The Secret Hour

by Luanne Rice

  She had died at Shoreline General, forty-five minutes later, without ever regaining consciousness.

  John closed his eyes, picturing Toni's face from the pictures in his file. The floodgates were now open: The other names and faces and facts came flowing through.

  Anne-Marie Hicks: seventeen, five foot four inches, curly blond hair, braces on her teeth, disappeared one April afternoon, her body found snagged in fishing lines.

  Terry O'Neal: twenty-two, model, pretty, darkly intelligent eyes, never made it to work at her father's insurance agency, body found by two boys crabbing off the Hawthorne Town Dock.

  Gayle Litsky: eighteen, long blond hair, taking time off from college and living back home with her parents, last seen heading to the movies, body found wedged in the rocks of a Black Hall breakwater.

  Jacqueline Rey, fourteen, only child and spitting image of her bright-eyed single mother, missing for four nights before being found among the timbers of the Easterly Yacht Club jetty.

  Beth Nastos, twenty, bookkeeper at Nastos Seafood, tall and slender with a shy smile, body hidden—more cruelly, perhaps, than any other—in the stone-and-steel breakwater of her family's century-old Mount Hope fishing business.

  Patricia McDiarmid, twenty-three, newly married mother of one, murdered in her workout clothes and stashed in a tunnel under Exeter's concrete State Pier.

  Never a day went by without John thinking of the victims. At first they had visited him in his dreams, one by one, and he had begged them to tell him what they wanted while he, in turn, had asked them for something in return: forgiveness. He had wanted them to forgive him for defending their killer. This was his town, and he loved the people in it.

  Everyone thought defense lawyers were tough and thick-skinned, so intent on obtaining victory for their clients and headlines for their own careers, that they forgot about the victims and their families. John was the son of a judge. He had grown up sitting in the back row of his father's courtroom, watching townsfolk brought before the bench. So many secrets and sorrows went on behind the closed doors of Connecticut's fine homes—John's father had taught him to understand and even love his neighbors for their complicated, not always tidy lives, and he understood that justice and life were more complicated than people wanted to believe.

  “This is it,” he said to the cabdriver as they pulled up in front of his house. John looked through the window at the big white house, stone walls, and tall, old trees. The sugar maple—Theresa's favorite—had turned brighter red during the cold night, approaching its peak. On the headland a quarter mile away, the lighthouse gleamed white in the cold sunshine. A patrol car cruised slowly by.

  We had it all covered, the four musketeers . . . he thought, taking it all in. Thinking of his high school friends, all of whom had remained local, he was unexpectedly flooded by emotion.

  John, the son of a judge, had become a lawyer. Billy Manning, son of a cop, had become a cop. And Barkley Jenkins, whose father had been the last lightkeeper, now ran an inn and had a contract to keep the automated lighthouse in working order.

  Theresa had been the fourth musketeer: From the day they had started dating in sophomore year, John had never wanted to be without her. Although Billy and Barkley would break away from their girlfriends some nights, deep down John had been afraid to let her out of his sight. The guys would razz him, but John was too in love to care. Had he known even then? That she was too beautiful to stay with him forever?

  Hurriedly, John pulled out his wallet and paid the driver.

  The broken window gaped in the sunlight, the jagged glass creating an open star. John would call to get it fixed before the kids got home.

  Walking up the steps, he looked through the front door and saw Maggie's book bag lying on the hall floor. Had she forgotten to take it to school? John's stomach tightened, thinking that the new baby-sitter was screwing up already. Hand on the doorknob, he instinctively turned around to glance at her blue car.

  The car wasn't there.

  The door was unlocked.

  John's heart beat fast in his throat, like a cluster of moths. He stepped into his own front hall. This was where he and Theresa had stood twice, bringing both kids home from the hospital—why had that memory come to him now? He shook it off, noticing Maggie's lunch on the chair, the brown bag he'd packed himself last night. She'd stayed home from school, that's all. That's what happened.

  Maybe a stomachache. Maggie, especially since her mother's death, had been prone to stomachaches. Or maybe it was her patented stubbornness—refusing to go to school till she saw with her own eyes that her dad was okay.

  “Maggie!” he called, dropping his briefcase.

  No answer. The hall clock ticked loudly. “I'm home, sweetheart. I'm fine.”

  That should bring her running, he thought. His good, caring, easily worried girl: She would want to know her father was safe and sound.

  But she didn't come running. She didn't even answer.

  “Hey, Maggie. Brainer—where's Maggie?”

  Palms sweating, John walked through the first floor. Slowly, in control, he glanced through the living room, dining room, kitchen—faster now, starting to run—into the den, the sunporch. Where's Brainer? The dog's gone too, he thought.

  “Mags!”

  His guts thudded, hard and sudden. What was the baby-sitter's name, the woman who had shown up at their door—and what kind of idiot, knowing what John knew about what human beings are capable of—would leave his kids with a stranger? Where was Mrs. Wilcox? Hadn't she said she'd stay to help? John heard himself groan, tearing up the stairs two at a time.

  “Kate?” he shouted. That was her name—Kate Harris.

  Ripping through the bedrooms upstairs, John found himself formulating a usable description of the woman. Five foot six, slim, straight brown hair, odd stone-colored eyes, gray coat, black shoes, something to help the cops find her—his blood turned cold as he realized what he was doing. Knowing himself becoming, in that instant, the father of a missing girl . . .

  chapter 3

  John felt the chill of cold truth. Searching his own house, the feeling grew stronger: Was he one of them now? One of those parents—loved ones who came home one bright day to find the nightmare starting—those parents he knew so well from witness lists and cross-examination—parents who had lost their children? Was he on the after side of a before-and-after life? The before-Maggie-was-missing and the after-Maggie-was-missing life?

  “MAGGIE!” he bellowed.

  The house responded in silence.

  John thought of the Moores, the Nastoses, the McDiarmids, the Litskys . . . they had gone through this; he had heard them testify to it: “I came home from work, and she wasn't there . . .” or, “We called her on Friday night, but she didn't answer . . .” or, “We searched and searched, but we couldn't find her.” They had somehow opened the door to the monsters. . . .

  “Maggie! Kate!” he yelled.

  Kate Harris! A plain name, a nice, normal-looking woman. John felt the stab—the standard description of a serial killer. “Seemed so nice, seemed so normal . . .” The boy next door . . . But women killed too, he thought. Women were not exempt from the inner forces that drove people to harm others.

  Where had Kate Harris taken his baby girl? His sweet little stubborn little soccer-shirt-wearing bath-forgetting beloved daughter . . . Maggie. Margaret Rose O'Rourke. Maggie Rose. Mags, Magpie, Maguire, Magsamillion, the Magster.

  “Maggie!”

  Up to the attic. Smells of dust, mothballs, something dead rotting in the walls—the bats were back, John thought. They'd had bats three years ago, and Theresa had called an exterminator. His throat caught, thinking of his wife.

  Another before-and-after, he thought. The before-the-accident, the after-the-accident. How best to define the moment his life first fell apart? Too frantic to think, John raced through the musty attic, looking in the old wardrobe, behind the cedar chest, inside Theresa's grandmother's leather-bound trunk.

/>   He let out a sound so inhuman—the relief of not finding his daughter's body mixed with the anguish of not finding his daughter—that it flushed the bats from the rafters and brought them swarming around his head. They surrounded him with dark, translucent violence, scratching his ears and face with something shockingly sharp—claws? Teeth?

  John didn't know. He ran down the stairs, wedging himself through the door and slamming it behind him. One or two bats escaped the attic, dispersing into the bright vastness of the colonial house's second floor.

  He still had the basement to search: his workshop, the laundry room. The garage, the garden shed, the boathouse. But he didn't have time; minutes were flying by, and he already knew.

  This is it, he thought, going for the phone in his bedroom. This is it, this is the moment. Payback for your career, payback for defending the people you defend.

  Does it mean they're right—you're a demon doing the devil's work, that you're a party to the crimes after the fact, that you should just let the killers fry? Is that what this means?

  My daughter's missing, just like those other families.

  Now I know what it's like, he thought, starting to dial. Now I know.

  John sat on the bed. He picked up the receiver. It felt slippery in his hand. Fingers shaking, he went to punch the buttons and hit air instead. Trying again, he dialed the 91 of 911, when he heard the front door open. Brainer barked. Maggie squealed.

  “He's home! There's his briefcase—Daddy!”

  “Maggie,” he yelled.

  Running down the stairs, he felt his daughter fly straight against his body. She clamped on in a death-defying hug, as if she were out to win the Olympics of hugging. Usually he had to pry her off, but right now John held on even tighter than she did. Brainer tried to bump between them, getting nowhere.

  “We didn't expect you home so soon,” Kate Harris said.

  John raised his eyes, looked at her over Maggie's head. Kate was smiling. Or at least, she was trying to. Her mouth turned up, dimpling her smooth, freckled cheeks. But her river-stone eyes looked so sad, as if no smile had really touched them in a long, long time. John wasn't in the mood for smile analysis, so he dropped the thoughts and gently eased his daughter away.

  “Why isn't Maggie in school?” he asked.

  “She wouldn't go,” Kate Harris said.

  “She goes anyway,” John said. “You're supposed to know that.”

  “I am?”

  “You're the adult.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, as if giving that some thought. “Yes, you're right.”

  “Where were you?” he asked.

  “We wanted to take our—Maggie's—mind off worrying about you,” she said in that faint southern accent.

  “I was worried,” Maggie confirmed.

  “Mags, will you give me a minute here? Go out to the sunporch. I'll be right there, okay?”

  “Dad, don't be mad,” Maggie said, looking stricken. John had seen her look stricken so many times in the last two years, it activated an automatic guilt mechanism in his brain. He did what he always did—promised her something to make her feel better.

  “I'll play checkers with you,” he said, regardless of the work he had waiting for him at the office. “Go set up the board.”

  “I will,” she said, backing away, “but don't be mad at Kate.”

  “Don't you worry,” John said. “Go set up the checkerboard.”

  They watched Maggie walk down the hall; her shirt, stained and too big, was now also quite wet. But her chopped hair was neatly brushed.

  “You heard her,” Kate said, perfectly dressed and impeccably groomed—all except for the cuffs of her gray pants, which John noticed, were also sopping wet. “Don't be mad at me.”

  “She's a kid,” John said. “She doesn't know what's going on. Where the hell were you? Do you know how crazy I was? I was just about to call the police—I thought you'd taken her . . .”

  Kate's expression changed. From calm, almost playful, she went straight to looking shocked.

  “God, I'm sorry.”

  “You must have realized!”

  “Honestly, I thought we'd be home long before you. We just ran down the street to the car wash—”

  “You washed your goddamn car?” he asked, blood pressure rising, knowing that the previous winner of the Baby-sitter X Bad Judgment Award had just been knocked off her pedestal.

  “No, we—” Kate began.

  “I don't have time for this conversation,” John said, shaking his head, holding his temple. It had swollen up and felt the size of a melon under his hand. “I have to play checkers with Maggie, then take her to the office with me—if you had any idea how much work I have to do!”

  “I know—I'd be happy to stay with her.”

  “No, thanks,” John said.

  “Will you please listen to me for a minute? I'd like to explain—”

  “No need, Ms. Harris.”

  “Honestly, there is. It's very important to me! I've waited—”

  “I don't know what explanation you think will suffice for taking my kid without asking, without leaving a note. It's outrageous. It's criminal, if you want to get right down to it. The kidnapping statute is written—”

  “You think I'd kidnap Maggie! Please, just listen to me!”

  Shaking his head, John jammed his hand into his pocket, came up with a few twenty-dollar bills. “Here, take this to cover your expenses. I'll just tell the agency it didn't work out.”

  Kate backed away, not touching the money. When John looked into her eyes, he saw a shimmer of amusement. Was she kidding—she thought this was funny?

  “Take it,” he said. “Unless you want me to pay the agency, let them send you a check.”

  “That would be much better,” she said, her voice cool but her eyes still hot. They flashed, like sunlight striking a blue-green river.

  “Your choice,” he said, shrugging. He thought about wishing her good luck, but what a joke—although he didn't believe she was a criminal, she had no business in the field of child care. Now, anxious to see Maggie, he walked Kate Harris to the door—for the sole reason of making sure she walked through it, to watch her drive away as he locked up tight behind her. Brainer stood beside him, wagging his tail.

  “I had a feeling we might not get to talk today,” she said. “I tried . . .”

  “Talk?” he asked, confused.

  She shook his hand. They looked into each other's eyes. The moment stretched out longer than it should have, and John slowly pulled his hand back. To his surprise, her gaze had made him feel nervous; his palm was cold.

  “Good-bye,” she said. “Will you please say good-bye to Maggie for me? And Teddy, when he gets home from school?”

  “Yes,” John said, watching her walk down the steps, carrying her coat. Her posture was erect, her head held high. Sunlight touched her brown hair, picking up glints of copper and gold. Her gray pants were snug, her thighs shapely—he quickly lowered his gaze, noticing again those wet, black cuffs.

  “Tell Teddy the tangles are gone.”

  “The what?”

  But Kate Harris had climbed into her car, started it up. John waited until she had turned around, started to drive away. Brainer bumped his leg, and instinctively John gave him a pet. The dog's coat felt damp, soft, and smooth. When John looked down, he noticed: Brainer's fur was five shades lighter without the mud and thorns and seaweed.

  The dog had had a bath.

  Reaching for the door, looking down the street, he saw Kate Harris's car drive past the seawall and out of sight.

  Tell Teddy the tangles are gone. . . . John shook his head. What a day—the brick, the hospital, thinking Maggie was missing. Glancing down at the hall table, he saw that Kate had left a card: a small white business card printed with a Washington, D.C., address and one handwritten local phone number. That summed it up for him, and an entire story flashed through his mind: relocation. She'd probably burned her bridges down south, come up here to
start over.

  “Mags,” he called, sliding the card into his shirt pocket. “Ready to play?”

  “Bring it on, Dad,” she shouted from the sunroom. “And prepare to lose!”

  John took a deep breath. He had bats in his attic, a shattered front window, and no baby-sitter—but his daughter was safe, home. Brainer, gleaming in sunlight streaming through the broken picture window, bounded ahead, leading John O'Rourke straight to Maggie.

  “She's gone,” Maggie whispered as soon as Teddy walked through the door at four-thirty.

  He stopped short, standing in the front hall. He was all gross and sweaty from his soccer match, freezing cold because he hadn't worn a warm enough jacket. It was getting dark earlier the closer they got to Halloween, and the house had looked gloomy from the street—not enough lights on. His mother used to always welcome them home with lamps blazing; Teddy flipped on the hall chandelier.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “She's gone,” Maggie whispered, gesturing toward the closed den door. That meant that their father was working at home. “Dad didn't like her.”

  “Kate?” Teddy asked, feeling the breath knocked out of him.

  Maggie nodded. “Because she took me in the car without asking. Dad was here when we got back, and he was ballistic.”

  “Where did she take you?”

  “He fired her, Teddy,” Maggie said, not even hearing the question. “He told me to go set up the checkerboard, and when he came in to play, he said he'd ‘let her go.' That's how he put it, but that means fired, right?”

  “Right,” Teddy said, looking at his father's closed door. He wanted to go in and reason with his father, tell him that Kate was good. She understood him—Teddy had known that after ten minutes in her presence. He hated to think of some of the other baby-sitters they had had—some nice, some mean, but not one of them able to understand him. Kate had gotten Maggie and Brainer—right away.

  “Where do you think she went?” Teddy asked.

  “Probably off to the next family,” Maggie said miserably. “I tried to tell Dad he had to keep her, but he wouldn't listen. He said she showed poor judgment, and that was the end of it.”