The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  Again, the sound. It seemed to be coming from the hallway that probably led to the bedrooms in the back of the house. He looked more closely. The hallway was in shadow, with waist-high wood paneling and mint-green paint above it. The only light was coming through the window in the kitchen, dank gray January sunlight. He could swear someone was shuffling, pacing, back there. But it was the barest whisper.

  Her eyes followed his.

  “Is there anyone else here, Mrs. Godwin?”

  The eyelids drooped. “Here?” The smile again.

  “In the house.”

  Tock. Tick-tock. Tick.

  “No, I don’t believe so.”

  John studied her. She seemed to be waiting for a blow. She reached up and, with a finger, pulled the rust-colored turtleneck away from her throat.

  “Do you want me to check?” he said.

  The house was still now, silent. John’s hand dropped to his lap and inched back toward his gun.

  His mouth was dry. There was nowhere safe from the strangeness now. Not even this widow’s house.

  The whispering sound again.

  “No. Everything is fine.”

  John felt his heart thump.

  “Just give me the word and I’ll do a check.”

  He needed her permission to search the house. But what would he do if he found Chuck Godwin hiding back there in a closet, his face all bashed up from the car accident? What would he do then?

  Her eyes swung up to his. Is this woman a prisoner? he thought. What’s keeping her here?

  For a wild moment, he wanted out of the house. The image of Charlie flashed into his head. He had to get home, check on the boy. A crazy vision filled his mind: Charlie, his throat cut, trying to say something with the flap of severed pulpy flesh gushing little streams of blood, just like Margaret Post.

  Her eyes were filled with an appeal.

  “Mrs. Godwin?”

  Her lips moved, but nothing came out.

  “What is it?”

  She swallowed. “No need.”

  John sat there. The shuffling had not resumed.

  Games. Someone is playing games.

  “Is your husband in the house?”

  Her look was dead, the eyes of a drowned woman, the eyes filming over from too long in the water.

  “You need to leave now,” she said. “Please don’t come here again.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Nat was walking toward the town square. The journal of Sergeant Godwin was back home, on the arm of the leather couch. He had to get away from it, to clear his head.

  The cold assaulted him, sending drafts of frigid air up his pant legs and down the back of his neck. He shivered and increased his pace.

  There could be no more doubt after reading the journal. The traveler was here, among them, in one of them, if the translator Joseph was right. The feeling of doom that had been lurking in the back of his mind—Nothing will ever turn out good again—was now front and center. The only redeeming thing was that his and Becca’s fates were now one. Their ancestors had bound them together, joined their hands in the darkness of the Haitian jungle.

  It was as if she were with him now, as if the warmth he felt were coming partly from her touch. The almost physical discomfort he’d always felt when anyone tried to get close to him was gone—he wanted to be near Becca, and he felt that, out there in the ether, was a response from her. Yes. Now. He didn’t feel wild or reckless; he felt that he had something he wanted, at all costs, to protect.

  He turned on State, choked with shoppers. Must be the post–New Year’s sales, thought Nat, merchants trying to stretch the holidays a couple of weeks. He passed a gaggle of Wartham students and an elderly couple who walked ahead of him with stooped, uncertain steps. Nat thought of Buenos Aires, of getting away from this black hole of a city in winter. But now he wanted to escape with Becca. And forever.

  Nat crossed over State toward the town square, the white steam of his breath blurring his vision. There were more shoppers, a scrum of teenagers weaving through the crowd. As Nat stepped up on the sidewalk, the crowd parted for a moment, and there, sitting on one of the green wrought iron benches at the edge of the park, was Becca Prescott, wrapped in a thick coat, the lower part of her face hidden by a big black-and-red scarf. Nat stopped. He wasn’t surprised or alarmed to see her, or even that he’d picked her out from the hundreds of people walking or resting on this busy square. His mood ticked upward, and he strode toward her, smiling.

  She was crying, or had been.

  “Becca?” he said, sitting next to her on the bench.

  “Yes?”

  “Everything okay?”

  She nodded her head, then again more vigorously.

  “Yes. Yes, Nat?”

  It was the first time she’d said his name without prompting. It sounded strange and wonderful to his ears.

  “What happened?” he said, moving closer to her on the thin struts of the bench.

  “I remembered,” she said, tears glittering in her eyes.

  “You . . . What did you remember?”

  Her gaze sharpened. Nat followed her eyes and saw only Hartigan’s liquor store across the street and the long wool coats of Northam citizens striding past it, mixed in with the bright down jackets of the Wartham girls.

  “I saw my brother. Chase.”

  Nat frowned. “You saw him here?”

  “No,” she said, laughing. God, he’d never heard her really laugh before, he thought; never heard this light rill escaping so naturally from her mouth. “Chase is dead. I know that. What I remembered was him giving me a ride on his shoulders when I was just eight or nine. I saw it, Nat.”

  “Okay.”

  “We were walking down State Street. That’s why I had to come out and look at it again. We were right there”—she pointed with her finger just to the left of Hartigan Liquors’s front window, stocked with bottles of every color—“and it was Easter time and I was wearing a new kelly green dress, and Chase wanted to carry me on his shoulders. To show me off, he said. My father . . .”

  She turned to face him. Nat studied her brown eyes, as clear and as happy as he’d ever seen them. Could she have been released? he thought. Could she be free from the thing that haunted her?

  “Walter Prescott, my father.” And another tear escaped her eye, but Nat saw that she was crying for happiness.

  “Exactly,” Nat said. “Your father.”

  “My father said to Chase: ‘If you think you’re strong enough.’ And Chase let out this little laugh, like, Are you kidding me? And he lifted me up.” Becca slowly raised her hand and touched it to the side of her arm. “I could feel it, Nat. I could feel the pressure of his hand. Just a minute ago. I remembered it like it had just happened.”

  Nat shook his head. “That’s . . . terrific.”

  “And he picked me up and we walked down there.” She pointed to Mrs. Cathay’s Ice Cream Shoppe, which had been on the corner of State and Prince forever. It had four-foot cardboard candy canes pasted to the doorway, along with lots of silver tinsel and a smattering of blue Christmas decorations left over from the holidays. Nat smiled.

  Her mouth fell open slightly. “My father called it promenading. We were promenading down State Street. And I had a mint chocolate chip, a child’s size. It cost a dollar twenty-five, and my father paid.”

  “Sugar cone or regular?”

  She laughed again. “Sugar. Who would eat a regular?”

  Nat laughed, and she joined in. Her hand reached for his. “I know they’re dead, but now they’re mine again. I miss them, but missing them is so much better than . . .” A dark cloud seemed to pass across her face. “Nat, maybe I didn’t die. I’m here with you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed. “Pinch me.”

  He did, on her thigh. Th
e touch sent a shock of pleasure up his arm.

  “Ow!” she yelped, and the bright laughter made her cheeks bunch and spilled the tears in her eyes out sideways.

  Maybe I was all wrong, Nat thought. Maybe everything will be okay.

  But then he remembered Captain Markham and the names of the squadron and he looked away.

  “I have to bring you home,” he said.

  “No!” she said, her voice burbling with suppressed laughter. “Let’s get ice cream. Cherry vanilla for me.”

  Her cheeks were reddened by the cold and the tips of her ears. She seemed, finally, to feel as young as she was. Nineteen. She looked nineteen for the first time.

  “Okay. Ice cream. Then home.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  after he dropped Becca at her house and checked the perimeter, Nat headed back to town, to the grocery store near his condo—who knew you still had to shop for orange juice and coffee when the world was falling apart? he thought. After he’d finished his shopping, he drove to the Northam Museum to have a talk with Atkins. It took longer than he expected, and he didn’t emerge from the museum entrance until after one p.m. As he emerged, his eyes fell on a stack of the Northam News piled in a plastic display case. He picked a copy off the stack. Disappearance of Lawyer Mystifies Officials, read the headline.

  There were now two people and one corpse missing. The body of Chuck Godwin, the lawyer whose widow had come to visit Nat, had disappeared. Elizabeth Dyer, that unpleasant woman he’d met at the morgue, hadn’t been to work in two days. And another morgue employee, Jimmy Stearns, was AWOL, though there seemed to be less concern about him. Judging by his address in a bleak part of the Shan, Nat guessed that Jimmy’s friends didn’t have the attention span or the clout to get the city to notice the man’s disappearance. But Elizabeth Dyer had been someone of substance and, more than that, a woman who hadn’t missed a day of work in three solid years.

  Blood had been found at the morgue where the two worked, and there were fears that Stearns had kidnapped—or killed—his fellow employee, then disappeared. The chances that they’d “run off together,” as one police spokesman put it, seemed low. “We don’t know what happened, we just want to talk with them,” the cop had told the newspaper. Their credit cards and ATM cards hadn’t been used; Elizabeth’s car was still parked in the morgue parking lot. Odd. There was no connection made to the Margaret Post case, though it had to be on people’s minds. There was far too much violence happening in Northam, relative to its size. It was starting to sound like Hartford or Boston.

  There was a separate story on the Post murder. Her parents were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer, with the city chipping in an additional $25,000. A Northam PD spokesman was quoted as saying the investigation was ongoing and that no persons of interest had yet been identified. The city was clearly desperate to be seen as taking the case seriously. Nat guessed the $25,000 was just the beginning.

  Nat looked up and down the snowy street, almost empty of pedestrians. Three Wartham students were hurrying home to their dorms, bags tucked under their arms, their chins tucked deep in blue-and-white scarves, the school colors.

  Nat pulled out his phone, thumbed to the recent calls, and hit a name.

  “John.”

  “Yeah,” John Bailey’s sleep-bleary voice rasped on the other end.

  Nat was watching the man at the end of the street. He turned, blowing a wreath of steam into the air, then began to retrace his steps. He reached his hand up, and it disappeared beneath the hood. Trying to keep warm, Nat thought.

  “I found something,” he said.

  “What?” John said. “Nat, you there? What the hell did you find?”

  “I know why people are dying,” he said.

  The sound of John’s breathing. “Why?” he said.

  “I’ll be there in ten,” Nat said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Ramona steered the Altima up Hanover Road. The weather was crisp, the dome of sky above the wall eggshell blue. Ramona’s heart was palpitating as she came to the tree where they’d found Margaret. She slowed down and stared at the ash’s black branches spread out against the red wall. I wonder if the killer grabbed her here, she thought, because he wanted every Wartham girl to have to pass the spot of her murder again and again, so that we would remember that none of us is safe. That was one of the latest theories she’d come across online. Jezebel had done a whole roundup of theories on the Wartham murder. Ramona usually tried to steer clear of the rampant gossip surrounding Margaret’s death; it was grotesque to see her life dissected by people who’d never known her. But that one little nugget had stayed with her.

  She hit the gas and made the right into Wartham, passing under the arch that read Terras Irradient, the Altima’s front end groaning as she made the wide turn. The car always made her self-conscious when she was on campus. It had made her even more conspicuous among the brightly colored Fiat 500s and the Beemer 3-series that dotted the campus like pieces of candy. The car was twelve years old and loud; the noises from its engine seemed to bounce off the Johnson Chapel with enough force to break its windows. Ramona had to get the damn thing looked at, even if she couldn’t afford the repairs.

  She didn’t want to be any more exposed than she already felt.

  Ramona pressed the accelerator and made her way down Johnson Drive, past the chapel. She could feel the girls on the paths, walking home from the dining hall, their books held high up, turning to look. The hell with them, she thought. At least I have wheels. Most of them had to wait for Mommy and Daddy to come pick them up in the Jag, but Ramona Best was mobile. The thought failed to lighten the darkness of her mood, which had been steadily deflating all the way up 95 North.

  The Altima edged over a little hump in the road. She turned down Raitliff Road and touched the brake as the car’s nose tipped downward, accelerating slightly down the little hill. When she reached the bottom, Ramona swung the car into the lot behind her dorm. She parked near the door in the back. Exit strategy.

  She took out her little two-day bag and headed in the back entrance. When she opened the door, the dorm smell came rushing out to greet her—it always smelled like floor wax, baby powder, and one other ingredient she never was able to nail down. White girls, maybe.

  Ramona started up the stairs. Martina Webb came down toward her, munching on a celery stick.

  “Oh, hey, Ramona.”

  Martina was a thin, acne-pocked sophomore, plain as anything, and a generally pleasant person. Ramona never felt she needed to be on her guard with her.

  “Hi.”

  Martina leaned back on the steel railing and pointed with the celery. “Been away?”

  Ramona nodded.

  “Went home?”

  “Yes, Martina. I went home.”

  Martina made a face. “Wish I could. But I’ve got papers up to my tits.”

  “Already? Classes have barely started.”

  “Some leftover stuff.” Martina looked more closely at Ramona. “Are you okay, hon?”

  “I don’t have cancer, Martina. I’m not recovering from anything. And good for what? Forgetting about Margaret?”

  Martina made a face. “We all miss her.”

  “No, ‘we’ don’t,” Ramona said quickly. Then her face softened. “But I do believe you do.”

  Martina sniffled and came in for a hug. Ramona gave her a brief one, no patting on the back, then picked up her bag and started up the stairs.

  The unadorned door of her room, with its plain black plate reading 2C screwed into the wood, made her tear up a little. Feeling in her bag for the keys, she glanced down and saw the white stuff along the floor at the door’s bottom edge. She didn’t need to touch it to know what it was.

  Salt. A line of salt.

  * * *

  Nat drove to John Bailey’s house. Th
e porch light was off.

  It was odd. You want to show criminals you’re home, John had always told him. Forget that movie shit about turning off all the lights when you think they’re ready to break into your house. Most thieves and burglars are cowards. Show them you’re home and they’ll go away.

  But the lights were off now.

  Nat pulled into the driveway and parked behind John’s Malibu.

  The pathway was shining palest blue in the evening light. He went up and knocked softly on the door. It immediately cracked open an inch, and Nat saw John’s pale, haggard face. Nat could see the glint of gunmetal pointed straight at his belly button.

  “It’s not me you have to worry about,” Nat said. Where had he heard that before?

  But the door didn’t open.

  “John.”

  “What’d you find out, Nat?”

  “It was Maggie Voorhees. She’s come back to kill us all.”

  The eyes were remote, unamused. “What . . . did . . . you . . . find?”

  Nat frowned. “A list.”

  Five seconds ticked by. Then the door opened.

  “Sorry,” John said, waving him in with the gun barrel.

  Nat entered quickly and shut the door behind him.

  “Answering the door with your gun?” he asked John. “Are you all right, buddy?”

  John sat heavily on the couch, crunching the front section of the Boston Globe under him. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and his blue Pats shorts. His skin looked unhealthy, and his right hand was shaking. He laid the gun on a side table.

  “I don’t know what got into me. Maybe I’m losing my fucking mind.”

  “I’d keep it in the safe, if I were you.”

  John closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids vigorously with his index fingers. After a minute, he gave a quick nod. “You’re probably right.”

  Nat went to the window and peered out between the curtains.