"What?"
"I know," Agnes whispered in a voice that chilled the room.
"What?"
"Last week."
"What about last week?"
"The day after Davey brought you to our house, I called Emerson College. You said you went there. But, well, something didn't add up. So I called them. They never heard of you."
Megan didn't know what to say.
"I won't tell." The voice was a whisper again. "It's okay, really. I lie about my age to Roland. I am three years older than him, but he doesn't know. The truth is, you love my Davey. I know. You're good for him. Not like those snotty, rich girls from town. Your secret's safe with me, honey. I just ask one thing."
A tear had escaped and ran down Megan's cheek. "What?"
"Give me some grandchildren. You're going to make a wonderful mother."
Agnes knew, Megan thought. All these years, this whole time, Agnes had known about the lie. The realization was almost too much to bear.
"Megan?"
"I promise."
"No, not that." Agnes's eyes flickered. She looked toward the door. "They want to move me to the third floor, don't they?"
"Yes. But you don't have to go if you don't want to."
"It won't help." She lowered her voice. "He will find me. Even there. He will find me and he will kill me."
"Who?"
Agnes looked to her left, then to her right. She leaned in closer and locked eyes with Megan. "The bad man who comes at night."
It was then that Megan remembered the spy camera in the digital clock. "Agnes?"
"Yes?"
"Was the bad man here last night?"
"Of course. That's why I called you."
Sometimes it was like dealing with a human TV set that kept changing channels. Megan pointed toward the clock. "Do you remember when I was here yesterday?"
Agnes started to smile. "The spy camera!"
"Yes."
"So you can see him? You can see the bad man?"
"We can look."
Megan had set the spy camera's timer to run from nine P.M. until six in the morning. It didn't record everything--it worked by motion detector--so it wasn't as though they'd have to go through nine hours of material. Megan checked the back of the clock and saw the light was flashing. That meant there was something in the digital hard drive.
"I'll be right back, Agnes."
She hurried down the corridor and back to the front desk. She borrowed a laptop and came right back to the room. Agnes was still on the bed. The clock/camera worked via a USB port. She moved the camera to the bed and plugged it into the laptop. Agnes moved closer. The spy camera icon came up. Megan moved the cursor over it.
"If he was in your room," Megan said, "we should see it now."
"What's going on here?"
They both looked toward the door. Missy Malek had entered, her hands on her hips, her lips pursed. She took in the whole scene--the two women on the bed, the clock/camera plugged into the laptop--and her eyes opened. "What is this?"
"It's a surveillance camera," Megan said.
"Excuse me?"
"A hidden camera. It's built into the digital clock."
Malek's face reddened. "You can't have that in here."
"I already did."
"We have privacy rules. When Agnes first joined here, your husband as her guardian signed an agreement. It specifically stipulated--"
"I never signed it," Megan said.
"Because you have no legal standing."
"Exactly. And this is Agnes's room. She wanted the camera in here, didn't you, Agnes?"
Agnes nodded. "Yes, I did."
"I don't understand," Missy Malek said. "You taped us?"
"I guess I did."
"Do you know what a violation of trust that is?"
Megan shrugged. "If you have nothing to hide..."
"Of course we don't!"
"Terrific," Megan said. "Would you like to watch with us?"
Malek shot a glance at Agnes, then back to Megan. "This is a mistake."
"Then it's our mistake," Megan said.
The images were grainy, not so much because the camera had a poor resolution but because it was set to film in the dark. The first thing to pop up was a still frame of Agnes sitting up in the bed. The camera's night-vision setting gave the room a spooky green haze.
Though the lens was set on wide to take in the entire room, you could still make out the frightened expression on Agnes's face. The night vision made her eyes glow white.
There was a play arrow on the still frame. Megan looked back at Missy Malek. Malek looked resigned. Megan clicked the icon.
The video began to run--and it did indeed solve the mystery, but not in the way Megan expected.
No sound was recorded, but maybe that was merciful. On the screen, Agnes was sitting up. You could see that she was screaming, crying. She was clearly terrified. She picked up her pillow for protection. She cowered into the far corner of the bed, trying to escape, pulling her knees up to her chest. She stared up at her assailant, her right hand shielding her face.
But there was no one there.
Megan felt her heart sink. She sneaked a glance at Missy Malek. Her face was still resigned, but not out of guilt or fear. She had known. Megan looked at her mother-in-law. Agnes watched the screen with her mouth opened. At first she looked confused, but through the fog, Megan could see clarity. Agnes could see what was happening. Part of her mind could accept it, but a bigger part simply would not. It was like suddenly telling someone that up was down and left was right.
"He made himself invisible," Agnes said.
But her heart wasn't in it.
After what seemed like an hour--in truth, it was maybe two minutes--a nurse rushed on-screen and began to calm Agnes. Megan could see that the nurse had a cup in one hand. With the other, she produced pills. Agnes swallowed them using the cup of what Megan assumed was water. Then she leaned back. The nurse gently tucked her in, waited a moment, and then tiptoed out the door.
A minute later, the recording stopped.
To her credit, Malek didn't say a word. Agnes stared at the screen, waiting for something else to happen. The screen came alive only one more time. According to the digital clock in the corner, it was about an hour later. Agnes and Megan leaned forward for a better look, but all they saw was a nurse checking upon Agnes.
On the screen, Agnes remained asleep.
That was it.
"You saw him, right?" Agnes said, pointing at the screen. "With the knife? One time he came in with a coyote and a bottle of poison."
Malek slipped out of the room without saying another word.
"Megan?" Agnes said, her voice so frail.
"It's okay," Megan said, feeling a fresh wave of devastation. Damn. What an idiot she was. Hadn't she known in her heart of hearts what the surveillance would show? Had she really believed a man with a knife (not to mention the occasional coyote and bottle of poison) came in at night to terrorize an old woman? Talk about wishful thinking. Agnes had been the closest thing a woman like Megan--a woman living a lie for almost her entire adult life--had to a confidante and best friend. Today she had learned just how close they had been--that for all these years Agnes had known, if not the truth, something close to it. She hadn't cared.
Agnes had known Megan better than anyone, and she had loved her anyway.
"You should go home now," Agnes said in a faraway voice. "You need to take care of the baby."
The baby. Singular. The human TV had changed channels or at least time zones again. But either way, Agnes was right. Enough. Enough chasing the past. Enough living with lies. Her father-in-law--the late, lied-to-about-age Roland Pierce--had often said, "Youth is but a breath." True, but so is your twenties and middle age and every stage. It's pretty much life's only guarantee.
When had Agnes started to fade away? When would Megan?
She didn't want to live one more day with the lies.
Megan kissed her mother-in-law on
the forehead, holding her lips there and closing her eyes. "I love you so much," she said softly. "I won't let anything bad happen to you. I promise."
She pulled away and started down the corridor. Missy Malek was there, looking a question at her. Megan nodded and said, "I'll talk to my husband, but let's start making arrangements for the move."
"She'll be happier. I'm certain."
Megan kept walking through the overdone lobby and passed the cafeteria. The doors slid open. Megan welcomed the cool air, especially after the stifling heat inside. She closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath.
There was still no message from Dave on her cell phone. She felt sad and angry and exhausted and confused. Ray was waiting for her at Lucy. She didn't want to go. He was part of her past. Opening that door could only lead to unhappiness. It was time to move on.
Ray's words came back to her: "I didn't tell you the truth."
Could she just let that go? And his tone, the desperation in his voice... could she really walk away from that? Didn't she owe him something? And maybe, in the end, that was what had brought her down. Maybe it wasn't the chance to relive some bygone youth, but the chance to help someone else find his footing.
She arrived at her car door. As she reached for the handle, something caught her eye.
Megan turned quickly and saw the knife heading toward her.
32
BROOME'S HEART SUNK. "It's not here anymore."
He was back at the old furnace ruins with Samantha Bajraktari and the young tech. Cowens had declined to join them this time, so Broome figured that he'd struck out with Samantha.
"What did you think you saw in the photo?" she asked.
"A hand truck."
"A hand truck? You mean, like for moving boxes?"
"Or bodies," Broome said. He put his hand on the old brick. When you took a step back, the ruins from the iron-ore mill were actually pretty cool. Broome remembered his and Erin's honeymoon in Italy. They'd done two weeks in Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice. The art was incredible, sure, but what fascinated Erin and him--two old-school cops at heart--were the ruins. Something about the remnants of death, the clues to something missing called out to them. They'd been fascinated by the Roman Forum, by the Coliseum, and most of all, by Pompeii, an entire city buried by a volcano. Two thousand years ago, Mount Vesuvius erupted, covering the city and its inhabitants in about twenty feet of ash. For seventeen hundred years, Pompeii stayed that way--the crime scene totally vanished, hidden from view--before it was accidentally unearthed and its secrets were painstakingly and slowly revealed. Broome thought now about walking through the perfectly preserved streets holding the hand of his beautiful new wife, and because he was a total moron, he had no idea at the time that this would be the single greatest moment of his life.
"You okay?" Bajraktari asked.
Broome nodded. The Pine Barrens, he knew, were loaded with ruins from the eighteenth and nineteenth century. They weren't tourist spots, except for the major ones in Batsto and Atsion. Most were, like this one, hard to find and required trekking. All that was left now were crumbling relics from a bygone era, but at one time, here in the woods of New Jersey, they were flourishing villages for paper mills or glass factories or iron-ore mills. Eventually, the natural resources dried up and so then did most villages. But in some cases, you really didn't know what happened. One day the people were there, living their lives and raising their families. The next, or so it seemed, they was gone, maybe waiting to one day be unearthed like something in Pompeii.
Bajraktari studied the brick from a furnace that had been built in 1780. "You thought you saw a hand truck, right?"
"Yes."
She rubbed the brick.
"What?"
"There's a little scraping here. It could even be a little rust. I can't know for certain without running a test."
"Like maybe a hand truck was resting against it?"
"Could be."
Samantha bent down to the ground. She rubbed her hand on the dirt. "What's your theory with this hand truck?"
"Right now?" Broome said. "The most obvious."
"Which is?"
"It was used to transport something."
"Like, say, a dead body?"
Broome nodded. "Let's say once a year--on Mardi Gras--you were killing or, I don't know, incapacitating men up here. Knocking them unconscious, for example. Let's say you wanted to move them."
She nodded. "You might use a hand truck."
"Right."
"If that were the case," Samantha said, "there'd be marks of some kind. Indentations in the ground. I don't know how big they'd be. The ones from years ago would be long gone, of course, but maybe if Carlton Flynn was moved that way just a few days ago, we'd still see something."
She moved back down toward the giant boulder where she'd found the blood. Broome followed. Bajraktari got down on her hands and knees now, moving her face to within an inch of the dirt like a tracker in an old Western. She started crawling around, moving faster now.
"What?" Broome asked.
"Do you see this?"
She pointed to the ground.
"Barely."
"It's an indentation. There are four of them, making a rectangle. I'd estimate it being about two feet by four."
"And what does that mean?"
"If you wanted to get the body on a hand truck, you'd lay the truck down on all fours. When the body was initially dropped on it, that would be the heaviest point." She looked up at him. "In short, it would make indentations like this."
"Whoa."
"Yep."
"Will you be able to, I don't know, follow the tracks?"
"I don't think so," she said. "The ground is pretty hard, but..." Her voice trailed off. She turned her head and, now like a tracking dog, she started back up the path. She stopped and bent down.
"It went that way?" Broome asked.
"Nothing conclusive, but look at the way this shrub is broken."
Broome came over. He squatted down. It did indeed appear as though something heavy, perhaps a body-laden hand truck, had run over the area. He tried to find a trail, but there wasn't one. "Where could he have gone?"
"Maybe not that far. Maybe to bury the body."
Broome shook his head. "It's been too cold the past few weeks."
"There are broken branches over here. Let's follow them."
They did. They were getting deeper into the woods, farther off the path. They started down a hill. Now, in an area where no one would have any reason to roam, they found even more broken branches, more signs that something substantial had, if not bulldozed, gone through at a faster pace.
The sun was setting, the night growing cold. Broome zipped up his Windbreaker and kept moving.
The brush thickened, making it more and more evident that someone had come this way. Broome knew that he should slow down, that he should be careful not to trample a potential crime scene, but his legs kept moving. He took the lead now. His pulse quickened. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
He knew. He just knew.
"Slow down, Broome."
He didn't. If anything he moved faster now, pushing the branches to the side, nearly tripping on the thick roots. Finally, less than a full minute after starting down the hill, Broome broke through to a small opening and stopped short.
Samantha Bajraktari came up behind him. "Broome?"
He stared at the broken structure in front of him. It was a low wall, no more than three feet high, nearly covered with vines. That was how it worked out. When man abandoned, nature moved in and took back what was rightfully hers.
"What is that?" Bajraktari asked.
Broome swallowed. "A well."
He hurried over and looked down into the hole. Blackness.
"Do you have a flashlight?"
The echo of his voice told him that the hole was deep. A knot formed in his stomach.
"Here," she said.
Broome took the flashlight and
flicked it on. When he aimed it straight down the hole--when the beam first hit--the sight stopped Broome's heart for a second. He may have made a sound, some kind of groaning, but he couldn't be sure. Samantha came up next to him, looked down, and gasped.
KEN SAT ON THE LAST stool and watched the barmaid.
Her name was Lorraine, and she was good at her job. She laughed a lot. She touched the men on the arm. She smiled, and if it was an act, if underneath it all she detested what she was doing, you never saw it. The other girls, yes, they tried. They smiled but it never reached beyond the lips and often, too often, you could see the blankness on their faces and the hate in their eyes.
The regulars called the older barmaid Lorraine. Regulars at a strip club--Ken tried to imagine anything more pitiable. And yet he understood. We all do, really. We all feel the pull. Sex, of course, had one of the biggest. It didn't hold a candle to control, but most of these men would never know that. They'd never get to experience it and so they'd remain naive to what could really tear at a man's soul.