She came into the room wearing a long black evening gown. Her hair was pinned up, like the first time I had come out to see her. It seemed like a million years ago, back when I thought she was nothing more than a lonely widow.
“Stand up or you’ll be held in contempt,” Maurice said to me.
I got to my feet. Mrs. Gayle went around to the far side of the kitchen table and sat down. There was still a stack of magazines on the table, along with a large pile of pictures she had apparently cut out of them.
“You may be seated,” she said when she was in her chair.
“May I speak?” I said.
“You may not at this time, no. Please be seated.”
Maurice took one step toward me. I sat down on the edge of the chair, my arms bent awkwardly behind my back.
“In the case of the People versus Joseph Trumbull,” she said, “you have been found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.”
She took a magazine from the stack and opened it. Then she picked up her scissors.
“Besides taking the life of young Brian Gayle, you have also destroyed an entire family. Do you have anything to say before I pass sentence?”
“Yes,” I stood up. “I do.”
“Address her as ‘Your Honor,’” Maurice said.
“This is not a real court,” I said. “You are not a judge. I know that you suffered a terrible loss, Mrs. Gayle, but please—”
“I told you to address her as ‘Your Honor.’” Maurice grabbed me by the shirt with his free hand and pushed me back down into the chair.
“I hope you realize that you’re not helping yourself.” She wasn’t looking at me. She was slowly cutting a picture out of the magazine, taking great care to follow the outline exactly.
“If this is a real courtroom, then where’s my lawyer?” I said. “You know I have the right to a lawyer.”
“That’s enough out of you.” She waved her scissors at me. “I believe I’m ready to pass sentence. Please rise.”
Maurice pulled me up by my shirt.
“For your crimes, you are hereby sentenced to serve the rest of your natural life in prison,” she said. “Unfortunately, your prison has not been built yet, so you will be put back into your holding cell until it is ready. I’m sure it’ll be done by tomorrow.”
“It’ll take a little longer than that,” Maurice said, not looking away from me.
“Address me as ‘Your Honor,’ bailiff.”
He rolled his eyes. This might be it, I thought. He’s distracted now. If he just looks away for a second … I’ll do what?
“Your Honor,” he said, “the prison cell will take some time to construct, as I explained earlier. In your chambers, remember?”
“It’s a bunch of metal bars,” she said. “Hubert would have had it half done by now.”
“It’s more than metal bars, Agnes. I have to tear out the walls on that bathroom. I have to put new fixtures in. I have to close off that window—”
“I want it done by tomorrow, bailiff. The prisoner should be in his cell, under twenty-four-hour supervision.”
“Yeah, about that,” he said. He was still holding my shirt, still watching me. “I agreed to try out that guard uniform you were talking about, but I hope you’re not expecting me to spend a lot of time down there with him. I have a training schedule, you know.”
“You don’t need to go to that gym anymore. You’re done with that now. I’ll need you here to manage the prisoner.”
“Okay, a little too crazy now,” he said under his breath.
“What did you say, Maurice?”
“Nothing, Agnes.”
She picked up another magazine and started cutting again. From across the room, I could see her hands shaking. For a long moment there was nothing but the sound of metal blades cutting paper.
That’s when the doorbell rang.
Nobody moved for a full second. Then the whole room turned upside down. Before I could do anything about it, Maurice pushed me backwards, right over the chair. I fell with most of my weight on my left arm, feeling something snap in the wrist. A moment later, he had his knee on my chest. I could feel the air being pushed out of my lungs as he reached for the refrigerator door. He grabbed the dish towel from the door handle and stuffed it into my mouth.
“Answer the door,” he said to her.
“Who could that be?” she said.
“I don’t know. Just answer it.”
“No, we should wait for them to go away.”
“They can see right through to the kitchen,” Maurice said. “They probably already know you’re here.”
She looked down the hallway, her face drained of all color. “There are two men out there,” she said. “What do I say to them?”
“Go see what they want. Then play it by ear.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“Just do it. Go. They’re going to wonder why you’re not answering.”
She got up from the table, smoothing out her black gown. As she walked out of the room, Maurice tightened his grip on me. It felt like he was pushing the dish towel all the way down my throat. The rifle lay on the floor next to him.
I wanted to swing my foot up, to kick him in the head as hard as I could. A lucky shot might stun him for a few seconds. If I could make enough of a commotion, whoever was at the door would hear it.
“One noise out of you,” he said, his face close to mine, “and I will kill you. Do you understand me?”
My left wrist was throbbing. Everything else was going numb as he kept his weight on me. There was no way I could move. I tried to make out what was going on at the door, but all I could hear was my own heartbeat and Maurice’s breathing.
The front door opened. There was a low murmur from the hallway. I heard her say “No” a few times. Then something else I couldn’t decipher. The voice from outside came into the kitchen as nothing more than a dull hum. Then I heard the door close.
Nothing happened for a few seconds. Maurice stayed on top of me. Finally, she came back into the room.
“They’re leaving,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I watched them get in their car.”
Maurice let out a breath and pulled the towel out of my mouth. As he looked up at her, I saw my chance. I rocked back onto my shoulder blades, feeling a white-hot jolt of pain in my left wrist. I kicked his face with my left foot, aiming for his nose and putting everything I had in it, like I was punting a football. If I hit him hard enough, I knew his tear ducts would open up like floodgates and he’d be blinded for at least a few seconds. Long enough for me to get to my feet and make a break for the door.
I heard her screaming, felt Maurice grabbing at my legs as I tried to roll all the way over. I worked myself up onto my knees, then finally got both feet under me. Maurice was still kneeling on the floor as I kicked him again. He blocked me with his forearms. One kick. Two. Three. I finally got through to his ribs on the fourth attempt, heard him cry out as I jumped away from him and right into Agnes Gayle, her white face huge and terrifying as I tried to put a shoulder into her and missed completely. Stumbling now into the hallway, no hands to brace myself as I rammed my head into the wall, hearing the glass break as the pictures fell one by one as I bounced from one wall to the other, seeing the door ahead of me now. Sunshine and grass beyond it if I can just make it.
I didn’t.
Maurice tackled me from behind, nearly sending me headfirst through the door. With my face pressed against the glass, I saw the back of the car as it disappeared down the driveway, the brake lights going on as it made the last turn to the road. The cloud of dust rising slowly behind it, all in the span of two seconds before he pulled me back by the shoulders and stood me right in front of him. With my arms cuffed behind my back, I had no defenses whatsoever. He hit me once in the stomach, folding me over and sending me back to the floor. Then he grabbed me by one foot and dragged me like so much dead weight all the way back into the kitchen.
Agnes Gayle was sitting back down at the table now. She had another magazine open and was paging through it furiously. She didn’t even look up as Maurice picked me up and sat me down on the chair. I was trying hard to breathe again.
“Where’s the tape?” he said to her.
“The drawer.” She had found another picture to cut out and was doing that as fast as her scissors could move.
“Not masking tape. Duct tape.”
“Other drawer.”
He grabbed the cuffs and pulled my arms up behind me. My wrist exploded and I almost blacked out from the pain. He brought my arms down over the back of the chair, then started running the duct tape all around me. When he had done that seven or eight times, he dropped the tape, grabbed the kitchen towel, and held it against his bleeding nose.
“If you broke my nose,” he said to me, “so help me God, I will make you pay for it.”
“I am very upset,” Agnes said, working away with her scissors.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Maurice said. “I’m not exactly thrilled myself. Who were those men at the door, anyway?”
“The police.”
“From where? Woodstock?”
“No. One of them was from Kingston. The other one was from somewhere else. I forgot what he said.”
“Did he say BCI?”
“They gave me their cards. They’re on the floor there.”
I watched Maurice pick up the business cards. “Howard Borello, Kingston Police,” he said, then he flipped to the other card. “William Shea, Bureau of Criminal Investigation.”
They were here, I thought. They were standing right at that front door, not more than twenty feet away from me.
“They asked me if Mr. Trumbull had been here,” she said.
“What did you say?”
“I told them yes.”
Wait a minute, I thought. Howie and Billy the Kid were working together? How did that happen?
“You told them yes?”
“I told them he was here a couple of days ago,” she said. “But not since.”
Howie must have talked him into it. Help me go through his files, find some of the places he may have gone. That’s how they found this place.
“You see,” Maurice said, pressing the towel to his nose again, “this is why the whole prison thing was a bad idea from the start.”
They got here, I thought. They got here, but now they’re gone. They’re driving away.
“It’s not a bad idea,” she said. “If he was already down there, we wouldn’t have had this close call.”
You have to come back, I said inside my head. Howie, you have to come back. Something wasn’t right here. You stood on that porch and you knew that something wasn’t right in this house.
“What happens the next time somebody comes? What if our little prisoner makes a lot of noise down there?”
She answered the door and something wasn’t right about the way she talked to you. You weren’t sure what it was, but now that you’re back in your car, it’s eating at you.
“Nobody ever comes here,” she said. “Today was a special case, on account of him being missing. But now they’re gone. They have no reason to come back.”
It’s eating at you, Howie. You ask Shea to turn around. You have to come back.
“You don’t live on the moon,” Maurice said. “Someone else will come here eventually. They’ll hear him if he tries hard enough.”
You come back. You look around the place. You see the shed, all the obscenities scratched into the walls. You can tell by the smell that someone has been there.
“So you soundproof the cell in case somebody comes by,” she said.
You keep looking. You go to the barn. You see my car.
“Soundproof the cell. Simple as that. Okay, so what happens when a pipe freezes and we have to get a plumber in here? Or the furnace breaks down? What are we going to do with him then?”
“We move him back out to the shed. For as long as we need to. Or somewhere else. A second cell, maybe. That’s your job to figure it out.”
“My job, huh?”
“Yes, it’s your job,” she said. “Because that’s what I want. And I’m the one paying for it.”
“I think I’m the one paying for it, Agnes. I’ve been paying for it for two years now.”
You see my car in the barn, Howie. You know I’m here. You come to the front door with your gun drawn, Shea going around to the back. Or the other way around. I don’t care which way you do it. Just make it happen, guys. Make it happen right now.
“You listen to me,” she said. She got up from the table and came to him. She was still holding her scissors. “You’re going to put him back in the shed tonight. Tomorrow you’re going down to Kingston. You’re going to buy everything you need to start building that prison cell.”
“I’ve been playing along with this,” he said, “but come on … Agnes … You don’t really want to keep this guy in your basement.”
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s not going to make you feel better.”
“You promised me,” she said. “You promised me he’d go to prison.”
“Agnes …”
“You promised me that he’d go away for the rest of his life. That they’d take away his clothes and lock him away in a cage. That he’d have to use the toilet out in the open and that guards would strip-search him every single day. And that the other inmates, that they’d beat him up and rape him. You promised me that, Maurice.”
“Okay, you weren’t actually expecting me to rape this guy in the basement, were you?”
“You promised me.”
“Because that’s not going to happen.”
“You promised me it would happen! All of it!”
That’s when she jabbed him with the scissors. She caught him in the chest with both blades. Two spots of blood formed on his white muscle shirt.
“What the fuck!” he said. “Did you just stab me?”
“You made me mad. Don’t make me do it again.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Taped to the chair, I could only watch what happened next. She jabbed him with the scissors again, barely had the blades back out when Maurice made his move, as sudden and as practiced as a snake. He wrapped the dish towel around her neck. Her eyes grew wider as he pulled outward on each end. She tried to say something, grabbed at him with both hands, dug her fingernails into his arms. She pounded on his chest. All the while her face, already pale, got even whiter.
It was over in less than a minute. When she was dead, he laid her down on the kitchen floor. He did it gently, like she was asleep and he didn’t want to wake her. He put her ankles together, then folded her arms across her chest. Then he closed her eyes.
He stayed kneeling on the floor, looking down at her. There was no expression on his face. No hint of regret. Nothing at all.
“Finally,” he said. “After everything she’s been through … She’s at peace. She looks beautiful now, doesn’t she?”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t imagine any combination of words that would make sense. “You …” I finally said. “What are you?”
“I’m the caretaker,” he said. “I look after her. I keep her happy.”
“You killed her.”
“No,” he said, finally looking up at me. “You did.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You came back here to this house and you killed her,” he said. “Just like the others. It’s a shame I got here too late.”
“No.”
“She was already dead when I found you here.”
He picked up the rifle.
“You tried to attack me,” he said. “I was defending myself.”
“No. It won’t work.”
“It’ll work just fine. They’ll eat it up. Everything will be resolved quite nicely.”
He put the rifle against his cheek. He pointed the barrel at my chest. This is it, I thought. This is where
it ends.
“With a rifle,” I said. One last idea. “You’re going to tell them you had to use a rifle to stop me.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll untape you. You were all over me.”
“That’s not what I mean. You’re going to tell them you came in and found me strangling her, so you had to … what? Go find a gun and come back?”
He put the rifle down.
“It doesn’t work,” I said. “The whole story falls apart if you use that gun.”
I tried to move my weight forward. If I could get a run at him, drive my head into his face or his body … It was my last chance. If Howie and Shea weren’t coming back, if it was just me and Maurice for a few more seconds before he killed me with his bare hands …
One last chance.
“You’re always thinking,” he said. “That’s what I like about you.”
Get on your feet, I told myself. One smooth motion. Dip your head and drive.
He stood up just as I made my move. I didn’t have a chance. He was too fast, too strong. He flipped me right over, chair and all. One last shot of pain in my wrist as he came down on me. One last breath as he wrapped his hands around my neck.
I looked up at him, at his calm, smiling face, thinking, This is the last thing that Laurel saw on this earth. She saw this and then there was nothing.
Voices. The sound of wood breaking, glass shattering. More voices, louder now. A blast of light. One final roar drowning out everything else.
Maurice’s face gone now, replaced by Howie’s. Looking down at me. My best friend since forever.
Then nothing.
TWENTY
It was a perfect day to burn down the city.
The Redcoats came up the Hudson River, apparently on their way to meet up with the rest of the British forces in Saratoga. They docked their boat on the Rondout Creek and began fighting their way up the long hill to the center of town. The men defending the city had had a week to get ready for this day, camped as they were in Forsythe Park, dressed completely in period clothes, apparently right down to the scratchy wool underwear. They had drilled every day, putting on their exhibitions of gunsmithing and noisemaking, filling the air with campfire smoke in the evenings. But in the end, all that preparation, they would only be able to put up token resistance.
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