Slice (35 page)

N
INETY-FIVE

A
part of Jessie was just as disbelieving as John was, though she wouldn't admit it. The rational part of her knew that the idea that Aaron was her son made no sense. But rationality didn't matter anymore. She knew he was her son.

Her son who'd come back to her.

And this time, she could not—would not—push him away.

Jessie reached the top of the stairs and smiled.

It was nice, after all these years, to have both her children—her twins—with her. Jessie tiptoed to Abby's room and opened the door. Her daughter was sound asleep. Jessie approached the bed quietly and leaned down, kissing the little girl on the forehead. Then she carefully made her way out of the room so as not to wake her up.

Outside the door to the room next to Abby's, Jessie paused. This had been Inga's room when they had first moved here. But this afternoon Jessie had made it into Aaron's room. She'd put fresh sheets on the bed and hung a photograph of a cowboy on a horse on the wall. The photo had been her father's when he was a little boy. Aaron had smiled when Jessie had shown it to him. She'd promised him that someday she'd take him horseback riding. How Aaron had beamed when she'd told him that.

Of course, people were going to ask questions. Where did he come from? Where was his birth certificate? Had he had all his shots? A part of Jessie—the rational part again—was wondering those same things.
How can he be my son? That's impossible.

But he was. She pushed the questions aside and opened the door.

In a shaft of moonlight, she saw Aaron fast asleep in the bed. How precious he looked. How angelic. How could John fear him? Jessie had been very happy when John had kissed her. She couldn't deny that she had some feelings for him. But like all the men she'd loved, John had lied to her; he'd kept things from her; he wasn't fully honest with her. Not so with Aaron. Aaron always spoke the truth. It wasn't his fault that he didn't know the answers to all her questions. He'd been lost for so long—abandoned. But not anymore.

Jessie reached down and kissed him on his forehead. She straightened the blankets around him.

Then she walked to the window, checking that it was locked. It was. No one could get through that window. If they tried, the security system would sound.

She'd keep him safe. She'd keep them all safe.

Looking down once more at her son's sleeping face, Jessie tiptoed out of the room and shut the door.

N
INETY-SIX

I
t was Halloween.

The day was dry and the air felt fresh after the rain. But it was cold. Paulette shivered and pulled her coat tighter around herself as she headed toward the woods.

Chief Walters had seemed to appreciate what Paulette had had to say when she'd gone down to the station first thing this morning. The chief had been very interested when Paulette revealed that Jessie had taken the little boy in to live with her. Paulette had chosen to tell Walters only so much about what she suspected. She told her only that she felt the boy was connected to Emil somehow—that he was going by the last name of Smelt, which seemed a clue. She secured the chief 's promise to look in on Jessie, and to check the boy out. After all, he was a lost child, Paulette argued, and his parents must be looking for him. Perhaps the chief should take the boy into protective custody until his parents or guardians could be found. Walters had seemed to agree, much to Paulette's relief. The chief promised she'd go out to the house and look into the matter.

That taken care of, Paulette had returned to Hickory Dell and made her way down to the woods. This was the part of her suspicions that she didn't share with the chief.

That shack Jessie mentioned
, Paulette thought to herself, as she stepped over the brook and into the woods.
I know where it is. I can find it.

Decades ago, she used to meet Howard at the shack. It was their little rendezvous, where they'd go to make out and not be found by Paulette's parents or her sister, Caroline. Paulette never let him get farther than first base, but she did enjoy his kisses. They'd hang out at the shack for hours, listening to Simon and Garfunkel on their transistor radio. Then Howard had gone off to Vietnam and the shack had been torn down.

At least, Paulette thought it had.

The woods seemed alive with sound this morning. Crows whooped from trees. There was the rat-tat-tat noise of woodpeckers and blue jays scolded from above. Occasionally Paulette made out the low hoot of an owl. From branch to branch squirrels leapt and chipmunks scurried alongside her on the path. There were barely any shadows this morning. The sun, nearly overhead, filled in all available space, pouring in easily through the bare trees.

There was no reason for fear on such a day.

Even though it was Halloween.

Paulette tried to push the thought of Halloween out of her mind. It was a happy children's holiday—but she knew its origins. When nightfall came, it was the eve of the day of the dead—the only time, some believed, that the dead could walk again among the living.

Paulette had no idea what she might find at the shack. But she knew she'd be able to sense if something undead dwelled there. She trusted her instincts, her intuition, her powers that much.

She walked, and walked some more.

The shack. Where was it?

Her father—or maybe it had been her grandfather—had built it, as a place to store hunting equipment. The woods had been much deeper in those days, stretching out past the gorge for at least forty miles. Paulette's father had hunted deer in those deeper woods when he was a young man. Now so much of the woods had been torn down, replaced with suburban housing developments. All that was left of the once mighty forest was this smaller stretch that edged Hickory Dell. Paulette had a memory of the shack being torn down at some point, her father moving all his equipment back to the house once the new housing developments started being built.

But, apparently, her memory was wrong. There was the shack, some ten yards ahead of her, slumped and weathered like an old man.

Paulette stopped in her approach, taking a deep breath. She could still hear the birds in the trees. That was good.

What might she find inside? Her heart began to race. All night long, the little sleep she'd been able to achieve had been torn apart by nightmares of the tall, dark man. She had tried so hard to see his face. Was it Emil? Or was it . . . someone else?

She began walking again. She reached the shack's broken door, hanging limply from rusted hinges. With a careful touch, Paulette pushed it open.

The place was draped in spiderwebs. Roots had grown through the old, corroded floorboards, and vines grew up the walls. There were some old wooden boxes scattered about. Paulette stepped inside.

Nothing.

She felt nothing.

Outside the birds chirped wildly in the trees.

“But the boy said he lived here,” Paulette whispered to herself.

Why did she sense nothing?

That was when she noticed a couple of books scattered on the floor in the far corner of the shack. Walking over, Paulette bent down and picked one of the books up in her hand.

Sound of a Scream
by John Manning.

A dark brown substance had dried over much of the cover.

Paulette knew instantly that these were the books Inga had with her when she was killed, and the brown substance was her blood.

“Dear God,” she gasped.

Then she noticed something else. Behind one of the old boxes sat a denim bag. It, too, hadn't been in the shack very long. No mold covered it. And on the floor around the bag Paulette could now make out the muddy footprints of a man's large shoe.

She bent down and pulled open the drawstring of the bag. There were clothes inside. T-shirts mostly. And some papers. With trembling hands, Paulette unfolded the papers and began to read.

“Dear God,” she gasped again. “I've got to tell Jessie.”

She stood and turned, ready to bolt out of there and run back through the woods.

But then the tall, dark man came through the door. Paulette didn't have time to scream. She barely saw the blade as it swung out at her, whistling through the air before slicing into her flesh.

Howard
, she thought.
I'll see Howard. . . .

The papers in her hand fluttered to the floor of the shack.

N
INETY-SEVEN

“M
onica?”

Todd pushed open the front door and stepped inside the living room. Mr. Thayer was behind him.

“Monica?” he called again.

There was no reply. The house had that heavy feeling of emptiness.

“You see, I told you she wasn't home,” Mr. Thayer said. “Her car's not in the driveway.”

“Just wanted to make sure,” Todd replied, before bounding up the stairs.

“Really, Todd,” Mr. Thayer called up after him. “I wish you'd stay and wait for her to get home. The two of you need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to her,” Todd called down, as he quickly went through his desk and gathered up the papers he needed. Then he ran into the bedroom and grabbed a couple of sweaters. Eventually he'd move all his stuff out, but for now, this would be enough. Monica wouldn't even know he'd been here.

He felt surprisingly little emotion as he hurried through the house that he and Monica had designed and built. Its sleek marble and glass left him cold. There were no pangs of homesickness, or grief, or loss. Todd was determined to end the marriage as soon as possible. He'd give Monica wherever she wanted—even the house. He just wanted to be free of a marriage that had felt stifling and unnatural for a long time now. A marriage that Todd knew now had been built on a lie told by a teenage girl.

He'd been Monica's prisoner too long.

At the window, Todd paused. Something caught his eye. He could barely make out John Manning's driveway through the trees, but he could see a man walking up toward the gate. It was that FBI investigator, Patrick Castile. He'd been by to interview both Todd and Mr. Thayer about what they might have seen or heard the night of the murders at the Pierce house. They'd had nothing to tell him. They'd seen and heard nothing.

It was a terrible shame about Heather and the kids' deaths. It just made Todd want to put Hickory Dell behind him all the more.

He hurried back down the stairs. “Okay,” he said to Mr. Thayer. “I got what I came for. Let's get out of here.”

“You sure you won't wait?”

“I told you. I have nothing to say to her.”

Mr. Thayer frowned. “Then at least go up and speak to Jessie before you head out of town again. Todd, you can't keep running away from everything.”

“I don't think Jessie wants to see me.”

Mr. Thayer sighed. “She might welcome the distraction. I just saw Gert Gorin trudging up the hill to Jessie's house.”

Todd sighed.

“Just tell her that you're leaving,” Mr. Thayer said.

“All right,” Todd said, and they headed out of the house.

N
INETY-EIGHT

A
aron stood among the trees that divided Jessie's property from John Manning's. He craned his neck, searching for the highest one. Having made his choice, he began to climb.

At the very top of a sweet-smelling pine, Aaron watched. On one side of him, Manning was opening his gate and allowing Patrick Castile inside.

But then he turned, his ears drawn by the sound of voices from the other side.

One of the voices was Jessie's.

His mother's voice.

N
INETY-NINE

“
I
thought you might want to know that the FBI is over talking with John Manning right at this very moment,” Gert Gorin was saying, her chin up, her eyes flashing, as she stood on Jessie's front porch. “I just saw that man, Patrick Castile, arrive. It's the third or fourth time he's been by to see Mr. Manning.”

Jessie stood in the doorway and sighed. “Why does this information concern me, Mrs. Gorin?”

The neighbor's face contorted in fury. “Because all of these murders only began after you returned to Sayer's Brook! Because an entire family is now dead—a family you and John Manning had conflict with!”

Jessie kept her cool. “Are you accusing me in some way, Mrs. Gorin?”

Gert folded her arms across her chest and twisted her lips into a smile. “I'm only stating facts.”

“Well, maybe you can state your facts on your own front porch,” Jessie said, attempting to close the door.

“I think I speak for the entire neighborhood—those of us who are left, that is—in saying that we'd be very happy if you just packed up and moved back to New York!”

A new voice was heard in reply. “You don't speak for me,” Todd said, walking up the hill.

“Or me,” said Mr. Thayer, who was following a few steps behind.

“Why don't you just go home and mind your own business for a change?” Todd was telling Gert. “Just go home and stay there.”

“Well!” Gert huffed, marching down the steps of the porch and stalking past the men back down the hill.

“Hello, Todd,” Jessie said from the doorway. “Hello, Mr. Thayer.”

“Hello, my dear,” Mr. Thayer replied.

“Don't listen to that old witch,” Todd said.

Jessie gave them a small smile, but didn't invite them in. “I guess she has a point that things did start with my return.”

“No one can blame you for anything, Jessie,” Todd told her. “For
anything
.” He put the stress on the last word.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I just came up to tell you that I was going away,” Todd said. “Mr. Thayer will have my contact info, if you want to reach me.”

Jessie eyed him. “Are you leaving Monica for good?”

“I'll be asking for a divorce.”

“I see.”

“Jessie, I wish I could tell you how—”

“Please don't, Todd. Too much has happened. I can't hear any more.”

“But—”

“I said please don't.” Her voice was sharp, sharper than she'd intended.

It was at that moment that she noticed Aaron standing a few feet away, watching them.

“Aaron!” she called. “What are you doing outside? I thought you were up with Abby taking a nap.”

“I came out to play,” the little boy said.

“Well, you've gotten all dirty again, sweetie. Come inside.”

Aaron came bounding up the porch steps, brushing past the two men. When he reached Jessie, allowing her to stroke his hair, he turned around and glared at Todd.

“Sweet little baby,” Jessie mumbled. “Come in and let Mommy clean you up.”

She closed the door without saying good-bye to Todd or Mr. Thayer.