25
Natalie drove over to Hunter Rose’s house and parked in the gravel driveway. Her hands were clammy on the wheel. She smoothed a few strands of hair behind her ears, took a nervous breath, and got out.
The mansion reminded her of decayed aristocracy, nestled in the woods like a fairy-tale castle. On the eastern side of the property, the well-tended lawn gave way to a tennis court and small orchard. On the western side was a greenhouse and a detached garage for Hunter’s vintage motorcycle collection. The interior of the house was composed of dark varnished paneling, tall echo-y ceilings and sinuous mahogany staircases. Natalie and Hunter had dated briefly one summer when she was in college and he was an aimless graduate student. They’d fucked on his parents’ king-sized bed while the Roses were traveling in Italy, and afterward they ate Doritos out of the bag, while Hunter showed her where he used to ride his skateboard up and down the hallway and his brother Nesbitt had carved faces into the mahogany woodwork. Scary faces full of anguish.
She crossed the yard and rang the doorbell.
“Natalie Lockhart. What a treat.” Slim and athletic, thirty-three-year-old Hunter cut an imposing presence in a black cashmere suit. He had thick dark eyebrows, a square jaw, and a handsome face. He hadn’t aged much. “Long time no see.” He gave her a self-conscious peck on the cheek and welcomed her inside.
She followed him into the large, antique-filled living room, where he offered her a mineral water from the bar. She accepted. It felt awkward. They hadn’t spoken in years. She only knew they’d once been wildly, uninhibitedly intimate. She remembered the excitement of being near him; she recalled the warmth of his skin, the magnetism of his body, and their core physical attraction.
A weak light came in through the north-facing windows—the ebbing of the afternoon sun through a veil of tangled woods. Hunter handed her the mineral water, then paused to light three candles on the fireplace mantel, and she couldn’t help noticing that he lived like a medieval king inside his dark castle surrounded by private security.
“Nice violin,” she said, noticing a cabinet full of antique musical instruments.
“That’s a German Stradivarius style, made in 1849. I have a New York dealer who acquires things for me.”
“Acquires things?”
“Yeah,” he said. “What’s wrong with acquiring things?”
“Nothing. We all do it. Squirrels do it.”
He smirked and sat on a velvet sofa opposite the beautifully upholstered wingback chair she was sitting in, sipping her mineral water. Natalie hadn’t meant to fall into her old pattern, where Hunter would say something serious, and she would make fun of him, but old habits died hard. She set the glass down on an antique carved wooden table stacked with books. He already knew why she was there. They’d spoken about it on her way over.
“So you don’t recognize her?” She showed him Morgan’s picture ID.
He studied it for a moment. “No. But like I said, I heard about it on the news, and it sucks. She’s so young.” He handed it back. “Was she a tourist?”
“Her name’s Morgan Chambers. She played the violin. She’s from Chaste Falls, and she came down here for the annual Monster Mash contest. This necklace was in her possession.” She swiped her finger over her phone screen and showed him the silver necklace with its Wiccan pendant. “Isabel Miller told me you gave these out to your female guests on Sunday night.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“And you don’t recognize Morgan? She was dressed as Wonder Woman.”
He frowned and shook his head. “There were a lot of Wonder Women, along with plenty of Belles and Ariels and Esmeraldas, a lot of beautiful women … so she may very well have been at the party. However, she wasn’t on the invite list. I sent out over a hundred invitations, and some of the invitees brought guests. The silver necklace was a gift to all my female guests, anyone who walked through the door. But I don’t recall meeting this woman.”
“She was one of the contestants in the music contest.”
He shook his head slowly. “I haven’t gone to that in years.”
“What about your surveillance tapes?” Natalie said. “I noticed there were several security cameras outside.”
He shook his head. “I can’t compromise the privacy of my guests.”
“What about a guest list?”
“Sorry, but I can’t share that with you, Natalie. Not without a subpoena.” He studied her. “What exactly is it you need to know?”
“Who Morgan came to the party with, what happened to her while she was here, the exact time she left and with whom.”
He didn’t respond.
“Why is this such a state secret?” she asked, losing patience.
“Let’s just say things got a little rowdy.”
“Rowdy how?” When he didn’t answer the question, she said, “Okay. I get it. There were a lot of important people at your party, and nobody wants their name getting out if things got a little rowdy. But I’m trying to re-create Morgan’s time line—where she went, who she spoke to, how she ended up in a dumpster. I can get a search warrant if I have to, but I’d rather not waste the time. Your cooperation would be greatly appreciated.”
He walked over to the bar, where he selected a bottle of wine and uncorked it. “My employees have all signed NDAs. Nondisclosure agreements. However, I can ask around and find out if any of them saw this particular guest. I’ll see what I can come up with, okay? If that doesn’t help, we can talk again. In the meantime, I’ll pull the outdoor surveillance tapes for you. You can swing by tomorrow—my security officer went home after an extra-long shift and I don’t want to bother him.”
She nodded, surprised by this sudden cooperation. “Thanks.”
“The people I employ are discreet. All phones and devices were checked at the door. No pictures allowed. I want my guests to relax,” Hunter said as the cork gave way with a muted pop. “We talked business. We drank. We traded gossip. We got silly. We celebrated Halloween. Care to join me in a glass of wine?”
“No, thank you,” she said, wondering where the needle landed between silly and rowdy.
He poured a glass of red wine and sat down on a velvet-upholstered, carved wooden chair that looked like a medieval throne. “I was tested extensively as a kid, you know, and they found out that I had a Stephen Hawking–size IQ, which put me in rarified air. The top point zero three percent for kiddies with big brains. But ever since, they’ve found out that IQ tests for children aren’t reliable indicators of how they’ll do as adults. I could never live up to my genius-level IQ. It was complete bullshit.” He shrugged and sipped his wine. “However, Dad expected me to be the Second Coming, or at least Einstein’s clone, whereas I just wanted to be a normal kid. I got bored easily. I hated school. I hated homework. I withdrew into a made-up world, where I slayed dragons and explored outer space, but I did okay … because I was just smart enough for my teachers to give me a pass. College was a different story. I went into a full-blown panic mode when I realized Dad expected me to excel in a big way. But I was a classic frat boy fuckup. I drank and took drugs. I experimented. In my sophomore year, my father read me the riot act. He put the fear of God in me. Did I apply myself? Study harder? No. I took selfies at the library with a big pile of textbooks and sent them to him regularly, just to shut him up. In the meantime, I saw myself as defective, as if I’d been born with a tail. I felt like a failure. Like a phony. I used big words at a very young age. I especially liked ‘ubiquitous’ and ‘euphemism’ and ‘infinitesimal.’ But what happens if you’re pushed to succeed, and then you fail? What if you fail and keep failing? Fortunately, my father left his entire fortune to me, so I was able to bide my time, and that made all the difference. Once I’d formed my first start-up company, the world opened up in a big way.” He shrugged. “The rest is history.”
“So you’re saying … luck made you.”
He nodded. “Arbitrary, unfair luck of the draw.”
“And y
our father’s fortune did the heavy lifting.”
“Or you could say that my father’s great expectations died with him. And when that happened, it eased the burden off my sad little rounded shoulders, so that I was able to achieve what I never could’ve accomplished if he hadn’t kicked the bucket, yeah. You could say that.” He took another sip of his wine.
The curtains were ablaze with late-afternoon light, as if the sky was burning.
He studied her a solemn beat. “You’re judging me, aren’t you?”
“No,” Natalie said, blinking.
“You just blinked. That means you’re lying.”
“Actually, I blinked because my eyes are dry.”
“‘The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues,’” he quoted. “Ralph Waldo Emerson. Deny it all you want. I know what you’re thinking, Natalie. You look at me and see a rich kid with your very dry eyes. You see a world of leisure and boredom, of partying and interchangeable sex partners, of fashionable clothes and money. A world full of power and prestige and status-seeking.”
“Yeah, maybe,” she admitted.
“You think I was coddled as a child. You think I’m one of those greedy fucks, those entitled brats, who’s never suffered a day in their lives. Don’t you? After all, I’ve never been hungry or cold or thirsty. I never had to take a minimum-wage job or put up with an asshole boss. But guess what? I get intimidated by people who embrace their own status fearlessly. What they wear, the money they flaunt, where they live, what kind of car they drive. I envy them their resolution and confidence. They seem quite alien to me. Because I don’t care about status. Not really. All I care about is character and principle, old-fashioned virtues that were drummed into me by my dear mother when she was alive. However…” He polished off the dregs of his wine. “I’m also a realist—Dad’s gift to me. I know that’s not the way the world works. Morality and principles. Most people could give a shit.”
“You’re right,” she said.
“I don’t mean to sound like such a dick.” He shrugged. “But my father didn’t believe in raising a naïve, corruptible innocent. Why do you think he named me Hunter? I’m supposed to be a warrior. I was destined to rape and plunder. The world is a merciless place. I’m supposed to be merciless back.”
“What about Nesbitt?” she asked. “Was he innocent?”
Hunter studied her for a long moment, and she knew she’d entered forbidden territory. “The police didn’t think so.”
“They were wrong,” she said. “They later admitted it.”
“Later? Or too fucking late?”
She didn’t respond, but she recalled being proud of her father for not suspecting Nesbitt Rose of murder, like every other cop on the force at the time.
Hunter got up and walked over to the fireplace, where he stared at the flickering candles. “There are parts of this house I won’t go into because they remind me of my brother. He used to ride his pedal car around in the third-floor hallway. There are scratches on the walls from where he’d turn the wheels too late.”
“He was one of the last people to have seen Bella alive,” Natalie said, in defense of the BLPD. “It’s only natural that the police would want to question him…”
He spun around. “Oh, I know why they targeted my brother.”
She nodded sympathetically. Unfortunately for Nesbitt Rose, he had a reputation as the town weirdo. Rumors abounded. When the high school was broken into and the gym lockers were vandalized, everybody blamed Nesbitt. When cats and dogs went missing, people accused Nesbitt. Of course, none of it was proved true. He was unfairly targeted because he was odd. He once brought a disgusting piece of roadkill—a dead raccoon—into the school for show-and-tell. He liked to walk around late at night in the moonlight. People would spot him loping along by the side of the road in pitch-darkness, caught in the sweep of their passing headlights. His head would be down, studying his feet as he clopped along, arms dangling. His creepy eyes in the high beams of oncoming vehicles red and owlish. He was paler than normal, with short hair he cut all by himself with blunt-edged scissors. He liked to wear a striped Dr. Seuss–shaped floppy top hat made of felt. Kids called him the village creeper. Others claimed he was harmless. Some tried to defend him but eventually gave up. Nesbitt didn’t want anybody’s help. He lived in his own little world.
Natalie had never been afraid of Nesbitt Rose in school. She liked his weirdness and his offbeat individuality. She used to call his mumblings, “Messages in a bottle from Nesbitt Rose.” With her friends, she would pantomime opening a bottle, pulling out a slip of paper, opening it, and reading his messages aloud. “Hello, world, what is the bat signal?”
Nesbitt was obsessed with people’s fingers, and especially with Bella’s fingers whenever she played the violin. She had the smallest, most nimble fingers in the world. He loved the music she produced on her violin, tucked under her chin, with that wildly swaying bow. It made him practically swoon with ecstasy. Bella claimed Nesbitt was her best audience.
After she disappeared that night, the four friends searched everywhere for her before finally calling the police. They kept thinking she’d show up and laugh at them. “Ha! Look at your faces!”
The police, including Natalie’s father, Officer Joey Lockhart, interrogated the Misfits for hours. They were suspicious of the three boys initially—Bobby, Adam, and Max—who were all crying and sobbing and in shock. But the boys only wanted Bella to be found. Once their stories were corroborated, the police turned their sights on Nesbitt, whom Bella had been seen talking to shortly before she disappeared. Perhaps he’d been lurking in the woods, waiting to pick her off from the rest of them.
Soon rumors spread around town that Nesbitt had killed Bella Striver. Nobody knew why he would do that, or how he could’ve possibly gotten away with it when he couldn’t find a pair of matching socks in the morning, or where he may have buried her, but that didn’t stop the gossip from spreading like a malignant tumor. It got so bad that after three weeks of rampant speculation, Nesbitt ended his own life. Nobody realized how deep his feelings ran or how self-aware he was until it was too late.
But then something truly appalling happened.
After the police ruled Nesbitt’s death a suicide, half the town accepted it as proof that he’d actually killed Bella. Hunter was furious. Their father was infirm at the time, and Hunter was Nesbitt’s guardian, and out of a deep well of grief and fury he made a statement to the press: “My brother is innocent. He wouldn’t hurt a flea, let alone Bella Striver. She treated him kindly. He loved her. She used to play the violin for him.”
But that wasn’t quite true. Bella had a cruel streak, and sometimes she would deliberately confuse Nesbitt just to see him sputter and blink. She liked it when he followed her around, trailing after her like an enormous slouching puppy. She especially liked it when he tried to hide from her and Natalie behind a slender birch tree, thinking he was invisible. She would burst out laughing and say, “Look at that! There he is, isn’t he a riot?”
But Natalie appreciated his silly innocence, his raw integrity, and his gritty independence from the rest of the world’s opinion of him. He didn’t seem to care what people thought. But that turned out not to be true. He was very much hurt by other people’s opinions.
When the police finally called off their search for Bella in early July, it was a heartbreaking moment for the Misfits. At that point, everyone assumed she was dead. It wasn’t the same for them anymore—not without Bella. Then the letters began to arrive.
Bella was the most significant person in Natalie’s life back then, besides Bobby Deckhart—the most important person in Natalie’s universe. Everything she cared about had been torn away from her that night. The world changed when Bella ran away and let them think she’d been abducted or killed. Natalie lost her best friend forever. It was almost as bad as losing Willow eight years earlier.
“My brother had no alibi,” Hunter said now, standing in front of the fireplace. “God knows
what he was up to that night. But there’s one thing I do know with all my heart and soul … it wasn’t anything nefarious. And three months later, when those letters started coming from California and all over the southwest, proving that nobody killed Bella, that in fact she wasn’t dead, that she’d left of her own volition … the whole town shrugged,” he said darkly, the anger still very much with him. “He was a good kid, a kind soul, accused of something terrible. I think now, looking back, he had undiagnosed Asperger’s or autism. He was somewhere along the spectrum. I’ve been reading about the syndrome, and it fits. Anyway, it’s taken me years to get over it.”
“I envy you,” she said, and he looked at her sharply. “Your ability to move on.”
He acknowledged her own pain with a nod. “You eventually come to terms with it,” he said gently. “Life is fucking flawed.”
She swallowed a hot mixture of agony, regret, and self-doubt, then shrugged, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. “My grief has sent me underground. Nobody wants to talk about it anymore.”
“Oh? There’s a black market for grief now? Who knew?”
She smiled. She felt momentarily paralyzed.
He waited patiently, while she struggled with it.
Natalie stood up. “Anyway, thanks for the mineral water.”
“No problem.” He walked her to the door. “Swing by tomorrow, and I’ll have those tapes for you.”
She paused on the threshold. “By the way, I saw your donor plaque on the wall of the music conservatory in Chaste Falls. I didn’t know you were such a fan of classical music.”
“Nesbitt loved listening to Bella play,” he said. “So I donated the money in his honor. See you tomorrow, Natalie.” He closed the door.
26
The public entrance of the police station had an arched limestone doorway with two glass doors that swung shut behind you. The lobby was grimly functional, like a doctor’s waiting room, except with brochures about crime everywhere. To the right was the dispatcher’s area behind a large sliding glass window. To the left was a fire door that opened onto a staircase leading to the other floors. On the wall of the lobby was a floor-to-ceiling mural of the department’s shield—Burning Lake Police Department.
The Wicked Hour Page 15
