Within These Walls (19 page)

24

J
EANIE REFUSED TO
come down for dinner. She was still angry about the house, and Lucas had turned around and made it worse during Echo’s visit by pushing her out of the way.
I’m really good at this single-parent stuff.
He did the only thing he could think of—ordered pizza and left it on the kitchen island for his kid. Like a runaway with a single sandwich, hunger would wear her down. When it did, he didn’t want her to have to scavenge for a meal. Certainly, she wouldn’t ask him to get something to eat with her, not in her state of animosity.

He spent the rest of the day in his study. His newfound information on January Moore enlivened his hope that maybe,
possibly,
there was still some life in this project. Perhaps, if he waited it out the way Echo had suggested, more hope would come.

By the time something jarred Lucas from the glow of his computer screen, it was well after dark. It hadn’t been a sound—more of a feeling that he
should
have heard something. Then the moment was lost, but the cool shiver of air held enough whisper to draw his attention away from his work. This time, however, he wouldn’t get out of his seat. Not until he had lined up at least a thousand words, one after the other—even if it was just transcribing his and Maury’s call to the best of his recollection. At least, that’s what he had promised himself.

That was before his gaze paused on the pictures pushpinned to the corkboard.

Lucas leaned forward, pressing his chest against his desk to get a better look.

Chloe Sears’s photograph hung upside down.

Chloe wasn’t an overly attractive girl. In every picture he’d ever seen of her, she looked dead-eyed, stoned. Her mouth was perpetually open, if only a little bit. Her wide, flat nose gave her face a strange, cubist look; a personified Picasso, where no facial feature was in the right spot.

Within the past few days, he had stared at that corkboard for hours. He’d paced back and forth in front of it, chewed away half his fingernails while inspecting computer printouts and news articles. Chloe had been right side up. Of that he was sure.

He broke his promise, got out of his seat, and stepped across the study to the board. Had Jeanie not closed herself up in her room all night, she could have been the culprit.

Lucas furrowed his eyebrows and pinned Chloe right side up.

Chloe had been twenty-three years old the day she died. Her parents had described her as “fiercely independent” in a blip of an article appearing in
The Denver Post
after police identified her as one of Halcomb’s devout. To them, she hadn’t seemed like the type of girl susceptible to the charms of a weird guy traipsing up and down the Pacific coast. She had vanished from her Denver-based home in early 1979, but because she had just turned eighteen, the police refused to take the disappearance seriously. That, and the Sears’s track record of domestic disputes didn’t bode well for finding the missing girl. Chloe’s brother, Chris, had a habit of threatening his parents. Chloe’s mother was a drinker, and her father had a chronic case of apathy. After police discovered Chloe to be one of the nine dead in Pier Pointe, her younger sister, Callie, revealed that her deceased sibling had had a mean streak. Chloe had attempted to talk her little sister into joining Halcomb’s group in early 1982, only
a few months before they set up camp in the forests of Northern California.

Lucas had attempted to reach the Sears, but Chloe’s mother had succumbed to her alcoholism and died in 1995 of sclerosis of the liver. Chris Sears was in jail on multiple charges of rape and burglary. He wasn’t interested in talking to anyone about his sibling unless there was money involved; and Lucas didn’t have any to spare. He couldn’t find Callie anywhere. And while Chloe’s father still lived in the same house, when Lucas reached out to him, the cranky octogenarian called him “a gossip-mongering piece of shit” before damning him back to the worthless column or newspaper or wherever it was he had come from.

Every one of Halcomb’s kids had a similar story to Chloe’s—and every lead Lucas had followed resulted in his getting shut down. Halcomb’s Faithful came from broken homes, were looking for a place to belong, and Jeff had a knack for making the unwanted feel special. He was an expert at saying the right thing at the right time. Charming and conniving, he stated the obvious in ways that made him look wise. Runaways were a disenchanted youth. Unappreciated victims of parents that not only misunderstood their children but also didn’t seem to care. Those parents knew that was the message Halcomb had been passing on to their children—kids that had taken their own lives for reasons no one understood. That kind of loss came with a lot of guilt, and guilt made people defensive. Nobody wanted to talk because everyone felt as though they were at fault . . . and perhaps in a way they were.

He peered at Chloe’s photograph for a moment more, still perplexed by its hanging upside down. Maybe he was just losing it. He didn’t remember doing so, but he very well may have removed that photo while doing his research.

Lucas ducked out of his study and glanced up the stairs. Jean
ie’s door was still shut. He frowned and crossed the living room to the kitchen, his stomach rumbling at the thought of a few slices of cold pizza. But he stopped just before climbing the brick steps that would take him into the kitchen. There, hanging on the wall, was a framed family photograph, taken when Lucas and Caroline still lived in the big colonial in Port Washington. It remained Lucas’s favorite family photo, taken when Jeanie was two or three years old. The three of them sat on the brown front lawn, crispy autumn leaves surrounding them in shades of red and gold. Caroline’s dream home was behind them, out of focus but still dominating the background. He’d hung it to remind himself of what was important, to keep his motivations in check. Except that, now, he gave the picture a perplexed look. He would have passed it by without a second glance had the fucking thing not been hanging upside down. Just like Chloe.

“What the
hel
l
?” He shot another look up at the second floor. Jeanie was screwing with him. She had to be. There was no other explanation. Except that he was almost positive Jeanie hadn’t gone into his study. The nagging voice at the back of his mind refused to go away.

That photo of Chloe hadn’t been upside down, Lou. You know it hadn’t been. You’re just afraid of what it might mean.

INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEW OF CALLIE SEARS, EXCERPT

March 24, 1983

Investigative Officer: Russell Cole, badge number 381, Pier Pointe, Washington, PD

Russell Cole: Did Chloe tell you she was leaving before her disappearance?

Callie Sears: She hinted at it for a long time, but she didn’t come out and say “Hey, I’m leaving tomorrow” or anything.

RC: How did she hint at it?

CS: She hated our parents. I mean, me and Chris, we have major issues with them, too, but Chloe
really
hated them. One time, when we were younger, she told me that she tried to poison our dad.

RC: How old were you when she told you this?

CS: I don’t know, maybe eight?

RC: That would have made Chloe eleven, correct?

CS: Yeah, but when she told me, she said that it had been a few years in the past, so maybe she was around my age when she actually tried to do it.

RC: Did she tell you how she tried to poison your father?

CS: Sure, with rat poison. She said she sprinkled it into his food.

RC: And your father ingested this food?

CS: I don’t know. She said he did, but I’m not sure that I ever really believed her.

RC: Callie, you understand that Chloe was involved with a pretty nefarious group, correct?

CS: (long pause) I guess I wasn’t all that surprised when I found out, honestly. I mean, it made me sad, but I wasn’t shocked or anything.

RC: You expected her to get involved with people like this after she left home?

CS: I guess I didn’t
expect
anything. Chloe was mean-spirited sometimes. I mean, I don’t like my parents, either, but I never thought about killing them or anything. You really think that group she was involved with was evil?

RC: My opinion is irrelevant. Do you know if Chloe was involved in any type of religious activity?

CS: Like, church and stuff? No way. Not unless she ran off and became a Bible thumper, but I don’t know anything about that.

RC: What about any alternative beliefs? Did she hold any nontraditional views? Anything dark like witchcraft, possibly satanic in nature?

CS: The group was satanic . . . ?

RC: We’re trying to figure that out.

CS: God. Did they really kill a baby?

RC: I’m not at liberty to discuss case details at the moment. Can you answer my question?

CS: I . . . I didn’t think she was
satanic
.

RC: Did you speak with your sister after she left home at all?

CS: Only once.

RC: When was that?

CS: It was around my birthday last year, so January of 1982.

RC: How did Chloe reach out to you?

CS: She called me, said she was heading up to see the redwoods with some friends. She asked me if I wanted to go. By then Chloe had been missing for almost a year. I hadn’t heard from her at all, and when she called me she sounded funny . . . so I told her no.

RC: Funny how?

CS: Just different, like when you haven’t heard someone’s voice in a long time. She was being really sweet, which was totally unlike her. I guess that’s why I knew something was up. Chloe was never nice to me.

RC: Did you tell your parents that she called?

CS: I mentioned it.

RC: How did they react?

CS: It didn’t really seem like they cared. Chloe always gave them a hard time growing up. I think they were kind of glad she took off, honestly. They seemed glad when Chris ended up getting arrested, too. Less people to worry about or something like that. (pause) Our folks aren’t exactly what you’d call superparents, you know? That’s why Chloe left. It’s probably why Chris got into the crap he got into. After
Chloe called and offered for me to catch up with her in California, I sort of regretted telling her no . . . because maybe it would have been better than staying home. Thank God I didn’t though, right? (laughter, pause) Sorry. I shouldn’t even joke about that.

RC: Callie, what did Chloe say to you during that phone call? Did she talk about this group of friends at all?

CS: She just said that she finally found a place where she felt like she fit in, that she’d changed her name to symbolize her new beginning.

RC: Changed her name to what?

CS: Clover. She told me it meant “Chloe was over.”

RC: Did she say anything else?

CS: Yeah, that she felt bad for me that I was still trapped with my parents. She called them “oppressors.” She said she hoped that I had the strength of will to set myself free, and that there was another way. I asked her “Another way for what?” but she either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to answer.

RC: So, she was inviting you to join the group?

CS: I mean, I guess so?

RC: When you turned down her invitation, what happened then?

CS: She said that it was too bad and we’d probably never see each other again.

RC: Did she say why that was?

CS: Sure. She said that she was leaving her old life and everyone in it behind, and if I was content to keep living with our parents, I had obviously been brainwashed and she couldn’t talk to me anymore.

RC: And that wasn’t enough to convince you to join whatever group she was involved in?

CS: No. As I said, Chloe and me, we’re sisters . . . but we were never friends. For most of my life, I was convinced she hated my guts. Maybe she just wanted me to join so she could poison me the way she tried to poison our dad. The way she ended up poisoning herself.

25

Friday, March 26, 1982

Eleven Months, Nineteen Days Before the Sacrament

I
T HAD BEEN
one month and four days since Avis flushed Audra’s pills down the toilet, and she’d never felt better.

She and the girls had started a vegetable garden just shy of the cherry orchard. Soon they’d have cucumbers, carrots, and giant tomatoes as big as Avis’s swollen, bursting heart. The boys made improvements to the house, and while Avis hadn’t asked, she could only assume it meant they were planning on staying for good. Even Maggie was spending most of her time at the house, laughing with the group, partaking in the cooking and planting, acting like a childless woman rather than a single mom. Eloise remained with her grandmother while Maggie traipsed around Congressman Snow’s property, making it a point to regularly tell Avis how different she looked. Better.
Like a new woman.
And she never ever called Avis by her former name. It was almost strange how easily Maggie had taken to all the changes. Maggie was, by nature, a worrier, but not once did she voice any worry about the strangers that had become Avis’s surrogate family. And while Avis found Maggie’s lack of concern a little odd, she didn’t want to rock the boat. Acceptance was a good thing, and this new life was exactly what Avis needed.

That new life consisted of shared clothes and shared lovers—though, admittedly, the latter took Avis a bit by surprise. She discovered this particular departure from the ordinary during her routine of going from room to room to collect dirty laundry.

The door to the boys’ room had been left ajar and she simply walked in. There, upon the bed, she found a quartet of boys and girls in a tangle of arms and legs that seemed to pulsate like a writhing ball of flesh. She caught a glimpse of Lily’s fiery hair. She heard Robin moan from somewhere beneath the pile. She watched Noah throw his head back and regard her with his giant eyes, his hands gripping an indiscernible mound of muscle that didn’t belong to him. When she and Deacon made eye contact, she stumbled out of the room and slammed the door behind her. The snapping of the door against the jamb only amplified her mortification.

Avis rushed down to the laundry room and busied herself, trying to forget what she’d just seen. She had never thought of herself as particularly innocent, having suffered through a promiscuous streak as a teen between attempts on her own life. But now her own sense of naïveté left her flabbergasted. All at once, she was repulsed and excited. Had they
really
been doing what she thought they were doing . . . and would they ever invite her to join?

A cacophony of rivaling thoughts rolled around her skull. She sat down next to the washer and tried to concentrate on the tattered Aldous Huxley paperback she had stuffed into the back pocket of her jeans. But amid the clanging of snaps and zippers in the clothes dryer, she couldn’t shake the sound of Robin’s breathless pleasure.

Her thoughts refused to stay in line. She sat there for what felt like an hour, trying to figure out whether to be upset or amused, wondering if she should pretend she hadn’t seen a thing. Every mother has the miraculous ability of momentary blindness. Surely,
Avis could summon the power of erasing memory the way one would wipe clean a crude picture drawn in chalk.

But before she could figure out how to handle any of it, her thoughts veered off in an altogether different direction, leaving her with a queasy, twisting ache in the pit of her stomach. Because if Deacon and Noah were sleeping with Lily and Robin—sleeping
together
rather than as exclusive couples—what did that mean when it came to Clover and Gypsy, to Sunnie, to
Jeff
, whose bed she was frequenting on a regular basis? She wanted to believe that she was special, that she was his and he was hers. She had assumed exclusivity. But as she sat there clutching
Brave New World
in a tight roll of soft pages and tattered cardboard, she realized that her assumption had been wrong. Maybe that was why Maggie was hanging around so often. Maybe, despite trying to forget how easily her best friend was able to capture attention, that same friend was going behind her back, sleeping with Jeffrey while Avis worked in the garden, told Avis how good she looked to keep her off track.

No, she wouldn’t.

Avis’s stomach heaved.

That bitch!

The book tumbled to the floor.

She threw herself at the wash sink that stank of borax and bleach. Her breakfast splashed against the metal bottom of the basin like abstract art. Tears streamed down her face from the effort. For all she knew, Jeff was sleeping not just with Maggie but with
all
the girls. The fact that it had taken her so long to figure it out was probably some sort of inside joke, so utterly obvious that it marked her as an idiot. A stupid, worthless, infantile fool.

How long will she think she and Jeff are a thing?
they had likely wondered.
When will she catch him in the act, and who will the lucky girl
be?

Office pools had been started over less.

You moron.
That self-deprecating voice reared up from the cobwebbed corner of her mind, louder than ever.
You stupid little girl. Why don’t you just kill yoursel
f
? Spare yourself the embarrassment. They’re better off without an idiot like you around. Because
really
, how could you be so fucking dim-wittedly dumb?

She crumpled back into her seat beside the machine and sobbed. The humiliation and betrayal crashed over her in debilitating waves. She felt obtuse enough to stick her head in the washer and drown herself. Her brain made an immediate leap to the medicine cabinet ­upstairs—the master bathroom had once held relief. Under Jeffrey’s orders, Avis had continued to pick up Audra’s pills at the clinic. But they were confiscated as soon as she stepped out of the facility. Jeff would pour them out the open car window or crush them under his boot heels, grinding them into the pavement. The fact that her source of help was gone only made her burst into another fit of hysterical tears.

Avis would have been happy to live out the rest of her life in the laundry room, but Kenzie slunk inside and quietly took a seat on the floor beside her. He watched as she wiped at her face with someone’s dirty T-shirt. When she finally gathered up enough courage to look at him, he gave her a pensive smile.

“It’s always strange the first time,” he said, doing her the favor of not asking what was wrong. He’d figured her problem out on his own. Hell, for all Avis knew, they were laughing at her as she wept behind a closed door. Was she still Avis if they were all snickering behind her back? Was Avis the type of girl to be the butt of someone’s jokes? She shook her head and tried to put on a miserable smile. Kenzie reached out and placed a long-fingered hand on her knee for comfort, then scooted a little closer. His hand drifted down her leg to cup her calf. “When I first found out, I walked in on Clover and Gypsy,” he said. “Thought they were gonna
kill
me.” He cracked a widemouthed grin, then barked out a jarring laugh at the memory.

She soaked up spit and tears with cotton that smelled of sweat.

“It’s our way, see? We gotta love each other. Being this way, it makes us stronger, more unified. You know, like a team.” When she didn’t respond, he gave her a quizzical look. “Don’t you feel closer to Jeff after you two started sleepin’ together?”

Her heart jumped into her throat, nearly escaping in another spasm of sickness. Did
everyone
know that she and Jeff were having sex? She squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden pounding in her head.
There’s something very wrong here,
she thought.
This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

“It’s no big deal, Avis,” he said.
That name.
“You don’t gotta be embarrassed. Everyone belongs to everyone. Monogamy is selfish, like ownership. You don’t want to be owned, right? That’s slavery.” He glanced over his shoulder, then leaned in, motioning for her to bring her tear-swollen face closer to his. Audra wasn’t interested in secrets. She’d had her fill. But she moved closer anyway. “Even so, we still have our favorites.”

She pulled away from him, feeling sicker than ever. “Oh.” The single syllable came out flat and hollow. Was being a favorite good enough? Could she handle the nonexclusivity if somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew she was Jeffrey’s top choice?

Kenzie backpedaled. “What I mean is . . . look, I’ve been around for about three years now. I haven’t ever seen Jeffrey spend as much time with one girl as he’s been spendin’ with you. I’m telling you, you’re
the one.
”

Was she? A guy like Jeffrey would have never gone for Audra Snow, but if she was his favorite, maybe she had transformed into someone new after all.

Avis—Audra?—blinked at the awkward, gangly boy in front of her. He was daddy-longlegs tall and skinny as a twig. His legs were bent every which way in the small amount of space the laundry room
provided. She hardly ever saw him anywhere other than beside the living room stereo, flipping through the record crate.

“Really?” Trying to regain some composure, she wiped at her nose and sniffled.

“Yeah-huh,” Kenzie said. “He likes you a lot, Avis. Jeff is picky. He only sleeps with some girls once. Robin and Lily, they got initiated—
everyone
gets initiated—but that was the end of that for them.”

“Initiated . . .” She muttered the word to herself. Kenzie didn’t seem to hear her.

“Besides, Jeff talks about you a bunch.” He blanched, then gave her a strained look.
Don’t say anything.

“I won’t tell,” she said, immediately garnering a sigh of relief from the all-angles boy. “What does he say?” she asked, hoping that the ego boost would help her crawl out of the emotional hole she’d stumbled down. But this time Kenzie shook his head. He’d already said enough, possibly more than he should have.

“We aren’t supposed to gossip.”

“But we’re supposed to keep secrets?”

He suddenly looked conflicted, his face going ruddy. His lips—which he pressed into a tight line—turned pale. A moment later, his hand moved from Avis’s calf back up to her knee, then farther up until she stopped it midtravel. Her reaction caused him to pause, to cant his head and study her in an animalistic sort of way. It was then that she noticed just how awkward Kenzie was. His head looked too big for his body, as though he had once lost a lot of weight and had never been able to gain it back. She remembered what Jeffrey had said about how most of the group would have ended up strung out on drugs or dead in a back alley. Kenzie had a definite post-junkie look. Even his teeth appeared oversized, like big white Chiclets squares pushed up into his gums.

Avis didn’t find Kenzie at all attractive. If anything, he struck her as a little creepy, all spindly and thin like a skeleton wrapped in cloth. But she knew if she pushed him away again, he’d leave her to the laundry while reporting the rejection to Jeff. Rejecting Kenzie, no matter how unsightly she found him to be, was a direct affront to the entire family. If she wanted to be part of the group, she had to do as she was told. They expected her to love everybody . . . not only Jeff.

She imagined Jeffrey explaining it to her in a way that would make the situation strangely appealing.
This is what makes us different from everyone else—what makes us special, what fulfills our souls.

Who was she to argue against the beliefs of the group that had swept her off her feet? They held the key to the happiness that she’d basked in for the past month. If physical love was a part of that equation, who was she to say it was wrong?

“Can it be just us?” Her pulse whooshed in her ears. “Please?”

Kenzie looked down to her hand on top of his, as if contemplating her request, and finally gave her a slow nod. “Okay,” he said. “But only because it’s the first time.”

And so she rose from her chair, quietly closed the laundry room door, and snapped the lock into place.

When she looked back, Kenzie was already fumbling with the buckle of his belt.

Aldous Huxley sadly stared up at her, halfway kicked beneath the washing machine. A Brave New World, indeed.