Free A Time of Torment by John Connolly

people here hadn’t managed to get around to it yet, or were holding out for one last warm weekend. Good luck with that in Maine.
    Sections of the backyard were lit by solar-powered lamps, one of which stood not far from the exposed corner of the pool. It cast a little light on the water, and Brown thought he caught a glimpse of something lying at the bottom of the shallow end. It was strangely regular in form, and he experienced the immediate sense that, whatever it was, it had no business being there.
    He drew closer to the pool. Behind him, he heard TP whisper.
    ‘Hey, where are you going?’
    Brown was exposing himself to anyone who might happen to glance out a window, but he didn’t care. Curiosity had snagged him with its hook, and now it was drawing him in. What was that?
    He stood at the edge of the pool and looked down. A television set, one of those big, expensive flat-screen models, lay on the tiles. Lengths of rope or cable crisscrossed it, binding it tightly to what was beneath, anchored by the TV to the bottom of the pool.
    Brown was looking into the eyes of a dead boy.

14
    C orrie returned to consciousness to find herself lying facedown on a couch in an unfamiliar room. Her hands had been pulled behind her back and secured with what felt like metal cuffs. She could feel them biting into her wrists. Her legs wouldn’t move, and she saw that they were held together with wire. She had been gagged with a length of cloth.
    She tried to control her panic. TP was on his way, and Barry with him. They had to be close. Any moment now she would hear the ringing of the doorbell, or the breaking of glass, and then Henry the Asshole would wish that he’d never made his way to Portland. She hoped Barry would break his legs, and maybe his arms too, just before TP killed him and his creepy friend.
    She heard movement behind her, and Henry appeared to her left. He was holding a pistol in his hand. Of the other man, there was no sign.
    Henry put the muzzle to Corrie’s left eye. She just had time to close it before she felt it pressing hard against the eyelid. The click of the hammer locking caused a little part of her to come loose inside.
    ‘Not a sound,’ said Henry. ‘Not a movement.’
    The boy in the pool had dark hair. He was probably not yet a teenager, to judge by his size, although the distortion caused by the water made it difficult to tell. He hasn’t been down there very long , Brown thought. For the most part he looked undamaged, apart from the way his mouth bulged. Brown couldn’t be sure, but it appeared that a ball had been jammed into it. The ball was red. It protruded from between his upper and lower jaws like a half-eaten apple.
    Brown gazed down at the boy, and the boy gazed back. The gentle lapping of the water in the pool caused his hair to move. One of his hands was visible, but Brown couldn’t see the other. He wondered if the boy had somehow managed to get his left hand free, and tried to push against the big TV as he drowned. That assumed, of course, that he’d been alive when he went in the water. If he was, did whoever was responsible for throwing him in the pool stay to watch him die?
    Brown felt the weight of the bat in his hand, and the grain of the wood against his skin. It brought him back, and with that he thought of Corrie. She was in the house with whoever had killed this boy.
    Now Brown was really glad that TP had his gun with him.
    He turned to speak to TP, who was staring at him from the back wall of the house. Brown pointed at the pool, but TP just shook his head. He didn’t want to see whatever was down there, because it didn’t matter. Only Corrie mattered now.
    TP moved to the patio doors.
    Upstairs, on the second floor, Henry’s companion left the bedroom he’d been cleaning and stepped into the hallway. His name was Gideon, although it would be many years before that fact became known. For now, like his companion, he was sailing under a false flag. He was, as Corrie