Ariel.
The voice again. Not from behind her, but from the passage.
Ariel was torn. Afraid, but desperate to know what was inside.
Ariel.
Or maybe it was her mother after all? Ariel ducked out of the opening and hurried to one of the pocket doors and opened it. The setting sun had filled the hall with golden, mellow light. She listened.
There was music coming from the salon. Like Ariel herself, her mother retreated into music when she was very upset. For a moment, she felt a disturbing kinship with her mother, but willed it away as quickly as she could. She was still so angry.
Quietly closing the ballroom’s door behind her, Ariel made her way to the stairs and tiptoed down to her room. Every so often she stopped to listen, but the music continued and there was no sign of her mother.
In her room, she dug the flashlight her mother had given her for emergencies out of her bedside table. When she left again, she closed her bedroom door so her mother would think she’d left the ballroom and perhaps gone to bed.
Ariel pulled the panel closed as tightly as she dared, fearing she might never be able to open it again. Never escape.
There was room for only one person to use the stairway at a time. She kept the flashlight focused near her feet and moved slowly, sliding her free hand along the wall for balance. As she descended, the light coming from the open panel above her got fainter.
She’d never been one to be afraid of bugs or spiders, but here was a place untouched by sunlight, or any light at all that she could see. If she were in a cave, there would be camelback crickets, and big cockroaches. Maybe bats. She was nervous; every cobweb, every faint disturbance in the close air of the passage made her jump.
She reached a landing, but there were no doorways, nothing built into the wall to tell her where she was. As far as she knew, she was nowhere at all. What if she stayed in here forever? What if she fell, unconscious? She might actually die before anyone found her.
Selfish. That’s what she was. Her mother had said so.
Was this where the murmuring and the running footsteps that she’d heard the first time she was in the ballroom had come from? The idea of something—or somebody—hiding deep inside the house did frighten her. But she wasn’t about to give up and go back.
The stairway ended as abruptly as it had begun, and she emerged into a low hallway or tunnel, facing a wall. To the left, there was a deep blackness that went far beyond the reach of her flashlight. Six or seven feet to her right, the tunnel ended in a tall, broad door. Going to it, she put her hand flat against it and pushed. It didn’t move. The space was small enough that the flashlight lit up the entire door and its simply carved frame. There was a row of tiles above it, but there were no hinges or handles on its face. Nothing to indicate that it should open. She puzzled over it, feeling around the frame gingerly, mindful of any creatures that might be living around it. There was nothing but a coarse dust that soiled her fingers and made her cough into her sleeve.
As she stood waiting for some inspiration that would help her open the door, she thought about what might be on the other side. Laying her hand flat against it again, she felt a slight vibration that rose and ebbed in intensity. She had a sense of something huge and powerful.
Daddy? Are you here? Daddy, are you watching?
How much she wanted him beside her at that moment!
Something thudded against the other side of the door, and she jumped back with a cry, dropping the flashlight. It blinked out as it rolled away, and now she stood in utter darkness.
Falling to her knees, she felt around the gritty floor.
Pleasepleasepleaseplease let me find it.
She could only hear the sounds of her own panicked breath, and her hand sweeping over the dirt.
Then there was light. It was faint, timorous: a pearly cast of air like the fog that had obscured what she’d seen the night Karin Powell died. At the same time she was overwhelmed with a scent she recognized: flowers. A fresher, more alive version of the smell surrounding the robe she’d found.
As she put her hand on the flashlight, she whispered a quiet thank you and clicked it back on.
Since she’d made no progress on the door (she didn’t even want to think what might be on the other side of it), she decided to continue on in the tunnel, to see what was at its end. Still worried about bugs and bats, she started slowly, keeping the flashlight pointed straight ahead. The dirt walls were smooth and damp. The tunnel canted uphill slightly, but she couldn’t figure out where she was. Surely somewhere well beyond the house.
Who had put this tunnel in? It was definitely at least as old as the house. Had it been built by free men or slaves? Probably free men because Bliss House had been built well after the Civil War.
She was tired. The farther she got from the stairway, the worse she began to feel. Her foot and leg ached. The side of her face began to itch. She’d almost forgotten what they had felt like when she’d first arrived at Bliss House. Now she remembered. The thought terrified her as much as imagining what might be behind the tunnel door.
Chapter 36
Allison had had a change of heart.
That was how Michael described it. He praised her. He brought her things: a blunt plastic crochet needle and some skeins of lofty blue yarn. (No scissors, not yet. Just a tiny hook-like blade that was made for thin embroidery yarn. Someday, he said, he might trust her with some small craft scissors he’d seen at the store. But not yet. Not now.)
Her change of heart had made him kind, sometimes. Allison lived for those times.
But most nights—days?—he showed up with hell in his eyes, and she couldn’t help but shrink away from him. Hell in his eyes. That’s how her grandmother had described the rabid dog that had attacked one of her uncles when he was small. “Like hell had found its way up to the living.”
That was Michael.
When he was kind, he touched her tenderly. Sometimes she cried, and he embraced her for a few moments before telling her to take off her gown. He’d brought her a series of nightgowns, calling them peignoirs, with a funny laugh. They were chiffon or silky polyester, and he gave her a small bottle of jasmine flower lingerie soap to wash them in. He put a couple of nails in the wall (he had brought a hammer, yes! but had guarded it jealously) so she could hang them up to dry. She didn’t even have a mirror to see what she looked like in them, but just put them on, shivering. It was always damp and chilly in that place. The only things that were at home there were the hideous cave crickets that startled to life when she lighted the candles.
When Michael left, she stripped off whichever gown she was wearing and wrapped herself in the smelly wool blanket spread beneath the ornate bedspread. It was the thing that made her the angriest, the way he made her put on those stupid nightgowns.
He stole her dignity every time he came into the room with his nasty demands. It was the pretending that she hated the most. But she did it, didn’t she? She did everything he asked her to do. And as long as she could get the coke, as long as he kept bringing that with him, she could almost bear it. It was her only source of relief.
What Michael didn’t know was that she’d had no real change of heart. She was in neverending pain. Both from the constant, light cramps in her gut and from the collarbone break that hadn’t healed properly. She could barely lift her arm. She certainly couldn’t fight him. But the pot helped a lot. The coke helped even more.
When she heard the key turn in the lock, Allison went into shut-down mode. He wasn’t allowed to see what she was doing. Even if he asked nicely, she refused to show him the afghan she was working on. They both knew he was humoring her, and at any minute he could make her show it to him or even take it away from her. But if he made her show it to him, she knew that she would have to somehow make him pay. If he looked at it, it would be spoiled.
She felt the flutterings of dread. What would he be like today? Or was it tonight? He thought it was funny to make her guess if it was d
ay or night outside. Finally, he would tell her one thing, and she would believe him. Then, before he left, he would tell her that he’d lied and told her that it was sunny outside when it was actually night. She had stopped asking, but sometimes couldn’t help herself. She hadn’t yet had a period since he’d brought her here. She was waiting for that. That would tell her how long it had been. It came, like clockwork, every twenty-seven days.
She stuffed the half-unraveled afghan into the pillowcase he’d brought the yarn and needle in, making sure that none of it hung out. She shoved it beneath the bed and waited.
Nothing happened.
Cautiously, Allison went to the door and put her ear against it.
Something was happening out in the hallway that she had only glimpsed once. Voices. Voices that rose in volume. Men’s voices. Women’s. A child screaming, screaming, screaming.
Allison ran back to the bed and covered her ears, but the voices got so loud that she couldn’t shut them out. Around her, the candles sputtered, one by one, drowning in their own melted wax. Worse, the single light bulb in the sconce flickered and went out. It couldn’t be a coincidence! Something wanted her to be alone in the dark. And the darkness was absolute. She might have been in a coffin, or a mineshaft a thousand feet below the ground. If hell was aloneness, a complete separation from God and life and every living thing, she was now well and truly in hell.
Where was Michael? Was he coming in? Had the voices out in the hall done something to him? She screamed his name, over and over.
The bed began to shake beneath her, and she had to take her hands away from her ears to hold on.
She cried, “Hail Mary, hail Mary, hail Mary, hail Mary . . .” Before she could finish the prayer, the bed began rising from the floor. A few inches or a foot? She only understood that it was moving, tilting. Unbalanced, she crawled, feeling her way to the edge.
“Michael, please!” she screamed. “Please!”
But the only answer was the ragged chorus of voices from the hallway.
Except . . . a single, bright voice in her head: “Allison! Watch—are we flying? Look at us!” She squeezed her eyes shut against the darkness, and could see another place, another time, entirely: a beach, the tide pushing against the shore, stick-legged birds running like wind-up toys back and forth, chasing the endless thread of water that teased along the shoreline. And everywhere sunshine. Lovely sunshine.
It was the voice of her brother, Kyle, who was just six. She couldn’t see him because she was giving him a piggyback ride. Feeling his small arms gently crossed around her neck, she found she could even smell the sun-drenched, muddy, candy-sweet scent of him. It made her ache for home. But it was a happy ache, and when the bed on which she precariously knelt gave a final jolt and slammed against the wall, her heart and her mind were far, far away.
The door opened. The light on the wall was still out, but the person coming into the room carried a small lantern that gave the room a peaceful glow. He closed the door behind him, but didn’t bother to lock it. Holding the lantern closer to her face, he could see that she was sleeping.
He put the lantern on the table beside the bed. The way the light fell illuminated a crack in the bed’s elaborately carved headboard, which he had always disliked. The men and women carved into it were gathered around some creature that lay helpless on its back. It wasn’t like any creature he had ever seen in life, and the carver had given the creature an expression of defiant exhaustion. It knew it was about to be murdered by the humans whose faces wore aspects of unguarded lust, but it wasn’t begging for its life.
The light also fell on the face of the girl. Allison.
She was better-looking than he’d been led to believe, and appealingly vulnerable in her sleep. He felt sorry for her. He ran one finger over a faded bruise on her left cheek. The bruise made him angry, but he wasn’t surprised to see it.
Feeling his touch, Allison stirred and whispered something unintelligible.
He stood by, watching, until she opened her eyes.
When she did, she simply stared up at him, not showing any sign that the balaclava he wore to hide his face alarmed her in any way. What had happened to her in this place? He didn’t know the specifics, but he knew the person who had caused the bruise, so he suspected that seeing a man in a ski mask was probably novel for her but pretty far down on the fear scale.
She didn’t speak, but only reached—with some difficulty—for the nearby blanket, pulled it close over her body, and turned away. Perhaps she thought she was dreaming.
Taking the hairbrush and chocolate from his back pockets, he rested them carefully, quietly, on the bedside table, and left the room. He couldn’t free her. She would tell, and there were too many people who would be hurt. But he could be kind to her.
He locked the door behind him.
Allison didn’t move, but she wasn’t asleep.
Chapter 37
Lucas found Nick Cunetta sitting in a booth near the back of the Waffle House, reading something on his phone. He looked comfortable, like he spent a lot of time in places like the Waffle House, despite wearing clothes that were more appropriate for a New York boardroom. Lawyers in places like Old Gate tended to all look the same: prosperously but conservatively dressed, their suits never costing much more than their Cadillac payments, an indifferent shine on their shoes, and ties chosen by their matronly wives.
But Nick Cunetta didn’t look local. Given the time of the evening, there was no sign of his tie and he’d opened the top couple of buttons of his Egyptian cotton shirt. Lucas could see the edges of a T-shirt beneath the collar. Old school. Nick Cunetta wasn’t satisfied with the barbershop a block over from the courthouse, but preferred to have his thinning black hair (that had a wave to it that he didn’t much care for) styled—along with a subtle manicure—in Charlottesville. He also preferred Italian shoes: Prada if he could get them, Ferragamo if not. He drank red wine or craft beers, never cocktails. Lucas had personal experience of all these details. A few months earlier, he and Nick had hooked up in Charlottesville a couple of times after meeting in a bar. But that was as far as the relationship had gone.
When Lucas got to the table, Nick put down his phone, letting it slide a few inches in Lucas’s direction.
“Good to see you again, Detective,” he said. “You want coffee or something?” He signaled to the nearby waitress.
“Sure,” Lucas said, sitting down. “I’ll pay for mine.”
Nick sighed. “Ah, so we’re all business tonight. Fair enough. Is that why you didn’t want to come by the house? We could watch a ballgame together or something.”
“We can do this at the sheriff’s office if you want, Nick. I just thought we’d be more comfortable here. I appreciated the call.”
The waitress came over to take Lucas’s order and refill Nick’s coffee.
When she was done, Nick wrapped his hands around the cup as though for warmth. The Waffle House was thoroughly air-conditioned but not that cold, Lucas thought.
“Thanks, Lena,” Nick said, giving the waitress a quick smile. He leaned back in the booth and looked at Lucas. His eyes were shot with red. “Really, it’s good to see you, man. Deputy Fife was fine. A good kid, but—in my experience—crap on the witness stand,” he said. “There were a couple of details I wanted to share with you personally once I heard you were working on Karin’s case.”
Lucas pulled out his notebook and held it up for Nick to see. Nick nodded.
“It’s nothing that won’t come out eventually,” he said.
Lucas opened the notebook. “Why don’t you tell me what your relationship to Karin Powell was.”
“Two people living in a small town who sometimes got bored living in a small town,” Nick said. “She wasn’t brilliant, but sharp enough. Within a year of getting her real estate license, she had a quarter of the listings in the county.”
Lucas didn’t doubt that. Her face was on a billboard on one of the highways leading into town, and those di
dn’t come cheap. The list of people who might be interviewed about her was getting longer with every hour.
“Suicide?” Lucas asked.
“No fucking way. If you knew Karin at all, you’d know she wasn’t the type. I’ve seen a lot of desperate people, and Karin didn’t have that kind of desperation in her. She was a good person, but I think she would’ve taken somebody else out before she took her own life.”
“How close were you?”
Nick shook his head. “It was hard to tell with her. Sometimes she texted me six times a day, and then I wouldn’t hear from her for two weeks. You’d be surprised how easy it is not to run into people even in a town the size of Old Gate. And what’s with the question about suicide, anyway? I heard about her bruises. Somebody messed her up, didn’t they?”
“Do you think it might have been related to her social activities?” Lucas said.
Nick scoffed. “She liked her entertainments, but she didn’t stray that far from straight sex, no matter who she was with.”
Lucas made a note. “What do you know about her relationship with her husband?”
“Mister Powell was too busy playing Bob the Builder to notice if a tree fell on him,” Nick said. “Mister Powell was oblivious.”
“What do you think of him?”
“I think he’s a nice guy who had his hands full with a complicated woman. I think he didn’t much like the fact that she had a particularly difficult addiction, but for whatever reason he was willing to live with it. He’s the first one I would look at, I guess, although if he lived with her situation all those years, I don’t know why he would snap all of a sudden. No. Him killing her is about as likely as her jumping off that balcony in a state of despair,” Nick said. He took a sip of coffee.
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