The House of Secrets

by Brad Meltzer

“I know, but the details of our lives together…the last time I saw you…where you live…any meals we might’ve eaten…Those memories are gone. I don’t even know my favorite restaurant, or favorite crappy movie, or even if I like you or not.”

  “With looks like this, what’s not to love?”

  “I’m serious, Skip.” On the whiteboard, it now read: I am Hazel and I am feeling frustrated. It was a generous word. Disbelief was more like it. Or pure shock. The doctors told her to give it time, that maybe her memories would come back. Or not. It’d already been two days. Two days with barely any sleep. Two days where she couldn’t taste anything (though they said that may not be permanent), but still, two days of her not knowing what to say when the nurses asked which Cheerios she liked better, plain or Honey Nut? How the hell could I not know that!? she wanted to scream. But something told her to keep her calm in front of the doctors, the nurses, and even Skip.

  Was that her relationship with her brother? According to the nurses, for over a week now, even when Hazel was unconscious, Skip was here every day, bringing old photos and sitting by her side, rubbing her arm the way she likes it. If that wasn’t love, what was it? Skip was being the perfect brother. So why was she so guarded around him? Is that how she dealt with everyone? The scariest part was, she didn’t know that either.

  “It’s the same with Dad,” she explained. “Online, I found an article from a year ago. It said Dad passed out in a grocery store in Encino. Full tachycardia followed by a stent in his heart. Where was I for all that?”

  Skip took a sip from his coffee. “Wherever it is you go,” he said. “Beirut, I think. Maybe Iran. Digging in the sand. Mom used to call it your continental drift.”

  For some reason, that sounded like her mom. Continental drift. “What about what they’re saying online? About Dad getting too close to the truth?”

  “So now the government killed him? Or maybe the Illuminati, the Masons, the Bilderbergs, or those damn poorly dressed pilgrims from the lost colony at Roanoke. Some even say,” Skip began, and suddenly he was their father, his voice a perfect imitation, “it could’ve been…dark magic!”

  Hazel burst out laughing. “He did love invoking a good Nazi curse.” She’d caught the tail end of a Secrets marathon the night before on the TV in her room. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that if a mystery’s solution was a little shallow, muddy the waters with lore.

  “The coroner said it was a heart attack. But even if you disagree, do you know how many people it takes to run a worldwide conspiracy?” Skip asked. “How many man-hours? People get bored, take other jobs, focus on their families, get old, get colon cancer, whatever, and then you gotta get new people and pay for their training. So get these giant organizations out of your head. No one wants to rule the world anymore. That’s a horrible job.”

  “So you don’t think it’s someone you and Dad met…in the House of Secrets?” Hazel said, using her father’s voice now too, not even on purpose. Right there, she realized this was the lexicon of her relationship with Skip: the mocking, the teasing, thirtysomething brother and sister still peppering their conversations with the tiny triggers of their childhood. It made her happy. A piece of her showing up when she least expected it.

  “One last question,” Hazel said. “Do I have any friends? Why hasn’t anyone come to visit me? Am I not a nice person?”

  “That’s three questions,” Skip said. “It’s like you have a brain injury.”

  It was a joke, but Hazel felt Skip evading her, as if he were pretending he hadn’t heard her.

  “Skip,” she said, “I need to know.”

  Skip looked at her. “Do you remember Darren Nixon?”

  Hazel thought for a moment. “I don’t know who that is.”

  “I figured.”

  “So who is he?”

  “No one. Friend from childhood,” Skip said, grabbing the remote and putting on the TV.

  Hazel didn’t know much about her brother. But she knew a lie when she heard one.

  “You brought him up for a reason, Skip. Tell me who Darren Nixon is.”

  “Will you stop? Since when are you so paranoid?”

  For Skip, it was yet another joke, but all it did was remind her how much her brain was misfiring. Facts were easy for her, especially her research. If she closed her eyes, she could practically recite the Edwin Smith Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian medical manual. But when it came to people—to memories, especially about herself—there was so little she could recall. It was like looking through gauze. So yes, maybe Hazel wasn’t paranoid in her old life. But she certainly didn’t feel like someone who apologized for being who she was, whoever that was.

  “Skip, there’s a computer in the waiting room. Plus every nurse on the floor has a phone with a Web browser on it. You can tell me now or I can go out there and look him up myself. Now who’s Darren Nixon?”

  “I’m telling you, it’s nothing. He’s someone who knew Dad.”

  “Knew him how?” Hazel was about to ask. Instead, she glanced out into the hallway. There he was again, the man in the dark suit. The one with the gun. The SIG Sauer.

  Skip looked out into the hallway too, then back at the remote.

  But as Hazel saw the man lock eyes with Skip…as her brother shot this stranger a quick look right back, one thing was clear: These two men knew each other. And they were keeping that information from Hazel.

  “Hey! You! Guy in suit!” Hazel shouted.

  The man kept walking, like he didn’t have a care in the world. This was a hospital. If you’re here, you have a care.

  “I’m talking to you! Who’s Darren Nixon!?” Hazel called out.

  “What’re you doing?” Skip hissed.

  The man turned the corner by the nurses’ station, nearly out of sight.

  “I know you heard me!” she added, louder than ever. “I’ll keep yelling until someone puts it into Google! Darren Nixon! Darren Nixon! Spelled D-A-R-R-E-N—!”

  The man with the gun stopped. Without a word, he turned, heading straight for Hazel’s room. Skip twisted in his seat, refusing to look at him.

  “Ms. Nash, I think you made your point,” the man said.

  “Don’t tell me you’re Darren Nixon,” Hazel said.

  “No.” He shut the door, then reached into his jacket for— Not his gun. His ID. He flashed a shiny gold badge. From the FBI. “I used to work with your father.”

  5

  Skip, call security,” Hazel said.

  Skip stared at her.

  “Skip, you hear what I—?” Skip was still silent. “Wait,” she said to her brother. “You know this guy, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t have to! I see it on your face!”

  “Haze, before you go explosive—”

  “Don’t. I was trying to like you, and now you’re lying to me?”

  “I’m not lying! I met him last week. I swear on my eyes. He came up to me in the hospital cafeteria, flashed his shiny badge, and asked me about Dad. Wanted to know if I knew this guy Darren Nixon.”

  “And you didn’t tell me this?”

  “You’re kidding, right? You can’t come up with your favorite color and I’m supposed to tell you that the FBI wants to chat?”

  “Ms. Nash, I can explain,” the man in the suit said. According to his ID, his name was Trevor Rabkin. He was over six feet tall, wide across the shoulders, and handsome in a bland way. His black hair was short, his blue suit nice, though not expensive. More Jos. A. Bank than Brooks Brothers. And it was wool—too hot for the summer—which meant it was probably what he had, not what he wanted to wear.

  “I used to work with your father,” Rabkin said.

  “You said that already. What kind of work?” Hazel asked.

  Agent Rabkin didn’t answer, which made Hazel think he wasn’t just a guest on her father’s show.

  “Haze, he just wants to ask you a few questions,” Skip said.

  “And I just want
to know what kind of work you did with our dad, because even with my brain not working, I feel like I’d remember if he was doing favors for the government.”

  Rabkin was still silent.

  “Oh, c’mon, can you please spare us the tough-silent-guy thing?” Hazel said, fighting her urge to kick him out on his ass. Just by being here, the FBI was interfering with her recovery. But if Hazel wanted answers—if she wanted to know why the FBI was suddenly sniffing around—there was only one way to find out. “You obviously were doing something with our father, you couldn’t get whatever info you wanted from Skip, and you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have something you were hoping to get from me. Now who’s Darren Nixon?”

  Rabkin stepped deeper into the room, scanning each corner. At the foot of her bed, he picked up her chart and paged through it, the way people who don’t read do, as if by fanning the pages some fascinating aspect of the story would be revealed to them.

  Hazel wondered why he was alone. Didn’t the FBI always travel in pairs? And why did she know that?

  “Do you know where your father was the week before he died?” Agent Rabkin asked.

  Hazel shook her head. That memory, like so many others, was gone.

  “Filming,” Skip said.

  “Exactly,” Rabkin said. “Filming yet another season of The House of Secrets, this one a special episode about some new scientific breakthrough that they hope can help them authenticate the Shroud of Turin.”

  “What’s this have to do with Darren Nixon?”

  “The show was filming in Tucson, Arizona, where the science lab is. But for one of the days, your dad took a day-trip to Spokane, Washington…”

  “Can you please stop doing that thing with your voice?” Hazel said. “You sound like my father doing a tease before a commercial break. We get it. My dad went to Spokane.”

  “And while in Spokane, he went to visit a man named…”

  “Darren Nixon,” Skip said.

  Hazel shot an annoyed look at Skip.

  “Two days after that, Darren Nixon was found dead in New Brunswick, Canada, facedown in a mini-golf amusement park, of all places. Your father was Nixon’s last known visitor.”

  Skip took half a step back. This was news to him too.

  Hazel felt herself indexing the evidence Agent Rabkin was presenting about himself. His white button-down shirt had metal collar stays, held down by magnets. A nice touch, offset by the fact that his red tie looked like it hadn’t been untied in ten years. He had a day’s worth of beard and a little cut on his neck, like his razor was dull. No cologne. A tan line where his ring should be. Like he’d just taken the ring off for the occasion.

  “Does your wife know what kind of cases you work on?” she asked.

  Agent Rabkin stared at Hazel for a few seconds, not speaking. “Not anymore.”

  “So now you come in here and want us to believe that my father might’ve killed this man Nixon?” Hazel asked.

  “I didn’t say that; you did. What caught our attention was the cause of death. According to the coroner, Nixon’s body was cold to the touch and thawing out. Like he’d been frozen. And then, when they cut Nixon open…well, just under the skin of his chest they found a—”

  “Book,” Hazel said.

  Rabkin looked at her. “Not just a book—”

  “A bible,” Hazel blurted. “A bible that belonged to Benedict Arnold.”

  Skip turned her way. Rabkin took half a step to the side, like he was ducking a punch.

  “Hazel, how the hell’d you know that?” Skip asked.

  6

  Who told you about the bible?” Rabkin asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hazel said, still in the hospital bed. She closed her eyes. Tried to focus.

  She’d heard this story before.

  Mysteries need to be solved.

  A dead body.

  Something hidden inside it.

  Some of the details were so clear; others were lost.

  She opened her eyes. Agent Rabkin and Skip were still staring at her.

  “I think my dad told it to me,” Hazel said.

  “He didn’t tell it to me, that’s for sure,” Skip said, standing from his seat and walking over to the window, but never taking his eyes off Hazel. His voice was shaking. “I’d remember something gory like that.”

  “So you think this bible, you think it was something your dad was searching for?” Rabkin asked, glancing back down at Hazel’s chart. “Or was it something he already had?”

  Hazel looked away, toward her reflection in the TV above her bed. Rabkin wouldn’t be here if he didn’t think Hazel knew something. “I’m not sure,” she said, meaning it completely. “But New Brunswick, Canada—where you found the body: Wasn’t that where Benedict Arnold lived right before he died?”

  “He died in London,” Rabkin said. He had an unblinking intensity that Hazel found familiar, as if everything he said he’d read somewhere else. Which was probably true. “After the Canadians got tired of him.”

  “Time-out,” Skip said. “Why would you think my dad had this bible?”

  “That’s classified,” Rabkin said, Hazel watching him work through those words for a second before he uttered them. Classified. Like he liked saying it. He was still new at this. “What I can tell you is: Two weeks ago, on June 19, your father had a private meeting in Spokane, Washington, with a young man named Darren Nixon. Two days later, Nixon was found dead in one of the last places Benedict Arnold lived. And three days after that, your father was dead too. So either we’ve got a hell of a coincidence, or…”

  “You think someone murdered my dad,” Hazel said.

  Rabkin didn’t say a word.

  “I thought they said it was a heart attack,” Skip said. “We saw it happen. I saw it with my own eyes.” Skip paced the room. “You telling me the coroner lied to me? Is that what it’s come to now?”

  “Sit down, Skip,” Hazel said, but he didn’t. To her left, on the side table, was a framed photo Skip had brought to the room. The doctors said old photos might jar some memories. This one was of her and her father at a Dodgers game. She must have loved LA as a kid. That’s what the pictures seemed to show, anyway. If she’d loved it here, though, wouldn’t she have stayed? Why would she spend most of her adult life studying other cultures, digging into unchangeable history? What had she been looking for all this time?

  It didn’t matter, Hazel realized, because the government didn’t send FBI agents to Los Angeles hospitals to say hi to anthropology professors. This was about her father. About what he knew. About what he’d left behind. About the last mystery. And then she heard those words too: That’s the last mystery. And then. As the car swerved…the red.

  “Can I just say,” Skip began, “I don’t get who Darren Nixon is, but if my dad really was going all holy grail on Benedict Arnold’s bible, I’d know. I talked to him every day. I knew what made his nose twitch. Anything JFK-related? Sure. Thomas Jefferson–related? Check. He also had a true soft spot for Jack the Ripper and, for some reason, life-after-death experiences—we did over two dozen shows on that. But never—not once—did he mention Benedict Arnold or his bible.”

  “Maybe this was the secret he kept from everyone,” Rabkin said.

  “Then you don’t know my father. He was on TV for four decades. He outlasted Jacques Cousteau, Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, even that guy from America’s Most Wanted, and he did it for one reason: He didn’t chase anything unless he could put it on television. So again: What’s so special about Benedict Arnold’s prayer book? Who gave it to Arnold? Where’d it come from?”

  “Now you’re asking the right question,” Agent Rabkin said. “The bible was a gift to Arnold. From a man named George Washington.”

  7

  That’s the absolute stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Skip said. “And I’ve spent half my life in meetings with Hollywood executives.”

  “Skip, be quiet,” Hazel said, swinging her legs out of bed and standing up, des
pite the pain. To Rabkin, she added, “Tell me the story about Benedict Arnold.”

  “You should look it up. The last moments between Benedict Arnold and George Washington are among the most heartbreaking in U.S. history,” Rabkin said. “It starts when Benedict Arnold is revealed as a traitor. Right there, Benedict realizes the gig is up—he’s been found out, and it’s all happening right as George Washington himself is about to arrive at Arnold’s home for a visit. Good china is on the table. Linens are washed. The best wine is ready. Two old friends, you understand, that’s what they were.” He paused. “Of course, Washington hasn’t heard the news yet. He has no idea his dear friend is a turncoat. But in a panic, Benedict Arnold races out of the house. He leaves his wife and kid behind, jumps on his horse, and rides away, toward the British.”

  Hazel knew the details were right, but what gnawed at her was that it sounded like Rabkin had just looked the story up himself. He had the facts, but he didn’t have the emotions. For two days now, that exact feeling pained Hazel more than anything. She saw a commercial for Corona beer, but couldn’t remember the last time she had one; she found a scar on her shoulder, but didn’t know how it got there. Without the emotional context, it was like she wasn’t living in her own head; she was occupying someone else’s. Indeed, as Rabkin was proving, emotions were the key to understanding the historical relevance of something. People did horrible things to each other, the same kinds of things over and over again. It was the why that mattered. Rabkin only had the what.

  “I’m confused,” Skip said. “Why didn’t Arnold take his family with him?”

  “It was war,” Rabkin said. “You don’t bring your wife and kid to war.”

  “So where’s the bible come in?” Skip asked.

  “When Washington learns what’s happened, he’s devastated,” Rabkin said. “He trusted Arnold. They’d fought together, lost the same friends, even loved the same people. And on top of that, Arnold wasn’t just trying to hand over the country. He was handing over Washington himself. If the plan had worked, the British would’ve hung George Washington in public. When Washington hears the news, they say it’s the only time the father of our country is ever seen crying.”