The Secret Hour

by Luanne Rice

  She found it.

  Her father was in his office, working on the Merrill file. He had zillions of documents spread everywhere: interviews with witnesses, with psychiatrists, with the coroner. Blue-bound transcripts of testimony were stacked on the cherry table. Redwelds lined the floor. A manila folder—so innocent looking from the outside—was shoved under a pile of books. Just seeing it made Maggie's heart begin to pound.

  Her father, wearing his tortoiseshell half-glasses, was writing furiously, copying out of a book. Maggie took a deep breath, walking closer.

  “Daddy?” she asked.

  “Hi, Mags,” he said, not looking up.

  “What're you doing?” she asked, staring at the folder.

  “You know . . .”

  “How much longer?”

  “Not much.”

  “You said we could go to the mall.”

  “We can. Just give me till lunch.”

  “What are we going to eat?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I'm hungry.”

  “Hang in there, Mags. I won't be much longer.”

  “I mean really hungry, Dad.”

  Her father let out a long exhalation, just short of a whistle. He slid his glasses off, pinched the bridge of his nose. When he looked up, smiling, Maggie smiled back.

  “You realize I'm right in the middle of something,” he said.

  “Just a coffee break, Dad.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, rising to stretch. He wore jeans and a blue chamois shirt; his shirt had come untucked, and Maggie laughed at the sight of his bare stomach. “At the cafeteria downstairs?”

  Maggie nodded. “Bring me a cinnamon bun? With extra icing? And a milk?”

  Her father looked surprised. “Don't you want to come?”

  Maggie shrugged. Her cheeks felt hot and her nose felt cold—even before she told the lie. The fact that it was a harmless white lie made things better, but not much. “That'll take too long,” she said. “If we have it here in your office, you can keep working.”

  “I get it.” Her father laughed. “That way we get to the mall sooner.”

  “You're a genius, Dad.” Maggie grinned.

  She sat very still, in his swiveling desk chair, until the sound of his footsteps grew fainter in the hall. Listening carefully, she heard Damaris's fingers clicking over the computer keys in the cubicle just outside the office door.

  Gazing at the manila envelope, Maggie began to sweat. She knew what was inside; Teddy had looked once, and told her. Her father sometimes brought it home, but he never let it leave his desk. He guarded it carefully, as if it contained poison or explosives, things that might harm his children if left untended.

  Teddy had waited till Dad had had to go to the bathroom once. Darting into the office, he had flipped open the folder to look. . . . What he had seen was so terrible, he had refused to tell Maggie even one detail. No matter how much she begged or cajoled, he wouldn't spill.

  “C'mon, Teddy. What's in there?”

  “Don't ask me, Maggie.”

  “If you don't tell me, I'll look.”

  “Please, Maggie—don't do that. I know you. You'd never fall asleep again.”

  “They're really bad?”

  “Worse than really bad.”

  “Terrible?”

  “Yeah, Mags. Terrible.”

  “Just tell me one thing—one little thing, so I won't have to look. Knowing nothing is so much worse than knowing something, because my imagination is torturing me!”

  Teddy had cringed at the word “torturing,” and then he had capitulated and told Maggie the one thing that had stolen her sleep for the next two weeks:

  “They're cut . . . in ribbons,” he said, stopping himself.

  “Ribbons?” she'd asked, focusing on the pretty word used in such a horrifying way. “What do you mean?”

  “I can't tell you, Maggie,” her brother had said, his face white with horror and, probably, the shame of disobeying their father to look at the forbidden forensic photographs of Greg Merrill's victims. “I won't. I don't want you to have the pictures in your head. Okay, Mags? Don't ask me . . . and don't ever look yourself.”

  “I won't,” she had whispered, worried because her brother looked so upset.

  Now, about to break her promise, she pushed herself out of her father's desk chair. Her pulse raced; she felt it fluttering in her throat. She was a good girl, very careful, and she never liked to go against her father's rules or wishes. But this was Halloween, the season of pranks, and she really needed to get some courage so she could be Amelia Earhart. . . .

  Touching the smooth cream-colored folder, her fingertips felt cool and steady. How bad could it be? The folder itself looked totally innocuous, with a typed label on the flap: GM23–49. That referred to evidence numbers, and Maggie knew, just from hanging around lawyers her whole life, that there would be twenty-three photos inside.

  She drew in a deep breath and started to flip the folder open.

  “MAGGIE!” her father's voice yelled in her ear, and she felt herself pushed aside as he grabbed the file. Her father hadn't touched her hard, but Maggie had been standing on one foot, and she felt herself teeter, lose her balance, and fall over.

  “Oh,” she heard herself say. “Oh, oh . . .”

  Trying to catch her, her father dropped the photos. Unable to decide what to do—to catch Maggie or cover up the pictures—he tried to do both.

  “Don't look, honey,” he said. “Close your eyes!”

  Maggie did, but not before glimpsing one picture: a lady with her face powdery white and her eyes open, like a doll's. Somehow Maggie knew she was dead—the picture wouldn't have been scary otherwise. Instantly she slammed her eyelids shut because she knew she never, never wanted to see those other pictures.

  “Teddy was right,” she whispered, starting to cry. “I never should have looked . . . I'm sorry, Daddy. I'm so sorry I disobeyed!”

  “It's okay, honey . . .”

  “Oh, Teddy!” Maggie sobbed.

  John drove slowly, holding his daughter's hand across the Volvo seat. Damaris had been all for carrying Maggie to the lounge, putting a cool cloth on her head, and giving her a cup of soup to soothe her, but John knew he had to handle this by himself.

  Maggie was buckled into her seat. She gulped over and over, swallowing sobs. Every noise she made was a nail in John's brain, driving home the guilt. She was his sweetheart, his baby. She needed her mother and father, and lately she'd had neither.

  “You okay, Maggie?”

  “Uh,” gulp, “huh,” gulp.

  “You sure?”

  No reply.

  John held her hand tighter as they drove along the shoreline. She had seen one picture for two seconds, called her brother's name, and started sobbing her heart out. By the time Damaris came back from fetching the cinnamon buns, coffee, and milk, John was sitting on the floor, rocking his weeping child in her arms.

  “Let me take her home,” Damaris had said softly. She was a mother herself, with four kids of her own.

  “I'll do that,” John had whispered, regardless of his schedule, holding Maggie against his chest. He had felt her thin body, wracked with sobs, her breath rasping in and out. Hidden beneath the jacket he'd thrown over them where they'd fallen were pictures of girls not much older than her: Anne-Marie, Patricia, Terry, Gayle, Jackie, Beth . . .

  John had once warned Teddy that forensic photos were harmful to people not trained to view them, that they could be as destructive as “poison and explosives.” He remembered the phrase from his own father, from a time thirty years ago when John had sneaked into his father's office to look at similar pictures of a victim back then.

  Ironically, her body had been discovered in the well by the old cider mill, two miles from the first breakwater Merrill had used. John had avoided going near that cider mill his entire life, just as he knew Teddy had been steering clear of the breakwaters—places he had loved to fish and crab when he was younger—si
nce seeing the terrible pictures.

  Photos were vivid; they made death real. Lately, immersed in the Merrill case, he'd started feeling disgusted with his job. Sometimes he wished he didn't know so much—like Billy had said, predators were everywhere. John thought of himself as a moral man, but he had to face the truth: He was working for killers. He had pictures of their handiwork in his home. He felt sick.

  Now, holding his daughter's hand, he felt the heat just starting to come back to her skin. He squeezed once, waiting for her to squeeze back. She didn't.

  “Hey, Mags,” he said. “We're forgetting something.”

  “What?”

  “The mall.”

  She nodded, but when he looked more closely, he saw the color draining from her neck again. “Not right now, okay, Dad? I want to go home and wait for Teddy.”

  “Teddy?”

  Maggie nodded, huge tears forming in the corners of her eyes. They balled up, spilled over, and coursed down her cheeks. She licked them away, her voice croaking as she whispered, “I want my brother.”

  “Okay, honey,” John said, feeling a knife in his gut.

  He started toward the coast road, then remembered that they were still staying at his father's. Angry at himself for being too busy to interview new baby-sitters—and feeling furious at the memory of the brick through their window—he turned down his dad's street.

  Parking in the driveway, he turned to Maggie, but she was already out of the car, running as fast as she could up the stone walk, scrambling up the steps as if trying to escape a monster.

  Following her inside, he spotted Maeve sleeping on the living room sofa, covered with an afghan and snoring loudly. His father was out at his weekly “Judicial Session,” where half the retired judges from Superior Court got together to play poker and kick around the old days. Teddy wasn't home yet.

  Suddenly he heard Maggie squeal, “It's for me!”

  “What is?” he asked.

  “This package!”

  Maeve must have brought it inside. John moved closer, to examine it. Wrapped in brown paper, tied in a blue ribbon, the parcel had Maggie's name on it. John had recently seen the handwriting—become almost familiar with it—from notes on the back of her sister's picture.

  Nodding that it was okay for Maggie to open it, he watched his daughter tear in. She pulled off the ribbon and paper, pulling out a long, fringed white silk scarf and a pair of aviator glasses. An envelope fell into the floor. Picking it up to hand to Maggie, John saw the East Wind logo printed on the flap. Maggie read aloud:

  Dear Maggie,

  I want you to have my flying scarf and sunglasses. I wear them sometimes, but not very often. They would do much better on you, helping you become Amelia.

  Amelia Earhart used to inspire us, my sister and me, and I hope she will inspire you. I think you're a natural: you're smart and brave. I could tell the minute I met you. You kept a clear head that day. . . .

  I'm leaving today. The East Wind was a fine place to stay, but right now I feel the wind blowing me to a new destination. Like Amelia, I have a journey to make. We all do! As you make yours, I hope you'll believe in yourself. I believe in you!

  Your friend,

  Kate Harris

  P.S. Please say good-bye to Teddy, your father, and Brainer for me.

  “She left, Dad,” Maggie said, sounding grief-stricken and breathless.

  “We didn't even know her very well, Mags,” John said chidingly.

  “But I liked her . . . and she liked me! She gave me her scarf and glasses!”

  “She shouldn't have. I'd've taken you to the mall.”

  “This is better,” Maggie whispered. “She said I'm brave. . . . How did she know?”

  “Like she said—you behaved that way the day she met you.”

  “If I'd known that, I wouldn't have gone looking for courage today,” Maggie said, her chin wobbling again. “Didn't have to look at those pictures . . .”

  “That's what you were after?” John asked, pulling her onto his lap in that same wing chair he'd sat in so many years ago.

  “Yes,” she said, starting to cry again, clutching Kate's white scarf to her face. “I wish I hadn't seen that girl. . . .”

  “Me, too, Mags.”

  John kissed his daughter's head. He found himself thinking of Willa Harris, hoping that she wasn't one of them, one of those girls, one who hadn't been found yet. He hoped Kate would never have to look at pictures like Maggie had just seen.

  “We have to tell Teddy she said good-bye.” Maggie sniffled. “He'll be sad.”

  John didn't reply. Somehow he knew that, too. There were nice people in the world; his job didn't always bring him in contact with them, but there were. He found himself touching her scarf with his fingers.

  What did it mean, that he had come after Teddy but before Brainer in her list of good-byes? He felt surprisingly, absurdly grateful that she'd mentioned him at all. He wondered where her journey would take her next.

  He wondered, and he couldn't let it go.

  chapter 11

  The Seven Chimneys Inn, the sprawling stone mansion just east of Breton Point in Newport, on Rhode Island's craggy coastline, had once belonged to Rufus Macomber, the railroad magnate. He had built a fireplace in the bedroom of each of his seven daughters, and although the house had five more chimneys besides, he had intended the name to honor his girls.

  Kate checked in, and then drove straight to the Newport Police Station. She parked at a meter on the square, walked up the hill to the brick building behind the courthouse, and asked to see Detective Joseph Viera.

  “Hi,” she said, when the compact, muscular detective came out of an inner office, rolling down his shirtsleeves and straightening his tie. “I'm Kate Harris—we've spoken on the phone before.”

  “Yes, of course. Come on in.”

  “It's nice to meet you after all this time,” Kate said, preceding him through the door of a small office. “You know, to put a face to the voice. Thanks for all the work you've done on my sister's case.”

  “You're welcome. Still no word about her?” Detective Viera asked, gesturing at a chair across the cluttered desk.

  Kate shook her head. The floor seemed to move slightly beneath her, as it did whenever she realized that her sister had been gone six months, and that no one knew where Willa was.

  “You realize, there's nothing much new I can tell you,” he said. “I've spoken with—what's his name”—searching his notes—“here it is, Detective Abraham O'Neill, in Washington, D.C.”

  “Yes, he's overseeing the case. . . . I called the Washington police first,” Kate said. “When she didn't come home.”

  “That's appropriate, Washington being her hometown. The investigation focused on Newport, I seem to remember, because it was the last place she was seen . . .”

  She tried to smile at his helpfulness, nodding. “Yes,” she said, hearing also the word he hadn't said: “alive.”

  “What brings you up here now, Miss Harris?”

  Oh, that question. It brought tears to her eyes faster than anything. She had to purse her lips, sit very still for a long moment, staring at the big clock on the wall, watching twenty seconds tick by before she could trust herself to answer.

  “I have to know . . .”

  Detective Joseph Viera waited. He knew she wasn't done, and he probably knew what was happening in her gut right now. She surely wasn't the first sister of a missing person he had met; perhaps Kate's reaction was just a predictable symptom of a horrible condition: Missing Sister Syndrome. There had to be such a thing, she thought. Something as devastating as how she felt had to have a name.

  “Sorry,” she said, feeling a tremor go through her bones.

  “Take your time.”

  “So much time has gone by . . . I never stop hoping for the phone to ring, thinking someone will call to say they've found her . . .”

  The detective nodded, but the jaded look in his eyes let her know how impossible he though
t it was.

  “I know the Washington police have done a good job—they've coordinated all kinds of police reports from three states and the District. But I guess I felt it was my responsibility, as her sister, to come up north and do this for her. To be here . . . to walk where she walked.”

  “I understand.”

  Kate paused, knowing he didn't; not really. The detective didn't know the details—the awful, hurtful details that had led to Willa's going away. He knew about the affair; all the police did. They had questioned Andrew, questioned Kate herself. But he didn't know about Kate's guilt—for encouraging Willa to work for Andrew, and for saying, in a high, piercing voice, that she would never forgive her.

  “I think about Greg Merrill a lot,” Kate said, watching Viera's eyes.

  “The Breakwater Killer?”

  Kate nodded.

  “He did most of his killing in Connecticut,” Viera said. “In fact, if I'm not mistaken, all of it.”

  “All the ones they know about,” Kate said.

  “Well, she fits his profile, from what I know of it,” Viera said, eyes cast downward at the pile of papers, “but I'm looking at her file here, and plenty of other things jump out. It's possible, Miss Harris, and I'm sure Detective O'Neill would say the same thing, that your sister just doesn't want . . .”

  “To be found,” Kate said.

  “Sounds like an unhappy love affair all around. For everyone. Maybe she thought the best thing to do was just . . . quietly go away. Shame is a powerful motivator.”

  “That's not possible,” Kate said stubbornly. “Willa would never do that to me.”

  “Okay, well, you know your sister,” Viera said. Kate could see his face shut down: The eyes were suddenly guarded, the jaw set. She regretted her outburst. Now he'd be talking to her like an emotional family member, censoring anything he really thought.

  He remained polite, even friendly. He reviewed Willa's file, sharing with Kate the details they had come up with.

  There was the record of O'Neill's original phone call, back in April. He had sent a unit to Willa's Adams Morgan apartment, found notes on a phone pad indicating an imminent trip to New England—chambers of commerce, reservation services, the elaborately doodled word “Newport.”