The House of Secrets

by Brad Meltzer

  “He is a great man indeed,” the man with sunglasses says.

  Identity confirmed, though Jack smiles to himself at the melodrama. The Bible passage—from the Book of Judges—is about a man who lets killers into the city of Bethel, betraying everyone he loves. They used to call that passage The Traitor’s Creed.

  Jack looks around to see if anyone else is watching.

  By the time Jack turns back, the man with the sunglasses is gone, the crosswalks on both sides of him filled with hundreds of people. For a brief moment, Jack is standing on the corner alone…and then the crush is on him, behind him, to his sides.

  Jack is impressed. The autograph was a nice touch.

  Bethel. Home to a great traitor. Though not nearly as great as the man who betrayed George Washington.

  Jack looks down at the paper. He flips it over. There’s something written on the other side. It’s an address, a few miles away. Not a great area. Naturally. They’ll never bring the prize where everyone can see it. Still, isn’t this why he came all the way to Johannesburg? It was never about a meteor, or even a TV show. For Jack Nash, it was about locating another page of Benedict Arnold’s bible.

  11

  UCLA Medical Center

  Today

  How’s your pain? One to ten, where are you?” the night nurse, Dexter, asked.

  Hazel’s entire body throbbed. Sitting up in bed, she was at about seven, with an eight rising in her neck. “Two.”

  “You’re only hurting yourself, you know,” Dexter said.

  “I don’t want anything else in me. I just want to feel…authentic.”

  “You’re a good sister, a good daughter. Nothing’s more authentic than that.”

  Hazel smiled a thank-you and flipped open Skip’s laptop, which she’d asked him to leave behind.

  Ten minutes ago, she sent Skip after Agent Rabkin, telling her brother to follow the FBI agent out of the hospital—and most important, see who else he stopped to chat with. She knew Rabkin wasn’t a novice, but with Skip gone, it’d at least give her time for this.

  She closed her eyes. Like an echo, she heard Agent Rabkin’s news that her dad was poisoned. Heard his warning to stay away.

  Mysteries need to be solved.

  Three guesses per night.

  In her mind, she was in bed, her old bed, in the dark, with her father sitting beside her. What was he saying?

  She opened her eyes. It was right there, so close. Still, one detail, one feeling, stood out more than anything else. The love her father had for her. Whatever it took, whether Hazel’s brain was working right or not, nothing would stop her from finding out if someone killed him. She needed to pay that love back.

  Adjusting the laptop, she was all set to run searches on her father, on Agent Rabkin, and of course on ex-con Darren Nixon. But as she launched Skip’s homepage…

  Browser history.

  She couldn’t help herself.

  With a click, there it was, her brother’s digital footprint, most of it centered around Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BuzzFeed stories like Who has the hottest NHL wife?, the ESPN hockey pages (Did her brother even like hockey? There was so much she couldn’t remember), and based on the list under Recently Visited, far too much time on HOS-MB: The House of Secrets Message Boards, where fans were leaving tributes to their dad. Every few entries, Skip would reply with a quick Thanks for looking out for us!!

  She clicked further back and found Skip’s own Google searches for Trevor Rabkin, Darren Nixon, and even Jack Nash death conspiracy, which took him to the corners of the Internet reserved for what looked like their dad’s most dedicated fans.

  The only thing that really caught her eye was under the Recently Closed tab, where Skip had landed on the Contact page for Longwood Funeral Home. A dull pain that had been squatting in the back of Hazel’s neck exploded in a burning fire. She’d been unconscious for eight days. Had she really missed her dad’s funeral?

  Hazel glanced at the clock on the laptop. Skip would be back soon. This was her chance to dig into her dad’s poison, Benedict Arnold’s bible, and all the craziness the FBI just dumped in her lap, but try as she might, she still couldn’t get that word out of her head…

  “Sociopath,” Hazel whispered to herself, logging in to her own email account.

  Mysteries need to be solved. Time to see the life she’d left behind.

  Onscreen, she had fifty new emails. One from the chair of her department at San Francisco State—I’m happy to hear you’re doing better. Some of us were very worried about you—one from a reporter at the Los Angeles Times asking for an interview, and dozens from people she’d never heard of, each with a variation of the subject line “SORRY ABOUT YOUR FATHER.”

  She deleted them all.

  She had a little over three years of mail stored up: Hundreds of messages back and forth with students. (Student: Prof. Nash, I’m going to be about four days late with my paper. Is that cool? Hazel: No. Student: Three days? Is that cool?) An inordinate number of emails flagged as important that she sent to herself, usually reminding her of dental appointments or kickboxing class. There would be some weeks when she and Skip seemed to be in constant contact—photos, jokes, weird sightings of their father (Check out this old clip of Dad on That’s Incredible!)—and then months where there was nothing.

  She couldn’t find a single email from anyone who looked like a friend.

  And then there were the messages from her dad. Dozens. So many unanswered:

  Haven’t heard from you in weeks, Hazel-Ann. I left a message on your home phone and at school.

  Was she avoiding him?

  Was thinking of your mom today and wanted to see your face. Can we Skype later? Love you.

  “Love you too,” she whispered. But had she Skyped him? File not found.

  Thought of Tim Knollberg today. Have you heard from him?

  Tim Knollberg. At the sight of the name, she was moving backward, and a memory was rolling over her.

  Every year when classes started, Hazel fought to keep a low profile. She could remember that. Let Skip be famous. Hazel preferred the quiet. She never advertised who her father was, but somehow the college kids always knew.

  So when nineteen-year-old Tim Knollberg came to office hours and said, “Can I ask you something about your dad?” Hazel assumed he was another superfan. Until he handed her a flyer and added, “That’s my sister Rachel. She disappeared when she was nine. I took your class on the off chance that maybe your dad could help us find her.”

  Her father had helped. Of course he had. They did a whole episode on the modeling technology that existed to accurately age missing children, set up hotlines around the country, even helped identify three long-lost children who’d been abducted and murdered. But they never did find Tim Knollberg’s sister.

  Where in the world are you, Hazel-Ann? Are you there? Is it a full moon? Are you out there howling, my werewolf? Call me.

  My werewolf. She knew that name too—it’s what her dad would call her when she didn’t understand why he had to constantly leave and chase UFO leads, or meet with witnesses at Loch Ness. Why, she used to wonder, were fake things more important than real things?

  “Big things are coming for you,” he used to promise her. “Because one day? You’ll be the werewolf.” It was a term of endearment, his way of telling her that she mattered, that one day she’d be some unknowable thing people wanted to figure out. It was a funny thing between the two of them, except it had grown to mean something entirely different to Hazel.

  She replayed Rabkin’s words: An amygdala of a certain size indicated killers and other types of werewolves.

  “Sorry to interrupt…” a man’s voice said, calling out from the hospital hallway.

  Hazel looked up, saw a suit, thought it was Agent Rabkin himself. But it wasn’t. Just a lanky Asian man, his face masked with worry, like he was lost.

  “Sorry,” the man said, already backtracking. “Wrong room.”

  “No worrie
s,” Hazel replied, thinking, Not a big deal. Nothing to worry about. But then another thought came to her: What if that man was someone who was actually threatening her? What if someone who was truly dangerous had raced into her room? What would she do? What would happen to him?

  And then another thought—a dark, brutal thought: He would have met the werewolf.

  12

  It was nearly 10 p.m. when Dr. Morrison walked to his reserved space on the first floor of one of the hospital’s nearby parking structures. The day he got it, he was excited, until his ex-wife asked, “How come people don’t feel good until they get their name on something?”

  That’s why she was his ex. She could ruin even the easy days.

  Just like someone else.

  “You don’t answer your phone anymore?” a man called out.

  Dr. Lyle Morrison lived alone in a leaky Spanish revival in Santa Monica Canyon. He had a golden retriever named Rolex who pissed all over his floors. And he still owed $127,000 on his student loans from Yale. But of all the headaches in his life—including alimony—none was as bad as the man in the dark suit currently leaning against Morrison’s silver Lexus. Agent Trevor Rabkin.

  “Sorry to be late,” Rabkin said. “Skip was trailing me. Took an elevator ride to lose him.”

  “I know you spoke to her. You think I’m stupid?” the doctor hissed.

  “She’s in better shape than you said. Nearly at full speed.”

  “If you interfere with her recovery—”

  “I just want to know how she’s doing.”

  “You don’t care how she’s doing. You want to see what she knows, what she remembers.”

  “And that’s a crime? You know how long her father worked for us? Even longer than you.”

  Dr. Morrison went silent.

  “You think I didn’t look you up, doc? We all have a moment we’d regret. You got caught and made a deal to get out of yours. Jack Nash was no better—and if I had to bet, based on Hazel’s file, neither is she. So you can act as high and mighty as you want, but there’s a reason you’re standing here in the dark, passing me confidential information. Just like there’s a reason you never told Hazel how well you know her family.”

  Morrison clenched his jaw and shook his head. “This is the last time I’m doing this.”

  “Your help is always appreciated. Now. Hazel. What’re the chances of her memories coming back?”

  “That’s the issue. You saw. She doesn’t even know what she knows.”

  “What about her therapy?”

  “The grief counseling was a waste. Without memories, she doesn’t have any grief. So of course she hasn’t even begun to mourn her father. I don’t know if she knows how.”

  Rabkin considered that. “Maybe that’s better.”

  “It’s not.”

  “You worked with her father too. How’s she compare?”

  “That was years ago,” Dr. Morrison said. “Jack Nash was a reckless man, but also a kind one.”

  “And she’s not?”

  A security guard in a golf cart rolled by and tipped his cap at Rabkin and Dr. Morrison, just three guys in a parking lot, doing their jobs.

  “You realize I could lose my practice for having this conversation?” Dr. Morrison growled.

  “Then keep your voice down.”

  The doctor looked around the parking lot, sighing to himself, as if he couldn’t quite make sense of the experience he was having. “I feel like I’m supposed to tell you to follow the money now.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re the good guys,” Rabkin said. “We just—” Rabkin’s phone vibrated. So did Dr. Morrison’s. A new text for both of them.

  Dr. Morrison pulled out his phone first. Read it.

  “What’s wrong?” Rabkin asked.

  The doctor held up his phone. On it was a message that Hazel’s hospital bed was empty.

  “No one knows where she is.”

  13

  You okay? You in pain?” Skip called out as he pulled up to the bus bench in one of their dad’s old cars, a 1966 Chevy Impala Super Sport.

  Hazel was always in pain.

  “I lost Agent Rabkin,” Skip added.

  “It’s okay. Just get us out of here,” she insisted, sliding into the passenger seat and ducking down. They were four blocks from the hospital. Skip took off. Was this their relationship? Hazel wondered. Is this what he regularly did? She’d get in trouble and he’d bail her out?

  Hazel stayed silent until they got home. Or at least to this home: the 1926 Spanish-Moorish revival house in Studio City that sat protected behind closed iron gates.

  This was the house she grew up in. Her father’s house.

  “Ready to see your old life?” Skip asked.

  She nodded, slowly opening the car door and staring up at the front walk. There was so much she wanted to ask him, about Rabkin, about their father, about the poison. Instead, she went with “Skip, was there a funeral? Did I miss Dad’s funeral?”

  “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “What does that mean? How could it not be a big deal?”

  “It was a memorial. Just friends and family,” Skip said, and then stopped. Hazel could imagine him playing those words back in his mind, hearing how they sounded. “It was small. Private. Just…” He paused again. “I didn’t know if you were ever coming back out, Hazel. I was operating under the assumption that I’d be having a memorial for you next.”

  She nodded, still sitting in the passenger seat, mentally picturing her dad’s funeral, a packed cemetery with tons of mourners, all of them crying. Then she pictured her own funeral, with just Skip—and whoever was paid to do the service. She couldn’t help but wonder if being dead would bring less pain than what was burrowing through her belly right now.

  “You’re not okay, are you?” Skip said, like it was a question he’d never asked before, like he’d become accustomed to her being bulletproof.

  “I’m fine,” Hazel said, still picturing Skip alone standing over her grave. Empty funerals didn’t come from bad luck. They were earned. “I need you to tell me…” she added. “You heard what Rabkin said. If Dad was poisoned—”

  “Stop. Just stop, okay? You didn’t kill our father.”

  “Skip, was I a good person?”

  “Why don’t you come inside?”

  “No one has come to visit me,” Hazel said. “You didn’t answer me the last time I asked. I need to know. Now.”

  “That’s what made you leave the hospital?”

  “I’ve been going through my email—”

  “Don’t do this. You’ve been on the news for two weeks. Your life isn’t what it was before.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Hazel asked. “A half hour ago, I read an old online interview I’d given to the alumni magazine of my college. You know what I said?”

  “Hazel-Ann,” Skip said, “we really don’t need to do this.”

  Hazel-Ann. It didn’t sound like he called her that. Ever.

  “I told them I studied death and dying because it was the one thing about humans I actually liked. That they died. I said that. Out loud. You Google my name? It’s right there. Who talks like that? What kind of person talks like that? If I had friends, wouldn’t someone have called, at least? Sent flowers? I mean, who would have come to my funeral?”

  He was silent for a moment, then said, “Butchie.”

  “Butchie? I can’t remember someone named Butchie? I’m doing worse than I thought.”

  “You need to get some sleep,” Skip said, climbing out of the car.

  In no time, they were both at the front door, a heavy one made from a thick slab of mahogany with an antique brass doorknocker shaped like a dragon. Skip stood there a moment, his hand on the doorknob. “You sure you’re ready for this?”

  Hazel nodded, but as Skip opened the door, his sister just stood there.

  “How about I go inside and give you a few moments?” Skip added. “Come in when you’re ready.”

 
; Hazel nodded again, not really listening, not hearing anything.

  She was there for five minutes, ten minutes…Then finally, she stepped inside.

  Her father’s house was filled with the dead.

  The walls were covered in framed photos of their mom. Claire at twenty-five. At thirty. At forty. Frozen in time, before she got sick.

  In the living room, like a sentry next to the butter yellow sofa Hazel could remember from her childhood, stood a six-foot-tall marble statue of Anubis.

  Dad’s library was filled with books. Autobiographies. History. Folklore. Shelves devoted entirely to UFOs, Bigfoot, the sinking of the Titanic, 9/11. There was a desk in the center of the room, with a Tiffany lamp shoved to one side and the rest of the space covered in books. Every book was lived in. They had pages bent down, passages highlighted in black, blue, red, and green. Notes were scribbled in the margins, and some paragraphs were marked with sloppy asterisks beside them. God knows what his system was. A volume of Thomas Jefferson’s letters was marked in three places with ticket stubs from a recent movie.

  But it was his shoes that got to Hazel.

  They were scattered throughout the house: loafers in the kitchen, sandals under his desk in the library, tennis shoes in the hallway, shiny black tuxedo shoes by the sliding glass door to the backyard. Hazel hadn’t noticed them when she first arrived. Now, they were all she saw. Even when she stared out at the dark yard, she could make out a pair of battered old hiking boots in the rose bed beside a trowel still poking into the dirt. He was coming back, Hazel thought. He had always come back.

  “Here we go,” Skip said. A flash of light lit the kitchen; he handed her a lit sparkler.

  “I like sparklers?” she asked.

  “It’s July Fourth.”

  Hazel had no idea. In her mind, it was still June. It might always be June.

  “Dad’s favorite holiday,” Skip added. “I thought we’d celebrate in his honor. Honor the people who love you.”