I got up and peered out of the window into the backyard. Lex was in the pool with Mia while Patrick worked on his laptop in one of the lounge chairs. Nicholas was out of the house, and Jessica was upstairs. I had all the time in the world.
I took another look at the filing cabinet. Could Robert Tate be one of the rare people who took home office security seriously? When he lived in a gated house in a gated community? The pistol seemed to suggest so, and this was a big house. He could have hidden the key anywhere. I shined my phone’s flashlight down at one of the middle cabinets, trying to get a look at the gap between the drawer and the cabinet itself, to gauge what kind of tool I would need to get into it.
That’s when I noticed the scratches.
The hardwood floor was scratched, extending about a half an inch from the front corners of the filing cabinet. Not deep scratches, but the diffuse pattern of many smaller ones.
I smiled, grabbed onto the cabinet, and tipped it forward. It scraped against the floor as I did it. Holding the cabinet with one hand, I brushed the other along the back that had been pressed to the wall until I found the key taped there.
Not bad, Robert. But not good enough.
Inside the cabinets I found the usual things. Tax returns, financial statements, lots of business and legal stuff I couldn’t decipher. I kept looking until I found what I was after. In the bottom drawer there was a file on each family member.
Mia’s was the first. It had her birth certificate and social security card, correspondence with the private Montessori school she attended for preschool, and a couple of crayon drawings she must have made for her daddy. Behind it was a second file labeled MIA—MEDICAL that had hospital bills, insurance statements, and other documents related to Mia’s limb length discrepancy. Nothing out of the ordinary, not that I was expecting to find anything there. If there was anyone I knew to be completely innocent, it was Mia.
Next was Danny’s file. In most ways it was similar to Mia’s, except instead of an accompanying file of medical information, there was an accompanying file labeled DANIEL—DISAPPEARANCE. It looked like Robert had made note of every interaction the family had with the local police and later the Feds when the FBI took over. I pulled the thick file out of the cabinet to go through it more carefully later.
Then came Nicholas. His file was the thinnest so far. Birth certificate, some school records, a hospital record from when he broke his wrist in 2009, and a story written in wavering pencil. I pulled it from the file and read it. It was about a knight who saved a poor dragon from a cruel princess.
Nicholas was eleven when Danny disappeared. It was difficult to fathom any eleven-year-old—let alone quiet, controlled Nicholas—killing someone, but his relationship with Danny had been a troubled one, and he was the only member of the family who seemed angry that I was around. Maybe one day all of the anger that Nicholas had been bottling up over his brother’s taunting and petty bullying finally exploded. If Lex and Patrick, and probably Jessica, were going to engage in such a risky and emotionally difficult deception, it had to be to protect someone they really cared about and didn’t want to see punished for Danny’s death. Who could fit that description better than Nicholas? Still waters run deep, and no one’s face was more still than that serious, secretive boy. Maybe he didn’t seem capable of killing someone, but then, lots of killers don’t.
Next was Lex’s file, and it had an addendum as well: ALEXIS—ADDICTION.
Nicholas wasn’t kidding. It was bad.
It had started in high school. There’d been some trouble her freshman and sophomore years—a suspension for fighting in school and an incident where she was a passenger in a car where the driver was caught smoking weed—but things had escalated sharply around the time Ben McConnell killed himself. She was arrested a handful of times for possession and hospitalized twice. Robert pulled some major strings to keep her from being expelled from school. She was hospitalized a third time after Danny disappeared in what appeared to doctors to be a suicide attempt instead of an accidental overdose. She dropped out of school to do six months at an inpatient rehab facility. The next couple of years were a cycle of relapse, chaos, and more stints in rehab. She’d been released from Promises Malibu almost two years ago, and the file ended there. To an objective observer it would seem like nothing more than a troubled, privileged girl struggling with the tragic death of her father. And maybe that’s what it was.
Or maybe not.
I got up and looked out the window again, just to make sure everyone was still in the backyard. Lex was spinning Mia around in the water. It was hard for me to imagine her hurting anyone, let alone one of the siblings she doted on like a mother. But I had to remind myself that a few weeks ago it would have been hard for me to imagine that Lex was pretending to think I was her brother. She was a gifted actress covering for someone, and maybe that person was herself.
I tried to envision how it could have happened. Lex, high on prescription pills, behind the wheel even though her license had been suspended. Too out of her mind to react in time when Danny darted in front of the car on his bicycle. Maybe she panicked and hid the body rather than owning up to what she did. Maybe that’s what she and Patrick were covering up. There was nothing they could do for Danny, but at least they could keep Lex out of jail. The shock of what she’d done made her try to get sober, and the pressure of the FBI sniffing around again made her crack. It was possible.
I moved on to the next file, Patrick’s.
It was empty. I guess Patrick also knew where the key to the filing cabinet was hidden. Or maybe, being a lawyer, Patrick simply wanted to take possession of his own records, and Robert had given them to him. It wasn’t necessarily suspicious.
But then again, there was no one Lex would go to more lengths to protect than her brother. They were closer than any siblings I’d ever known, probably because of the shared trauma of their father’s suicide, and Patrick, as an up-and-coming young lawyer brimming with ambition, had a lot to lose if the truth of Danny’s death ever came out. Agent Morales had had Patrick in her sights for years; there had to be a reason for it.
Jessica’s file contained her various forms of identification, the marriage license between her and Robert, a ream of financial information, paperwork from two car crashes and two DUI arrests, and the records of her stints in rehab. Why did Jessica drink so much? Was she just the cliché of the rich, alcoholic housewife, or were there more specific demons she was trying to drown? If I had killed my youngest son, I’d want to live in a world of blurred oblivion too. Or if I was already loaded, it might make it easier for me to lose my temper with a high-spirited boy who liked to push buttons and accidentally take things too far.
Robert’s file was the last one in the back of the cabinet. There wasn’t much to it, just his birth certificate and some insurance documentation. Either the filer didn’t feel the need to keep a file on himself, or, more likely, most of it had been taken as evidence when he was indicted. I barely knew Robert Tate. We’d spoken on the phone a half a dozen times, but no one had mentioned the possibility of me going to visit him in prison after my first night here. Maybe because I knew him the least, he was at the top of my suspect list. It was preferable to imagine that a stranger and not one of these people I’d come to care about was responsible for killing Danny. Robert had already proved himself capable of criminal activity—although financial malfeasance was a far cry from killing someone—and his alibi the day Danny disappeared was thin. He’d been driving home from a business meeting in Palo Alto, so his movements for much of the day couldn’t be accounted for. And it wasn’t impossible to formulate a motive for him. The money all came from Jessica’s side; her family, the Calvins, owned a food packaging empire. Robert’s roots were much humbler, and when Danny disappeared, his business was in trouble. He was already dodging his taxes and embezzling from investors to keep it afloat, and the SEC was closing in. Maybe he’d planned to stage Danny’s kidnapping as a way to extract money from the Calvins t
o solve his financial troubles and stave off an indictment, but then something went terribly wrong and Danny died.
I liked this theory, but I had no real evidence for it, and it contained two major flaws: I had a hard time imagining Lex and Patrick going through with this charade in order to protect a stepfather who was already in prison, and it was hard for me to believe that any man who would save his children’s drawings and stories in his filing cabinet could have purposefully endangered one of them.
But no matter how many excuses I made, how much evidence I found for why someone wasn’t capable of this, there was one truth I kept circling back to. Someone in this family had killed Danny. I was wrong about one of them. And I was no closer to figuring out who.
• • •
I was back to eating lunch at school with Nicholas and Asher. Our shared experience with Lex had thawed some of the ice between Nicholas and myself, and I’d been doing my best to avoid Ren ever since she’d given me the brush-off. She often came over to my easel to chat for a minute or two before art class and said hi whenever she passed me in the halls, but I just couldn’t deal with her and the conflicting ways she made me feel right now on top of everything else. It was better for me to keep my distance.
Our eyes met across the courtyard, and she gave me a smile that made my stomach do a weird sort of flip. I’d been watching her without realizing it.
“Who is that woman?” Asher asked, interrupting Nicholas as he complained about his history teacher. “She keeps staring at us.”
Nicholas and I turned to look. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn’t Agent Morales casually chatting with Dr. Singh under the awning of the science wing.
Despite the sunshine my skin went cold.
“Oh shit,” Nicholas said. “Lex is going to lose her mind.”
“Why?” Asher asked. “Who is it?”
“The FBI,” Nicholas said, already standing up. He marched toward the two women, and I hurried after him.
“Can I help you?” he demanded as he reached Agent Morales.
“Nicholas,” she said. “It’s good to see you again—”
“What are you doing here?” he said. “I hope you don’t think you’re going to talk to my brother.”
“Nicholas, please—” Dr. Singh said.
“You’re not supposed to be talking to him either,” he said. “Danny, go back to the table.”
Under any other circumstances I would have felt relieved or even touched that Nicholas was defending me. But I was too occupied with trying to figure out what Morales was doing here. I stared at her, trying to get some clue from her expression, and she just looked coolly back at me.
“You’re absolutely right, Nicholas,” Morales said, barely glancing away from me. “It was inappropriate for me to come here. I just wanted to check that you were okay, Danny, and to thank you again for being so helpful the other day. I know it must have been difficult.”
“No problem,” I said.
“Well, I’ll be going now,” Morales said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed your lunch.”
Morales and Dr. Singh headed back into the building, leaving Nicholas confused and me shaken. I had the distinct feeling a shot had just been fired across my bow.
Before I left school that day, I removed my baseball card from the book in my locker where I’d hidden it. I’d thought it would be safer here than at home, but obviously I was wrong. I’d need to find a better hiding place for the boy in the picture.
• • •
I was in Danny’s room going over my research again when everything changed.
Lex was out picking up dinner and Jessica was gone, but I kept the bedroom door locked just in case Nicholas or Mia decided to stroll in while I was going through my documents. I was taking pictures of everyone’s medical records from the files in Robert’s office and e-mailing them to myself so I could return them to the filing cabinet before anyone discovered they were missing. I didn’t know what might end up being useful, so I was collecting all the information I could get my hands on. A question was starting to form in the back of my head when Mia suddenly screamed.
“Danny!” Her voice was piercing, slicing through the walls and distance that separated us. “Nicky! Somebody!”
All my thoughts fled. I was out of my room and stumbling down the stairs in an instant. I found Mia standing half inside the door to the patio.
“Danny, help!” she cried.
“What is it?” I looked her over as I ran to her side, and she didn’t appear to be bleeding or broken.
“There’s a mouse in the pool!” she said.
My relief was palpable, like suddenly finding the ground under your feet after missing a step. “Jesus, I thought you were being chased by an ax murderer or something.”
But her eyes were filled with giant tears. “He’s drowning!”
“It’s okay. We’ll help him,” I said. Anything to take that look of fear out of her eyes.
She took me by the hand and led me out to the swimming pool, where, sure enough, a little field mouse had fallen in somehow. He was trying to climb out, but the tiled walls of the pool were vertical and slick. He started to swim toward the center of the pool, his head barely above water.
“Run and get the skimmer,” I said.
“I couldn’t find it!” Mia was frantic. She knelt down by the side of the pool and said, “Keep swimming, mousy! We’ll save you!” For a moment I thought of the bat who used to sleep in my window.
“We need something to scoop him up with,” I said, looking around.
“Danny!” she screeched.
I turned to look. The mouse had disappeared under the water.
“Danny, he’s dying!”
Without thinking I jumped in, caught the mouse between my hands, and lifted him up onto the warm concrete lip of the pool. Mia knelt beside him, crying and urging him in her tear-thick voice to wake up. I pulled myself out of the pool and poked the little guy. Slowly he roused, shook himself, and darted into the grass.
Mia threw her arms around me, and I patted her back.
“There, he’s okay now,” I said. “You saved him, Mimi.”
“Thanks, Danny,” she said as she pulled away. I wiped the tears off her cheeks. She was all wet from hugging me. “What if he comes back and falls in again?”
“I don’t think he’ll ever come near this pool again,” I said, “but we’ll put the cover on just in case, okay?”
She smiled. “Okay.”
I turned on the switch to roll out the automatic cover, while Mia watched carefully to make sure no field mice took a last second dive before the pool was sealed up.
“Come on,” I said. “We’d better change.”
Mia fetched me a towel from one of the downstairs bathrooms and ran upstairs to get out of her wet clothes. I dried off as best as I could in my soaking jeans and tee before stepping inside. I took the stairs two at a time, gooseflesh prickling on my arms as the air-conditioning hit me, stepped into my bedroom, and felt my heart stop beating.
Nicholas was sitting on the floor, surrounded by Robert’s notes, with my laptop open in front of him. He looked up at me with eyes that were like gasoline meeting a spark.
• • •
In retrospect, I’m surprised it took that long for everything to fall apart.
• • •
“What the fuck is this?” he asked.
“What are you doing in here?” I said.
“I was going to Dad’s office to get some printer paper, and your door was open and I saw all of this,” he said, gesturing to the stack of papers spread across the floor. “Not that I really feel like I have to answer your questions right now when you should be explaining just what the fuck you’re doing with all of this.”
I closed the door behind me and began scooping up the papers on the floor, stuffing them back into the file. Nicholas grabbed for them too.
“Stop it!” he said. “What is this?”
“
I’m just . . .” I swallowed. “I just thought maybe it would help me remember, you know? There’s so much about my life from before that’s still a total blank to me, so I did some research—”
Nicholas jumped to his feet. “Bullshit.”
“It’s true!” I stepped toward him. “I wanted to understand what was happening here while I was gone, because no one will talk to me about it—”
“Stop it!” He pushed me back so violently that I hit the door with a dull thud. “You’re lying!”
We both stood there, silent, staring at each other.
“You’re a liar,” he said slowly. “And you’re not my brother.”
“Nicholas—”
“I knew it,” he was saying, more to himself than to me. “I knew it from the moment I saw you, but everyone else—I tried so hard to believe it, but you’re not him. You’re not Daniel.”
The fight went out of me. He knew. Part of him had always known. And I knew there was nothing I could say now that would make him forget that.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
Nicholas pushed past me and out of the bedroom. He stalked down the hallway and stairs, and I ran after him.
“Nicholas, wait!” I said as he opened the front door and began to run down the driveway.
“You come any closer, and I will kill you!” he shouted over his shoulder. “I will kill you!”
I caught him at the end of the driveway.
“Let me explain,” I said.
He didn’t let me explain. He punched me.
I automatically dodged the blow, so his fist only clipped the side of my head. He cried out in fury and lunged at me, falling on top of me as I tumbled to the ground. We rolled around on the grass as he tried to hit me and I tried to protect myself. I was bigger but he was angrier, and after several minutes of wrestling and scrabbling, he got in a solid punch to my jaw. My vision went momentarily black and fuzzy, and he collapsed beside me, cradling his hand. For a long moment the only sound was our heaving breaths.
Here Lies Daniel Tate Page 21
