Oren pulled out a chair for her, a habit learned in childhood. He turned his own chair around and straddled it, folding his arms across the wooden back – another habit, one learned in his years as a CID agent. This was his preferred interrogation posture. ‘So the old man sleeps with his eyes open – and he walks in his sleep? That’s why you hang bells on his doorknob?’
‘You just wait – and watch.’
‘And that ’s why you installed all those dead bolts – so he can’t leave the house at night without a key.’
Hannah picked up a sheet of paper from the pile in front of her. ‘This report’s from a sleep clinic in San Francisco. They claim you can’t predict an episode of somnambulism. But I’ve got a computer printout from another outfit in LA, and that one tells you how to make it happen. So much for expert opinions.’
‘Printouts? You’re surfing the Internet, Hannah? I thought you’d be the last person on earth to get a computer.’
‘Oh, the judge wouldn’t have one of those damned things in the house. I use the computer at the library.’
‘But no one in Coventry ever goes to the library.’
Down the hall, the cowbells were ringing.
‘You have to see this for yourself,’ said Hannah. ‘That ’s why I stopped his medication when I knew you were coming home.’
‘You mean your medication – the prescription I filled at the drugstore, right?’ Oren got up from his chair and left the kitchen. As he walked down the hall, Hannah was close behind him.
‘He won’t go to a doctor,’ she said. ‘So I go. It doesn’t matter much if the doctor sees him or me.’ She spat out the word, ‘Doctors. They can’t agree on anything. One tells you it’s not psychological – and another one says it’s all in your head. And your father believes it’s all in my head.’
The judge stood before the front door, pulling on the knob, then jerking it. His eyes were vacant and so at odds with his urgency to get out of the house.
Hannah looked up at Oren. ‘This morning I changed his decaf for regular coffee, real strong and lots of it. Caffeine is one of the triggers that brings it on, and the medication keeps it turned off. It’s like working a pharmaceutical light switch.’
The old man twisted the knob with one hand and banged on the door with the other. Oren took his cue from the housekeeper, who showed no sign of alarm. This was something witnessed many times.
‘Your father doesn’t see the locks. The door he’s looking at doesn’t have any yet. I got locks on the windows, too, but he’s never tried to get out that way. I don’t know why. Only doors.’
‘The window wasn’t locked when I came home last night.’
‘No need. I was waiting up for you. Must’ve fallen asleep in my chair.’
Her second job as the sleepwalker’s watcher would explain why the judge thought she seemed sluggish at times, and this must be why she took naps in the afternoon.
His father began to cry, and Oren came undone. He had never seen the old man in tears before, not even after Josh went missing.
‘He wants to get out of here so bad,’ said Hannah. ‘He’s got the night terrors.’
‘How long does this go on?’
‘You don’t have to whisper,’ she said. ‘It’s real hard to wake him. This can last a few minutes or half an hour, sometimes longer.’
The judge gave up on the door. Oren and Hannah followed him down the hall and into the kitchen. The housekeeper motioned for Oren to take a seat as she poured their whiskey. She pushed one of the shot glasses to his side of the table. ‘You’ll need that.’
So spake Hannah the Oracle, and he knocked back the whiskey with unconditional faith.
His father had found the back door and struggled to open it. His obstacles were three strong bolts, but he never tried to undo them, not that he could – not without a key.
Hannah watched, almost bored by this. ‘It began after Josh went missing, but it only happened a few times. You were never around in those days – always out in the woods, looking for your brother. Then the night terrors started up again when the judge sent you away at the end of that summer. The sleepwalking went on for a long time, but then it finally stopped. Years and years went by.’
‘And then the bones started turning up on the front porch.’
‘Anxiety.’ Hannah rewarded him with a smile. ‘That ’s the key.’
Oren looked up to see the judge staring at him. ‘Sir?’
‘Don’t get fooled,’ said Hannah. ‘He’s looking your way, but you don’t know who he sees in your chair.’
‘You should ’ve told me this was going on. You didn’t have to go through this alone.’
‘I promised your father I wouldn’t worry you with this silly notion of mine – that he walks in his sleep.’
The desperate need for escape was forgotten. The judge opened the refrigerator, perused its contents and pulled out a jar of pickles. Next he raided the breadbox, and then he stood at the counter, using a fork to smear one slice with the juice from the jar.
‘He thinks that’s mayonnaise,’ said the housekeeper, shaking her head. ‘There’s as many theories about what ’s going on here as there are experts who think they know what they’re talking about.’
‘He’s acting out a dream?’
‘Some say yes.’ She riffled the papers in the stack on the table. ‘Others say he can’t be dreaming. Sleepwalking happens in non-REM sleep.’ She laid one of the printed sheets in front of him. ‘But according to this doctor, he can sleepwalk in a dream state. When you deal with more than one medical opinion, it’s always a crapshoot.’
The judge sat down with them. An invisible object was cradled in one arm, and now, with great care, he set it down on the table. After lifting a latch that only he could see, he stared at the contents of a box that was not there.
‘I’ve seen that before.’ Hannah shook her head. ‘I mean to say—’
‘I know.’ Oren also stared at the nonexistent box. ‘Any idea what it is?’
‘Wish I knew. It drives me nuts. No sense in asking him. His answers don’t always work with the questions. Watch this.’ She leaned toward her employer and raised her voice. ‘What ’s in the box?’
The judge turned to her without expression and said, ‘The soup was burning on the stove.’
‘Nothing to do with my question.’ Hannah sat back in her chair and turned to Oren. ‘But you heard his answer clear as can be.’
He nodded. His father might be reliving a night months after Josh had vanished. Oren had come home from the woods, dirty and exhausted. The judge and the housekeeper had waited up for him long past the dinner hour. Distracted and frazzled, Hannah had allowed the soup to bubble over in its pot and burn. Now Oren could see it, and he could smell it, too. A trace of that same broth lingered in the air tonight, mingled with the stale odor of lamb cooked for dinner. He had a collection of scents that triggered strong emotions. In combat zones, the stench of burning flesh called up the adrenaline rush of a man standing out on a ledge. The smell of Hannah’s soup conjured the helplessness of a teenage boy in freefall.
The housekeeper held up a sheaf of papers clipped together. ‘This doctor says a sleepwalker’s speech is incomprehensible gibberish. That’s how I know the fool phoned in his research. He for damn sure never talked to anybody who lives with a sleepwalker.’ She crumpled these sheets into a ball and tossed them over one shoulder as she pushed the rest of the stack to Oren’s side of the table. ‘It ’s not like any of these idiots talk to each other, either.’
Oren touched his father’s arm, asking, ‘What ’s in the box?’
‘Our child is lost,’ said the judge. ‘I need another miracle.’
‘Well,’ said Hannah, ‘now we know he’s talking to your dead mother.’
‘Another miracle. What does that mean?’
‘The stuff of dreams,’ she said. ‘Nothing more. You know your father doesn’t hold with miracles when he ’s awake.’ She pulled the pharmacy bottle from her pocket and s
et it on the table. ‘He sleeps through the night when I slip Lorazepam into his whiskey. It won’t cure him. Nothing will – and that’s the only thing the experts agree on. But the drug keeps him out of mischief, and I can get some rest.’
Oren watched the old man close the lid of the dreamed box. ‘This is why you hide the car keys in a tea tin.’
She nodded. ‘One night, I found him behind the wheel. He was almost to the end of the driveway when he woke up. He can do lots of things when he’s sleeping. My big fear is that he ’ll get out of the house one night and go for a walk in the woods.’
‘Answer the phone,’ said the judge, though the telephone was not ringing.
Hannah leaned toward him, saying loudly, ‘It’s not my call! It’s for you! ’ She turned to Oren. ‘Sometimes he can understand me – so long as it works with what’s going on in his head.’
The judge rose from his chair and walked to the telephone mounted on the kitchen wall. He picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. After a few seconds, it dropped from his hand and swung from its cord. There was surprise in the old man’s eyes, as if he were seeing his surroundings for the first time. He looked down at his bare feet, not wanting to meet the eyes of his son and the housekeeper. Shyly, he slipped out of the kitchen and padded off down the hall. They heard the cowbells ring as the bedroom door closed behind him.
‘Your father gets embarrassed when he wakes up that way.’ The housekeeper retrieved the dangling receiver and set it back on the wall cradle. ‘But he won’t remember any of this in the morning.’ Hannah returned to the table to pluck another paper from her stack. ‘This expert says it’s dangerous to wake a sleepwalker.’ She laid it down and covered it with another. ‘And this one says it isn’t dangerous at all.’ She crumpled both of them. ‘You see why I get frustrated?’
‘What do you think, Hannah? What ’s going on with him?’
‘Well, what’s in a nightmare? It’s the intolerable thing. You remember your dreams, don’t you? He never does. I think he ’s struggling with something that can’t be said out loud. This unspeakable thing, it ’s something he can’t deal with in a wide-awake brain. Sleepwalking is like his safety valve. His worst thoughts come out at night, and he never has to remember them when he wakes up.’ She sat back in her chair, downed her shot glass in one gulp, and then she poured another. ‘That ’s why I used to take him to the séances. Things slip out there. Sometimes things bypass your brain and just pop out on the witchboard.’
‘It ’s a scam.’ Oren filled his glass again.
Hannah smiled. ‘I remember a time when you thought different. How old were you when Mrs Underwood died? You know who I mean – the old lady who used to live down on Paulson Lane.’
‘Our Good Samaritan duty.’
‘Right. I guess you were eleven and Josh was nine. That woman was very old, close to ninety. The judge was real surprised when you boys took her death so hard – all those nightmares.’ Hannah’s grin spread slow and wide. ‘But you and I both know what caused those scary dreams. It was the witchboard you hid behind the washing machine. Did you boys really believe that I never cleaned behind the washing machine?’
Oren smiled. With the destruction of that old Ouija board, Hannah had ended the midnight conversations between two children and a dead woman in the dark of a cellar. Most of Mrs Underwood’s communication from the grave had been simple yes or no responses, but whole words had also been spelled out. Cold drafts of air had sometimes blown out their only candle, causing the boys to stifle screams of fear and delight. And all through that winter, Josh and Oren had believed in magic.
‘Kid stuff.’ He shook his head. ‘This is different. Alice Friday is a con artist. That Ouija board of hers is just a cheap trick.’
‘It is, and it isn’t,’ said Hannah. ‘Nothing magical or supernatural about it, but it does work in a way. You used to have an open mind.’ She laid one small hand atop his. ‘And then you grew up.’ This was said with a small measure of pity.
Oren poured himself another shot. ‘I’ve dealt with lots of psychics in homicide cases. They turn up at the funerals so they can meet the grieving relatives – and fleece them. Bloodsuckers.’
‘But there’s no charge, Oren. The séances are free. So where ’s the crime?’
‘It’s fraud.’ He made no distinctions between the fakes who charged and the ones who did it for attention. In his experience, they all did real damage to the families of victims.
Hannah sipped from her shot glass. ‘A witchboard can only tell you what you already know. That’s my take on it. Most of the time, the board spells out nonsense words. You have to work at it to force out a meaning. More like therapy than magic, but it’s way more interesting than that. And you’d be surprised at who turns up out there in the woods.’
‘Like the judge? That surprised me.’
‘At first he went on my account. I told him I was scared to go alone.’
‘And he believed that? You’re not afraid of anything. He knows how you drive a car.’
Ignoring this, Hannah continued. ‘So your father, always a gentleman, escorted me out there one night. He only watched for a while. The little wooden thing – a heart with a hole in it? Well, none of the players could believe they were moving it around the board.’
‘Somebody moves it, and it isn’t my dead brother.’
‘Oh, Josh, the spirit guide.’ She nodded and smiled. ‘Now that part’s fake. When Alice asks if his spirit is there, the wooden heart just settles over the letter Y for yes. The witchboard never spelled his name. But one night, the board spelled out the words red comb. It helps if you know that the judge took Josh in for a haircut the day before he disappeared, and the barber gave the boy a red plastic comb.’
‘Oh, please.’
Hannah leaned toward him. ‘Don’t you roll your eyes like that. The barber always gave every customer a black comb. That red one was a fluke. It just turned up in the box with the barbershop’s regular order of solid black. Josh was the only boy in town with a red one.’
‘And Alice Friday probably heard that from one of her victims. Don’t tell me the judge was fooled by—’
‘Your father is no fool – and Alice Friday never touches the witchboard. Half the men at that séance were tourists – and the others were regulars at the town barbershop. I’m sure they all heard about the red comb. So, for a while, the judge sat down to play on a regular basis – and the sleepwalking stopped. All that’s left of Josh is little snatches of memories, and lots of people have them. When they sit around that witchboard, all those little bits of the boy come out to play. You might say your father was collecting pieces of Josh long before the bones started coming home.’
Oren leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘And that’s why he never asked for more help – never called in state cops or the feds? The old man was waiting for somebody to drop a clue in a damn séance?’
Did he believe that? Did she? No, and no.
He refilled his shot glass and hers. ‘You weren’t quite that patient, Hannah. Right after Josh went missing, you asked for help. You got William Swahn to find me an alibi.’ He lifted his glass and drained it. ‘I always knew who really ran this house – our lives. Was it your idea to send me away that summer?’
‘No, I was against it.’ The shot glass seemed almost too heavy for her as she lifted it to take a sip. ‘I told your father to send Josh away. He didn’t listen to me then. After the boy disappeared, the judge probably thought about that all the time. I wish I’d never said a word.’
Now all her words were spent, and so was she. Her eyes were closed by half. Her day was done.
Oren switched on the bedside light and then rose to pull on his jeans. Though he was tired, sleep would not come, and he was grateful. He lacked his father’s gift of forgetting every dream. Sometimes acts of nightmare violence broke into his wide-awake mind, but it was worse when he lay helpless, wrapped in sheets, eyes closed in the dark. And some nights
he would wake up screaming the soldier’s song, Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop!
He sat down at his old desk and wrote a letter to Evelyn Straub. Then he put out the lamp and padded down the stairs in his stocking feet so as not to wake the house. Having no keys to the bolts on the front door, he climbed through the porch window, pulled on his boots and struck out for Coventry on foot.
No need for a flashlight. The moon was back, and it was bright. Oren walked down the road, undisturbed by any traffic. His only company was a dead boy and a dead dog. Josh had walked this same route with him on many a summer morning, and Horatio had trotted along between the brothers. Occasionally, one boy or the other would reach down to ruffle the dog’s fur, reassuring their pet that he was still part of the family, though Josh never wanted the dog to come along on trips into town. Horatio had been shameless about kissing strangers and drooling on them, and he had been banned from every store where customers preferred to do their shopping dry and unloved.
One standout day, Josh had locked the poor beast in the kitchen, using his let’s-be-reasonable voice to say, ‘No, you can’t come today.’ That had set off the barking tantrum, followed by whining that was almost human. The dog had cried, as if in fear that he would never see his boys again.
Oren remembered his own words. ‘I know why you don’t want Horatio along. He gives you away. This has to stop. It ’s creepy.’
Josh had ducked his head under the weight of that comment. Creepy was a word that could turn a boy’s high school life into a living hell of derision. Oren had released Horatio from the kitchen, and the dog had jumped his brother, paws on shoulders, kissing and slobbering. All was forgiven. This was followed by the old familiar line, screamed at the top of Josh’s lungs, ‘Get off me! I’m gonna puke!’
Horatio had done his mad little dance on hind legs, barking to say, Let’s go! Let’s go! The boys could have set fire to him, and the dog, who was love incarnate, would have assumed that they were only having a difficult day – and promptly forgiven them.
Tonight, Oren resolved to get rid of the stuffed carcass on the living-room rug, that bad joke on a good old dog.
Bone by Bone Page 11
