The Halo Effect: A Novel

by Anne D. LeClaire

  “Yes. It was early in the summer, so we hadn’t begun to use it as much as we usually do. For small weddings. Christenings. That kind of thing.”

  The detective scanned the pages. “And these seven people are the only ones who had access to the chapel during those two weeks?”

  Father Burns looked at the page. “Yes. Except for Father Gervase and me, of course. And Wayne Jervis.”

  “Jervis. You say he’s the custodian?”

  “Yes. Part-time.” Father Gervase watched as Gordon penned in Jervis’s name on the list. “He comes in Saturday mornings to do a little maintenance and to clean the chapel.”

  “Well, that should narrow the time frame for when the object was left there,” Father Burns added.

  “And the people on this list would all be parishioners?”

  “Yes.”

  Gordon pointed to the last name on the list. “And this one too?”

  “Well, the family are parishioners.”

  “But they aren’t regulars,” Father Burns said.

  Father Gervase stared at the finger still pointing to the last name and was swept by a chill of foreboding.

  Duane LaBrea.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “We are looking for Duane LaBrea.”

  Rain recognized the policemen standing at the door. They were the same two who had questioned her after Lucy disappeared, and then a second time after Lucy’s body had been found in the woods at the edge of town.

  “We understand you were her best friend,” one of them had said, the one who’d made her nervous because he was the kinder and, she had sensed immediately, the smarter one. “We know how best friends tell each other secrets,” he had said with a smile that hadn’t fooled her for an instant. “We need to know anything Lucy might have told you. Even if you promised not to tell.”

  “No, nothing,” she had lied. She’d thought that would be the end of it. Lucy’s secret was safe with her.

  Instead, to her amazement, they were now asking for Duane. Even surprised, Rain couldn’t contain a smile. What the hell kind of trouble had Duane gotten himself into that brought police to their house? The police, for God’s sake. So her mother’s Golden Boy of the decade, the model for a saint, wasn’t so damn perfect after all. Too bad her mother had gone shopping and wasn’t here to witness this. But then her mother would probably have ushered the policemen in, offered them coffee, and waited for them to inform her that Duane was receiving some special, fabulous citizen-of-the-year award or something. That was how pathetically delusional her mother was. The only prize Rain could imagine Duane winning was for lamest seventeen-year-old on the planet. In the galaxy. In the universe. “Just a sec,” she said and left them on the porch to descend to her brother’s basement lair, where he was doing whatever the hell he did down there. Predictably, the door to his room was closed and locked. Apparently their mother didn’t have a problem with him locking his door. Not Duane the saint. Oh, wait. The ex-saint.

  “Duane?” She heard music. Something predictable lame. An old Queen album, the volume low per their mother’s running order so she didn’t have to put up with the noise. “Duane. I know you’re in there.”

  There was a slight rustling on the other side of the door. The music stopped.

  “Duane, damn it, open up.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ll tell you when you open the door.”

  “Just go away.”

  “And what? You want me to send the police down here to get you?”

  “The what?”

  “The police. The cops. There are two of them waiting on the front porch, and they want to see you.”

  The lock clicked open. Duane wore only a pair of old boxer shorts in a faded pink. Since he started doing his own laundry and no matter how many times their mother told him the correct way to do the wash—another of their mother’s rules: always separate the white clothes from the colored—his clothes were weird shades of blue or red or, once, purple. There was a crease slashing his cheek where it had been pressed against the pillow. She avoided looking over at his bed. If he’d been down here watching porn and jerking off she sure as hell didn’t want to know.

  “Police?” His voice cracked like he was twelve. “Here?”

  “Right.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Have you gone completely deaf? They want to see you.”

  “Jesus.” He thought a minute, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Look, tell them I’m not here. Tell them you forgot and I’m at work or you don’t know where I am. Okay? Just tell them something.”

  She wanted to tell him that she wouldn’t lie for him, especially not to the police, but he looked so genuinely scared that she caved.

  The two policemen hadn’t moved from where she’d left them on the front porch.

  “He’s sleeping.” Okay a lie, but not a big fat one. Not a criminal one. Definitely landed in the fib category.

  “I see,” the smaller one said, the one she instinctively was more leery of. “Okay, Rain. We’ll wait while you go wake him up.”

  “You want me to wake him up?” She hadn’t planned on their persistence. What the hell had Duane done?

  “And if you don’t mind, we’ll step inside while you get him,” said the other one. “Get out of this heat.”

  “Okay,” she said. Though it was most definitely not okay. Without her knowing how it had happened, the power had shifted and they were running the show. She wished her dad was home. He’d know how to handle this. She descended to the basement, where she was again met by a closed door.

  “Duane. Open the fucking door.”

  “Did you get rid of them?” Again the conspiratorial whisper.

  “I told them you were sleeping.”

  “And they left?”

  “No. They told me to wake you up. They’re waiting in the front hall.”

  He yanked open the door. “Jesus, Rainy.”

  He hadn’t called her that in ages, and suddenly it was like they were again children and had gotten in trouble with their mother. “Why are they here anyway, Duane? What do they want?”

  “Shit, I don’t know.” He pawed through a pile of laundry on the floor and pulled out a pair of khakis. They were badly wrinkled, and there was a smear of chocolate ice cream on the thigh, but he stepped into them anyway. She looked at his concave chest, counted his ribs. When had he gotten so thin? Was he using drugs? Was that why he’d lost weight? Was that what had brought the police to their house?

  “You should have told them you didn’t know where I am.” He pulled on a white polo he wore for work, one with the green Eastern Point Creamery logo embroidered on the breast. He shoved a foot in one yellow Converse, searched under the bed for the other. “This is completely fucked.”

  “Comb your hair,” she said. Stop looking so guilty.

  “Don’t leave me alone with them, okay, Rain?” he said as they climbed the stairs.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll just feel better if you’re there.” Now he was acting like she was the older one, which she would have thought she would like, but it freaked her.

  “Okay? Promise?”

  “All right,” she said in a tone that suggested she was doing him a huge favor. Actually, she had no intention of missing the action. Even though she had let them inside, it was still shocking to see them in the hall, filling the air with their presence.

  “Hello, Duane. I’m Detective Gordon, and this is Officer Slovak.”

  “Hi.”

  Look them in the eye, Rain wanted to scream. Duane stood there all hunched and nervous and looking guilty as shit.

  “We’d like you to come down to the station with us, son.”

  “The station?” Duane’s voice did that twelve-year-old cracking thing again.

  “So we can ask you some questions. Clear some things up.”

  “Jeez. I don’t know,” he said.

  Rain could see she’d have to help him
. Obviously. “Our parents aren’t home right now.” She was surprised by how loud her voice sounded. “I think they’d want him to wait until they are here and can go with him. Him being a minor and all.”

  The three of them turned and looked at her. Gordon in an appraising glance, the other one, Slovak, clearly annoyed at her interruption, and Duane with a look of such doglike gratitude she was both gratified and annoyed. She wished he would stand the hell up straight. “What is this about anyway?”

  The men exchanged a look, and Slovak gave Gordon a what-the-hell shrug, which must have been some kind of signal between them, because Gordon started the questioning right there with no more talk of going down to the station. At least for the moment. He leveled his gaze at Duane.

  “Can you tell us the last time you were at the chapel of the Church of the Holy Apostles?”

  Rain snickered. Duane? At the chapel? Then she remembered one of the loser dopeheads at school saying it was a place where kids could score. The locked bedroom door. Duane’s thin body.

  “The chapel?” Duane looked confused. “I don’t go there.”

  “Well, that’s a little strange, Duane, because we have your signature on the register at the church. The one you have to sign to get the key.”

  Duane darted a glance at Rain, then looked back at the men. “Oh. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I forgot. I went there a couple of times. During final exams.”

  He did?

  Gordon checked his notepad. “And that would be in June?”

  “I guess. Yeah. That’s right. June.”

  “Were you there alone?”

  Duane shifted his weight, wiped a palm against his thigh. “Yeah. Alone.”

  “So no one was with you?”

  Duh. That’s what alone means, cone head. Rain nearly rolled her eyes.

  “No. I was by myself.”

  “Okay.” He jotted a note on a pad that had appeared as if by magic. “Tell us how well you knew Lucy Light.”

  The words shot a current through the hall. Lucy’s name reverberated. Lucy Light. Lucy Light. Lucy Light.

  Duane shrank, actually took a step back. He shot another look at Rain, but after the first shock of hearing Lucy’s name the significance of the policeman’s phrasing hit her. Not if Duane knew Lucy, but how well he knew her, as if Lucy was his girlfriend or something, which was so ridiculous she nearly laughed.

  “I knew her better,” she blurted. “She was my best friend.” Of course they already knew that. We know how best friends tell each other secrets.

  “We appreciate your help, Rain, but we want your brother to answer our questions.” They turned their attention back to Duane.

  “We’re trying to locate someone who might have had an object that belonged to Lucy,” Slovak said. “We’re hoping you can help us with this.”

  “An object?”

  “Yes. Something Father Gervase found in the chapel that Lucy’s father believes belonged to her. A little plastic figure of Yoda.”

  “Yoda?”

  Rain knew exactly what he was talking about, had seen it in Lucy’s bedroom about eight kazillion times. Feel the force! Lucy’s Yoda voice was so clear it was almost as if she were standing right there in the hall with them. Patience you must have, my young Padawan!

  “That’s right,” Slovak said.

  “No,” Duane said. He swiped his palm against his thigh. “No, I haven’t seen anything like that.”

  Rain had always been able to tell when Duane was lying. He’d make a sucky criminal. The lie was so obvious she was sure the two policemen knew it too.

  “That’s too bad. We were hoping you could help us out here.”

  “Yeah. Save us some time,” said the fat one, Slovak. “I guess we’ll just have to send it off for DNA testing and fingerprints.”

  Now he was lying. Rain was just a living lie detector. The FBI should hire her. But she could tell by her brother’s face that he totally believed the cop.

  “I think you should come back later,” she said. “When our parents are here.”

  Slovak opened his mouth to argue, but the other one—Gordon—said okay and, amazingly, just like that, they left. Their departure was so abrupt that she and Duane stood in stunned silence for several minutes.

  “He was lying, you know.” They were in the kitchen, and Duane was drinking a beer from the six-pack of Coors, his father’s drink of choice now that he no longer drank scotch. He popped the tab right there in the open where either of their parents could walk in and catch him, a clear sign of how much the visit from the police had shaken him. “That stuff about the DNA testing and fingerprints. It’s a lie.”

  Duane took a long swallow. Rain knew he had a beer now and then—who didn’t—but the way he was sucking it down surprised her. He had the look of someone who intended to swim through the entire six-pack without hesitating to belch. “Do you think they’ll really come back?”

  “No doubt.” Even though she didn’t really like the soapy taste of beer, the yeasty smell of it, she reached for the can and took a foamy sip. “So you go to the chapel?”

  “I did. A couple of times.” He took the can back.

  “That’s a surprise.”

  He shrugged.

  Once more she pictured his thin frame, the locked door to his room. “So what? Are you doing drugs or something?”

  “What?” His voice rose in shock. “Drugs? No. Jesus, Rainy.”

  “So what was all that about Lucy and Yoda?”

  He avoided her gaze. Drank more beer.

  “Duane?”

  “I had it. Okay? I guess I must have dropped it in the chapel.”

  “Wait. You had Lucy’s Yoda?” Her voice was thick with disbelief.

  “Yeah.”

  “What the hell, Duane? Did you steal it or something?”

  “Steal it? From Lucy? Fuck no, Rainy. You think I’d steal from Lucy? Jesus.”

  “So how did you get it?”

  Another long swallow of Coors. “She gave it to me.”

  “She gave it to you?” Rain reached for the nearly empty can.

  “Yeah.” Duane didn’t bother taking it back but retrieved another from the refrigerator. Their mother the detective would know exactly how many were gone, but at the moment that was the least of Rain’s concerns.

  “Why? Why would she give it to you?”

  He shrugged. “What does it matter now?”

  “But why?” she persisted.

  “Oh, Rainy.” He closed his eyes and held the cold can against his forehead. “It wasn’t anything. Just forget it. Let it go.”

  “Bullshit, Duane. Lucy loved that thing. Why would she give it to you?”

  “It was kind of a secret, okay?”

  “A secret? You and Lucy had a secret?” A sting of betrayal, the heat of jealousy caught her ribs. Everybody has secrets.

  He started pacing from the table to the far counter, his face scrunched with concentration. “So do you really think those two cops will be back?”

  A secret with Lucy? She fought to keep tears from welling. “Of course they’ll be back.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they won’t. I told them I didn’t have the Yoda. That’s all they wanted to know.”

  “Are you completely stupid, asshole? They could tell you were lying. You’re such a shitty liar a blind man living on Neptune could tell.”

  “What? Are you mad at me now?”

  “Dogs get mad, stupid. People get angry,” she said in a singsong voice.

  “So are you angry with me?”

  “I wouldn’t waste my energy. You know what? I hope they do come back. I hope they come back and drag you down to the station in front of the entire town and then lock you up.”

  “Lock me up? Jesus, Rainy. Why would they lock me up?”

  “You tell me. You tell me why they would lock you up, Mr. Big Shot Secret Keeper.”

  He stared at her with eyes grown glassy from the two beers. “Jesus, Rainy, what are you thinking?”

&n
bsp; “I’m not thinking anything. Should I be?”

  “I didn’t do anything to Lucy, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “I would never do anything to hurt Lucy.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  A noise from outside the window woke me.

  I was in an unfamiliar bed, and it was a moment before I remembered. Maine. Sophie. I turned and saw her still figure on the far side of the bed. I started to reach across the distance, but before I touched her I stayed my hand, my fingers that still held her scent. Let her sleep, I thought. Carefully, I slid out of the bed and descended the stairs. A nearly full moon lit the main room. I threw open a window, inhaled the damp air. I found the yellow plastic-cased flashlight on the table by the door and stepped onto the porch and went down to the dock, guided by the beam of its light and the moon. Sturgeon moon. The name came to me from memory’s recesses. Once I had known the name of each month’s full moon. Names, I corrected myself, for I knew each moon had many names, but I could only remember a single one of those for August. The stillness of night was broken by voices, drunken, I realized after a moment, and arguing, the same ones we had heard the previous afternoon. Suddenly a memory from childhood surfaced, the summer my parents had rented a lakeside cabin in New Hampshire for a week, unusual in itself because they seldom went away. Long before the word staycation had been coined, my father had been a proponent. “Why leave home when we have everything we want or need right here?” And yet, this one summer—I had been what? Twelve?—we had taken a cabin. The first night there we had eaten out, another rarity in my family. At the next table sat a family, mother, father, and daughter. The daughter was about my age, but it was the mother who fascinated me. She was tanned and dressed in a sundress with straps as thin as string, and she had struck me as exotic as a movie star. The man initiated a conversation with my father. They were from Ohio, a fact that had surprised me. Such an ordinary setting for the woman. This was their first time east, the man confided. Usually they took a place on Lake Michigan. Not long after we had ordered, the waitress arrived at our table with a bottle of wine. Compliments of that gentleman, she told my father. For a moment, I thought my father would refuse—my parents were not wine drinkers—but then my mother placed her hand on his sleeve and the moment passed. Much later, I woke to the sound of voices cutting through the night just as the ones did there in Maine. The father, clearly drunk, the woman too. And someone crying. The girl, I’d known. And as quickly as that, the scene in the restaurant seemed false. The memory of the dinner tainted. I’d vowed that when I grew up and had a daughter, I would never fight in front of her. Standing on the dock, I allowed myself that brief consolation. Lucy had never heard her mother and me argue.