Orient

by Christopher Bollen

  Mills wondered if not becoming attached—to anyone at all, really—was another sacrifice Paul had made for his domineering parents. If they had treated Paul less like a slave and more like a son, he might have had a chance at happiness. Paul was an architect even in his hobbies, painting landscapes that never included a single human figure. To draw a person was to reduce the scene to scale, to ruin its eternal beauty by fixing it to a time and place. Dead landscape paintings filled the cellar, infinite and impotent in bloodless yellows and blues, a headache of sky and sea. One little dot and they might have taken on life. Paul had brought Mills to his house in Orient to be that dot, the smudge on the doorknobs, the dirty feet on the coffee table, the stains on the bedroom rug. Paul needed to come out, not as gay or straight, but as human.

  “I suppose it seems like I don’t have very much,” Paul said. Mills could have answered yes. Instead, he put his arms around Paul. He hugged him just like he had Magdalena’s grandfather clock, savagely, full-bodied, almost lifting him off the ground. “Hey, now,” Paul said, but he too was hugging, pressing his weight on him, the stench of their breaths mixing, the scratch of cheek stubble, the dry skin of radiator heat in winter, two men of different ages, not father and son, not lovers, just the tight, grappling hug of two people who had found each other in an underground room. “All right, all right,” Paul said, but he was squeezing harder than Mills was. “It’s time we went upstairs,” he said, as if time were of the essence. As if time were Paul’s main problem.

  Mills let go. Paul’s eyes were as glassy as the lenses that covered them. They climbed the steps, shut the bulkhead doors, and traveled in slow, astronautical strides through the empty Benchley back rooms. These could be Mills’s rooms too, and he was so fixated on the possibilities of what these rooms could contain that, as he walked down the hallway toward the front of the house, Mills mistook the red strobes revolving through the windows as a string of Christmas lights, a festive, early twinkle of things to come.

  But Paul froze in the hallway, recognizing their source.

  “The police are in the driveway,” he said. “I want you to go upstairs.”

  Mills listened from the top of the steps as Detective Gilburn and two officers swept through the front door.

  “Where is Mills Chevern?” It was Gilburn’s voice, impatient, no longer casual, no longer benign. “We need to take him in for questioning.”

  “On what grounds?” Paul stammered. “Do you have a warrant?”

  “We could get one in a minute. We were hoping to make this easy. If he comes in willingly, it won’t be considered an arrest.”

  “Arrest?” Mills heard the anxiety in Paul’s voice. “Arrest for what?”

  “We need to question him about the burglary and fire of the Muldoon residence.”

  Paul again spat the most atrocious word back at the detective. “Burglary?”

  Mills heard the rustle of a plastic bag. He stayed in the shadows, not daring to step forward on the landing for fear that they might spot him.

  “Does this look familiar to you?”

  “No.”

  “And you can verify that it wasn’t in your guest’s possession when he came to stay with you?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. A flask? Mills doesn’t drink.”

  A blinding memory: Tommy’s flask, which he’d given freely to Lisa Muldoon. She had held it between gloved fingers and wrapped it carefully into the empty birdseed bag. His knees wobbled, as if his own blood were sinking him.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s not here right now.” Paul’s voice strained, and he mumbled unintelligibly, stalling. “He went out about an hour ago. He won’t be back until late tonight.”

  “Lisa Muldoon submitted this to us as evidence. Paul, it’s time you stopped protecting this kid and cooperated in our investigation.”

  “I have cooperated.”

  “Mills Chevern has a history of theft, and when we get the results back from the lab, I’m guessing we’ll find his prints on this flask. It belonged to Tommy Muldoon. It was a family heirloom.”

  There was a pause. Mills heard a chair being dragged across the floor and doors being opened.

  “Mike, I have a hard time imagining Mills burning a house down over a flask. And if he stole it, how did Lisa get her hands on it?”

  “That’s simple. He gave it to her.”

  “He what?”

  “Handed it to her. In her words, like some sort of mocking restitution. And I’m curious what else Mills Chevern has in his possession that belongs to the Muldoons.”

  Footsteps traveled along the hallway into the kitchen, right below where Mills stood.

  “You can’t go back there,” Paul called. “Can you please tell your men that they aren’t allowed back there? This is private property.”

  “I’m not arresting him if he comes in on his own volition. I just want to ask him why he had this flask days after the fire.”

  “Maybe Tommy gave it to him. They were friends, you know.”

  “That’s the version he’s been telling. Lisa has a different story.”

  “Mike, hasn’t Lisa already proven herself to be an unreliable source? Hasn’t she been in Orient all along, not off at college the way she told everyone? Of course she’d like to pin the blame on someone else. I don’t want to accuse anyone, but if she was here the day her family was killed—”

  “She’s copped to that.”

  “I heard you arrested her.”

  “She came in voluntarily. I was hoping Mills would do the same.”

  Mills heard the back door open and boots travel down the cement steps. Gilburn guided Paul closer to the staircase. He lowered his voice. “Did you ever actually see Mills hanging out with Tommy? Was there any moment, any occasion, in which you can swear they actually spent time together as friends?”

  “No, but I know they were. Mills told me so. And Pam, that argument out front days before the fire, it was about Mills and her son being friends.”

  “Do you know what I think it was about? I think it was about Mills entering the house and room of her son. Did Pam Muldoon ever once say during the conversation that Mills and Tommy were friends?”

  “I can’t remember, but why else would he be in his room? That’s what friends do.”

  The two officers reentered the house, weaving through the many, vacant back rooms that Mills had diligently cleared.

  “Paul, listen. I know you like this kid, but you really need to accept the fact that you have no idea where he comes from or who he even is. To answer your question, according to Lisa, she was staying at the Seaview. She wasn’t away at college. And her brother came to visit her there. According to Lisa, Tommy Muldoon was very upset about the young man living next door. He was crying when he went to see her. Tommy told her that Mills kept making passes at him—”

  “Passes?”

  “Yes, passes. And that he found Mills in his room on more than one occasion, going through his stuff.”

  “That is bullshit. If he was in Tommy’s room he was invited.”

  “Lisa claims that Tommy was scared. He felt threatened, ‘creeped out’ was her wording—like the kid wasn’t right in the head. This was only a week before the fire. And when Lisa spoke to her mother by phone a few days later, she says that Pam also caught the boy in her son’s room. Sarakit Herrig verified that Pam was upset about something of just that sort. And now we have an item—a somewhat valuable family artifact—that Mills is known to have had in his possession.”

  “I think it’s important to remember that Mills gave that valuable family artifact back to the one surviving Muldoon, who’s now trying to use it against him,” Paul said sternly.

  “Forget the flask,” Gilburn roared. “That’s not even the sticking point. I’ll tell you what is. The gas can. The more I think about your prints on that canister, the more I’m convinced that the one person who had access to that canister was Mills Chevern. You said it yourself—he carried it out to th
e curb with work gloves. We found a gas canister that came from this house in the only other house in Orient that Mills had access to—the one belonging to his friend Beth. That flask only bolsters what we already know. If Lisa came in to talk to us, why can’t he? We just want to ask him about it.”

  “I’m sure he has an explanation,” Paul said hesitantly. “But I think you’re giving Lisa a little too much credit. Jesus, can’t you hear how convenient that story is, coming from her? It’s obvious she’s trying to take suspicion off her boyfriend. She’d do anything to save him. Everyone knows that she’s been seeing him secretly for months. Why don’t you ask her about that? Ask her where Adam was on the night of the fire. And where was she? Ask her why Adam’s been scaring the whole village with those monsters on the beach.”

  The bag again, crumpling, being returned to wherever Gilburn stored his evidence.

  “That did occur to me. And don’t think for a second I didn’t check. Adam had an alibi. He was with a few of his hunting buddies playing pool in a friend’s basement. We have multiple witnesses that could have testified to being with him until the moment he took the fire department call. He was in the clear for arson.”

  “Was? Why do you keep using the past tense? Have you found him?”

  “Yeah, we found him. Today, with a bullet in his chest. Do you own a rifle?”

  “What?” Paul spit the question out undigested. “Dead? You found his body? Adam Pruitt is dead?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Lisa?”

  “Out of her mind with grief, as anyone could expect.”

  Mills knew that with Adam dead, there was only one other suspect. He had been the main suspect all along, and it was only Adam, alive, who had shielded him.

  “Clear,” one of the officers said.

  “I want it on record that I didn’t allow your men to search my house. Mills is not on the run.” Paul screamed the last word. “He will be back in a few hours.”

  “And I am asking you, as a man who was born in Orient and cares about his community, if we can at least be authorized to search Mills Chevern’s possessions for any additional items that might belong to the Muldoons.”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Paul screeched.

  “I have a call in to his family in California.”

  “He doesn’t have a family. He was a foster kid.”

  “Paul, he was adopted at age thirteen. He has a mother and a father and three sisters in Fort Bragg. We’re trying to track them down right now.”

  “That’s not accurate,” Paul said quietly, as if to himself. “When he gets back, I’ll drive him down to the station myself and this can all be sorted out. He is not on the run, and there are no items, no other items, that belong to the Muldoons in this house. It was my fingerprints, not his, on that gas can. Maybe it’s my fingerprints on the flask. Why don’t you just arrest me for conspiring to steal a bunch of valuables from my neighbors, and then—”

  Mills shoved himself deep into the shadows. He moved across the runner on the tips of his toes, fearing at each step that a beam might betray him. He had to walk slowly as the confrontation accelerated downstairs, too slowly, a silent swamp of slowness, as the words got louder, quicker, more abrasive. Paul was trying to buy him time before they climbed the steps to his bedroom.

  The hallway was black, and a squeak drove through the runner as his toes made contact. He froze. His room was twenty feet away. He held his hands out to feel the contours of a table midway along the hall, the boards around it the loudest under foot. He hopped over the site of blatant impact, nearly tripping as the runner slipped around his shoes. If he jumped out of his window, he might break his legs. As he passed the hall closet, he opened its door, praying for forgiving hinges, and gathered the rope ladder Paul had stowed there in case of a fire. An officer started ascending the steps, but paused when Paul demanded a warrant. In another second, Mills made it to his room and shut the door behind him.

  He grabbed his green duffel bag, quickly packing it with his nearest clothes. He threw the strap over his shoulder, then hurried to the window and opened it. A rinse of cold slid over his face. He threw the rope ladder over the ledge and bolstered its weight bar against the frame. He straddled the sill and found the first flaccid rung. He descended quickly, the rope burning his palms, his eyes falling below the window line as he heard loud steps in the upstairs hallway. His knuckles skidded across the clapboard siding of a house that was supposed to be his, the one he had found amid the millions of homes in America, and he was leaving it like a thief because it didn’t belong to him. It never had, and now it never would.

  The police lights poured through the trees, across the grass, over his arms and shirt, a wash of red waving and receding. He didn’t even have a coat to hide the whiteness of his skin. Eight feet from the ground, he jumped and landed on his side. The metal clamp of his duffel bag struck his cheek; his left arm skinned by a branch. He climbed to his feet and yanked on the ladder, all his muscles fighting the weight that secured it, until it fell from the open window. He gathered it up and headed toward the backyard, realizing as he ran that he’d left Tommy’s watch and the L pendant in the birthing-room bowl, two more pieces of evidence against him. The watch would be identified as Tommy’s, and Lisa could claim the pendant as her own. He was leaving Paul Benchley, who had been his only family, who might also take the watch and pendant as proof of his guilt. Except the fingerprints on the flask didn’t belong to Mills Chevern of Fort Bragg, California. They belonged to a young man with no record, who had disappeared almost a year ago over state lines and hadn’t been heard from since. His fingers were numb, and his breath trailed white. He saw the bulb flicker on in his bedroom, but he rounded the house before the officers could duck their heads out.

  He threw pebbles at the light in the second-floor window. After seven launches and three successful taps, a shape appeared in the glass with unkempt hair and a beefy neck. In the seconds it lingered there, the shape became her husband.

  Mills didn’t want to plead his case to Gavril. That was the reason he’d decided not to ring the doorbell. He wanted Beth. When the shape evaporated, he panicked at the thought of Gavril scurrying down the steps to shoo him off the property or, worse, calling the police. His body was shivering violently.

  A shape cut through the pink, a veil of blond hair and slim shoulders. She raised a finger and disappeared. He rushed to the back door to wait for her. Beth turned down the hallway in sweatpants and a moth-holed T-shirt. She fell back as he entered the kitchen, or he pushed her back, his legs and feet covered in mud, his fingers blue and mooned with dirt, his lips quivering so fast they made even simple words hard to formulate: “Please help me . . . the police . . . the police think I did it.”

  Beth shut the curtains in the kitchen. She made tea in the microwave because it was faster than heating a kettle. He spoke and listened at the same time, pausing only for breath or to check for the Doppler of approaching cars. He rested his forehead against his arm on the table; he could almost fall asleep here, he thought, with Beth across from him, knowing she was there to keep a lookout.

  “Adam Pruitt murdered?” Beth had gone away in her head when he told her. She went away and came back and went away again while he continued talking, each time interrupting him again the same way: “Adam murdered? Shot?”

  “Yes. And he had an alibi for the fire. The reason they couldn’t find him this whole time was because he was dead.”

  “Do you think he died before or after he met Lisa on the beach that day?” she asked. “If she was the last person to see him, maybe she was the one who shot him. We need to tell the police.”

  “I’m not going to the police,” Mills snarled. Beth still seemed to view them as a source of protection. He didn’t. “If Lisa wasn’t with Adam on the night of the fire, if he was with his friends like the detective said, maybe she did it alone. She’d have keys to her own house. She’d know where to pour the gasoline. But she’s already frame
d me. And who do you think they’re going believe?”

  “Okay, okay,” Beth murmured, pushing her hair back with her palms as she leaned on the table. Her face was soft and rested. She looked older and calmer than he’d ever seen her. It seemed as if some burden had been taken off her in the last hours, just as the worst burden weighed on him.

  “And I left that fucking watch and necklace in my bedroom.” He slapped his hand down. “She denied it at the time, but now she’ll probably say that pendant was hers. And I took my bag, so they’ll think I ran off with the rest of the stuff I stole from the Muldoons.”

  “I was with you when we took that pendant.”

  “They’ll say I planted it there. I doubt Eleanor will admit she ever had it. They’ll say anything, make every piece of evidence fit, because they already think I’m guilty. And I did take that watch.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said again. He was sick of her okay, okays. He didn’t want to imagine what was happening at Paul’s right now: the house searched, the beds stripped, all the carefully packed boxes being torn apart. Maybe Mills should have run west as soon as he climbed out of the window.

  “This is what I’m going to do,” he told her. “I’m going to leave as soon as I can. They don’t know my real name. You have to promise not to tell them.” He stared at her. “Do you promise?”

  Beth nodded. “Of course.”

  “I’ll get warm for a few hours and borrow a coat and I’ll get to the train station in Greenport. If I get back to New York, I’ll be safe. They won’t be able to find me there.”

  She tapped her finger, slowly and repeatedly, like the ticking of the grandfather clock they’d carried up to the nursery together.

  “That’s not a good idea,” Beth said. He wanted to disagree, but he was grateful to have someone else to think with. “If they’re looking for you, they know you’re likely to run. They’ve probably already thought of the train station. They’ll have cops waiting there.” There went his two-hour ride to safety. “They might even have the causeway blocked off in case you try to walk or get out by car.” There went the causeway, a thin passage decorated in siren lights. “And the ferry won’t be any safer. They’ll have marshals stationed there and surveillance cameras along the dock.” It had never occurred to him that he could be so trapped on dry land. He realized just how remote Orient was, hanging by a single thread to the rest of the country, marooned in a prison of water. If only he could jump over the bay or the Sound and reach the land on the other side. He started to envision a structure that could span impossible barriers. Mills was wanted for murder and he had just spent a minute reinventing the boat.