“I think,” she said, “it looks like hell. In the hands of an opposing candidate, it’s an unpleasant handful of mud. In the hands of a D.A. building a criminal case, it’s a coverup.”
Underhill leaned back and stretched his long legs, crossing them at the ankles in the space between their chairs. “You worry too much, Ms. Kennedy.”
“You’re paying me to worry,” she said. “But at this point, there’s not much you can do about it. But I’d like to fly down to interview Enrique Chembergo. There may be big holes in his statement, but we’ll never know that unless—”
“Drop it, Ms. Kennedy. Please. What’s done is done.” Underhill picked up the glass and swirled the brandy, then tipped it all the way back. He studied the bottom of the glass as his head cleared. “One of life’s great lessons, Ms. Kennedy: First, make the right choice, then worry about the consequences. We did what was right. That’s how this family operates, has always operated.”
Brenna shrugged. “You’re the client. But I don’t think someone like Dagnolo—”
“It didn’t start with me, of course,” Underhill said, looser now, lubricated. “We all carry forward what we’re taught. The guiding principles that my father learned from his father, Ford learned from me. We’re Underhills, Ms. Kennedy. That still means something.”
Maybe a different tack, she thought. Flattery is the inquisitor’s secret weapon. Stroke him. Let his ego do the talking. “So I read in the papers, governor,” she said. “I’ve always known there were principles behind your politics. So often they get lost.”
Underhill straightened in his chair, offered a benevolent smile. “Not with us.”
Brenna decided to push. “Gosh,” she said, “there’s still so much about your family I don’t know.”
By his third brandy, Vincent Underhill already had covered the proud history of three generations since grandfather Andrew. Now, he was deep into his national political aspirations for Ford. Brenna needed only an occasional nod to keep him talking. What Underhill didn’t mention, though, was curious. For a man so infatuated with the notion of legacy, of great and righteous Underhillian values passed like a torch from one generation to the next, why hadn’t he mentioned the obvious: With the death of his only grandchild three years earlier, the great Underhill lineage might end with Ford.
“Tragedy is the greatest test of character,” she said. “I understand you’ve had your share of it in the past few years.”
Underhill’s eyes drifted, but only for a moment. “Alzheimer’s doesn’t respect much of anything, Ms. Kennedy. Not money, or power, or privilege. Doesn’t give a damn about character. But we’re quite involved with the Harmony Center, as you probably know. Whenever we’ve had misfortune, we try to learn from it, to educate others, to inspire.”
She nodded respectfully. It was time to test him. “And of course you and your wife got so involved in brain-injury causes three years ago. I remember that well.”
Underhill shifted in his leather chair, then fixed his gaze on hers. She waited in silence for a response, finally prompting: “After the accident with Ford’s son, I mean.”
Brenna couldn’t tell exactly what had changed, but something in the man’s face softened. His eyes never shifted, but the skin around them seemed to sag, as if gravity had suddenly gotten stronger. The roots of whatever she’d hit went deep.
Underhill unfolded his hands and laid them on the arms of his chair while he traced the pattern of rivets on the front of the right chair arm with one long finger. “Pray, Ms. Kennedy, that you never experience the kind of sadness that the death of a child can bring.”
She thought of Taylor, couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop every mother’s nightmare from bobbing up from the unspeakable depths. “I do,” she said. “It’s the only thing I pray for. I know how painful—”
“No.” He held one hand toward her, pink palm out. “You can’t know, remember?”
“Yes, Mr. Underhill, I can. You don’t have to live a tragedy like that to imagine it, and no parent could imagine it without knowing the pain.”
Underhill squinted, slowly nodding his head. “Well argued, counselor, but I disagree.” He drew his legs up until he sat upright behind his desk, proper but not rigid. “How much do you know about what happened?”
“A riding accident,” she said.
A sad laugh. A nod. “You never think much about the word ‘accident’ until something like that happens, until a child dies. Accidents happen. Everybody knows that. You accept it as part of life. But there’s a whole world of guilt and what-ifs inside the word ‘accident,’ Ms. Kennedy. Anybody who’s been there carries it like a cross, and for the rest of their lives.”
Underhill stood up, moving now as if in slow motion, and measured himself another dose of brandy, smaller this time. “It was a Sunday,” he said, offering the decanter again. Brenna shook her head. “We weren’t even expecting them, Ford, Leigh, and Chip. They just came rolling up unexpected, out for a drive or something. And Chip—God, he was irrepressible—came bouncing out of the Range Rover like a little tornado, all full of plans.”
“Chip was three?”
He nodded. “An amazing age. They’re pretty sure they’re running the world when they’re three.”
“So I’m guessing it was his idea to go riding.”
“Exactly.” Underhill smiled. She felt she’d connected on some level. Then his face sagged again. “But it was my idea to send them out on Gray.”
“That’s the horse?”
“One of Floss’s jumpers. Beautiful animal. Strung tight as a banjo string, though. Skittish. Ford’s a decent rider, but my gut told me to give them one of the gentle mares, something high-mileage. But there he was, that damned gelding, the only one in the stable saddled up and ready. So Ford climbed on, I handed Chip up to him, and off they went.”
Brenna smoothed her skirt, leaning forward as she did. “You can’t blame yourself.”
Underhill sipped at the brandy. “Sure I can.”
“As a friend of mine would say, that’s your choice.”
He nodded. “My choice, yes, because I’ve never shrunk from responsibility, Ms. Kennedy, although I know that’s out of fashion. A different horse, who knows?”
“But that sort of second-guessing—”
Underhill set the brandy glass down with an indelicate thump. “The thing about an ‘accident,’ see, is that it comes with a lifetime of second-guessing. There’s no debate about what happened. It was just one of those things. But you go back and relive the decisions you made that led up to what happened, turn them over and over again, wondering what you might have done differently, how that might have changed things. And you struggle with the questions, like Sisyphus and the rock, but they roll right back. Sometimes they roll over you.”
Brenna recrossed her legs. “What did happen, governor?”
“Out there, while they were riding?”
“The horse reared or something, right?”
Underhill closed his eyes. “Do you know how Fox Chapel got its name, Ms. Kennedy?”
Brenna shook her head.
“Well, actually, neither do I.” He opened his eyes again. “But damned if there aren’t still foxes running around out there on all this expensive real estate. We haven’t yet taken all their habitat, or at least they seem to like what we’ve done with it. They stuck around. So there are foxes in Fox Chapel.”
“Foxes,” she repeated.
“Ford said there was something wrong with the one that crossed the trail that afternoon. It was dull red, not like the others we see around here, my son said, with these tired eyes, head hanging low to the ground like it weighed a ton. Sick-looking, maybe rabid. Something wrong, but we may never know exactly what.”
“Horses can sense things,” she said.
“This wasn’t a trail horse in the first place. Lived its whole life in a stable or a ring. So this fox, whatever the problem with it, just spooked the hell out of him. It was a narrow stretch of trail, down in the bottoms behind the house, and Ford said he couldn’t control him. When he reared, they all went over backward.”
“The horse fell on them?”
Underhill swirled the residue of his brandy and watched the teardrops roll down the sides of the glass. “Ford was able to grab Chip and jump clear. The horse got up, still agitated, wide-eyed, but everybody seemed to be all right. They thought it was over.”
Brenna imagined Ford’s relief as he realized his young son was safe.
“But the fox was still there, maybe fifteen yards down the trail,” Underhill said. “It started coming straight for them, kind of wobbly-legged. Ford said it looked like a mean drunk. That’s when they really knew something was wrong with it.”
Brenna closed her eyes now. “The horse had nowhere to go,” she said.
“He couldn’t turn, couldn’t go forward. He tried to back up, but Ford and Chip were standing on the trail right behind him.” Underhill rubbed his elegant hands across his eyes, pointed to his left temple. “The kick—just one—caught Chippy square, knocked him back maybe twenty feet.”
Brenna felt her stomach clench, imagining the sound, the unreal sensation of seeing your child tossed like a rag doll, the one sickening moment when Ford must have understood that it was bad. She didn’t need to hear the rest of the story. She was sure from Underhill’s deep sigh that he didn’t want to tell it. He seemed to force himself to continue.
“Thank God, he probably never even knew what happened. It was that quick. When Ford picked him up—he was limp, lying in a patch of wildflowers at the base of a tree—he looked like he was sleeping. Eyes closed, no expression whatever. Just a little boy taking a nap. But Ford knew.”
Brenna covered her mouth with her hand, a reflex triggered by the urge to cry. She cleared her throat instead. Underhill was gazing at the ceiling, a single tear spilling from one eye and rolling down his patrician cheek.
“It was a mile, at least, up and out of the bottoms and back to the house. A steep climb, too. Ford doesn’t even remember running back, but as soon as I saw him coming toward the house, my grandson so slack in his arms—” Underhill’s voice caught. He drew a ragged breath. “Chippy never woke up.”
“There was nothing they could do?” Brenna managed.
“He died in the ambulance. The paramedics knew, because they usually won’t let parents ride along.” Underhill couldn’t stop the tremor in his lower jaw. “They let Ford and Leigh stay with him.”
Why had she forced the conversation again? What was her point in asking this man to relive the pain of that tragedy? Brenna couldn’t recall, and suddenly felt as coarse and insensitive as one of those TV reporters who shove their microphones into the faces of a victim’s grieving family and asks how they feel.
“Even before we got the news back here, I’d loaded my shotgun and was headed out to find the horse. Believe me, Ms. Kennedy, he’d have died that day, too, if Floss hadn’t stopped me. Half a million dollars on the hoof—at least that’s what we paid for him when he was a colt—but I’d have done it without a second thought.”
“It wouldn’t have brought your grandson back.”
Underhill nodded. “Of course it was irrational. But a certain closure would have been of some comfort at that point.”
“So you still have the horse?”
“Not here. Like I said, call it irrational. But we just couldn’t keep him here, seeing him every day, this 1,200-pound reminder of our grandchild’s death. Gray was Floss’s favorite, even more than the ones she used to ride, and she couldn’t bear to sell him.”
“You sent him away.”
“We have a horse property down in Westmoreland County, so he’s there. It was best.”
Brenna wanted to say something appropriate, but managed only a tired cliché: “Out of sight, out of mind.”
“The horse, yes,” Underhill said. “Our grandson?” He shook his head. “Never.”
Chapter 20
Maura Pearson piloted the Special into the Harmony parking lot at a stately speed, drawing an appreciative smile from the shriveled octogenarian in a motorized wheelchair—the one the staff called “the White Raisin”—who was waiting for a pickup near the center’s front entrance. She parked in an open spot beside Christensen’s Explorer and cut the engine.
“I still think we’re on to something significant here,” Christensen said. “We know she’s reacted with strong emotion to two memories: the disappearance of the gray horse, and Warren Doti. We know she loved the horse; she may have loved Doti. And you can bet the death of her grandson was another powerful memory.”
Pearson checked her hair in the rearview mirror. “But what’s the connection? Doti and the horse, maybe.”
“The kid died while he was riding the horse.” He folded his notebook and slid it into the briefcase at his feet. “I’m not saying they’re connected, necessarily. They just all happened about the same time.”
“That’s assuming her memory can be trusted,” Pearson said. “Never A-S-S-ume.”
She was right. He needed more information. “I think I’ll focus on that time frame for now, see what turns up. If nothing else, I can nail down a chronology of things that happened to her during that period. I can always broaden it later.”
Pearson checked her watch. “I need to get in for the afternoon class. The aides can get them started, but I should be there. You must have a guess at this point. What do you pinheads call it?”
“A hypothesis.”
“That.”
He hoisted the briefcase, rested it across his thighs. “I can’t help but think this whole thing gets back to the idea of loss. She lost the horse. She lost Doti. She lost the grandson. And it all happened about the same time. There’s a reason those three things are all somehow represented in this very weird, very dark image she paints over and over.”
Pearson pulled the polished chrome driver’s-door handle. The car rocked as the weighty thing swung open. “House of cards,” she said.
“I know. It’s just a start, but it feels significant to me.” And dangerous, he thought, though he still couldn’t say why. He opened his door and stepped out. Ripples of heat rose from the Special’s roof as he and Pearson faced one another across its metal expanse.
“You sitting in this afternoon?” she said.
“Don’t think so.” He turned and unlocked the Explorer’s door, tossed the briefcase onto the front passenger seat. It crushed Annie’s rendition of Earth’s geologic layering, rendered in Play-Doh across sturdy cardboard for an Earth Sciences project at her old school a few months back. Her teacher had returned it the day before Annie transferred to Westminster-Stanton, crisp and fractured, and he hadn’t yet moved it from car to house. His daughter hadn’t seemed particularly fond of it, actually wanted to throw it away, but when he asked if he could put it in the special box where he kept her momentous accomplishments, she’d flushed with pride. Now, this.
“Aw, hell,” he said.
Pearson looked up, startled, from her side of the Special. “What?”
“Nothing. Just … nothing.” He turned back toward her. “Never mind.”
“So, you just goofing off this afternoon, or what?” she said.
Christensen shook his head. “I’ve got some paper-chasing to do.”
Christensen passed Oxford Centre, wondering if Brenna was in her office, then turned off sunwashed, red-brick Grant Street and into the urban canyon of Fourth. He cruised slowly through the deep shadows, between the Grant and City-County bui
ldings, past the jail annex, looking for the squat Gothic masterpiece that housed the Allegheny County morgue.
These few blocks, home to the Pittsburgh police department’s old Public Safety Building, the county courthouse, the county jail, and the morgue, were the center of Brenna’s professional universe. She knew the plots and players on the grand stage of justice in western Pennsylvania in a way he never would. To him, these blocks were unfamiliar territory, far removed from his professional landscape at the University of Pittsburgh. Truth be told, he was awestruck by Brenna’s command of her world of cops and criminals and judges.
He had seen the morgue before, marveled at its turn-of-the-century architecture, but the place struck him each time as something a film director might create for a scene requiring profound gloom. Shoehorned onto a concrete lot behind the courthouse and jail complex, its granite walls were a hopeless gray deepened by layers of soot and grime. Beneath the half-dozen window air conditioners on this side of the building, condensation dripped onto the granite blocks and left dark stains that created the impression that something gory was seeping out. Though a grand example of period architecture, here was a building that would never rise above its purpose.
Christensen circled the block, finally finding a parking spot along the curb near the morgue’s rear entrance. A driveway extended from the street into an open garage door, where he could hear voices and clattering metal and the sound of a closing car door. A sign posted beside the garage door seemed morbidly cold: Delivery Entrance.
What struck him first as he passed was an overpowering and noxious smell, worse than anything he could recall. It hit him like a fetid fist, knocking him back with a force he wouldn’t have thought possible. He covered his nose and mouth, his eyes beginning to tear, and forced himself to peer into the dark garage. Two men in dark-blue jumpsuits and surgical masks were moving around a white coroner’s van, behind which stood two gunmetal gray gurneys, each carrying the ominous black lump of a body bag.
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