Lance stepped inside and Jacob closed the door behind him.
“Ethan, can you say hi to Mr. Lance?”
Ethan looked up from his book again, and obediently said, “Hi, Mr. Lance. How are you?”
Lance looked at this small boy on the couch, book in his lap, impeccable manners, and knowledge behind his youthful eyes. In that moment, Lance saw himself. Many years ago as a child, sitting in his home reading a book his mother had brought him from the library while she was busy in the kitchen, humming a tune while baking them a pie they’d share later while she asked him about what he’d read.
Lance smiled at the boy. “I’m doing very well, Ethan. Thank you for asking. How are you?”
“Good,” the boy said, then quickly diverted his eyes back to his book.
“Good, what?” Jacob said. His voice stern.
Ethan looked up from his page again. “Good, thank you.” Then he looked to his uncle. Jacob nodded once, and the boy was back to his book again.
“Can I offer you a sandwich, Lance? PB and J is sort of our post-church ritual. We’d be happy to have you join us.”
Lance thought about the protein bars in his backpack. “If you’re sure it’s no trouble, that would be great. Thank you.”
“No trouble at all. White or wheat?”
“Wheat, please.”
“Good man,” Jacob said. “Been trying, and failing, to get little man over there to switch to wheat instead of this processed white garbage. No luck so far.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Kids, right?”
Lance nodded, because it seemed the only right thing to do. “Kids,” he said.
“Just a second. One world-class PB and J on wheat coming right up. Make yourself at home.”
Jacob turned and walked to the kitchen area, which took up the entire left side of the cabin’s open space. Fridge, oven, sink, and a large woodstove in the front corner with a small pile of chopped wood beside it. A square table with four chairs separated the kitchen from the rest of the open space, which served as the living room. There was the couch, on which Ethan was absorbed in his book, two end tables, a coffee table, bookshelf, and small TV stand with a modern-looking television that looked incredibly out of place among the otherwise rustic décor. A wired antenna was mounted on the wall above the TV, its black cable snaking down the wall and out of sight. The rear of the room had three doors, which Lance assumed led to bedrooms and a bath.
Lance breathed in deeply. The whole place smelled of wood and spices and … peanut butter. He turned and found Jacob Morgan behind him, holding a small plate with Lance’s sandwich.
Lance took the plate and said, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Milk?”
“That’d be great,” Lance said and walked toward the table.
A few moments later, Jacob Morgan was at the table as well, his own sandwich and glass of milk half-eaten and half-drunk. Lance chewed his sandwich and took a sip of his milk. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then wiped the back of his hand on his shorts. Both men seemed intent on eating and nothing more. But once the sandwiches were finished, Jacob Morgan looked at Lance with eyes that said, Go ahead, get on with it.
Lance took a deep breath, realizing he had no real idea where to start. Settled on, “I’ve got some questions, and they might seem strange.”
As if he’d been expecting nothing less, Jacob Morgan gave off a small sigh and looked over to Ethan, who was still sitting quietly on the couch, finger still moving across the pages.
“Let’s step out onto the porch. Get some air. That okay?” Jacob asked.
Lance stood and nodded. “Okay.”
32
The sky was still darkened, the breeze still steady, but the air was not uncomfortably cool. In fact, it was Lance’s preferred temperature. A perfect fall afternoon, if not for the blanket of dark clouds. Jacob Morgan wore faded blue jeans and a plain gray sweatshirt, his post-church attire. His feet were bare and he kicked a few stray leaves off the porch and into the yard, where the breeze snatched them up and they went scurrying down the hill and disappeared over the bank, back toward town.
Lance had a brief moment where he wondered if he should follow. Catch a ride on the wind and hightail it out of here before he did something stupid, said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Like mentioning to the nearly complete stranger on the porch with him that he could talk to and see the lingering spirits of the dead … and more.
But he could not leave. Not now. Not while, after his entire life of wondering, he was so close to finding somebody else that shared his gifts.
Jacob Morgan turned and stuffed his hands into the front pouch of his sweatshirt. He leaned against the porch railing and said, “You can have a seat if you’d like.” He nodded toward the papa bear rocking chair. “My ass is still numb from church, so I’m going to stand, if you don’t mind.”
Lance didn’t mind. He mimicked Jacob Morgan’s posture and stuffed his own hands into the pouch of his hoodie. He leaned against the wall of the house, facing the man. Leaned his head back and felt the rough wood scratch at his scalp. The two men stared at each other, and just as Lance was about to open his mouth to begin, Jacob Morgan cut him off, saying, “I suppose you’re here to ask me about the morning I found the Benchleys. Is that right?”
Lance closed his mouth. Had to regroup. He’d become so focused on the mission to get answers about Ethan that once he’d actually arrived at the house, the entire Benchley family story had evaporated from his mind. He found that right then and there, he couldn’t have cared less about what had actually happened that night in the farmhouse. Felt a twinge of guilt and shame in his gut as he realized he didn’t care if their killer was still walking free along the streets of Ripton’s Grove.
Lance heard his mother’s voice in his head. You’re being selfish, Lance. Could hear the tone of disappointment. He swallowed hard and his mind raced as he tried to figure out whether to allow Jacob Morgan to start off down this road of conversation.
And then Lance remembered that he was never in control. If this was the way things were supposed to begin, Lance would let them. He’d get his opportunity to ask about Ethan soon enough.
“Why do you think that’s what I want to know about?” Lance asked.
Jacob laughed. “Come on, man, you don’t have to be all mysterious with me. You were being coy last night at the farmhouse, and I didn’t press that matter, but everybody knows you’re here to write a book.” He made air quotes with his fingers and said, “Discover the truth.” Then he laughed again. “Is that about right?”
So far, the ruse of being a true crime writer had worked well for Lance—so much, in fact, that if he had a computer, he might be compelled to actually write a damned book about this mess. It would certainly give him something to do on buses other than sleep and read. He figured continuing the charade would only help him at this point.
“Something like that,” he said. “But you should know, I’m not a detective.”
Jacob Morgan looked confused. “Meaning?”
“Meaning I’m not out to solve a case,” Lance said. “My publisher”—Your publisher? Boy, laying it on thick now, aren’t we, Lance?—“was intrigued by the nature of the crime, and I’m only here to present the facts as given by those who know them.” Lance grinned, sheepishly but purely for show, and said, “Now, I won’t deny I’m also supposed to make it a compelling read. You know, add suspense and mystery and make it as dramatic as possible. But I’m only gathering information. If the police say Mark Benchley killed his family, that’s what the book will say.”
Jacob Morgan was quiet for a moment, then said, “People really buy that shit?”
Lance nodded. “True crime was the third-best-selling genre in the United States last year.” This was a one hundred percent made-up statement as far as Lance knew. But it sounded like a good answer that an actual true crime writer might have ready.
“What was first?” Jacob Morgan asked.
“Romance,” Lance said instantly. “Chicks dig their love stories.”
Jacob Morgan barked another laugh. “True enough, my friend. True enough.”
A hard breeze blew across the hilltop, and the porch rattled and squeaked. Jacob Morgan looked at the support beam to his left and then knocked on it with his knuckles, as if reassuring himself it was secured and in place. “So you want to hear my side of the story, is that it? You found out it was me who found them and you want to know how it was?”
Lance nodded, eager to move on to the subject of Ethan but also very curious to hear what Jacob Morgan had to say. “That would be great.”
Jacob nodded, looked to where Lance had his hands stuffed in his hoodie. “You gonna write any of this down or … record it?”
Lance blushed and thought quickly. He pulled his flip phone from his pocket and snapped it open. Pretended to hit a few buttons on the keypad and then set it in the rocking chair next to him. “Okay,” he said. “All set.”
Jacob eyed the phone suspiciously.
Lance said, “Uh, you wouldn’t believe the microphone on that thing. You know what they say—they don’t make ’em like they used to.”
Jacob nodded as if this made perfect sense, and then Lance watched as the man’s face changed and his eyes narrowed and his thoughts slipped away from the porch and landed back on that awful morning.
Lance listened intently, his eyes never leaving Jacob Morgan’s face as the man told his story. The details weren’t much different than what Lance had already been given by Susan, but the perspective—the emotion—that was now presented differed greatly. Where Susan had recited the grisly details of where the bodies had been found with a sense that she’d been excitedly presenting a book report, Jacob Morgan’s voice had wavered and cracked at parts, causing him to pause and look away, often out over the railing of the porch, staring blankly into the trees, or off toward the horizon where the hill sloped away and fell to Ripton’s Grove. He would wipe a loose tear or two away from high up on his cheeks, and then he’d turn back to Lance—man-to-man once again—and continue.
Jacob Morgan had been headed out of town to help his friend Jack do some work on a new house he and his young wife had just purchased. “It was a total wreck of a place,” Jacob said. “He sent me pictures. It was going to take a hell of a lot longer than a week, but that was a good enough chunk of time to start. Jack’s terrible at that sort of stuff, and a contractor would have taken one look at the house and another look at Jack and ripped the poor bastard off.” Jacob shrugged. “I was looking forward to getting away for a bit anyway. Not exactly a vacation, but it was good enough for me.”
Jacob had driven up to the Benchleys’ place to ask Mark to stop by the house a few times during the week, just to check on things. “It was just something we did for each other,” Jacob said. “Help out here and there when we could. Share stuff from our gardens, help out with any handiwork now and again. You know,” Jacob said with another shrug, “neighborly stuff.”
Jacob had seen Natalie Benchley’s body as soon as he’d pulled his pickup truck into the driveway. “At first I thought some laundry had blown off the line,” Jacob said. “Looked just like some fabric sprawled out, half on the porch steps, half in the driveway. But as I got closer”—here was a time he’d had to look away, a time when his voice wavered— “I saw … I saw it was Natalie. I didn’t have any delusions about it.” He shook his head. “She was dead. There wasn’t no question about it. She was facedown in the yard, one arm outstretched as if she’d been reaching for something to hold on to, and on her back from the neck down was nothing but gore.” He shook his head over and over as he spoke. “Just holes and blood and torn flesh and…” He cleared his throat. “Like I said, there was no question she was dead.”
Jacob had walked up the front porch steps and pulled the pocket knife he always carried from his jeans. “It was all I had on me at the time,” he said. “I don’t travel with my guns.” He had entered the house and called out to see if anybody was there. “I knew they wouldn’t be,” Jacob said. “I knew whoever’d killed Natalie wouldn’t be sticking around. But all the same, I kept my eyes peeled, ready to jam my blade into the unlucky bastard’s neck if he gave me the chance.” And he’d found Mark Benchley in the living room, sitting in his chair with the shotgun at his feet and most of the man’s face gone. “I looked at the wall behind him for a long time before I ever even lowered my eyes to Mark,” Jacob said. “It was like … it was just covered in…” He trailed off. Another clearing of the throat. “It does weird things to you when you see stuff that’s supposed to be inside somebody on the outside. Especially when it’s splattered on the wall like some sort of goddamn art project.” He shot Lance a look and frowned. “Sorry for my language.”
Jacob had then gone upstairs. “I stood in the living room a long time, Lance. A long time. By this point, I figured if anybody’d still been in the house, they would have either come at me already or run away. This is going to sound funny, but you gotta remember, these people were my friends, and, well … I guess I was in a bit of shock. That’s what the doctors or the shrinks will tell you, anyway. But, even though I saw the shotgun lying at Mark’s feet, and the way the gore was spread on the wall behind him, my brain never perceived it as a suicide. Not then, anyway. I went upstairs, just for my own sanity—wanting to say I’d checked the whole house before I called the cops. It was empty, of course. Then I went down to the kitchen.”
Jacob had seen the smoldering remains of the brush pile fire through the kitchen window as he’d run the cold water tap to get a handful to splash his face. “Something about the smoke called to me,” he said and then quickly shot Lance a look that asked, Do you think I’m crazy? He forced a weak laugh. “I know that doesn’t make any sense, but I swear, it’s like I couldn’t take my eyes off that pile of brush and the slowly dying smoke puffing from its center. It’s like it was pulling me in, Lance. Does that make any sense at all? It’s like something was yelling at me, trying to get my attention and get my ass out there.”
Lance felt his blood run cold. He did understand (The mirror), and he wondered if there were more people on this hilltop with hidden gifts than just he and Ethan.
Lance, the good journalist, said nothing. Only nodded for Jacob to continue.
Jacob had then found Mary Benchley. “I walked out the backdoor and I saw her. I mean … I didn’t know it was her. How could I? All that was left at that point…” This time he heaved and tried to hold back a great sob that spun him around, and he wiped his eyes and stared out to the trees for a long time, taking deep breaths. He turned around once he’d composed himself. “It was just bones, man. Just bones and not much else.” He shook his head and his eyes still glistened. “Something told me it was her, man. Just like I’d felt pulled toward that fire, something just told me it was her. I mean, I hadn’t seen her since … well, since she’d gone off to school, but I just knew.” He looked at Lance, and his eyes were those of a man who was begging to be understood. “I never told the police that part. I never told them about those feelings I’d gotten. I never told them I thought that pile of bones in the fire was Mary.”
“Was the basement door open or closed when you were in the kitchen? Do you remember?”
Jacob Morgan looked confused. “I have no idea, man. Why does that matter?”
Lance shrugged. “Details are always important. Even if we don’t know why.”
Jacob Morgan didn’t seem to know what to say to this.
“So I pulled out my cell and called 911 and then, well… you know the rest, I’m sure.”
Lance nodded. “For the most part. How hard did they work to prove you were the one who’d killed them? I mean, that was the initial thought, right? According to everything I’ve seen and heard.”
Jacob Morgan sighed and nodded. Laughed. “Yeah, that was a fun day or two. Nothing like being the town monster to really show you folks’ true colors. I’ve never seen so many people turn th
eir back so quickly.” He shrugged, like a man who’d chosen to live in the future and forget the past. “But it got sorted out in the end.”
“Did it?” Lance asked, and immediately wished he’d found a more tactful way to continue.
Jacob’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Did the police get it right?”
There was a flash of something then, something across Jacob Morgan’s face that said he was no longer simply rehashing information but was now engaged in something he wasn’t sure he wanted to continue. His voice was suddenly accusatory.
“Are you suggesting that you believe I did murder the Benchleys?”
Lance pulled his hands free from his hoodie’s pocket and held them up, shook his head. “No, of course not. But I am asking if you think Mark Benchley did. Other sources I’ve spoken with have said he was quite the family man. Loved his wife, adored his daughter. Why would he kill them?”
“Did your sources also tell you that Mark Benchley was a few bricks shy of a full load?”
Lance said nothing.
“They tell you he was a religious fanatic who would cast judgment so fast, if you blinked, you’d miss it?”
Lance nodded in agreement but added, “They also told me the two of you were friends.”
What are you doing, Lance? You’re here to talk about Ethan. Why are you provoking this man? How is that possibly going to help you?
Jacob Morgan leaned back against the railing, and his aggressiveness drained away. He looked down at his feet, cast his eyes across the wooden boards of the porch floor before he looked up and grinned. “Yeah, Mark and I were friendly. Truth be told, we probably wouldn’t have been if they hadn’t moved into the farmhouse, but after I went to introduce myself and then helped him out with a few little fix-me-ups, it just sort of happened. Mark wasn’t a bad guy on the surface, honestly. Pretty normal, in fact, if you could ignore his Bible-thumping fear-of-God trances he’d slip into now and again. But seriously, he was a nice guy, and I can honestly say I enjoyed his company. He had a very unique worldview. It was … I guess I’d have to say it was refreshing.”
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