by Caleb Carr
As we rolled up the Westons’ long drive, we caught sight of a thick-armed, middle-aged man and a boy who looked a little older than me standing on the edge of a piece of pastureland what was located between the house and a stream that ran at the base of a high wooded hill behind it. They were wrestling and struggling with a section of barbed wire, trying to mend it. On the other side of the house was a big vegetable garden, where a girl in her late teens and an older woman were weeding and tending to produce. Like the man and the boy, they were dressed in worn farm clothes and were going about their business with a kind of determination what was enthusiastic and a little frustrated at the same time. It was the sort of attitude I’ve seen in a lot of similar farmers, over the years: the manner of people who have to fight against everything that Nature and human society can throw at them just to get by, but who still have a strange love for a life lived so close to the land.
There was a fifth member of this little family, too, a girl who, I already knew, was just shy of nine years old, and who didn’t fit into the peaceful scene around her quite so comfortably as the others. Her dress wasn’t made for working: even with two good arms and hands, a kid her age wouldn’t have been able to do a whole lot of the kind of physical labor a place like that required, and it was obvious even from far off that this little girl couldn’t use but one of her upper limbs. She just sat at the edge of the garden with a doll and what looked like a big pad of paper in her lap, her good left hand going over the paper again and again with some kind of writing or drawing utensil.
The smell of manure started to hit us about fifty yards from the house, which was set close to a big brick-red barn. When they saw our rig drawing up, all five of the residents came ambling in from their chores, the little girl moving the slowest and most cautiously and needing to be nudged along by the woman. As they got closer, I could see that the Westons themselves looked to be in their forties or fifties, the deep creases in their leathery skin and the greying of their hair making any more exact guess impossible. They had broad, kindly faces, but that didn’t mean much to me: some of the worst people I’d. ever come across in my life had been kindly looking foster parents—not a few of them farmers—who took in poor kids from the city and treated them like slaves, or even worse. But the two teenage kids looked happy and healthy enough, so I wasn’t too suspicious to start out with.
As Mr. Weston—Josiah, we discovered his name was—approached Mr. Picton, he glanced at me and Cyrus with a kind of concern that caused the pair of us to hang back a bit, away from the others.
“I took it as understood that there weren’t to be but one visitor, Mr. Picton, sir,” he said.
“Yes, Josiah,” Mr. Picton answered. “That being Dr. Kreizler, here.” Mr. Weston wiped his hand to shake the Doctor’s. “But the other gentleman and the boy are associates of his, and he feels that he may need them in order to accurately assess the situation.”
Josiah Weston nodded, not happily, exactly, but not in a hostile way, either. Then his wife spoke up: “I’m Ruth Weston, Doctor, and these are our children, Peter and Kate. And hiding somewhere around here,” she went on, pretending to search the area behind her skirt where Clara was hiding, “is another young lady …”
Clara didn’t make any move to reveal herself yet; and seeing this, Peter smiled and said, “We’ll get what we can finished while there’s light, Papa. Come on, Katie, and give me a hand.”
The pair of them went back off to the chore of mending the wire fence. They looked pretty cheerful as they did, and from this I figured that they had in fact been treated well during their years with Josiah and Ruth Weston. Once they were gone, little Clara started to appear from behind Mrs. Weston slowly, her pad of paper and doll tucked under her left arm and a bunch of pencils held tight in her left hand.
” Well!” Mr. Picton said, merrily but gently. He’d caught sight of Clara, but was glancing around as if he hadn’t. “Where is my little girl? I’d hate to think I came all the way out here only to find that she’s disappeared … no sign of her? All right, then—thank you, anyway, Ruth, but I suppose we’ll just have to head back to town.”
Mr. Picton started to walk back toward the surrey, and then Clara rushed out from her hiding place to tug at the tail of his jacket with those parts of her thumb and forefinger what weren’t engaged in holding the pencils. As she did, I got my first really good look at her (though in fact it was my second overall, since I’d seen her likeness in the group photograph hidden in the secretary at Number 39 Bethune Street); she was a skinny little thing, with light brown hair gathered into one big, wide braid at the back of her head; eyes of a color similar to the hair (though, I noted uneasily, a touch more golden); and pale skin with very rosy cheeks. Like most kids who’ve seen things at an early age that nobody should ever have to, Clara’s skittish movements were echoed by the pitiable nervousness of her silent face.
Turning around in mock surprise, Mr. Picton smiled wide. “Why, there she is! She appears put of nowhere, does this one, Doctor, and never will teach me the trick! Come and meet a friend of mine, Clara.” Still clutching the tail of Mr. Picton’s jacket, the little girl followed him over to the Doctor. “Dr. Kreizler, this is Clara. Clara, Dr. Kreizler works with hundreds and hundreds of children in New York, the city that I’ve told you I once lived in. And he’s come all this way—”
“All this way,” the Doctor interrupted, giving a meaningful smile to Mr. Picton that said he’d take it from here, “to see your drawings.” He knelt down to look her in the face. “You like to draw very much, don’t you, Clara?”
The girl nodded; but it was much more than just a nod, we could all see that. It was a kind of request, too: a wish, you might say, that the Doctor would ask her more. And the funny thing was that, though Cyrus and I were continuing to stand back, we understood the moment better than either the Westons or Mr. Picton did: for we’d seen the Doctor use the trick on many other kids at his Institute. Drawing, painting, molding clay, they were all some of the quickest ways to get a little girl or boy who’d survived something that they plain and simple couldn’t speak about to begin to communicate. That was why the Doctor kept so many kinds of artistic materials in his consulting room at the Institute.
“Yes, I thought you might,” the Doctor went on, slowly lifting a finger to point at Clara’s clenched little fist. “Because you have so many pencils. But no colored pencils.” He put on a troubled look, then brightened. “Did you know that there are such things as colored pencils, Clara?”
The light brown eyes went very big, and Clara shook her head to make it pretty obvious that, though she hadn’t known there were such things, she’d certainly like to have some.
“Oh, yes. All the colors you can imagine,” the Doctor answered. “Tomorrow I’ll bring you some from town—because you really do need colored pencils to draw things as they actually are, don’t you?” Clara nodded. “My friends and I sometimes draw, too,” the Doctor said, indicating Cyrus and me. “Would you like to meet them?” More nods followed, and then the Doctor signaled us over. “This is my friend Stevie,” he said, pointing to me.
“Hey, Clara,” I said, smiling down at her. “Does your friend draw, too?” I pointed at her doll, to which Clara shook her head hard and thumped her pencils against her chest. “Oh, I get it—drawing’s your game. Let her find her own way to have fun.” Clara’s shoulders began to move up and down; and then a scratchy sound what could’ve passed for a small laugh got out of her throat.
Finally, it was time for the big test: the Doctor pointed at Cyrus. “And this is my friend Mr. Montrose,” he said.
For about fifteen seconds, Clara stared up at Cyrus with a face what was plain impossible to read. Something was going on in that head of hers, that much was clear—and while none of us could yet say just what said thing was, it was obvious from the way that Clara stood her ground calmly that it was not terror. But It should have been: if any piece of Libby Hatch’s complicated story was true, if anything like t
he infamous attack by the mysterious black man out on the Charlton road really had happened, then when that little girl looked up at Cyrus, she should’ve taken off for the Hills, or at the least for the safety of her foster mother’s skirts.
But she didn’t.
Finally Cyrus smiled kindly and bowed. “Hello, Clara,” he said, his voice sounding especially deep and soothing. “You know, when I was a little boy, I drew a picture of a wonderful house.” He knelt down to look into her eyes. “And do you know what the strange part of it is?” Clara studied Cyrus’s face hard and then shook her head slowly. “The strange part is that I live in that house now—it’s the Doctor’s house.” Clara pondered that for a few more seconds; then she held her drawing pad up to Cyrus.
On it was scratched a rough picture of the Westons’ farmhouse. Cyrus grinned, and Clara once again let that strange little noise out of her throat. “Well, well,” Cyrus said quietly. “So it’s happened to you, too.”
None of us ever found out whether Cyrus had caught a glimpse of what was on Clara Hatch’s pad of paper before he said what he did to her, being as, in that slightly amused, slightly mischievous manner that he sometimes exhibited, he always refused to tell us. But it really didn’t matter. The important thing was that, at the moment he told Clara his little story, you could just feel trust start to flow out of the girl: sucking her pencils under her arm with her other belongings, Clara turned away from Cyrus and took the Doctor by the hand, a move what caused Ruth Weston to gasp and Josiah Weston to put a hand to his mouth in amazement. The girl then led him over to Mr. Picton, put the Doctor’s fingers to her doll’s chest very carefully, and glanced up to give Mr. Picton a questioning look.
Mr. Picton slowly started to smile. “Why, yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, Clara. I’m sure that the Doctor will know how to make your little girl feel much better. That’s his job, you see, to make children feel better. Perhaps you should take him inside, and show him what’s wrong.”
The girl took the Doctor’s hand again, but before going anywhere she looked up to Mrs. Weston.
“Of course,” the woman said, reading another question in the little face. “I’ll go with you. Maybe some of your other friends could use the Doctor’s help, too.”
The three of them walked toward and then into the house.
“That’s the damndest thing,” Mr. Weston said quietly, scratching his head. “Three years she’s been here, and I’ve never seen her take to a stranger that way.”
“As I told you, Josiah,” Mr. Picton answered. “Dr. Kreizler is no ordinary visitor! Alone in his field, you might say—and his field is made up of cases like Clara’s. Well, then—Stevie? Cyrus? Shall we go inside, too?”
Cyrus nodded and began to move toward the door with Mr. Picton and Mr. Weston. But I stayed where I was. “If you don’t mind, sir,” I said, “I think I’ve pretty well served my purpose here. Unless there’s anything else, I’d like to get out to the old Hatch place and see what the detective sergeants are up to.”
Mr. Picton gave me a slightly puzzled look. “It’s over three miles from here, Stevie.”
“Yes, sir. But I’m used to walking. I can find my way.”
Mr. Picton nodded. “All right. We’ll see you back at my house, then.”
I looked to Cyrus, who signaled the okay to me with a little nod. Starting to run down the drive, I suddenly remembered what manners I had, and turned to call, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Weston!”
“What?” the man answered, still sort of stunned by what he’d witnessed. “Oh—yes, and you, too, son!” he called with a small wave, as he continued to guide Mr. Picton and Cyrus toward the house. Once they were inside I took off at top speed, waiting ’til I was well out of sight of the farm to light up a cigarette.
CHAPTER 31
I hadn’t got halfway back to town before I began to wonder just how bright an idea my walking three or four miles alone on those shady country roads had been. The sun was starting to edge ever closer to the treetops, but even at high noon the strange, scurrying sounds that came out of those forests would’ve been worrisome. So when I found myself on the edge of Ballston Spa again, a peculiar mixture of relief and disappointment at being back in “civilization” came into me. I kept moving quickly, onto Charlton Street, which road, like Malta Avenue, took its name from the town that it eventually led to. Before long I was back out among the farms and the woods again, moving south and west through country that was even less inhabited than those stretches what lay to the east of Ballston Spa. I had close to two miles to cover, and I was determined to enjoy the adventure and not let myself get wrapped up in fear again; but I have to admit that it took the sound of exactly one hooting owl to kick me from a fast walk into a solid run, and by the time I finally began to hear familiar human voices in the distance, I’d grown nervous enough that I actually broke out into a grin, and felt a few tears of relief come into my eyes.
The sight of the old Hatch house, though, when I finally reached it, was enough to send a shiver of lonely fear back through me, and I found myself again wondering if maybe I shouldn’t’ve stayed at the Westons’ farmhouse. For if that latter happy spot had a reverse image, it was the joint I was now approaching, no question about it. There was no paint at all on the outside walls of the old two-story building, just some dark shingling that over time had turned a blackish shade of brown, what made it look almost as if the whole house had been consumed by fire without actually being destroyed. There were big, wild hedges growing both outside and inside the busted windows on the bottom floor of the place. In the backyard loomed a huge dead oak tree, under which were a few old, worn headstones inside a rusty iron fence. The front yard, meanwhile, had pretty well turned into a hay-field, and you could hardly see the collapsing barn for a stand of maple saplings and creeping vines that had sprung up in front of it. There was evidence of some kind of life spilling out the front door and onto the grounds—broken bottles, rusted cans, yellowing chamber pots, and washbowls—but they were all scattered in a way that indicated the place had turned into nothing more than a popular spot for local kids in a troublemaking mood. A big rectangular space what figured to’ve once been the garden made up the far side of the yard: bushes, weeds, and time itself were making short work of the fence what had once run around it. Finally, beyond this last sign of human industry was the line of the woods, a line that was doing its best to creep back up and take over the whole area again.
The well, I remembered hearing Mr. Picton say, was down behind the garden, so I began to wade through the overgrown grass and bushes in the front yard until I came to the top of a high hill at the edge of the woods. I still couldn’t see the others, though I could hear them, so I cupped my hands in front of my mouth. “Detective Sergeants? Mr. Moore?”
“Stevie?” I heard Mr. Moore answer. “We’re down here!”
“Where’s ‘here’?”
“Bear left as you come down the hill!” he answered. “We’re just behind a stand of pine trees!” I started to follow the instructions, then heard Mr. Moore’s voice again: “Oh, dammit, Lucius, I don’t care what kind of pine trees they are!”
About halfway down the hill I did in fact catch sight of Mr. Moore and Marcus, who were standing in their shirtsleeves over a collapsed collection of heavy rocks, in the center of which was a hole what was just big enough for a man to negotiate. A wooden cover for the hole lay to one side of the rocks. Mr. Moore and Marcus’d placed a strong tree limb across the hole, and were slowly pulling a thick rope up through the opening. From the sounds that echoed out of the blackness below, I figured that Lucius was actually down in the well.
“Ow!” he shouted. “Will you please be careful, dammit?”
“Oh, for once in your life stop whining!” Marcus answered.
“Whining?” Lucius shot back. “I like that! I’m down here in this filth, exposing myself to God-knows-how-many diseases …!”
As I arrived at the well, the top of Lucius’s balding head began to a
ppear through it. I gave Mr. Moore and Marcus a hand pulling the rope, and once Lucius was out he rolled over on the ground to catch his breath.
In his arms, he was cradling an old brown paper parcel.
“Is that it?” I said. “Is that the gun?”
“It’s a gun,” Marcus answered, starting to coil his rope. “And we’ve removed the pieces of the wagon that might have bullets lodged in them—the front wall of the bed and the driver’s bench.”
I nodded, then glanced around, noticing that someone was missing. “Where’s Miss Howard?”
“Took the rig back to town,” Mr. Moore answered. “She wanted to find that Wright woman—the Hatches’ housekeeper—and ask her a few questions. What about the Westons’ farm? How did it go? Oh, and you haven’t got a cigarette, have you, Stevie?”
Sighing at the question (he always asked it, even though he always knew the answer), I took out my packet and handed him a stick, then offered one to Marcus, too. “Maybe the smoke’ll keep some of these blackflies away,” Marcussaid, swiping at the tiny insects what were starting to swarm around our sweaty heads. Then he lit up off a match I’d struck, blowing out a big cloud of smoke that did seem to send some of the bugs scurrying. “Did the Doctor meet the little girl?”
I nodded quickly. “It went good—I think Mr. Picton was surprised by how good. The Doctor had the kid holding his hand inside of five minutes.”
“Hmm,” Mr. Moore noised uncertainly as he smoked. “Holding hands isn’t talking, though—any sign her condition is psychological, rather than physical?”
“Well, she does make some little grunting noises,” I answered. “And she can laugh, or something close to it.”
Marcus looked encouraged by that fact. “But that’s conclusive—at least, I think it is.” He turned to his brother, who was still resting on the ground. “What about it, Lucius?”
