when the sun would sear a man’s naked eyeballs in their sockets like eggs frying on a hot garbage can lid in the hundred degree heat, especially when the glare billowed in waves off the glistening white finish of his year-old Lincoln Mark VII. But you’d think that by this time of year, the damn sun would let up.

  He blinked a couple more times, the movement of his eyes unconsciously echoing the rhythm of his turn-signal indicators as he swung off Mariposa Way onto Oleander Place. He didn’t stop, even though the intersection was clearly marked with the standard red octagon. Almost as an afterthought, he slowed just enough to scan the cross street. A California rolling-stop came as close as anything to describing the maneuver-illegal by any account, but Ace McCall didn’t give a damn. There wouldn’t be any cop cars on watch, not here in the middle of Charter Oaks. And there wasn’t any cross traffic, anyway. He wasn’t dumb enough to just pull in front of some snot-nosed kid’s dilapidated Beetle and get sideswiped. There wasn’t a nick on the Linc anywhere, and he’d been driving it for over a year. Even into LA two or three times a month.

  If he could survive that cannibalistic traffic, this piddling street counted for less than nothing.

  He knew how to handle machines. He straightened the wheel and followed the gentle arc of Oleander Place as it rose gradually to crest the tallest of the small hills that dotted Tamarind Valley. The top marked one of the boundaries of Charter Oaks. The end of Ace McCall’s responsibility.

  Responsibility.

  He grimaced. He was beginning to hate that word. He glanced at the passenger seat beside him. An issue of the Tamarind Valley Times lay open, accusing him with a white-eyed, blank stare. He caught the edge of a headline and tore his eyes from the roadway just long enough to register three words-“ Construction Fraud Charged ”-before he crumpled the top page and tossed it over his shoulder and returned his eyes to the road.

  There was a flicker of movement. McCall glanced sideways, across the lane to one of the tract houses. A solitary ghost stood forlornly in a recently landscaped front yard. It gazed wistfully at the street and clutched a white bag decorated with silhouetted black cats and witches in its sheet-draped hand. Clutched it as tight as death itself.

  You’re gonna have to wait kid, McCall thought glumly, oddly touched by the sight. Sorry, kid, no spooks for two more days.

  Saturday.

  Halloween.

  He clenched his teeth in anger.

  The day he had to turn over his books to the shyster that paraded as his attorney. The sleazy bastard had offered him a day’s grace. Out of the goodness of his heart. His cast-iron heart that had no more human warmth in it than a lump of rotting, frozen graveyard-clay.

  “But they’d better be on my desk by noon Saturday,” Alberts had intoned officiously over the phone in his best intimidation voice. “I’ll wait for you in my office. And I’m going to have to make a special trip to pick them up, so you damn well better be on time.”

  McCall grunted. It was pretty rough when your own side started figuring you for a cheat and a thief.

  He crumpled another leaf from the Times, tossing it over his shoulder into the back seat as well.

  Shit.

  He glanced in the rear-view mirror. The ghost was gone. For the moment, the shadowed length of Oleander Place was deserted. Cut-outs of bats and pumpkins and witches dangled here and there, construction-paper corpses that festooned door frames and window sills. Scattered clumps of drying leaves whispered beneath bare trees. But he saw no other movement, no people.

  Where is everyone? McCall thought. He glanced at his watch.

  Dinner time.

  He pulled the Lincoln to the curb and jammed the shift into park. The engine roared, then settled into an uncomfortable idle. Everyone was inside-Momma, Poppa, the statistically proper two and a third kiddies-all tucked away from the crisp October wind and the crisp October darkness, shut safely away from the outside world in their safe new homes. Homes he had maneuvered and finagled. Homes he had busted his ass to get approved by the County board. Homes he had built. Homes he sweat for and bled for and even…

  He twisted in his seat. Now they were trying to get him, trying to take away everything he had worked for, just because he had cut a few corners, made the places a little cheaper than he should have. Hell, in fifteen or twenty years, nobody would even remember his little scams…or so he had figured two years before.

  And even now-even after it had all come out and the County was dogging him, slobbering for a head-in a decade the shoddiest house in all of Charter Oaks would still probably sell for at least two hundred thou-twice what they were going for now. He crumpled another sheet of newspaper and pulled away from the curb.

  He drove slowly now. He studied the houses as he passed, remembering each one, recalling a sticky problem with the plumbing in that one, a shattered plate glass window in this one. In each, he saw the glow of lights behind closed draperies echoing the sheen of the dying sun.

  He felt alone. Miserable and alone.

  Slug-like, the pale Lincoln crawled up Oleander Place. To the top of the hill.

  And stopped.

  In front of 1066 Oleander Place.

  The last house.

  2

  Even a cursory glance showed that 1066 differed from the rest. It was dark, for one thing, inside and out. No lights gleamed warmly through draped windows or reflected on a tidy, well-tended lawn. Its shadowed stucco was scarred and pitted in half a dozen places from peltings with rocks and sticks. A necklace of broken glass circled the foundations where hot-rodders had tossed their beer bottles on Saturday nights. The lawn was a lawn in name only-instead of grass, dusky grey-green weeds that looked jaundiced in the fading light clustered in harsh knots and hillocks. Even the weeds were scrawny and half-dead from lack of care.

  1066 Oleander Place.

  McCall angled the Lincoln into the driveway, fully intending just to turn around and get the hell away from the place. With everything else he had on his mind, the last thing he needed was to start thinking about 1066. He closed his eyes. His forehead furrowed as if he had just felt the first hammering assault of a mind-shattering migraine. He shook his head and stared ahead. He refused to let those memories through.

  But the next thing he knew, his hand rested on the key dangling from the ignition. In spite of his better judgment, he twisted it and throttled the engine into silence. He opened the door and stood, an angular silhouette with one foot propped on the Lincoln’s glossy frame and the ot
her crushing a straggling weedy morning glory that had wandered halfway across the drive.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The sun was gone. The sky still glowed, but now it was mostly an unhealthy yellow glow that was part cloud, part lights from the businesses cropping up like toadstools along the Ventura freeway, just like he figured they would when he started planning the Charter Oaks project five years ago.

  Just like he figured.

  He shivered and pulled his jacket tighter. After a couple of moments, he almost slid back into the Lincoln, was halfway crouched into the doorway when he stopped. A sound from the house startled him.

  Craaack! Like breaking glass.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “Kids again.”

  He swept the yard with his eyes. The blood-red McCall/Sidney Realty “For Sale” sign was canting again-how the hell had he missed seeing that. He shook his head. “Gotta get a clean-up crew out here.”

  This was a prime lot-probably the best view in all of Charter Oaks, perched as it was at the top of the rise. From the front yard, you could follow the downward sweep of Oleander Place across the northern half of the shallow valley. From the back yard, the southern half opened out, dropping abruptly-almost precipitously-to survey vista on vista as the valley lengthened, then wrinkled to become the foothills of the coastal range. The asking price was good, McCall knew-an easy five thousand below list.

  But the “For Sale” sign remained staked steadfastly in the front yard, standing sentry over emptiness and darkness.

  Client after client said they liked the deal. They liked the view. They liked the floor plan and the generously sized lot. They liked the quiet neighborhood, with its handy shopping centers a short drive down Bingham Boulevard, its handful of churches of varying denominations scattered nearby, and its three schools almost within walking distance. One after another, they sauntered through the place and hmmm — ed and maybe — ed approvingly.

  But they didn’t buy.

  The house at 1066 was the last of the original Charter Oaks subdivision. The only one that had never sold.

  McCall shivered again. He listened intently, but the cracking sound wasn’t repeated. “Imagination,” he said to himself. “Too close to Halloween. Too much stress.”

  He bent again to slide into the Lincoln. A slit of light, suddenly visible when his head turned to just the right angle, glimmered beneath the garage door. He straightened. As his head moved, the glimmer disappeared. He scowled. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone there. No one had shown the place for a month.

  Irritated, he slammed the car door, fumbled in his pocket for a set of master keys, and walked to the side garage door. His feet crunched dried weeds that needled through his socks and prickled his ankles where his slacks pulled up from his shoes. He slid the key into the door, then stopped, listening.

  Nothing.

  Wait…what was that?

  No, it was just the wind in the naked branches of an elm in the corner of the lot. Or the whisper of cars on the freeway.

  Somewhere down the block, a woman’s voice wailed “Mikeeee,” and another voice, high-pitched and piercing, replied with a drawn-out “Commiiinnng Mommm.”

  But the house at 1066 lay silent as a white-stucco sepulchre.

  3

  McCall’s hand trembled as it held the key. He steadied his fingers with his other hand and thrust the key home. The lock was stiff, tight. When he turned the key, the scrannel grating of metal on metal sent shivers coursing up his spine. The door creaked opened.

  Welcoomme, to Inner Sanctumm.

  “Gotta get a crew up here,” he said loudly, as if to push the creaking echo away. “The place is going to hell fast.”

  The garage smelled musty in spite of the fact that it had never been used. No ground-in grease droppings from split gaskets stained the concrete, no spatters of paint, no stench of gasoline from leaky power mowers. But still the place smelled…bad.

  There was no light visible now.

  McCall paused. He glanced back at his car. He could just see the edge of the white front fender gleaming against the rapidly darkening sky. He thought about the flashlight he always carried in the trunk. But he didn’t go back for it because just then, craaaack!

  The sound repeated somewhere inside and he stepped into the garage before he was aware he had and carefully shut the door behind him. It seemed important at the moment that the door be closed. Fatally important. He just didn’t know why.

  The place was dark but not pitch black. A hazy light penetrated from somewhere. The kitchen door must be open. He shuffled across the garage. Even though he knew where everything was, including the as yet unused water heater hunkering in the corner to the left of the door, he instinctively held one hand out from his side, the other in front of him, as if he were afraid of running into something unexpected, something sharp that would jab his eyes or gut his stomach. His heart thumped. He smelled the rankness of his own sweat overlaying the stale air. He slid forward. The sound of leather against smooth concrete-a grating ssshhh, ssshhh, ssshhh — made him nervous. He almost wished to hear the sound of breaking glass again.

  He stopped.

  “What’s going on?” he said out loud, startling himself as the sound echoed from empty walls. “I’m no kid afraid of spooks. This is shit!”

  He took a long stride, another. Two more and he would be at the kitchen door and he would…

  His toe caught and he went down. He sprawled, stretched out on the concrete. His knee cracked on the smooth surface, then his chest, and then his chin. His teeth snapped together and he came this goddam close to losing half an inch of his tongue. The pain in his knee was sharp, burning, moist. For a long instant, he didn’t dare move.

  Broken bones, fractures, sprains-all sorts of possibilities flickered through his imagination as he lay sprawled in the darkness. Something hot dripped along his chin. He raised his hand to touch it. It was sticky as well.

  Blood.

  Shit, he’d probably sliced his chin open. He rolled onto his side, ignoring pain like a shard of ragged glass slashing his elbow, and sat up. So far so good. He rubbed his knee. His fingers came away stained dark. The thin gabardine of his slacks was shredded along the knee. He flexed his leg and tried to stand. Wobbly but apparently all right, he made it to the doorway separating garage from house.

  As he passed through the door way, he instinctively palmed the light switch just inside the kitchen, even though he knew in the back of his mind that he had had the power shut off weeks ago. One of his men had found signs that some bum had been camping out in the back bedroom. No lights, no water, no free hotel, McCall had figured.

  With a spine-chilling snap, a light flickered on.

  He threw his hands over his eyes, as much out of surprise as out of pain…then winced as the movement twisted his body and his knee threatened to give way.

  “What the…?” he began. There shouldn’t be any lights.

  There weren’t. The three bulbs in the ceiling fixture stared down, blank and dead. The same with the fixture in the ceiling of the dining area in front of the double windows that looked over the valley.

  McCall breathed a tremulous sigh of relief. The pull-shade over the right-hand pane was up. It should have been down. McCall nodded. That explained the sharp snap and the sudden light-the remnants of daylight streaming through the window as the shade popped loose at the instant he touched the light switch. Coincidence, yes. Certainly nothing more.

  He swiveled on his good leg and peered into the darkness of the garage. With his body between the jaundiced light and the garage, all he could see was his bulky, dark outline where it had bled across the concrete. He moved to one side.

  Even in the dimness he could see clearly the jagged line of a break in the concrete slab of the garage. It looked like it was at least three inches across, but he realized almost immediately that he was seeing a shadow, not the break itself. The concrete was probably offset only a fraction of an inch, but that was enough to send him r
eeling when he stumbled over it. The crack started along the outer wall, perhaps a dozen feet in from the double-width wooden doors, and twisted like a shadowy rattlesnake across the floor until it disappeared beneath the inside wall that connected with the entryway. Directly in front of him, the edge of the crack glistened wetly.

  Blood. His blood. Caught on a crack in the glass-smooth garage floor.

  McCall’s mind snapped back to the headlines on the day’s papers, to the calls from investigators and engineers and attorneys. To the threats. And to…

  “ Ace.”

  His head jerked up and he whirled around, almost pitching himself headfirst across the kitchen floor. It was a whisper that might have been only the passing wind. Or it might have been something more.

  No. It can’t be.

  He’s dead!

  4

  “Who’s there?” Ace McCall yelled, his voice midway between a scream and a shriek of anger. “You better get the hell out of here. I’m armed!”

  He clenched his fist-not as effective as a gun, he knew from a lifetime of experience, not even as good as a nice, heavy white-ash bat or a long sturdy length of two-by-four, but it was all he had and he knew well enough how to use it.

  “Who’s there?” He strained to hear any movement.

  Nothing.

  He crossed the kitchen slowly, uncomfortably aware of the layered shadows of cabinets and alcoves designed to hide nothing more threatening than crockery and silverware but that now had become abysses of darkness and fear. He crossed the dining room as well, angling his body so that the dim light through the open shade fell just to the right. He wasn’t about to give whoever was there a good glimpse of where he was. He glanced out the window. The lights of Tamarind Valley glittered coldly, like bits of silver ore shattered from a larger piece. Further out, strings of white and red from the freeway cut through the valley like twin, thin coping saw blades.