The Singing Bone (40 page)

“Someone smells bad.” Alice picked at her nails.

“Be nice, Genie.”

“I'm just saying. These showers work.”

“Listen up, everyone.” Mr. Wyck used the voice he used when he needed them to pay attention. “There's a new plan.” He told them a short story about how when a wolf leaves a pack, a new wolf takes over the old wolf's role. “It will seem strange at first, but it's important. When situations become static, we must take action and transform. Never fight your own transformations. They are natural and essential to the course of the world.” And then he said it: “I have to leave for a while, and when the time is right, you will come to me. Lee knows how to find me.” Lee nodded. Mr. Wyck placed a hand on Lee's shoulder. “This is your main man from now on. You have to listen to everything he tells you.”

Alice pulled the bed's covers back and crawled in and put her hands over her ears. “Why?” she cried from beneath the blankets. She sat up and reached out and shoved Trina forward, trying to knock her off the edge of the bed. She wanted Trina to wake up.

“Genie,” Mr. Wyck said. “Leave Trina alone. I'll see you again very soon.”

Alice climbed out of the bed and came towards him. He picked up a bag that was already packed. Alice grabbed the bag with both hands and cried, but Stover stepped between them, gently pulling Alice away. Mr. Wyck nodded at Lee and went out the door and into the night.

Alice went to the open door and watched him. He turned and put his finger over his lips, and then he ran down the sidewalk until Alice could no longer see him. She shut the door and got back under the covers. Far.

  •  •  •  

That night they went to a Chinese restaurant, going in at different times and sitting at different tables. Alice sat with Lee. “My punishment,” Lee said. Trina took her food outside, to sit with Stover in the car. He said he wasn't hungry.

In the daytime, they drove. Alice didn't know how long they'd been away. “When are we going home?” she asked. “I need to get a road journal. To write in. Like Jack Kerouac.”

“You're a girl,” Lee said.

“So?”

“Girls can't write.”

“Oh.” Alice wanted a journal, anyway, and when they stopped in a town for food, she asked Stover to get her a notebook. “Please?” she said. He brought her back a composition book and a pen. He put his hand on the top of her head and stroked her hair. Alice wrote
My Travel Journal
on the cover. At the new hotel, she sat on the balcony with the notebook in her lap, staring out at the lights below. It was cold, but she didn't care.

She opened the journal to the first page, but she didn't like to start on the first page, so she changed her mind and opened it in the middle and began to write.
I don't know where we're going.
Her writing looked unfamiliar. It was small and uneven.
But we're not staying wherever we are for very long. Stover has a case of the blues. Trina has turned into an unspeaking animal. She feeds herself and stares. Lee is a clown face. Mr. Wyck left on his claws for feet. One of us will be in a red sack soon.
She stopped writing and went inside and got into bed. She curled up between Stover and Trina. Stover was on his back with his mouth open, snoring. Alice let her hand hover over his mouth so she could feel the breath. She put her head on his chest and fell asleep.

She woke to the sound of a scream—and when she sat up, it seemed that everyone was shouting. She ran out onto the balcony and looked down. Stover was below her on the ground. His body looked strange. She went back inside. The police were coming. She could hear the sirens. Lee jumped out of bed and pulled on his jeans. Trina sat up and Alice went over to sit next to her. She held Trina's hand. “It's okay,” she whispered. Alice started to sing “Dark Eyes.” Below, she could hear the station wagon start up. Car doors slammed. Alice was going through all the songs—even “Night and Death.” She helped Trina get dressed. When the police came in, Alice stopped singing and looked at Trina.

“Trina? I think this part is real.”

Trina looked at Alice, her eyes blank. She nodded.

“Alice Pearson and Trina Malik?” one of the officers said. “You are under arrest for the murders of Robert and Greta Smith, and their two children, Matthew and Mathilda.” As he spoke, he and another officer put Alice and Trina on the floor. The carpet was rough on Alice's cheek. Beneath the bed, she saw her travel journal. She remembered Stover as he passed it to her in the car, a half smile on his face.

From the police car's window, Alice saw the cops throw Lee facedown on the ground. She watched as the ambulance with Stover's body in it drove away—the red flash at a slow pulse, the long pause at the stop sign. Her mouth was dry, her throat sore. She breathed in short quick gasps, working her wrists in the handcuffs.

“Did I kill your sister?” Alice asks Stuart. She's driven to Massachusetts to meet him. “I need to know.” Stuart is on his lunch hour. They've moved from an outdoor courtyard to pace the green hill that looks out over the highway. They stand side by side, gazing at the cars.

Stuart looks at her. “Jack Wyck killed my sister. You know that.”

“I'm worried that I did it.”

“Why?”

“I have dreams.” She won't tell him about Molly's ghost, who seems to have finally left her alone. She's gone a week without seeing her and her apartment is blissfully quiet again, but Alice is making plans to move. She doesn't want the Wyckian Society to know where she lives.

“Does it matter anymore who did it?”

“Yes. No. I'm not sure.”

“My advice, Alice, not that you asked for it, is to close this chapter of your life. Put it behind you if you can. You've carried it for long enough.”

But Alice doesn't hear him—not the way Stuart would like her to, and what he wants to say is
For fuck's sake, leave it alone already
, but he doesn't. He looks at her profile. She hasn't changed that much: a thinner face; she has fine lines at the corners of her mouth and at the edges of her eyes. She turns to him. “What did you see that night? What did you
really
see?” she asks.

Stuart looks at the cars. “I saw you and Molly in the woods.” It's colder on the hill than it was in the courtyard. The sun has gone behind the clouds. In the springtime, Stuart watches the men who come out to work on the hill from his office window. They clear the yellowed winter grass and rake and put down fresh seed. They cart away bags full of dry grass—more than he'd ever guess. All year long, until just before the men with the rakes and seeds come, the hill is bright green. He thinks it's absurd since the hill looks out over a highway, and he's never walked on it until today. He's not even sure it's officially allowed.

“What were we doing?” Alice wants to know. “Molly and I?”

“Arguing.”

“That's what happens in the dream. Was it about the twins? Molly wanted to go to the police.”

Stuart stands with his hands in his pockets, a blank expression on his face.

“Stuart—” Alice touches his arm. She wants him to look at her. She knows his eyes will tell her even if he doesn't. “Did I hit Molly on the head? I dream that I did.”

“No,” he lies. “Jack Wyck did.” He gives her a firm look. “I'm leaving now, Alice. I'd rather not talk about this again. Ever.” And then he turns and walks away from her, back down the hill and into the building. The doors slide shut behind him as he says hello to the receptionist. He wants to look behind him to see if Alice has followed him, but he doesn't.

Stuart's jaw is clenched. He should have said “Those aren't dreams, you fool. They're memories. Of course you killed Molly.” She lifted a rock and hit his sister on the head. Twice. And Molly fell away, into the icy February reservoir. But he will never say that, because even though he saw her do it, he doesn't see the point in telling the truth now. He believes in another truth, in another murder, the slower one, the one that led Molly and Alice to the edge of the reservoir. Before Alice picked up the rock, Jack Wyck had pricked open the beautiful, fragile skin on Molly's pale inner arm and shot her full of heroin. He'd made her into his possession. And though Stuart guesses the sex was completely consensual, it wasn't, not really. Jack Wyck was twice his sister's age, a criminal, a con artist, a cult leader. No, Jack Wyck killed Molly. He might as well have hit her on the head. He might as well have pushed Stover over the balcony railing, locked Trina in a prison cell, and lifted the knife that killed the twins and their parents. And he gave Alice that haunted face—the one she wasn't supposed to have. He gave her the memory of murder.

Stuart moves silently down the hallway, over the flat beige office carpeting, beneath the white lights that cast no shadow, sliding his key card through one door after another until he reaches his office. Jack Wyck killed them—all of them. And a little bit of Stuart, too. And his parents. He looks out his office window and sees that Alice is still standing on the hill. She turns slowly and begins the steep descent to the parking lot. Her black wool coat is open and it catches in the wind behind her like wings.

“Can I have a coffee, too?” Alice asked, and Detective Simon nodded to the police officer. The officer unlocked Alice's handcuffs.

“We're going to be recording this interview,” Detective Simon said. He lit a cigarette. “Can I have a cigarette?” Alice asked, and he passed her the pack. He watched as she lit it. Her hands shook. Her wrists were so small he thought she might have slipped out of the cuffs. “Get her a coffee,” he told the officer. “And something to eat.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Get it anyway,” he said to the officer. “Something from the machine.”

“Do the machines work?” she asked brightly. She exhaled, blowing the smoke towards the ceiling. “Where is everybody? Where's Stover and Trina and Molly? I think I'm ready to go home now.” Alice kicked the table leg idly with her foot until Detective Simon asked her to stop.

The officer came in with a coffee and a candy bar. “ ‘Pay-Day,' ” Alice read slowly, turning the candy over in her hands. “Pay Day Pay Day Day Day Pay Pay Day,” she repeated. She brought the Styrofoam cup to her lips and sipped. She made a face.

“I know,” Detective Simon said. “It's not the best.”

“It's hot,” she said, and then after a moment, “Day Pay.”

“Do you know where you are?” Detective Simon asked.

Alice looked up and around. “Mmmm,” she said. “I guess not. Not ­really. It's something official, though. I can tell by the light.” She went back to sipping her coffee. She bit off a little piece of the cup and let it drop on the table in front of her. She looked at Detective Simon and smiled. “A hospital?”

“No, you left the hospital this morning.”

“Oh.”

He gazed at her—a neutral expression on his face. She began to kick the table leg again.
Thump, thump, thump. Is she faking?
he wondered. But no. “She's not right in the head,” he'd said to the officer who brought her in. “What did you expect?” he'd answered. “The prom queen?” They'd taken both the girls to the hospital to get them checked out. Alice had been screaming and Trina staring and silent. Trauma, the doctor said. Something happened. They sedated Alice, put her in a bed. The nurse washed her. She pointed to the tattoo. “I found one on the other girl, too,” she said. Detective Simon had seen the dead girl's tattoo.
Jack Wyck
, the tattoo read—neat black script on the inner left thigh—and one on the boy, too. He wondered if they'd let him do it or if they'd been forced. The police had handcuffed Alice's slim wrist to her hospital bed. When she woke, she rambled on about a play. “I need to see all the actors,” she'd said. “All of them here, lined up. Now.” An officer sat next to her bed reading the newspaper and idly replied, “I wish this were a play. I need an intermission.”

“You've been arrested,” Detective Simon said. “You're back in New York. Trina's in the next room. She's already confessed. We haven't found Jack Wyck yet, but we will. Your friends Molly and Stover are dead.”

“Molly and Stover aren't
dead
.” She rolled her eyes. “Jesus. Everyone has something to add. Frankly I'm getting tired of all the notes. We need to just take it to press.”

“No, Alice.” Detective Simon leaned towards her and looked into her eyes. “Molly and Stover are
dead
.”

Alice stared at him. “I killed Molly's
character
, not Molly.”

“Did you?”

She nodded.

“How?”

Alice unwrapped her candy bar and set it on the table in front of her. She sipped her coffee and looked at her candy bar. She mouthed
Pay Day
.

“Were you at the Smith house with Trina and Lee?”

“Do you like this kind of candy bar?”

“Alice,” Detective Simon tried again. “Were you in the house with Trina and Lee?”

“What house? The White House?” Alice laughed.

“The Smiths' house. The Smiths are all dead.”

“They're in the red sack.”

“What do you mean?”

Alice looked at him and said quickly, “What's red and white and lies in all four corners of a room?”

“I don't know,” Detective Simon said. “What?”

“The babies.”

“What babies?”

“What's black and white and red all over?”

Detective Simon waited. Alice had finished her coffee and was nervously tearing at the Styrofoam cup. Her fingernails were bitten down. “What?” Detective Simon said.