Passover

by Aphrodite Anagnost

  “Absurd,” she mumbled. But then, the whole thing was absurd. The horrific murders, the eternal waiting, the sheriff out in the north pasture yelling at a sexy, donut-addicted smoking deputy.

  She could read Dave’s face well enough to see he’d lost confidence in himself too—in his own interpretation of reality. The lines on his forehead deepened. Dark shadows encircled his eyes.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do this in an orderly fashion. Rachel, go into the kitchen. See if the rifles are there. Zack, check upstairs in case Leo carried them to one of the bedrooms. I’ll check out the living room and foyer.”

  Rachel bit her lip. She didn’t want to go into the kitchen alone. It seemed an alien place where someone or something might be waiting. The creaky floor was slanted enough for a marble to roll.

  “I’m not going back upstairs.” Zack’s voice cracked. “I don’t want to.”

  “All right,” said Dave. “We’ll look together.”

  “No!” said Zack, walking away.

  Rachel followed Zack back to the porch. Just as he stepped out, Leo resumed drumming upstairs. Behind the beats of the double-bass pedal, she heard a rushing of water, as if she’d left the shower on—the one that’d soaked her in blood a few hours before.

  “Oh, God.” She touched Zack’s back and, twisting away, ran past Dave who was inspecting the items in the dining room. She tore up the stairs, stumbling once, arriving breathless in Leo’s room. She felt a breeze on her neck, as if she were being followed.

  Leo finished a long roll and crashed the cymbals.

  “What’s the matter, Mom?” He looked up from the Ringo Starr kit around which his room was arranged.

  She dropped onto Leo’s bed, unable to speak. Still sitting there, she kicked the door shut, as if to push out whatever she’d imagined was pursuing her.

  Leo’s voice came toward her as if from a distance. “Where’s Zack?”

  “Ummh…pulling ivy.” Her mind flew to her older son. She imagined him in the garden, green tendrils circling his ankles. The blackberry bushes closing in, inch by inch. The empty porch swing swaying, as if pushed by an invisible hand.

  She had to keep track of her family. To monitor everyone’s whereabouts, at all times. It wouldn’t do to have Leo in his room, Zack in the yard, and Dave scurrying around, looking for rifles—she had to keep things together.

  From the cellar came the noise of a water pump turning on and off, moans of the joists, breezes whispering through windows left open, carrying that familiar campfire scent.

  “Let’s go downstairs, Leo,” she gasped.

  “I’m not hungry.” He shrugged. “Anyhow, I need to practice my new double bass pedal.”

  “No, we have to go downstairs.”

  He perched on his stool, knees wrapped around the snare, hands folded, face placid but curiously intent, as if reading her mind before making a decision.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “We need to stick together.”

  The entire second floor, with its high ceilings and perpetually dark hallway, seemed a breathing, sentient entity with its own agenda. The shadows possessed bulky, hulking shoulders. The windows, wide staring eyes. She tried to wring the image from her mind, but no sooner did she take a step away than it advanced again.

  “I’ve found the rifles,” Dave called from the bottom of the stairwell. “Some idiot put them in the closet.”

  Rachel bristled at “idiot,” then breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, he’d found the guns. She loved that about Dave—he achieved what he set out to do. The heaviness left her chest all of a sudden. The noises from the basement ceased, the breezes passing through the windows seemed just innocent streams of spring wind again. The upstairs shadows lifted. Leo gave up his thoughtful perch on his stool and rose to follow her out.

  In the foyer, Dave held up both rifles when he saw her on the landing of the stairs.

  Well, somebody put ’em in that closet.” Dave stood in the living room, his tone monotonous, his affect bland, undisturbed. “They didn’t walk in by themselves.”

  “I’m tired of your sarcasm.” Rachel compressed her chapped lips, flopping in an over- stuffed chair. “It’s supercilious and condescending.”

  Dave sighed. He loved his wife, her great capacity for empathy, her mind. But this growing disdain for the sheriff seemed undeserved. She kept staring at the man’s gut, as if examining him, as if she had x-ray vision and could see through his clothes straight through his abdominal wall and into his fatty liver. This side of her he didn’t much care for.

  He could tell she didn’t like the man’s sausage fingers or his thick neck in a stiff khaki collar. But Sheriff Phil Wise was smart, educated, well-traveled, a stickler for upholding the law. Also widowed—his wife killed by a drunk driver. He didn’t speak much of his two sons, reputedly pot dealers in California. He’d only say, “I love them, but they’re lost to me now.” Cultivating trust was his business. He lived in Hygeine, Maryland, ten miles up Route 13, just over the border. Yet here he was, with a team of deputies, committed to helping them. More than the Virginia state police had been willing to do.

  Now he seemed to be studying the landscape through the back window of the living room. Peacocks perched on a woodpile, preening. It was still morning, and the window was coated with beads of dew.

  Dave had a growing sense of something inexplicable, almost mystical about the murders. The sheriff’s steel-gray gaze fixed on something behind the barn. The man knew more than he was letting on.

  But Rachel was a woman of science. She would deny this force driven to kill on the last three full moons. Swear up and down it didn’t exist. Until whatever it was—ghost, demon, werewolf, evil spirit—bit her on the ass. The least she could do was curb her sharp tongue and let the sheriff work.

  Wise flipped open his pocket notebook and walked to the back window, leaned forward, as if a few extra inches might reveal some crucial clue. He scribbled something, maybe a diagram, then clicked the pen and returned it to his shirt pocket.

  Next he examined the camcorder’s viewfinder, looking through the lens, frowning. He rubbed the window with a forefinger. “Outside pane’s dirty. Dust from the field, probably. Got any Windex?”

  “Fresh out,” said Dave. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” said the sheriff. “There’s some in the car.”

  He pulled a keychain from his bomber jacket, which was draped over a tufted leather-wing armchair that stood against the wall like a sentry. Above it, on the smoky blue wall, hung a painting of a ram’s horn twined in a thorny vine. The sheriff’s eyes lingered a moment on this new oil, Dave’s most recent. He considered it his finest painting. One he’d never sell.

  Sheriff Wise pressed an ear against a recessed panel of the door, paused and listened.

  Everyone listened.

  The world outside had seemed silent until the sheriff opened the door and the cawing of crows rushed through the house. Quickly, he shut it and it was quiet again.

  Rachel began pacing. Dave sat at the Hemming grand piano, the same vintage as the house, its mahogany case shiny with beeswax. He plunked out “Man of La Mancha” with one finger, then dropped the fallboard with a clunk.

  Wise returned from the car carrying a bottle of Windex and a crumpled hankie. At the back window he adjusted the tripod and reset the camera on top. He pointed its lens at the copse of willows in the pasture and pressed record.

  Dave rose from the piano and walked to the window to put his right eye to the viewfinder. “I don’t get it. What exactly is it we’re looking for?”

  “Not sure. Just a feeling. Maybe something that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Dust blowing under the willows.” Dave studied the weeping tendrils, their catkins swaying. “Looks like a dirt devil.”

  “Somethin’s brewin’.” The sheriff checked the electrical cords, then pushed the plug all the way into the surge protector. “Nobody trip, now, hear?”

  Dave patted his back. “Th
anks, Sheriff. Maybe we’ll see something on camera we can’t in real life. The rotten core.”

  Having slipped into the living room, the boys lay on the chenille sofa. Head to toe under a black cashmere throw, munching juicy apples.

  “I think we ought to leave,” mumbled Zack, between bites. “Me, too,” echoed Leo.

  Rachel strolled over to the window. “Sheriff, you’ve got your camera pointed at my horse’s grave.” She crossed her arms and stared into his eyes. Her effort to hold the tears in the cups of her lower lids was heartbreaking.

  “Sorry, Doc,” said the sheriff, the corners of his mouth pulling downward. “I didn’t know it was there. Just keeping tabs on movement in the pasture.”

  • • • •

  Rachel lifted the peacock feathers in the vase on the living room mantle, fanning them between fingers and thumbs. She felt everyone’s eyes on her at once, and turned around. Blood rushed out of her face, which cooled and tingled.

  “I don’t mean to sound nasty,” she said. “But someone in this house is playing tricks. Like moving rifles into the closet. I don’t know who. People do strange things when they’re afraid. Sometimes unconsciously.”

  “Not me.” Zack rotated his apple around the core, chewing off small bits. He wiped juice off his chin with the back of a hand. “Can’t we just drop it?”

  “I didn’t blame you,” she said.

  “Then who?” said Dave.

  Zack stared at the floor. “If he wants to think I moved the rifles, let him, Mom.” Zack shrugged. “It’s soooo important to know whose fault it is. Isn’t that right, Dave?”

  Rachel pressed her lips together. “David. Stop accusing Zack.”

  “I didn’t. I was just asking who. It was a question. Is it a crime to ask a simple question?”

  “Now you’re yelling,” she whispered.

  “I am not. I was just saying.”

  “Why don’t you just come out with it, then?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe I moved them and don’t remember,” Dave muttered.

  Leo pulled the blanket up to his chin, folding his arms.

  She wondered what Leo was thinking. He was a quiet one. Up to a point. Often the last to offer an opinion, but when he did he meant it.

  She shot Dave a glare, trying to telepathically say, It’s time to shut up about who moved the rifles. Leo’s face was pale, eyes slitted. His breathing rapid and shallow. He looked ready to flip. If anyone suggested he’d moved the rifles, he would develop a big attitude fast.

  Mr. Volcano, she thought. Wonder where he gets that?

  “Let’s move on to something else,” the sheriff said, still looking out at the pasture. “Get me a calendar.”

  Dave’s eyes narrowed. “What’re you thinking?”

  “Maybe there’s more to the pattern than a killer who strikes every twenty-eight days.” Dave walked over to his briefcase. “I have my phone.”

  “If that’s all you’ve got. A paper calendar would be better.”

  “Zack’s got a hot Maria Sharapova one upstairs.” Leo’s cheeks flushed. “Wearing a bikini, holding her tennis racket like a guitar.”

  Zack rolled his eyes. “I’ll get it if you want.”

  “Here’s my date book.” Dave pulled out a booklet covered with stickers. A neon green one read: We’re rural, not stupid. He handed it to the sheriff.

  “Thanks.” Wise opened to a page with all the months in the year diagrammed with holidays.

  Rachel touched Dave’s arm. “I need to search the eastern woods on a horse.”

  “I’ll go. If something’s going on in the woods, I’m going to find out what.”

  “I’ve studied the topography. You’re not a tracker,” said Rachel. “I am.” Rachel had been a mounted guide in the Sierras during college.

  “What’s with this amateur sleuth thing?” Wise reached out a detaining hand, but Rachel brushed it aside.

  “I’m going to ride,” said Rachel, “by myself.”

  “No—I’m going with you.” Dave turned on her, red with anger. “I want you to take care of the boys, here.”

  “The sheriff and his deputies can do that.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “You stay here, I’ll go.”

  “No way.” She wasn’t backing down. She’d taken lessons in tracking in Wyoming, from one of the best—a Nez Pierce. Dave had scoffed at the idea that she could do a better job in the woods on a horse. And he hadn’t been the one studying the pattern for two solid months. This time, the killer would come from the dense forest east of the farm, the most logical way to approach without being seen. He’d probably already used the woods to scout out the house, leaving footprints. He might even have set up camp in some remote corner of those woods. Psychopath. Insane. Mumbling to himself, plotting. One out of every twenty-four persons is a psychopath, ready to crack.

  Dave slung a rifle over his shoulder. “I’m going to find out what’s happening out there. Now.”

  Rachel stared mutinously into his eyes. “I go alone.”

  “I’ll call the deputies over,” said the sheriff. “Have one stay in the house with both of you and me and the boys while the other two search the woods.”

  “Too many trails to cover on foot,” said Rachel.

  “Look,” said Wise. “I don’t want you two going anywhere. This is my business. Not your business. Understand?”

  “Nope,” said Dave. “I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t agree. If you know something about those woods then spill it right now. Tell us everything you know. No time left for secrets. You’re holding out on both of us and we all know it.”

  “This is not the time for me to be spreading my conjectures around,” said the sheriff. “When I’m certain, I’ll tell you what you need to know. I’m a professional. This is my business. When I need your help, I’ll tell you.”

  “Damn you,” said Dave. “We’re going out. Unless you want to arrest us.”

  Wise shook his head. “I think it’s dangerous.”

  “Post all the deputies here with the boys,” said Dave. “I’ll ride with Rachel to protect her. We’ll be safe enough, so will the boys. The killer—or killers—has never struck during daylight.”

  “That might not mean anything,” said the sheriff. “But I swear to God if I had the authority to stop you, I would.”

  “Dammit,” said Rachel. “Let’s go!”

  “Okay,” said Dave. “Maybe we’ll find some footprints we can follow.” He patted the stock of his rifle. “Let’s go get some fresh air.”

  “You ride Slivovitz.” She gritted her teeth, wishing Aristino were alive. “I’ll take Le Pouf. I’ll tell Lev.” She sat at the dining table and texted the assistant.

  Fifteen minutes later, Rachel, Dave, and Wise left Deputy Ruiz and her perfect figure to a game of Risk with Zack and Leo at the refectory table. The two other deputies sat the table, their rifles close at hand.

  “You don’t need to hover,” Rachel said to the sheriff as they reached the barn. “Why not stay with your deputies. Make sure they behave.”

  The sheriff pulled up short, looking exasperated.

  “Okay.” He turned on his boot heel and immediately headed back to the side porch, then turned again. “There are a couple of reasons I’m letting you do this, aside from not having the authority to stop you.” He stood wide and put his hands on his hips. “One, the two of you have been mostly distractions, so far. Two, it’s daylight, and, three, I doubt either of you is the target—you’re not children, and, Dave, you’re not an old man living alone.”

  “Thanks for the Cliffs Notes,” Rachel said. She hooked an arm through Dave’s.

  “I want you to promise me if you see trouble, you’ll fire that rifle at the ground three times. Bang, bang, bang! Just like that.”

  “Got it, Sheriff,” said Dave.

  “Pinky swear,” said Rachel.

  The Sheltons threaded through the backyard shrubs, between clumps of rosebushes, p
assing a brown duck, Tartuffo, known for his fluffy tufted crown. The duck sat between fallen oak stumps, spooning his bill through the dirt. Peacocks scratched through flower beds for grubs.

  Skanda, the Hindu war god, had ridden a peacock, thought Rachel. Peafowl were good luck. We need it. She held Dave’s hand, leading him between rows of asparagus toward the cypress barn, home to a baker’s dozen of horses.

  • • • •

  Lev Lewin, dark-eyed as a Moor, saddled Slivovitz and Le Pouf in approval of their mission. He handed the horses off to Dave and Rachel, his thin arms pale in the sunlight. Dave had been right to choose him as an assistant. In horses, all three had experienced the lusty delight of something sweet, like a twelve-layered chocolate cake.

  Lev’s family, the Lewins of Long Island, had made a fortune importing teas and pearls from the Orient. Lev had fled to Middlemarch County to escape the family business, as well as his parents’ gambling habit at Belmont, Queens, and Newport Jai Alai. While still a teen, he’d eloped with a Catholic girl who would only kiss him if he went to catechism. At his first job interview he’d spilled his guts. Donatella had been a Mafia princess. Her father was doing five to ten. Their marriage had been annulled by force—Lev had only signed the papers at gunpoint. He’d dropped out of Cornell and fled to Portugal—where he’d discovered horses could dance. There he’d studied the art of dressage with an old master who died at ninety, willing Lev his library and prized gray Lusitano mare.

  The Sheltons had coached him for the Young Rider Championships on Maria the Pious. He’d stayed on, living above her stall, in an apartment next to the hayloft. He assisted in all their enterprises—training horses, selling olive oil and platinum business-card holders and cigarette boxes for flashy Europeans.

  “Good luck,” he said. “Maybe you’ll see something useful out there and we can trap this nut.”

  Dave nodded. “You have your gun?”

  Rachel saw unspoken worry in Lev’s eyes. Visions of H.V. Ewell, impaled by the stop sign, entrails unravelling on the floor, flashed through her mind. Then Revel Petty, head split by an axe, blood and brains splattering Daisyland’s walls. And the Harper Boys, shot dead in Sharpsburg, their young bodies now rotting, hollow things. The earth pressing on their frail bones.