She would need support — documenting, photographing, collecting evidence and being responsible for it — to ensure it wasn’t tampered with, lost, stolen, or anything else. In this case, that it wasn’t swallowed up by all the damned snow. It was a lot to ask of one person. Swift knew what it was like to carry such a burden.
Crime Scene Investigators like Brittney, who worked for the State troopers, were a relatively new addition to the proliferating law enforcement departments. When Swift had started as a State Police Detective twenty years earlier, detectives did all the leg work. He could still feel that stress, that sense of being torn apart, needing to be in all places at once. It had never really gone away.
He felt a gnawing grow in the pit of his stomach. Soon he would have to confront a family with the death of their child.
Swift returned his attention to the elderly woman. “Mrs. Hamilton, thank you. Please let Trooper Bronze escort you back inside. Stay warm. We’ll be in touch.”
He turned and stepped off the porch and back out into the snow. He turned in the direction of the Getty place.
CHAPTER SIX
Something woke her up.
Callie sat up in bed, rubbing at the skin beneath her eyes. It had taken her forever to fall asleep, fitfully, beset by strange dreams. She turned and checked the time on her phone on the bedside table. It was quarter of four in the morning. She listened for Hannah, who now shared a room with Reno and was still prone to waking up in the night. Hannah had slept in the same bed with Callie and Mike until she was almost two. Reno had spent less time co-sleeping; she was in her own bed by the time she was barely a year old. Callie and Mike had agreed, over months of often emotional dialogue, that this would be their last child. Since then, there had been an unspoken reluctance to transition her to another room. They were savoring every moment. But while co-sleeping might have its developmental advantages, it could be a strain on the marriage. While Callie and Mike had gotten somewhat inventive with ways to share crucial marital one-on-one time together, more often than not simply sleeping peacefully beside one another was all they needed. Hannah would rotate around in the bed throughout the night like the hour hand on a clock, her little pudgy feet winding up in Mike’s face, or sticking through Callie’s ribs. It was disruptive for both of them.
Callie swung her legs out of the bed. Mike was still asleep. He was the deeper sleeper, and while he didn’t have her ability to nap and drift in and out of sleep, he had the enviable ability to sleep through all the Florida storms and hurricanes.
Her feet touched the cold floor. The small woodstove that had been alive with roiling, dark orange flames was now a dim red glow.
She listened intently. She heard nothing, but left the room nonetheless, her bare feet whispering across the hardwood floor.
It was chilly — and quiet.
Callie had forgotten about the dark and cold, and the profound silence of the North Country. Outside at night, the wind moaned, and there was a sense of empty space, but also of things living out there in the snow and trees, keeping to their own. A deep, hushed thrum of life in the crisp, unvarnished landscape of the night forest. She remembered it from her childhood. When the other girls were penned up inside talking to one another on the telephone, she would slip on her coat, slip outside and take in the air. She somehow understood that the Adirondacks were a special place, removed from the rest of the bustling, packed-together world.
She passed through the kitchen and turned down the hallway towards the kids’ rooms. There was no sound, but she felt uneasy. Something was leading her, drawing her forward with invisible pulleys that cinched around her, like her skin, dry in the cold mountain air.
She suddenly had an overwhelming urge to stop walking, turn around and go back to bed, slip under the covers, pull them up over her head, and sleep. To escape. But she went on.
She stopped at the girls’ room, which was first on the left. The door was ajar, as per usual, and she pushed it open further. She leaned in and listened to the girls breathing. Reno was a deep sleeper like her father; her breath whistled softly through her small nose. Hannah was more difficult to hear, and Callie tip-toed further into the room, where the baby was sleeping soundly, her breathing coming through her mouth in little haa exhalations. She’d been stuffy-nosed lately.
But Callie was still tense. Back in the hallway she turned and, heart beating, walked the few paces to Braxton’s bedroom. His door was closed.
She turned the knob and swung the door in. There she saw the cool, blue glow of the computer screen on his desk. He had probably snuck out of bed and been doing something on his laptop, and that was what had awakened her. Her heartbeat slowing, she was already preparing a short, whispery lecture in her mind when she saw that he wasn’t in his bed.
He wasn’t in the room.
She glanced at his desk again. His MacBook had some sort of character on the screen, a cartoonish figure that looked like someone from a mob movie. There was a caption next to the character which read, What’re You, Sleeping with the Fishes? Get Back In There!
Braxton’s chair was pushed away from the desk, and there were a few papers lying beside the computer.
She wheeled around and left the room. She walked back down the hallway. The bathroom was off from the kitchen. She had passed it on her way to the girls’ room but couldn’t remember whether it had been open or closed. She usually kept it closed so Hannah, if awakened, wouldn’t wander in and start splashing around in the toilet bowl.
The door was shut. She raised a hand and rapped softly. She whispered, “Brax? You in there?”
There was no light emanating from the space beneath the door, so she opened it and looked in. The bathroom was dark except for a night light plugged into the wall.
She walked into the living room and looked on the couch, but he wasn’t there.
She didn’t know what to do. She was stumped. She was a little angry, and she was scared. She turned and walked quickly back to his room, not so lightly this time; her footfalls pounded the wood as she advanced down the hallway. Maybe he had just been burrowed under the covers and she hadn’t seen.
Or, she thought, he’s out smoking.
Just the one time she’d detected the scent of cigarettes on his clothes, but she’d also smelled something else; the unexpected, rather bright scent of fabric softener. She didn’t think many kids came home from school smelling like their clothes had just been exhumed from the washing machine, and when she went through the pantry and discovered among the fusty bundles of dirty clothes a missing spray bottle of the stuff, she’d realized he’d been covering up. This had been over two months ago, though, before they’d moved, and since then she hadn’t noticed anything, despite sniffing his jackets and shirts on a regular basis. Still, she could have missed it.
Back in his room, she saw for certain that he wasn’t there. She stood in the center, and debated whether or not to put on clothes, go outside and catch him in the act, or stay here in his room, like some mob boss from the game he played online, and wait for his return. Mike would go ballistic if he knew Braxton was smoking, but Callie had smoked on and off for years, and knew how hard it was to stop. Mike didn’t smoke because Mike never had smoked. It was simple — if you didn’t start, you didn’t get hooked. And if Braxton was sneaking one here or there, maybe she could ward off the demon nicotine before it really sank its teeth in.
Even as she thought this, a nameless fear crept over her. It took a moment for her to become aware of the faint red pulse that seemed to live in the room. She looked closely at the wall beside her and saw that it was flashing red; very faint, but unmistakable. Now the fear welled up into her throat, and she spun around, went to the window above his desk and pushed back the short curtain.
She stopped breathing. Outside, quite a distance away but close enough to be visible, what looked like half a dozen police cars were all out, parked in the middle of the road, their lights flashing.
Callie drew a sudden, trembling bre
ath. She left the room in a frenzied rush, displacing as she passed the papers on Braxton’s desk.
Oh God, oh no, oh God, keep him safe, tell me he’s safe, that he went outside to look at the lights, that’s all, he went outside to look.
She jogged down the hallway and back into the living room, turning towards the bedroom to wake Mike. She was almost at the kitchen door when there was a soft knock behind her.
She stopped in her tracks, frozen. Her thoughts vanished like things shot out of the sky. Far away a voice told her a deep truth. It was connected to the knowledge that our birth, our life, our death are what they are, all inevitable and impermanent. What would follow was only a drama arising out of attachment. The storm and tantrum of the ego.
Callie turned around slowly, and faced the door on the other side of the living room. The one that led to the cold, dark outside.
The soft rapping came again, perhaps a little more urgently.
She stood still. The moment drew out like a blade, until the knocking resumed more forcefully.
She found herself drifting towards the door, as if propelled by some unseen force. But she knew. Death was on the other side.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Callie was not in bed beside him, but Mike considered that perfectly normal: Hannah still woke up in the night and sometimes Callie would crawl into bed with her to get her calmed back down, and then fall asleep herself.
His dreams hung in his mind like the after-image of a movie. There was a homeless man who lived near the Hirschl and Adler Galleries in Manhattan, just east of Central Park. He had a tent that rippled in the bitter cold. Nearby was a townhouse that had sold for millions of dollars.
Mike remembered the man and his long, Slavic face and nappy beard. Mike had brought the homeless man a battery-powered heater one particularly brutal winter.
The dream, the image of this man still hanging over him, Mike swung his legs out of the bed and stood up, rubbing his eyes. Then he became aware of voices from the living room.
Callie was up talking to someone. Braxton?
Mike walked out of the room, and, as he moved through the dark kitchen the voices grew clearer. He heard Callie take a deep breath, and then let out a moaning wail. The sound sent a tremor down the column of his spine, and he quickened his pace.
In the living room there was his wife, as he had never seen her before. She was a tangle of arms and legs, and she was being held by a man standing just inside the doorway.
Mike registered two things as he approached them: His wife was somewhere between fainting and trying to get out the door. The man holding her back was a cop. He just had that look. If Callie sensed Mike behind her, she didn’t show it. Instead, the low sound coming from her throat mounted to a mad shriek, and she redoubled her efforts to get past the man blocking her way.
“Callie!” Mike called. His voice sounded strangled. He took her by the shoulders. Only then did she seem to become aware of his presence, and turned and fell into him in a heap. Over and over again, she said, “Let me get out there. I have to get out there!” Her breath was hot against his neck. She grew rigid and pushed away from him, repeating more loudly: “I have to get out there!”
Mike looked beyond her at the man in front of him. “What’s going on?”
“Sir, my name is . . .”
But his words were lost amid Callie’s shrieks, as she broke loose from Mike and pummeled at the cop, knocking him backwards.
The entrance had two doors, a main door and a storm one. The main door was still open behind the man, and the storm door, which swung outward, did nothing to break his fall as Callie charged into him. The two of them went sprawling onto the porch outside. At the same moment, Reno came into the room behind Mike. “Mom?”
Mike spun around and moved instinctively towards his daughter. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew he needed to protect his family. He scooped Reno up and moved quickly into the hallway with her in his arms, as Callie and the man disentangled themselves on the porch.
“Mom!” Reno was yelling now, too. “What’s wrong?”
Mike shushed her. “You’ll wake your sister.”
He stopped just short of her bedroom and held her away from him so he could look into her eyes. She was only six, but she was smart, intuitive; you could get nothing past her. “I don’t know what’s happened yet,” he said. “But I need you to stay right here for just a minute. Let me go help Mommy.”
“Mom!” She looked past him, trying to catch sight of her mother.
“Reno,” he said firmly. “Please, honey. I’ll come right back for you. Stay here.”
He set her down on the threshold to her bedroom. Miraculously, Hannah was still asleep in the darkened room. Mike left Reno and turned away. Passing Braxton’s door, he stuck his head into the room.
Gone.
The computer was lit up. A criminal-looking character stared out from the screen. The room held a faint, red pulse. Lights from outside. Cop lights. Ambulance lights – God no.
He turned and retraced his steps down the hallway, passing Reno, who stood where he had placed her, her little face contorted with confusion and fear. It pained his heart to leave her. But he had to see to Callie.
“Right back,” he said as he passed her and ran a hand over the top of her head, across the soft, tangled hair.
He pounded back to the living room. The man at the doorway was holding Callie, who had quieted down. She was saying, “Why? Why won’t you let me?” in a breathy whisper.
Any moment, he thought, and she’ll start shrieking again. Callie was emotional; she had a short fuse, and was a bear of a mother. Now, her instincts were firing on all cylinders. Mike got his arms around her and drew her back into the house, expecting renewed protests.
But she seemed to soften as she felt his arms around her. The cop, covered in snow from his fall, came in behind them, the storm door swinging shut. He met Mike’s eyes as they all retreated from the entranceway. And then Mike saw behind him the red lights dousing the trees, turning the snow pink in rapid-fire flashes.
The cop shut the main door. Mike held fast to Callie, who was now quietly weeping.
“I’m Detective John Swift, with the State Police,” the man said, speaking urgently now. But his eyes betrayed sorrow. “Do you have a teenaged son?”
At this, Callie’s body went completely slack in Mike’s arms. He held her tightly as she brought both hands to her eyes, covering her face. Mike’s heart was pumping hard and his skin felt numb.
“We do. Is he in some kind of trouble?”
He could have left the house and done something stupid. Like walked over to the neighbors. Maybe they’d freaked and called the police. They didn’t know anything yet. Didn’t know anything.
Didn’t know. Didn’t know didn’t know didn’t—
“He is . . . there is no easy way to say this. He is deceased.”
Callie began to writhe in Mike’s grip, and then she broke free, her elbow coming back and catching him in the solar plexus, knocking the wind from his lungs.
She shoved the detective aside as he sought to grab her. She twisted the doorknob, yanked it back and pushed her way through in one unstoppable motion. She had jumped off the porch and into the frigid night before either Mike or the detective could even straighten themselves out.
As Mike caught a glimpse of her, hair flying in the darkness as the storm door began to close, his only thought was, She’s not wearing any shoes.
* * *
She ran through the darkness toward the red lights. They stuttered and flashed in the night. They made no sense, those lights. They shouldn’t be there.
Yet they had always been there. Deep within her she knew. The lights had always been there, and this had already happened. Already happened in another life, and would go on happening, all through eternity.
She sprinted down the edge of the driveway, oblivious of her feet clad only in socks, in the snow, unaware of it coming down, melting on her face and s
ticking in her hair. The scene ahead seemed to get no nearer, like a mirage in a dream.
Her mind was empty as she ran. She was aware only of her breathing, the pumping of her arms and legs.
Where was she going?
She had forgotten, momentarily, why she was even here, running. And then she saw his face, with the mop of hair in his eyes, and the half smile on his lips.
Someone was trying to stop her. A big man in a uniform had his arms stretched out. His mouth was moving but she heard no sound. She surged past him. She felt his fingers brush her arm as he lunged for her. Then more men surrounded her. She ran until everything in her body sang in chorus, her blood, her nerves, the ringing of the night, all blended into one magnificent blast of sound, and her son was in the middle of it, light brighter than a thousand suns surrounding him, and he turned and looked at her.
Then it was gone..
She saw that they were gathered round something in the road.
Her gaze fell on the object of their attention. She saw his face, and she saw his arm, his hand, which seemed to be reaching out. They seemed to be clearing the snow off him. There was a woman crouched there, who now stood up.
Hands gripped Callie’s arms. She pulled at them and howled. Yet no sound escaped her.
The woman was coming towards her. She was waving her hands and her lips were moving. Callie felt the hands let go. She moved forward, and the woman came towards her. Her eyes were kind but her face was set and determined. Callie ignored her and walked on. Then the woman suddenly had her in a monstrous hug.
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