Too Close To Home Read online

  Too Close To Home

  A Thomas Cade Thriller

  Jay Nadal

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

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  About the Author

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  Published by 282publishing.com

  Copyright @ Jay Nadal 2019

  All rights reserved.

  Jay Nadal has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction, names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  1

  They stalked their victim for two weeks before killing him. One called himself Jason, though that was not his given name, not even his first alias. The other was named Mr Blank.

  Their victim was tall, thin, and old. He had dark veins standing out on the backs of his hands. His hair was gray stubble, concealed beneath a hat whenever he went out. A cane with a rounded wooden handle was another constant companion, and he wore suits that were thirty years out of date. The old man, whose name his killers didn’t care to remember, smiled at everyone he met and doffed his hat to women. Many of the residents in this corner of Woodland Heights smiled at his greeting and often stopped to engage in small talk when they met him. The one who called himself Jason had learned that these reactions signified liking.

  After memorizing the old man’s habits and movements, they had moved on to discovering everything they could about him. It was ridiculously easy. Breaking into his house had yielded a notebook containing carefully identified passwords to a Google email account, Facebook, and a few other websites. Memories choked the house. Eyes stared down from every wall and spare surface. So many eyes were unbearable. The pictures told them the man had once been married and had a son. The Facebook account revealed the son had moved away from Houston on a football scholarship at USC and from there had gone into coaching, again on the West Coast.

  The wife had died, the only child on the other side of the country. The old man was alone. They had killed him for his house. It had been their single goal all along. Like all the residences on Woodland Street, it was a narrow, two-story wood-framed bungalow. It stood at right angles to the street. This example had a broad window at the rear to allow the bedroom an unobstructed view of the garden, which sloped away to a four-foot wooden fence. Beyond the fence lay another yard, and beyond that a house.

  From the vantage of the wide window, they were afforded an unobstructed view of that house. Its timbers were painted gentle pastel shades of yellow and gray. As Jason sat on the old man’s bed, he could see into both bedrooms of the other house. He could also see a portion of the living room and most of the kitchen. The old man had thick net curtains which he kept tied up during the day. Jason let them down. They could still see but were rendered an indistinguishable outline to anyone looking in. The woman they were watching had even waved to Jason once as she walked out to her car and looked up to see them sitting in the window. Probably thought he was the old man whose body Mr Blank had wrapped in plastic and stuffed into the chest freezer in the basement.

  2

  The windows were dark. The house was still except for the lone figure who approached it across the back yard. He moved with confident ease, heading for the back door. Shadows painted his face, reducing his eyes to black pools. He reached the door, gripping the handle with one hand and producing a long thin metal rod from his jacket pocket with the other. He applied it to the lock, producing surreptitious scratching sounds, like a rat.

  Inside the house, the woman slept fitfully and alone. Her brow furrowed and murmurs escaped her mouth which barely hinted at the fear she was feeling. In the darkness of her dream, she dreamt of the night she had killed her husband.

  Blood gushed over her hand where the blade disappeared into his stomach. It felt hot against her skin. A harsh, metallic tang assaulted her as the blood escaped his body. Greg gasped as though he had been winded. His fist was still raised, but the rage that had been twisting his features disappeared. He stared into her eyes, openmouthed. She saw shock there. She had never stood up for herself like this before. Never fought back. Then came the awareness of the wound; the pain hit him, and Ashley saw the anger reignite. How many times had she watched that transformation, triggered by the wrong word or look, or for no discernible reason at all? Greg’s lips peeled back to bare his teeth.

  As Ashley pulled back the knife, he lunged. She stabbed him again. His fist slammed into the wall mere inches from her head. Drywall splintered, and his hand went through to the space beyond. She stabbed again. Again, upward into the hard muscles of his side and stomach. Upward because he had knocked her to the floor at the start of the attack. Knocked her down and punched her in the face hard enough to make her black out for an instant. Ashley screamed her frustration, anger, and terror. She screamed for her life, and her arm thrust backward and forward, spilling his blood and tearing his flesh until he lay still, surrounded by a spreading pool of blood.

  Ashley woke with the name of her husband on her lips. It died in the air of the silent bedroom. She was alone. It took a moment for the dream to fade and reality to reassert itself. The streetlight outside provided an orange half-light that threw up deep shadows. The curtains were open. It had been a long time since she had been able to sleep in complete darkness. A bed and nightstand were the room’s only furnishings. The built-in closet that faced the window stood open, mirrored door slid aside. She had a compulsion every night, checking locked doors and windows and then the potential hiding places in the house. The ritual ended with the closets, which remained open to show her there could be no possible hiding place for an intruder.

  Pushing damp hair away from her face, Ashley sat up. The pillow felt soaked, and she tossed it to the floor. Waking her phone, she felt a sinking feeling as the time glowed bright white on the dark surface. Three thirty. Barely two hours’ sleep tonight. Her eyes drifted to the small white plastic pill bottle that sat unopened
on her bedside table. They were prescribed by her psychiatrist to help her get the sleep she needed. But lately she’d been too afraid to take them. Too afraid to be locked into the embrace of deep sleep, helpless.

  She needed sleep. The dream had ripped out of her subconscious for the third night in a row. There would be no return to natural slumber. It would be another night of staring at infomercials and movies that no network would contemplate screening for anyone but insomniacs.

  The vintage Oilers T-shirt that served her for a nightshirt pulled wetly away from her back as she reached for the white bottle. Nothing to be afraid of, no reason to— A sound from downstairs froze her. She held her breath. A car passed by outside. She wondered if she had imagined the sound, something like a creaking floorboard. But the car had passed a heartbeat after she registered it. By the time silence returned, there was nothing. This is a wood-framed house, she told herself. Built to blend in with the historic architecture. Wood expands and contracts. It makes noises at night. The noise had come from downstairs, from the kitchen, directly below her bedroom.

  Ashley closed her eyes. Was that a stealthy footstep? The sound of breathing? Then the unmistakable sound that could only be a floorboard in the hallway settling under the weight of a footstep. It broke the silence like the crack of a gunshot. Someone was walking slowly along the hallway from the kitchen at the back of the house, toward the front door, and then toward the foot of the stairs. She grabbed for the knife beneath her pillow, the rough rubber grip warm and dry to the touch. The fixed blade glinted in the half-light from the window. Fear crippled her mind for a moment. Flashes of violence sparked in front of her eyes, memories of her previous life. Ashley hadn’t dared attend any of the self-defense classes she had found online, even those catering specifically to celebrities. The risk was too great for someone to wonder what Ashley Fisher, TV news anchor, would feel the need to protect herself against.

  She had taught herself, watching YouTube videos made by hard-faced survivalists who talked about the capabilities of a knife to gut or slice instead of stab. Now those lessons evaporated from her memory. She held the knife in a locked grip, arm rigid and knuckles white. The voices whose advice she had memorized all faded into one panicked, internal monologue.

  There is someone in my house

  There is someone in my house

  There is someone in my house

  A stair sang out. It was a long, agonized sound, a cliché of a haunted house creaky board, and it ended in a soft thump. Ashley fought to bring her breathing under control, forcing slow, deep breaths. With the breathing came the beginnings of reason. Third stair up. She knew because she had memorized the steps that made noises and the precise sounds they made. There were five in total. Recalling helped her to regain control. She gave herself a mental countdown, just like she did before going on air. Five boards in the twenty-year-old staircase. Number three, number five, nine and ten, then the top. The thick carpet would muffle slow, careful steps on the rest.

  Her grip on the knife shifted, her wrist becoming supple and relaxed. She allowed her fingers to find the optimal grip for an upward slice. Directly beneath her bedroom window, she had placed a trellis as an escape route. From the bed to the window would only be a matter of seconds. Throwing open the window and clambering out onto the trellis would use up any time she had left. He would be in the room, and she would be half sliding, half falling down the wood to the lawn below. She couldn’t make herself move. To move would be to make a noise and maybe precipitate a rush by the intruder. And the die would be cast.

  The door would be flung wide. The intruder would be in the room, and Ashley would lash out with the knife. It would happen again. She remembered how fast Greg could move when angry. The times he had struck out to catch her by the hair before she was even aware his temper had flared. Clunk. Clunk. A double thump and that was the tenth stair. She had missed two steps. A deep half-creak quickly muffled under the thick carpet. Last stair. She almost whimpered. A new sound reached her then, a long scraping noise. It sounded like something hard being ground against the wall or possibly the balustrade at the top of the stairs. Something with an edge. She could almost hear it digging in, shaving off surface layers of paint.

  She had to get off the bed, onto her feet. If he was upstairs, it was too late to go for the escape, but she could grab her phone. One bare foot stretched to the edge of the bed, moving slowly to avoid any sound from the mattress. One lithe, bare leg was extended now while her dark eyes never left the white bedroom door. The T-shirt rode up to her hip, toned muscles rigid as she shifted her weight to put one foot to the floor. The scraping noise was getting nearer. The first-floor rooms of the house were arranged in a horseshoe centered on the front door and the hallway which ran back toward the kitchen. Her room lay on the opposite side of the U to the stairs.

  Taking a deep breath, she made a lunge for the phone. A released spring twanged loudly as she did so, and the phone slipped as she made a grab for it, aluminum case clanging against the tempered-glass tabletop. Ashley whimpered in panic at the noises, expecting to hear the rush of the attacker now that she had confirmed she was awake. As she fought to draw the shape across the face of the phone that would waken it, she heard a cheery whistle. A child’s song, a silly piece of nonsense but one she had heard many times before. The phone slipped from fingers that were nerveless.

  This old man. He plays one

  He played knick-knack on my drum

  Tears leaked down her face, and Ashley did the only thing she could. She dropped to the floor and hid under the bed. Presently the door opened and, as she had known it would, the whistling was now accompanied by clicking fingers. All she could see through her terrified tears were dark, slim-fitting trousers and two-tone shoes with a pointed toe. This couldn’t be. A flashlight flicked on and played around the room. It rested on the phone, and she watched the footsteps move into the room toward it, light never moving from the dark screen. The intruder chuckled, the short, sharp laugh raking her with its familiarity. This. Could not. Be.

  From her hiding place, she couldn’t see higher than the intruder’s knees. Her mouth was filling with the taste of blood where she had bitten her cheek without realizing it. Ashley remained frozen in terror as the intruder moved around the room. Then he left the door open behind him. She heard the whistling recede as he went down the stairs, then stop. She looked up. From her hiding place she could see out through the bedroom door. She had an unobstructed view of a face, framed for a second as he stopped and looked directly at her.

  The back glow from the flashlight and the light seeping in from the streetlight outside gave hints to his shadow-soaked features. She thought she saw a moustache and beard framing his mouth. Short dark hair, flat to the scalp, and a hint of a round, babyish face. Then he was moving again, and the whistled tune continued, trailing him through to the kitchen and the back door. She knew the face that had briefly peeked out of the gloom. But he was dead. She had killed him a year ago.

  3

  “Goddamn. You almost took my damned hand off,” Mike barked.

  “I told you. Turn it toward me,” Cade snarled back.

  “I did. How much farther?”

  “It’s this floor. I’m beginning to regret ever asking you.”

  “So am I. Put it down. I need to take a breather. Son of a bitch. Things like this didn’t used to be this goddamned hard.”

  Cade put down his end of the brown leather-look three-seater couch. His T-shirt was dry still, and he hoped he wasn’t as red in the face as Mike Rawlins, who glared up at him from the other end. Rawlins had salt-and-pepper hair and a severe crew cut, a mouth downturned at the corners, and the kind of stare that would make a mad longhorn think twice. He had once been a feared sergeant in the HPD, and retirement hadn’t mellowed him.

  The building’s stairwell was hot, with wide bands of Houston sunshine cascading in through tall strips of glass that rose with the concrete stairs. Dust danced in the beams. The stairwell
smelled of bleach and lemon from the cleaner employed by the building’s owner.

  “You couldn’t find a building with an elevator, huh?”

  “Nope,” Cade replied.

  “How did you find this place, anyway?”

  “Just looking where I could afford. Rents downtown are way too steep. So is Midtown, mostly, but I got a deal.”

  “I can see why.”

  “Quit griping. I got some cold beers up in the office. Come on now.”

  He picked up his end, and Rawlins grudgingly hoisted his. They grunted and twisted the couch around the intricacies of the staircase and through the fire door, leaving stripes of scraped paint along the upholstery as they heaved it through. Beyond was an uncarpeted hallway. There was a door at the far end marked ‘Roof’ and a door opposite the stairs marked ‘Tom Cade - Private Investigator’ in modest black letters. The door had a window of frosted glass on which the letters had been embossed. The door looked painfully new compared to its surroundings.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Rawlins exclaimed when he saw it. “Never thought I’d see the day Tom Cade went commercial.”

  Cade unlocked the door to his office and pushed the door wide. He liked looking at the embossed letters and tried not to think about how much the door had cost him.