The Hand on the Wall

by Maureen Johnson

  “Can’t sleep,” she said.

  She strode across the room like she had meant to be here all along and busied herself in the kitchen for a moment, filling the electric kettle to make herself a hot chocolate. She dumped two packages into a mug and looked at the pile of chocolate dust she intended to consume. Was this supposed to make up for something, this dust? Was it supposed to repair whatever in her that had ripped in two?

  That was a lot to ask of a mug of cocoa dust.

  “Do you want something?” she said to Hunter, leaning out of the kitchen. “To drink? I’m . . .”

  She jabbed her hand in the direction of the kettle to indicate “I am bringing water to the boiling point in order to make hot beverages of all kinds.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Some tea or something?”

  Stevie stuck a tea bag in another mug and brought both drinks out. Hunter had chosen one of the coldest spots in the room to sit. There was frigid air coming down from the chimney, as well as slipping in from the front door.

  “Find anything good?” she asked, setting down the mug on the brick edge of the fireplace.

  “I don’t know what I’m looking at,” he said. “We got a drive each to read. I read about a thousand emails about campaign strategy and dozens of spreadsheets of financial transactions. The emails show that everyone in this campaign is an asshole. No surprises there. I don’t know what the spreadsheets mean. Someone is paying a lot of money for something, but I have no idea what it is or what it’s for. This is a weird way to spend a night.”

  He shoved the tablet between the sofa cushions and picked up the mug.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t think my aunt’s house was going to burn down. I didn’t think I’d be up here, in a blizzard, reading emails from inside the Edward King campaign.”

  It was a good reminder that someone had bigger problems than she did.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said. “David? Is he . . .”

  Stevie waited for the end of the question, because questions about David could go a lot of ways. Everything inside her coiled up like a defensive snake.

  “I mean, the first time I saw him was when he was getting beaten up. And he’s King’s son. And getting this stuff? I mean, stealing it . . . it’s pretty hardcore. It’s good? I think? I don’t know what to think.”

  “Me either,” Stevie said.

  “You and he . . .” Hunter let the words linger. “There’s something. There’s obviously something.”

  “No,” she said, looking into the sludge of chocolate she was drinking, with gray, scummy lumps of undissolved cocoa floating on top.

  “Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

  Hunter was perceptive enough to know that sorry was probably the right word. She felt her shoulders relax a bit but kept her gaze deep into the murk of her drink. They settled into an uncomfortable silence for a moment. Hunter was an easy person to look at—not in the sense that he was stunningly handsome, like some kind of consumable. He was easy in his manner. Unlike David, he didn’t appear to be sizing you up. The spray of freckles across his face was like a starry sky. He had a strong build. He was solid and real. He could be trusted.

  “Can I talk to you about your aunt a little?” Stevie asked.

  He nodded.

  “On the night—the other night—I called her,” Stevie said. “She seemed busy. She said she couldn’t talk. It seemed like someone was there. Did you see anyone?”

  “No,” he said. “I had my headphones on. You know she used to play her music really loud, and the downstairs smelled a lot, so I stayed upstairs most of the time. I was working on my end-of-semester paper. I was way into all the plastics we find in the ocean.”

  “So the first thing you noticed . . .”

  “Was smoke,” he said. Something passed across his face as he said the word. His gaze turned away from her and went up and over, which, according to the books Stevie had read about profiling, meant someone was remembering. “I smelled it. I’ve smelled smoke before, but this was a lot of smoke, and it had this really harsh smell. Not like woodsmoke. Like things were burning that shouldn’t be burning. You know when you smell something like that that something is wrong. I pulled off my headphones and then there was this sound, like cracking. Imagine a tray of glasses falling over and over. By the time I got to the door and to the stairs, it all happened really fast. There was smoke, fumes. I had trouble seeing getting down the stairs; it was burning my eyes . . .”

  He was shaking his head as he spoke, as if he couldn’t believe what he had seen.

  “The kitchen, where she was, must have gone up quickly. I guess the gas had been going for a while. It spread into the living room. There was so much flammable stuff everywhere—books and papers and trash. All that furniture was old, and the carpets were too. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs . . . I saw fire pretty much everywhere leading to the kitchen. I called to her. I think I tried to get to her office to see if she was in there, then I was going to try to run through to the kitchen. Somewhere in there I passed out.”

  Stevie had no idea what to do for a moment. Her thoughts of David were temporarily suspended. Hunter lingered in his memory for a moment, then let out a loud sigh and rubbed his face.

  “Maybe I’m more freaked than I realized. I’m fine, but it’s . . . it was a lot of fire.”

  Stevie looked back down into her drink.

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “Go to therapy,” he replied, dealing the cards. “I was just in a house fire that killed my aunt. I’m calm now, but I don’t think that’s going to last forever.”

  “That seems really smart,” Stevie said.

  “It is smart. I’m a smart guy.”

  He went silent for a moment, and Stevie felt a burble of anxiety putter up to the surface.

  “Was that your question?” he said. “Or was there something else?”

  Everything in his tone said, “I too am fine and am ready to move on with the conversation.”

  “She said something really weird on the phone,” Stevie said. “‘The kid is there.’ Do you know what she was talking about?”

  “‘The kid is there’?” he repeated, shaking his head. “I have no idea what that means. You don’t think . . . Alice?”

  “Alice wouldn’t be here,” Stevie said. “It makes no sense.”

  “Maybe she didn’t say kid? Maybe she said . . .” He searched for something that sounded like kid, then shook his head. “Look, my aunt was drunk that night. Really drunk. So drunk she burned the house down.”

  “She said kid,” Stevie replied.

  Hunter shook his head in confusion.

  “Then I have no idea what she meant. But she was really hung up on the codicil for those last few days. She was talking about it more and more. She said Mackenzie told her. There was a document. He hid it so that the place wouldn’t be overrun with fake Alices. She said the school knew all about it and was banking on it, because when it expired, they would get the money.”

  “She said the school knew about it?” Stevie said, leaning forward.

  “Yeah. Look, I know how she seemed. I know she could be . . . she had some issues. I know what I just said about the fire. But she knew what she was talking about when it came to this stuff. And when she got into this stuff with the will, she changed. She didn’t seem as interested in the case as she did with this idea that there was, like, a prize out there. A really, really big prize.”

  “I asked about it,” Stevie said. “I asked Call Me Charles.”

  “Call Me . . .”

  “It’s what we call Dr. Scott.”

  Hunter nodded, understanding the nickname at once.

  Neither of them seemed to know what to say next. Stevie cycled through many possible things—like telling him about her solution to the Ellingham case or asking him if he really thought his house burned down by accident. But both of those things were too much.

  “Nate said something about a board g
ame earlier,” Hunter said. “Do you want to play one, maybe?”

  Stevie was caught completely off guard by this. It was too normal.

  “There are games,” she said. “Around here. Somewhere . . .”

  “There’s nothing as serious as a game” was one of Albert Ellingham’s mottos, and since the school opened, there were always board games around. Back then, it was mostly Monopoly, but since there were so many games around now, the collections had grown. There was a whole pile of games in a corner of the common room. Stevie had never really paid them much attention except when Nate pulled one out and persuaded her to play.

  It was something to do now, on this strange night.

  She found the game pile, four in all, in the cabinet along with the cleaning and fireplace supplies. She set them down on the farm table like an offering. Hunter examined them expertly.

  “This one is better with more people,” he said, pushing one aside. “I don’t know this one, but it looks complicated. This one, though . . .”

  He held up a small box that contained a card game called Zombie Picnic.

  “I played that one with Nate,” Stevie said. “It’s pretty good. You try to have a picnic while zombies attack you.”

  “I know this one too. Come on. Sitting here like this sucks. Let’s play.”

  Had you asked her a half hour before, Stevie would not have believed that she would be playing a card game instead of, say, crying in the corner of her room or making plans to fake her own death. Life went on, in the form of cards showing pictures of sandwiches and potato salad and zombies chewing people’s heads off. She was still here. David was still upstairs. Things could be fixed.

  For an hour or two, there were no murders. There was no case. She looked at her phone at one point and saw it was after midnight. Then it was two in the morning. She became giddy on sleeplessness and adrenaline and whatever comes after sadness. Hunter was good company, and the game was ridiculous. Maybe Albert Ellingham had been on to something with this game thing.

  Once they had passed the three or four o’clock mark, then it seemed only reasonable to go on until the sky lightened, which it finally did. It turned from night pink and black to day pink and white, then pure white. She and Hunter were now night companions, linked in some way she could not define. All felt good for a while. They would get up and start laughing at nothing. They made popcorn. They stuck their heads out the window and let snow fall on their faces, waking them up.

  It continued like this until sometime around dawn, when there was a creak on the stair. David emerged from the hallway.

  “Game, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah, well . . .” Hunter arranged the cards in his hand. “We’re just taking a break.”

  David made a hmmmm noise and disappeared into the kitchen, reappearing a moment later with an untoasted Pop-Tart sticking out of his mouth. He sat in the hammock chair and spun, causing the rope to twist audibly.

  “I was up half the night reading your stuff,” Hunter said. “Do you have any idea what we’re supposed to be looking for?”

  “Nope,” David said, using his feet to stop the spinning. “Just that it’s important.”

  “So if I was looking at a bunch of spreadsheets, banking records . . .”

  David stuck the last piece of the Pop-Tart in his mouth and shrugged.

  “Helpful,” Hunter said. “So how do you know it’s important?”

  “Because my dad is trying to hide it,” David said. “Because of the way he’s been acting. Because of stuff he’s said or hasn’t said. I know when my dad is up to some shady shit.”

  “Isn’t that always?” Hunter asked.

  “He’s always up to some shit,” David clarified. “It’s not always shady. This is shady. And whatever is on those drives, he was keeping it off the server.”

  “A lot of the stuff seems routine,” Hunter said.

  “Some of it may be. I think some of those drives are backups, which means we have to find the interesting thing. It’s fun.”

  “Fun,” Hunter said.

  “Like what you’re having. Oh, morning, Stevie.”

  Stevie tried not to twitch. Everything about David was deliberate.

  Hunter gathered up the cards and stacked them into a pile, tapping them neatly on the table surface before putting them back in the box. “You’ve set up some kind of fake identity in your dad’s campaign, right?” he said.

  “You mean Jim?” David said.

  “Yeah. Jim. Can Jim do something?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like send an email to the school asking to see the codicil.”

  David eyed Hunter, somehow making sure to shut Stevie out of the look. Stevie, for her part, almost got whiplash from the turn in the conversation.

  “What codicil?” he asked.

  “The one that says that the person who finds Alice Ellingham gets a fortune,” Hunter replied. “The one the school doesn’t show anyone.”

  David tilted his head in interest.

  “Why would Jim do that? Jim is a busy guy.”

  “I’m helping you with your stuff,” Hunter said. “You could do me a favor too.”

  “A favor for you?”

  “A favor,” Hunter replied, ignoring any implied question. “An exchange of labor.”

  “And this favor is for you?” David asked again.

  “It’s something my aunt believed in,” Hunter replied. “I want to know. I’ll help you; you help me.”

  David waited a long beat, then spun in the chair again, twisting the rope. Stevie suddenly found that she was wide awake, and maybe about to throw up.

  “Well, the Wi-Fi is out,” David said. “If Jim wrote such a note, I don’t know when it would send. But why would the school share it with Jim if they don’t show anyone?”

  “It’s not that they don’t share it with anyone,” Hunter replied. “It’s probably more that they don’t share it with just anyone.”

  It took Stevie’s foggy mind a moment to absorb the difference.

  “Board members,” she said. “Legally, there must be people who would know.”

  “Right,” Hunter said. “And maybe there’s a reason that Senator King would want to know about it because his son goes here. Maybe we could come up with a reason . . .”

  Hunter was on to something. Stevie’s brain switched back on for one last burst of activity for the night.

  “He would want to know because of news stories,” she said. “Because of the deaths. You don’t have to explain that much.”

  “My parents are both lawyers,” Hunter said. “You write short, terse notes and make it sound like people have to do what you want. Only say what you need to. I think it might work.”

  David scratched at his eyebrow and then rubbed the stubble on his chin. Chin stubble. Stevie had to tell herself not to look at it, or the way he stretched out his legs. Human sexuality was amazing and confusing and horrible, and messed up all her thoughts just as she got them in order. Focus.

  “Will you write it?” she asked David. She looked right at him, challenging him.

  “Again, I need a reason.”

  “I’ll owe you.”

  He laughed out loud at that.

  “And it dicks around with your dad a little more,” Hunter added. “If you made a guy, why not use him?”

  Stevie could almost see the calculations going on behind David’s eyes.

  “Fine,” he said. “You tell me what to say and I’ll send it, and you keep reading. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  It took only a few minutes to come up with Jim’s wording:

  I am writing on behalf of Senator King. The senator would like to see a copy of any legal documents that state that there is some kind of financial benefit for anyone who produces Alice Ellingham. This document has been long rumored to exist. The senator would like to know about any potential legalities or news stories that might involve the school, and obviously, any kind of windfall would be rich fodder for the pre
ss. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

  “It’s short,” Hunter said. “Keep it brief. Sounds more important, like you’re entitled.”

  “Relatable,” David said as he finished typing. “Fine. I’ll send it off as soon as I have a signal again. Are you going to read the stuff I gave you now?”

  Hunter got up without a word, sat back on the sofa, and picked up the tablet.

  Exhaustion dropped on to Stevie. The bubble burst, and the air was sucked back out of the room. David was twisting in the chair and the wind was howling. She was not needed.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said.

  As she got up to go, David trailed her loosely in the hall.

  “Are you following me?” she said.

  “I’m going to my room to get a power cord,” he replied. “Like I said, I was reading all night. Looks like you had fun, though.”

  Stevie gripped her doorknob so hard she thought she might rip it off.

  “Not everything is about you,” she said.

  Then she went into her room and shut the door in his face.

  15

  THE WHOLE HOUSE WAS SHAKING.

  Stevie opened her eyes. The light in the room was dim. She blinked a few times and reached for her phone. It was almost three in the afternoon. There were no texts or calls from her parents, which suggested that there had been no signal.

  She found she had made a nest for herself to keep warm—all the blankets, her robe, her fleece, even a few towels. At one point, she remembered she had considered tipping out her bag of dirty laundry on top of herself. She pieced together the events that had gotten her here. She had been with Hunter and David in the common room until early in the morning, then the exhaustion had come down on her and she had gone into her room to rest for a minute. The minute had turned to hours, and the day had vanished.

  She slithered out of bed and went to the window. Outside, the snow was coming down sideways, even blowing back up. It had so coated the trees and ground that it was hard to figure out what was outside at all. It was impossible to calculate how much snow had collected on the ground, but it looked like it was now a few inches below the window. So, two feet? Three feet?