The Keeper

by T F Allen

  Hannah opened her eyes. “You’re right. We probably won’t find him tonight, but there’s still more we can do. Where are you staying?”

  Sister Mary Elizabeth remembered the tiny bag she’d packed was still in the back of the SUV. “I didn’t book a place in advance.”

  “No biggie, you can stay with me.” Hannah shifted into reverse. “You’re allowed to do that, right?”

  “I’m a grown woman.”

  Twenty minutes later we marched into Hannah’s hotel room—which now held two double beds instead of the king she had booked. I didn’t plan on staying long. Everyone deserved their privacy, and women deserved even more. I only stayed to see what they were planning so I’d know when to join them in the morning. I hovered near the ceiling and waited while Sister Mary Elizabeth freshened up in the bathroom.

  Hannah fired up her laptop and entered the wireless passcode the hotel concierge had given her. Her fingers clicked on the keyboard so fast I couldn’t see what she was typing. While the page loaded, she grabbed an energy drink from the minibar, took a long, draining gulp, then poured as much of a miniature vodka bottle as she could into the can.

  “I won’t be able to sleep tonight,” Sister Mary Elizabeth said as she ambled out from the bathroom. “I can’t stop thinking about Michael.”

  “Grab your reading glasses and pull up a chair.” Hannah turned her laptop so they both could see the screen. The display showed the home page of the Harkrider Vineyard’s website. “We’ll learn everything we can about this guy tonight. And tomorrow we’ll pay him a visit.”

  CHAPTER 21

  I read over their shoulders and noticed the time the winery doors opened. Until then, Hannah and Sister Mary Elizabeth needed to rely on what the internet could tell them about the man they suspected of taking Michael.

  I chose a more direct approach.

  Focus. Lock. Pull.

  Donnie sat behind a desk in a room lit only by a computer monitor in front of him. I joined him as he stared at the display—a video feed from a camera he’d hidden somewhere in the ceiling of Delacroix’s cell. It showed a full-color view of the bed, the lighted mirror protecting Jolene, and the easel holding Delacroix’s new painting. Donnie made the camera zoom in on Delacroix while he slept. Then he guided it to the right, panning toward the canvas where the first layer of paint was drying. He squinted to try to see any figures Delacroix might have hidden there. It looked like a huge blob of red and brown. He couldn’t decide if Delacroix was working on a higher level or just messing with him by creating a work full of nonsense.

  Donnie couldn’t trust anyone in this world. He’d learned that lesson from his parents a long time ago.

  He remembered one star-filled night when he was seven years old, running free among the rows of cabernet vines while his parents worked late in the winery. With his imagination he’d built a private kingdom in that field and crowned himself ruler over the entire hundred acres. When he played in the vineyard, he was free to shout and scream, laugh or cry, or do whatever he wanted as long as no one heard him. It was his favorite thing to do. He wasn’t sure how parents were supposed to act, but he knew something was different with his. They treated him like a pet that had outlived its novelty. They blasted his creativity with coldness every chance they could, but he found a warmer audience in the vast, rolling hills of the vineyard. His parents were fine with him playing there as long as he didn’t damage any vines. The vineyard became a convenient babysitter for two people who seemed too busy to raise a child, but those hundred acres meant much more than that to him. Here in his kingdom, his emotions bounded and somersaulted under the open sky. The vineyard gave him the creative release he was starving for, even at such a young age.

  That same evening he got the idea to mark each corner of his kingdom. He gathered four sticks and headed out. The western corners were easy to reach because they bordered the county road and were the closest to the winery, the tasting room, and the mansion. At each spot he drove one of his sticks into the ground as deep as he could. He stood back and imagined it as a metal pole a hundred feet tall, bearing a flag that shouted to the world that this was his domain.

  The challenge was finding the eastern corners, because they hid so much farther away. On this side of the vineyard, the original owners had cleared and planted as high on the hills as they dared, edging against the base of the Vaca Mountains. The northeast corner lay near the entrance to the caves, where the huge oak barrels were stored. His father had only let him go inside once, and even then he wouldn’t let him run around and explore. The caves were the most fascinating place on the property, so of course they were off-limits. After he planted the third stick, he ran to the doors and pulled as hard as he could. They wouldn’t budge. Even the crowned prince of this kingdom couldn’t get past the lock on the door without a key. He gave up and ran toward the last corner.

  He remembered what he saw next as clearly as the night it happened. When he reached the southeast corner, he noticed an oak tree standing just inside the property line. Even at seven he knew enough about winemaking to know uneven sunlight made for uneven flavor in the grapes. He wondered why his parents would let it grow there. A limestone boulder the size of a tree trunk sat next to the tree, looking just as out of place. He crept forward with the last stick in his hand.

  When he got closer, a dark figure jumped out from behind the boulder—with four legs and yellow eyes and an endless row of sharp white teeth. It stared at Donnie like he’d just killed its young.

  He’d never seen a wild animal this big before. A couple of friends from school had told him they’d seen bobcats and coyotes on the shoulders of the Silverado Trail, but their stories hadn’t prepared him for this. It growled like a dog, but not exactly like a dog, then jumped around like it wanted to attack. Those actions were enough to scare Donnie into running, which turned out to be exactly what it wanted.

  After ten steps he tripped to the ground. He tried to get up quickly, but a heavy weight dragged on his right foot. He didn’t feel any pain until he turned and saw it—the wild beast gnawing on his ankle, jerking its head back and forth, tugging against him, burying its teeth into his leg. It felt like he’d been stabbed with a dozen knives. He tried to shake his ankle loose, but that hurt even more. He kicked and stabbed at the animal’s face with the heel of his left foot. He grabbed his stick and started poking, kicking and poking, until finally he hit its nose.

  The beast let go and jumped back with a whimper. Donnie scrambled to his feet and ran. Fear and adrenaline powered him forward and helped shut out his pain, but his right foot wouldn’t work with the rest of his body. He hobbled, stumbled, and dragged himself a hundred yards before he dared look back. The doglike creature was gone. Nowhere in sight.

  He winced as he remembered the long trek back to the winery, how his ankle had throbbed with pain as he dragged it across the vineyard. He remembered the way his mother looked at him when he limped through the entry doors to the winery. Her cold expression melted away, and suddenly she acted like a parent should, screaming for his father and gathering her child in her arms. His father also acted out of character, shouting, “It’s okay! It’s okay!” while he covered Donnie’s wound with his hands. They carried him to their Mercedes and huddled around him in the backseat while the head sommelier drove them to the hospital. They smoothed his hair, told him they loved him, and promised everything would be fine. Aside from the pain, despite all the trauma and fear he suffered, that car ride was the warmest memory of his life.

  His parents continued to act like they loved him while he recovered in the hospital. They slept in uncomfortable positions on uncomfortable furniture. They ate food from a cafeteria. They convinced a specialist from Cedars-Sinai to fly in for the surgery and demanded the highest level of care their money could buy.

  The coyote that attacked him had damaged several tendons and dislocated his ankle. His father ordered a full search of the property and built a fence guaranteed to keep out all four-le
gged animals. But the vineyard was off-limits when he got home. They kept him in the mansion until he recovered, at first doting on him and making sure he got anything he wanted. But after his ankle healed and he started running through the house, they unlocked the doors and wished him well. Soon things returned to normal between Donnie and his parents; he became invisible again.

  He found a new playground in his father’s library that same year. Picture books fascinated him the most, and he spent all his time inside the mansion discovering artists from each era of history. He savored the delicate beauty of a Botticelli and the gritty detail in a Caravaggio. The struggle, pain, and anguish captured in the Vatican’s Laocoön stirred a set of emotions he never knew he could feel. His father’s art books opened a new world to a boy who never saw any emotions from his parents until after he survived a vicious attack. These pictures made him feel more alive, more real than anything in his sheltered life. He decided the only way to fully experience these emotions was to become a professional artist.

  His parents finally allowed him to convert an empty bedroom into an art studio when he turned thirteen. There he created paintings and sculptures meant to frighten, enrage, or sadden, usually with mixed results. His early works were crude and transparent. Those failures only made him more determined and angry. Getting angry seemed to help. When he gave in to his emotions, his talent seemed to soar. His paintings gained a depth previously unattainable. His sculptures became gruesome beasts that frightened the maids who cleaned his room. Finishing a piece came with a rush no drug could ever match. It felt like he’d touched the face of God. He wanted to chase that feeling until he became a god himself.

  His high school art teacher noticed his talent and encouraged him to apply to art school. And that’s exactly what he did. By the time he graduated, his work was so much better that he earned a serious look from SFAI, even before his parents made a huge donation to seal his acceptance.

  He waited eleven years before daring to visit the southeast corner of the vineyard again, returning during a weekend home from art school. Fear had kept him away, not his parents’ warnings. He visited on a moonless night, armed with his father’s aluminum flashlight. The column of D-cell batteries in its core felt solid and heavy in his hand. No longer a defenseless child, he marched toward the tree with wary confidence.

  The tree had grown wider, taller, and stronger. Its branches had been pruned so the canopy could grow evenly. The vines it would have shaded were gone, sacrificed so this out-of-place tree could dominate the corner of the vineyard. The limestone boulder looked smaller than he remembered. Its flattop surface rose only three feet from the ground.

  Now that he was there, he knew the coyote must have been guarding the boulder that night. The tree was ornamental, a distraction that only gave the animal cover from the stars. He shined his flashlight on the boulder as he approached.

  Nothing jumped out at him this time. Instead his flashlight uncovered what the coyote was trying to protect—a series of letters and numbers chiseled into the flat surface of the boulder. Donnie could still see them now. He drew the picture in his mind so clearly I could read it myself:

  IN LOVING MEMORY

  NICHOLAS HARKRIDER

  1971–1988

  He didn’t need to do the math. Nicholas Harkrider had died the year Donnie was born, but he couldn’t remember any relative with that name. Not an uncle or a cousin, not anyone he could think of. He looked at the tree again. Judging by its size, it could have been planted eighteen years ago. And all the care that went into growing it—the placement, the pruning, the plowing under of nearby vines—told him Nicholas was more than a just distant relative. Whoever Nicholas was, Donnie’s parents must have loved him enough to maintain a memorial in their prized vineyard. There wasn’t a tree on the property dedicated to Donnie as far as he knew—and definitely no limestone boulder with his name carved into it.

  Envy and resentment built inside him, and he tried to concentrate their power. He put his hands on the chiseled-in words and traced each letter with his index finger, pushing so hard he drew blood. He focused on the name Nicholas over and over, repeating the name and tracing it in his own blood, working himself up, convincing himself that his parents had kept a dark secret from him his entire life. Their reaction the night of the coyote attack wasn’t out of love. It had sprouted from their fear he’d discovered the shrine to someone they loved more than their only son. He remembered how the anger surged through his body then, how it roiled in his bloodstream, reddened his skin, and tensed his muscles to the point he started shaking.

  He couldn’t remember how long he stayed there or how he ended up inside the caves on the northeast side of the vineyard. Somehow he’d cornered his father against a rack of wine barrels from the previous season. And he was shouting at him. “Tell me who he is! Who’s Nicholas Harkrider?”

  “I swear we were planning to tell you.”

  He grabbed his father’s shirt and squeezed until he felt the buttons bite into his palms. “Did you love him? Did you love him more than me?”

  “Of course I loved him. He was…” Fear blossomed in his father’s eyes as he finally admitted the truth. “He was your brother.”

  The news tore through Donnie’s mind and triggered a jolt of rage. He shoved his father into the rack and beat him with the aluminum flashlight, striking his head, shoulders, ribs, and gut—wherever the flashlight happened to land. Emotions took over, and he gladly gave them the reins. His father grabbed the rack to support himself, which only angered Donnie more. He needed to beat him to the ground, to humiliate his father like the tree and the boulder had humiliated him.

  He grabbed his father again and threw him to the floor. But his father still held one of the rack’s wooden supports. When he fell, part of it came with him. All at once the rack creaked and collapsed. An oak barrel fell free, crushing his father as it bounced across the floor. He remembered the sound the barrel made when it slammed against the opposite cave wall, and the exquisite silence that followed.

  Time to plant another tree.

  The details of the next few hours were still fuzzy in his mind. He remembered talking to a police officer, but only to confirm he was the one who had discovered the body. His mother, along with a few trusted employees, crafted a believable story that preserved the reputation of the family and the vineyard. No one asked for an autopsy. His father’s death would be remembered as another tragic accident in the Harkrider legacy, just like the car crash that had killed his older brother the same year Donnie was born.

  He wasn’t surprised that his mother had convinced the police to buy her story. She’d been practicing at lying since he was in diapers. They never spoke about the events of that night or the horrible secret she kept from him. He knew she was too ashamed to face him after what he’d found. After he graduated from SFAI, she moved out of the mansion and into another one on Lake Tahoe, leaving the Napa property to him with the understanding he wouldn’t interfere with the winery. He was free to live in the mansion but could never join the family business. He agreed to her conditions because he’d grown up under those same rules.

  The night after she left, he camped out in the vineyard to celebrate the liberation of his kingdom. He cut down the tree his parents had planted, sawed it into firewood with his chain saw. He propped his feet on the limestone boulder and warmed his hands with the heat of the campfire.

  His parents never told him he had a brother. It didn’t matter that his brother had died before he was born. He deserved to know. Nicholas was at the top of a long list of things they had kept from him, denying him an emotional connection that might have given his life more meaning.

  Maybe they’d grown tired of Nicholas, too. Maybe they’d had enough of raising children before Donnie was even born. Maybe they were glad Nicholas had died. His brother was probably the only person in the world who could understand what he’d lived through.

  Nicholas was just a name on a limestone boulder. Donnie’s
parents had worked hard to make sure of that. He ran to the gardener’s shed. Made it back in less than ten minutes. He pushed the shovel into the soft brown earth and dug until he couldn’t lift his arms.

  I kept quiet as Donnie retold the story of his first murder to himself, mostly because it left me speechless. He seemed proud of what he’d done, which worried me more than anything else. If Donnie didn’t feel any remorse after killing his own father, he’d have no problem killing a famous artist or a kidnapped art student—or a newspaper reporter, or even a nun.

  I prepared to leave when a voice surged through Donnie’s head. It sounded like the same one I heard in Cole’s bedroom, deep and menacing, like a noise coming from a torn speaker: Leave Delacroix alone. You need your rest.

  Only Donnie and I were in this room. It was nearly as dark as Cole’s bedroom, but I could see into every corner.

  He reacted like someone was shouting at him from down the hall. “He might wake up and start again.”

  I’ll watch him while you’re gone. You won’t miss a thing.

  Donnie turned the monitor off. He walked through the darkness and grabbed the doorknob. It felt cold in his hand.

  After midnight tomorrow they both have to go. I don’t care how talented he is. Sooner or later, someone will come looking for him.

  “I know that.”

  You need to prepare yourself.

  Donnie squeezed the doorknob as hard as he could. This was his kingdom. He’d do what it took to defend it. “Don’t worry. I’ll be ready.”

  CHAPTER 22

  I raced back to Michael’s cell. Everything about that last conversation told me he needed my protection now more than ever.