Safe Houses

by Dan Fesperman

  Henry might still be working there if the senator hadn’t been unseated in the 2012 election. Bales, unsurprisingly, remained employed by switching over to committee staff, where he managed to at least keep Henry aboard part-time until the summer of 2013, when the gig at DOJ came open. Henry got the nod solely on the strength of Sir Rodney’s recommendation.

  And, now, here he was tucking into his eggs and bacon under the gaze of his prospective next employer.

  “Sure I can’t make you some?” he asked.

  Anna shook her head.

  “I can’t help but notice that you haven’t yet said no to my offer.”

  “I also haven’t said yes.”

  “And what will it take for you to say yes?”

  “A little more information on my employer.”

  “Fair enough.” Her cell phone began ringing in her purse. “Shit.”

  Anna frowned at the incoming number but answered.

  “Yes?”

  Then a pause, followed by a look of embarrassment. She grimaced and touched a hand to her forehead.

  “I’m so sorry. I meant to do that on the way out of town and it completely slipped my mind. Her pills are on the kitchen counter. The food’s in the pantry. Oh, and her name is Princess, not that she ever answers to it.”

  Another pause, Anna nodding with a hint of impatience.

  “I’m not sure. Cheryl will be back on Saturday, though, so you can just hand her over then. I’ll text her your number and address…Okay, good…And thank you again.”

  She sighed and put the phone back in her purse.

  “Princess?”

  “A cat. Not mine. I was babysitting for a friend who’s out of town, so I had to pass her along to someone else. One more change of venue and she’ll start feeling like one of my clients.”

  “Clients?”

  “Children. Runaways, foster kids, juvies. I did have my own cat once, but gave it away after three months.”

  “Allergies?”

  “No. I just didn’t like having it around. My mother’s daughter, I guess. We never even had a dog growing up.”

  “What’s a farm without a dog?”

  “That’s what my father always said. All he ever wanted was a retriever for hunting, but Mom always put her foot down. I think Willard and me were already more critters than she could handle.”

  As if on cue, Scooter stood and sauntered toward the back door. Henry walked over to let him out.

  “Think I offended him?” Then she turned somber. “Maybe with a dog this never would’ve happened. Another set of eyes on Willard. Or maybe a dog would have distracted him, or been his friend.”

  Henry decided it was a good time to change the subject.

  “Those children you work with, who’s minding the store while you’re gone?”

  “My coworkers. They’ll manage. So will the children.” Then she looked at the floor, as if ashamed for saying it so dismissively. “What more do you need to know about me? I’m thirty, I live in a third-floor walk-up in Mount Vernon with no roommates and, as you heard, no pets. My job is important but not all-consuming. I like baseball, hate football, never vote Republican, avoid Facebook like the plague, and eat out at least five times a week, which is probably why I can’t afford a better apartment or a real PI. Any other questions?”

  “None that can’t wait.”

  “I’m beginning to see how you go about your work. Watching, listening, waiting for slipups. Maybe you even arranged for Nancy to make that call.”

  “What if I really had?”

  “I’d be impressed. But not in a good way.”

  “Useful to know.”

  “You sound like a man who’s made up his mind.”

  “I have. But I won’t take your money for any longer than two weeks.”

  “Fair enough. Will you be needing an advance?”

  He shook his head.

  “What changed your mind?”

  So, then. Already having to lie. Henry took another bite of his eggs to avoid looking her in the eye, and then answered with his mouth full.

  “Curiosity, I guess.”

  “That job of yours in Baltimore, with the U.S. Attorney. How’d you end up on their radar?”

  Still interviewing him. Maybe she was having second thoughts.

  “A friend on the Hill. Told me they were looking for something a little unorthodox, and said it matched my skill set.”

  “Skill set?”

  “Mostly the ability to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut while looking for anomalies and paper trails. Plus the law school background. They liked that, too.”

  “What did DOJ want you to do?”

  “Do you really need to know?”

  “Now that you’re my employee, do you really need to ask?”

  “They detailed me as support staff on a special investigation, an antidrug task force, working with city cops. It was an infiltration, plain and simple. Justice was convinced one of their people was tipping the bad guys, and they wanted to find out who.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Not if you’re careful. I’m a chickenshit at heart, so I was careful.”

  “Did it work?”

  “They got their man, and I got a bonus. Which is why I don’t need an advance.”

  The last part was another lie, but the first part was true. In fact, he’d built such an airtight case, and did it so quietly and efficiently, that DOJ was able to handle the whole thing without going to court, which greatly pleased his bosses because it allowed them to keep everything out of the public eye. It worked for Henry, too, because his role never had to be revealed in depositions, charging documents, or in open court. And in the departmental shake-up that followed, so many people were fired or transferred that no one could have said for sure who the snitch was. The U.S. Attorney showed his gratitude by offering a full-time job. Henry, having seen the lay of the land, turned it down.

  “That looks good,” Anna said. “I’ve changed my mind about that egg.”

  She stepped around him to the stove to turn on the gas and cracked an egg into the skillet with a single pop against the rim.

  “One other request, if you’re really going to do this,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Keep me as busy as you can, don’t let me feel sorry for myself, and don’t act like I’m made of glass.”

  “Understood.”

  “When do we start?”

  “How ’bout now?”

  “Good. I scheduled a nine-thirty visit with Willard. I told them I might be bringing my own investigator, and they said fine.”

  “That gives us more than an hour to spare. Would you mind if…”

  “If what?”

  “Well, this won’t be pleasant, but I need to look at the scene. The house.”

  She held the spatula in midair, the egg bubbling beneath it.

  “Okay.” Barely audible. “Sure. That makes sense.”

  She ate only half the egg and slid the rest into the garbage. He grabbed a notebook and they set out on foot down Willow.

  8

  They must have been an odd sight to the neighbors. Henry, who knew every name behind every address, saw the Larrimores eyeing them from the breakfast nook, peeping out between the crape myrtles. The town mailman, Sarris, out on his early rounds, nodded gravely as he motored slowly past them in his van. By noon everyone in town would know that he and Anna were up to something, or at least had become a duo of sorts—the prodigal daughter of the murdered family teamed with the hermited newcomer. He didn’t like feeling this exposed and scrutinized, but for better or worse he would be out in the open from here on out.

  The Shoat house was a one-story rancher. Red brick with white trim. Door near the middle, two windows to the left, three to the ri
ght. Gray shingle roof in need of repair, eaves still dripping from a thunderstorm the night before. Two dogwoods on the lawn, one of them blighted, plus a pin oak that had probably been planted around the time Anna was born.

  Anna tore off the crime scene tape from the wrought iron railing of the front steps and wadded it into a black-and-yellow ball that she threw to the ground before getting out her keys. Henry picked it up as she unlocked the door.

  “All that land out back, it’s your family’s?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.

  “Forty acres. Corn, soybeans, a barn, and a patch of woods. Plus two big-ass chicken houses, way at the back ’cause Mom hated the smell.”

  “Who’s looking after the chickens?”

  “The feeding and watering are automated, so that’s taken care of unless something breaks or the power goes out. You don’t really own the birds. Washam Poultry is coming out around midday to pick ’em up, says they’re as big as they’re gonna grow. So that will be the last of it except for cleaning out the shit, which of course we do own. Or I own. God knows who I’ll hire to do it, or to harvest the corn and beans in the fall. Can you grab the mail?”

  Henry reached inside the mailbox. An electric bill, two ad circulars, and a catalog for L.L. Bean. Nothing that would interest Mitch, although he supposed other items would keep rolling in. Like fingernails and hair, your mail kept growing after you died.

  They stopped just inside the door, as if both of them needed a moment to acclimate. The air was damp and stale with a sharp overlay of disinfectant. A sunken living room was to the right, its walls almost as bare as in his house. There was a gallery of family photos atop an upright piano in one corner. A younger version of Willard smiled back at him from a frame on the left. At the far end of the living room, two steps led up to a small dining room with a glass-fronted cupboard showing off the good china.

  The entryway opened just ahead onto a hallway, and that’s where they headed. To the left were the bedrooms. They turned right into a family room with a brick fireplace and a big screen TV, and crossed the carpeted floor to an eat-in kitchen. Anna, as if sleepwalking, went all the way to the stove, which smelled faintly of bacon grease, before doubling back toward the family room. Henry dropped the wadded ball of tape into a trash bin beneath the sink and followed silently. A shaft of sunlight peeped through an opening in the curtains, filled with dust motes, probably the same ones that had been tumbling through the air on the night of the murders.

  They went down the hallway toward the bedrooms, Anna’s shoes echoing on the hardwood floor. There were three doorways. The two on the left were open, the one on the right was closed. Anna stopped, as if unwilling to take him farther.

  “Have you been staying here?” he asked, belatedly realizing how harsh the question sounded.

  “Only the night before the funeral. I got in too late for a motel, and I’d been too zapped to make any plans. Either way I was going to have to confront it. All or nothing, that’s me.” Her voice was a monotone. “The next day I checked into a B&B, the one Mrs. Hollis runs across town. This is the first time I’ve been back since then.”

  Henry nodded, trying to imagine what that one night must have been like for her.

  “I slept pretty soundly, believe it or not. Exhaustion, probably.”

  Henry stopped by the door to Willard’s room.

  “Okay if I have a look?”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  The bed was made, the floor swept, and almost everything was in its place. The only anomalies were scraps of paper here and there, marked with lines and slashes—the numerical tallies that Anna had told him about. Three were on the bedside table. One was labeled, BOOKS, another MILK, and the third had a drawing of something dotted and circular.

  Here and there were plastic model airplanes and cars that Willard had built, or tried to build. Most were half finished. A few that he’d completed were hanging by fishing line from the ceiling, including the Millennium Falcon. Anna gave it a tap, which made it swing back and forth.

  “I don’t suppose they’d let me take this to him in jail.”

  “Probably not.”

  He had his own little flat-screen TV, mounted above a DVR player. A Luke Skywalker poster hung above them. More scraps of marked paper were on his dresser. On one, the tally reached at least a hundred.

  “That’s the one for how many times he’s watched Star Wars,” Anna said.

  Henry picked up a scrap labeled SOCKS, with the total at sixteen. Two others had drawings that Henry couldn’t decipher.

  “I see what you mean about the obsession with counting.”

  “Mom used to try to pick up after him. But he’d get so upset that she gave up.”

  “You don’t think that maybe…?”

  “That he’d kill her over that? No. If you’d ever seen them together, you’d know. She was his Lord and Protector, and he was devoted to her.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Oh, they were fine, too, but it wasn’t the same. They’d hunt, go on walks, do chores, but never really said much. But Mom? It was sweet. I used to envy him sometimes. Stupid, huh?”

  She turned away from him, like she might be on the verge of tears. Henry pretended not to notice and opened the closet door. Camouflage hunting overalls hung next to flannel shirts, a few button-downs, three pairs of khakis. There was a sport coat for dress-up occasions, along with a single clip-on necktie, which struck Henry as deeply poignant.

  Even in the closet, Willard’s tallies were in evidence—pencil scribbles on the door frame and the back of the door. Someone, probably his mom, had tried to scrub them off but had given up. From the words and symbols it was apparent that Willard had kept count of his lifetime supply of belts, shirts, pants, and shoes.

  A small footlocker sat at the end of the bed.

  “What does he keep in there?” Henry asked.

  “Be my guest.”

  Henry unbuckled the hasp and pulled open the lid. Anna gasped in surprise. It was practically stuffed with papers—page after page torn from yellow legal pads and spiral notebooks, some of it neat and folded, the rest crumpled or wadded. All of it was marked with Willard’s lines and slashes—probably more than a hundred tallies. Most of the paper looked relatively new, and none of the ink was faded.

  “Good God,” Anna said, a little horrified.

  “This wasn’t normal?”

  “Not to this degree.”

  Henry pulled out a few of the folded sheets. They were labeled with strange symbols, indecipherable. He uncrumpled a few more and the story was the same. No one but Willard could have told them what he had tallied, or why.

  Anna sighed and put her hands to her face.

  “I guess it was getting worse. Maybe if I’d come home more often…” She lowered her head.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No. But I was avoiding the place. That’s what I think now. I used to visit every few weeks. Lately, nothing. I was telling myself it was because I was so wrapped up in my job, and with my friends. I’d joined a book club, a health spa, a dinner group, anything to keep me busy on weekends. It was almost like I could feel what was happening here and knew I wanted nothing to do with it.”

  “Or maybe you were just building a life, like everybody does.”

  Henry shut the trunk, stood, and gently steered her back into the hall. Nodding toward the closed door across the hall, he said, “I’m sorry, but do you mind if…?”

  “Go ahead. I’ll pass, if you don’t mind. Been there, done that.”

  He opened the door, the smell hitting him right away, like a public restroom that has been mopped down with industrial cleaners. He felt like he’d released an unwanted spirit into the rest of the house.

  There was no crime scene tape. The sheets and mattress were gone, with only t
he box spring remaining. Here and there on the headboard were dried brown spatters of bloodstains. The curtains were shut—he wondered if gawkers had tried to peep in from the back lawn—which made it so gloomy that Henry had to resist the urge to throw them open and pull up the sash, let in some fresh air.

  The door to one of the closets was open—Anna’s mother’s, judging by the dresses hanging in a neat row, a sparser selection than he would have guessed for a woman of her age. Stacked on a top shelf was a sheaf of papers and a couple of cardboard boxes. Exactly the sort of thing Mitch wanted him to paw through. Maybe later. On the bedside table, next to the telephone, a checkbook was splayed open with unpaid bills underneath. An uncapped pen lay to the side.

  “Hate to say it,” he called out over his shoulder, “but you’re going to need to go through some of this stuff.”

  “I know.”

  He turned, surprised to see her in the doorway.

  “I haven’t had the willpower for it yet. There’s so much of it. Those boxes in the closet, four more in the mudroom. Old letters, old photos, all kinds of stuff. Plus the laptop.”

  “Your dad’s?”

  “Mom’s. Out in the barn, of all places. She had a little office built after I went off to college, a place all to herself with a coffeepot, a space heater, and everything.”

  He nodded, already curious about the office. All in good time.

  The phone rang, making them jump as it jangled on the bedside table like an alarm, along with the echo from the one in the kitchen.

  “You should answer it,” he said. “Probably junk, but you never know.”

  “I need to get the line disconnected. Another item for the damn to-do list.”

  The bedroom phone was closer, but Anna walked down the hallway to the one in the kitchen. Henry followed at what he hoped was a discreet distance and stopped in the doorway to listen.

  “Hello?” A pause while someone spoke, then she put down the receiver.