“I want to go to the house,” he repeated.
“Which house?”
“The one where David died.”
Christensen froze, trying hard not to react. This was significant. Sonny had maintained as recently as last week that his brother died in a car accident; now he was admitting he’d died at the Jancey Street house. The oblique photograph must have had some impact, but what?
“That’s a big step,” Christensen said. Should he acknowledge Sonny’s reconstructed memory? “I’m not sure I’d recommend it just now.”
For the first time, Christensen noticed the bandage on the top of Sonny’s head. A white, gauzy thing mostly covered by his hair.
“It’s vacant, but my dad still owns it. I have a key. We can get in.”
“That’s not the point, Sonny. We just need to take these things slowly. What happened to your head?”
“That’s part of it, I think.” Sonny touched his scalp. Lightly. “Had an accident this morning, in the river.”
Christensen tried again to guide Sonny into his house, but he wouldn’t budge. “You hit your head?”
“A plank or something, real heavy. Swam right into it. Knocked me out for I don’t know how long. But man, things got hairy.”
“Stitches?”
“Seven. No biggie. Almost drowned, though. And that’s when it started happening. I’m going down, right? I can feel the cold water in my lungs, and it’s like I’ve felt it all before. What do they call that? Something that happens that feels like it happened a long time ago? And all of a sudden I’m remembering that same sensation, clear as can be.”
Repressed memories, Christensen knew, could be triggered by anything—a color, the sound of a car horn, the scent of a menthol cigarette, a soft brush of wind against a cheek. It didn’t have to be a sensation as powerful as water in the lungs. But a recovered memory also could be a case of brain-chemical trickery, like dèjá vu.
“Remember that dream I told you about?” Sonny said. “The drowning one where I was underwater and couldn’t pull my head up?”
Christensen nodded. He also looked around to see if anyone was watching. He desperately wanted to get Sonny inside. “You were on your back or something.”
“Lying on something hard and looking up at this square kind of light, but my head was underwater. I was twelve or thirteen. I couldn’t breathe.”
Christensen sat beside Sonny on the swing. Annie was pressing her face against the picture window just a few feet from them, puffing out her cheeks, trying to get Sonny to notice. He didn’t, and she seemed to understand from her father’s disapproving look that now wasn’t the time. She retreated into the house. “We talked about that dream a few weeks back,” Christensen said.
Sonny walked stiffly to the far end of the porch.
“It wasn’t a dream. Something about that sensation, I don’t know why, but I know it really happened. Down in the basement of the Jancey Street house. There’s a laundry sink with a window above it. A font. That’s what the voice calls it.”
“The voice?”
Sonny was pacing now. “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s the same one I hear underwater, all burbly: ‘I am baptizing you in the water, but there is one to come who is mightier than I.’ Remember that?”
“That note you got,” Christensen said. “The one that wasn’t signed.”
Sonny stalked back and forth across the porch. “‘His winnowing-fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn in unquenchable fire.’ I can hear the voice.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I’m underwater, so it sounds, you know, all garbled. I can feel the water in my lungs, and the adrenaline. The need to breathe. Next thing I know I’m in the ER at Allegheny General and they’re stitching up my head. As I’m lying there, I flashed on some other things. And I know they’re not dreams either. One was this guy, Peebo. He and his old man still live next door to my mom’s apartment. When he was little, I think I—”
Sonny shut his eyes. “He was like three or four. I was fifteen, maybe sixteen. He’d do anything I said. So one time I, uh, I—”
“Tried to hurt him?”
“No! No. I don’t know why I did it. But I held him underwater once, you know, to see what would happen. I can feel him fighting me, pushing me away, kicking. I remember feeling so strong, holding his life in my hands like that.”
“But he was okay?”
“My mother stopped me.”
“Do you think you would have stopped anyway?”
Sonny hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“What else, Sonny?”
“My brother,” he said. “The house on Jancey. David died there, didn’t he?”
Christensen tensed. “From what I understand, yes.”
“I know he did. He died in our room. I remember it now.”
If Sonny linked the memory to the photograph, or if he remembered anything more specific about David’s death, he didn’t let on. For now, the gamble seemed to have paid off. “You seem pretty sure about all this,” Christensen said.
“It’s weird. Like this stuff suddenly came into focus.”
Melissa pushed through the front door with an armload of clothes. She walked between the two men without a word, headed for the car. Sonny didn’t seem to notice her.
“How could I have been so wrong about my brother?”
Careful now, Christensen told himself. He cleared his throat. “Sometimes we tailor our memories so we can deal with them better. Losing a brother is a pretty tough thing. Maybe your mind just did what it had to do to deal with the loss.”
“But you knew. You didn’t say anything.”
“I knew you’d remember it when you were ready.”
Sonny stopped and leaned against the porch rail.
“I’m going to the house. You don’t have to come if you don’t want, but I’m going.”
He couldn’t let Sonny go alone. “You’ve worked hard to get this far. It’s a big step, Sonny, but you’re the best judge of whether you’re ready.”
“Can we go now?”
Annie appeared at the picture window in a wedding dress. A flower girl dress, really. She’d worn it in a cousin’s wedding last year, and at the moment was a vision in white lace and pink satin ribbons, topped by a frothy veil, hands folded as if in prayer. Very pious. Very subtle.
“You’re pretty popular around here,” Christensen said.
Sonny wasn’t diverted. His face was as intent as Christensen had ever seen it. When Sonny leaned forward and repeated, “Can we go now?” Christensen knew he had no choice. Sonny was going to the house. His demons had an address.
“I want to go with you, but I need to make one stop first, to drop off the girls,” Christensen said, his stomach churning at the thought. Brenna’s house was still safe, separate, away from this madness. Did he really want Sonny to know where the girls were staying? He swallowed hard. “You can ride with us.”
Without another word, Sonny hoisted the daypack and started down the steps toward the Explorer.
Brenna wasn’t home. They’d resumed a relationship of sorts, but not a healthy one. His deceit seemed always just beneath the surface of every strained conversation. They still weren’t sleeping together.
“Where is everybody?” Annie asked, laying her fresh clothes on the living room couch. “Taylor!” Her voice echoed through the house.
“Brenna probably took him across town to see his dad, honey. They should be back this afternoon. Will you be okay here if Dad goes out?”
“Is Sonny staying? We could play Candy Land.”
Sonny wouldn’t even get out of the car. He’d had a death grip on the front-passenger seat armrest all the way to Brenna’s, and Chri
stensen had wondered again if this visit to Jancey Street was somehow avoidable.
“Sonny and I need to go out, honey. It’s important. I’m sorry I’ll miss a Saturday with you, but maybe we’ll take a day off this week and do something, okay?”
Annie’s bottom lip quivered. Melissa stomped into the room, dropping her clothes onto the couch. “That guy’s got a serious attitude problem,” she said. “I said good-bye twice and the stuck-up jerk didn’t even answer.”
“I’ll explain later,” Christensen said. “Right now I need you to promise me you’ll stay here with Annie until Brenna and Taylor get back. I have to go out, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be.”
“Guys like that always think they’re God’s gift. So excuse me if he’s twenty-two. Big friggin’ deal.”
He put both hands on his older daughter’s shoulders. She was agitated and he expected her to pull away, but instead she returned his gaze. “Melissa, remember after you got burned by the shampoo, I told you about the Primenyl case? How I’ve been working on something that had to do with it?”
She nodded. He couldn’t remember the last time he had her undivided attention.
“Sonny may know something about the killer. He may have seen something when he was a kid that the police think could be really important in finding the person who killed those people, the one they think is killing again.”
“Cool,” Annie said.
He’d forgotten his younger daughter was in the room. He kept one hand on Melissa’s arm and stooped to Annie’s level. “This has to be our secret. Please. It’s very important.”
“Not even Brenna?” Melissa said.
“She knows,” he said, then immediately knew he’d blundered. Both girls looked hurt. Betrayed.
“Look, I can’t tell you the whole story now, but Brenna knows a lot about the case and has been helping me. But she doesn’t know anything I haven’t told you.”
“Bullshit,” Melissa said. “She just knew it long before we did, that’s all. You don’t trust us.”
“Yeah, bullshit,” Annie echoed.
“Come on, guys. I need your help here.”
“Just go, okay?” Melissa said.
“I wish I had a choice.”
They stood together for a long moment, close enough to feel one another’s warmth. Annie was still mad, her body as rigid as an ironing board when he tried to pull her into a hug. Melissa, though, threw her arms around his neck when he stood up. She seemed as startled as he was when she stepped back.
“No big deal,” she said, turning away. “Just be careful.”
His wink forced a tear onto his cheek, but he brushed it away before she saw. “No big deal.”
He repeated it irrationally as he strode down the hall and shut the door to Brenna’s study. “No big deal,” he said as he opened and closed the drawers of her desk, wondering where she kept her gun.
Chapter 34
Irondale was one of those classic Pittsburgh neighborhoods where the houses and people were sturdy and unchanging. It sat on a bluff overlooking the Allegheny River, with three main streets that ran perpendicular from Braxton Avenue at one end to Allegheny River Boulevard at the other. It was hidden, in a way, between the upscale Highland Park and downscale Braxton Heights, and as Christensen steered down Chislett Street, he noted its remarkable whiteness. Not the snow. The residents. Working-class Eastern Europeans were notoriously suspicious of people they found racially or ethnically mysterious, including anyone who didn’t share their broad, flat faces or heavy legs. Neighborhoods like Irondale resisted integration like a granite outcropping resists erosion.
“Turn here?” Christensen asked.
Sonny nodded. His agitation level had been creeping up since they’d passed Shadyside. By the time they turned onto Chislett, Sonny was wired. He opened and closed the Explorer’s electric door locks twice. He rocked back and forth. He tightened his right-hand death grip on the armrest, leaving fingernail marks Christensen figured would be there forever.
They passed a Catholic church on the left. “St. Bingo’s,” Sonny said. “That’s what my dad called it.”
A “Bingo Every Friday” banner hung across the church facade, twice as large as the sign identifying it as St. Thomas More. The notion of Ron Corbett having a sense of humor struck Christensen as odd, almost unimaginable. They passed the drugstore where Molly used to drop off the girls’ prescriptions on her way to work, one of three Pharmco stores made famous by the Primenyl killer. The one where Downing said Ron Corbett worked as a pharmacist and store manager in the autumn of 1986. Christensen felt like he was walking onto the set of a movie he’d seen many years ago.
“Left at the next street,” Sonny said. He opened the glove compartment, then closed it. He opened it again, closed it.
Time to get him talking, Christensen told himself, or at least to try to. “What are you feeling right now?” Christensen asked.
“It’s weird. Tense.”
“Do you know why?”
“No.” Sonny swallowed hard. His breathing was getting shallow. Faster. “Been a long time. Haven’t been here since I went into foster care.”
“Never? No friends here you kept in touch with?”
“Left again on Jancey.” This time Sonny gasped as he spoke. He inhaled two times, quickly, let the air out slowly. Twice more, out slowly again. The door locks kept a disturbing cadence.
“Were you happy here?”
Sonny shook his head from side to side like a halfback trying to clear cobwebs after a vicious tackle. He pretty much had his breathing under control.
Christensen repeated the question.
“Don’t remember,” Sonny snapped. “It wasn’t yest—”
Sonny’s body went rigid, and what little color was left in his face drained away. He was staring at a house on the opposite side of the street, a three-story brick Victorian that, except for its obvious disrepair, looked a lot like every other house along the south side of Jancey.
Christensen pulled the Explorer to the curb. The house had no obvious house number, but clearly they’d arrived. “You okay?” he asked.
No reaction. Christensen studied the house’s redbrick face. The trim paint was a dull brown, cracked and peeling off in strips the size of yardsticks. The broad front porch was littered with junk. Fitted plywood filled the large ground-floor picture window, and it was well-scarred by taggers. The only decipherable symbol among the graffiti was an artful pentagram. Vandals had stolen all of the removable outdoor hardware, including the porch light fixture and, judging by their faint outline, the address numbers identifying it as 154. Christensen wondered briefly if squatters might be living inside.
His eyes settled finally on the single third-story window. In a sickening rush, he remembered one of Sonny’s stories, the one about the top-floor window seat where he and his brother watched their father make their mother bark for the neighbors. He turned back toward Sonny, who was wide-eyed and unblinking. The motor was still running.
“We can keep going,” he said.
“No.”
“If you’re at all uncertain, Sonny, we should wait.”
Sonny closed his eyes. “Give me a minute.”
Christensen turned off the engine. A Port Authority bus roared past, accelerating from the stop sign at the end of the block. As it disappeared out of sight, Christensen realized they were being watched. Up and down the street, huffing snow-shovelers and bundled stoop-sitters paused and stared at the unfamiliar vehicle now parked on their street. Christensen stared back. Did any of them remember the Corbetts? What Corbett family cataclysms had they witnessed? How many had they excused as none of their business?
“Think any of these neighbors remember you?”
Sonny forced his gaze from the house. Nothing seemed to register as he scanned
the faces up one sidewalk and down the other. He looked back at the house, then did a double take. An old woman, dressed in the telltale black of an Italian widow, trundled toward them and turned up the steep steps to a house on the high side of Jancey, directly across from the Corbett family home.
“I don’t know her name,” he said.
“You remember her, though?”
“My dad called her ‘the Inspector.’ Always on her front porch, sweeping, saying rosaries, taking everything in, never saying a word anybody could understand. Knows everything that goes on around here.”
Sonny closed his eyes tight, as if in pain. Then he shuddered. “She was watching when they brought David out of the house. I remember her shaking her head at all the cop cars and stuff.”
“She’s got a pretty good view of your old house,” Christensen said. “What else do you think she saw?”
Sonny opened the Explorer’s door, got out, and steadied himself against its frame for a few seconds before slamming it shut. Christensen unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out, worried what Sonny might do next. Sonny still had one hand on the car when he reached the passenger side, and his eyes were closed. His expression was bewildering, a look of part-wonder, part-terror, as if watching a frightening scene unfold on the backs of his eyelids.
“David killed himself.” Sonny’s eyes shot open, and he pointed directly at the solitary third-floor window. “In our room. He shot himself in the head.”
“Sonny—”
“Oh, Jesus Christ. I thought it was the TV.”
“You thought what was the TV?”
“The gunshot. I was downstairs, and I heard it, and I didn’t go up.”
“Who else was in the house?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your dad had moved out the week before.”
“I know.”
“Were you and David alone?”
“No. My mom, my aunt, I don’t know. Somebody else was downstairs.”
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