Sins Of The Father

by James, Harper

  The words were barely more than a whisper, directed into her lap.

  How many times had this argument been played out over the course of fifty years? Hundreds, maybe thousands.

  Then Helen raised her head slowly and looked at her husband, a very different look in her eyes.

  ‘And don’t you dare’—the word froze Evan’s insides, even though it wasn’t directed at him—‘say it wasn’t my fault.’

  Anthony Fox held his hands up, palms towards her. Evan reckoned that was a lesson he’d learned a long time ago. And learned well.

  Neither man said anything, giving her time. It was her story, if it was going to be told at all. She dabbed at her eyes with what remained of the kleenex.

  ‘We couldn’t have children, not to begin with, so we decided to adopt. As you can no doubt see, we both come from a long line of anaemic, bloodless, blond-haired ...’

  The words were harsh, her tone bitter, as if she was punishing herself. She shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut.

  ‘So, when we saw Francisco, we fell in love with him. He was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen—have ever seen. We didn’t care if he was Latino. He disappeared on January 12, 1966. We’d had him for exactly five days.’

  The date hit Evan like a punch in the face. Francisco disappeared on the day Margarita took her own life. And whether or not Anthony Fox believed his wife, he sure as hell did.

  The silence stretched out. Anthony Fox cleared his throat.

  ‘Shall I continue?’

  ‘Do what you like. You always have.’

  Evan wanted to dissolve into the rug under his feet. He’d come here uninvited and dug all this up, releasing fifty years of pent-up, or maybe not so pent-up, pain. The means doesn’t always justify the end, he prayed it did this time.

  ‘There isn’t a lot to tell,’ Anthony said. ‘I was at work ...’

  Something passed behind his eyes as he recognized the implied criticism in those few words, but he carried on.

  ‘Helen was at home with the baby—’

  ‘Francisco, not the baby.’

  ‘Helen was at home with Francisco. They were in the yard. The telephone rang—’

  ‘It was my mother.’

  Evan saw what was coming, tried to guess how much of the blame the mother had to shoulder.

  ‘This was before cell phones, of course,’ Anthony continued. ‘Helen went inside to take the call, and ...’

  He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘Two minutes,’ Helen said, her voice flat, dead. ‘Not even that. Two minutes for that freak to—’

  ‘We called the police, of course.’

  A short bark of a laugh came from Helen. Evan knew exactly what was behind it. The same sound had come out of his mouth bearing the same toxic emotions more times than he wanted to remember.

  ‘We told them again about Narvaez hanging around—’

  ‘The idiots would never have worked it out if we didn’t.’

  If you could bottle bitterness and sell it the Foxes would be rich beyond their dreams, Evan thought to himself.

  ‘They went to his home. He wasn’t there. Francisco wasn’t there either—’

  ‘And you expect me to believe those two disappearances are a coincidence?’

  Anthony Fox didn’t answer her, he’d no doubt tried before. His wife shook her head in despair or frustration.

  ‘Jesus wept.’

  Evan let the silence hang for as long as seemed appropriate. Even the cat had stopped moving and was watching intently.

  ‘Did they find Narvaez?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The police’s attitude—’

  ‘Helen, please.’

  ‘The police’s attitude was that he’d disappeared back to Mexico, maybe taking Francisco with him. And two illegals going back to where they belong, while not being as good as two hundred or two thousand, was a start, a move in the right direction.’

  Her shoulders slumped, the outburst draining her. Despite that, the well of bitterness just kept on flowing.

  ‘After it was all over, I immediately fell pregnant. Apparently, it happens all the time. So everything ended happily after all.’

  Not one of the three people in the room believed that for a second. Two of them knew better than to contradict her, though.

  ‘I’m going upstairs to lie down now. Anthony, you see Mr Buckley out.’

  The two men watched her as she moved towards the door. Then she stopped and turned, faced Evan directly. He swallowed and braced himself. His turn now.

  ‘I know you’re only doing your job, Mr Buckley, but please don’t call again.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ Anthony said once she’d left the room.

  ‘No, it’s me who should be apologizing, causing you all this pain after all these years.’

  Anthony shook his head.

  ‘Don’t worry, we do this January 12, every year, without fail. Sometimes I think it’s all that keeps her going.’

  ‘Did you ever find anything else out?’

  Anthony shrugged.

  ‘We hired a private investigator after the police lost interest.’

  Evan was struck by the uncanny similarity to his own situation, apart from the fact that he’d become one instead of hiring one. He was never going to be allowed to move on.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Anthony said.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘The investigator found out about Francisco’s mother’—Evan nodded in response to his inquiring gaze—‘how she killed herself. And what had happened to her brother, to his face.’

  Evan nodded again.

  ‘I know all about it.’

  ‘Helen always calls him a freak. I don’t think he had an easy time either.’

  ‘Do you think he abducted Francisco?’

  Anthony was quiet a long time, fifty years of arguments going back and forth in his mind.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably. We paid the investigator to go down to Mexico, see if he could track down Narvaez.’

  The rest of the sentence hung in the air between them.

  And Francisco.

  ‘Did he find him?’

  ‘He found Narvaez. He didn’t find Francisco. Even if Francisco was there, they’d have kept him hidden. It’s all too late now anyway. We had our own family, we’ve moved on—most of the time.’

  ‘Apart from when somebody knocks on your door out of the blue, ey?’

  Anthony smiled.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  Did he know Narvaez had come back? What he wanted to know himself was, did Narvaez bring Francisco back with him?

  Anthony was ahead of him.

  ‘If you’re wondering if we knew Narvaez came back, the answer is, I know—Helen doesn’t.’

  Evan’s surprise must have shown on his face.

  ‘Are you surprised that I know or that I haven’t told my wife?’

  ‘Both, I suppose.’

  ‘I kept in touch with the investigator. He told me—and no, he didn’t say if Francisco came back. As far as telling Helen goes, well ...’ He shrugged, gave Evan a sad smile. ‘I don’t know for sure if he abducted Francisco or not. He doesn’t deserve to have his other eye poked out on the off chance that he did—which is what would happen if Helen ever saw him again.’

  There was an awkward pause. It was obvious he wanted to say more.

  ‘May I ask why you are looking into this now, after all these years?’

  Evan hesitated.

  ‘I, uh—’

  Anthony held up a hand to stop him.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me if you’ve been asked not to. I’ve got a pretty good idea anyway.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s not rocket science. I’m an old man myself, I know what it’s like as you grow older. You look back on your life and all the what ifs come screaming into your mind. All those bad decisions you made come back to haunt you. Depending on the kind of man you are, you might try t
o make amends.’

  Evan gave a small you-got-me dip of the head.

  ‘You’re very philosophical about all this.’

  ‘One of the few advantages of growing old. You learn to accept the things that can’t be changed. And don’t worry, it’ll come to you one day as well.’

  A shiver ran down Evan’s neck, his palms suddenly moist. Was he talking about Sarah? The way he was looking at him, that small smile on his lips, something he couldn’t put his finger on in his eyes, made him think so.

  ‘Just one more question.’

  The small smile on Anthony’s lips became a mischievous grin.

  ‘I thought you’d never ask. I still keep in touch with the investigator. His name’s Elwood Crow. He’s even older than me, but his mind’s as sharp as it ever was. You might learn something from him. Who knows, maybe he can help you out with some other things as well.’

  Anthony Fox wrote Crow’s number on a slip of paper and sent Evan on his way, feeling as if he’d been turned inside out for the whole world to see.

  Chapter 24

  EVAN PULLED INTO THE driveway of Carl Hendricks’ farm, Beau Terre, and parked in the yard behind the house that separated it from the burned-out barns. He cut the engine and sat listening to the silence, not even the sound of birds in the trees breaking it.

  The house was in darkness, the power cut off when Hendricks moved out to take up residence at the state’s expense. The windows were dark. He shivered, alert to the slightest sound. Floyd Gray might be hiding inside, watching him, just as he had hidden, watching, on the night he discovered Hendricks’ secret chamber and its grisly contents.

  He was being paranoid. There was no need to be careless as well. He felt exposed, out in the open, the car advertising his presence. He started it up and drove back out, making a right turn and driving a half-mile until he came to a dirt road that lead into a wooded area. This was where he’d hidden the car here last time he came here. He backed in, all the way to a five-bar gate with a rusted-up padlock on it. The car was invisible unless you were looking for it. Then he jogged back down the road to the farm.

  A cold wind had picked up, coming off the bare fields, ruffling his hair. He turned up his collar and approached the remains of the barns, the smell of burned timbers long since gone. The smaller barn had one wall intact, somehow surviving the ravages of the fire. A few charred corner posts poked up into the air like blackened fingers. The roofs had collapsed, tiles scattered across the yard.

  Most of the floor of the smaller barn had caved in, the hole half-filled with blackened rafters and broken tiles. The concrete staircase leading up from the basement below was still intact, the metal handrail Hendricks cuffed him to now twisted like a piece of expensive modern art. Mounds of rain-soaked ash lay around, most of it scattered across the fields by the wind long ago. Straggly weeds sprouted in the fertile, ash-rich earth.

  He picked his way through the debris, stared down into the hole. The fire had consumed the posts supporting the basement ceiling and a couple tons of earth had caved in on top. Even if there was a lower level basement under all that, he’d never dig it out in a month of Sundays. He hunkered down at the top of the staircase and shone the flashlight from his phone into the gloom. It didn’t penetrate far enough to see anything. He took hold of the handrail and shook it. Despite being twisted, it was solid enough, so he leaned forward and downwards, peering into the hole.

  A patch of deeper darkness on the far side might have been the entrance to the chamber where Hendricks interred Daniel and Robbie Clayton. Or the other one where he found the Zippo lighter. It didn’t matter, he wasn’t interested in the ones he knew about, the ones he’d been in.

  He pushed himself upright and looked for somewhere to wipe the soot off his hand, ended up lifting his leg and wiping it on his sock. He turned a full circle, cursing Matt Faulkner for setting the barns on fire, making everything so much more difficult. He would never find anything from out here. He’d have to approach it from inside the house, hope some of the underground tunnels were intact.

  He paced the area between the barns and the house slowly, eyes sweeping the ground in front of him. It was flat and firm, no depressions marking the route of the tunnel he knew joined the house to the barns. Standing in the middle, he looked left and right, calculated the most likely route and stamped around on the ground. It was rock solid, no hint of subsidence, no sudden caving-in, tipping him into a yawning chasm.

  Something caught his eye, half-hidden under the stairs that led up to the wraparound porch. He bent and picked it up. A bone, well-chewed, tiny scraps of meat still clinging to the slimy surface. It hadn’t been there long or the rats would’ve had it—unless there was something living here that kept the rats away. Memories of a single, whispered word made his breath catch in his throat.

  Marlene.

  He threw the bone back under the stairs, wiped his fingers on his pants, and slowly climbed the stairs up to the porch, testing his weight on each tread. Empty beer bottles were strewn around, crumpled cigarette butts in a plastic cup. It might be kids, hanging out at the creepy old farmhouse, scaring each other with stories about what happened in the secret chamber under the barns.

  He had a sudden, vivid flashback to the last time he was here, creeping up the stairs from the basement to the barn, then Carl Hendricks’ sneering voice.

  Help you with something?

  He whirled around. There was nobody there.

  His cell phone rang, making him jump. He ignored it, let it go voicemail. Thirty seconds later, a text message arrived. His imagination went into overdrive—another message from Hendricks’ buddy?

  I can see you.

  The flesh on the back of his neck crawled, the wind finding its way inside his collar, making him shiver. He pulled out his phone and stared at the screen.

  Guillory.

  He dropped the phone back in his pocket, feeling stupid. He didn’t want to talk to her now. She’d want to know where he was, what he was up to, and that was a conversation he wasn’t ready for.

  He got the Zippo lighter out, ran his thumb over the inscription to remind himself why he was here. Remind himself why he deliberately deceived Guillory about the emails and texts from Hendricks. Why he deliberately ignored the evidence of his own eyes pointing to Floyd Gray living at this house, right now, with Marlene, his beautiful, sleek, killer of a dog.

  He crossed the porch and stood in front of the back door, the sound of his blood loud in his ears. It was exactly like the last time he was here. Alone. Nobody knew he was here. The only difference was, this time, Carl Hendricks had deliberately lured him here with his taunting messages.

  Don’t worry, it will all be over soon.

  Would he ever reach that state of grace Anthony Fox promised he would, the ability to accept the things that can’t be changed?

  He tried the back-door handle.

  It was unlocked, as he knew it would be. He pushed the door open, his ears alert for the sound of a low growl in Marlene’s throat, his own throat constricting as if her teeth were already clamped around it, and stepped inside.

  ***

  THE KITCHEN SMELLED OF stale cigarettes, moldy fast food containers and wet dog. It was empty. Even so, somebody was definitely living there. He relaxed, his shoulders dropping from up around his ears, and looked around. Nothing had been touched since he was here last. No attempt made to clean it, tidy it, with a view to selling.

  Last time he was here, there’d been a ring of spare keys in one of the kitchen drawers. He searched them now, found them and locked the back door, left the key half-turned in the lock to stop anybody unlocking the door from the outside.

  Once bitten twice shy.

  Something caught his eye that definitely hadn’t been there before. Leaning against the wall was a takedown recurve bow. Without cams or pulleys, it was a thing of deadly beauty—the last time he’d seen one, it was being used to bring down kids and teachers in a school gym in the movie We Need
To Talk About Kevin. He picked it up and tried it, surprised at the amount of strength it took. You could shoot an arrow straight through a grizzly bear and out the other side.

  What kind of game did Floyd Gray hunt with it, sending Marlene to despatch anything that tried to crawl away and die?

  He went through into the hallway, hesitated at the top of the stairs that led down into the basement. He tried the light switch because it was there. The power was off as he’d thought. He got out his phone again and turned on the flashlight. It did a better job of illuminating the stairs than it had outside in the open air. It still wasn’t great. He didn’t know how quickly it would run down the battery. He checked the display—about a third left. Hopefully it would be enough.

  He took the stairs slowly, concentrating the beam in front of him. The basement hadn’t been touched. Lumber stacked in bays against one wall, a workbench along another, shelving on the other two sides. The false shelf unit with the hidden door behind it was wedged open with a piece of lumber. Beyond that, the tunnel that led to the other basement, the one under the barns, was in darkness. At the far end was another door, the room behind it now open to the elements.

  He found a heavy-duty broom in the rack with the lumber and crept forward into the mouth of the tunnel. He swept it from side to side with one hand, clearing away the layer of dust and loose dirt on the floor as he went, his phone in his other hand. He got all the way to the end but didn’t find a trapdoor or a grill concealing an entrance to a lower level. He tried the door at the far end. It wouldn’t budge. There was a couple tons of damp earth piled up against it. It was that mound of earth that had stopped the fire from burning through the door and spreading into the main house.

  The doorframe was twisted and skewed. A crack of light showed through the top right corner where the door sagged. A steady stream of air flowed in. He twisted his head and saw the sky above. He smelled the dampness at this end. Last time he was here, everything was bone dry. Since then, months of rain had soaked into everything, the timbers eagerly sucking up the moisture.

  As if on cue, there was a loud creak from above his head, halfway back down the tunnel. He froze, then angled the beam of his phone upwards. The ceiling was lined with six-inch wide wooden planks, supported by wooden posts. Some of the planks were bowed, gaps showing between them. He hadn’t looked up last time, didn’t know if they’d always been that way.