Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  This might be her future—talking to people who had just witnessed traumatic events. She would have to work with them, calm them, get them to a place where they could talk.

  “Nate,” Stevie said, taking his hand again, “what’s your favorite book?”

  “What?”

  “Just tell me your favorite book. Don’t think about it too hard. Just name a book you like.”

  “The Hobbit.”

  “What do you like about it?” Stevie asked.

  “I like the whole thing.”

  “But name one thing. Close your eyes and think about The Hobbit for one moment and tell me what you like.”

  Nate closed his eyes. His face smoothed just a bit.

  “The round door,” he said. “On Bilbo’s house. I read it when I was little and I always thought about the door.”

  “That’s great,” Stevie said. “Keep that door in your mind. Keep Bilbo in there. Let’s breathe again. Four in. Seven hold. Eight out.”

  After another moment, Stevie saw Nate settle a bit more. His shoulders relaxed a bit, and the strain of trying not to be sick let up. He exhaled one last time, opened his eyes, and looked at her.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay. What’s going to happen? What’s happening? Stevie, what the hell is happening?”

  “They’ll ask us what we saw,” Stevie said.

  “I didn’t see anything. I don’t even know what’s going on. They said Hayes is dead?”

  “I mean how the day went,” Stevie said. “They need to establish the facts.”

  “But what happened? How did Hayes die?”

  “I don’t know,” Stevie said, though in her mind’s eye, she was looking at the hatch door again. She felt it in her hand, the weight of it as she balanced on the thin-runged rail of the ladder. “But it’s important we don’t try to make anything up. Just be clear. Just say what you know.”

  “That’s good advice.” Larry was standing in front of them. He squatted down and looked Nate over, then looked to Stevie and nodded his approval. “This one here has a good head on her shoulders. The police need to go over the events.”

  One of the troopers called Nate’s name and summoned him into the front parlor. Larry sat on the step next to Stevie.

  “How you doing?” he said.

  “I wrote some of it down,” Stevie said, showing him the notes. “As fresh as I could.”

  Larry read the page carefully. Stevie followed his eyes as they went to each line.

  “This is good,” he said, passing it back. “You’re handling this well.”

  “Do you know what happened?” Stevie asked.

  Larry shook his head.

  “Don’t know?” Stevie said. “Or can’t say?”

  “They’re ready for you,” an officer said, stepping up to Stevie and guiding her into the security office.

  Here she was, watching a case up close, giving a statement, experiencing all the things she so longed to experience.

  All it took was for someone to die.

  17

  THE POLICE KEPT STEVIE ABOUT A HALF HOUR. THE QUESTIONS WERE exactly what Stevie expected. Run through the order of the day. Who went where and what time? What was Hayes doing in the tunnel?

  The collection of information, she knew, needs to be clinical. Don’t assume. Don’t get friendly. Ask the questions. Establish the timeline. Record accurately and quickly. She tried to keep her answers clear, short, but complete. No embellishments. No editorializing on what it all meant.

  When she was done, Larry was waiting with Nate so they could drive back to Minerva. As the three of them stepped outside, a crime scene processing van made its way onto the property. This caught Stevie short for a moment and gave her a quick surge of panic. She thought again of the hatch. But it was very likely that all death scenes where the cause wasn’t immediately clear had to be processed.

  The moon was thin like a hook, and the owls were calling. The smell of fall leaves blew on the wind and Hayes was dead.

  They returned to a very wakeful Minerva. There was a kind of a suctioning sensation as she and Nate entered—like they vacuumed the conversation out of the air.

  “Oh my God,” Janelle said, hurrying to Stevie and hugging her. “Are you okay? Oh my God. Is he really dead? Stevie? What happened?”

  Over Janelle’s shoulder, Stevie looked at Ellie and David. They were hunched up together on the corner of the purple sofa. Ellie was largely in a ball—not crying, but vacant. David sat close to her, his arm dropped gently over her shoulder.

  Nate started to giggle.

  “What the hell are you laughing about?” Ellie snapped.

  “I have no idea,” Nate said.

  “It’s shock, El,” Pix said. “Just laugh, Nate. You can’t help how you react.”

  Nate started laughing harder, and then he started to hiccup.

  Stevie felt the sleepiness descending hard now. She was utterly calm, just very tired.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said simply.

  Back in her room, Stevie found that she was moving with very slow, precise motions. Most nights she just pulled off her clothes and threw them into her laundry sack. Tonight, she hung her coat carefully, pulled each arm delicately out of her shirt, removed her pants as if they were fragile. She rolled everything and dropped it carefully into the bag, then dug the warm, school-issued pajamas from the bottom of the dresser and put them on.

  She climbed into bed, lights on, and stared straight ahead, gripping her phone as if waiting for it to ring. No one was going to call. It was just something to hold.

  She had no idea how much time had gone by when there was a quiet knock on her door. At first she decided to ignore it, but then she pushed herself up and opened it.

  Somehow she knew it would be David.

  “Your light was on,” he said quietly. “Can I come in?”

  She blinked and rubbed her neck, then shrugged and left the door hanging open. He came in and shut it. Stevie sat on the floor against the foot of her bed. He leaned against the wall. His hair had been tamed a bit and his expression was unusually serious.

  “Do you know what happened?” he asked.

  “I know he’s dead,” she said. “That’s it.”

  David drew his lips inward in thought and rubbed his hands together for a moment. He paced over to Stevie’s bureau and drummed his fingers on the edge for a moment. He didn’t seem to be focusing much on anything. He slid down to the floor. Stevie stared at the lower half of his sweatpants, which seemed like a safe place to stare. They were very old and may have once been deep navy blue. Now they were washed-out blue-gray with the word YALE on the leg in cracked white lettering.

  “Why did you say that before, about not talking?” he finally asked.

  “Because witnesses are unreliable,” she replied.

  “You think people will lie?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not that. It’s that people don’t know what they remember. It’s not that people lie so much as people are just wrong about what they think they see. Humans are bad at estimating time, distance, and duration of events, especially when scared or stressed. And it’s all a lot worse in the dark. But one of the worst things is when witnesses start talking to each other. As soon as you start talking to someone else, the story you have in your head changes. Human memory is rewritten like computer memory. You just get the most updated file. Which is why, if you see some kind of accident, you should record what you experienced right away, without speaking to anyone else. That’s going to be your clearest account. You may still be off, but you won’t start baking in mistakes.”

  The explanation ran smoothly from her lips, as if she had been waiting her entire life to deliver it to someone. It arrived fully formed. Now that she was talking about crime more hypothetically, her body warmed a bit and her senses returned.

  “What?” David said.

  Stevie looked around for a way to explain. The only objects she had to use for examples were pens and pape
r clips. They would do. She pulled off some caps.

  “Say there’s a robbery,” she said, “and there’s a getaway car and a bunch of robbers with guns. Witness One may then recall three robbers, two with masks and one with a hat, and a black car.”

  She set down one black pen cap and two paper clips.

  “Witness Two may remember four robbers, all with masks, and a blue car.” She added two paper clips and replaced the black cap with a blue one. “And maybe they thought they saw a motorcycle.”

  She pushed a roll of tape past.

  “Witness Three is sure it was three robbers,” she went on, taking away a paper clip. “One wore a mask and a hat, and the car was green. I don’t have a green cap, so . . . anyway. Witness Three is sure of what he saw. That’s a big deal—people who think they have good memories are sometimes the least reliable but the most likely to sway others. And that witness then says that the motorcycle was with the green car.”

  “Is that the tape?” David asked. “And the green car is that blue cap?”

  “The point is,” Stevie said, “now that Witness One has talked to Witness Three, and Witness Three seems really sure about what they saw, Witness One may now think back and see three robbers in hats, not masks. Witness Two now questions the masks and thinks the car was green. And one robber was very tall. Witness Three claims they were all tall. And suddenly everyone starts to say that they were all tall, and that the motorcycle was with the green car.”

  David inched closer and examined the pile. He had gotten very close, actually.

  “Okay,” he said quietly. “But what actually happened?”

  “What?”

  “Was it three or four robbers?” he asked. “Was the car blue, black, or green? Was there a motorcycle involved?”

  “The point is . . . ,” Stevie repeated.

  “And which witness was this?” he asked, reaching for a paper clip. He pressed it into her palm. His hand was warm.

  Had she really just seen Hayes’s body on the ground in that tunnel? She had seen the soles of a pair of shoes, his mottled skin . . .

  Don’t think about that. Don’t make it real.

  Something else was coming into her head instead. Well, not her head. Other parts of her. Her mind was quickly being stripped of rational thoughts. She and David were micropositioning themselves closer, an inch here, an inch there.

  Was this really going to happen?

  The last foot of space between them was rapidly closed up, and David pressed his lips to hers. She felt her body relax, and a warm ease fell over her. She let herself rest against the floor and David came over as well, supporting himself with an elbow. He was kissing her very gently, his lips pressing on her neck, tickling her ear, and she was kissing back harder, hungrily. He rested on the floor and she surprised herself by rolling on top of him.

  Everything in her brain was saying don’t do this—it would be a mess. It was David, and there was something about him that was so off, and he lived upstairs, and someone had just died. She’d seen a body.

  But that was the thing that was also pushing her forward, probably. The thing that was filling her with some weird, urgent emotion and the need to do something, anything, anything at all. She kissed the strange crook of his nose, his high forehead, and back to his mouth. They changed positions, rolling forward to the fireplace. Stevie felt her back hit her case board and knew the cardboard was probably bending a little and she didn’t care. She didn’t care if the floor opened up and swallowed her or if she was sucked up the chimney. Her hands were in his hair and he was mumbling something that she couldn’t quite make out.

  “Hey.”

  That was a totally different voice, and it was coming from the doorway. The two of them stopped rolling. Neither moved for a moment.

  Stevie realized she was sweating and David was out of breath, his heart pulsing above hers. Stevie tipped her head back and looked at the upside-down figure of Pix.

  “I think maybe you should go back to your room,” she said, not unkindly.

  “Yup,” David replied, rolling off Stevie gently and standing up, his back to Pix. “Yup. I’ll do that now.”

  Pix stepped out into the hall and allowed David to pass.

  “You should try to get some sleep,” Pix said once David was gone. “Do you need anything?”

  “Nope,” Stevie said, her voice high and strange. “I’m good. Thanks, Pix.”

  “Okay. I’m just upstairs.”

  Stevie remained where she was for a moment, staring up at the ceiling where a moth was helplessly slamming itself into the light. Then, very slowly and very deliberately, she struck the back of her head against the wooden floor.

  * * *

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  INTERVIEW BETWEEN AGENT SAMUEL ARNOLD AND FLORA ROBINSON

  APRIL 17, 1936, 12:45 p.m.

  LOCATION: ELLINGHAM PROPERTY

  SA: I’d like to go over what happened on Monday. Is that all right?

  FR: Of course.

  SA: You’ve been here at the Ellingham house for two weeks now? Since April fourth?

  FR: Yes.

  SA: You come to visit regularly?

  FR: Yes.

  SA: And you live in New York City. That’s how you know Mrs. Ellingham?

  FR: We met nine years ago.

  SA: Where did you meet?

  FR: At a social occasion.

  SA: What sort of social occasion, Miss Robinson?

  FR: At a literary salon.

  SA: A literary salon?

  FR: Yes.

  SA: Where was this literary salon?

  FR: In New York City.

  SA: Was this a drinking establishment, Miss Robinson?

  FR: Why is that important?

  SA: We just need to build a picture of Mrs. Ellingham’s contacts. We want to know if she might have met someone somewhere who would want to hurt her. Alcohol isn’t against the law anymore, and no one cares what happened nine years ago.

  FR: I assure you, this establishment was full of the best people.

  SA: Drinking establishments nine years ago were also full of criminals, Miss Robinson. By definition, they were run and supplied by criminals.

  FR: Hardly the kind of criminal that . . . it was different.

  SA: I understand. Let’s talk about your relationship now. You’re considered Mrs. Ellingham’s closest friend, would you say? You spend a lot of time here with them in Vermont. The staff says you are here most of the time the Ellinghams are.

  FR: I think that’s fair to say, yes.

  SA: There was a party at the house on Saturday the eleventh. Was that a small or a large party?

  FR: A small party. The parties are very small now that the school has opened.

  SA: Who was in attendance?

  FR: I was, Leo was . . .

  SA: Leonard Holmes Nair. The painter.

  FR: Yes. Maxine Melville, the actress, and her husband, John Porter. One or two business associates of Albert’s, but they didn’t stay very long.

  SA: It appears that most people left the house on Sunday. How long were you planning on staying?

  FR: Until it felt like the right time to go. My invitations are open-ended.

  SA: What did you do on Sunday?

  FR: Albert was working, and it was raining, so we spent a good part of the day in the drawing room with Leo. He is working on a new painting.

  SA: Anything else?

  FR: We played with Alice for a bit. I took a long bath.

  SA: And in the evening?

  FR: I stayed up late talking to Iris and Leo. Maybe a bit too late. I didn’t feel well in the morning.

  SA: In the morning, Mrs. Ellingham called for you to ask you to come on her car ride, is that right?

  FR: Yes. She came to my room at ten. I was still in bed. I had a terrible headache. I said . . .

  [Silence.]

  SA: Yes?

  FR: I’m sorry.

  SA: Take your time.

  FR: I
said I didn’t feel well and she should go. If I’d gone . . .

  SA: So you didn’t go on the ride because you had a headache.

  FR: I wish I’d gone. I wish I’d gone.

  SA: What time did you get out of bed?

  FR: The maid brought me something to eat around noon. I had her draw me a bath. I spent the rest of the day in my room, reading.

  SA: You went to Mrs. Ellingham’s dressing room that evening. Why?

  FR: I heard something going on. I wanted to look out the window. Iris’s window faces the front garden.

  SA: So do several other windows.

  FR: Well, I know her room has a clear view. I just went in to look. I was upset.

  SA: Isn’t it unusual to go into Mrs. Ellingham’s personal dressing room when she’s not there?

  FR: I go to Iris’s dressing room regularly.

  SA: Even when she’s not there?

  FR: Yes. I am free to use her things.

  SA: Did Mrs. Ellingham let others have such open access to her personal space?

  FR: I have no idea.

  SA: She sometimes didn’t allow her personal maid into her dressing room.

  FR: I’m not a maid.

  SA: She typically locked the door, did she not?

  FR: I have a key. Do you have a light for a cigarette?

  SA: Sure.

  [Pause.]

  SA: So you let yourself into Mrs. Ellingham’s private dressing room with your own key? How long have you had a key?

  FR: Oh, I don’t know. Some time.

  SA: It seems odd to me that you would take the time to go into a locked room to look out of a window.