Chestnut.
Brendan had always explained my pet name by recalling the snack we bought from a city cart at Christmastime. But Red had been nicknamed for his hair.
Olivia was watching me, her face grown grave. “Nora?” she said, with no abruptness in her tone. “Are you all right?”
I took the lead this time, and Olivia followed me into the sitting room. I picked up one of the photos, not of Greggy, but of his mother. “This is Kat, right? She has such pretty hair.”
Olivia continued to look at me, while keeping her distance. We both knew something was coming, like a barometric pressure change building in the air. My head felt thick and hot. And Olivia’s strong form looked frail, ready to fall over.
“Everyone admires her hair. Like buttered toast, not a streak of gray in it. Of course, Kat’s still pretty young.”
“Yes, she must be.” I nodded. “How young exactly?”
“Thirty-two,” Olivia said, rather wistfully. She was studying another picture of Kat. “She had Greggy when she was only sixteen. That’s why she moved so far away, I think. She was ashamed. Even though I was hardly more than a baby myself when I had her.”
There was only one thing left to do.
I took out the first photograph I’d shown to Dick Granger. “Do you know these people? I know the woman’s a little cut out of the shot—”
Olivia’s fingers were shaking when she took it, but she answered with no hesitation at all. “I’ve never seen him before. But that’s Kat over there on the side.”
I wasn’t shocked; it was as if I’d known for some time.
“That’s Kat’s ring right there,” Olivia told me. It was a cluster of garnets on the hand resting on Brendan’s arm. “I gave her that ring for her thirteenth birthday.”
“She had a boyfriend in high school,” I said.
“Well, she sure had someone,” Olivia replied, sounding a little stronger now, with her own blow still at bay. “Got knocked up, didn’t she?”
I winced. “You never knew him?”
“No,” Olivia replied, regarding me coolly. “Kat kept to herself some. She’s always been mature that way. Began taking college courses while she was still in high school, and moved west to finish. Anyway …” She paused to collect her thoughts. “She never brought boyfriends home.” She looked at me. “Are you saying that guy in the picture was one of them?”
I dropped my gaze to the photo. “The man in the picture was my husband.”
“Oh.” Olivia’s hand swept across her face. “Oh, Lord.”
I finally sat down. This whole conversation had been conducted upright; Olivia still remained standing. “He called your daughter Amber.”
Tears filmed Olivia’s eyes, not quite yet ready to fall. “Because of her hair.”
I nodded. “And he had a brother who died when he was very young. Named Gregory.”
Olivia’s head snapped straight. “Kat never told me how she came to name Greggy. But she was so insistent. She said she knew she was carrying a boy, and she would only consider one name for him.” Olivia hesitated. “She always wanted children.”
I recalled the flash of kinship I’d felt with Amber, reading her letters. With Kat.
“The woman you spoke to in Wedeskyull,” I began. “Her name was Eileen, wasn’t it? Eileen Hamilton.” Eileen had to have gotten the photo from somewhere. She’d had some connection, to Olivia, or Greggy, or Kat.
Olivia didn’t seem to be focusing, but she answered nonetheless. “That’s right. She’d sent checks to Greggy anonymously for years. Starter checks, no name on them. I tracked her down when it occurred to me that she might have some clue as to his whereabouts.”
“Eileen knew,” I breathed. Resurrection. Another boy named Gregory. “How?”
Olivia shook her head. “I’ve been wondering that myself. Mrs. Hamilton wouldn’t tell me. She didn’t even let me into the house.” For a moment Olivia’s mouth compressed. “When things, uh, get back to normal, I’ll ask my daughter,” she continued. “My best guess is that Kat sent her a baby picture or something. She always swore they couldn’t have contact with that side of Greggy’s family, and now I understand why. But Kat has a soft spot. Perhaps she took pity on that awful woman.”
It occurred to me then, stupidly, late, but it did occur and I forced the thought out. “Brendan, though? He didn’t know?”
“No.” Olivia shook her head. “No, Nora, if it helps, he didn’t. Kat was always very certain of that—that Greggy’s father wouldn’t have wanted to know he had a baby.”
“I wonder,” I whispered. How different things might’ve been if there’d been another boy Brendan could’ve cared for with the devotion that made him run to rescue his little brother. How different for Brendan, for Greggy, and me.
Olivia went on speaking. “Greggy wanted to search for his dad. It was the one thing he and his mother fought about.” A bolt of hope seemed to momentarily strengthen Olivia, and she dropped to the floor before me, leaning forward and gripping my wrists. “Did he find your husband? Or find out he was dead? Is that why Greggy’s run off?”
I had already begun shaking my head. I couldn’t keep the truth from this woman any longer. Not when I was discovering what a cruel seducer was false hope, and that knowledge could feel light as a balloon in your chest.
“No, Olivia. I mean, I don’t know if Greggy found my husband or not. I haven’t figured that part out yet. But that isn’t why he hasn’t come home.”
When she spoke, her voice was bloodless. “What part have you figured out?”
I didn’t know yet who had killed Greggy. But as soon as one person besides me felt the drive to find out, any role the police played would have to come to light. The more people who have information, and knowledge, and stakes, the fewer secrets can be kept.
I got off the chair, and I knelt in front of Olivia.
The woman crumpled, her hands a protective shield over her face. They hit the floor with a loud, violent smack, and the skin on them flamed as I stroked Olivia’s humped back, and told her over and over again how sorry I was, I was so, so sorry.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Back at the inn, I needed to ask one more favor of Dick Granger. I had found two more gifts from Dugger when patting my pockets for tissues for Olivia. An audio recorder and a slim DVD.
“It’s not too late, is it?” I asked.
“Not at all, luv.” He led the way into the parlor again. “The telly is in here,” he said, opening a wooden cabinet.
I thanked him.
The innkeeper stopped at the door, then spoke hesitantly. “Did you talk to Liv, luv? Were you able to give her something to go on?”
I looked up, words not coming to my lips, but the answer probably on my face. This was Olivia’s news to deliver now. She had to tell the town. Dick left the room. I could hear his footfalls echoing in the entryway as he headed over to the front desk.
The TV and DVD player came to life and I inserted the disk.
It was nighttime on the tape, and everything was black with a greenish tinge, even the dots of falling snow. The camera had been fitted with a night-vision attachment, turning the scene before me into some sort of Emerald City, malevolent, surreal, filled with challenges too great to overcome. I imagined Dugger sprinting alongside the events he was capturing.
The film jumped around, so it was hard to be sure, but amongst the snow-swept fields, I thought I caught a glimpse of frozen Queek Pond. This was the expensive part of Wedeskyull, full of large, grand homes I had hoped one day to restore.
And then someone burst onto the scene and the video camera caught his flight. He was dressed in jeans and a dark jacket, but that flowing mane of hair was unmistakable. It was Greggy. He ran across the field, stumbling at times, clutching items in both hands so that he couldn’t regain balance as fast as he otherwise would.
A cop appeared behind him, his broad, powerful body instantly recognizable. Club. He was moving fast, giving chase, but another g
ray-clad man was even faster, more agile.
Brendan. Eerily lit, but utterly recognizable. This call must’ve come in urgently; they’d had to get out of the cruiser without much preparation.
I rocked back on my heels. I hadn’t taken a seat, was just watching from the floor. If I hadn’t already been down there, I might’ve fallen.
Here was my husband, alive, in the room with me again.
Shouting.
Words impossible to make out, and then, “Don’t run, kid!” A loud crack—a branch breaking maybe—that drowned out whatever Brendan said next. “… just want to talk to you! Slow down!”
I began to whimper, hoping the innkeeper wouldn’t hear. If it hadn’t been for the man’s nearby presence, I might’ve crawled to the television, tried to summon my husband forth.
Club’s distinctive growl. “Go. Don’t let him get away. You heard what the Chief said.”
Brendan put on a burst of speed, and the cameraman did the same so that for a minute only jarring green ground was filmed, and the lower stalks of trees. Dugger must’ve been hiding in a perimeter of woods, following along at an equally fast clip.
There was nothing but eerie jade light. Brendan’s voice filled the void.
“… be slowed down on the pond. No way around it—”
“Better run, man,” grunted Club, the exertion clearly wearing on him. “… faster than me.”
Then both men vanished from the shot, because suddenly I was watching a blur, unable to hear anything but a distant rush of wind.
Brendan’s lanky, athletic form made an appearance, Dugger getting close again.
Even when I couldn’t see, his voice still carried.
“Stop!” Brendan shouted. “… not saying you stole anything, kid! Just let us have a look, and we’ll sort this whole thing out!”
A howling swirl of snow from the ground blotted out whatever Brendan must’ve been glimpsing offscreen, the thing that caused him to raise his voice even louder in alarm.
“Stop right now so we can talk to you!”
“Brendan—get down!” Club huffed with exertion as he gave the command, but only one thing made a cop tell another cop to get down, and my chest pinched with anxiety. Even knowing Brendan’s fate, that he’d survived this incident, I was frightened for my husband.
“He’s going for something, man! I’m—coming!”
“… don’t want to hurt you!” Brendan himself was hardly out of breath. “Get your hands where we can see them.”
There was a third voice, higher and unsure. Greggy’s, but he couldn’t be seen.
And then he could be, standing beside a green-tinted glimmer of ice, his form small and slight compared to those of the two men. He went down on his knees, stuffing something into one hand, using the free one to scrabble around in his pocket.
Oh, Greggy, don’t. I pleaded with events already past, long since set in stone.
“Brendan—get—down! Police! Hands up or we’ll shoot!” Club was running hard, but Brendan was closer. And Brendan wasn’t doing anything.
Greggy’s voice again, repeating the same airy words.
“Goddammit, Brendan, pull your gun!” Club panted. “Shoot him! … gonna kill you!”
“Club, wait—” Brendan was at last breathing hard. “He’s saying something—”
There was the paper-snapping crack of gunfire, a sound almost lost in the whole of the outdoors.
The camera angle changed. Brendan’s boots crunched over snow.
He came into focus, crouching down beside Greggy. He felt for a pulse, and his shoulders sank.
Who had opened fire? The recording hadn’t caught anyone’s finger on a trigger.
As partners, Brendan was the thinker, Club the actor. They worked well together—and were such good friends—because each was so willing to fill a different role.
“He was going for a gun,” came Club’s voice, unseen in the distance. “You were in danger.”
“Are you sure?” Brendan asked thickly. “He was reaching into his front pocket. Strange place for a gun.”
“He was saying ‘dead.’ Kept repeating it.”
“Did sound like that,” Brendan agreed. “But the front pocket of his jeans? For a weapon? Maybe a pocketknife. Nothing long range …” He began to dig around in the dead boy’s pocket. “Goddammit … did steal the jewelry …” He took out several shiny strands, then another item, flat and square. Brendan looked at it, and then he bent over, dropping out of the frame, although noises could still be heard.
The sound of liquid, splattering and sloshing onto the snow.
“Brendan?” Club also stood out of sight of the camera’s eye. “… the fuck is wrong with you? You sick, man?”
I couldn’t follow what was going on; too much information was missing.
“It wasn’t …” Brendan’s words were hard to make out, but that wasn’t the fault of the tape. My husband was crying. “Wasn’t a fucking gun, Club. He didn’t have a weapon.”
“What the hell was it then?”
“Goddamn you!” Brendan roared, and both men came into view, their bodies colliding, boots sliding in the puddle Brendan had left, packing down snow with their knees and their fists as they fell. “You murderer!”
“Brendan, man, get off! I was trying to protect you!”
Brendan held something in his hand that the camera couldn’t see.
There was a pause, the briefest lull.
Then Club barked a laugh. “A photograph? Kid was going for a fucking photo?”
I inched across the floor on my hands and knees, struggling to see the wavering green images Dugger had fought to preserve. I pressed my face right up against the screen until I could make it out, or thought I could, if only because the shot was so familiar.
The second sliver of Amber picture, this one newly streaked with blood.
My husband’s voice came again, broken now beyond repair. “The kid wasn’t saying dead.”
Club stayed silent.
Then came a ragged cry; it sounded like a bird’s screaming. “You know what he was saying?”
Club shook his head, a slow, hazy motion in the dark. His features bunched with confusion. Brendan was muttering, putting things together for himself, as he backed away out of sight. “She left. She went to Colorado.”
His last words were caught just as he began running. “He was saying dad.”
The only thing that remained to be seen on film was the dead boy’s body, lying prone in the snow, and the flakes dropping down upon it.
They fell slowly at first so that it was possible to see where each one landed, mark its progress and rate of melt, until before too long they stopped melting altogether and began to accumulate in a thin, white shroud.
READY
Tim sat at the console in the cruiser. They were parked at the barracks, snow falling gently all around. Lately Gil had been driving, and Tim riding shotgun, but tonight that was going to change.
He typed in the coordinates on the GPS. Then he spoke without turning to Gil.
“Tell me what you did to the reporter.” It had to be bad. Gil had tied up Club’s dog in that smoking wreck of a house without a second’s hesitation. And Gil liked animals.
“Nothing that didn’t need to be done.”
“You took him to the silo.”
They had found the place during a raid a year ago—some rich kids from downstate were using it to host pharm parties; Club and Gil had joked about the fact that they took place on an actual farm—and the owners had gone into foreclosure soon after. The whole place still stunk of animal things: breath and fear and waste.
“I did what needed to be done,” Gil repeated. “And I doubt he’ll be asking any questions from now on.”
Tim was to blame. He’d given Ned the lead about Melanie Cooper.
He’d been partnered with Gil the day the call came in from Lenny Paulson’s plant about John Cooper. An industrial accident. It wasn’t clear from the staticky report what ha
d happened—some part of a container of acid had eroded away, its replacement too long put off probably—and Cooper had been luckless enough to be breathing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The look in the man’s eyes was one Tim hoped he’d never have to see again.
Cooper had managed to get himself out of the room, even closing the door to protect his fellow workers. Someone had laid him out on a dingy leg of hallway, near an empty water cooler and a coffee station that gave off the smell of something burned. Away from the inner workings of the plant. Wherever all the noise and grinding and bustle of production took place had to have been far off, since where they stood was as quiet and deserted as a crypt.
Cooper was taking shallow, hitching breaths that seemed to cause pain of a sort Tim couldn’t imagine. The man’s eyes fluttered shut as he went in and out of consciousness, which at least served to blot out the combination of abject horror and mute plea in them.
They got there before the ambulance did. The Chief had always emphasized speed and immediacy of responding. He spoke in a rumble behind Tim and Gil.
“Paulson already radioed, said the call was a mistake. Some worker from downstate must have overreacted. The bus is on its way back to WCH.” The Chief paused. “We’ll let Doc take care of this.”
Tim felt something crawl up his back. “No way, Chief. Call for it again. This man needs an ambulance. Emergency treatment.”
There was silence as the Chief absorbed the protest. Tim’s heart clenched like a fist in his chest. But when the Chief spoke, his tone was affable.
“You know, I don’t think so,” he said. “Those folks at the hospital are only gonna prolong the inevitable. Look at him. You think you’d be doing this fellow a kindness?”
Tim forced himself to take another look at Cooper. His eyes were opening and closing at a rate that suggested things slowing down, ceasing to work, and his mouth hung slackly, exposing the blistered, fiery flesh inside.
“A trip to the hospital will also slow things down here at the plant,” the Chief added. “Lenny says it’s a bad time for that. Worst possible time.” He paused to let his words sink in, although they understood them. “I radioed Doc. He’ll meet you on Rural Route 31.”
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