The House of Secrets

by Brad Meltzer

  The first thing Hazel noticed were three tall bottles of olive oil on the kitchen counter, a taste she wondered if she’d ever have again. In the living room, there was a bulky old color TV with a screen so covered in dust, Hazel could have etched her initials in it, a sofa that sagged in the middle, and a coffee table covered with books, reams of paper, and three cups with withered tea bags stuck inside them, all surrounding an IBM Selectric typewriter.

  Hazel went straight for the books: a Stephen King about JFK’s death, a biography of John Adams, a volume about the exodus in Syria, and there, at the bottom of the stack, Secrets of the House by Jack Nash. Her father’s autobiography, which had come out a few years ago. She couldn’t recall him writing it. He probably hadn’t.

  Hazel flipped to the title page with a feeling of dread. She didn’t actually remember her father’s handwriting, but she knew it the moment she saw it, clean block letters that read: FOR DARREN, SO NICE MEETING YOU! —JACK NASH.

  Had her dad signed it when he was here? For some reason, she didn’t think so, despite the fact that the ink looked fresh, like it was done recently. Hazel flipped through the book, but didn’t see any bookmarks or folded-down pages. Yet somehow, from the way the spine was cracked, the book looked like it’d been read. Completed.

  Hazel carried the book with her, heading for the bedroom. Nixon’s queen bed was pressed against the wall in a corner, so that only the left side was accessible, the way little children slept, or people who’d spent time in captivity, like prison, not wanting their back exposed, not even when they were asleep in their own home. There were stacks of books in here too—biographies on Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Cornelius Vanderbilt; Nixon clearly liked his businessmen—and another IBM Selectric, identical to the one in the living room.

  There was only one apparently personal item in the room, on a shelf. It was a faded color photo that looked like it had been cut from a magazine. There was a beautiful woman, sitting, holding a baby in her arms, looking down upon it with nothing short of reverence. Behind them was a splash of red, from what looked like a flag, though most of it was blocked by the edges of the frame.

  Hazel unscrewed the back of the frame and slid the photo out. It was definitely sliced from a magazine. The paper was thick and glossy, but nothing like a real photograph. There was no writing on the page, but now she could see the full flag revealed, draped lifelessly on a stand in someone’s library or office. Red, black, and green. The national flag of Libya.

  Libya.

  Hazel had seen that episode just the other day. Her father was tracing the history of a dragon slain by St. George.

  It was, as all of these things were to Hazel, absurd. After looking at paintings in Libya and replica bronzes in Croatia, Dad finally determined that the dragon was likely a metaphor…or was it?

  Hazel rubbed the back of her neck and looked back down at the photo. A small child. There was always a child. Was that young Nixon in the photo? Maybe? Probably? All she knew for sure was that her father had been in this house. Soon after, Nixon was found dead in Dad’s Revolutionary coat. And in between? There was still so much missing.

  In the dragon episode, there wasn’t any mention of Benedict Arnold. And wasn’t that what this was all about? That’s what Agent Rabkin had said. Naturally, Hazel refused to take his word for it. She’d looked it up herself. George Washington did send Benedict Arnold his belongings, including what many agree were books and most likely a bible. But even then, what made Arnold’s bible so important?

  According to Rabkin, there was something inside, something in its pages, some kind of message. Or. Maybe the bible itself was the message. Maybe it contained a code, or itself was a code. Or a message. Was that why her dad was in all those countries? Was he sending a message? Or maybe receiving one? Whatever the bible really contained, it was important enough to take someone’s life. Someone who had committed his own crimes—and had just been visited by her father. Is that what Darren Nixon figured out? What Jack Nash was really up to?

  For the next two hours, Hazel pulled open drawers, looked through closets, and peered under beds and couches, sifting through Darren Nixon’s life, unearthing him like she was digging out a body, sweeping away the dirt and sand one grain at a time.

  She expected to find guns. She expected to find poisons. She expected to find detailed blueprints for her father’s house. However, the most dangerous thing she found was a new set of knives in the kitchen. They were all there, none of them missing.

  In a second bedroom, which had been turned into an office, there were reams of white paper, boxes of ribbons for Nixon’s typewriters, manila envelopes by the dozen, sheets of stamps, and, in the only evidence of twenty-first-century technology, a desktop photocopier and scanner.

  And yet Darren Nixon didn’t have a landline, didn’t have a computer.

  Throughout the plane ride here, Hazel had imagined herself walking into Nixon’s house and the walls would be covered, serial-killer style, in crazed drawings of Benedict Arnold, Jesus, and maybe maniacal clowns, just for the fear factor. There would be an arsenal of weapons. There might even be a secret message from her father scratched into a mirror, or a pool of dried blood seeping out from under a false wall that led to a stone chamber filled with hundreds of copies of Benedict Arnold’s bible.

  That would have made things easier.

  Now, standing in Nixon’s makeshift office, all she knew about the man was that he had a healthy aversion to modern technology. The fact that his TV wasn’t even plugged in confounded her more. If he’d been a fan of her dad’s TV show, if he’d stolen or even purchased Benedict Arnold’s jacket from her father, or had contact with him, wouldn’t Nixon have some better connection to the world? Rabkin had mentioned a Netflix account, but there was no place to watch it. She supposed he had a computer at work, and a phone—maybe he even had a friend or two who might eventually come looking for him, but here he was, living in a tiny town, with just books and two typewriters?

  No. Pieces were still missing. But. Everything is somewhere.

  Hazel sat down in Nixon’s desk chair. It was high-backed, with faux leather upholstery, the armrests pulling apart at the seams. Nixon had covered a few spots with black electrical tape, but on the end of the left arm, it felt like he’d picked at the tape until it pulled away, and now there was a bald spot surrounded by a fluff of white fuzz and sticky fabric. Hazel could feel indentations where he’d dug in his fingernails.

  Hazel spun slowly around in the chair, trying to take in the room as Nixon saw it every day, see what his eyes fell on, what talismans Darren Nixon kept.

  A silver metal garbage can in the corner. An empty carton of Marlboro Reds lay in the bottom of it, though the house didn’t smell like smoke. There were a few balled-up Kleenex and last month’s bills in there too.

  There was also a corkboard on the wall.

  In the middle of it, held in place with two thumbtacks, was his inmate release form from the Washington State Department of Corrections. A simple one-page document stating that he’d been released from prison two years ago on July 18, satisfying the terms of his conviction. The signature of the Governor. The seal of the State of Washington, with George Washington’s thin, unsmiling lips, his hooded eyes, his white hair. The only other item on the board was a yellow Post-it that said, Buy chains, a reminder for the winter that he’d never see.

  Next to the corkboard was a window, sunlight glowing through the cheap white shades. But what caught Hazel’s eye was a hole that was drilled below the bottom right corner of the window. Through the hole, a bright yellow extension cord was stapled to the window frame and ran down to the ground, eventually plugging into a surge protector.

  Surge protector. In a house that barely used electricity.

  Hazel followed the cord, pulled the shade up, opened the window, and looked out into the backyard. Running down the outside of the house, the yellow extension cord was stapled to the wall, then disappeared, buried in the dirt. The yard
had a fire pit, a single folding chair, and an old wooden side table. Beyond that was a quarter acre of dirt and wild grass. Nothing that required electricity.

  So where’d that cord run?

  Hazel went outside. Everything is somewhere.

  50

  It was warm outside, maybe eighty-five degrees, and the metal folding chair felt hot to the touch when Hazel reached it. That chair had been green once, but most of the paint was chipped away, revealing the rusted metal beneath. This was where Darren Nixon spent his free time, judging from the corona of cigarette butts on the ground, the mountain of ashes in the fire pit, and the dented Pepsi cans along the ground. Hazel could see why: It was peaceful—silent, save for a wind chime somewhere in the distance and the chirping of birds.

  The fire pit was about four feet wide and ringed with river stones, not a professional job, but it looked like it’d been built with some care. Nixon liked fire. He used it as a weapon. And when it came to the fire pit, he clearly put time into it, building it nice, so that he could sit outside under the stars, smoke a cigarette, drink a Pepsi, and, judging from the circle of footprints in the dirt, pace around the flames.

  It was natural, Hazel knew. Humans were wired to walk in circles, unless they had a firm and distinct point of reference in front of them. It was how people got lost and died in the desert and the forest alike, even when civilization was only a few miles away. True north to the human body was an ever-tightening circle.

  For Nixon, this was a good place to sit, walk, and make plans.

  Or type. The wooden table had a few dozen sheets of paper on it, now damp and ruined, held down by two rocks, and beneath it, no electrical port anywhere.

  So where did the yellow cord go?

  Hazel walked back toward the outside of the house, gripped a section of the yellow cord in her hand, and tugged. The staples popped from the wall. When she got some length of the cord in hand, she pulled harder, yanking it from the ground. Bits of dirt and stones burst upward, like a burrow when Bugs Bunny would travel underground.

  She walked slowly across the yard, pulling the yellow cord from the ground, unspooling it like a thread in an old sweater, letting it lead her. Eventually, it stopped, dead-ending at a wooden fence on the far right side of the property. No. Not dead-ending. She tugged the yellow cord. It kept on going underneath the fence.

  To the house next door.

  Hazel looked through the fence. Even from here, she could see it. Across the yard, behind an old house with peeling gray paint, the yellow cord poked out from the dirt and snaked into a small hole that was cut into the side of a prefabricated shed.

  A most perfect hiding place.

  51

  Hazel darted to the house next door, leaping up onto the front porch. There was a business card and a magnetic refrigerator calendar from a real estate agent shoved into the crack of the door.

  Hazel knocked, waited. Tried the doorbell. Nothing. She peered into the front window, but couldn’t see anything through the thick brown curtains. She pulled the card and calendar from the door. The paper was stiff and the agent’s face—a woman named Lori Lord who promised to provide “110% Customer Satisfaction!”—was washed out from the sun. No one had been through this door in weeks, at least. Maybe months.

  Hazel heard a door slam across the street, turned around, and saw a teenage girl walking outside. She picked up a ten-speed bike from the pockmarked front lawn, hopped on, then seemed to notice Hazel for the first time.

  “You the calendar lady?” the girl called out.

  “No,” Hazel said.

  “Too bad. Ours slid under the refrigerator and now I never know what day it is.”

  Hazel walked down the front steps and into the street, holding up the magnet. “You can have this one.” The girl pedaled over and took the calendar from Hazel’s hand. She was maybe fifteen, with hair down the length of her back, fake diamond studs in her ears, and a black Ramones T-shirt. “Nice shirt,” Hazel said.

  The girl gathered up the hem of her shirt, pulled it away from her body. “Someone left it in the house on July Fourth.” She shrugged. “I thought it was cool.” She let go of the shirt, let it fall back onto her body. “Probably some friend of my pop’s. How does that happen? You go somewhere and forget your shirt when you go home?”

  “Beer,” Hazel said.

  The girl laughed. “There was plenty of that.”

  Hazel thought she was wrong. The girl was maybe eighteen or nineteen. Hazel imagined her sitting in the back row of one of Hazel’s classes, raising her hand, asking if whatever Hazel was talking about would be on the test, Hazel thinking, Sweetheart, it’s all on the test.

  “Do you know who lives here?” Hazel asked.

  “Nobody,” the girl said.

  “For how long?”

  “A year? Maybe two, now that I think about it. Since before Ms. Nixon died, anyway. She moved out when she started to go cuckoo.”

  “Right,” Hazel said.

  Ms. Nixon. Darren lived next door to his mother. Now Mom’s house was vacant, save for that shed out back. A good hiding spot for sure, Hazel thought. Especially for someone who’d already been busted by the cops, who probably hated them. If someone kicked down Darren’s door, they wouldn’t find the shed, at least not right away.

  “Do you know Darren?” Hazel asked.

  “You from the IRS or something?” Definitely not fifteen. Maybe she was twenty.

  “No, no,” Hazel started. “Darren’s my cousin.”

  “Oh. Cool. I’ve been knowing him since I was ten. He used to let me and my brother play hide-n-go-seek in his backyard. He was a paranoid guy. I’d see him watching us.”

  “I haven’t been out here in forever,” Hazel said, careful to slip into a bit of dialect to let the girl know Hazel was just like her, whatever that meant. “I knew his mom lived in one of these houses, I just couldn’t remember which one.” She pointed at her rental car down the street. “I came by to get some stuff for Darren. He’s sort of in a bad spot. Got in a car accident in Canada. Messed up his head.”

  The girl brushed her hair from her eyes. “Shit,” she said. “Wow. Crazy.”

  “Yeah,” Hazel said. “Does he use this house too? I want to make sure I get anything he might want.”

  “Not since his mom died, I don’t think. My dad helped him move all the furniture out and he gave us some silverware and a bunch of dishes. Bone china. Said that wasn’t him. My dad said he’s lazy. We sold it on eBay.” She picked up her bike, got on it. “He might have some stuff in the shed out back, I think. I hear him out there a lot. I’m warning you, though. He’s a bit of a weirdo.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Hazel said, heading for the backyard. “I’ll check it out. Glad to see you. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m robbing the place.”

  52

  The prefabricated shed was 10 × 12, the top of its door spotted with a freshly spun spiderweb. No one had been here in a bit. The shed looked like wood but was made from vinyl. Harder to burn, Hazel thought, now wondering if this was where Nixon plotted his crimes, or if this was what he built after.

  As Hazel pulled on the door, she expected more typewriters, more paper, more books. Instead, it reminded her of one of the medical labs from the hospital: The three walls were covered in white dry-erase boards; there was a desk with a laptop computer, a printer, and two lamps. A portable fan stood in one corner, and all the electric devices were plugged into a surge protector that was connected to the yellow cord. There wasn’t a single piece of paper in the room.

  On the dry-erase boards, Nixon had listed every episode of Jack’s show, nearly three hundred in total, including the various specials and miniseries that they did when the ratings sagged. There were columns for the original airdate, the approximate date the episode was filmed, the location, the mystery, all of it in tiny handwriting, a scrimshaw-like precision that Hazel immediately and somehow found familiar: It was how captives wrote, how the imprisoned passed notes, scribblin
g onto tiny pieces of paper, compounding as much information as possible into the smallest space, in case they needed to transport the information in unconventional ways.

  You’d already been to prison, Darren Nixon. So what was left to be afraid of? What scared you when you slept?

  He’d crossed out certain episodes: the one with the alien autopsy, the five separate episodes that concerned Billy the Kid, any about the possibility of ESP or computers becoming sentient. He’d circled more than a dozen episodes that took place in different countries. Iran in 1980. Libya in 1983. Northern Ireland in 1984. Russia in 1985.

  According to Hazel’s passport, all the places she’d recently visited.

  Beside those episodes, in his tiny writing, were two letters with a question mark: B.A.?

  Benedict Arnold.

  He’d also put stars next to a few episodes: an episode in Florida about the Bermuda Triangle, one in Boston about Bobby Kennedy and the Mafia, the one in Philadelphia in the underground tunnels. But there were no B.A. marks next to any episodes in America, and there were a good three dozen over the years that had some concern with George Washington and the Revolutionary War.

  Finally, on the far left of the boards were a few drawn lines connecting various episodes, with questions running along the top:

  International burials?

  Cross check with census/naturalization

  Military action?

  Hazel didn’t know what any of it meant. She took out her phone and snapped two dozen photos, getting the boards from every angle.

  She turned on Nixon’s laptop, was surprised to see it had Internet, then saw that it was connected to a secure network called PrettyFlyForAWifi. The signal wasn’t strong, just three bars. Hazel looked around the shed but didn’t see a router or modem. Nixon was stealing his Internet from his neighbors. It made sense. If someone tracked him online and cops pulled up to his neighbors’ house, Nixon would still have time to run out the back door, pulling the electricity with him.