by Chris Beakey
She held the thought firmly in her mind as she went back into the hallway and stepped toward the door.
Probably locked.
But with a turn of the knob, it opened.
The room was stark and colorless. The walls were blank and the small single window was covered with a Venetian blind. There was a twin bed topped with an Army-green blanket, a bedside table with a clock and a phone, a dresser and a desk with Kieran’s laptop computer. The laptop was open on the desk, and the handles of the double-door closet were looped together by a combination lock that looked like it belonged on a bicycle.
The bed was tiny. She could not even imagine the two of them sleeping here, in a room that looked like a prison cell.
Outside, the wind moaned. She went to the window, and peeked through the blinds. The snow was almost up to the lower sill now, and the cold air made her shiver again as she looked down at a small wooden box on the dresser. She ran her fingertips across the inlaid design on top, and imagined Kieran leaning over a worktable, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he constructed it. With only a moment of hesitation she unlatched the small hatch and raised the lid.
The box was filled with bottles of prescription pill bottles of varying sizes. She read a few of the labels—Olanzapine, Fluvoxamine, Ativan—recognizing them as depression medications based on what she had learned online after coming across a bottle in her mother’s purse.
But her mother had taken one prescription. The box contained six.
The thought made her uneasy as she looked around the strange, uncomfortable room again.
You shouldn’t be here. You need to get out.
Her hip bumped the desk when she stepped back. The screen on the laptop bloomed with light. She looked down and saw the website for a television station. It was the same site Kieran had been viewing in his office at school. There was a video box at the center of the page under the headline “murder victim identified as local teacher.”
She sat down at the edge of the bed, her mood darkening even more with the realization that she hadn’t even bothered to ask Kieran about Ms. Jenkins, who might have been his friend.
And then she looked at the top of the screen. Kieran had used Google Chrome as his browser, which revealed tabs for three other web pages he had open, each identified by a line of text:
Frederick woman dies in crash.
Still no answers in roadside murder.
Detectives appeal to public for clues in death.
She felt a sense of foreboding as she leaned forward, and put the cursor over the first tab.
It was the story about her mother, one she had seen a dozen times before, the Lexus pictured upside down at the bottom of the gorge.
She went to the next tab, a story about another woman, Danica Morris, who had been murdered at the side of the road. She glanced at the date of the story: September 13.
The same night, she thought. Up here on the mountain.
On Rolling Road.
She switched back to the site that had first been on the screen, the story about Ms. Jenkins, and scrolled through it again.
“Seen enough Sara?”
She turned toward the door as Kieran’s voice echoed through her mind.
But he wasn’t there.
She went back into the hallway, which was empty.
Your imagination, she thought. Playing tricks.
And yet it had felt like he had been right behind her. Watching her. Again. For weeks she had been certain of the psychic bond between them, a mental and emotional connection that always told her she was about to get a text message, or when her phone would ring.
A connection that made her feel as if he was still watching her, right now.
Her legs wobbled as she went back into the main room, then sat down on the couch and leaned forward and thought of everything Kieran had told her about his childhood. The death of his mother. The abuse. The nightmares he suffered, even now.
Suddenly all she wanted was to get away, to be back in her own home, in the warmth and familiarity of her own room.
But you have to say something. You can’t just run out.
She went over to the table, where Aidan had left his notebook and pencils. Scribbled a note: Kieran, it’s late and I need to go. The pencil lingered above the page as she tried to think of something else to say. I hope Aidan is okay. I’ll call you in the morning.
She knew she needed to write something more, like, Love, Sara.
She left it blank, and grabbed her purse and then her coat and stepped awkwardly around the jumble of old furniture in the front section of the house.
The cold seized her as she stepped outside. She sank up to her thighs in the snow and even though she wanted to run she could barely walk to the Jeep. She reached into her purse, pushed the button for the remote and unlocked the doors. The inside of the Jeep was as cold as the air outside and the windows were covered with ice. After three tries, the engine turned over. She turned the defroster on high and pulled the scraper from the glove box, then with another anxious look back at the house quickly swiped narrow swaths of visibility across the windshield and side and rear windows.
She pressed the accelerator to keep the engine going, then glanced in the rearview mirror and shifted into reverse.
The wheels spun through the loose snow, but after a moment she had the traction she needed to move. Back toward the house and then, with a grinding turn, toward the road.
But then with a loud backfire the Jeep shuddered. The lights on the dash flickered and the engine died.
She turned the key and heard nothing but a click.
Tried again. Heard nothing.
God don’t let me get stuck out here. Her heart was beating quickly, erratically.
She thought of her father, hugging her, urging her to stay home.
Call him and tell him to come get you.
He would know she had lied to her about staying overnight at Madison’s.
Tell him you changed your mind. Tell him you decided to help Aidan with his homework instead.
It was a poor explanation and she doubted she could carry it off.
So go back into the house. Lie down and pretend you’re asleep. If Kieran left her alone she could simply stay on the couch, all night, then ask for a jump-start or a ride home in the morning.
But even then she would have to face him; would have to look into his eyes. Would have to pretend that she hadn’t heard him slapping Aidan—
Stop—don’t think about it. She got out and trudged back toward the house, her teeth chattering uncontrollably as she stepped inside, and suddenly saw the night for what it was. The lie she had told her father. The wine and the drugs. The carefully-chosen clothes and makeup that she had so desperately hoped would ensure her seduction by a man—a teacher—ten years older than herself.
And then an inkling of something worse as she remembered the look on Kieran’s face after she had fallen, the disgust in his eyes as he tossed her the towel. The moment seemed terrible now, like a sudden unmasking, a glimpse at some kind of rage deep within him.
Her regret was overwhelming as she stared down at her wet clothes and reached for the phone. The dial tone was jumpy and there was a ticking sound on the line. It rang four times before her father answered:
“Hello.” His voice was groggy and confused. She remembered the neediness in his eyes when he had asked her to stay home.
“Daddy,” she said, as if she were a little girl. She looked down at the pillows where she and Kieran had almost made love and rubbed her wrists, which were still sore from the pressure he had put on them when he held her against the floor.
He wanted to hurt you. She knew it for certain as she remembered the anger in his face, the power of his strength.
Because he doesn’t love you.
And he never will.
The realization hit her hard as she started to speak, the wall finally crumbling as she stammered on, telling her father she was stranded and scared of the storm, her voice breaking into sudden, uncontrollable sobs as she begged him to bring her home.
Goddamn it Aidan where did you go?
Kieran stood in the backyard, his mind addled by the lingering effect of the strong weed, his chest tightening with fear over the idea of Aidan being outside without a coat. He opened his eyes wider in an effort to adjust his vision to the darkness, his fingers tracing their way to the flashlight’s “on” switch, and felt a dull and sudden pain at the base of his skull as Nurlene’s voice came back.
He ran away.
Out the window in the snow.
The voice was louder than it had been during the brief episode inside the house.
Now he dies. I died and now he dies.
Freezes.
Dies.
“STOP!” He took a succession of deep breaths, drawing the icy air into his lungs.
He waited several seconds, then gazed up into the falling snow again and imagined himself slipping into his brother’s mind, a dense mental jungle with thousands of footpaths that meandered into eternity. It was an ability that came from his own mental condition and it worked best in the last few moments before he drifted off to sleep, when echoes of the day’s interactions made him feel as if he could access Aidan’s thoughts.
He looked back toward the direction of the house, and imagined Aidan running out into the snow, desperate to escape the brain-piercing siren. When he looked down and ahead he saw the footsteps that verified Aidan’s route and followed them, picking up the trail that went into the woods.
The footsteps became more difficult to read as the woods thickened, and then they seemed to disappear completely.
He stopped, leaned against a tall, thick tree, and looked at the path of the trail ahead. If Aidan had continued on he would have eventually come alongside the edge of the gorge. The thought was terrifying given the heavy snow and the likelihood of ice beneath it; the easy possibility of Aidan slipping and falling and tumbling over.
But maybe not. Aidan had grown up in the woods, and had always played in them as if they were his private sanctuary. His mind was odd in so many ways, but it was finely attuned to the wonders and dangers of the wilderness around him.
He looked back at the path he had traveled, switched the lamp from the flood setting to a focused beam, then walked back the way he had come, going no more than ten yards before he saw the strand of rare white birches; the sight instantly tapping into the not-too-distant memory of the “frontier game.”
“Big Chief on the birch trail finds the road.”
“Big Bear on the rock trail finds home.”
The phrases were a call-and-response mechanism that he had created to give Aidan his bearings in the woods; the words like song lyrics that would act as a mental compass if he ever became lost. He heard the lyrics as Aidan might have as he approached the birches, which marked the trail that led back to Rolling Road. Five feet beyond, and covered almost completely by the snow, was a large boulder that marked a side trail that would meander through thicker trees and dense brush before leading back to the house.
The trail beyond the boulder looked untouched.
But there were footprints in the trail beyond the birches, the route to Rolling Road.
You came back down the main trail.
He thought about the altercation in Aidan’s room.
You were afraid to go back home where I was waiting. So you went off on the birch trail, toward the road.
He considered following the same route, yet realized that if Aidan was walking in the road he needed to be there with the truck, so he could pick him up and bring him home.
The footsteps he had made in the trail made it easier to move back toward the house. He saw the vague light in his bedroom window, visible even through the closed Venetian blind, the level of light that would have crept in from the hall if his bedroom door was open.
Which meant Sara must have wandered in.
He thought of his laptop, tried to remember if he had shut it down before she arrived, and started to head back inside.
No, he thought. No time.
He took off his right glove; grabbed the keys to the pickup from his jacket pocket, slid into the truck and pulled out onto Rolling Road; ever more conscious of Aidan alone and freezing, somewhere in the night.
Caruso was still thinking of Kieran O’Shea and the dead women as he carefully pulled the Blazer up to the drive to the cabin. Inside, he had set lamps on timers to bring late-night light to several of the rooms, partly for security reasons but mainly because he hated walking into a dark and empty house. The two fireplaces at the front of the cabin burned wood, but for practicality’s sake he had installed gas jets in the hearth that anchored the beam-ceilinged room off the kitchen, a study that had once held the antlered trophies of deer killed by his father and grandfather.
He shivered as he stepped into the room now, a delayed reaction to the freezing gusts that had assaulted him as he’d moved from the Blazer to the front door. Once the fire was switched on he stood in front of it, feeling the intense heat at his back; his eyes moving, as always, to the console table along the wall and the photos of relatives both living and dead. The visit to Langford Secondary brought back memories of his own high school days as he looked at the 90s-era prom shot of himself and Cassie, his first and only love; a photo that had been taken two days before she learned about the tiny life growing within her.
Four months later they were married eighteen-year-olds; Caruso spending his days in college classes and nights on the EMT crew while Cassie babysat a neighbor’s son and prepared for her own.
On darker days Caruso sometimes wondered about the wisdom of keeping that photo and so many of the others on the console table: his infant son Elliot in a red and green costume that made him look like one of Santa’s elves; Elliot on a tricycle, with his beaming smile; the 5 × 7 studio shot of Cassie and himself and Elliot together, shortly before their lives fell apart.
In his sub-conscious mind the photos from his five-year marriage would always be bracketed by birth and death; the impending birth of Elliot the driving reason for walking down the aisle before being even old enough to have a drink; the boy’s death triggering its end. Despite a handful of relationships in the years since, he remained alone to this day, a single man by circumstance more than choice, still throwing himself into work to keep sad thoughts of Cassie and the life they would have had together out of his mind.
The potential slide into the memories made him moderately grateful for the investigation, a diversion away from dark thoughts that would have ruined his sleep. After pouring an ample amount of Glenfiddich over ice, he logged on to his laptop for another look at how the media were reporting the story. A visit to the TV news stations came first. Two out of three did stand-ups from the gates of the apartment complex where Cherilynn Jenkins lived. The stories were brief, saying nothing that hadn’t been reported at 6 p.m. aside from the fact that there would be a candlelight vigil for the “beloved teacher” in the days to come; the last one ending with a shot of teenaged girls crying into each others’ arms.
Caruso felt a tight, scraping sensation at the top of his throat as the segment ended, an overdue reaction to the death as his cell phone buzzed with a call from central dispatch.
There was no real urgency in the dispatcher’s voice and he was only half-listening until he heard the description of the Jeep, at a house on Rolling Road, where a teenaged girl named Sara Porter was stranded in the snow.
“AI–DAN…!” Kieran slowed the pickup to a crawl as he called out through the open window. He had driven for twenty minutes along Rolling Road and was now searching back and forth along the narrower logging roads that crisscrossed it, feeling as if his brother had been
swallowed by the storm.
But he had to be out there, somewhere.
He was certain that the tracks on the Birch Trail had been Aidan’s. But from the truck, and with another inch of fresh snow on the ground, the tracks were no longer visible.
He found another trail.
The thought filled him with dread.
And walked back into the woods.
He hit the brakes. The truck skidded several yards before stopping at an angle in the roadway. Then after a long look behind and in front of the truck he shifted back into first gear and kept going, his arms and shoulders tense as he searched for a sign of movement amid the trees.
And then he glanced in the rearview mirror.
And saw the flash of red as Aidan emerged from the woods, stepped into the road, and started walking the opposite way, back toward the house.
He braked and turned around in the seat, his eyes straining to see through the sheeting ice on the truck’s rear window. An hour earlier he had responded to Aidan’s incessant pleas to go out in the snow by promising, tomorrow. As soon as we wake up. We’ll even get dressed for it now. So you’ll be ready.
It was a brilliant ploy, deferred gratification that felt like immediate gratification; allowing Aidan to put on the red thermal undershirt and heavy gray jeans and sleep in his boots so he was dressed to play outside even if it wasn’t going to happen until morning.
Boy, you’re gonna have hell to pay.
He shifted the truck into reverse for a U-turn. Aidan had been moving slowly. He was probably stunned by the cold even if he didn’t feel it, and would be easy to catch, his legs too numb for running away once the truck pulled up beside him.
In a matter of minutes they’d be home with the fire blazing. Sara Porter would be shocked at Aidan’s distress.
And to yours, he thought.
After being out in the cold, his eyes would be stinging and teary. Sara would assume that the intensity of his fear for Aidan had made him cry. She would be touched, and worried, and when her guard was down he would ask her what she had been doing while he was outside.
