by John Hart
“Very well, Clarence. Thank you for your time.” I walked down Hambly’s private stairs and did not look back. I heard his office door slam.
I found Hank in the car, his arm out the open window.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Really?”
I looked at Hank. “Really.”
“So where to now?”
“Highway Six-oh-one, toward Mocksville. I’ll show you where to turn.”
We rolled out of town, and as we drew closer to Stolen Farm, I felt the spring inside of me grow tighter. My head was heavy with densely packed emotions. It grew more so as we approached Vanessa’s house and stopped in front of it.
“Wait here,” I told Hank, getting out of the car, leaning in through the open window.
“Jesus, Work.”
I held up my hands, palms out. “Last time,” I told him.
Stolen Farm lay in the shadow of the neighboring woods. Thin fingers of light reached for the farmhouse but fell short, satisfied with the faded red wall of the old barn. We’d parked in the rutted drive, house to the left, barn to the right. I didn’t see Vanessa’s car, but her nameless man was there; he watched me from the gaping mote-filled cavern that bisected the barn. If I’d looked up, I would have seen the door to the loft, where Vanessa and I found what we’d thought would last forever. I didn’t look up. I looked at her man. He’d been working on the tractor. Grease covered his hands and the heavy wrench he held. He leaned against the tall molded tire with a proprietary air and studied me as I crossed the dry dirt toward him. He looked bigger than I remembered; he was heavily muscled, and depressingly young, but definitely the same guy.
“That’s far enough,” he said. I stopped, still ten feet away, and held up my hands.
“I’m not looking for any trouble,” I told him. “I just want to talk to Vanessa.”
His mouth opened to an unasked question, and he put the wrench down on the engine cowling of the tractor. He moved toward me, wiping his hands on his pants. Worry creased his face.
“I thought she was with you,” he said.
I dropped my hands, feeling foolish. I might have decked him the other night, but it was clear to me now that he was not intimidated.
“What are you talking about?”
He stopped, towering over me. He searched my face as if for something specific, then flicked his eyes at the house. I followed his glance, hoping to see Vanessa, but the old place was still and dark.
“She didn’t come home last night.”
“What?”
“And I haven’t seen her all day.”
A familiar pit opened in my stomach. Something moved in the young man’s eyes, and I knew it for what it was. I stepped closer.
“Start at the beginning,” I told him. “Tell me everything.”
He nodded and swallowed hard. He wanted to tell me. The thing in his eyes made him need to tell me. It was fear; the young man was afraid, and suddenly I was, too.
CHAPTER 28
So what was that all about?” We were on the interstate, ten minutes north of town. Hank had started to speak at least five times, but something in my face had stopped him. I didn’t want to answer him. I didn’t want to say the words, yet for some reason I did. Maybe I hoped they wouldn’t sound so bad if spoken out loud.
“Someone important to me has gone missing.”
“Someone important? Who do you—Oh, I get it. A girlfriend?”
“More than that,” I said softly.
“Plenty of fish in the sea, Work. Trust me on that.”
I rolled down the window because I needed the smell of something clean. Wind buffeted my face, and for a moment I could not breathe.
“You’re wrong about that, Hank,” I finally said.
“Then we’re swimming in different bodies of water.”
Not swimming, I thought, drowning, and for a moment I was.
“So who was the guy?” I didn’t answer, and Hank looked his question at me a second time. “The guy?”
I settled back into my seat, the headrest soft and sweet-smelling on the heels of jail-issue bedding. “Just drive, Hank. Do you mind? I need to think.”
His words came from far away. “Sure, man. Whatever. It’s a long trip.”
He was right. It was.
But we made it to the crowded parking lot of Dorothea Dix Hospital by late twilight. We didn’t speak until he killed the engine. I peered up through the windshield. Of all the miserable places in this world, I thought, this one must hold the darkest secrets. I thought of Bedlam, and screams choked with vomit. “Talk about the screaming willies,” I said.
“It’s not as bad as you might think,” Hank said.
“You’ve been here before?”
“Once or twice.” He did not elaborate.
“And?”
“And I’ve never been on the secure floors. But the rest of it is just like any other hospital.”
I studied the grounds again. “Except for the razor wire,” I said.
“There is that.”
“What now?” I asked.
“How much money do you have?”
I checked my wallet instinctively, forgetting that I’d already counted the money when it was returned to me. “Three hundred and seventy dollars.”
“Give it to me.” He separated out the three hundred-dollar bills and gave me back the rest. “This should do it.” I watched him fold the bills together and tuck them into the front pocket of his jeans. “Ready?” he asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” I said, meaning it. He punched me lightly on the shoulder.
“Relax,” he told me. “This will be fun.”
When we got out of the car, he donned a windbreaker and checked something in the inside pocket. I couldn’t tell what it was, but he grunted lightly, as if satisfied. I looked up at the hospital, black and sharp-edged against the dark purple sky. Light seemed to jump from the windows and die on the way down.
“Come on,” Hank said. “Try to relax.”
We started toward the main entrance to the hospital. “Hang on,” Hank said. I watched him trot back to the car, unlock it, and reach inside. He came back with the picture of Alex that I’d left in the mailbox. “Might need this,” he said. The picture flashed in the weak light, but I saw Alex’s face perfectly. Like the building, it had sharp edges, and I wondered, not for the first time, what had brought her to this place. What had brought her here and what had she carried away? What had she taken home to my sister, and was it as evil as my troubled mind made it out to be?
I needed an answer, and looking at Hank, I thought we had a good shot at finding one.
We walked into the lobby. Halls shot off in multiple directions. An elevator bank faced us. The hospital smell was overwhelming.
Hank approached a row of newspaper machines and dug some change from his pockets. “Have you read the Charlotte paper today?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He dropped his change into the machine that vended the Charlotte Observer. He retrieved a paper and handed it to me. “You’ll need this,” he said.
I didn’t understand. “What for?” I asked, holding the paper as if I’d never seen one before.
“Are you serious?” he asked, and turned away.
“Oh.” I tucked the paper under my arm. Hank looked up at the bewildering proliferation of signs and seemed to find what he wanted. I didn’t have a clue what that was, but when he told me to follow him, I did. Soon we were lost in the maze, and the ever-present signs beckoned us deeper into the hospital. Hank kept his eyes down, like he knew exactly where he was going. He looked at no one and no one looked at him. I tried to follow suit. Eventually, we turned onto a hall that ended at a small waiting room. In the corner, on the wall, a television showed us its blank screen. A sticky note informed passersby that it was out of order.
A row of vinyl seats lined one wall. Two more halls ran away in opposite directions, their
polished floors agleam with the reflection of fluorescent lighting from above. Voices echoed around us: passing nurses, medical students, a box on the wall paging doctors. Across from us was a blue swinging door beneath a sign that said EMPLOYEES ONLY.
“This is the place,” Hank said. I looked around again, sure I must have missed something. Hank fished a plastic identification badge from his jacket pocket and clipped it onto his shirt. It had his picture on it, a name I’d never heard before, and the name of the hospital. It looked just like every other employee identification badge I’d seen since we entered.
“Where did you get that?” I whispered.
“It’s forged,” he replied curtly.
“But . . .”
He flashed his crooked grin. “I told you I’d been here before.”
I nodded. “Okay. What do you want me to do?”
“Wait here,” he said. I followed his gaze to the row of uncomfortable red vinyl seats. “Read the paper. This might take a while.”
“I want to come,” I said.
“I know you do, and I don’t blame you, but people will talk to one person when they might not talk to two. One is a friendly chat. Two is an interrogation.”
He read the emotion on my face, knew how important this was to me.
“Relax, Work. Read the paper. If there is an answer to be found here, I’ll find it. Okay? This is what I do. Trust me.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Don’t think about it.” Hank turned away, then just as quickly turned back. “Give me the sports section,” he said. I fumbled it out of the paper and handed it to him. He rolled it up and saluted me with it. “Icebreaker,” he said. “All-important in this business.”
I sat stiffly on the hard chair and watched as Hank walked boldly through the door designated for employees only. He didn’t look back, and when the door swung shut, it swallowed him whole.
I settled back. I opened the paper and stared blankly at words that swam. When people passed, I tried to look normal, as if I belonged, but it was hard, for in my racing mind I was a criminal.
I sat there for what my watch said was only fifty-five minutes. The watch lied. It was a lifetime.
Time and again, that blue door swung open. A black man came out the first time, then a white woman and a fat man who could never be mistaken for Hank Robins. Another woman. Two men. An endless stream, and they all wore the same badge of identification. Again and again the door swung wide, and each time it did, the spring of my body wound a little tighter. Hank had been found out. He wasn’t coming.
Then I saw him, in the brief flash as the door swung shut behind an old man pushing a bucket. He was coming out, and the next time the door opened, it was for him. He did not smile, but in his eyes I saw a fierce satisfaction. He took me by the arm before I could say a word; then we were walking, our footsteps loud in the hard-tiled and resonant halls that were the arteries of this place.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked in a voice so normal, it surprised me. I’d expected a whisper.
“Did you get it?” I asked, meaning the answer to our question.
The fierceness moved from his eyes to his mouth, and he smiled. “Oh yes. I got it.”
I wanted to shake it out of him. “And?”
“And it’s something.”
We walked in a silence that just about killed me, but eventually we made it to the car. Hank slipped behind the wheel, started the engine, and hit the door-lock button. He still had not said a word. He backed out of the parking spot and navigated us through the inland sea of parked vehicles. Finally, he looked at me. “Buckle up,” he said.
“Are you fucking with me?” I asked. “Because this is not a good time.” He did not respond, and his eyes remained steady on the road.
“I’m just getting my thoughts together, Work. There’s a lot to say and I’m trying to figure out the best way to do it. I don’t want to freak you out.”
“You’re freaking me out right now.”
But he would not be rushed, and he kept his mouth shut until we were on Interstate 40, driving west at exactly nine miles over the speed limit.
“Have you ever heard of East Bend?” he finally asked.
“Maybe. I think so.”
“It’s a little place. Pretty, with horses. It’s on the Yadkin River, not far from Winston-Salem.”
Headlights flashed on Hank’s face from across the grassy divide, unidentified cars driven by nameless people. In the dark intervals, Hank’s face was a blurred profile. Then he turned to look at me.
“You should go there sometime. There’s this little vineyard there, right on the river. . . .”
“Is there some reason you’re stalling?”
He looked at me again, and headlights filled the space around us. “Alex is from there. It’s where she grew up. For the first fourteen years anyway.”
“And?”
“Look, Work . . . the details are sketchy. All I’ve got is what the nursing assistant told me, and bought information isn’t always reliable. I haven’t verified any of this.”
“Fine. You’re absolved of the consequences of any misinformation. Just tell me what you heard.”
“She killed her father, Work. She cuffed him to the bed and set it on fire.”
“What?”
“She was fourteen. Her mother was in the bed, too, but she survived. It was Daddy she was after.” He paused. “And she got him, too. Cooked him right to the bed.”
I felt Hank’s eyes on me, gauging my reaction, but there was none; then Hank continued, his voice a flat line.
“She waited for him to stop screaming, and then she called 911 and walked out of the house; she watched it burn. When the fire truck arrived, she met them at the curb, said her mother might still be alive. They found her under the bedroom window, burned over seventy percent of her body. She was cut up pretty bad, too, from diving through the glass. When the police showed up, the girl told them what she’d done. She didn’t lie about it, but she didn’t gloat, either. Rumor is, she didn’t shed a single tear. The nursing assistant didn’t know if she went to trial or not, but the state sent her to psychiatric lockup. She spent four years at Dorothea Dix, but she was a minor when she did the job. So when she turned eighteen, they released her to Charter Hills, where she met Jean.”
“That was only three years ago,” I said.
“She’s young.”
“She doesn’t look it.”
“She’s led a hard life, no mistake there. It’ll age a person.”
“Are you sympathizing with her?” I asked.
“Not at all,” Hank said. “But they couldn’t tell me what went down before she killed him. She must have had a reason, and it’s not too hard to guess what it was.” I sensed him shrug. “I have a soft spot for hard-luck cases.” He left the rest unspoken. I didn’t have the details, but I knew that Hank’s childhood had been no picnic.
The silence drew out. Cars passed us.
“That’s it?” asked. “That’s all we know?”
“I tried to buy a copy of her file, but the guy wouldn’t go there. He said gossip was one thing, stealing documents was another; but he was pretty sure of what he told me. Said it was common knowledge among the staff.”
Hank checked his mirror and passed a pickup truck. One of its headlights was out, so it seemed to wink at us as we passed. I saw the sign for Interstate 85, and we remained silent until we’d left I-40 and pointed south, toward Jean and the woman who guarded so well the secrets of her violent past.
Hank reached into his pocket and handed me back two of the hundred-dollar bills. “It only took one,” he said.
“So that’s it?”
“Basically.”
I sensed Hank’s hesitation. “What does ‘basically’ mean?” I asked.
Hank shrugged again. “The guy was scared of her.”
“Of Alex?”
“Alex. Virginia. He said everybody was pretty much scared of her.”
“Except Jean,” I said.
I felt his eyes again, measuring me in the dark. “Except Jean,” he finally said. “Jean loved her.”
I nodded silently, then looked again at Hank. There had been something in his voice.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Just something I heard at Charter Hills.”
“What?”
A shrug. “Something a guy said. Another floor worker, one of the guys I talked to the other day. I asked him about Jean and Alex, and something he said stuck with me. He said that Jean loved her like a preacher loves his God.” Hank took his eyes off the road. “His words, not mine.”
I pictured them together.
A preacher and his God. Obedience. Subservience.
“Could she really love her that much?”
“Who the hell knows? I’ve never had anything like it.” He sounded wistful. I said nothing for a long time, and Hank, too, seemed content with his own thoughts.
“Do you think Alex could have killed my father?”
“Assuming you didn’t do it?”
“Very funny.” I wasn’t laughing.
“Do you know where she was the night Ezra went and got himself shot?”
“No.”
“Did she have a reason to want him dead?”
I thought of Ezra, and of his persistent disdain for Alex. I saw the fight between him and Jean, the night that everything went to shit. The fight had been about Alex. Ezra had tried to force them apart.
“She had a reason,” I said.
“And seven years ago, she cooked her father to his bed.”
I nodded to myself. “I guess it’s possible.”
“There you go.”
CHAPTER 29
We rolled into Salisbury after midnight. The town was quiet, with few cars moving and fewer lights burning. I felt like a ghost as we whispered through the stillness. Even Hank was subdued, and I guessed that, like me, he could not shake the image of what Alex had done.
When Hank pulled into my driveway, I got out and walked around to his window. He rolled it down.
“Listen, Hank. I really appreciate what you’ve done; it means a lot.”
