Noah blinks, snaps out of his fury, looks at me, the gun shoved against my skull.
He backpedals from us, puts his hands on his head.
“You’ll never get away with this,” I say.
“Sure I will. Sure I will. The happy-go-lucky millionaire philanthropist who serves low-cost food to the middle class? Everyone loves me. Oh, and Jenna?” he says.
“Yes, Justin,” I say evenly.
He says it in a whisper. “After I kill you and Noah, I’m going to find your aunt Chloe and kill her, too. She’s going to love our little fun room downstairs. I’m thinking shish kebab.”
And then I feel the vibration against the back of my skull as Justin pulls the trigger.
120
CLICK.
Justin pulls the trigger again.
Another hollow click.
I dive for the Glock I just dropped, sliding to the floor, then spinning back, faster than Justin can say Damn, this revolver must not be loaded.
Thank you, Aiden, for emptying the bullets.
Justin looks at the gun, then me. A bitter smile on his face, then he shakes his head and throws the gun to the floor.
“No one will believe it,” he says. “Like Noah said, Chief Marks already has arrest warrants out with your name on it. So the only way you’ll get that justice you so richly seek is to shoot me.”
I get to my feet, the gun steady now, aimed at Justin’s chest.
He raises his arms in surrender. “How about it, Detective? Are you gonna shoot an unarmed man? Please, please,” he says in a mocking plea, dropping to his knees, “don’t shoot me, Ms. Murphy! Don’t shoot me!”
Sirens, in the distance, but not that distant. A 911 call, no doubt, after the gunshots I fired. Once Isaac heard that the shots came from the house on 7 Ocean Drive, he’d send the whole force.
I lower the gun slightly—not so low as to give Justin any ideas, but not pointing it directly at him.
“You’re not gonna do it,” says Justin, as if disappointed. “You’re really not.” His chest rises and falls, his face locked in a grimace.
It hits me then—he wants to die. He doesn’t want to spend his life in prison. Not one member of the Dahlquist clan ever spent a day in prison. He doesn’t want to break the streak.
“My favorite was your uncle,” he says. “Heating up that poker in the fireplace and driving it through his kidney.”
I shake my head. I’m not going to let him bait me.
“Do you wanna know what he said before I did it?”
The sirens getting closer. Multiple squad cars approaching.
“He said, ‘Help me, Jenna.’ He was begging.”
I close the distance between us, the gun aimed at his head.
“He was in so much pain,” Justin says.
I rear back, then drive my foot into his ribs, kicking him as hard as I can.
He doubles over on the floor.
“Pain like that?” I say.
He lets out a noise—pain, yes, but also amusement. “That’s the spirit,” he manages. “I knew you had it in you.”
“You’re gonna rot in prison, Justin,” I say. “You don’t get to go out in a blaze of glory, some dramatic suicide, like all your ancestors.”
Justin focuses on me with a hint of amusement. He gets himself to his hands and knees. “My ancestors?” he says.
“Shut up, Justin,” Noah says, suddenly stepping forward.
“My ancestors?”
Noah pulls the .38 special from his pocket and aims it at Justin. “I’m warning you, Justin, shut up.”
Justin lets out a wicked laugh. “Oh, Jenna, you think Holden is my father?”
I look at Noah. “What’s he talking about?”
“Nothing,” Noah says. “We’ll talk about it later, when everything’s calmed down.”
I step back, instinctively, separating myself from both of them. “We’ll talk about it now, Noah. And put down that gun!”
“Murphy—”
“Drop the gun, Noah! Now! Slide it over to me.”
The sound of tires squealing outside as the squad cars pull up to the mansion.
“Tell her, Noah,” says Justin, regaining an upright position, still on his knees. “Or better yet, show her those papers in your—”
Noah throws an uppercut, a violent left fist, connecting just under Justin’s chin, sending Justin off his knees and sprawling backward. Justin’s head smacks the floor, and this time he’s truly unconscious, no faking about it.
Noah with his back to me. The gun in his right hand.
“Don’t move, Noah. Don’t make a move.”
The sounds outside: officers rushing through the gate, up the walk, the front door of the mansion slamming open, footfalls downstairs, their voices, announcing their office, clearing each room on the lower level.
My mind races, thoughts bouncing every which way, trying to make it fit. Noah—Noah—it was Noah all along? Noah is Holden’s son? Everything spun upside down, everything unraveled, like a fist coming down on a jigsaw puzzle, scattering the pieces in all directions.
“Tell me, Noah,” I say, my voice shaking.
Noah slowly bends down and places the gun on the floor. Though Justin is no longer a threat, he kicks the gun across the room for good measure.
“I want to see those papers,” I say.
His back still to me, Noah removes the papers from his pocket, rolled up like an ancient scroll, and turns to face me.
“Put the gun down first,” he says.
“No chance. Toss them over.”
Noah drops his head, then starts walking over to me.
“Stop, now,” I say. “Keep your distance and toss them to me.”
He looks up at me, not breaking stride. “Jenna,” he says.
“Stop, Noah, or I’ll shoot!” My gun is aimed at his face, my feet spread.
“No,” he says.
He draws closer to me. Five steps. Three steps.
Footfalls on the stairs as officers race up to the second floor.
“I’ll shoot,” I say through my teeth.
“You’re not gonna shoot me, Jenna.”
My finger is on the trigger as Noah’s eyes lock on mine, as I feel the familiar heat of his approach.
And I can’t. I can’t pull the trigger. I don’t know why. I don’t know anything anymore.
I just know I can’t shoot him.
Noah puts his hand over the barrel of my gun—his Glock—and pushes it down.
He puts his forehead against mine.
“It’s okay now,” he says. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“Tell me it wasn’t you,” I whisper. “Tell me you aren’t his son.”
Noah removes the gun from my hand. He replaces it with the scroll of papers, pressing them firmly into my palm.
His mouth moves to my ear.
“Holden didn’t have a son,” he says. “He had a daughter.”
121
“HERE. IT sucks, but it’s hot.”
Officer Lauren Ricketts places the Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of me in the interview room at the substation. When I look up to thank her, I see black spots, and I feel the weight under my eyes.
“Rough night,” she says, rubbing my back. “Tomorrow will be better.”
Tomorrow is today. It’s past five in the morning.
And no amount of tomorrows will change it.
I look down again at the documents, still curved along the edges from having been rolled up in Noah’s pocket for several hours. I read through them again, for at least the twentieth time.
The first page, a piece of stationery bearing the name Lincoln Investigative Services. A letter to Holden Dahlquist VI.
You asked us to determine whether a woman named Gloria Willis, of Bridgehampton, mother of Aiden Willis, gave birth to a second child approximately eight years ago.
Holden knew, or at least suspected, that he’d impregnated Aiden’s mother.
The answer to your quest
ion is yes. Eight years ago, Ms. Willis did give birth to a second child at Southampton Hospital but left the hospital with her child only hours later, without filling out any paperwork. We believe that she abandoned this child later that evening at the Bridgehampton Police Substation (see attached news headline).
I flip the page. The news clipping I saw myself, at Aiden’s house:
Newborn Abandoned at Police Station
The photo of Uncle Lang, holding the baby at the substation in Bridgehampton.
The next page, a photocopy of a handwritten note, the penmanship poor but legible:
Please find my daughter a good home. She is in danger. Don’t ever let her know about me. Don’t ever let her try to find me or the father. He will kill her.
My pulse banging like a gong, no matter how many times I read this note, a note from a terrified mother trying to protect her newborn daughter the only way she knew how—by abandoning her.
I flip to the next page, a court document:
At a Term of the Family Court of the State of New York,
held in and for the County of Suffolk, at Riverhead,
New York
In the Matter of the Adoption of a Child
Known as Baby Girl X
I skip a bunch of the middle pages because they are legalese, just a bunch of lawyers’ words. The punch line at the final page:
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the petition of Gary and Lydia Murphy, for the adoption of Baby Girl X, a person born on a date unknown, at a location unknown, is allowed and approved; and it is further
ORDERED that the name of the adoptive child shall be JENNA ROSE MURPHY, and that the adoptive child shall hereafter be known by that name.
I can picture her. Of course I can’t in reality, but my brain isn’t tracking reality now—I can picture my mother, visiting Uncle Lang like they did every summer, taking me from Lang, holding me in her arms and saying, I’ll love her. I’ll love this child.
A single tear, falling onto the page, a thick circular stain in the corner.
Still unable to believe it, though it makes all the sense in the world.
My physical differences from my parents and brother, especially the red hair. My nickname, the red sheep of the family.
Never quite feeling like I fit in.
Sometimes we tell our children little white lies, Chloe said to me.
She didn’t tell me—none of them told me, not Mom, not Dad, not Lang, not Chloe. They kept me in the dark to protect me. Protect me from whom, they didn’t know.
A little white lie.
And here I thought it was random—I thought I was a random victim at that house that day. When in reality, Holden was trying to kill me to end the Dahlquist bloodline. First he ran down Aiden’s mother—my mother—with a car, then he had Justin scoop me up and bring me to the house to finish the job.
I would’ve died in that house if it weren’t for Aiden, coming to avenge his mother’s death.
Chief Isaac Marks pops his head in the door, measuring the look on my face before deeming it safe to enter.
“Murphy,” he says. “We’re done with Noah’s interview. So you two are free to leave.”
I nod and push myself out of the chair, my legs uncertain.
“Murphy, I—I’m sorry,” he says. “I was a jerk. And I had you all wrong. I thought you were a loose cannon hassling poor Aiden for no reason. And then I—well, I admit for a time there, I—”
“You thought I was a serial killer.”
He throws up a hand.
“That’s okay,” I say, “for a time there, I thought you were, too.”
He laughs, which might, under the circumstances, be the best response of all.
“When Noah showed me those investigative records,” he says, “and it turned out you were the daughter of—I mean, I thought you’d been playing me all along.”
That’s what Noah thought, too.
“Plus, your fingerprints on that knife—”
“I got it,” I say. I may not like it, but I have so much emotion stirred up inside me right now, I don’t have room for anger.
“Justin’s spilling like a volcano,” he says. “Now that we have him in custody, he won’t shut up. He’s proud of it. He says he’s part of the legacy now, he’ll go down in history, et cetera.”
“I’m sure he feels that way.”
“He told us about everything in 1994, too. Apparently, Holden saw you and your family walking to the beach one day, right past his house. He got one look at you and—I guess there’s a strong resemblance to your biological mother. He followed you around the beach all day, then he hired an investigator, and—well, you know the rest. You got the investigator’s file right there. Then he had Justin snatch you up and bring you to the house—”
“Isaac,” I say, raising a hand. “I don’t want to know the details. I don’t remember and I don’t want to remember.”
“Sure. Yeah, sure, Murphy. Well, I’ll see you next week, then. If you’re ready.”
I shake my head. “You need me to testify at the prelim?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He places my badge and my gun on the table.
“You don’t think I’m going to lose my best cop, do you?” he says. “I may be a horse’s ass on occasion, but I’m not stupid.”
122
I WALK to the cemetery on Main Street, the cemetery where Winston Dahlquist and his descendants are buried. The afternoon air is mild and smells of the rain this morning.
Just down from the Dahlquist plot, Aiden Willis is busy planting flowers in a vase by some tombstone. Back at work already. Always the same, the raggedy shirt, the baseball cap turned backward, the scarecrow hair. He surely takes after his father, not his mother.
Yesterday, the DA’s office officially announced that it had no basis to proceed with murder charges against Aiden for the death of Holden VI. Aiden was too young at the time to have been charged as an adult, and the circumstances, they said, “strongly suggest that his use of force was justified.”
That might be the understatement of the year.
Aiden stops what he’s doing when he sees me approach, squints at me.
I don’t really know what to say to him. I have no sense of family with him. We couldn’t be less alike. We’ve never known each other. We’ve never shared a single thing, other than a mother.
“Hey,” I say.
His eyes scatter about, as always, never holding a gaze.
“You doin’ okay?” he asks me.
“Me? Yeah, sure. Listen, Aiden, I’m sorry for the way I treated you. I thought—I thought you were a part of this. I had no idea it was Justin.”
He nods, his eyes roaming around the ground at my feet.
“Did you?” I ask, uncertain if I should even ask. “All these murders? Did you know it was him?”
His eyes go blank a moment, as if he’s lost in a thought—more accurate, probably, to say lost in a feeling. “Didn’t know for sure,” he says. “Couldn’ta ever proved nothin’. Who’d believe me, anyhow? I’m just a ditch-digger. He’s got all that money and shit.”
“And he had the knife you tossed out the window,” I add.
For a moment, Aiden’s eyes focus, though not on me, looking off in the distance, his mouth forming a small o. “He said he kept it somewheres for safekeepin’. Case I ever got any ideas, he said.”
A not-so-subtle threat. Don’t mess with me, Justin was saying to Aiden, or the cops will suddenly find this bloody knife. Fuck with me and I’ll send you to prison.
He tortured Aiden. He made Aiden shoot up the school yard with him a year after Holden’s death—one of the many things Justin has bragged about to the police—and who knows what else he said and did to him over the years.
“What about me?” I ask. “Did you know who I was?”
His eyes are still darting around, but a sheen of tears covers them. He shakes his head. “When you first came back to town, first time I saw you—you looked fam
iliar, but I couldn’t figure it. Then I finally ’membered where I’d seen you, from all that time ago when we was kids, that day at the Dahlquist house. I didn’t know why you’d come back. Couldn’t figure. But I didn’t know that you were my—that we was—”
The flowers, halfway in the vase, start to tip over. Aiden reaches for them.
“You should probably get back to your work,” I say.
Aiden fixes up the flowers, sets them down firmly, turns to me in his indirect, no-eye-contact way. “I’s too young to know ’bout you at the time. I’da been only little when you was born. One time, when I’s older, I saw a picture of her, with her belly.”
I saw it, too. The photo from the scrapbook, with the baby bump.
“She said the baby didn’t live. She got real sad.”
Probably the same thing that she told Holden VI, that I didn’t live, that I was stillborn.
A little white lie. To protect me, so Aiden wouldn’t look for me. So Holden wouldn’t look for me. So nobody would ever look for me.
His darting eyes, just for a single moment, make contact with mine before skittering away again. “You look like her,” he says. “A good bit like her.”
“I’m lucky. She was very pretty. And courageous. She did a brave thing for me. So did you, Aiden. If there’s anything I can—”
“You wanna see her grave?” he asks.
I start to speak, but a lump fills my throat. I nod and follow him.
It’s a simple grave, farther to the south of the cemetery, an ordinary headstone kept up pristinely.
Gloria Jane Willis
March 5, 1964 – July 12, 1994
Our Beloved Mother
Our beloved mother. Even though, for all practical purposes, Aiden was an only child. Even though, as far as he knew, I didn’t survive the birth. Still, he included me, the sibling he never really had, the sibling he never knew.
My—our—biological mother. The woman who gave me up to save me. A prostitute who surely wanted something better for herself, and for her son.
And for her daughter.
July 12, 1994—the day Gloria was killed in a hit-and-run. The day before the seven hours of hell, when I was plucked off the street and taken to 7 Ocean Drive, so Holden could take my life, too, and end any vestige of the tortured, maniacal Dahlquist bloodline.
The Murder House Page 32