by Lisa Unger
“Most people think he’s dead,” she said, her tone indicating that there was more to come. Maura was silent for a minute, chewing on the end of her pipe. Lydia could see she had something more she wanted to say and was debating whether to continue. The keen desire to gossip was clear in her black eyes.
“Some people say he loved her,” she said finally, her voice lowering a bit. “Not in the way a brother loves a sister. They say it tortured him, drove him mad.”
“What happened to him?”
“I was told his family sent him away. Some people believed he joined the army, but the popular rumor always was that he was sent to an asylum, where he killed himself. And others …” she said, pausing dramatically, “others believe he escaped—either the army or the asylum, depending on who’s telling the story—came back, and killed Eleanor’s husband because he couldn’t stand another man touching her. They say he ran off, leaving her to take the rap to punish her for not loving him.”
She shook her head. “But I never believed that. Paul was a quiet boy, gentle, maybe even a bit on the slow side. He didn’t have it in him. Just more stories for the bored little minds in this town.”
Lydia was quiet.
“He was the only one of them who wasn’t rotten at the core,” Maura said, looking off over Lydia’s head. She opened her mouth again, then clamped it shut as though to keep trapped whatever was about to escape. Her face grew harder and she looked at Lydia. Lydia could sense that they’d outworn their dubious welcome, but she pressed on.
“So who do you think is killing the husbands of the Ross women?”
A smile at once mocking and victorious spread across her face. “Well, it’s always been my hope that it is Annabelle Taylor herself, come back from the grave to do the job.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in curses,” said Lydia, fighting a chill that had raised goose bumps on her arms.
“I don’t,” she said, expressing streams of smoke from her nostrils like a dragon. “But I never said I didn’t believe in ghosts.”
chapter seventeen
Sitting quietly on the couch, sunlight streaming in from the large window overlooking Fifth Avenue, Lola and Nathaniel Stratton-Ross looked less like children than they did tiny adults. But they were children and interviewing them was a delicate matter. It had occurred to Ford on the way back from Haunted that maybe he didn’t have the finesse, the delicacy it might require. He didn’t want to fuck it up, so he put in a call to a woman he knew, a child psychologist by the name of Irma Fox.
He and Irma had worked together a couple of times in the past five years. Most recently when his only witness to a double homicide was the six-year-old son of one of the victims. He remembered Nicholas Warren as he’d found him that night, in his Toy Story pajamas, holding tight to a wilted stuffed dog, freckled with blood splatter.
They’d found him crouched in the bedroom closet, where he’d clearly had a front-row seat as his father and his new stepmother were shot to death while they slept in their bed. He told Ford that night that he’d come to his father’s room to wake him after a bad dream but hid in the closet when he heard something on the stairs. He’d not closed the door, he said, but he’d covered his eyes, so he hadn’t seen anything. Ford knew that Nicholas had seen it all and believed he could identify the killer. But he wanted the information without traumatizing the kid further.
It took Irma to bring Nicholas to a place where he was able to reveal the truth about that night. After two hours behind closed doors with Irma, Nicholas revealed that he’d let his mother into the house that night, as he’d promised her he would. And that she’d killed his father and his father’s new wife. “So that I could live with just Mommy again.” Nicholas’s mom was doing two consecutive life sentences and Nicholas was living with his aunt and uncle in a Brooklyn Heights townhouse. Ford hoped the kid was getting some good therapy and didn’t wind up on the FBI’s most wanted list sometime in the future.
Irma had a way about her and everyone responded to it, not just children. She was a careful person, careful with her words, her tones. She had a way of focusing all her attention on you when you talked, a way of turning her warm green eyes on you with such understanding, compassion, respect, that you just couldn’t help but pour out your soul into her hands. Ford knew this truth about her well, having confessed more to her over the years than he had to his own wife.
She was pretty, not beautiful, with a kind face, her skin smooth and pink like a peach. She was small but not what he’d call thin, with a motherly fullness about her breasts and hips. She was always well dressed but was not exactly what he’d call stylish. It was as if she’d been carefully constructed to be pleasing without being threatening. As if she wanted people never to notice her so much that they forgot about themselves.
He called her from the car and by the time he pulled up in front of her Central Park West office, she’d cleared her afternoon for him. She owed him a favor big time. He’d managed to get her eighteen-year-old off the hook on a DUI that was going to cost him his license and possibly some jail time, and into a special AA program instead. Shrinks’ kids were always the most fucked up, he’d noticed.
There were some small fireworks upon their arrival at the Waldorf suite when Irma insisted that she speak to the children alone, without Eleanor and without the attorney present. She did agree to a video camera, so that they could all watch on a closed-circuit monitor from another room. It took a while before a uniform showed up with the equipment.
As the interview began, Piselli searched the children’s room in the suite, while Detective Malone was back at the crime scene, working their bedrooms. Ford felt confident that something was going to turn up, one way or another. Either that or he was going to lose his job. Eleanor Ross was pissed and she wasn’t going to be quiet about it. He could feel her eyes boring into his temple as Irma introduced herself to Lola and Nathaniel, as they watched on the small black-and-white monitor.
The twins had different energies. While Lola’s face was cool and expressionless, Nathaniel’s was open and guileless. Lola sat upright, legs crossed like a little lady, leaning elegantly on the armrest. Nathaniel slumped, pumping his legs back and forth, fidgeting in his suit.
“Do you know why we’re all here today?” Irma asked the children, her voice light but firm.
There was silence for a moment during which Nathaniel looked at Lola. Irma waited, not pushing them along.
“Someone killed our daddy,” said Lola softly. Nathaniel nodded.
“I’m sorry, Lola,” Irma said, and Ford could hear the sympathetic half smile on her face, though she was mostly off camera, just a triangle of her shoulder visible on the screen. “Yes, that’s right. You’re both very brave to talk to me today even though you’re feeling sad. Is that how you’re feeling?”
“Our daddy’s with the angels,” said Nathaniel with a vigorous nod. Again silence, and Ford could imagine Irma nodding, a look of quiet understanding on her face.
Then, “Do you remember the night your father died?”
Nathaniel seemed about to say something when Lola spoke up, casting a look at her brother. “We were sleeping,” she said with finality.
“Okay,” said Irma. “Tell me what you remember about that night before you went to sleep.”
Again Nathaniel looked to Lola. “We went to a restaurant with Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma,” said Lola.
“That sounds nice. Where did you go?”
“Twenty-one. I had a hamburger and a Pepsi.”
“And Nathaniel, what about you? What did you have?”
Ford rolled his eyes and tried not to be impatient. He didn’t want a rundown of every item on the menu at 21. He reminded himself that his impatience was precisely why he’d called in Irma to handle this interview. He tried not to sigh as Irma and the children talked more about the dinner, about the story Grandma read to them before bed, and other inane details that were intended to relax the children, get them remembering and talking
. Ford started to tune out, listening to the rhythm of Irma’s soft voice, the lighter, higher pitches of the children’s voices responding.
“Let’s try a little game,” said Irma, her voice bright. “Let’s see how many little things you can remember about that night.”
“Like what?” said Lola suspiciously. Something about her, the way she talked, even her facial expressions, made her seem so much older than her twin. She had a gleam of intelligence and a composure that Nathaniel lacked but made up for in a kind of lovable sweetness.
“I don’t know …” said Irma, her voice coaxing. “Just anything that comes to mind. Like, what stuffed animals did you sleep with that night?”
Nathaniel’s face lit up. “I had Pat the Bunny,” he said with a smile, then looked around as if to see if he could find it for Irma.
“I don’t sleep with stuffed animals,” said Lola imperiously, casting a disapproving look at her brother. Nathaniel looked at her with a sad shyness that made Ford’s heart twinge a little. They were silent for a moment, looking at each other, Lola frowning, Nathaniel with a little worried wrinkle in his brow. There was a dynamic at play between the two of them, something unspoken, a meta-communication. Ford noticed that Irma remained quiet, waiting to see what would develop. Even on the monitor, Ford could see Nathaniel’s eyes start to glisten.
“I want my bunny,” he said suddenly, his little face threatening to crumble into tears.
“You’re such a baby,” said Lola, disgusted.
“It’s okay, Nathaniel. We’ll get your bunny for you,” said Irma, turning and looking into the camera lens.
“It’s not here,” snapped Lola. “It’s in his room at home and we can’t go there.”
“That’s okay, Nathaniel,” said Irma again, her voice light and happy. Nathaniel looked at her and smiled at whatever he saw in her expression. He sniffled a little, but the threat of a tantrum seemed to pass. “We’re still playing the game,” Irma reminded him, “and you’re doing so well. What else can you remember?”
Lola was sulking now. He’d seen the look before—a frightened and sad child who used anger as a shield. Ford was reminded that, in spite of her composure, she was just a little girl who’d endured a shattering trauma.
“Ummm …” said Nathaniel, an exaggerated look of concentration on his face.
“I know,” said Irma enthusiastically, as if the thought had just occurred, “what were you wearing?”
“Oh! I was wearing my SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas,” Nathaniel said happily. “I wear those every night. Want to see?”
“That’s wonderful! I can’t wait to see them as soon as we’ve finished talking,” said Irma. “What about you, Lola?”
“I don’t remember,” she answered sullenly.
Nathaniel looked over at his sister and seemed to be affected by her mood. He reached out a hand to touch her leg and she took it in hers. Ford saw the closeness there that he’d seen the first night. Nathaniel slid in closer to Lola.
“I remember,” Nathaniel said. “You wore your red nightgown with the hearts. Remember?”
Bingo, thought Ford. Neither child seemed to feel that they had anything to hide about their attire. He’d half worried that Lola was smart enough to understand why they wanted that information. Ford cast a glance at Eleanor. But if she was having a reaction to what Nathaniel had revealed, she hid it well. She stood with her arms folded, her eyes fixed on the monitor. Her lawyer sat on the sofa watching, as well, and taking notes.
“So let’s go back to that night. Close your eyes and think hard for me, okay, guys? Your grandmother read The Night Before Christmas. Then your mommy put you each to bed. What’s the next thing you remember?”
At this, Nathaniel’s eyes widened. Lola looked over at him with a severe glance as he started to sniffle.
“What, Nathaniel? What is it?” asked Irma, her voice coaxing.
“Nathaniel” Lola said, her tone a warning. He looked over at her and his little mouth curled, his eyes filled with big tears.
“The bogeyman,” said Nathaniel. “The bogeyman came.” And he released a wail that raised goose bumps on Ford’s arm, that was at once heartbreaking and frightening.
“Roaches, tunnels, curses, dogs—now ghosts. Give me good old hand-to-hand combat any day compared to this shit,” said Dax from the back of the Rover. The sky had turned to blue velvet outside and stars began to glitter in the night. They had the heat on full blast and Lydia still didn’t seem to be able to warm up after their visit with Maura Hodge.
“What’s the matter, Dax? Chicken?” she said.
“Not bloody likely,” he said, snorting his contempt. “But that woman and her beasts gave me the shivers. Who else was in the house?”
Lydia looked over at Dax. “She said no one. But I heard some movement upstairs, or thought I did.”
“Well, I saw someone in the window upstairs. There was definitely someone up there.”
“Man, woman? What?”
“What do I have, a fucking bionic eye? It’s dark; I couldn’t tell.” Then, “Where are we going now?”
“Haunted house,” said Jeff, looking in the rearview mirror. “No pun intended.”
“Naturally.”
They’d left the Hodge residence with the uneasy feeling that Maura was either crazy or deceitful or both. Lydia was unsatisfied with the interview; it felt like a tease and that they had left with more questions than answers. Lydia had the distinct impression that Maura had talked to them only because she knew they weren’t going to take no for an answer. And that she’d carefully evaded giving any actual information about anything. Or maybe she really didn’t know anything. Maybe she was just an old woman, alone with her bitter and crazy thoughts, and that was all she had to share.
Once they were back in the SUV, Jeff had a brief conversation with Ford in which they’d exchanged information about their respective interviews.
“So you got ghosts and I got the bogeyman,” Ford had said with a laugh.
“That’s about the size of it. Now what?”
“I’m going to head back over to the laundry room and watch the forensics team. If someone did that crime and then left through the laundry room, there has to be blood evidence. Even if it was wiped clean, the Luminol has a chemiluminescent compound that reacts to the iron in the hemoglobin and glows under a blue light. If nothing else it could prove someone else was at the scene that night.
“The other thing I wanted to tell you was that we have about twenty guys down in those tunnels trying to find a trail to follow … the Luminol might help with that, too. I learned, however, from this New York City architectural historian that I located at Columbia University that tunnels like this are not at all unusual in older buildings. They were blasted out during Prohibition, made quick getaways for speakeasy proprietors and bootleggers. Interesting, huh? I never knew that before.”
“Me neither.”
“Anyway, they’re all over the place, especially in the East Village. Most of them have been sealed up, though.”
Jeff was silent a minute, thinking of the whole network of passages beneath the street connecting to buildings. It added another dimension in his mind to the city he thought he knew. With Jed McIntyre crawling around down there, it made him more than a little uneasy.
“Jeff?” said Ford.
“Sorry. We’re going to head over to the Ross estate,” he said, snapping back to the conversation. “Apparently it has sat empty and untouched for years. Lydia thinks we’ll find some answers there.”
“Good luck. See you in the morning.”
Breaking and entering just didn’t seem like that big a deal anymore. Lydia remembered a time when it seemed very exciting in its grayness, in the way it walked the line between right and wrong. But tonight it took Jeff about fifteen seconds to pick the lock and they were into the Ross home as easily and with as much a sense of entitlement as if they’d had a key.
“That lock is new,” commented Jeff as the door s
wung open, creaking on its hinges. They’d bickered briefly in the car about Lydia waiting outside in the event that floorboards and such in the house were unstable. She, naturally, wouldn’t hear of it. So Jeffrey guessed that their agreement about her not involving herself in the more dangerous aspects of the investigation was little more than a sham. It was his turn to be angry now. Angry that she was so stubborn; angry that his concerns for her safety—completely natural concerns, given the circumstances—were ignored. She made him feel like a Neanderthal for wanting to protect her and their child—and he was starting to resent the hell out of it. He wondered when she was going to start acting as if she cared about her own safety … and if she was going to start acting and feeling like a mother at some point.
The three of them stood in the grand foyer and looked about them at the havoc time and neglect had wrought. Their Maglite beams cut through the darkness like tiny kliegs, circles of light falling on graffiti across the walls, beer bottles on the floor. Spider webs glittered and swayed from the chandelier above their heads. In a drawing room off to the right of the foyer, the stuffing had been ripped from an antique sofa and chairs, a fireplace was filled with trash. The wind was picking up outside and it blew through the house with a moan.
“What are we looking for?” asked Dax.
“I’ll know it when I find it,” answered Lydia as she walked down a hallway that led deeper into the house. Dax headed off to the right toward the staircase. After a second, they could hear the steps creaking dangerously beneath his weight. Lydia half braced herself, waiting for him to come crashing through the wood until she heard him reach the landing above.
At the end of the hallway, she and Jeffrey reached a set of double doors that led to a library, where every inch of wall space was covered with books on rich oak shelves. With high ceilings, an elaborate Oriental rug over dark wood flooring, a cavernous fireplace across from a leather sofa and matching wingback chairs, a low, wide cocktail table, the room was elegant in a masculine way. Everything was covered by a thick layer of dust, had the aura of decay and abandonment.