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The Eyes Have No Soul

Page 4

by Matthew W. Harrill


  Her garden glowed in the warm afternoon sunshine, the lawn a verdant green, beads of moisture from the morning dew refracting the light as they resisted the warmth of the day. Minuscule insects flitted in and out of the sunbeams, a myriad of microscopic golden motes. In stark contrast to the random nature of the grasping wisteria vine, the garden was well manicured, simple, and logical. One could have described it as perfunctory.

  Taking one final deep scented breath from her private glade, Clare turned to the house and stopped. The front door had been left open. Clare looked about. The day grew suddenly cold. The hairs on her arms stood on end. She was not alone.

  Chapter Four

  Cautious but intrigued and made brave by anger, Clare pushed the door all the way open. How dare someone come into her home uninvited? She took a step into the hallway, being careful to muffle her footsteps on one of the rugs. A noise came from the kitchen, a muffled bump. She paused.

  Careful here. Grab a weapon. Anything.

  Clare reached for a small statue her brother Jeff had been awarded. A gold column mounted with an elongated star that looked more like the Starfleet symbol from Star Trek, would serve well to stab or bludgeon with if the situation came to such. It was compact and heavy.

  Cautious moves. One foot placed with care in front of the other. Silent. Focused. Ready to act. Today was not a day to test Clare Rosser. Brushing her hair back over her ear with her free hand, she took the step that brought her within reach of the kitchen door. Sturdy bleached oak, the door was a couple of inches ajar, allowing for a partial view of the kitchen. The intruder could be hidden anywhere beyond, but there was no sign of disturbance.

  Clare pushed the door on silent hinges, making the gap large enough for her to squeeze through while maintaining the maximum level of protection. Taking a breath to calm her nerves, she moved forward, trophy held chest high before her. She turned several times, attempting to assess the nature of the intruder. Nothing stood out. The kitchen was empty. She let out a slow breath, leaning against a cabinet, willing the tension away. Something touched her hand, and she yelped.

  Turning to face her attacker, Clare was met with a small furry face turned at a slight angle. A brief 'meow' came from the tiny mouth.

  “Steve!” Clare exclaimed, withdrawing her weapon and reaching her other hand out.

  The tortoiseshell cat, a rescue animal, stuck his head up. Clare leaned forward, her face next to the shelf on which he stood.

  In response, Steve pawed at her nose in greeting and nuzzled her head, purring.

  “Ah good, you're back,” said a voice from behind her.

  Without thinking, Clare swung her arm, letting fly with the trophy. The pointed star embedded in the soft plaster of the kitchen wall with an audible 'thunk', three inches to the side of a very startled Jeff Rosser.

  “Whoa! Steady on there, sis.”

  Clare put one hand to her forehead, feeling the sweat present. “Jeff. You imbecile! What are you doing?”

  Clad in his dark-gray Armani business suit, with a pinstripe shirt and black tie, Jeff cut an imposing figure. That was even despite the red corkscrew curls erupting from his head, which would have made most people look comical. It was his badge of honor, marking him as the firebrand businessman people had come to fear. He was cutthroat.

  “Visiting,” he replied, “and making lunch. You know you really need to keep the fridge stocked. I'm almost forced to eat healthy.” He placed a plate of egg salad sandwiches on the table and pulled the trophy out of the wall in one smooth move, admiring it as it came free. “Why do you keep all this crap, Clare? It looks like one huge antique store in here.”

  Clare shifted the chairs around the table so they remained exactly where they had been the night she came home to find her world had changed. “It reminds me of Mom and Dad, that there are answers out there still to be found.”

  “Yeah but this is a museum of a miserable childhood. Move on, already.”

  “No Jeff. It's my choice to live this way. I have my space. There was something that went on here, sinister in nature. Everything stays the way it was, no matter how long, until I can work out what it means.”

  Jeff shook his head. “This is obsession, sis. You're a damned-good forensic scientist. You know better than anybody that this won't solve anything.”

  Clare ran her hand along Steve's back, causing the cat to arch in pleasure. Steve was the only one she would allow to knock objects out of place.

  “Perhaps it won't. Yet I believe there must be something I've missed.”

  “You just have to assume that you won't.”

  “No, I can't accept that.” A wave of weariness came over her. Clare pulled out an ornate wooden chair and collapsed into the seat.

  “Are you all right? You look like you're losing weight, sis. That's no good. There's nothing to you as it is.”

  Clare shrugged. “I'm fine. Not eating as much as I'd like, but that's always a good thing, isn't it? I'm just a bit tired and thirsty.”

  Without passing further comment, Jeff found a glass in the cabinet above the sink, filled it with water, and handed it to her.

  Clare smiled her thanks and took a sip, which became a series of gulps. In no time at all, the glass was empty, yet she felt strangely dissatisfied. “Why are you here? It can't be just for food.”

  Jeff trailed his hand along the painted kitchen wall. “It's strange. My apartment in Boston is being renovated, and I took some time off. Just felt a longing to hang out here, see my big sis, her strange puritan idiosyncrasies and all.”

  “Well you could at least shut the front door when you come in.”

  Jeff's face frowned in confusion. “I came in through the back. The same way I always have. You're the only one that ever uses the front. I didn't even realize it was open.”

  It was true. Ever since childhood, Jeff had preferred to skulk in the back entrance. That way there was a better chance of avoiding the parents if they were in one of their collective 'moods'.

  “It was open when I got here. Someone's been inside.”

  Jeff peered into the hallway. “Nobody's here now.”

  “How did you get here? I didn't see the Porsche.”

  “I walked. Car's being detailed over at Dick's Auto Body. It's a nice day, and I felt like stretching my legs. Why the sudden inquisition?”

  Clare drew a slow breath. Unexplained events never happened in Holden. Not since their parents. “Just a bit tightly strung today I guess. I had a bad day at the office.”

  Jeff grinned. “That's why you're home early. Walked out, eh? Quit?”

  “No, it's nothing like that. Just an ongoing disagreement that led to me requesting a bit of cooling-off time before I said something I really would regret.”

  Around a mouthful of sandwich, Jeff mumbled, “Well, this is gonna top your day right off. Roger Bartow came back yesterday.”

  Clare nearly dropped the empty glass. “You serious?” The long-time absentee father of one of her neighbor's kids had often been a topic of discussion in the area, especially with him disappearing around the time of her parents' death. Some locals had tried to lay the deaths at his feet purely on opinion and hearsay. It had never gotten anywhere.

  Jeff nodded. “Annette Cameron gave me a call when she couldn't get hold of you. Lucky I was on my way, eh?”

  Clare was already on her way out the door. “You staying here?” she called back.

  “And remain alone in this relic? Fat chance.” Jeff dropped his plate for an inquisitive Steve to sniff over and hurried after her, leaving the door swinging.

  Clare was outside and hopping up onto the raised gravel drive of the Cameron house in moments. An abandoned old trailer for a boat sat on the track, wheels wedged into immobility with wooden chocks. She dodged around this. The house, with its newly finished brown siding and white window frames, gleamed at her in the afternoon sun, fitting perfectly with the early autumn colors in the surrounding trees. The house inside would be nowhere near as b
eatific.

  Clare knocked. Not waiting for an answer, she opened the porch door. “Anne?”

  “In here, honey,” called Anne's mother, Annette.

  Clare picked her steps carefully as she wound her way through the hall. Cardboard boxes were stacked with magazines, as if their location were death row and the weekly recycling the sentence that would never come to pass. Random plastic toys, many faded and broken, scattered in shady patches threatened to trip her. Marbles, dolls, heaps of sneakers discarded for a trip to the refuse tip that was beyond reach. Why they couldn't see it as mess was beyond Clare's logical mind.

  She winced as she passed through the kitchen. Plates were piled up high, discarded and stained to a permanent state of filth. A random gathering of elegant crystal goblets stood majestic but for the wine staining the sides where it had evaporated. A sink was piled with saucepans. A putrid smell emanated from this room. It turned Clare's stomach, and she tried to take shallow breaths so as not to inhale too much. Jeff followed close. Clare felt him about to comment; she knew her brother would find this hard to bear, and she shook her head with a warning glance to keep his thoughts private.

  Finally, the filthy obstacle course ended with the entrance to the living room, a relative sanctuary of order in the midst of the mess.

  On a couch, Anne Bartow sat, face pale, straw yellow hair pulled back in a bun. She didn't even glance up. Her parents, Ted and Annette Cameron, flanked her as if to protect her from the world. Off to one side, Roger Bartow's son, Dean, sat bored in a shirt and tie as if awaiting a trip to church. Anne's two younger children from a subsequent tempestuous and ultimately failed relationship, Grace and Bo, played on the floor with whatever detritus could be found to amuse them.

  “Is it true?” Clare asked without any preamble.

  “Yes, dear,” Ted replied. His green plaid shirt was creased and worn, his eyes overtired beneath thick-lensed glasses that appeared to support his mass of white hair as much as it kept it out of his eyes. “When we woke up this morning, he was already down here with her. I can only imagine Roger gave Anne the shock of her life.”

  “You'll be fine, hun,” Annette reassured her daughter. Anne just stared straight ahead, as if focused on a vision only she could behold.

  Jeff leaned down and wiggled his fingers in front of her eyes. “There's nobody home.”

  This earned him a glare from Annette. “Well, of course there ain't. Poor thing was probably shocked dumb at him being here.”

  “Well, where did he come from? How did he get in?”

  Ted barked a laugh. “That door's never locked, you know that. If Holden weren't so goddamned friendly, maybe we'd have decent locks and a bit of security. How many times have you just wandered in off the street?” He was angry and upset at seeing his daughter sitting there helpless. Clare understood this; his lashing out was his only method of expressing his feelings.

  “Seems to be catching, that,” Jeff observed.

  “My front door was open when I arrived home,” Clare elaborated. “It wasn't either of us.”

  “Maybe it was the boogeyman,” muttered Dean.

  “Dean Bartow, that's enough out of you,” admonished his grandmother. “Kid's a chip off the old block, all right.”

  Dean sat glowering under a mop of black hair but said no more.

  “And nobody heard what was said? He never spoke to any of the kids?”

  “The kids were all in bed,” Ted said with a shrug. “Doc Strange asked us similar questions when he was here.”

  Julian Strange was the family physician for half of Holden so it seemed. It didn't surprise Clare that he was already involved.

  “We're just waitin' for the paramedics to show up and take Anne for a check-up. He told us to wait and that we have. It's been hours.”

  Clare was already working through the logic of the situation. This was all just too odd to not leave some clue. “What did he look like? It's been a dozen years since he left. I never knew him before but with all the rumors he might have information about Mom and Pop at least.”

  “Twelve years since Roger left her with a baby?” In a red dress with short dark hair, Annette showed very little resemblance to her daughter. Anne's facial features, immobile in her state of catatonia were those of her father, with slight softening. “You didn't miss much through not knowing him, girl. We barely saw the man when he was with Anne. He was a ghost, more of a drifter than a husband. He had a baseball cap on when I came downstairs this morning, black. And he wore a jacket with a logo on it. He kept his head down, but he was shaking, and he looked like he had been sweating a lot. It was dripping off of him.”

  “What logo?”

  “You think you can catch up with him? You think he left clues to his whereabouts?”

  Clare looked around the living room. “Ted if I'm being brutally honest, I wouldn't even know where to start looking for clues. I've got to start somewhere. The logo. Can you remember it? If it is distinct, it might be important.”

  Flashing lights became visible down the hallway as an ambulance pulled up on the driveway.

  Annette's brow furrowed. “It was a sort of odd looking letter 'a' shape. I've seen it several places before.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Hello? We're here for Anne Bartow. Is anybody in there?”

  Clare grabbed a scrap of paper and pencil from the floor where Grace had moved to watch the ambulance. Sketching a stylized 'A' as quickly as she could, she held it up. “Did it look like this?”

  Annette took the proffered drawing, considering the sketch as she turned the paper around. Ted glanced at the paper then rose to answer the door. Anne just stared, vegetative.

  Two burly paramedics entered the house, one earning a look of disapproval from Annette. The fact that he was black was not lost on Clare. Some people it seemed had bigger issues than keeping a tidy house and Annette's views were well known in the neighborhood.

  “I'll help her up, thank you,” she said when the paramedic moved to attend to Anne.

  “Annette,” Clare insisted.

  “Yes, that's what he wore. That red logo was on the breast of his jacket.” Annette didn't look her way, leaving Clare and Jeff standing amidst the Cameron family detritus, Dean silent behind them.

  They followed the slowly-moving party out to the ambulance, giving them space as they ushered Anne ahead.

  “What do you think?” Jeff asked.

  “I have several thoughts. First, if Anne comes to, she might provide all the answers. One can only speculate what Roger must have told her to leave her in such a state. Second, the identity of our mysterious house guest might be revealed if we can find some prints.”

  “You think if it was Roger, he might have been that careless?”

  “I think we at least need to act as if he was. There was a lot of suspicion that he had a hand in Mom and Dad's deaths. What if that's the fact he admitted? Would that be enough to cause Anne to lose her wits? I know that I have a place to visit in the morning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That's not the first time I have heard Alden Labs mentioned today. I don't believe in coincidences.”

  Chapter Five

  All Clare wanted out of life was a good night's sleep. Was that so hard to achieve? After the hassle at work and the feeling of all-round betrayal, Clare and Jeff remained up until the early hours dusting for prints. She found only one set that didn't belong. That they were in her parents' bedroom did nothing for her nerves. Clare had a restless night's sleep and woke as weary as she had been the night before.

  It was Saturday morning; the working week finished. A quick liquid breakfast of icy water followed by juice that tasted of vinegar and was quickly spat out led to Clare leaving Jeff asleep in his room. She made the house as secure as possible, the windows locked and the front door barred from within. The back door was well-hidden under overhanging ivy. Jeff was right. It was much safer using just that entrance.

  Under a light blue sky dotte
d with cotton balls of fluffy cumulus clouds, Clare made her way across town in the Impala, keeping the revs at a grumbling low for fear of disturbing the town's residents. The sun hit her car from the east at such an angle that it reflected off the hood, threatening to dazzle her senseless. At a set of lights, she pulled on her Wayfarers, earning a honk from the car behind. She ignored their waving protest.

  Alden Research Laboratory lay across the other side of town from the mystery of her own wooded glade, sitting just North of the junction of Shrewsbury Street and Main. The lab had grown from a small satellite department of a nearby university to become a major employer in the town. There would be, in Clare's opinion, no Holden without Alden. Her father had worked in the labs for most of his adult life, fishing in nearby Chaffin Pond with colleagues during his free time. The pond was fed by a river that also provided water for lab research. It was no wonder she would find people at every turn who knew the family. Alden was a community within a community.

  So it was that when Clare pulled the Impala to a stop in front of the lobby and climbed out to the parking lot, she felt on familiar ground. The pines surrounding the complex were a little more aged, but the main building, brown bricks and flat roof as was typical from the seventies, had not changed at all. Clare ran her fingers along the iconic Venturi Meter that had been one of the labs' first triumphs, used for testing water turbines. The pits in the cast iron shaft were deep and worn with time and exposure, the iron itself cold and lifeless. Clare turned to enter the lobby. A guard clad in brown moved to intercept her.

 

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