The Death Dealer

“No!” He didn’t want her going out alone, especially at night. In fact, he didn’t want her going out alone at all, he realized, an opinion she would not appreciate.



“Fine. Come by and pick me up, then. You can bring her with you. I’ll stand right by the doorman until you get here.”



“Okay,” he said. “Ten minutes.” Then he hung up and looked at the girl, who looked eerie in the strange red light.



“You…you won’t call the police on me, will you?” she begged.



“Not yet. But let’s get out of here and go see a friend of mine. I’ll have to call someone to come lock this place up for the night,” he told her.



He didn’t close the door as they left, but it closed behind him, and he heard a lock slide into place.



“Shit!” the girl said, jumping.



“It must lock automatically,” Joe said, glad not to have to call someone and try to explain what the hell he had been doing there. He led her down the front walk, and when they stepped out onto the sidewalk, the gate closed behind them, as well.



“You’re not going to leave me here, are you?” Debbie asked, panic in her tone.



“No, I told you, we’re going to see a friend of mine. She’ll know what to do,” Joe said.



The traffic was bad once they picked up his car, and Joe chafed at the thought of Genevieve standing out on the street, even with her doorman. He knew he was being paranoid, but he couldn’t escape his dreams.



Nor the fear that his own sense of insanity seemed to be growing worse.



The girl at his side was silent. He realized that he wasn’t helping matters, but he wasn’t sure what to say. “So, Debbie…where are you from?” he asked at last.



She stared at him as if he had just threatened her with torture. “Here,” she said. Like “Smith,” he knew it was a lie.



“Whatever,” he muttered. “Let me try this one. What’s your favorite food?”



She’d been staring straight ahead, but she looked at him then. “At this moment? Anything not out of a Dumpster,” she told him, and he knew that, at least, was honest.



His nerves felt totally stretched by the time he finally pulled up in front of Genevieve’s apartment, and then he was afraid he would snap like a bowstring from the tremendous sense of relief he felt when he saw her there, chatting with Mac, the doorman. She ran up to the car and hopped into the backseat.



“Hey,” she said cheerfully to Debbie. “I’m Genevieve.”



“Debbie,” the girl said.



“Where should we go?” Joe asked, looking at Genevieve in the rearview mirror.



She shrugged. “O’Malley’s, of course.”



He nodded, and a few minutes later he let the two of them off in front of the pub and went in search of a parking space. Luckily, he found a place in a lot a block or so away. He made his way back as quickly as he could and found that Genevieve and Debbie were playing darts with his two favorite old timers, Angus MacHenry and Paddy O’Leary, and had claimed a nearby booth as their own.



“Joseph Connolly, that took ye long enough,” Paddy told him.



“Hey, I’m not as young as I used to be,” Joe said.



“Well, this young ’un is a pip at darts,” Angus said. “And she’s a Douglas. A nice Scottish lass.”



He looked at Genevieve, who shrugged and gave him a little grin. “A Douglas from Philadelphia,” she said softly.



To his surprise, Debbie walked over to him and gave him a quick hug, then looked at him with embarrassment.



He smiled at her, trying not to look as awkward as he felt. “Philly, hmm?” he said.



She nodded, then threw her next dart.



“Good shot,” Genevieve said encouragingly.



Joe watched as Angus challenged Debbie to a head-to-head match, and she replied with a laugh and a promise to best him.



“Runaway?” he whispered to Genevieve.



“Yes. But we’ve called her parents. They’re on their way.” She turned to him, speaking softly. “She came up here with some older friends, who wound up leaving her on her own a few days ago when they decided to get warm and cuddly with a couple of druggies. There were some toughs on the street, and she got scared, so she ran into Hastings House. Luckily, they weren’t able to follow her.”



“Weren’t able to?” he asked.



Genevieve shrugged. “Strange, huh?” she said, staring at him.



“What’s so strange?” he asked, feeling as if he were choking.



“When she was running, the gate and the door both opened. But as soon as she was inside, they both closed. And locked.”



He frowned, staring at Genevieve. “No. They must have just decided to let her go. When I was on the street, both the gate and the door were open.”



“Right,” Genevieve said, looking into his eyes.



“The security system must be going haywire,” he heard himself say.



“Haywire,” she echoed, but it didn’t really sound as if she were agreeing with him.



“Was everything all right with you today?” he asked her.



She nodded and smiled. “Great. How did it go with Larry Levine?”



He shrugged. “I believe him,” he told her.



“So…we’re not getting anywhere,” she said.



“Gen, you know as well as I do that finding out the truth can take a long time,” he said.



She nodded, biting her lower lip.



“Hamburgers coming up!” Bridget, their waitress of a few nights back, called as she made her way through the crowd milling near the bar. Debbie all but clapped her hands.



“Oh, thank you,” she said fervently.



Angus punched Joe lightly on the arm. “Thank ye kindly, Joe. Gen said you’d be buying tonight.”



“My pleasure,” Joe said, and laughed, then watched as Angus, Paddy and Debbie made themselves comfortable in the booth and started reaching for the ketchup and mustard.



“You did a good thing tonight, Joe,” Gen told him.



“I did?”



“Debbie just got in with a wrong crowd. She’s been here five days. Her parents reported her missing, but…well, you know how that goes. Anyway, if you’d called the police, it might have gotten complicated.”



“Well, then…I’m glad I called you.”



“Me, too. So, do you want a hamburger, too?”



“Sure. I’ll just go with the flow,” he said.



She grinned and started toward the bar to find Bridget and put in his food order. He slid in beside Angus on the banquette.



“Did ye hear about the way the old house welcomed the girl?” Paddy asked him.



“What?”



Debbie looked at him. She was a pretty kid, with warm brown eyes. “That house saved me tonight,” she told him softly. “Well, you did, too, of course. But it was really weird, the way the house just let me in when I needed to get away from those guys.”



“Security system,” he said, but he didn’t even believe that himself.



Because he’d heard her.



That night, he’d heard Leslie whisper to him, trying to make sure he knew Debbie wasn’t a criminal, that he didn’t shoot her.



But he couldn’t escape the sense that she’d been trying to tell him something else, as well.



He gritted his teeth. Hard. “Security system,” he repeated.



Debbie looked at him. “The house saved me,” she said somberly. “It really did.”



Hastings House, he thought. The place where Matt had died. The entry to the tunnel and the room where Leslie had died, where Genevieve had been kept prisoner.



The place was damned, he decided.



But not, he insisted to himself, haunted.



A moment later Genevieve came back and slipped into the booth next to him.



“Just how old is she?” Joe asked, indicating Debbie, who had finished her burger and gotten up to play darts again.



“Fifteen.”



“Such a kid,” he said.



Genevieve arched a brow at him. “You’ve had to look for enough missing kids. Debbie is lucky, and you know it. Most of the time, a kid of fifteen, she’s already on drugs. Then she’s hooking.”



“Then she’s Candy Cane,” Joe said.



“Yeah.” Genevieve said, studying him. “Have you heard from her yet?”



He shook his head. “I’ll go back over tomorrow,” he told her.



A few hours later, Debbie’s parents walked in. There were a lot of tears as they embraced their daughter, then thanked Joe and Genevieve.



A few minutes later, when it was time to leave, Debbie gave Genevieve a long hug. After that, she walked over to Joe and looked at him solemnly. “Thank you,” she said simply.



“Stick with the folks, huh?” he said. “They seem like nice people.”



“I guess.” She hesitated, then whispered, “He’s not my father. He married my mom. They have a new baby.”



“They still love you.”



She squared her shoulders. “Look, I know I was a jerk. I just thought it would be cool to see New York. And…I know this is gonna sound weird, but I think that house used me to get to you.”



He shook his head. “Debbie, it’s just a house.”



She stared back at him gravely. “No. It’s not just a house. That house…it breathes. It’s like it has a heartbeat. Honest. It’s not evil, though. I’m telling you, it saved me. But it wanted you.”



He felt a slight tremor shoot through him. There was a kid in front of him—a kid—telling him that Hastings House was…alive.



Ridiculous.



She had been scared, traumatized, that was all, and she was seeing things as spooky and chilling, when there was undoubtedly a perfectly logical explanation.



As soon Debbie had left with her parents, Joe decided that he needed a beer.



Later, he drove back to Genevieve’s.



He pretended exhaustion. He couldn’t help it. There was a whisper in his ear, and that whisper was Leslie.