“I’m sorry to bother your nap,” Loretta said. She had worked for him ever since she finished high school twenty-five years ago. She knew his rhythms. She had brought him dinners to freeze after his wife, Ann-Marie, passed. She did that for a year. She made sure he never sat too long because blood clots ran high in his family. She was a good face for him to wake up to.
“No bother, Loretta, what is it?”
“There’s a man outside who says he needs to see you. Says it’s urgent but he wouldn’t go into it.”
“Don’t recognize him?”
Loretta shook her head. Pealey looked at the wall clock and saw that it was about leaving time. Still, he told Loretta to send the man in.
A blond guy in his late twenties, maybe early thirties came inside. He had a giant bound manuscript under his arm. He seemed frazzled.
“Sheriff, I’m Kyle Broder. Detective Tomás Ruiz contacted you a week or so ago about a cat that had been killed.”
“Uh-huh. Go on.”
Kyle launched into a long and complicated story. It involved some professor of his who was writing some book, and when Kyle wouldn’t publish the book, the professor snapped. The sheriff half listened. He had learned from almost fifty years on the force to strip away anything extraneous because people tended to babble.
“He lives in this town,” Kyle said. “His name is William Lansing.”
Now Pealey remembered the whole tale. William Lansing had spoken of a former student who’d become a little obsessive. And lo and behold, the crazy showed up at the sheriff’s door.
“Son, why don’t you take a seat?” he said, in the most calming tone he could muster. “You’re pacing all around.”
Kyle obeyed. He placed Devil’s Hopyard on the desk.
“Like the park,” Pealey said, tracing a thumb across the letters.
“Were you sheriff here when Mia Evans went missing?”
Like he’d been gutted, Pealey felt a sharp jab to his stomach. Mia Evans had been the one true blight on a solid career. He didn’t like puzzles—or rather, he didn’t like not solving them. Mia’s disappearance remained a haunting enigma.
“William is writing about her,” Kyle said, turning to a dog-eared page.
Pealey put on his glasses and read a sick and disturbing paragraph about a professor who wanted to eat Mia’s heart.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
Kyle turned to another passage, this one where the professor chains her up in a shack. Pealey closed the book after getting through a few sentences.
“I can’t read this filth.”
Kyle took out his cell. For a split second, the sheriff reacted as if it was a weapon—hearing about Mia had put him on edge—but then Kyle showed him a picture of a rock shaped like a heart and covered with blood.
“William writes about killing Mia with a heart-shaped rock and this was hidden in his office.”
From the angle the picture had been taken, Pealey could clearly see it was William Lansing’s office. The rock was held up next to a framed diploma with Lansing’s name.
Kyle reopened the manuscript to where Mia was bludgeoned in a shack in Devil’s Hopyard.
“Mia was my girlfriend at Bentley.”
Pealey recalled hearing that from a few boys his team had questioned years ago. All of them had alibis for that night. They questioned each student and faculty member at Bentley, and even when the papers stopped printing about Mia, Pealey still poked his nose around. For a while, he thought that Karen Evans was involved, since she had a string of bad news ex-boyfriends. One was a crank dealer who came back to town right before Mia disappeared. Pealey had been certain the guy took her and he’d even got a warrant to search the guy’s trailer, but the ex had gone clean and was staying at a Motel 6 up in Lewiston, Maine, the day Mia vanished. Her mother also seemed too high on opiates to be the master of any plot. Everyone soon moved on from the case, but Mia became the sheriff’s own private obsession, a distraction from Ann-Marie’s cancer. After Ann-Marie died, the missing girl preoccupied his lonely nights. And then one night, he passed out on a knocked-over bottle of Jim Beam and a sea of newspaper clippings with Mia’s face. He had dreamt that he saw her lips moving on the clippings. Then she spoke. She told him to forget about her. She said whatever happened to her no longer mattered. She wanted peace, and more than that, she wanted him to have peace. She told him to find a companion other than her. So he put her clippings in boxes up in the attic. He drove out to a kennel and got a black Lab puppy. He stopped drinking so much, only a nip here and there, and rose early for the sunrise. He found the best kind of happy he could.
“William was just getting home if you go question him now,” Kyle said. “I think he killed Mia and she’s buried somewhere in Devil’s Hopyard. I haven’t finished the manuscript yet, but the end might reveal where—”
Pealey tugged at his mustache, his habit when plunging into deep thought. He’d brought Professor Lansing into the station after Mia’s disappearance—all her teachers were questioned. The professor had a strong alibi from both his wife and a student and actually accused the police of not doing enough to find the girl. This soon became the town’s sentiment until an unseasonably frigid winter blew in and their focus switched to their own issues. The ice for the next three months also made it impossible to do any real searching. The professor had never been on his radar, and Pealey doubted the guy was the missing puzzle piece.
“Son, there are three sides to every story,” Pealey said. “Yours, his, and the truth.”
“I know the truth of what happened. That son of a bitch fucking killed Mia. He was having an affair with her, she tried to end it, and he went psycho.”
“I understand how someone can love a pet very much,” Pealey said.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Obviously, you’re heartbroken over your cat that was killed. I have a dog at home who I talk to as if he’s human. He saved my life. But I don’t think this man killed your cat and I don’t think he killed—”
Kyle leaped from his seat and pushed the manuscript at the sheriff. “The proof is all here!”
“Now, this is what a book told you, that don’t mean it’s a fact. And how do I know you weren’t the one who wrote it?”
“His children are involved in Mia’s death too,” Kyle insisted. “Somehow. Either they knew or helped. I’m not sure about his wife, but I don’t think so. She seemed genuinely surprised when I told her what William was writing about.”
“I know his children,” the sheriff said, running through his mind any interactions he’d had with them. This was becoming increasingly more difficult to do than it used to be now that he was pushing seventy and holes started appearing in his memories. “They took over the Royal Wee.”
“The son, Bill Jr., is a little off,” Kyle said. “Psychopathic tendencies, and his relationship with his sister is weirdly close. The whole family is hiding secrets.”
Pealey recalled a time when the daughter must have been in junior high or high school and was caught shoplifting at the Crystal Mall. She’d stolen a pair of leggings after already paying for a sweater. She had stuffed the leggings in her waistband and they’d beeped when she tried to go through security. He’d given her a stern lecture.
“The one time I met Bill,” Kyle said, “he was picking the feathers off a living bird. Really hurting it.”
“How long ago was that?” Pealey asked, sitting up straight for the first time since Kyle entered.
“Ten years. College.”
About a decade ago, an ornithologist connected to Bentley had come to the station complaining about a rash of injuries to some of his birds. Evidently, he believed someone had broken into his research facility and plucked the feathers off of a good number of them. He’d suspected fraternity activity, or some cruel dare, but whoever picked the facility’s lock had done so with the utmost care not to arouse suspicion—not likely a wasted frat guy. These mutilations continued for some time, the culp
rit moving on from the ornithologist’s birds and attacking ones in the wild. People suspected an out-of-control animal, but the ornithologist said a rabid animal would go after nonavian species too and wouldn’t be so specific with its prey.
“Plucking off the bird’s feathers?” Pealey said, tugging at his mustache some more. “You don’t say.”
Kyle looked exhausted, like he’d been running nonstop and didn’t know what to do with himself now that he’d become still. He removed a jump drive from his pocket and picked up the large manuscript from the desk.
“The manuscript is on the drive for you to read. I don’t know why William’s deciding to do this now, but he is confessing his crimes in it. Please … could you just look it over and talk to him again?”
Maybe it was the desperation Pealey could hear in the young guy’s voice or the coincidence of the mysterious bird mauler who might just be Bill that made him not brush off Broder’s claims anymore. If William Lansing’s son had a penchant for harming birds, maybe the father did kill Kyle’s cat, and even worse—Mia.
He looked over at a picture of Ann-Marie on his desk. He hadn’t kept any from the cancer years, wanting her to remain robust in his eyes. She was in a baby blue dress up at her sister’s place in Vermont, giving him a Mona Lisa smile with a string of mountains as a backdrop. He could’ve sworn he saw her lips moving. Possibly the nips of whiskey he’d had were still fogging his brain, but he could hear Ann-Marie’s serene voice. She whispered: Follow this lead.
He had adored her for thirty-five years and never once ignored any of her requests. He wasn’t about to start now.
34
NATHANIEL WAITED FOR Professor Lansing on the side of the road past the college’s entrance. The professor had sent a text asking Nathaniel to deliver a note. So Nathaniel bundled up in a heavy winter coat and scarf, not sure how far he’d have to travel. He watched the road for Professor Lansing’s car to emerge. The sun was setting and cars had turned on their lights to cut through the snow. He wrapped the scarf around his mouth so only his eyes were visible. He decided this would be the last favor he’d do for the professor. He was glad that he’d be getting a good grade in class, but he was also becoming increasingly weirded out by the professor’s demands. The trip all the way to Brooklyn to leave a fruit basket had been a strange request, but the professor swore how much his friend loved surprises. Then the Ex-Lax and drugs gave Nathaniel too much of a glimpse into the professor’s life of constipation and sleepless nights. If this final demand wouldn’t be the end of his duties, he’d have to tell his mentor that he was done for good.
Heavy brights lit up the distance and a car screeched to a stop by his feet. The window rolled down and Professor Lansing stuck his head out. He had an envelope, sealed with a W in fine calligraphy. A large bandage covered his arm, blood leaking out.
“Deliver this to the motel on Pine Road, room twelve,” Professor Lansing said. “Knock on the door, leave it, and make sure you’re not seen.”
Nathaniel took the envelope. “Okay.”
“This will be the last thing I ask of you,” the professor said. “This is good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” Nathaniel asked, but Professor Lansing rolled up the window. Nathaniel heard classical music pumping from the speakers as the car took off. He stared at the blank envelope, curious as to what was inside, but he tucked it in his inside pocket and zipped his coat closed, making his way to Pine Road.
* * *
KYLE RETURNED TO his motel and crawled into bed with Devil’s Hopyard. It had been a long day and he craved a nap more than anything, but he had to know how the manuscript ended. There was no guarantee that the sheriff took him seriously and would go question William again. If Kyle wanted answers, he’d have to rely on himself to discover them. With only a few pages to go, he flipped to where he’d left off.
I return to our shack, our home. The floorboards had all been removed and you are buried beneath. At first I’d done a crude job, the thrill of the taste of your heart distracted me, and I could tell upon entering that a crime had been committed here. So I lied to my wife and told her I had a faraway conference and spent the entire weekend perfecting your eternal resting spot. I removed the bedframe and mattress; all I kept was the blackened pan I used to cook you, hoping a sliver might have remained for a later bite. I burned the wooden bedframe and mattress outside along with any of evidence of what transpired in this shack. Afterward it was like when I’d found it, wholly pure again.
I spent the weekend sleeping on its bare floor, my ear flush and listening to you a few feet under. I could say it didn’t have to end this way, that if you hadn’t rejected me we could’ve been good together for much longer, possibly forever, but I knew that was a lie. From the very moment you walked into my classroom, I saw our true future. What beats inside of me is not a heart; it is pure rot and sin. I challenge anyone who grew up the way I did to turn out any differently. I knew cruelty before I could even form words. My father punched my mother in the stomach upon learning there was a life inside. I watched her exist with busted lips and broken bones, and maybe she loved me, but not as much as she loved herself. She left me to suffer, knowing that if one of us remained, my father wouldn’t attempt to come after the one who got away.
The shack that he tortured me in was not very different from this one. That was what drew me to it. I’ll never forget the day I went running in Devil’s Hopyard and saw its beacon of light, its calling arms. It told me what to do and just how to do it, much like the shack from my past that said it was okay to feed on a heart as opposed to starving. And I’d been starving for so long before I met Mia. I had built up so much rage I had no idea how to release it. I worried that the brunt of it might go toward my wife, my children. That I might turn into my father. I needed someone else to absorb my evil, someone I loved so the act of her murder had weight. I want to make it clear how much she meant to me. The two of us will be larger in death than in life once our story is shared with the world.
Kyle rubbed his eyes, sleep yanking at his consciousness. There were only a few pages left to go. He slapped his face to keep himself awake. A loud knock on the door did the trick even better. He swung off the bed and crept to the door. The knocking got louder and louder, a desperate pounding. Was it William? Would this be the place of their final battle? He opened the door ready to fight, but saw a shivering Mia instead of his enemy, not even wearing a coat, practically naked in the snow.
With quivering purple lips, Mia asked, “C-c-can I come in?”
35
MIA APPEARED OTHERWORLDLY, the fallen snow creating a lush backdrop for this angel’s return to Earth. She wore only a bra and underwear, her toes frostbitten, a shade of blue. She had barely aged at all, still looking nineteen but no longer wide-eyed. She had seen the worst of humankind and would never find her way back to innocence. These thoughts flooded Kyle’s mind as she stood before him at his motel door.
“C-c-can I come in?” she asked, and he took her by the hand and carefully brought her inside. She felt real, and he had a genuine spark upon touching her wrist. He ran over to the closet and took out a bathrobe to warm her up. She sat on the bed and he stood as far away from her as possible, his lips shivering just as much as hers.
“Aren’t you dead?” he said, after a moment of silence, of disbelief.
“‘Die at the right time: thus teaches Zarathustra,’” she said. “Nietzsche. My time wasn’t meant to be ten years ago in Devil’s Hopyard.”
“You escaped from William?” Kyle asked, no longer knowing what might have truly occurred in that shack. The scenario he had created was now blown to bits.
“I didn’t escape,” she said. “I found a different hell. I wandered for a long time and finally came back here. Because I saw you were looking.”
“But how did you know?”
She rose and came toward him. He backed up until he banged into the wall. Her breath was so sweet, a hint of sour apple.
“I’ve followed y
ou through the years,” she said. “I was with you after I vanished. I held your hand those two nights in the psych ward, you just couldn’t feel me yet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And when your mom passed, I was there too. I may have just been a whisper, but I told you that she loved you even though she never really said it because she was difficult and prone to fits and numbed herself with any medication that could quiet the noises in her head, just like my own mom. I told you to finish up your master’s and move to New York City. I knew you could accomplish whatever you set your mind to.”
“You are dead,” Kyle said, tears filling his eyes.
“I don’t think of myself that way. Like Nietzsche said, ‘Many die too late, and few die too early.’ There’s a tombstone with my name in a graveyard, but it doesn’t have a corpse in it, so I’m not dead, just gone. My death will be at the age of ninety-three, not early at all.” She looked into the distance, this future materializing. “I will be a great-grandparent. I will have many true loves. I will have seen the world. I will close my eyes one night and won’t wake from my dream. That’s how it should be.”
But Kyle knew this wouldn’t happen. The girl before him was nothing more than an apparition.
“I wish I could have done something to save you,” he said, the tears flowing. They blurred his vision and made her appear even hazier.
“I played with danger because I liked doing it, because I thought I was just flirting and not destroying myself. Because I thought boredom was the worst sin imaginable. I learned the truth the hard way.”
“Did you know who William was?” Kyle asked. “The kind of person capable of doing the things he did?”
She nodded. “Everyone close to him knew who he was. Even you.”
“That’s not true. I never saw this coming.”
“You didn’t want to believe it so you made him into something he isn’t. He has that kind of charm. He’s done it to many people before, even me. But we both recognized his sadness and his evil heart too. We just chose to look the other way.”
The Mentor Page 24
