The House of Secrets

by Brad Meltzer

  “What does someone like you get paid?”

  “You looking to change jobs?”

  “No,” Hazel said, “I’m trying to figure out why all this is worth it to you.”

  “It’s not about money,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “Doing right,” he said. He bent his left ring finger down into his palm, rubbed his thumb over that tan line. A habit, Hazel thought. Or maybe a tell. Doing right for the people he loved.

  “Ever hear about my dad doing anything with kids?” Hazel asked. “In all his shows, there’s always…I don’t know…there’re lots of kids around.”

  “What’re you saying? You think your Dad—?”

  “I’m not thinking anything,” Hazel shot back.

  Onscreen, Rabbit again eyed Nixon’s family tree. Father: Unknown. “You think your dad could be Nixon’s father?”

  Hazel didn’t answer, though something in her gut didn’t think so.

  “What about your brother? You said he was in Libya for that episode. Think he’d remember anything?”

  “I can ask, but I doubt it.” Skip would’ve been only seven back then. Old enough to have a memory. Probably not old enough to make sense of it. “Maybe my dad’s assistant Ingrid would, if she’s still alive.”

  “She’s alive,” Rabbit said.

  “You’ve checked recently?”

  “Not in the last hour, no,” he said. “But unless she’s taken a fall, she lives—”

  “In Hartford, Connecticut. I know. I looked her up,” Hazel said. “Maybe send someone to her house.”

  Rabbit glanced at her. Then something seemed to dawn on him, something that worried him. “Anyone seen you since you were here?”

  “I talked to a kid across the street. Maybe not a kid. A young woman.”

  “She saw your face?”

  “I wasn’t wearing a mask.”

  Rabbit started moving, walking slowly around the room. “What have you touched in the house and shed?” he asked.

  “Everything.”

  “You talk to anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t stop for gas? Didn’t get a sandwich? Nothing?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Where were you planning on going next?”

  “Depended upon what I found,” Hazel said.

  Rabbit pulled at the skin under his chin, the sympathetic nervous system kicking in. Hazel knew he either thought she was lying or was feeling profound uncertainty.

  “If you had anything to do with Darren Nixon’s death,” he finally said, “you need to tell me.”

  He wasn’t just asking about her memory anymore. He was asking what she knew, what she’d found out.

  “I think we were all to blame,” Hazel said.

  “And that means what?”

  “I gave myself truth serum—that was my answer. I think it has to do with my dad and whatever was in this bible, but…I don’t think I killed Nixon.”

  “What about your father? You kill him?”

  “No,” Hazel said, but the fact was, she had no idea. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I wasn’t ready to die, I know that much, so if I’d done something to him, I wouldn’t have done it in a car I was in too.”

  Another pull at the skin. Then a release.

  “You and I,” he said, “we’re off the record now.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means something isn’t right. And now you’ve left your DNA all over this house and this neighbor can ID you.”

  “Everyone can ID me. After that video of our car crash, one of the rolling hubcaps has its own Facebook page,” Hazel said. “And let’s not forget, it was your big mouth that brought me here. I wouldn’t even know to sniff around if you and your boss didn’t think it was such a good idea.”

  Rabbit went silent. “I’ve been wondering about that too,” he finally said. “For me not to know Nixon had Libyan parents, it’s because someone didn’t tell me. Or because someone wanted you to find it.”

  “Above your pay grade, huh?”

  “That’s what we need to find out.”

  We. He was using “we” now, Hazel noticed. That’d be useful. “Can we talk to your friend Dr. Morrison?” Hazel asked.

  Rabbit shook his head. “Morrison is dead.”

  “No, he’s not. I just spoke to him.”

  “I’m sure you did. And then he jumped off the roof of the hospital.”

  57

  Hazel closed her eyes, picturing Dr. Morrison’s blue shirt. The stray hairs on his neck. The pepper in his teeth. She focused. She could hear a dog barking. She could also smell Agent Rabkin’s cologne. All this going on in the world, and he still managed to put a dash of something on his neck.

  All this cloak-and-dagger crap with her dad?

  All of his old secret government trips?

  All of this death so close to her?

  She was still sitting inside a stranger’s shed. Someone with a history. With a life.

  “What do you go by,” Hazel said, “when you’re not at work?”

  “Trevor. Though…Rabbit.”

  “Rabbit?”

  “It’s short for—”

  “I got it,” she said. “Why was Dr. Morrison giving you all the details about my treatment?”

  “He didn’t have a choice.” Rabbit took a breath. “He was a drug addict. Started with an addiction to Adderall, then began writing his own prescriptions.”

  “How long?”

  “Fifteen years. Maybe more. Longer than I’ve been employed, though apparently he’d been going to NA meetings—Narcotics Anonymous—for the past few years.”

  “But you knew who he was. You knew he worked on my mother. And consulted with my father. He probably knew more about me than I do.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “I’m not a good person.”

  “No,” Rabbit said. “You weren’t.”

  “I’ve killed people.”

  “Your file is unclear on that.”

  “It wasn’t a question,” she said. “That’s something I’ve figured out. At the very least, I tried to kill someone.”

  “Were you successful? Do you know who?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me—I mean, besides Dr. Morrison.”

  “You didn’t kill him,” Rabbit said.

  “Really? Because I’m not feeling that.”

  “You feel something?”

  “I’m not a robot,” Hazel said. “Why didn’t Morrison just quit? When you came to him and told him you needed him to hide my old life from me, why didn’t he just quit his job, get in his car, and keep driving?”

  “I thought the same thing when I first approached him. I hated using his addiction against him, just as much as he hated seeing me. But there’s no quitting. For either of us,” Rabbit said. “Just choices of how you want to live.”

  “You have a shitty job,” Hazel said.

  “Yeah. I’m starting to see that.” For a moment, Rabbit just stood there, looking at nothing, thinking about his new boss, Agent Moten. Then he reached into the duffle, came out with an iPad and a bag filled with Hazel’s medication. “I got these from your apartment. I don’t know what helps anymore, but even for the pain meds, you’ve missed almost an entire day.”

  Hazel watched his thumb go to that missing ring again. He had no idea he was doing it. He was just doing right.

  She took a handful of pills and swallowed them with no water. “I have a tattoo on my neck,” Hazel said. “That in your secret files on me?”

  “No,” Rabbit said. “But if we’re telling secrets, I have one on my shoulder.”

  “Is yours a quote from Benedict Arnold?”

  “No. It’s a birch tree with a hawk in it.”

  Hazel turned away from Rabbit, pulled up her hair, and let him read it.

  “What’s it from?” Rabbit asked.

  “It’s what Benedict Arnold called his men.”

 
“I didn’t like American history. Would’ve failed it in high school if I wasn’t so determined to get away from my parents. True story.”

  “I was just as determined. But I never got anything less than A,” Hazel said, “in anything.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “Probably,” she said, “that I’m not someone you want to creep up on from behind.” She let her hair fall back down, turned and faced Rabbit again. “What does yours mean?”

  “That I’m not someone you want to creep up on from any angle,” he said. He handed her his iPad, facedown. “One last question: We found a new body. I’d like to know what you see.”

  “And then what?”

  Thumb. Missing ring. A pause. “And then you stay or go.”

  Her father was dead. Her mother was a mystery. Her doctor was dead. Darren Nixon was dead. Her own memory was a vacuum. I should run, Hazel thought.

  But she didn’t.

  58

  A dead man, mouth agape.

  Lit upon by flies.

  Outside, a hard sun.

  Not a pretty sight. But this was her sweet spot. Hazel knew this business of death. Muscle memory, the muscle being her brain.

  “I don’t know him,” Hazel said. “Is that what you need to know?”

  “Never heard the name Arthur Kennedy?”

  “Not until you told it to me ten minutes ago,” Hazel said. “What’s his story?”

  “Businessman from New Haven.”

  “That’s not far from where Ingrid lives.”

  “Could be a coincidence.”

  Hazel didn’t think so. Maybe she would have yesterday, but not today. “Where did you find Kennedy’s body?”

  “We didn’t,” Rabbit said. “He was found outside a mosque in Sonapur.” When Hazel cocked an eyebrow, he added, “Slums of Dubai.”

  “Where Skip is. So this is the body he went to check out. You think he’s safe?”

  “As safe as you are here.”

  It was a fair point. Skip said he was also bringing a cameraman, someone who’d have an eye on him. Still, the best way to keep her brother safe was to figure out who had done this in the first place.

  “Tell me what you see,” Rabbit said, pointing back to the photo.

  “Was he murdered?”

  “Tell me what you see.”

  Long way from home, was Hazel’s first thought. A modern experience. A Western one, specifically. Most people died within shouting distance of where they’d been born.

  Most murder victims weren’t left in places where people easily found them. That was against the whole point of killing someone. Even in cultures without strict law enforcement, murderers still didn’t go around leaving bodies stacked up in obvious places. You only left a body in a public place if you wanted to get caught or you wanted to scare the population. From the earliest tribes of the Amazon to the terrorist sects working today, if there was one constant ritual for the dead, Hazel knew, it was to use their brutalized bodies as a warning.

  Except this man didn’t appear brutalized.

  Hazel expanded the photo. He was older than Darren Nixon, pushing fifty by the looks of the folds around his mouth, evident in death, even with the flies. Pattern baldness, but kept trim, sideburns squared.

  Terrible teeth, but not yellowed, which meant he had dental care regularly. Had a watch on his left wrist, a nice one, not too expensive, an Invicta, white gold band, blue face, a diver, though he didn’t look like the kind of guy who went diving.

  No blood anywhere.

  “Well, he’s not homeless,” Hazel said. “Teeth are too clean and his watch is too new.”

  His eyes were closed, but that didn’t mean anything. Most people died with their eyes closed. It didn’t matter if you fell out of a tree or died of cancer, or where in the world you were, Hazel had found. The body was good about closing out stimulus right before the end.

  “Another Revolutionary coat? A copycat?” Hazel said, pointing to the man’s jacket. It looked a bit like the one on Darren Nixon—her father’s coat—though she could tell just from looking at the photo that this one wasn’t old. The buttons were too shiny, which meant they likely weren’t lead or pewter.

  “Definitely a costume. The fabric looks acrylic or polyester. Probably something you can get online, or in a good Halloween shop.”

  Hazel flipped back through the photos. There were only three, all of them clothed. She’d need a shot of the body nude on a table to get a really good look.

  “He was dressed after death,” she said.

  “Based on what?”

  “The body was found outside?”

  “Yes, just as you see it.”

  “Full sun?”

  “For a few hours, maybe,” Rabbit said. “But it was hot. Almost a hundred degrees, even at night.”

  “You sit outside dead, you’re going to leave fluids everywhere. See how clean his clothes are? This man was dressed maybe twelve hours after death, that would be my guess.”

  The flies and rigor mortis made it look horrible, but as Hazel looked at Rabbit, she knew—he’d seen worse.

  “He wasn’t strangled,” she added, pointing to his neck. “And I don’t see any wounds. Those would be leaking too.”

  “The report says respiratory failure. Stroke, maybe. Heart attack.”

  “They find a rental car?”

  “Nope. Nothing. Never checked in to his hotel either.”

  “The hotel where my brother currently is—thanks to the fact that your office told him where this dead guy was planning to stay.”

  “Trust me, I don’t like it either.”

  “So Arthur Kennedy’s body was dumped in a public place, dressed in a crappy Revolutionary costume, and no one noticed?”

  “That’s the problem I’m having,” Rabbit said.

  “And somehow these pictures just show up in the FBI’s inbox by chance?”

  “Right. It’s impossible,” Rabbit said.

  “No. Someone’s baiting you. Or trying to fool you.”

  “There’s something else,” he began, but Hazel wouldn’t let him finish, because when she heard those words—of someone trying to fool you—she already knew, could feel it coming up from behind her, like she’d already been told the story.

  Because she had. She remembered the details. Just like Dr. Morrison had said, with the right association, certain details would come back. She remembered it all now. Including the answer.

  “I know,” she said. “They found another bible in his chest.”

  59

  Trevor Rabkin was thirty years old when he first heard The Story. He was in a dead criminal’s shed. Hazel had just remembered it, remembered all of The Story, so she repeated it, twice, to make sure she got all the details.

  A farmer. A frozen body. An autopsy. Benedict Arnold’s bible concealed in the body’s chest. It wasn’t the sort of thing you told a six-year-old, that much he figured out right away.

  “When did your dad say this happened?”

  “A hundred and fifty years ago. It was a bedtime story. I thought it was, anyway. He could have said three hundred years ago, it wouldn’t have mattered to me. The point was, it’s all a trick. In the story, after the autopsy, they say that the bible was put inside the chest before the person died. But that’s the point. It can’t be. It’s impossible. And once you accept it’s impossible, then you can solve it: Whoever did the autopsy is lying, or the narrator of the story is lying, but someone’s lying. The only way a bible gets into someone’s body is because someone puts it there. It’s a message, a symbol, a whatever the excuse is. But at base, it’s a trick.”

  “Who else knows that story?”

  “It was just something my dad made up one night,” Hazel said. “Ever heard anything like it?”

  “No,” Rabbit said. And neither had Moten, unless he chose not to tell Rabbit. A continuing presumption that was now begging to be tested. “Does Skip know the story?”

  “You heard what he
said. If Dad told it, it wasn’t to him. He just— Growing up, I think it was something my dad made up to get me to stop asking him questions.”

  Or to start, Hazel thought. It was an idea she wasn’t sharing with Rabbit, but it was one she could no longer ignore. All these history details in her head, from Benedict Arnold living in Canada, to bibles being used to hold family trees, to all the nonsense with a book inside someone’s chest…All these years, she assumed her father was entertaining her. But what if it was more than entertainment? What if, over time, he was testing her? Or better yet, training her?

  Hazel considered this, rolled it through her brain. It was, of course, ridiculous. Why would a father train his six-year-old daughter?

  “You’re thinking something, aren’t you?” Rabbit asked.

  “No,” she told him, now remembering a new detail—that her father had been through almost the same thing. Her grandfather was in this business too, used to work in radio and for the Army Signal Corps, telling Loch Ness and Sasquatch stories in a weekly radio show to entertain the troops. Then her dad came along and put those stories on TV.

  From there, Hazel had a new theory. A better theory. Why would a father train his six-year-old daughter? Because he wanted to make sure she didn’t make the same mistakes he did. Because he wanted her to stay away from these silly tricks, wanted her to leave the family business behind. Because he wanted to give her a chance at freedom—to be different from her brother—so she wouldn’t get trapped like he was in this life.

  Why would a father train his six-year-old daughter? Because he loved her.

  “Y’know your dad taught you that story for a reason.”

  “I’m starting to realize that.”

  “Whoever killed Arthur Kennedy—and Darren Nixon—they wanted you to know. Not me. Not the police. You.”