We're in Trouble (23 page)

Larry put the cruiser in reverse and backed it slowly away from the house, out of the drive and onto the track. He watched for ten minutes as the fire grew, and tried not to think about anything, to see only the flames. Then he got the call from Lynn at dispatch.

Sheriff?

Copy, he said.

Ned called in. He says it looks like there's a fire out at the Sullivan place.

A fire?

That's what he said. He sees a fire in the woods.

My my my, Larry said. I'm on old 52 just past Mackey. I'll get there quick as I can and take a look.

He waited another ten minutes. Flames leaked around the boards on the windows. The downstairs ceiling caught. Long shadows shifted through the trees; the woods came alive, swaying and dancing. Something alive and aflame shot out the front door—a rabbit? It zigged and zagged across the turnaround, and then headed toward him. For a moment Larry thought it had fled under his car, and he put his hand on the door handle—but whatever it was cut away for the woods to his right. He saw it come to rest in a patch of scrub; smoke rose from the bush in wisps.

Dispatch? Larry said.

Copy.

I'm at the Sullivan house. It's on fire, all right. Better get the trucks out here.

Twenty minutes later two fire trucks arrived, advancing carefully down the track. The men got out and stood beside Larry, looking over the house, now brightly ablaze from top to bottom. They rolled the trucks past Larry's cruiser and sprayed the grass around the house and the trees nearby. Then all of them watched the house burn and crumble into its foundation, and no one said much of anything.

Larry left them to the rubble just before dawn. He drove home and tried to wash the smell of smoke out of his hair, and then lay down next to Emily, who didn't stir. He lay awake for a while, trying to convince himself he'd actually done it, and then trying to convince himself he hadn't.

When he finally slept, he saw the house on fire, except that in his dream there were people still in it: Jenny Sullivan in the upstairs window, holding her youngest boy to her and
shouting Larry's name, screaming it, while Larry sat in his car, tugging at the handle, unable even to shout back to her, to tell her it was locked.

Patricia Pike had known from the start that Sheriff Thompkins was reluctant to work with her. Now, driving in his cruiser with him down empty back roads to the Sullivan house, she wondered if what she'd thought was reticence was instead real anger. Thompkins had been civil enough when she spoke with him on the phone a month earlier, but since meeting him this morning in his small, cluttered office—she'd seen janitors with better quarters—he'd been scowling, sullen, rarely bothering to look her in the eye.

She was used to this treatment from policemen. A lot of them had read her books, two of which had uncovered information the police hadn't found themselves. Her second book,
On a Darkling Plain
, had overturned a conviction. Policemen hated being shown up, even the best of them—and she suspected from the look of Thompkins's office that he didn't operate on the cutting edge of law enforcement.

Thompkins was tall and hunched, perhaps muscular once, but now going to fat, with a gray cop's mustache and a single thick fold under his chin. He was only forty—two years younger than she was—but he looked much older. He kept a wedding photo on his desk; in it he had the broad-shouldered, thick-necked look of an offensive lineman. Unsurprising, this; a lot of country cops she spoke to had played football. His wife, next to him, was a little ghost of a woman,
dark-eyed, smiling what Patricia suspected was one of her last big smiles.

Patricia had asked Thompkins a few questions in his office, chatty ones designed to put him at ease. She'd also flirted, a little; she was good-looking, and sometimes that worked. But even then Thompkins answered flatly, in the sort of language police fell back on in their reports.
It was at this point in time that I, uh, approached the scene.
He looked often at his watch, but she wasn't fooled. Kinslow, Indiana, had only six hundred residents, and Thompkins wasn't about to convince her he was a busy man.

Now Thompkins drove along the interminable gravel roads to the Sullivan woods with one hand on the wheel and the other brushing the corners of his mustache. Finally she couldn't stand it.

Do I make you uncomfortable, Sheriff?

He widened his eyes and he shifted his shoulders, then coughed. He said, Well, I'll be honest. I guess I'd rather not do this.

I can't imagine you would, she said. Best to give him the sympathy he so obviously wanted.

He told her, If the mayor wasn't such a fan of yours, I wouldn't be out here.

She smiled at him, just a little. She said, I've talked to Wayne's parents; I know you were close to Wayne and Jenny. It can't be easy to do this.

No, ma'am. That it is not.

Thompkins turned the cruiser onto a smaller paved road—on either side of them was nothing but fields, empty and stubbled with old broken cornstalks, and blocky stands of woods, so monochromatic they could be pencil drawings.

Patricia asked, You all went to high school together, didn't you?

Abington, class of '64. Jenny was a year behind me and Wayne.

Did you become friends in high school?

That's when I got to know Jenny. Wayne and I knew each other since we were little. Our mothers taught together at the elementary school.

Thompkins glanced at Patricia. He said, You know all this already. You drawing out the witness?

She smiled, genuinely grateful. So he had a brain in there after all. It seems I have to, she said.

He sighed—a big man's sigh, long and weary—and said, I have nothing against you personally, Ms. Pike. But I don't like the kind of books you write, and I don't like coming out here.

I do appreciate your help. I know it's hard.

Why this case? he asked her. Why us?

She tried to think of the right words, something that wouldn't offend him.

Well, I suppose I was just
drawn
to it. My agent sends me clippings about cases, things she thinks I might want to write about. The murders were so . . . brutal, and they happened on Christmas Eve. And since it happened in the country, it never made the news much; people don't know about it—not in the big cities, anyway. There's also kind of a—a fairy-tale quality to it, the house out in the middle of the forest—you know?

Uh-huh, Thompkins said.

And then there's the mystery of
why.
There's a certain type of case I specialize in—crimes with a component of unsolved mystery. I'm intrigued that Wayne didn't leave a note. You're the only person he gave any information to, and even then—

He didn't say much.

No. I know, I've read the transcript already. But that's my answer, I suppose: there's a lot to write about.

Thompkins stroked his mustache and turned at a stop sign.

They were now to the right of an enormous tract of woods, much larger than the other stands nearby. Patricia had seen it growing on the horizon, almost like a rain cloud, and now, close up, she saw it was at least a mile square. The sheriff slowed and turned off the road, stopping in front of a low metal gate that blocked a rutted dirt track; it dipped away from the road and into the bare trees. A
NO TRESPASSING
sign hung from the gate's center. It had been fired upon a number of times; some of the bullet holes had yet to rust. Thompkins said, Excuse me, and got out. He bent over a giant padlock and then swung the gate inward. He got back behind the wheel, drove the cruiser through without shutting his door, then clambered out again and locked the gate behind them.

Keeps the kids out, he told her, shifting the cruiser into gear. Means the only way in is on foot. A lot of them won't walk it, at least when it's cold like this.

This is a big woods.

Probably the biggest between Indy and Lafayette. 'Course no one's ever measured, but that's—that's what Wayne always told me.

Patricia caught his drop in volume, glanced over to see his mouth droop.

The track curved right, then left. The world they were in now was almost a sepia-toned old film: bare winter branches, patches of old snow on the ground, pools of black muck. Patricia had grown up in Chicago, but had relatives on a farm downstate; she knew what a tangle those woods would be.
What a curious place for a house. She opened her notebook and wrote in shorthand.

This land belongs to Wayne's family? she asked.

It used to. Township owns it now. Wayne had put the land up as collateral for the house, and then when he died his folks didn't pay on the loan. I don't blame them for that. The bank sold it to the town a few years back, on the cheap. The town might sell it someday, but no one really wants farmland anymore. None of the farmers around here can afford to develop it. An ag company would have to buy it. In the meantime I keep an eye on the place.

Thompkins slowed, and the car jounced into and out of a deep rut. He said, Me, I'd like to see the whole thing plowed under. But I don't make those choices.

She wrote his words down.

They rounded a last bend in the track, and there, in front of them, was a meadow, and in the center of it the Sullivan house. Patricia had seen pictures of it, but here in person it was much smaller than she'd imagined. She pulled her camera out of her bag.

It's ugly, she said.

That's the truth, Thompkins said, and put the car into park.

The house was a two-story of some indeterminate style—not quite a Cape Cod, but probably closer to that than anything. The roof was pitched, but seemed . . . too small, too flat for the rest of the house. The face suggested by its windows and front door—flanked by faux half-columns—was that of a mongoloid: all chin and mouth, and no forehead. Or like a baby crying. It had been painted an olive color, and now the paint was flaking. The track continued around behind the
house, where a two-car garage jutted off at right angles, too big in proportion to the house.

Wayne drew up the plans, Thompkins said. He wanted to do it himself.

What did Jenny think of it? Do you know?

She joked about it. Not so Wayne could hear.

Would he have been angry?

No. Sad. He'd wanted a house out here since we were kids. He loved these woods.

Thompkins undid his seat belt. Then he said, I guess he knew the house was a mess, but he . . . it's hard to say. We all pretended it was fine.

Why?

Some folks, you just want to protect their feelings. He wanted us all to be as excited as he was. It wouldn't have occurred to us to be . . . blunt with him. You know that type of person? Kind of like a puppy?

Yes.

Well, Thompkins said, that was Wayne. You want to go in?

The interior of the house was dark—the windows had been boarded over with sheets of plywood. Thompkins had brought two electric lanterns; he set one just inside the door and held the other in his hand. He walked inside and then motioned for Patricia to follow.

The inside of the house stank—an old, abandoned smell of mildew and rot. The carpeting—what was left of it, anyway—seemed to be on the verge of becoming mud, or a kind of algae, and held the stink. Patricia had been in morgues and, for one of her books, had accompanied a homicide detective in Detroit to murder sites. She knew what death—dead human beings—smelled like. That smell might have been in the
Sullivan house, underneath everything else, but she couldn't be sure. It
ought
to have been.

Patricia could see no furniture. Ragged holes gaped in the ceilings where light fixtures might have been. Behind the sheriff was a staircase, rising up into darkness, and to the right of it an entrance into what seemed to be the kitchen.

Shit, Thompkins said.

What?

He held the lantern close to the wall, in the room to the right of the foyer. There was a spot on the wall there, a ragged, spackled patch. Someone had spray-painted an arrow pointing at it, and the word BRAINS.

Thompkins turned a circle, with the lantern held out. He was looking down, and she followed his gaze. She saw cigarette butts, beer cans.

Kids come in here from Abington, Thompkins said. I run them off every now and then. Sometimes it's adults, even. Have to come out and see for themselves, I guess. The kids say it's haunted.

That happens in a lot of places, Patricia said.

Huh, Thompkins said.

She took photos of the rooms, the flashbulb's light dazzling in the dark.

I guess you want the tour, Thompkins said.

I do. She put a hand on his arm, and his eyes widened. She said, as cheerfully as she could, Do you mind if I tape our conversation?

Do you have to? Thompkins asked, looking up from her hand.

It will help me quote you better.

Well. I suppose.

Patricia put a tape into her hand-held recorder, then nodded at him.

Thompkins lifted the lantern up. The light gleamed off his dark eyes. His mouth hung open, just a little, and when he breathed out a thin line of steam appeared in front of the lantern. He looked different. Not sad, not anymore. Maybe, Patricia thought, she saw in him what she was feeling—which was a thrill, what a teenager feels in front of a campfire, knowing a scary story is coming. She reminded herself that actual people had died here, that she was in a place of tremendous sadness, but all the same she couldn't help herself. Her books sold well because she wrote them well, with fervency, and she wrote that way because she loved to be in forbidden places like this; she loved learning the secrets no one wanted to say. Just as, she suspected, Sheriff Thompkins wanted deep in his heart to tell them to her. Secrets were too big for people to hold—that was what she found in her research, time after time. Secrets had their own agendas.

Patricia looked at Thompkins, turning a smile into a quick nod.

All right then, the sheriff said. This way.

Here's the kitchen.

Wayne shot Jenny first, in here. But that shot didn't kill her. You can't tell because of the boards, but the kitchen window looks over the driveway, in front of the garage. Wayne shot her through the window. Jenny was looking out at Wayne, we know that, because the bullet went in through the front of her right shoulder and out the back, and we know he was outside because the glass was broken, and because his
footprints were still in the snow when we got here—there was no wind that night. Wayne's car was in front of the garage. What he did was, he got out of the driver's side door and went around to the trunk and opened it—best guess is the gun was in there; he'd purchased it that night, at a shop in Muncie. Then he went around to the passenger door and stood there for a while; the snow was all tramped down. We think he was loading the gun. Or maybe he was talking himself into doing it. I don't know.

We figure he braced on the top of the car and shot her from where he stood. The security light over the garage was burned out when we got here, so from inside, with the kitchen lights on, Jenny wouldn't have been able to see what he was doing—not very clearly, if at all. I don't know why she was turned around looking out the window at him. Maybe he honked the horn. I also don't know if he aimed to kill her or wound her, but my feeling is he went for a wounding shot. It's about twenty feet from where he stood to where she stood, so it wasn't that hard a shot for him to make, and he made most of his others that night. Now down here—

[The sheriff's pointing to a spot on the linoleum, slightly stained, see photos.]

Excuse me?

[Don't mind me, Sheriff. Just keep talking.]

Oh. All right then.

Well, Jenny—once she was shot, she fell and struggled. There was a lot of blood; we think she probably, uh, bled out for seven or eight minutes while Wayne . . . while Wayne killed the others. She tried to pull herself to the living room; there were . . . smears on the floor consistent with her doing that.

[We're back in the living room; we're facing the front door.]

After he'd shot Jenny, he walked around the east side of the house to the front door here. He could have come in the garage into the kitchen, but he didn't. I'm not sure what happened from there exactly. But here's what I think.