“Who do you think did it?” I asked.
Paul took a long drag and blew it out and cocked his head toward me.
“Maybe it was Frank Cherry’s ghost,” he said.
THE NEXT DAY, from Paul’s room, we saw a large brown four-door pickup truck pulling a horse trailer coming up the Culvers’ driveway, escorted by a patrol car. The truck drove up past the house and down toward the stable.
“That must be Patricia,” I said to Paul, who sat by the window, stroking his beard.
She had arrived the night before and was staying with Kiki Baumberger, who had been Jane Culver’s closest friend in Spencerville. Charles would arrive the next day. The Culvers couldn’t be buried until the coroner concluded his investigation, but a memorial service would be held that Wednesday afternoon at Holy Comforter. What would happen to the Culvers after that was still unsettled, perhaps even for Charles and Patricia. Jane Culver had been born here, but the children had no roots in Spencerville. Once the state settled the matter of their parents’ murder, it was likely that neither Charles nor Patricia would ever return again, even for a casual visit.
“Should we go over there?” I asked.
“What for?” Paul said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “To pay our respects or something.”
“You go if you want,” he said.
I didn’t.
Because she expected to be showing the house soon, my mother had asked me and Paul to straighten up the yard. The grass had begun to grow again and was rough and uneven. Patches of weeds were scattered through the lawn, and the boxwoods needed trimming. Paul took the riding mower, working his way out from the house in circles. I took the push mower and trimmed the edges and borders of the flower beds and the fences. I was out front near the pasture pushing the mower when Patricia crested the hill atop Velma, her father’s chestnut mare. Next to her on Oberon, her mother’s sorrel gelding, was a young man I immediately concluded was my replacement.
They broke for the corner of the field and came around to trot along the fence toward me. I cut the motor and stood with my arms along the fence, waiting for the two horses to slow and stop. I looked past Patricia at first, curious as I was to scrutinize her companion.
He was small—less formidable than Patricia in every aspect. He looked down absently. He might merely have been distracted by the discomfort of the situation; nevertheless, I interpreted his blank stare as a deliberate effort to make plain that I was not nearly as significant a personage to him as he was to me. I also noticed that he was young—plainly younger than Patricia, not much older than me.
“I’m so sorry, Patricia,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said.
She looked a bit dazed, as if she hadn’t slept for quite a while; most likely she hadn’t. I remembered how she had appeared not long after I first met her, before we got involved, even as friends—when I first began to think of her not as aloof, but as isolated; lonely and alone; not an ice princess, but a princess in a tower.
“I was planning to come see you when I could,” I said.
“That’s sweet of you,” she said. She tilted her head to the boy beside her. “This is Nelson,” she said.
I mounted the fence and extended my hand. The boy nudged the horse toward me and reached out to meet my grip.
“Nice day for a ride,” I said.
“The horses needed to be looked after,” Nelson said. “It’s not their fault what’s happened, after all. They’ve been cooped up in that stable half-starved for three days.”
“At least,” Patricia added.
Behind me, Paul cut the engine on the riding mower. The sound of the motor was replaced by the slight breeze and the swishing of the horses’ tails. Paul appeared beside me.
“Hello, Paul,” Patricia said.
“I’m so sorry about what happened,” Paul said.
“I know,” Patricia said.
“Do they have any idea who did it?” Paul asked.
“They don’t seem to have a clue,” Patricia said. “It seems random. But Daddy had a lot of enemies.” She trained her eyes on Paul. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you that,” she said.
“All the same,” Paul said. “It’s really just—well, there really aren’t words for it.”
Patricia nodded gravely.
“Have you all taken any precautionary measures?” she asked.
“Nothing special,” Paul said. “I wouldn’t expect whoever it was to come back.”
“I suspect you’re right about that,” said Nelson.
Patricia’s doleful eyes drifted back up to the house. Her horse snorted in the heavy, humid air.
“I keep wondering,” she said, “what if I had been home with them?”
For a moment she seemed to float off into some ghastly vision of an alternate reality. Was she picturing herself beside them on the floor, surrounded by a circle drawn with her own blood?
She turned back toward us. Her face resumed a more familiar dispassion, as if she’d exceeded her day’s allowance of soul-searching and empathy.
“Rocky,” she said, “do you have the number for that boy who came to work for us? The one who used to sit with your father?”
I felt a twinge of offense on William’s behalf. Don’t call him “boy,” I wanted to say. The Old Man had done it a million times, along with much worse, but still.
“His name is William,” I said.
“That’s right,” Patricia said. “William.”
“I’m sure my mother has it,” I said.
“They won’t take me into the house until Charles arrives,” she said. “I can’t get to Daddy’s address book or Rolodex to find William’s number.”
Daddy’s address book. My eyes clouded with an unexpected swell of empathy.
“Would you mind calling him to ask if he will see after the stable? Nelson will be taking the horses back to Charlottesville this afternoon. I want to have everything shipshape before Charles gets to town.”
“Why don’t you let us take care of it, Patricia?” Paul said.
“I couldn’t,” she said.
“It’s the least we can do,” Paul said.
Patricia peered down at Paul warily.
“Maybe I should do it myself,” she said.
“Nonsense,” said Paul. “You just leave the padlock open when you go this afternoon and we’ll take care of it and lock up when we’re through.”
Patricia took a moment to consider the proposition.
“All right then,” Patricia said. “Thank you both for your help.”
“It’s nothing,” Paul said.
“We should go, Patty,” said Nelson.
Patty? I thought. Oh, please. It must speak ill of me that even under the circumstances, my jealousy of Nelson overtook any sympathy I might have felt for our murdered neighbors. I’d like to think it had more to do with wishing to comfort Patricia in a way I no longer could than with a lack of pity for her parents.
“I hope I’ll see you again,” she said. “Before I leave.”
“I hope so too,” Paul said, as if she were speaking only to him.
AFTER LUNCH WE walked across the field and over to the Culvers’ stable. As we looked up at the trees and the stately columns of Twin Oaks, I realized for the first time that I had never actually been inside this house that had loomed in my imagination for so many years. Paul had gone in, at least twice. I wondered whether that, as much as anything else, was the difference between us.
The stable was empty, but the door had been left unlocked, as promised.
“Lead the way,” Paul said.
I pulled the door open and stepped over the spot on the sandy dirt where, a few months earlier, I had stood over a drunken Brad Culver, contemplating his murder.
“So,” Paul said, “what did you do?”
“I’m sorry?” I asked.
“Where do we start?” he said.
I showed him where the tools were kept. With shovels and pitchforks, we
cleared all the stalls of dung and bedding. Afterward we used wire push brushes to scrub the stalls with disinfectant, drained and rinsed the water buckets, and stored and sealed the leftover feed in rubber bins.
When we were finished, I took the tools back and locked the cabinets. When I turned back to the stable door, Paul was on the ladder leading up to the hayloft.
“Want to check it out?” he asked.
He climbed to the top of the ladder and pushed the ceiling door up and over; it landed with a soft thud. I swallowed hard and followed him up.
Paul strode across the room and flung open the loading door, flooding the room with light. On the floor in the old familiar place was the same pair of blankets I had used with Patricia. Perched atop a small nest of hay next to them was a used condom.
“Yours?” Paul asked.
I shook my head weakly.
“I guess they forgot to clean up after themselves,” Paul said.
Over his shoulder, through the loading door, I could see the paddock and the ring and the driveway that led up to Twin Oaks.
“Should we get rid of the evidence?” Paul asked.
I couldn’t speak.
Paul turned and bent to pick up the blankets. Tucking the blankets under his arm, he kicked a loose clump of straw up and onto the shriveled rubber.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I shut and latched the loading door as Paul descended the ladder. Alone in the darkness, I looked down to where the blankets had flattened the straw. My education, I thought.
Downstairs, Paul had already placed the blankets in one of the cabinets along the wall inside the tack room.
“Anything else?” he said.
I shook my head.
“You do the honors.”
I pushed the door shut and took the padlock from the bench beneath the window and closed it in the latch for what I assumed would be the last time. When I turned around, Paul was already making his way up the drive toward Twin Oaks.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
He stopped and looked back at me as if I’d asked the most foolish question imaginable.
“Don’t you want to see?” he said.
I followed him, as I always had.
The sun was still well above the horizon; otherwise I’m not sure I could have found the courage to step under the yellow tape.
“We shouldn’t be here,” I said.
“I just want to have a look in the window,” Paul said.
“Don’t touch anything,” I said.
Paul stepped up to the windows beside the door and peered in. Behind him I anxiously watched the long driveway.
“Come look,” he said.
We couldn’t see much through the partially drawn curtains, but the gap was just wide enough to reveal the giant dark stain and the outline in white tape of where the bodies had been found at the center of their dark, rusty circles. On the far wall was the bloody writing Miss Anita had described. Observing even the small fragment of the scene visible through the sliver between the curtains, I felt a preternatural apprehension come over me—an almost tangible dread, like a conscious entity, pressing against me with crackling, invisible electric force.
When I turned around, Paul was standing out in the driveway at the edge of the yellow tape, smoking. I stepped off the porch and ran out to meet him.
“What did I tell you?” he said.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
He flicked the ash off the end of his dwindling cigarette, pinched the end with his callused fingers, and tucked the butt into the pocket of his jeans.
“I told you they were going to get theirs, didn’t I?” he said.
23
NEVER BEFORE HAD THE Spottswood County Sheriff’s Office dealt with a case of such sensational magnitude. Crime scene investigators from the state police offices in Richmond were invited in to go over the evidence. The FBI had sent an agent, the newspaper rather breathlessly reported, who specialized in profiling serial killers. The Spencerville City Police also offered their dubious expertise. All these various arms of law enforcement coalesced into the auspiciously named Twin Oaks Task Force.
The first task, it seemed, was the pursuit of office space. By the time I arrived at school Monday morning, word had already spread through the halls of Randolph High that the Twin Oaks murder investigation was being conducted right on our own campus, in the field house annex. Bobby Carwile had mentioned to an old pal who happened to be an assistant football coach at Randolph that the sheriff’s office didn’t have the room to accommodate all the visiting experts. The coach suggested that they use the annex, which had originally been built to house a long-defunct vocational arts program and had since been claimed as office space by the football staff, which essentially meant it wasn’t much more than a place for the male coaches to go take a nap or dip snuff during school hours. It was a public building, closer to the crime scene than the Spottswood County Sheriff’s Office, with plenty of room—an ideal spot to base a law enforcement task force. Apparently when the city superintendent of schools agreed to the request, he had done so without fully considering the monumental distraction an active murder investigation would be to a thousand high school students.
At lunch, Cinnamon and I took up our usual position beneath the tree outside the smoking pavilion. Down the hill, clusters of students gathered at the end of the yard against the fence overlooking the track and the field house annex.
“I don’t know what they think they’re going to see,” Cinnamon said.
“Maybe a devil-worshipping hippie maniac being pulled out of the back of a squad car,” I said.
Inspired, Cinnamon perched her cigarette in the corner of her mouth and pulled her sketch pad and a box of charcoal sticks and pencils from her shoulder bag. With quick, graceful strokes of charcoal she outlined the shape of a lanky, bearded man with glowering eyes, clutching a dripping knife the size of a machete. Instead of feet, she drew cloven hooves. From between his legs curled a rather phallic forked tail; from beneath his bushy hair, a pair of pointed horns. She held the picture up and grinned.
“Nice,” I said. “I think I’ll have it framed.”
She tossed the smoking butt of her cigarette into the grass at her feet and stamped it out under the soles of her cherry-red sixteen-hole Dr. Martens.
I told her about seeing Patricia and her new boyfriend in the pasture.
“Seems kind of cold,” Cinnamon said, “going horseback riding in front of the house where her parents got murdered.”
“The horses needed to be exercised,” I said. “They’d been stuck in the stalls for a few days. Somebody had to do it.”
“What about you?” Cinnamon said. “How did it feel to see her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She wasn’t herself. It was weird, seeing her all—I don’t know—sentimental.”
“What did you think of her boyfriend?” Cinnamon asked.
“He’s, like, twelve,” I said.
“Seriously?”
“No. But he couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty. My mom heard he was a freshman in college, but he quit and decided to do the horse thing instead. Nelson Waltrip. That’s his name. Have you ever heard anything so douchey in all your life?”
I told Cinnamon about the surprise Paul and I had found in the hayloft.
“What a bitch,” Cinnamon said.
“I don’t know. Paul thought it was as good a way as any to get your mind off things,” I said. “They must have forgotten they left it there.”
“Bullshit,” Cinnamon said.
She lit another cigarette.
“Don’t be so sad, Rocky,” she said.
“I’m not,” I said. “It was over a long time ago.”
“You don’t look like you’re over it,” she said.
I looked down at the grass. “Like I said, it’s just weird.”
“Well, cheer up,” she said. “You’ve still got Mr. LaPage.”
&nb
sp; “Hilarious,” I said.
We stood and shouldered our bags. Cinnamon took a final drag before flipping the butt off into the yard toward the annex building, where a crowd of students still pressed up to the fence, hoping to see something remarkable.
I rode the bus that afternoon; Paul had said he had something to do. When I got home, a white panel van and a pair of police cruisers were parked in front of Twin Oaks. Charles Culver would have arrived by then, I thought. I wondered whether he and Patricia had been allowed to go inside.
I found my mother alone at the kitchen table, staring down into an empty coffee cup. She had taken the afternoon off to meet with the Realtor.
“How did it go?” I asked.
“Well, the good news is, we won’t be showing the house for a while,” she said.
The reasons were obvious enough. Who would want to go out to pick up the newspaper every morning and have to look up across the field at the murder house?
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“Something will work out,” she said. “It always does.”
The doorbell rang.
“You see?” she said. “I’m sure that’s the Realtor right now, here to tell us she’s had a surprise offer, above the asking price. Salvation is always just a moment away.”
I followed her out to the entry hallway to answer the door. It was not the Realtor but rather the sheriff’s investigator Bobby Carwile, in his weathered chinos and necktie and the same navy blazer he’d worn when he visited us the day before.
“Hello there,” Bobby Carwile said. “Is your mom home?”
Over his shoulder, I could see another white van, just like the one in the driveway at Twin Oaks. Two men wearing navy-blue jackets with the word POLICE emblazoned in yellow across the back were removing a series of what looked like fishing tackle boxes from the open rear doors.
“Hello, ma’am,” Carwile said.
“How can I help you?” said my mother.
“I just thought, if you didn’t mind, that I might ask you a few more questions.”
“Who are they?” my mother asked, pointing at the two men behind the panel van.
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