The House of Secrets

by Brad Meltzer

  Butchie hit a button on the cash register. It spit out a paper receipt, which he tore off, wrote four words on it, held it up. DRIVING RANGE. HARDING PARK. “You know that place?”

  Hazel nodded.

  He crumpled up the paper, threw it away. “See you there.”

  28

  The driving range at Harding Park was just on the other side of San Francisco State, which, Hazel knew, is where she taught. Maybe she should’ve gone there first.

  “Sit,” Butchie called out, pointing at a little stool next to him. There were dozens of golfers lined up, every ten yards or so. Butchie was in the last spot, next to the net fence, the only one not dressed in pastel colors.

  “We should be good here,” he said. He had a bucket of balls next to him. “But keep an eye out.”

  “For what?”

  He didn’t answer. Hazel tried to remember.

  She’d jumped out of planes with him. She knew that.

  Which meant there was trust between them. And the way he’d kissed her, the way he’d grabbed her? They were close. She understood this. She wasn’t sure how close.

  He lined up and swung—thwack! The ball slanted to the right after about fifty yards in the air. “The hell happened?” Butchie asked.

  “I was in the hospital.”

  “I know that.” Thwack! “I get the news too, you know.” He pointed his club at her head. “What’s the story in there?”

  “I’ve got this thing in my brain,” Hazel said, and then explained the injury to her amygdala as best as she could. Butchie listened intently, still hitting balls.

  “You get any superpowers with it? You psychic now or able to move shit with your mind? Open a garage door or something?”

  “I know we know each other,” Hazel said. “I know we’re friends. But I’ve got no idea what that means. Were you my boyfriend?”

  “You ever had a sex change?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then I was never your boyfriend.” Thwack!

  Gay. Got it.

  “So, you got amnesia or some shit?” he added.

  “No, I can remember things. Facts especially. But personal experiences…people…those’re harder. I just can’t quite order them up right. I get little snatches. Bits of memories. I need to stitch them back.”

  Thwack! “You know I came to visit you?”

  “Where?”

  “UCLA. They wouldn’t even let me near your hospital room. Some big burly fuck put his hand on my chest and told me I didn’t have clearance to see you and I almost came back with a Molotov cocktail of clearances, you know? Burn the whole place down just so I can make fun of your paper gown.”

  “That wasn’t my doing,” Hazel said, happy to hear there was at least one person who tried to come visit her. Maybe there were others—though she somehow knew there weren’t. “I was in a coma.”

  Butchie pulled out a nine iron, stepped to one side, and took a few practice swings. “I came to get your mail, water your plants. Then your building manager called 5-0. You believe that? Can’t people do nice things for people anymore? Shit. Cops ran my license, put me in the back of their car, made sure I wasn’t robbing you. Lucky for us, they didn’t get to your drawers, or we’d be seeing each other at our arraignments. So I just waited, right? Saw you on TV. Then people started looking for you.”

  “Who?”

  “If they left a name”—thwack!—“I would have handled it already. Wasn’t students with late papers, I’ll tell you that.” Butchie stopped mid-swing, looked over his shoulder at her. “Your hair is too short. You look better with it long.”

  “It was burned. They cut it in the hospital.”

  “That’s a bitch,” he said. Thwack! “Dammit. I’ve been slicing like crazy lately. You remember how to fix that?”

  “Make sure your palms are parallel,” Hazel said. “Maybe invest in a pair of golf shoes.”

  Butchie gripped his club, adjusted his hands, and let it fly. “Better,” he said. “So you still know that.”

  “You and me,” Hazel said. “Are we in some kind of business together?”

  “Not together. It’s my business, with the planes,” Butchie said. “A little import.” Thwack! “Oh, that was clean. A little export.”

  Hazel thought for a moment. “So you do sell drugs?”

  Thwack!

  “Guns?”

  “I don’t sell. I ship”—thwack!—“whatever people don’t want to use FedEx for. Sometimes it’s chemo meds that someone’s niece can’t get in Mexico. Other times, well, I don’t open the packages.”

  “Do I?”

  “You’ve been known to be curious on occasion, yeah.”

  “What kinds of occasions?”

  “There was a chiropractor in Long Beach. You had a bad feeling. Sure enough, he was sending photos—the worst kinds of photos, of little kids with…Anyway, you know what kinda photos. He was sending them to fellow monsters across the country. When you opened the package, you sent half the pics to the chiropractor’s wife, the other half to the police. Then you did the same to the recipients.” Thwack!

  “Sounds like a good way to make enemies.”

  “That’s your specialty,” Butchie said. “Manuel Leyva got thirty years in Montana, no parole, for what you sent about him. He knows it was you.”

  She was tempted to ask, but there were only so many problems to deal with. “So you don’t know who was looking for me at your store?”

  “Whoever it was, they were polished. Maybe Feds, maybe someone private. Definitely a pro,” Butchie said. “I told them I didn’t know where you were. Now I can’t tell them that.”

  “I’m out of here later today.”

  “To where?”

  “Spokane,” she said, knowing she shouldn’t tell anyone that, but also knowing this was the first person she’d met who felt…right.

  Hazel thought about her medical records, about the teeth that were yanked from her head, about her various injuries, about all her trips, about what the hell all this drifting meant. Wondered how she could speed up her learning curve. Dr. Morrison was right—she still needed therapy, but that wasn’t going to solve the problems she had now.

  “This is going to sound crazy,” Hazel said, “but did I ever mention Benedict Arnold to you?”

  “You really asking me this?”

  “Butchie,” she said, “I’ve had a confusing week.”

  “Get up,” he said. She did. “Turn around.” She did. “Pull up your hair.” She did. Butchie put his hand on the back of her neck.

  Her arm twitched, getting ready to go for that knife.

  “Easy,” Butchie said. “If I was going to hurt you, I wouldn’t have given you a weapon first.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, aimed it at her neck, and clicked a photo. “You’ve been walking around with that for as long as I’ve known you.”

  Hazel looked for herself. It was a tattoo, along the nape of her neck, under her hair. Simple script, all lowercase, no punctuation:

  a wretched motley crew

  A quote. From Benedict Arnold.

  29

  Trevor Rabkin got on a plane in the morning, made it to Hazel’s San Francisco apartment in no time. Tried her phone again. No answer. Not that he expected one. According to her credit card, she bought a new prepaid cell phone this morning, got some breakfast, then took a cab ride to a strip mall near her office.

  Human things.

  Nothing to worry about. Except this was Hazel.

  Naturally, Skip was no help. He swore he hadn’t heard from his sister. Said he was just as worried as Rabbit. That this behavior was not the person he knew.

  No one knew her, that was the problem. Apparently, not even Hazel knew Hazel.

  “You must be Mr. Charles,” Rabbit said, flashing his FBI ID.

  “Can I help you?” the manager of Hazel’s building asked, though Rabbit knew what the answer would be. Nineteen years ago, the manager did two years for stealing a car when he was sev
enteen. He’d been clean since, which made him the kind of guy you wanted managing your apartment complex, because he wanted trouble like he wanted smallpox.

  “Are you familiar with Hazel Nash?” Rabbit asked.

  “I know she came back yesterday. She in trouble?”

  “Did she tell you she walked out of the hospital, even though she was receiving mental health treatment?”

  “Mental health?”

  “Mental health,” Rabbit said. “As in, real problems.”

  The manager scratched at something on his right earlobe. “You know, as long as she lived here, I thought something was off. But I keep to my own, let other people keep to theirs.”

  “I’m the same way,” Rabbit said. “Everything she’s been through, last thing you want is a person becoming a danger to themselves and others. But that’s what she is right now.”

  The manager tugged at his earlobe some more. Trevor saw that he had a crease in it, and that he was working over a patch of dry skin. “You ever hear that old wives’ tale about earlobe creases?” Rabbit asked.

  “I don’t know many old wives. Know a lot of single mothers and deadbeat dads, though.”

  “They said it was a sign of having a big heart,” Rabbit said, leaving out the part where your heart gets so big, it explodes in your chest and kills you.

  “Truth,” the manager said. “Poor girl doesn’t know what’s coming next for her. I’ve been there. Let me get you the keys.”

  30

  UCLA Medical Center

  Los Angeles

  Dr. Lyle Morrison had spent most of his life trying to save people. He’d devoted nearly twenty-six years on this planet to the practice of medicine.

  But now, standing on the roof of the UCLA Medical Center, the wind whipping his lab coat behind him like a cape, he couldn’t figure out how he’d never managed to save himself.

  Oh, he’d tried.

  Over a decade ago, he wrote himself a quick prescription. Just one time, he’d promised. A little Adderall to keep things moving. Over the next few years, he’d blown through even more prescription pads, trying to find some happy middle ground. But every day was a tug-of-war, and he was the rope.

  In his coat pocket, his phone buzzed.

  Decline.

  He looked over the edge. An ambulance screamed up the street. Students walked through Westwood, eyes down on their phones. Cars raced through intersections.

  So many accidents about to happen, then narrowly avoided.

  Dr. Morrison wondered whether his life would be different if he’d been a worse doctor. If he hadn’t gone to Yale, hadn’t been spotted early on as an expert on the human brain, would life be better? Is there a richer reward for doing worse? What about if he’d never gone to the NA meetings—Narcotics Anonymous—if he’d never told that group in the church basement about his problems? That’s how the government found him. So if he hadn’t sought help, would he still be this man he’d become?

  Buzz.

  Decline.

  What did he know right now? He knew that Hazel Nash would be the end of him.

  He knew that she wouldn’t stop until she found the truth—about her dad and what Dr. Morrison did for the government. How many times did Jack Nash come back from his bible searches needing medical attention that should’ve been reported to the CDC? How many times had Dr. Morrison taken bullets out of men while they were chained to toilets? They’d used blackmail to get Morrison to do those jobs. Would anyone believe that? Maybe. But then when his drug issues got out? Morrison’s current life would collapse.

  He knew that in a few days, once Hazel started pushing open the doors to the past, the hospital he was standing on top of would disown him, that it wouldn’t matter how much he’d helped the government, or how many favors he’d done.

  Most of all, he knew that he couldn’t undo the truth: He’d done harm. Forget the drug issues. He’d lied to Hazel, worked to keep her in the dark. He’d harmed her. And as long as the government knew about his addiction, he’d continue to do harm. The one thing he swore he’d never do.

  There was no pain worse than realizing you’re a lesser man than you think you are. Except for the pain that you can’t change it.

  Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

  Dr. Morrison dropped his phone off the side of the building. He watched it sail through the air, so light, pinwheeling past all the floors he’d walked on, past all the emergencies he’d tended to, past all the patients he’d treated as their brains turned against them.

  The phone crashed to the pavement, disintegrating on impact. A few people looked up, but then kept moving on, the world still spinning, nothing permanent except energy.

  And what was the brain but energy? Maybe he didn’t need this body anymore. Maybe it was time to test his beliefs, test thermodynamics, see if the cure to this pain was as simple as losing the vessel. Maybe he could escape this prison he’d built around himself.

  The wind gusted again, and Dr. Lyle Morrison let his arms go slack behind him, felt his lab coat pull from his body in the wind, felt it peel off and away. It was that simple: Who he was was torn off his back. How free he felt, finally.

  And then he took a step forward.

  31

  A wretched motley crew.

  “You recognize the quote?” Butchie asked.

  Hazel nodded. “It’s what Benedict Arnold called his men, the ones who helped him fight against the British,” she said.

  “Not just fight. Win.”

  She nodded at that too, an old lesson flashing back. Who taught her this? Her dad, or did she read it? “The British navy had them pinned down in Valcour Bay,” she said, hearing her words like they were coming from someone else. “It was a tremendous assault, but Arnold trained his men so well, they lived through it, sneaking away in the middle of the night, and living to fight another day,” she explained. “The so-called ‘wretched motley crew’ took on the superior force, outwitted them, and eventually won the war, all under the hand of their inscrutable leader, Benedict Arnold.”

  It was the kind of story they make movies about. Except for the problem of that inscrutable leader. The liar and cheat no one trusted.

  “Butchie, have I ever killed someone?”

  Butchie turned and looked at Hazel. He didn’t answer.

  “I need to know,” she said.

  “Girl,” he replied, putting his nine iron back in the bag, then coming out with a new club, “first thing, you need to keep your voice down. Second, I need you to do a pirouette for me, real slow, so I can see if you’re wired up.”

  “People don’t get wired up anymore. They just leave the voice recorders on their phones on.”

  “Still,” Butchie said. He faced her then, golf club in his hand. It was a Big Bertha Driver, which she knew could collapse her head in a few strikes, not that she needed any more blows to the brain. “Take a couple swings,” he said. “Let me hold your phone.”

  Hazel handed Butchie her phone, then stood in front of him, let him pat her down.

  “Satisfied?”

  “I had to ask,” he said. He eyed the other golfers. “Take a swing. Make this look normal.”

  “I messed myself up pretty bad. I don’t know if I can.”

  “It’s all muscle memory,” he said.

  Hazel recognized that Butchie hadn’t answered her question. Maybe he never would. What she also recognized was that she felt comfortable for the first time since she’d woken up, that she felt authentic, that whatever was happening with Butchie, it was something she did. Something she enjoyed.

  Hazel lined herself up over the ball, felt her back angle down to about forty-five degrees, shifted her weight, her pelvis screaming, her ribs and shoulders screaming, her neck screaming, then swung back and powered through the ball, sending it high up in an arc, 150 yards away.

  “See?” Butchie said. “Your body took over.” Hazel took another swing. This time, the ball shot out sideways. “See, you thought on that one. Gotta detach.”

>   “You don’t need to answer my question,” Hazel said as she sat back down.

  “You shouldn’t have asked it,” he replied, lining up.

  A thought occurred to her: “Where’s your dog?” she asked, referring to his pit bull.

  “Butchie? Had to put him down,” Butchie said.

  “What? When?” Hazel said.

  “A couple weeks back,” he said. Thwack! “He had cancer everywhere. I’ve been pissed off about turtles and parrots and shit living eighty years. I’m like Mr. Bojangles over here now.”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry,” Hazel said. Then: “You and your dog had the same name?”

  “It’s a cool name,” Butchie said. “Love yourself first, right?”

  “I’m trying that out.”

  Butchie gave her a frown. “Well, at least I got you back.”

  “Part of me, anyway.”

  Butchie thwacked a few more balls into the distance. Up in the sky was the whoop-whoop-whoop of helicopters. Two Apaches flying low, out over Lake Merced, heading toward the Pacific.

  “Butchie, how’d we meet?”

  “A mutual friend told me you wanted to learn to skydive. Four, five years ago.”

  “I think I already knew how to skydive,” Hazel said.

  “You knew how to jump out of planes strapped to somebody’s chest.”

  “Who was the friend?”

  “Your pal from Africa.”

  Hazel remembered the photo from her apartment. The man breathing in her ear, his hand squeezing her hip. “Karl with a K.”

  “You remember him?” Butchie asked.

  “Not until I saw his picture in my house. Even then, he’s a blur. Where’s he now?”

  “Wherever you left his ass,” Butchie said. “You really don’t remember this shit? I met him while I was doing ecotours in Costa Rica. Couple years later, he brings you into my shop, says you’re good people, but even then I was like, that girl’s got bad taste.”

  “Thanks.”

  “At least he had good taste,” Butchie said. “Smart dude. Just not real great on the human-to-human level.”