Page 56 of The Chain House

He wore his seatbelt. He used his turn signals. He stopped at every stop sign for three seconds, looked left and right and left again before turning out of the subdivision in which he’d lived for the past twenty years, wondering now if he’d ever return.

He wasn’t driving like a man fleeing a crime scene. A murder scene. It wasn’t even that he was telling himself to be calm, to stay calm, to drive in a way to not draw suspicion should he pass a police officer somewhere—this was just how Trevor Harper drove. And as he drove his burgundy 2017 Ford Escape, both hands on the wheel, south on Taylorsville Road, not knowing exactly where he was going but knowing this road was long enough to get him there, he was still in shock. First, because he’d just killed a man. Sure, he’d done it with honor, he thought, to protect a woman he’d admittedly developed feelings for over the years, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d just killed a human being. And he wasn’t driving alone. The dead man’s wife—now a widow—was fleeing the scene with him. She, unlike Trevor, wore her shock quite openly and had yet to utter a word since getting into his car minutes ago and telling him, Drive.

When he’d asked, “Where are we going?”

She’d said, without looking at him, and in fact staring laser beams toward her house where Jake Hall lay dead inside, “Just drive, Trevor.”

Eyes on the winding road, he periodically gave Lizzie a glance to see how she was doing. Her eyes stayed wide and worried; she appeared to be, at least in her mind’s eye, still staring at her house. By now they were ten miles away and entering a portion of Taylorsville Road where stoplights and houses were scarce and nature had taken over. The only words he’d said to her since then were when he’d asked her to buckle her seatbelt, which she’d done without comment or hesitation, and apparently without blinking.

“You okay?” he asked with another glance as he drove.

She nodded.

He’d been wanting to ask her why she smelled of gasoline but couldn’t get the words out. It was weird enough having the Louisville Slugger angled in between them, the knob inches away from the gear shift, the bat’s barrel stained with a splattering of Jake Hall’s blood just inches away from Lizzie’s sandaled feet. He’d given that a few glances, too, each time looking back up to the road with thoughts of her white-painted toenails looming even larger than the bloodstain only inches away. He figured that if she’d noticed the bat—and how could she not?—and it bothered her, that she would have asked him to move it or done so herself. But something about it remaining where it was, where it had been when she’d so unexpectedly gotten into his car, spoke volumes. Like, they were fugitives together, and the baseball bat, the way it so casually and ceremoniously rested between them was now their bond.

If you only knew, Trevor thought, not only how long the bat had been one of his most treasured possessions, but how often he’d imagined using it just like he had on Jake Hall, would you still be riding shotgun with me? The killing of Jake Hall had not been premeditated, but in all his daydreams and imaginings, from all the way back when he was Tiny Tommy Batise, the bat’s main purpose had never been hitting baseballs. In his mind, he’d imagined using it countless times as the weapon it had eventually become. As a club. Whether the grade school bullies at recess or the high school bullies in the hallways or the biggest, meanest bully, Justice Minks, back on the Freedom Ranch, he’d imagined bashing plenty of skulls in with his Louisville Slugger. And those thoughts began as early as he could remember, back when he’d imagined becoming his own superhero to one day fight them all. Back when he’d imagined being The Raven, the boy who—just as he’d written in the thirty-seven issues of his own comic, The Raven and The Mongoose—after spending an evening inside an abandoned lighthouse with a raven who could talk and sing and who eventually bit him on the neck, acquired the power of flight at night. And when the boy became The Raven at night, he would fly around the city with his trusty baseball bat in its talon-like hands and swoop down and fight off any bully he could find. In the first issue, after fighting off a cluster of schoolyard bullies, The Raven finds a mongoose in danger of being eaten alive by a pack of wolves. The Raven, with his baseball bat, scares them all away, and he and the mongoose become instant best friends who make a vow to rid the world of bullies.

Up until now, the radio was on his favorite classic rock station and the music had been a pleasant diversion from the increasingly palpable anxiety hurrying him from home, but the host broke into the middle of his playing of Pink Floyd’s The Wall in its entirety to give an update on all the bodies being found after Sal Batise’s bombshell reveal that he was Mallard Malone. Trevor moved his right hand from the steering wheel long enough to turn up the volume, just as his favorite host read from his notes that nine bodies had been unearthed since this morning, all matching the supposed fictional burials in the Mallard Malone novels. All the victims were being attributed to the mysterious man once known as Justice Minks, and it was believed Minks may be responsible for the abductions and deaths of many more over the past twenty years.

Son of a bitch, Trevor thought, unknowingly increasing his speed toward Taylorsville, realizing now that, all long, he’d subconsciously been driving toward the abandoned wastelands that had once been the Freedom Ranch.

He’d known Justice Minks was the meanest, cruelest, most vile son of a bitch he’d ever encountered, even more so than his brother, the infamous Breaker of Chains, and, like many, had always assumed Minks was there the night of the Hawthorne murders.

That’s bullshit, he told himself—you knew he was there that night. You’ve known all along. And all it would have taken to corroborate Beth Hawthorne’s account from that night back then would have been to open your fucking coward mouth. And then maybe a more realistic hunt would have transpired for the man, and all of these murders might not have happened.

He shook it away.

No, this isn’t on you.

But he’d been hand-delivered those sketches in secret that night from Jennifer, a sweet, innocent but brave-as-hell little girl. The sketches she’d given him in trust, of the three women and Justice Minks that night around the fire, with their machetes and the corkscrew in Minks’s hand, the same sketches that had been used at trial to help put Sal’s Angels away for life.

But the ones showing Minks?

Those had never been seen, had they, Trevor? Because you got rid of them. You burned them in your own little fire, didn’t you?

Because you are a coward, Trevor.

No, he thought, as he drove, his speed increasing by the second. You aren’t a coward. Minks had hissed in his ear that night to forget him. He could still feel the man’s breath on his skin, his lips against his ear, because he’d taken the mask off to say it, to really get his message across.

I was never here, Raven. And if you ever say my name, I’ll come for you. I’ll hunt you down and I’ll chop your fake family up into pieces and feed them to you in a fucking stew. You understand me?

And Trevor had nodded and swore it and repeated it back and the threat had kept him quiet for twenty years. But these murders? The extent of Minks’s true evil? Of that Trevor had no idea. But deep down, he thought, you knew a man like Justice Minks wouldn’t just then go become a pleasant member of society.

And what would you have done, anyway? What would you have done?

His son’s voice screamed at him. At least I’m not all talk, Dad.

Trevor clenched the wheel so hard now his knuckles had turned bone white.

“Slow down, Trevor, you’ll get us killed,” Lizzie stoically said beside him, the first words she’d spoken since getting in his car and telling him to drive.

Just drive, she’d said, him having stopped the car, backing out of his driveway in a hurry because he’d just killed a man, when he’d noticed her standing in the grass next to his driveway. Her opening the door. Him at first thinking she was going to retaliate because he’d just killed her husband, but instead she’d gotten in and closed the door and told him, drive, just drive, and now here they were, her still smelling oddly of gasoline with her white-painted toenails and short shorts and long legs and him finally slowing down so he wouldn’t get them killed, him not daring to think that if she didn’t want them getting killed that maybe they had some sort of a future.

And she said, “I burned the house down.” He watched her as he drove, thinking, The house was still standing when we left, and maybe she could hear his thoughts because she went on: “I went outside to the garage and got the gas can.”

That explained the gas smell.

“I snapped,” she said. “I think. Or maybe I was wanting to do it for years, killing Jake and burning the house down with his body in it. It’s probably burning pretty good by now.”