The Good Lie by A.R. Torre
CHAPTER 36
Marta Blevins was in the running for Realtor of the month. One more signed contract and it would be her name on the plaque, her Tahoe in the premier parking spot. She needed a sale, and this showing could be it.
Unlocking the home, she stepped inside, crinkling her nose at the dingy green wallpaper and cheap assortment of furniture. She moved deeper into the shallow living room and pulled open the blinds, flooding the room with light. At least it was neat. Last week she’d shown a Culver City home that had piles of rancid clothes everywhere you looked.
On the street, her clients’ blue sedan pulled up to the curb. The newlyweds from Texas had been dismayed at the prices of the last two properties she’d shown them. Hopefully their budget would help them overlook the stigma brought on by this home’s history. Not that she had told them. California law was lenient with what had to be disclosed, and deaths were specifically off that list.
She watched them through the window. The husband was on the phone, which would give her a few minutes to walk through the place. You never knew how other agents would leave the house, and there had been a fair number of showings since the last time she’d been here.
The master bedroom was in order, and she took a moment to turn on the bedside lamp and open the blinds. The second bedroom had been converted into a flex office, and she toed a dead roach underneath an abandoned treadmill that was parked against one wall. Glancing in the laundry room, she was grateful to see the pull-down entry to the attic easily accessible. The husband was a home inspector, a fact he mentioned ad nauseam, and he had wanted to see the crawl space and attic of every home they’d viewed. In preparation, she pulled at the cord, pleased to see the folding stairs smoothly extend out, the construction well done and reinforced in multiple places. Normally, these attic access stairs were barely functional death traps. This looked like something that was built to last.
Hearing a tentative knock, she hurried back down the slim hall to let the couple inside.
As expected, the husband beelined for the access, enthusiastically gripping the handrails and clipping up the stairs and into the ceiling.
“I don’t know . . . ,” the wife said doubtfully, looking around the space. “Do you think they’d consider a lease purchase?” She adjusted the skinny red belt that cut across the middle of her white sundress. “My company is paying for four months of relocation rent. And I asked if we could use it on a mortgage, but they said—”
From the top rung of the stairs, her husband cleared his throat. “Um . . . Marta?”
“Yes?” she called out sweetly, sneaking a glance at her watch. Appetizers were half-price until six thirty, which meant—
“You need to see this.”
His tone was odd, steeped in trepidation, and she peered up the ladder at him. “What is it?” Mold? Asbestos? She mentally crossed her fingers. Please, not raccoons.
He climbed the final rungs and disappeared in the hole. She waited expectantly, but he moved deeper into the attic without responding.
Marta gripped the handrails of the stairs and gave them an experimental shake, testing their stability. It was really amazing. The owners had obviously swapped out the traditional steps for a commercial-quality set. She took the first step dubiously, then gained confidence on the second, then the third. By the time her head cleared the attic opening, she felt a small burst of accomplishment. And her ex said that she never got her hands dirty. What did he know?
She twisted toward the husband. What was his name? Wyatt? Wayne? Wilbur?
He was standing still, his attention on a mattress pushed against one of the attic walls. And wow, this was an actual room up here! Livable square footage, if you didn’t mind roughing it a bit. She pulled herself to her feet and spotted a work light, like the sort you see at construction sites, clamped to a nearby beam. She fumbled along the back of it and switched it on. The dark space illuminated in brilliant white light, and she turned back to the husband, pleased with herself. Wes. That was his name.
He was still just standing there. Staring at the bed. No, not actually at the bed. At something between him and the bed. A worktable of some sort.
“This is pretty nice,” she chirped, brushing off her hands and moving closer, curious to see what he found so intriguing. “I—”
Her words, her sentence, her thoughts all ceased. Everything in her subconscious halted as she stared down at the neat row of amputated fingers.
She stumbled back as her attention swept across the room. The mattress, its tan sheet stained with dried streaks of blood. The towel rings affixed above the mattress, ropes hanging from them. The camera set up by the bed. A bucket with flies buzzing above it. She inhaled and was suddenly aware of the smell. Iron and shit. Sweat. Fear. Was that sound coming from her? That low moan, that horrible, horrible moan?
She swayed to one side and looked for the stairs, zeroed in on the open hole in the floor. The wife was calling her name, was now climbing the stairs, but she couldn’t come up here. No one should be up here. She lunged for the exit and slipped, her hands scrambling across the unfinished plywood surface. Splinters peppered her palms, and she gagged at a tuft of hair that was stuck in between two boards.
Making it to the opening, she shoved her feet through, narrowly missing the face of the wife. “Go!” she yelled. “Move! Move out of the way!”
“Is it rats?” the woman screeched, hurriedly retreating down the stairs. “Cockroaches?”
Marta launched off the access and ran down the hall as fast as her heels would allow her. Snagging her purse from the couch, she burst out the front door and gulped in the fresh air. Digging through her purse, she cursed, then dropped to her knees in the grass and dumped it upside down, shaking the canvas tote until it was empty, her phone finally visible among the makeup, pens, business cards, and tissues. Unlocking it with a shaky hand, she took a deep breath and dialed 9-1-1.