Strangers at the Feast (32 page)

The redheaded woman, Ginny Olson, sat with her arms crossed. She was bundled in a thick cardigan sweater, belted tight despite the room being a good ten degrees above comfort level.

He had the Olson family at the station house, still wearing their blood-splattered holiday clothes. He’d been prepared to separate them, to ensure they didn’t try to coordinate statements, but they weren’t speaking. Their glazed eyes roamed the waiting area; their mouths hung open, ever so slightly, in the same helpless, unknowing way of people sleeping upright. No one touched the magazines, or the turkey buffet Carl Dundee’s wife had laid out hours earlier. The room was eerily silent except for the occasional creak of a plastic chair, at which they all, instinctively, flinched. Still in shock. And who could blame them—an invasion, a shooting, two deaths.

O’Shea had been working the holiday overtime when the call came in. He had spent most of the day organizing his desk and filling
out reports, so this brought him a momentary excitement. Since the station was short on staff, he volunteered to respond, which he hadn’t done in years. As he drove north toward Stamford—siren blaring, his red light flashing across the dark, narrow roads—he felt the familiar rush from his days as a patrol officer, a strange renegade vigor that had always made him feel more outlaw than law, an energy that brought, as he neared the house, a slight smile to his face. Until he saw what had happened.

By the time Captain Briggs instructed him to bring the family in for statements, he was relieved to get away from the scene.

“Whatever happens,” Captain Briggs told O’Shea before he left, “don’t let the press get their fangs in this yet. If anyone calls, be vague. Hopefully, they’re all still home eating turkey.”

But O’Shea knew that around 10:00 p.m., one of the
Advocate
newspaper crew, Sandra Yumi or Todd Bunson, would phone in for the police-blotter report. They were the rookies stuck with the nightly station-house calls, which usually yielded nothing more than some DUIs and disorderlies, the occasional fistfight outside a West Side bar, a few illegal possessions. Neither Bunson nor Yumi would be expecting much. O’Shea wanted to have a clear story, one that wouldn’t rouse suspicion, and one that wouldn’t come back to bite him on the ass.

But how the hell were the details not going to rouse suspicion?

Stamford had ranked as one of the country’s safest cities three years running. Breaking-and-entering rates were low, and violent stats were negligible, except for the West Side, which had always been a sinkhole as far as O’Shea was concerned. That’s where the gangs went at each other over drug turf. Semiautomatics floated around those parts. You saw a few drive-bys. But as long as they were killing only each other, the city’s feathers didn’t get ruffled. The department knew the precise coordinates of where that mess began and ended. Stillwater, Main, West Broad, and West Avenue. The rectangle of refuse and at the center was Vidal Court. They kept it contained.
Officers got calls to go in there, they kept their hands on their holsters and knew they might see blood.

But North Stamford? Deerkill Road?

A 911 with dead bodies there and O’Shea took note. Everybody took note.

O’Shea was forty-five years old. He’d been with the department twenty years, and he knew this would be a case that got everybody talking.

These just weren’t the people you’d expect to have sitting in your station on Thanksgiving Day.

GINNY

They had begun helping themselves to the pie and ice cream on the table when Ginny pushed back her chair and went to find Priya. She suspected her daughter might be camped out in front of the television, or had wandered upstairs to take a nap. As Ginny crossed the vast dining room she thought about how to explain Priya’s fatigue to her family. Not that they would ask—they’d all done a good job of keeping any concerns quiet—but it occurred to Ginny they might be able to help lift Priya’s spirits. As she imagined Douglas ballooning his cheeks, coaxing Priya to squeeze out the air and her mother digging for candy in her purse, she suddenly saw, at the bottom of the stairs, a child, a girl she thought she recognized, with her mouth open but silent, her arm wet and crimson. Ginny stopped.

She almost said, That’s not funny. And then, as her mind processed the image, her neck went stiff with panic. Move toward Priya, Ginny told herself, but her feet felt leaden. She became aware of a silence surrounding her, as though she were being plunged underwater. She looked to brace herself against something when suddenly she realized that she had, in fact, already rushed to the stairs. She was inches from Priya when the sound in the room returned in a blast, like a radio turned off at high volume, then powered on. China clinking, a knife stabbing a crystal pie platter, and voices, people’s voices: “Oh, just a sliver!” “It’s vanilla.”

Ginny crouched and touched her daughter’s forehead—Ginny would later remember this, her ineptitude—as though the girl had
a fever. She looked at the blood on Priya’s dress, afraid to touch her arm. Priya’s eyes, wet with fear, seemed to be pleading with Ginny, then slowly widened as a thud of footsteps sounded from upstairs.

Priya grabbed Ginny’s hand, pulled her from the stairs, and released a long, terrified scream:
Maaaaaa.

ELEANOR

It sounded like a crow cawing, or perhaps like a bell, the high-pitched vibrato that had once filled the halls of her school. Looking up from the perfect triangle of pear tart on her plate, topped with an orb of vanilla ice cream, Eleanor saw Ginny’s daughter in the foyer, her dress soiled. Ginny crouched before her. What on earth had happened? What game was the girl playing?
Trouble,
thought Eleanor. The poor girl couldn’t even sit for dessert; the tart was cooling, the ice cream would soon puddle on their plates.

Eleanor’s head was warm from the wine and she let out a drowsy sigh of disappointment. Then suddenly, Ginny and Priya rushed into the dining room, Priya yanking Ginny’s hand.
No running in the house,
Eleanor thought, but then her son threw back his chair and reached for a brass candlestick. Denise jumped from her seat and grabbed Laura, wrestling her to the ground with such force that the girl grabbed hold of the white silk runner and upended the tidy line of platters and pitchers in one strong jerk. Chairs toppled. The smell of coffee filled the air as liquid from spilled cups doused the table. Everybody moved so quickly, Eleanor was confused. The wine, too much wine; she was becoming dizzy. “Gavin, what’s going on?” But he was clutching the other candlestick in a white-knuckled fist and stared past her, into the foyer.

“Boys, get down here,” Denise whispered from beneath the table. The twins, who had been seated straight-backed alongside Eleanor at the table, now slid feetfirst from their chairs like rag dolls, vanishing
beneath the vast rectangle of lacquered walnut. A strange silence filled the room. Eleanor became aware of a slow, determined thud coming from the foyer, like the sound of a hammer hitting a blanket. But the next thuds were louder. Closer.

“Where’s the gun?” Denise whispered.

“Upstairs,” Douglas answered, his back to the wall, the candlestick raised like a bat. But it did not sound like her son’s voice. It sounded like a single piano note, horribly out of tune.

Ginny had pinned Priya to the side of the tall china cabinet, out of sight from the foyer. Ginny crouched, whispering, “Sweetie, you’re going to be okay,” as she slowly turned Priya’s arm.

“Gavin, I feel sick,” Eleanor heard herself say.

From the archway, her husband turned to her. Alone at the empty table, she was surveying the mess.

“For God sakes, Ellie.” He hurled her out of her chair by her armpits. “Come on.” He clenched her hand so tightly Eleanor could feel her wedding ring press into the bone of the next finger. As he led her from the room, her shoulder socket seemed to unhinge. They were running, out of breath, into the bright, vast kitchen where minutes earlier she had been arranging the dessert, where Ginny and Denise stood washing dishes.

Flinging open a closet, Gavin shoved her in with frightening brusqueness. “Ellie, do not come out. And stay quiet.”

She looked at her husband’s face, a face she had seen nearly every day for the past thirty-nine years. Sweat had collected in the three parallel furrows of his forehead; his nostrils flared. It was the expression he wore at the end of a run, except in his eyes she saw a flash of something unfamiliar, something like terror.

Then the door shut, and she was stranded in the dark.

DENISE

Denise held her children beneath the table, their bodies rigid with fear. She could see only the bottom of Douglas’s legs as he positioned himself beside the threshold. As the footsteps thudded down the staircase—one set? two? God, how many people were in the house?—the toe of his gleaming brown shoe tapped nervously on the carpet.

Think clearly,
she told herself.
What do you need to do? What if there’s a gang? What do they want from us?
She’d seen enough crime shows. Husbands lashed to kitchen chairs with electrical cords while their wives were raped. Gangs of intruders on methamphetamines, beating grandparents with baseball bats.

Never willfully entrap yourself, that was the rule. How many times had she told her children never to get in a strange van? If you were downstairs, you did not go upstairs. You did not get rope for your attacker, or offer more weapons. She flinched at the memory of a story about a young couple and the home intruder who asked the wife to get him a hammer.

People distrusted their spouses, elected officials, but when a stranger waved a knife and said, “Do what I say and I’ll let you live”—faith!

There was always a window of time when you had to risk harm for the chance of escape. Slowly, Denise reached up toward the table, groping for the tart knife, aware, suddenly, of the frailty of her fingers, the nakedness of her wrist. At the thump of approaching
footsteps she yanked back her hand, retrieving only the ice-cream scoop.

The footsteps stopped and the quick huff of Douglas’s breath filled the room. She wished they’d had a moment to speak, to coordinate a strategy. She couldn’t even see his face. Someone had to get the gun. But how many intruders were waiting upstairs?

In the shadows beneath the table, Denise kept her hand on Laura’s back, feeling the unbridled thump of her daughter’s heart. The air around them had steamed over with bodily fear, cut, suddenly, with the ammonia-like scent of urine; Laura had wet herself. Kissing her daughter’s head, Denise fought back a vision of the things they could do to children, to girls.

A deep voice broke the silence: “I’m coming down.” Its timbre slowly filled the room; like smoke, it crept along the carpet, curled around the doorway, until Denise felt it coming toward her. She breathed it in and felt a sickness.

He was coming. Her knees and elbows locked and as her fingers tightened their grip on Brandon and Brian, her joints became stones. She understood she was bracing herself, but for what? What were they doing under the table? It wasn’t an earthquake. They should have dashed for the kitchen and grabbed knives, forks, a rolling pin. They should have called 911. Anguish hit her as she realized her purse and cell phone lay stranded in the living room, that no one was coming to save them.

Denise knew she would have to get out from under the table, but the thought made her suddenly aware of the fragile contours of her skull. She felt as if the air itself might crack her head open. She tucked her chin to her chest. She wanted to stay beneath the table, to stay with her children.

“I’m gonna walk right out of here,” the voice said. “I’m not afraid.”

Was it the same voice? A different voice?

Wait for the window of opportunity,
she thought.

The footsteps resumed, almost thunderously loud, and she saw Douglas’s legs spread apart another inch.

Swing hard,
she thought.
Straight to the head.

“I’m gonna—”

Thwap
. A body fell. The candlestick rolled across the travertine tile. Grunts and gasps punctuated a long frightening silence of exertion. Through the threshold she saw a tangle of bodies in the foyer, arms swinging, legs kicking at the air. Her husband’s brown shoe sailed into the dining room.

Now.

Denise dashed out from the shadows of the table. Barely glancing at wrestling figures, she swiped the knife from the table, leapt over the bodies, and took the stairs two at a time. In the bedroom she rushed to the nightstand and fumbled through the drawer—goddamned magazines, tissues—until she found the gun. Her hands shook as she loaded it. Her fingers had never seemed so enormous, so clumsy. She didn’t look up, she didn’t look behind her.

It wasn’t until she raced from the room that she noticed the walls seemed to be covered with blood, and that the blood had been smeared into symbols, or letters; the same pattern of letters, in fact, over and over again. And she realized that one word had been written across the mirror and over the dresser and closet doors, the bedspread, and headboard:

BLIGHT

ELEANOR

The pitch-black pantry smelled of peanuts; the air was cooler than in the rest of the house and the floor felt like ice against her palms. Eleanor quietly drew her knees to her chest. How long did Gavin mean to leave her in here? She leaned over to press her ear to the door, but when her earring clanged loudly against the wood, she reeled back, terrified.

They accused
her
of worrying, of making too much of things? Well, this hullabaloo was entirely theirs! Shoving her into a closet. She slid off her earring and inched back toward the door. The cold wood sent a shiver from her earlobe down her neck. She heard nothing. The door had sealed her off from the rest of the world.

What if they were already back at the table, eating dessert? What if they were shouting, Come out now! Eleanor, everything is fine!