She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

by J. D. Barker

  “Stella?”

  I showed it to her, and her eyes grew wide.

  By Hand Bed and Breakfast.

  By Hand.

  “She had brought me up ‘by hand,’” Stella said softly. “Joe and I were both brought up ‘by hand.’ She must have made Joe marry her ‘by hand.’”

  We both recognized the phrase as one Dickens used numerous times in his novel. A phrase odd enough that it stood out even to me when I first read the book so many years ago. Pip’s aunt said it regularly.

  “Do you think that’s it?”

  Stella went back at the map, tracing a line with her finger. “6600 Still Creek Road. It’s on the other side of the island, about eight miles from here. Jack, that must be it.”

  I grabbed her gloved hand and quickly got her back to the car.

  2

  The only flight Fogel was able to find on short notice back to Pittsburgh left Nevada at 7:23 in the evening and came with a two-hour layover at O’Hare Airport in Chicago from 11:30 to 1:30 in the morning. She was dead tired. She tried to sleep on the plane, but did so in fits and starts, much to the dismay of the elderly man sitting beside her. At one point, he shook her awake and told her she cried out. Fogel had no recollection of what she had been dreaming, nor did she remember screaming, but the leery eyes of the other passengers told her she had, and she found herself reluctant to try and sleep again.

  At O’Hare, she found her gate, then wandered the terminals to pass the time. There was a stop for coffee at the only open counter in the food courts. Then she passed the remainder of the time parked in an uncomfortable plastic seat, reading the first couple chapters of Stephen King’s new book, Bag of Bones. The book seemed good, but she couldn’t focus. When her eyes inevitably fell shut again, she saw herself lying in a ditch at the side of the road, her gaze blank and wide, her skin burned but not burned. Still able to scream, though—the sides of her mouth cracked and bled with her pain-filled shrill.

  This time when she cried out, she heard it too. She put the book aside, got a second cup of coffee, and returned to her gate.

  Those two hours crawled.

  Last night, Stack had called her about ten minutes before her plane was set to board last in Nevada.

  Arden Royal, the twenty-seven year-old male found behind a Dumpster in Upper Saint Clair in 1991, also worked for Charter Pharmaceuticals. Stack was working to connect the others—they were on to something. Charter was about 280 miles outside Pittsburgh, near Philadelphia.

  “There’s something else,” Stack said. “I think someone’s watching me.”

  He told her about the white vans.

  She tried dialing Stack several times since but only got a busy signal.

  Fogel landed in Pittsburgh at thirty-three past three in the morning, retrieved her car from the lot, and took I-76 to Chadds Ford at a rate of speed that would put a smile on the face of any NASCAR fan.

  She arrived in Chadds Ford at a little past eight, drove through the small town in all of four minutes, noting it was even smaller than Fallon, Nevada had been, then followed her hastily scribbled directions under the single traffic light at the back end of the quiet town to SR-41, and from there to CR-27 West. The few houses she spotted were set far back from the road, most lost behind large fields of corn, hay, soybeans, and God knows what else they grew out here.

  Fogel completely missed the turnoff for Turlington Road not once but twice—blowing past it the first time at more than eighty miles-per-hour, then the second time as she drove much slower, carefully scanning the fields on her right.

  The road wasn’t marked.

  The road wasn’t really much of a road at all, a sliver of blacktop off the two-lane highway that quickly vanished into a sprawling cornfield. Had she not seen another car turn, she probably would have missed Turlington a third time.

  By the time she maneuvered her car back around and returned to Turlington Road, the taillights of that previous vehicle were nothing but pin points in the distance, and even those disappeared up and over a hill and blinked out by the time she straightened the wheel and pointed her Toyota down the center of the narrow two-lane road.

  While CR-27 West had been riddled with patched cracks and potholes, Turlington had been recently paved and was well maintained. Reflectors marked the center of the two lanes, and fresh white paint lined the edges. An eight-foot chain-link fence blocked access from the cornfields on either side, and Fogel was reminded of the claustrophobic drive into the state correctional institute on Beaver Avenue back in the city. More so when she came upon the gate and guardhouse at the end of the road.

  The guardhouse had an arm meant to stop traffic, but the arm was raised. The vehicle she followed in from the main road paused at the gate, then pulled through into an expansive parking lot surrounding a large concrete building centered at the back. As Fogel approached the guardhouse, she fished her Pittsburgh PD badge and identification card out of her purse, but found she didn’t need it. There was nobody inside.

  Noting there was not a single sign that read Charter—or any other business name, for that matter—she pulled through the gate and circled around until she found a parking space. Considering the early hour, it seemed odd so many people were here. Odder still—other than her green Toyota, every car in the lot was white.

  3

  Crossing that small island might have been the longest fifteen minute drive of my life. Stella had memorized the directions and pointed out each turn to me. Aside from a lone landscaper’s truck, we didn’t pass a single car in either direction. The island felt like another world, so far removed from the various cities I had lived over the years. If the island felt remote and isolated, Stills Creek Road was the edge of the earth. We turned from Cultus Bay onto Stills in silence. The road was narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, lacking a center dividing line. Mailboxes and driveways lined the left side with not a single house in sight. The driveways weaved back into thick groves of Douglas fir, red alder, big-leaf maples, tall cedars, and hemlock. A wild place, untouched by the destructive hand of man.

  “There,” Stella said softly, pointing at a large red mailbox with 6600 painted on the side in careful black script. Nothing else, no mention of the bed-and-breakfast. Nothing to indicate a business existed here at all.

  A canopy of large, bowing branches bent over the gravel driveway.

  “Go, Jack. I can’t stand it.” She was leaning forward again.

  I realized I was, too. My palms were clammy with sweat.

  I turned onto the narrow driveway and followed it through the trees.

  4

  The vehicle Fogel had followed into the Charter parking lot turned out to be a Ford F-250 pickup truck—white, like all the others. As she got out of her own car, she saw two men climb out of the large truck and disappear inside the building. Both wore long, white trench coats. Neither acknowledged her. Both moved with quick purpose.

  Fogel pressed the lock button on her key fob—the two chirps sounding especially loud, as all sounds do at such early hours—then followed after the two men, across the parking lot and through two thick glass doors.

  A whoosh of cold air met her as the doors swung shut automatically at her back, the click of her shoes echoing off the highly polished white marble floors.

  Fogel stared up at the soaring ceiling, rising the full height of the building.

  The ceiling was white.

  The walls were white.

  White canvases in white frames lined the walls, and somehow Fogel was certain if she inspected one closely, she would find those canvases weren’t blank, but painted white with careful strokes. Soft piano music came forth from hidden speakers. She recognized it as “Der Hölle Rache” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. One of her mother’s favorites.

  “May I help you?”

  This came from a reception desk at the back of the lobby, behind a waiting area made up of two white leather couches, four matching white leather chairs, and assorted white tables o
n a white rug.

  The lobby should have felt incredibly bright but the lights were just low enough to compensate.

  Fogel approached the desk and took out her ID. “I’m Detective Fogel, with the Pittsburgh Police Department. I’d like to speak to whoever is in charge.”

  The receptionist, a woman in her mid-twenties with long blonde hair and green eyes, smiled up at Fogel. She wore a white blazer over a white blouse, and although Fogel couldn’t see under the desk, she was certain the woman had on a matching skirt and shoes as well. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I’m with Homicide. I don’t have an appointment, but I need to speak to someone right away.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “Homicide? Has there been a murder?”

  “I’m not at liberty to provide details. This is an active investigation.”

  “I understand.” She smiled and picked up her phone, dialing a number with slender fingers tipped in white nail polish. Speaking softly into the receiver, she listened for a moment, then hung up. “Please take a seat, Detective Fogel. Someone will be with you shortly. Help yourself to coffee or pastries. The baklava is simply delightful.”

  “Thank you.”

  Fogel walked over to the waiting area and dropped down into the large, white couch.

  Coffee service, donuts, and assorted pastries filled the table at the center of the furniture. There was also a generous supply of flavored creamers, sugars, and artificial sweeteners. She poured herself a cup of coffee, black, then frowned when she realized it was ice cold. The pastries (including the famous baklava) looked like they had been out there a while, too. Mold crept up over the edges of the bagels.

  5

  There are times in your life when you think you know what comes next. Instances of predicability, sameness. Times when your next step is as known to you as the last, and you take those steps with confidence, knowing nothing horrific waits for you in the shadows ahead. You venture forth as if you read the last page of a book and can go back and read the rest from the beginning, knowing without a doubt where the story would go, while still taking comfort in the journey.

  I spent the preceding eighteen years of my life operating with the certainty that my parents were dead. I visited their graves. I spoke to them. I prayed for them. Always gone, always something of the past. I knew their faces only from old photographs and dreams, and the sound of their voices eluded me like the waters of a fast-running creek. I made peace with my parent’s deaths long before I understood what that really meant. When you lose your parents at such an early age, it simply is. You know and understand nothing else. Auntie Jo always told me I should be grateful I had been so young. Both her parents died when she was an adult, and the vividness of those memories haunted her nightly.

  I never told her about my dream, my personal haunting.

  A dream I now knew to be not a dream at all, but the chaotic memories of a child.

  If I had told her about the dream, would she have confessed my father was still alive?

  Would she have broken down in tears and told me that was really why she hated him so much? My mother died, and he lived? She, this aunt who raised me as her own, part of a cover-up all these years?

  Would she have called him a coward? Said he ran away? Might as well be dead?

  How I wish I could have spoken to her about all of this. I hated her for keeping the truth from me, yet I loved her for protecting me, and both of those things seemed to be one and the same.

  The gravel of the driveway crunched under our tires.

  Stella held the pamphlet we found back at the welcome center in her hand, and she gripped it in such a way the paper crinkled.

  A large, old house appeared on our left, peeking out from around the tall maples and alders, their branches swaying lazily in the early morning breeze. A hand-painted sign on a short post read Guest Parking, with an arrow pointing to the left. On our right stood a woodshed with enough cut logs stacked against the outer walls to last at least three cold winters. Beyond the shed was a garden, fenced high to keep out the deer and other wildlife. There were fruit trees, too. Apples and pears, mostly.

  The gravel driveway opened up into a concrete parking pad on the left, then wound deeper into the property, toward another house, newer than the first, this one perched on a slight hill at the edge of the cliff overlooking the waters of Puget Sound and the shipping lanes a hundred feet below.

  “This is breathtaking,” Stella said.

  A white picket fence ran along the outer edge of the yard. There had to be four, maybe five acres. “How can he afford all this? This can’t be the right place.”

  “Park over there.” Stella pointed toward the guest spaces.

  I pulled up next to a brown Chevy pickup with a lawnmower in the back and switched off the engine.

  I was out the car and around to Stella’s side to help her before I noticed the man watching us from the back corner of the woodshed, one hand holding a black trash bag and the other on the butt of a gun holstered to his right hip.

  He was about my height, with brown hair peppered with gray that carried on into his beard. He wore jeans, a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and black boots. There was a hard edge to his face, aged beyond his years. His eyes were sharp, though, fox-like, darting from me to Stella and back again from behind black framed glasses. His hands were dirty.

  He didn’t move.

  Not at first.

  When he finally did approach us, he did so with trepidation, his grip tightening on the trash bag. As he grew closer, his right hand fell from the gun. He tugged the tail of his shirt down over it. He studied us both. His gaze lingered on Stella’s gloves. He ducked slightly to get a better look at Dewey Hobson, still in the back seat. Then he turned back to us, his expression flat.

  “Dad?” the single word fell from my lips, so soft I wasn’t sure anyone else had heard it.

  I’m not sure exactly what I expected. Maybe for this man to drop the bag, rush me, and embrace me in a hug? Tears, perhaps. A rushed explanation of the years gone, broken words covering two decades of deceit, secrets, and lies?

  My God, son. You’re a man.

  I’ve missed you, Dad. Every second, I’ve missed you.

  None of those things happened.

  “We need to get inside,” he said quietly, before turning and walking at a brisk pace toward the house on the cliff, hefting the trash bag over his shoulder.

  Stella and I gave each other a puzzled glance before following after him.

  He left the front door standing ajar.

  This first floor of the house had an open floor-plan. The front door led to a foyer and a wide hallway with a staircase on the left and tall storage cabinets on the right. The hallway opened up to a dining area on the left and a chef’s kitchen on the right. Beyond the kitchen was a sunken living room with a large stone fireplace and two leather sofas with a matching chair and ottoman. A wall of windows overlooking a large patio and the deep blue waters of Puget Sound far below filled the back of the house. Several small boats dotted the surface. Further out, a cruise ship floated northbound for Alaska.

  I had to help Stella. She was horribly weak. Her arm was draped over my shoulder and she leaned into me, her breathing labored, shivering in short stutters. Over the past day, her strength came and went with little warning. At the ferry terminal, less than an hour ago, she had been alert, her energy up. She seemed strong. Even as we approached the house, I saw hints of the girl I remembered throughout the years. I began to realize she made a conscious effort for that girl to appear, to lift from the thickening fog of her illness. And each appearance came with a price, a toll, a drain, that shortened the next.

  Stella was fading.

  This was different from the car two days earlier, the lake.

  Something worse.

  Neither of us wanted to admit to that, but it was there nonetheless.

  I am to die soon, my dearest Pip. You know that, right?

 
Through the thick material of her clothing, I felt the heat of her body and knew she was feverish again. I got her inside the house and over to one of the leather sofas, where I gently set her down, her head resting on a soft leather pillow.

  She smiled up at me, silently mouthing the words My Pip.

  Hobson entered the house behind me, having left the car without any coaxing. He stepped into the foyer and closed the front door behind him, then stood there, still and silent again.

  Stuck, as Stella said.

  My father stood at the dining room table. He had torn open the black garbage bag, dumped the contents, and was sifting through what looked like bundles of bound pages—folders, video tapes, and journals.

  I went over to him.

  He didn’t look at me.

  “Dad?” The only word I had said to him in twenty years, now said twice. Ignored twice, as he continued to rifle through the material.

  Charter was printed on most of it. Either as a logo on many of the documents, handwritten at the top of others, or stamped onto the folders—this was accompanied by Confidential or Eyes Only or Internal Use Only. There was a bundle of photographs, too. I picked it up, tugged off the rubber band, and flipped through them. About a dozen in all. I recognized the faces from the yearbook—Perla Beyham, Cammie Brotherton, Jaquelyn Breece, Keith Pickford, Jeffery Dalton, Dewey Hobson, Garret Dotts, Penelope Maudlin, Richard Nettleton, Emma Tackett. Pictures of my parents were absent from the stack, but I had no doubt they were once there. There was a thick folder on Elfrieda Leech—an ancient photograph of my former neighbor and my parent’s guidance counselor clipped to the outer flap. I opened the folder and found dozens of pay stubs, sizable checks payable to Leech from Charter. The earliest dated February 4, 1974, and the latest stamped August of 1980. There were memos and handwritten notes, both mentioning the same names, those same Penn State students.

  I found a folder with my name and picture on it. One for Stella, too. The photos were old, both of us no more than three or four. Inside my folder were dozens of other pictures and at least a hundred pages of loose paper—some typed, others handwritten. One of the oldest on top was dated only four months after I was born. A handwritten note said—