The Devil's Labyrinth

CHAPTER 12

TERI MCINTYRE PARKED HER car on the narrow lane that wound through the cemetery, decided that it didn’t really matter that she’d forgotten to bring flowers for the first time in the two years she’d been coming here to visit her husband, and picked her way carefully across the grass. Coming to the headstone that marked Bill’s grave, she placed her hand on the cold granite.

“Hi, honey,” she said softly enough that no one would have heard her even if she hadn’t been alone in the cemetery. “Well, it finally happened — I forgot to bring you flowers. Forgive me?” She decided that the unbroken silence that fell over the cemetery as she paused for a moment, implied his assent, then she slowly lowered herself down until she was sitting cross-legged on the grave. “I hope you feel like listening,” she sighed, “because I sure feel like talking.” She unfolded her legs and stretched them out, unconsciously falling into the same position she used to use back in the days when they would sometimes sprawl on the bed for hours at a stretch, neither sleeping nor making love, but just talking. The grass felt cool beneath her, and she ran her hand across the dark green surface, finally picking a blade as if it were a piece of lint clinging to the coverlet of their bed.

“Ryan got hurt at school on Friday — hurt pretty badly. He was beaten up by some kids, and I have to tell you, it scared me to death.” She waited for a second, not really as if she were expecting Bill to say something, but just to collect her thoughts. “I’ve about decided to take him out of Dickinson and send him to St. Isaac’s. I — well, I guess I just feel like he’ll be safer, at least until he graduates.” Tears blurred her eyes but she brushed them away, almost impatiently. “Don’t worry,” she said, determined not to give in to the grief that was threatening to overwhelm her. “I’m not going to start crying. And I know this isn’t what we’d do if you were here.” Now her voice started to tremble in spite of herself. “But you’re not here, and I need to make the decision myself. She hesitated, then got to the true reason she’d come here today. “Except that I’m not making it all by myself. I—” She fell silent for a moment, then pressed on. “I’ve met someone, Bill. His name is Tom — Tom Kelly — and—”

And what? And she was lonely, and frightened, and miserable, and Tom Kelly had been there for her last night and helped her deal with the hospital and Ryan and the police and everything else Bill should have been there to help her with. But how could she say it? How could she say any of it without sounding cold and callous and uncaring that the only man she’d ever loved — ever intended to love — had died and left her alone to be lonely and frightened and miserable? But it was Bill that was dead, not her, and—

And she had to go on.

“Anyway, he’s a good man. You’d like him.” She managed a wan smile despite the bleariness in her eyes. “And Ryan will learn to — I know he will. Anyway, Tom was able to arrange a scholarship for Ryan, so it won’t cost us anything. I don’t like the idea of him living away at school, but it’s only for a year and a half, and it’s only a few miles away, so I’ll see him a lot.” She reached out and touched the headstone again. “And I hope it’s okay with you.” She fell silent again, then went on. “And I’m not talking about just Ryan, either. I’m talking about Tom, too. I hope you can understand about him, wherever you are.”

She turned over onto her back and looked at the sky through the leaves in the lone tree on the hill. “He misses you,” she said, a tear leaking out and sliding down the side of her face. “He keeps your picture on his desk. And I know he thinks I’m being disloyal by seeing Tom, but I hope someday he’ll understand. I know you want what’s best for both of us, and right now I need some help and some support.” Her voice began to tremble. “The kind you can’t give me anymore.” She fished in her purse, found some Kleenex and wiped her eyes. In the tree overhead a bird began to sing, and suddenly Teri felt lighter and strangely unburdened. “And Ryan needs a father figure. I’m not saying that I’m going to marry Tom or anything like that, but I think he’s going to be good for Ryan.”

Above her, the bird sang a few more notes, and Teri decided to accept the bird’s chirping as the sign she was looking for.

She smiled. “You should see Ryan, honey,” she went on, the tremble in her voice steadying as her tears dried. “He’s becoming a man. He’s so tall — the last time you saw him, he was still a little boy. Remember how gangly he was? Well, now he’s filled out, and started shaving, and every time I look at him, I see you. And he’s decided he wants to go to Princeton, which is another reason to send him to St. Isaac’s.”

The bird chirped one last time, and flew away and Teri got to her feet. “Got to get going,” she sighed, slung her purse over her shoulder, kissed her fingertips, touched them to the top of the headstone, and stepped back to stare at the name that was deeply engraved in the granite:

Captain William James McIntyre.

“Tom Kelly is a good man,” Teri whispered. “But he’s not you. There was only one of you, and you’re still my hero. And you always will be.” Tears welled in her eyes once more, but they were no longer those of the horrible, wrenching sorrow that had gripped her for most of the last two years. “I’ll come back soon,” she said. “No matter what happens between me and Tom, I’ll come back to tell you about Ryan.”

As the bird wheeled in the sky and came back to perch once more on the branch above her, Teri turned and began to retrace her footsteps on the path back to her car.

Bill had heard her, she was sure.

Heard her, and understood.

† † †

Clay Matthews watched silently as Brother Francis and two girls he didn’t know — but who must have done something wrong to earn them the penance of having to help pack up Kip’s belongings — finished clearing out Kip’s half of the closet. The weird thing was that after complaining all last year and most of this one that Kip had too much stuff, suddenly Clay was feeling like not only the closet but the room as well was far too empty. And it wasn’t that Kip’s stuff would soon be gone, but that Kip himself was gone.

He was gone, and he wouldn’t be back.

He was dead.

Even now the word didn’t seem quite real to Clay. In fact, it felt wrong; people his age didn’t die — old people did. People like his grandmother, who had died of cancer two years ago, and Mr. Endicott, who had lived across the street in Brookline, and had died last year just because he’d gotten too old.

But now Kip was dead and suddenly Clay wished he didn’t have to live in this room anymore. Last night, at least, he’d been able to turn the lights on when he couldn’t go to sleep, and look at Kip’s stuff, and sort of pretend that maybe it was all a mistake. But even last night he hadn’t really been able to make himself believe it. Somehow, in a way Clay didn’t quite understand, all the stuff that had belonged to Kip had changed. It was as if just overnight it had all turned into nothing more than old clothes nobody would want, and beat-up shoes that should be thrown away, and clutter that wasn’t really good for anything, but just filled up a lot of space.

And now it was all being packed up and taken away and instead of making Clay feel better it was just making him feel worse. Kip’s desk looked naked without his books and CDs, and the bed, stripped of its sheets, blankets and bedspread, didn’t just look bare.

It looked abandoned.

The gaping lid of Kip’s footlocker — now jammed with nearly everything Kip had owned — seemed almost like the maw of some kind of beast that was swallowing up every last trace of Clay’s roommate.

“Am I going to be in here by myself for the rest of the year?” he asked, doing his best to keep his voice steady.

Brother Francis shook his head. “I would be very surprised if a new student didn’t arrive tomorrow.”

An odd mixture of resentment and relief rippled through Clay. He didn’t really want another roommate, but he didn’t want to be alone, either. “Who?” he asked, even though it didn’t really matter. Whoever it was, it wasn’t going to be Kip.

Brother Francis shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s something no one consults me about,” he said. “I know there’s a waiting list, and I know there are at least a dozen names on it. If Father Laughlin hasn’t already made the decision, I suspect he will have by tomorrow morning.” He scanned the area around Kip’s bed and desk, and then turned to the two girls. “Good job — I think you two can be excused now.”

The two girls wasted no time scurrying out of the room before Brother Francis could change his mind, and after they were gone, Brother Francis laid a hand on Clay’s shoulder. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked, his eyes clearly reflecting the concern in his voice.

Clay nodded halfheartedly.

“Okay. I’ll go get a dolly for the footlocker. See you in a few minutes.” Brother Francis left the room, glanced back at Clay, then gently closed the door.

Clay took a deep breath, his eyes fixing on the bare mattress where just a few days ago Kip had sprawled, listening to his iPod, playing air guitar and drumming on his knees. And now he’d never see Kip again.

Never hear another one of his stupid jokes.

Never play cards with him.

He was gone.

But where? Where was Kip’s spirit, the presence of him that had always been in this room even when Kip himself was not? Was it in Heaven? Or was it in Hell, because he had killed that woman?

Or was it just gone?

Who knew what really happened to somebody’s spirit after they died?

Clay flopped down onto his bed, punching up the pillow beneath his head. As he gazed over at the bare mattress on the other side of the room, his eyes suddenly fell on the seam in the wainscoting next to Kip’s bed.

Detective North’s questions about drugs came back to his mind.

Was it possible that Kip really had been using drugs?

If he had, he’d been lying for as long as Clay had known him. But if Kip had been using drugs, Clay knew where he would have kept them.

The one place the two detectives hadn’t found, and that Clay hadn’t told them about. He got up, walked around the far side of Kip’s bed, and carefully removed the panel of wainscoting he and Kip had discovered no more than a month after they’d moved into the room, when Kip had become certain that the wall behind the panel was hollow. Sure enough, once they worked the panel loose they found a hole in the plaster behind the wainscoting that some previous occupant of the room must have cut in order to make a secret compartment where all the things no one would want Brother Francis — or anyone else — to find during dorm inspections could be safely stored.

Clay reached in, and his fingers found what he expected: two large plastic ziplock bags.

In his ziplock bag, Clay had five old copies of Playboy, half a pack of cigarettes, and an unopened pack of condoms, at least one of which he was still hoping to get to use before the end of school this year. There should have been six copies of Playboy, but the one Kip had borrowed was now forever gone.

The other bag was Kip’s.

Clay pulled it out and dumped the contents on Kip’s bare mattress.

Basically the same stuff, except that Kip’s cigarettes were almost gone.

But no drugs.

For a moment Clay considered transferring the contents of Kip’s bag to his own, but then changed his mind; even though Kip was gone, it didn’t feel right.

It felt like stealing.

Putting both bags back into the wall, he carefully replaced the wainscoting, then went back to his bed and flopped down.

So he’d been right — Kip hadn’t been doing drugs. Then what had he been doing?

What the hell had happened to him?

† † †

Ryan McIntyre lay on his bed, propped up on pillows, watching his mother pack clothes into a duffel bag. But she wasn’t packing nearly enough — it looked like she was packing for a weekend camping trip or something. “I’m gonna need a lot more than—” he began, but Teri didn’t let him finish.

“St. Isaac’s uses uniforms,” she said, folding another pair of jeans and doing her best to fit them into the duffel bag without wrinkling them.

“Uniforms?” Ryan echoed. Nobody had said anything about uniforms. His jaw ached, his side hurt whenever he moved, he was getting a headache from trying to figure out what to take to St. Isaac’s, and now he had to wear a uniform? Maybe he should just go back to Dickinson. But even as the idea formed in his mind, the memory of the beating in the boys’ restroom flooded back. Whatever happened at St. Isaac’s couldn’t be as bad as that, so he watched silently as his mother continued folding clothes, wondering now when he was going to wear the stuff she was packing.

What about the rest of the stuff he was planning to take? Would he even be allowed to put posters on the walls in his room? Probably not. Now all kinds of questions were tumbling through his mind. Was he going to have a roommate? Were the nuns as mean as Father Sebastian said? How strict was everything going to be? And was he going to have to go to Mass all the time? Even worse, what if he couldn’t even do the work? Private schools were supposed to be way harder than public ones, and St. Isaac’s—

He cut the thought short; it was all just too much to deal with.

His eyes fell on the photograph of his father on his desk. That should have been the first thing he packed. Pain stabbed him as he got awkwardly off the bed, but he took a deep breath and pressed his side until it passed. Then he picked up the photograph. His father seemed to be looking not exactly at him, but deep into him. Ryan instantly felt the familiar pang of loneliness that always shot through him when he thought about his father, and the way his father had always been able to provide answers for his questions. Now, as he gazed at the photograph, he could almost hear his father’s voice. Grow up, it seemed to be whispering. Act like a man, and do the right thing. He wrapped the photograph in a towel and handed it to his mom, who put it into the duffel.

“You don’t have to take everything with you tomorrow,” she said. “I can bring over anything you need.”

Ryan gingerly sat back down on the bed, holding his side.

Teri looked at him anxiously. “Do you need a pain pill?”

Ryan shook his head. “I’m okay. Just nervous about tomorrow, I guess.”

Teri sat next to him and smoothed his hair, then touched his swollen eye and gently traced the edge of a big bruise. As Ryan was about to brush her hand away she suddenly stood up. “There’s something I want you to have,” she said. “You’re not as old as you’re supposed to be, but I think it’s time.”

Intrigued, Ryan followed her through his bedroom door and down the hall to the little door that opened into the attic. They ducked in the doorway and stood up in a spacious area with a plywood floor below them and bare rafters above. Teri groped for the chain and a single hanging bulb lit the room, throwing harsh shadows across the storage space. Ryan followed her between containers of Christmas decorations, cartons of his baby clothes, and boxes of photographs, many of them so old no one even knew who they were anymore. A couple of old lamps with missing shades sat on a bent chaise lounge, and the ceramic chicken he’d painted red when he was in kindergarten sat, headless, next to the chaise on the little table that used to be in his room when he was small.

Ignoring it all, his mother crouched next to an old green trunk with a combination lock on its hasp.

A trunk Ryan couldn’t remember seeing before.

His curiosity increasing, he knelt next to his mother and watched as she worked the combination, removed the lock and opened the lid.

On the top lay a sheet of tissue paper, which she pulled away to reveal his father’s class-A dress uniform.

Ryan’s breath caught. The last time he’d seen his father dressed in that uniform was when he received a Silver Star for Gallantry in Action, during his first tour in Iraq. It was the same uniform he wore in the photo Ryan kept on his desk. Could this be the gift?

But even before he could voice the question, his mother had lifted out the tray holding the uniform, set it aside, then removed everything below it. Finally she pried open a false bottom that was so perfectly fitted that Ryan hadn’t even seen it, and took a small rosewood box from the compartment the panel had hidden. “This was with your father’s things when they came back from Iraq,” she told him. She turned the box so it faced Ryan and opened its hinged lid.

Inside was his father’s crucifix, the one he’d worn around his neck almost as long as Ryan could remember. He picked it up gently, almost reverently. It was heavy — heavier than he’d expected. And it wasn’t flat like most crucifixes. This one was thick, the body of Christ in full relief, the cross itself covered with intricately detailed carvings, each delicate etching darkened with time and tarnish.

“He was going to give it to you when you were grown,” Teri said as Ryan gazed at the object in his hands. “But I think maybe you need to have it right now. He said it always helped him do the right thing.”

The silver felt warm and familiar to Ryan’s fingers. Despite the etching, the metal was smooth, as if it were very old, and had been worn by generations of fathers and sons. And he could almost hear his father’s voice again, repeating the words he’d heard inside his head a few minutes ago. The same words his mother had just spoken.

Do the right thing.

Accepting the cross — putting the chain around his neck and feeling its weight against his heart — would mean something.

It would mean he had become a man, a grown-up.

A man his father would be proud of.

He remembered the last few days, when he’d acted like a sulking child when all his mother had wanted him to do was go out to dinner with a man she liked.

Instead, he had thought about weasling out of it. In the end, he’d thought better of it, but it had taken him too long.

And what about when those two guys had jumped him in the hall at school, and he hadn’t even tried to fight back.

What kind of man would have just taken the beating he had?

Suddenly the crucifix felt like it was burning his flesh. This was something that had to be earned, not simply received.

He handed it back to his mother. “Not yet,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise. “You’re sure?”

Ryan nodded. “I think maybe Dad was right — maybe I’m not old enough yet.”

She took the crucifix from him, kissed it so gently it almost made Ryan cry, and put it back into the box. “It’s yours,” she said, “and it’s right here, whenever you want it. The combination to the lock is your father’s birthday.”

He nodded, not trusting his voice to speak. He would come back for it, but not until he had earned it.

And just now, he felt a tiny bit closer to realizing that goal.