I took a quick flip through the candid shots. Most were of the two sisters, some with adults who were probably their parents and other family members, ranging from infancy to late teens. The last two dozen or so were of Karen Meineke and her bearded husband; a couple of those had snowcapped mountains in the background. At random I chose four of the sisters together, from girlhood to adulthood. All had tag lines on their backs, the first two in ballpoint pen in a precise hand — their mother’s, likely — and the last two in the round, girlish hand.
Lynn’s 6th birthday party.
Ellen and Lynn, 4th of July parade.
Me and Ellen, summer ’84.
Ellen, sweet 16 and never been kissed — ha! Me 18 and still a virgin — ha!
Ellen: Sheila Hunter. Lynn: Karen Meineke.
So Aunt Karen’s name was also a new identity, no doubt adopted for the same unknown reason. Chas Willis, too? Mr. Meineke? Depended on exactly when the two of them had been married. No clue here as to Jack Hunter’s real identity; or if there was, I couldn’t pick it out because I’d never seen a photo of him.
I put the album back where I’d found it. I’d seen in here long enough; pressing my luck as it was. I checked out front — empty and quiet except for the yattering of jays in the pines — and then stepped onto the porch and shut the door behind me.
I went down and around to have a look at the outbuilding behind the house. It was bigger than a shed, but not by much, with a flat tarpaper roof — the kind of structure that gets put up fast and as cheaply as possible without a building permit. If it had a window, it was on the side opposite where I was. The door was on the back side, and for some reason it had been wedged shut by means of a two-by-four fitted slantwise from the ground to the knob. Busted latch? The length of wood was tightly jammed; I had to kick it loose. The door didn’t come open when the two-by-four popped free, so the latch was all right. And not locked. I opened up and stuck my head inside.
Karen Meineke’s workshop. Cluttered with tools and sawhorses and pieces of plywood and bars of lead, the walls honeycombed with cubbyholes that contained chunks of colored glass. And not as empty as I’d expected. It jarred me when I saw that the cold, dark room had an occupant and who it was.
Emily Hunter. Sitting hunched on a stool in one shadowy corner, like a bad little girl being punished.
She recognized me, said my name and hopped off the stool. But she didn’t move in my direction; she stood very straight, her arms down at her sides — a small, forlorn figure bundled in a fur-collared coat.
“I knew you’d come,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“Oh, yes. Just cold. It’s cold in here.”
“Come outside into the sun.”
We went around to the front of the house. She walked close to me and stayed close when I stopped in a patch of sunlight near the stairs, as if she were afraid I might go away and leave her alone again. She was pale except for splotches of color the cold had put across her cheekbones. Otherwise she seemed all right. No visible marks on her. If there had been, I don’t know what I would have done.
She said, “My aunt’s not back yet. Good.”
“She the one who put you in the shed?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. Not long.”
“So you wouldn’t run away or use the phone.”
“Yes.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Shopping. She won’t take me with her when she goes into town because she’s afraid I’ll say something to somebody or try to get away.”
“How many times has she locked you up?”
“One other time. Yesterday.”
I had to work to hide my anger behind a poker face. “She hasn’t hit you or anything like that?”
“No. She doesn’t like me, but she wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Why doesn’t she like you? She’s your real aunt, isn’t she?”
Emily nodded. “She hates kids, I guess. Kids are a pain in the ass, that’s what she said.”
“She live here alone?”
“Yes. She and Uncle Mike are divorced.”
“Uncle Mike. Mike Meineke?”
“Yes.”
“How long have they been divorced?”
“I think I was about eight. Two years.”
“Where does he live now?”
“I don’t know. Up here somewhere, I think. Do you know where my mother is?”
“I was going to ask you. She brought you up here?”
“Yes. On Friday.”
“How long did she stay?”
“Just a few minutes. She and Aunt Karen went outside to talk so I couldn’t hear them.”
“So it was late Friday afternoon when she left. Did she tell you where she was going?”
Nod. “Back home. She was supposed to come pick me up Saturday night or Sunday morning, but she didn’t. At first I was glad because I knew you’d come when you got my letter. But now I’m worried. She hasn’t called and she doesn’t answer the phone. Aunt Karen’s called home a dozen times. She’s really upset.”
So am I, I thought. “Where were you going after she picked you up?”
“Someplace new to live. She wouldn’t say where.”
“Emily, was anyone with you and your mom when you drove up here?”
“No. Just us.”
“And you came in your mother’s car?”
“Yes.”
“Did she say why she needed to go back home right away?”
“Some things she had to take care of.”
“Meet someone? Trevor Smith?”
“I don’t think so. She didn’t want to see him anymore.”
I ran it around inside my head. Some things to take care of. The money kind, maybe; and the loose ends kind. Close out bank accounts, clean out safe-deposit boxes — banks are open on Saturdays now. Make sure there was nothing incriminating or revealing left in the house. Tasks she hadn’t had time to do or to finish doing on Friday. Her first priority, or one of the first, had been to stash Emily with her sister, keep her away from me. But what had happened after her return to Greenwood? Why was her car still parked in the garage and where was she? And how did Dale Cooney’s death connect with her disappearance, if it did?
Emily asked, “What’re we going to do now?”
“Wait for your aunt to get back so I can talk to her.”
“About what’s making everybody so scared.”
“That’s right. Do you have any idea what it is?”
“No. Nobody will tell me anything. It must be something really awful if a man wants to kill my mom.”
“Did she say his name, even his first name?”
“No.”
“Your aunt knows who he is.”
“Yes, and I want to know, too.”
“She won’t talk about it in front of you.”
“I know,” Emily said. “Will you tell me if you can make her tell you?”
Difficult question. She had a right to know; it involved her parents, her aunt, and it was having an immediate and chaotic effect on her life. Mature for her age, but still a kid, with a kid’s emotions, and she had already suffered a devastating blow with the death of her father. “Something really awful” might open wounds that would never heal.
I hedged by saying, “Maybe it’s best if you don’t know everything, at least not right away.”
“That means you won’t tell me anything.”
“Emily, do you trust me?”
“...Yes.”
“Then believe this. I won’t keep anything really important from you, but I have to know all the facts first. That means talking to other people besides your aunt.”
“I’m not a baby,” she said.
“I know you’re not. And I’m not treating you like one. I’m telling you the same thing I’d tell an adult.” Which was the truth, and to prove it to her I held her gaze, let her see it in my eyes.
“All right,”
she said slowly. “But I hate not knowing. I hate being afraid.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Always.”
A jay began squalling in one of the pines. The racket turned my head for a few seconds. When I looked down at Emily again, she said, “Is it okay if I go with you?”
“With me?”
“When you leave. After you talk to Aunt Karen.”
It caught me off guard; I didn’t have an immediate answer.
“Please? You’re going to look for my mother, aren’t you? In Greenwood? I don’t want to stay here anymore. Aunt Karen... she doesn’t want me and she makes me more afraid. Please let me go with you.”
Christ. What can you say?
“Please,” she said again.
“I wish I could.” Also the truth, gently. “But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’re in your aunt’s care. I can’t just take you away.”
“Even if I say it’s what I want?”
“You’re a minor. Emily. I’d have to have written permission, and when your aunt finds out who I am she’ll never give it. Besides, your mom expects you to be here. Suppose she’s on her way right now? She’d be frantic if she found you gone.”
“I don’t think she’s on her way.” Now it was her eyes, big and dark and tragic, holding mine. “I don’t think she’s going to come at all.”
Another sound saved me from having to fumble up a response to that. This one was the thrum and whine of an approaching car. I swung around to look along the access lane.
“That’s Aunt Karen’s van,” Emily said.
14
I caught Emily’s hand and drew her with me around to the side of the house opposite the carport. I did not want Karen Meineke to see the two of us standing in plain view; it was liable to panic her. We got into heavy tree shadow just before a beat-up yellow Volkswagen van rattled into sight, polluting the air with blackish smoke from a defective exhaust. If the driver noticed my car parked on the turnaround, it didn’t alarm her; the van came up the driveway and into the carport without slowing. The noisy engine and the defective pipe combined to produce an explosive farting sound when the ignition was switched off.
The woman who stepped out and came around to open the rear doors weighed at least forty pounds more than she had on her wedding day, a lot of the extra poundage in bulging hips that rolled and wobbled inside a pair of jogger’s sweatpants. Her hair was a hennaed red now, long and stringy under a dark-green stocking cap. While she unloaded a couple of grocery bags, her back to the house, I whispered to Emily, “Stay here until I call you.” She nodded and I moved out into the open, walked slowly toward the carport.
I was halfway there, adjacent to the stairs again, when Karen Meineke turned and saw me. She had a grocery hag in each arm; she almost dropped one, recovered just in time, and then came up on the halls of her feet and swiveled her head left and right like a trapped animal looking for an escape route. That initial reaction lasted four or five seconds, as long as it took her to realize I was alone and not particularly menacing — empty hands, casual movements. Then she seemed to suck in a breath, gain control of herself. She came forward jerkily to meet me.
“Who are you?” Thin, shaky voice. Deep-sunk eyes wary and hiding things. “What’re you doing on my property?”
“Waiting for you, Mrs. Meineke.”
“Why? What d’you want?”
“Information.”
“About what?”
“You and your sister.”
“My — I don’t have a sister.”
“Sure you do. Ellen. Ellen and Lynn, sisters.”
The hidden things crawled into the light of her eyes, and they were the naked shapes of terror. “Jesus,” she said in a sick voice, “oh, Jesus, you... you’re...”
“That’s right. The detective Ellen told you about.”
She backed up a step, and for a second I thought the fear might goad her into flight. That might have happened if the one bag hadn’t slipped again, this time free of her clutch. The sound of it splitting on the hard ground seemed to freeze her in place. She glanced down at the scatter of canned goods, cookie packages, a burst quart of milk. When her eyes came up to mine again they had a stunned sheen. Her face was as white as the spilled milk.
“I’m not gonna talk to you,” she said.
“You’d better, Lynn. For your own good.”
“Karen. My name’s Karen. You get out of here and leave me alone. This is my property, you have no right to be here. I don’t have to talk to you, you can’t make me...”
Babbling. I waited until she ran down. Then I said, “What happened ten years ago?”
She shook her head. Shook it again, hard enough to wobble chins and jowls.
“Why did you and your sister change your names?”
“No,” she said. “No!”
“Where’s Ellen now?”
“I don’t... how do I know where she is?”
“She went back to Greenwood Friday afternoon,” I said. “Why? Who was she planning to see?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. She... nobody came here Friday, nobody’s been here in weeks—”
“There’s no use in lying. I know she was here. I know she brought Emily with her.”
“No. Leave me alone.” The fear was a living thing in the woman’s body; it made her quiver, jerked her legs into motion. She backed up another step, looking down again at the split bag of groceries, then went sideways in a kind of unsteady loop away from me toward the cabin. I let her get to within half a dozen paces of the stairs before I moved over to block her.
“You get out of my way,” she said without looking at me. “If you don’t leave me alone I’ll call the law. You hear me? I’ll call the sheriff and have you arrested...”
“No you won’t. Then I’d have to tell them what I already know about you and Ellen.”
“You don’t know anything. You can’t make trouble for me.”
“I know enough,” I said. “I’d have to tell them what you did to Emily, too.”
“...What?”
“Emily. Locking her up in that studio of yours. No heat, no toilet facilities — that’s abuse, Mrs. Meineke. Child abuse and child endangerment.”
“You... found...” She choked on the rest of it. Her face was splotched with red now, as if droplets of blood had been stirred into the milk-white.
“That’s right, I found her. And I let her out.” I raised my voice. “Emily, you can come over now.”
Karen Meineke stared as her niece appeared. Emily stopped beside me, as close as she’d stood before. She didn’t say anything; she just looked at the woman with those wide, tragic eyes.
“I never touched her,” Karen Meineke said. “I never hurt the kid. You tell him I never laid a hand on you, Emily.”
“She already told me,” I said.
“I had to put her in the studio. Her mother... Oh, shit, I never wanted her here in the first place!”
Emily said, “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.” Her small fingers clutched at my coat sleeve. “I want him to take me home, Aunt Karen.”
The woman stared at her with cringing amazement. “What’s the matter with you? Your mother’s coming back for you.”
“No, she’s not. She’d’ve been here by now if she was. Please, Aunt Karen?”
“Ellen... your mother... she’s coming, I tell you. She has to. If you’re not here, she’ll... No, you’re staying right here with me.” Karen Meineke was sweating now; she reached out with her free hand to clutch at the porch railing, as if she might suddenly be feeling dizzy. “God, I wish I’d never... I wish...”
“Never what?” I said. “Never had a sister? Never done what you did ten years ago?”
“I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t me, it was them... Ellen and that bastard she... It wasn’t our idea, they talked us into it.”
“You and your husband, Charles Willis.”
She winced at the name.
/> “What did they talk you into doing?”
“I can’t tell you. I won’t.”
“I’ll find out one way or another. And soon. You know that. You know you can’t keep on lying and pretending.”
“Damn you, leave me alone! If you don’t, I’ll—” Hot little flicker in her eyes; she’d had a sudden thought. It straightened her up, gave her the impetus to push past me and start up the stairs.
When she’d gone partway I called. “If you’re going after a weapon, say a handgun, I don’t think you’ll find it where you left it.”
The words stopped her. She pivoted, both arms hugging the remaining grocery bag to her chest. “You... you were in my house. You broke into my house!”
“Did I? Front door doesn’t seem to be locked. Besides, you weren’t here — you don’t know if I was inside or not.”
“Broke in and stole my gun—”
“I’m not a thief,” I said. “Misplaced weapons have a way of turning up. Empty, even though you think you’ve left them lying around loaded.”
“You son of a bitch!” She screamed the epithet at me. And lumbered up the rest of the way and banged into the house.
As much to myself as to Emily I said, “It’s no use. I’ll have to find out some other way.”
“Do I have to stay here with her?”
“I’m afraid so. There’s no other choice.”
“For how long?”
“Until your mom comes or I find her first. If she does show up, you tell her to take you straight home. Tell her she can’t run and hide anymore, I’ll find her wherever she goes.”
“She isn’t coming back here,” Emily said.
Ah, Christ. I had my doubts, too, but I didn’t want her to know it. I said, “You’ll be all right here. Your aunt won’t lock you up anymore.”
Those dark, pained eyes moved over my face; I could almost feel them like a feather touch on my skin. “You’ll come back, won’t you? You won’t just leave me here?”
“I’ll be back. As soon as I can.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Eye contact for a few more seconds. Emily broke it, took a couple of hesitant steps away from me — and changed her mind and came back and threw her arms around my waist, hugged me briefly and very hard. Then she ran up the stairs and into the house without looking back.
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