by Jeff Abbott
The ceiling creaked above me.
I sat very still on the bed. Old houses cry out in the struggle against time, and this one, weathered by sea and wind and rain, was no exception. But that noise had sounded like the distinct pang of weight against old wood.
Another faint scream of a trodden-upon board, then another.
Why on earth was anyone tiptoeing around the attic?
I stood. Sweetie suddenly bolted upright, flung himself off the bed, and scrabbled at the door like the room was ablaze. I inched the door open and he shot out like a jag of lightning. His claws skittered on the hardwood floor of the hallway and he bounded down the staircase.
I eased the door shut quietly. A long minute passed, then another soft footfall from above—away from the wall that held my window, moving toward my closet.
I tiptoed—after all, if I could hear them, they might hear me—to the closet door and carefully opened it. The door swung open on silent hinges. I fumbled for the light cord. Another creak sounded.
A trapdoor occupied a back corner of the big closet. I'd noticed it when I unpacked, in the same abstract way one notices the particular shade of color the walls are painted. I reached toward the trapdoor, wondering if I could feel the weight of another person on the opposite side of the wood. I didn't touch the door, though—I suddenly felt the sharp gnaw of fear. And remembered the ghostly tickle I'd felt against my skin, and the kitchen door that had swung open with no one near. Idiot. No such thing. Ghosts don't exist, and if they did, they wouldn't make boards creak.
Minutes crawled by like hours. I heard someone walk down the hallway, Sass's voice out in the garden calling for Aubrey, a voice raised downstairs in anger that I suspected was Philip's. The sea wind played against my window in capricious gusts. Rain began again, whipping against the window, the striking drops sounding like a child's fingers thumping against the glass.
The attic held its silence.
I tarried another ten minutes, then opened the trapdoor. Disuse made the hinges shriek, and I cringed, waiting to see a face appear in the black doorway. Dust motes danced around my face and I sneezed. No response issued from the darkness, so I unfolded the wooden steps attached to the door and clambered into the attic.
The house was old, but the attic seemed decades older. The air tasted ancient, tinged with time and dust. I realized, with some disappointment, that I didn't have a flashlight to guide my way.
I retreated to my room. I could still hear Aunt Sass braying for Aubrey, like she might holler for a wayward dog. I wondered if maybe Tom had gotten ahold of Aubrey and was busy resolving their unfinished business by beating Aubrey to a pulp.
Or maybe Aubrey had been sneaking around the attic while his mama called for him out in the garden. I watched Aunt Sass from the window, huddled underneath her umbrella. No Aubrey materialized. Aunt Sass'd catch cold if she didn't get out of the storm.
A quick exploration of my room revealed no flashlight, but I did find a candle and matches. I'd hoped as much, since the frequent storms along the coast could result in power outages. I had no idea if the island had its own generator.
I ascended back into the attic, feeling a tad like a male Jane Eyre, wondering if a raving former wife of Uncle Mutt's awaited me in the darkness. Ridiculous. I'd let a goofy, scared dog and my own overactive imagination propel me away from logic. I am always reasonable and I refused to let myself be girded by the most inane doubts and fears.
Why be afraid of a dark attic? You just found out your father killed his crazy brother. And that this whole clan covered it up for years. You should be more afraid of this family. What'll they do to you if they learn you know about their little conspiracy?
Darkness cloaked me. My candle provided meager illumination. The attic was long, running the length of most of the house. I wondered if each and every room offered access to the garret the way my closet did—surely not. But folks made odd architectural decisions in olden days. I decided it might be worthwhile to identify every point of ingress the attic offered.
Forgotten homes of spiders dangled from the rafters, the errant dust the only prey caught in their clutches. The air smelled of the sea. I began moving toward the south side of the house, away from my room.
Boxes and trunks dotted the walls, arranged haphazardly wherever they were deposited. The grime of long memories coated the containers I ran my fingers across. Locks and old tape kept time out. Nothing here that I could see had been disturbed. But someone had been here. If not taking something—perhaps hiding something?
I looked for the signs that any container or object in sight was new. Nothing gleamed as freshly unwrapped from plastic. There was little here that spoke of recent years.
I stared down at my shoes, now smeared with dust. The floor itself was dirty and I should have thought to see if the intruder had left footprints in his wake. I began backtracking along the floor, keeping the candle's gleam close to the boards.
I heard the wind gust against the glass, the rain building. I thought again of Aunt Sass, yelling out in the rain for her son. I felt a tug of concern for her, to my surprise. Perhaps it was easier now to understand her vitriolic reaction to my wavering about Bob Don's status in my life. She knew what hell he'd been through after Paul's death; maybe she felt he needed a new connection of family and I was his best chance, something gone right after the fabric of his old family became irreparably stained.
Then I saw it—a tennis shoe's tread in the grit. Then another. And another, stepping back over the first. The prints stopped at an array of boxes and trunks, outwardly indiscernible from the rest of the Goertz family detritus that clogged the attic. I put the candle close to the cartons, looking for signs of recent contact.
I finally found one trunk where the dust had been brushed away from the clamps. A fat blot disturbed the grit on the floor. I guessed someone had knelt here, and I believed it had been a man—the knee and shoe prints were large, like the Goertz men. I eased the trunk's lid open. It moaned in quiet protest.
Clothes lay in militarily perfect folds, creases still sharp, although the garments themselves smelled musty. I fingered through the stacked shirts and pants.
They were a boy's clothes, long unworn.
A catcher's mitt, a cracked softball nestled in the web of its leather, lay on one side of the trunk. I brushed fingers against the glove. It was silky with wear, softened in the way only a child's sweat will. I had a shortstop's glove with the same feel back home, and I smiled with the memory of it. A baseball cap for the Houston Astros, fitted for a child's head, lay perfectly next to the mitt. The logo was old, the colorful stripes left over from the early 1980s. I remembered it—I'd worn a similar cap myself.
I pulled the cap out carefully. For some reason, I felt compelled to treat these items with reverence, as though I'd unearthed them from a long-buried time capsule. Below the cap was a stack of familiar blue-backed books. I smiled again as I withdrew the top volumes from the stack. The Flickering Torch Mystery. The Secret of the Caves. The Shattered Helmet. All classics from Franklin W. Dixon's Hardy Boys series. The spines were worn with reading and rereading. These books had been loved. This series had been my favorite boyhood reading as well, tagging along on adventures with the intrepid Frank and Joe. I had even bragged once to Sister that when they made a Hardy Boys movie, I'd be the natural choice for Joe. She'd laughed at my arrogance.
These belongings could have been mine.
I put the books back in the trunk. I rooted about in the clothes some more. Finally I found, at the bottom, a V-neck burgundy sweater, the kind every boy is given during some Christmas and naturally loathes. A diamond-shaped monogram of BGR, the G huge and pointed for the surname, was sewn on the right breast of the sweater.
Brian Riley Goertz.
I felt as though I'd just brushed the satin in a coffin and my hand had come away smeared with some noxious substance. I wiped my fingers against my khaki shorts, feeling uneasy.
I groped through the clothes. Either something h
ad been taken from this trunk, or someone wanted to mull over memories of Brian, or—
Someone wanted to hide something, and chose this as their cubbyhole. My fingers brushed through the garments again, and I touched cardboard. Sandwiched between two shirts was a small box, the sort used to store jewelry. It had been taped shut, but I peeled the tape off and opened the box.
An assortment of men's jewelry lay inside. An old elastic watchband snaked its way through two rings. I examined the booty; the watch was an old Timex, and the face of it was smashed. One ring was a simple wedding band with no inscription; the other ring was a college ring, for Corpus Christi State University.
A man's jewelry, secreted among a dead boy's belongings.
This jewelry, then, wasn't young Brian Goertz's. Paul's, perhaps, given to his son? But if so, why pack it away after Brian's death? Unless Deborah couldn't bear to have her father's effects, or didn't want them. The jewelry box seemed an intruder in the trunk of Brian's belongings, and—
Realization shuddered down my spine. A wedding band. A smashed watch. A college ring from the city that was the cradle of the Goertz family. Paul Goertz's body had never been found, according to the family.
This jewelry might be confirmation of everything Gretchen told me. I imagined a dimly lit sculptor's studio in Corpus Christi, Nora Goertz's dead body sprawled across the putty-speckled floor, her face a wet red mess, the smell of gunfire crisping the air. So what then? Paul Goertz turns from the carnage and calmly slips off his watch, his wedding ring, and his college ring before he goes to stalk Gretchen and meet his own death? It made no sense.
The picture seemed all wrong. Maybe not—if he was going on the run, and the jewelry could be used to identify him. Had Paul's mind worked that way? And perhaps he'd removed his broken watch, if Nora had smashed it while fighting for her life. Perhaps.
Or perhaps the family, complicit in their burial of Paul's body to shield Bob Don, stripped the corpse of its jewelry before disposing of it forever.
That made no sense. Did they plan on presenting the watch and rings to Brian one day—here, my boy, these belonged to your disappeared, presumed dead daddy. Wear them in health. No.
Why would the Goertzes save this? It could be found one day, and implicate them all. A slim chance, yes, but why even take the risk?
I thought for a minute. No easy answer reared its head.
I emptied the rest of the trunk and found nothing else that piqued my interest. I ran my fingers along the trunk's lining, but no mysterious catches or bumps to indicate hidey-holes presented themselves. I leaned back on my heels and sighed. An armor of falsehoods covered this damn family, an unyielding barrier I'd have to blast my way through to get to the protected core of truth.
I stood and hurried down the length of the attic, looking for other entrances. I found one. Over Candace's room, at the other end of the house. Damn. She was probably out and whoever came up here took advantage of her absence. I walked slowly back toward the trapdoor leading to my room, feeling an odd coolness descend on the attic, as though the outside rain robbed the air of its July heat. I knelt again by Brian's forlorn trunk.
What happened here? A strange heat kindled in my heart, as though I could reach past time and death to touch my cousin's hand. My father killed your father. I'm so sorry.
My fingers brushed the trunk's surface, and as if in answer, a chill blasted through the attic, freezing me to the spot. Iciness prickled my skin through my T-shirt and walking shorts. I kept my head bowed, stunned by the sensation, not daring to look up.
Because I was certain that if I did, I would see a young boy standing there, shimmering in the light, insubstantial as air, with silvered, blank eyes.
No, I chided myself. You and your stupid imagination.
So I raised my head. And there he stood, not six feet away from me, the boy in the photographs, wavery in the dust motes. He wore bright summer clothes. A dark elongated bruise marred his pale throat, like a long purplish smudge. He reached a hand toward me, palm up. A strand of seaweed clung to his thumb. I saw bitterness and hate well in his angel's face. Then he disappeared.
I trembled. The cold deepened for a few long moments, then vanished as though a window had been opened and warmth readmitted to my world.
I wiped a shaky hand across my eyes. I hurried about my business with thoughtless precision. I quickly—very quickly—repacked the trunk, with the exception of the jewelry box, which I stuck in my pocket. Then I sealed the trunk and stood and retrieved my still-lit candle. I warmed my hands over the bright, hot flicker. They shook above the little flame.
I retreated back down to the relative safety of my room, rapidly folding up the access door to the attic, wondering if anyone would comment if I nailed it shut.
I walked back into my room, closed the closet door behind me, and set the candle down, extinguishing its flame with a hard breath. Rain lashed against the windows, the storm's second wind fiercer than its first. Thunder cracked the sky and the firmament of the floor quivered a little with its force.
My hands still shook and I turned the hot-water tap on full blast, running the water over my fingers. I felt numb. A litany to reassure myself of my sanity began to chant its way through my mind:
You do not believe in ghosts. You have never believed in ghosts. Your imagination has kicked into overdrive. It was a spooky-looking room, so you imbued it with the qualities you expect in a movie with a web-shrouded attic. The past couple of days have been hell on you mentally, so you just manufactured this little fantasy of a ghost boy for a distraction. You saw nothing. You saw only what your imagination produced for you. You must get a grip on yourself, Jordan. For God's sake.
I washed my face and used the toilet, then soaped my hands and face again. I bit my lip hard to feel the sharp reality of pain. The water felt like life against my face. I dried with a towel and stared at myself in the mirror. In the calm fluorescent light of the bathroom, my hand resting on the cool of the sink, the attic seemed far away. And seeing the daily trappings of grooming—the basin speckled with flecks of whiskers from my morning shave, my toothpaste tube dented in its middle, a bottle of aspirin with its cap not set quite straight—all this ebbed my fear and the first fingers of doubt massaged my beating heart. The cold, the vision of the boy—I'd no doubt manufactured it all in my shock.
It was nothing more. Time to deal with the pressing issues at hand. I pulled the jewelry box from my pocket and decided to hide it among my own clothes, until I decided on a course of action.
I stuck it under a Rice sweatshirt I'd brought for the cool nights that breezed across the coast, even in summer. And heard the crinkle of plastic in one sleeve as I shoved the box underneath the shirt.
I hadn't been the only one sneaking around the house. Nestled in my sweatshirt was a bag full of green pills. The delicate letters on the capsules identified them as Digoxin.
“THESE AREN'T MINE.” I TOSSED THE BAG ON THE table in front of Victor Mendez. “And I don't know who planted them in my room. How about dusting them for prints?” I don't usually bark out suggestions to law-enforcement officers on how to do their job, but fingerprints equaled reality—something I desperately wanted to deal with instead of long-buried family secrets and imaginary children lurking in attics.
If Mendez noticed the tremor in my voice, he gave no sign. Instead he stared at the medicine. “You're saying someone purposefully hid these in your room?”
I resisted my natural urge toward sarcasm. My friendship with Mirabeau's own police chief had taught me that investigators often repeated what a witness told them, to be sure they had the story right. I nodded. “Yes, sir. I found them just now, hidden in one of my sweatshirt sleeves.”
From a corner chair Philip Bedrich glowered at me. “Well, Mr. Mendez. Finally something you can't accuse me of.”
“That's not true,” I answered mildly. “I don't know when the pills were stashed in my room. You had as much opportunity as anyone else.” I marveled at how
controlled my voice sounded, considering the events of the past hour.
Philip shook his head. “This whole comedy of errors is bullshit. Why would I stick pills in your room?”
“I don't know, Philip. I don't know why you do half the things you do.”
“You don't understand,” he muttered. Mendez ended our cousinly concord with a wave of his hand. He slid the bag of pills into a second container, an evidence bag. “You”—he pointed at me—”outside. You stay here, Mr. Bedrich.”
“Like I've got places to go? With the rest of my family thinking I'm a murderer?” Philip mumbled. He ran a hand across his thinning hair and a look of sick worry crossed his features. I suspected the iron facade was starting to buckle; he didn't seem to have the moral fiber to endure a solitary siege. I couldn't imagine what it was like to face a police investigation without my family's support.
I did not envy him the loneliness he was bound to feel.
Mendez guided me onto the veranda. A strong, salty breeze gusted in from the water. The sun had vanished below the horizon. Clouds blotted the night sky, settling close to earth; I felt I could reach out and tangle my hand in their clammy heaviness. The wind off the Gulf was wet. The rain didn't seem to bother Mendez. He stopped by the swing where Bob Don had slapped me and regarded me with frankness.
“Why does so much in this case keep coming back to you, Mr. Poteet?” He shook the evidence bag in front of my face. I saw for the first time how young he looked; surely this was not his first homicide. But perhaps he was more accustomed to the murders of everyday life: the husband slaying the battered wife, the teenaged gang member blasting his rival into early oblivion, the careless drunk mowing down a pedestrian in her path. Lolly Throck-morton's death was the end result of a lace of complex interrelations that offered no simple answers. I wondered how Mendez's first write-up of this case would read. I didn't envy him his job.
“I don't know why. Someone here doesn't like me, or believes I might be easy to frame.”