The Murder House

  “No, no.” He cradles my head with his hand. “I want you here.”

  “I think…you just saved my life,” I say.

  “I’m just glad you’re okay. And here I told you…you were safe.”

  I close my eyes and nestle in the comfort of his arms.

  I was safe. Or at least, I should have been safe. How did Aiden even know I was here? I wasn’t followed in my car. I checked the rearview mirror the whole time for patrol cars. The streets were deserted. Nobody followed me by car.

  So how did Aiden know?

  Nobody knew I was coming here.

  Then my eyes pop open.

  A chill courses through me.

  One person knew.

  84

  THE EAST Hampton Town Police respond to Justin’s call. I know some members of that force from working on the multijurisdictional drug task force, but I don’t know any of the ones who arrive at the scene. It’s clear the officers know who I am when I give them my name, thanks to the Noah Walker trial. They are respectful and courteous as they scribble their notes and take photographs and scan the living room and backyard for evidence.

  I sit quietly for hours, letting them do their work, waiting for one of them to inform me that there’s a warrant outstanding for my arrest, or an APB, from the STPD. But it doesn’t happen. No handcuffs come out. No perp walk. They just promise to keep us updated on their investigation and leave.

  An armed invasion in East Hampton is something the cops take seriously, so I know they’re going to be looking hard for Aiden now.

  Which also means that, if Aiden has a single functioning brain cell in his head, he’s in the wind now. Gone. Skedaddled.

  “I’m sorry about this,” I say to Justin. “He was after me, not you. I brought him to your house.”

  “He brought himself.” Justin touches my arm. “You’re the good guy, remember?”

  Not sure about that. I’d say Justin’s the good guy. And dammit, I really wish my feelings for him went deeper than that. I wish I could manufacture some chemistry, a spark between us.

  The wind whips up, straining the large pieces of cardboard that we used to cover the shattered window.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  “Stay. It’s after four in the morning. And you can’t go home.”

  I probably can go home, actually. Apparently, Isaac’s plan to “take care of” me doesn’t include issuing a warrant for my arrest for breaking into Aiden’s house.

  So yeah, I can probably go home. But I won’t. Not yet.

  Aiden’s surely not home, after all. What better time to visit his house again?

  85

  I PARK my car on the shoulder of the road, just as I did last night, and I approach his house with caution, just as before.

  First blush, I see nothing different about Aiden’s house. The front window through which I climbed, almost grabbing Aiden as he raced past me to his bedroom, is still open. If Aiden had come back, surely he would have closed it.

  Same deal in the backyard. His bedroom window still open.

  Isaac didn’t close up the house? Not his job, I suppose. And he was probably distracted.

  Or maybe not. Maybe he knew I’d come back. Maybe I’m walking into a trap.

  The front window would be an easier entry point, but the backyard is more private, nothing but a sloping yard and swaying trees, and total darkness.

  I climb into the bedroom and stand for a moment, silent. Hard to hear much of anything inside the house. Wind coming in from windows in the front and back, simultaneously, like the entire house is whistling to me.

  Daylight will come in an hour. I want to be home by then.

  Start with the bedroom. A battered dresser with a framed photograph on top, one of those side-by-side frames. On the left, a beautiful young woman, probably in her late teens, with strawberry-blond hair and elegant features. On the right, the same woman, propped up against pillows in a hospital bed, her face pale, her hair unkempt, no makeup, but a radiant, beaming smile as she holds a newborn. Pretty much a standard postbirth hospital photo.

  I remove the hospital photo and flip it over. On the back, handwritten in cheap blue ink:

  Aiden and Mommy, 6-8-81

  Aiden as a baby. And this very attractive woman, his mother. He doesn’t look a thing like her.

  Then again, I haven’t seen the father yet.

  I replace the photos and open some drawers, having no interest in his clothes or underwear but hoping for anything else that might be tucked away in here.

  When I get to the final drawer, I don’t find clothes at all. I find a small photo album, a cheap one you’d get at a convenience store with plastic sleeves to hold the photos.

  Most of them are of his mother, going back as far as the hospital photo. Little Aiden, with those raccoon eyes even as an infant, appears once or twice. And I get the first shot of the father, his cheek pressed against Aiden’s, smiling for the camera. A strong resemblance to Aiden, deep-set eyes and straw-colored hair, not by any means a handsome man.

  But the mother dominates these photos. About twenty photos in all. Starting with the hospital and moving forward, chronologically I assume, but—

  But she looks different as time moves on in these photos. Not older, but different. Hard to tell how much she has aged—not too much, a year or two, at most—but a definite change. Her eyes darker, deeper. Looking more gaunt, more tired.

  Sick? Can’t tell, but—darker, for sure. More troubled, more weary, as the photos progress, like I’m watching the story of her decline in time-lapse photography.

  And then the last photo, her head turned from the camera, her hand raised in a stop gesture, as if she didn’t want to be photographed.

  And a baby bump, unmistakable, protruding from her belly, beneath her black T-shirt.

  My heartbeat kicks up. A second child?

  The last page doesn’t contain photos. It contains two news clippings, one of them a vertical column, the other merely a headline and photo. Old articles, each of them, faded, with the crispy texture of aged newspaper.

  The vertical column, stapled to the album page, has this headline:

  Hit-and-Run Kills BH Woman

  They’re talking about Aiden’s mother. Gloria Willis, age thirty, of Bridgehampton, pronounced dead at Southampton Hospital after being hit by a car on Sugar Hill Road the previous night. The article claims she had several priors for prostitution and drug possession. Her blood analysis revealed the presence of narcotics and alcohol in her system at the time of her death.

  The article is cut out of the bottom quarter of a newspaper page, so there’s no date. But it can’t be that hard to find out when Aiden’s mother died.

  Gloria Willis was a drug addict and a prostitute?

  Holden VI liked prostitutes. It seemed to be a family trait, in fact.

  The other news clipping isn’t even an article. It’s a photo, likewise ripped from the center of the newspaper and thus undated. The photo shows Uncle Lang, in his chief’s uniform, holding a child swaddled in blankets.

  Beneath it, this caption:

  Newborn Abandoned at Police Station

  Southampton Town Police Chief Langdon James holds a newborn child, left abandoned at the entrance to the Bridgehampton substation last night. The infant will be turned over to the Suffolk County Division of Child Protective Services.

  What does this all mean? Is this abandoned child Aiden? No. No, of course not. There are photographs of Gloria and Aiden in the hospital at birth.

  The baby bump. The second child.

  I close the photo album and leave the bedroom. In the kitchen, there is a door that could possibly be a door to a pantry, but my money says it’s a door to the basement.

  The basement with those wax figures, arranged perfectly, like a family portrait.

  It’s time I got a better look at them.

  86

  I OPEN the basement door, flip on the switch, and head downstairs.

  The
basement is unfinished, with an aging washer and dryer, an unused sink.

  I walk toward the back of the basement, the part I saw through the open window last time. But this time, the lights are on.

  The creepy wax figures, the Norman Rockwell setting around a coffee table, the faux fireplace.

  On the love seat, the wax figure of the man, in a tweed coat, hair greased back, beady eyes, looking a lot like the man in the photo album.

  In the rocking chair, the woman, seated and wearing a shawl over her shoulders—a dead ringer for Aiden’s mother.

  A third chair, empty. For Aiden?

  For Aiden to sit down here and play “let’s pretend” with his family?

  Weird. Creepy.

  Sad, actually.

  I get a closer look at the woman and see, for the first time, something I didn’t notice when I was shining a flashlight in here from the backyard.

  On the floor, next to the woman’s chair.

  A tiny toy crib, for an infant.

  Not a wax figure this time, just a doll—a naked doll, a tiny, bald newborn, swaddled in blankets.

  A newborn.

  Trying to connect it now.

  Aiden at the cemetery, urinating on the tombstone of Holden VI.

  Holden VI, the man notorious for frequenting prostitutes.

  Gloria Willis, a prostitute—in that photo, pregnant with a second child.

  The caption from that photograph in the paper: NEWBORN ABANDONED AT POLICE STATION.

  “Shit,” I mumble. “That’s it.”

  Gloria Willis had two children. Aiden first, then a child she gave up at birth, abandoned anonymously at the police station.

  And why would she abandon her son at the police station anonymously?

  Because she didn’t want him? Because she didn’t want a child whose father was a monster? Because she didn’t want the father to ruin the son?

  I don’t know. There are still some questions.

  But at last, finally, I might have a few answers.

  Aiden Willis had a brother. Or more accurately, a half brother.

  Whose biological father was Holden Dahlquist VI.

  And somehow, in some way, that abandoned boy found his way back into dear old Dad’s life.

  Book VI

  Bridgehampton, 1993–94

  87

  TONIGHT IT will be the beach. Sometimes it’s a park, sometimes one of the taverns as it’s closing and drunk patrons are stumbling out. The beach is always the best. Because there’s always someone there, and they’re asleep, unaware—easy prey.

  His trombone case feels heavy. The boy alternates hands as he carries it along Ocean Drive toward the Atlantic, the beach, just past two in the morning.

  The wind coming sharply off the ocean. Darkness, and roiling, chaotic waves.

  And light.

  Three small beacons of light. Lanterns, or some form of them, for the beach bums, the ones not comfortable sleeping in pitch darkness. He knows how they feel—he slept with the closet light on for years, his mother yanking on the shoestring to turn it on, then sliding closed the closet door, leaving it open just a crack. He’d beg for another inch, for additional light, and they’d negotiate it every night. She usually let him win.

  Kind of funny, though, that they’d sleep out here on the beach, in a natural setting, and still require the comfort of artificial light.

  What are they afraid of, scary monsters?

  What scares you? Dr. Conway always asks him. Scary monsters, things like that? Or does something else scare you?

  The boy climbs to the small perch where the parking lot meets the sand. He opens the trombone case and removes the BB rifle, fully loaded.

  Safely enveloped in darkness, further shielded by the wild grass on his perch, he closes his left eye and nestles his right eye against the rifle’s scope, slowly moving the barrel of the air gun through the deep blackness, through the dark, until he finds the small glow of light.

  You wanna know how I feel, Doctor?

  When the rifle’s sight is perfectly aligned with the lantern, when the circular scope is filled with nothing but the yellow-orange glow, he pulls the trigger.

  A quick, hollow clink as the glass breaks, and the light disappears.

  Over the wind, over the rush of the crashing waves, he hears it, ever so faintly. Movement. Rustling. Someone jarred awake.

  He imagines that person’s reaction: disoriented. Confused. Alarmed. And worse—not knowing. Not knowing whether he should be scared. Not knowing whether he’s safe. Not knowing whether something really bad is about to happen.

  That’s how I feel, Doc. That’s how I feel, all the time.

  The boy places the rifle back in the trombone case and slides down from the sandy perch. He steps back onto the pavement of the parking lot and heads north.

  The house, the Murder House, on his right, just two houses from the beach.

  He knows the house. His mother comes here once a week for her job.

  He stops at the iron gate. Looks up at the sad monster of a mansion, at the gargoyles and the spears on the roof, aimed at the sky, as if angrily threatening the gods—

  A loud, sudden noise, the slap of doors flying open, wood hitting wood.

  The boy crouches down, fear swirling inside.

  A man’s mumbling, angry voice carrying in the wind.

  The house, still dark. But the boy finds it. The second floor, south end.

  His eyes adjust. He makes out a bedroom. A balcony that wraps around the west and south sides. Double doors, flung wide open.

  A man—the man, it must be him. Six, they call him, or Number Six, or just The Sixth. But it’s him. Holden Dahlquist VI.

  Shirtless, hair blowing in the wind, leaning over the balcony, looking down.

  Trying to get his leg up on the top of the railing that borders the balcony. Trying to stand on top of it?

  The boy gently places his trombone case on the ground.

  Unlocks the latches.

  Removes the air gun.

  Looks through his scope, moving through darkness until he finds the man, illuminated by the bedroom light behind him.

  With a final thrust, the man pushes himself onto the top of the railing. He rises, wobbly, standing on a narrow perch, a tightrope walker getting his balance.

  He’s only on the second story, but this is no ordinary house. The man must be thirty, forty feet up. No way he’d survive a fall, especially when his landing would most likely be on the spiked fence below him.

  The man arches his back, raises his arms as if beseeching the heavens. As if preparing to jump, as if preparing to fly off the balcony to another world.

  The boy watches all of this through the rifle’s scope.

  He pulls the trigger.

  The man takes the blow, staggers, flutters on his perch, his arms doing tiny circles, his legs buckling, before he falls backward onto the balcony.

  Aim-fire-click. The boy can do it well. He fires two, three pellets at the man. The man, injured from his fall, confused, reacts to each shot, jumping with surprise before scurrying back into the bedroom, out of sight.

  The boy smiles. Then he packs up his rifle and runs back to his house.

  88

  THE BOY returns the next day. An itch he has to scratch. He hasn’t stopped thinking about the man. Can’t get the images from last night out of his head.

  No trombone case this time. And this time, during the day. No school today, and Mom says dinner isn’t until two.

  Ocean Drive is empty. The beach is empty. Even the beach bums, the drifters, have found someplace else to be today. It seems like everybody has someplace else to be on Thanksgiving.

  The boy slips through the iron gates. It takes some effort, but he’s small enough.

  He walks into the front yard, which slopes upward to the house. Colorful leaves dancing all around him, the air brittle with cold, the wind coming off the ocean downright treacherous.

  He’s staring at the monumen
t by the fountain—Cecilia, O Cecilia / Life was death disguised—when he hears the noise in the back.

  He rushes to the back of the house, his feet crunching the blanket of leaves.

  The first thing he sees: a rope, dangling from a tree branch, knotted in such a way that an oval circle hangs down, bobbing in the wind.

  A noose. He knows the word for it. That’s a noose.

  A ladder. A man—the man, it’s him—standing on the top rung, reaching for the noose, struggling to fit it over his head. Crying, sobbing, cursing.

  And then suddenly noticing him, a trespasser, a boy, having just come around the corner.

  “Get…get outta…get outta here…kid.” His words thick and slurred. The noose in his hands, not yet around his neck.

  He is so terrified, he can’t respond to Mr. Dahlquist.

  “I said…get out…get—” The man swaying, the ladder rocking, the man losing his grip on the noose as the ladder topples over, the man falling with the ladder to the blanket of leaves below with a muted thump.

  The man cursing, then sobbing, his shoulders heaving. Punching the ground, swatting leaves, gripping his hair, grunting and screaming, like something inside him is trying to get out.

  Then he stops. He’s worn himself out. He looks around and he finds the bottle, half-filled with some brown liquid, obscured by the leaves. He unscrews the top and takes a long guzzle, empties most of the bottle, wipes his mouth with his sleeve.

  Then he turns and looks at the boy.

  “It was…you…last…last night,” says Holden Dahlquist VI. The words struggling to escape his mouth, heavy and blurry.

  The boy doesn’t answer. Doesn’t confirm, doesn’t deny.

  But he walks toward the man.

  “You my…guardian angel…or some…something?”

  The boy stops short in front of him.

  Mr. Dahlquist, dressed in a flannel shirt and pajama bottoms, yanks open the right side of his shirt, ripping off a button, revealing a small, deep-red wound.