The Night Visitors

Chapter Twenty-Six Mattie

STUPID. STUPID TO care what this asshole has to say about my father. Stupid to care about my father after all these years. After the things he did.

And we were so close. Alice definitely got my signal. All I had to do was throw the chili in Davis’s face and she’d have gotten the gun. Now we’re all sitting around the table eating chili—well, Davis is eating while the bowls in front of me and Alice go cold—and Alice is looking at me as if I’m the enemy.

They’ll drag his name through the mud and yours and Caleb’s along with it. It will bring up all that old business about your time at Hudson. That’s how people will see you, Mattie, like you’re tainted by your father’s deeds. Do you want that?

No, I hadn’t, and I don’t now. I’d rather Davis shot me right now and got it over with, but I’ve got Alice and Oren to think about, and anything that uses up time until Frank gets here is useful. “Would you like another bowl?” I ask after Davis has finished his second and is on his third beer. “Another beer?”

“Nah. I’d better keep my wits about me. Don’t think I don’t see you two ladies giving each other the side-eye. I had kinda hoped Oren would’ve joined us by now, though. HOW ABOUT IT, SON? JOIN US FOR SOME CHILI?”

Davis’s booming voice echoes in the house, which feels bigger and emptier outside the circle of our lamplight. Is Oren even still here? I hope he hasn’t tried to go outside. I think of Caleb’s frozen body and reflexively check the window that faces the barn, but the snow has mounded so high on the sill that I can’t see anything except that it’s still snowing.

“Expecting someone?” Davis asks.

“No one’s getting out here,” I say, shaking my head. “Or out of here, for that matter. We could be snowed in for days. Where did you leave your car?”

“Never you mind,” he snaps.

I shrug. “I was just wondering what your exit plan was. Do you have four-wheel drive? A plow?”

“What would I need those for?”

“To get out before the police come checking on me. I’m friends with the chief of police. He’ll come out once the snow stops tomorrow to see if I need help digging out.” This last part is true even though Frank and I haven’t exactly been friends for years; he still checks up on me after snowstorms and hurricanes. “Jason’s truck has a plow. You might want to check his pocket for keys. Do you know how to operate a plow?”

“Of course I do!” he says in an angry voice that tells me he absolutely doesn’t. “I’m surprised you do.”

I shrug. “Living out in the woods all alone like I do, you pick up these things.”

“Well, then you can help drive when we’re ready to go. And we’ll worry about that key later.” He smiles slyly. “I think you’re just trying to put off our little trip down memory lane in your daddy’s study. But I suspect Allie here is looking forward to it, aren’t you, Allie?”

Alice shrugs. “Why should I care? I already know her folks died here in a gas leak.” She takes out a bit of newsprint from her jeans pocket and unfolds it on the table. As Davis leans forward to read it I recognize my father’s picture. Seeing his face makes me go cold all over, as if he were here, sitting in judgment of us all.

“This doesn’t say nothing about him being under investigation,” Davis says. “You got it hushed up, eh? Figures. Rich judge’s daughter living in a big fancy house, you probably had your daddy’s cronies sweep all the nastiness under the rug.”

I raise one eyebrow. “Does the state of this house look like I have a lot of money?”

“That’s true,” Alice says. “Everything’s falling apart here. Even the clothes she’s wearing have holes in them. I don’t think she’s got two dimes to rub together, Davis.”

Davis gives Alice a condescending smirk. “That just shows how you don’t understand rich people, Allie. Least not the snooty old-money kind. They love to look like they don’t care. Like your buddy Scott, the way he dressed in raggedy jeans and faded old T-shirts.” Alice blanches at the mention of Scott. “And this bitch . . . well, one look through her daddy’s papers will show you how rich he was. He owned half the real estate in town, not to mention farmland all over the county and interest in some surprising ventures. She probably has bags of money stowed away—and she’s gonna give us some to keep quiet about her daddy’s secrets.” Davis tilts back the last of his beer while Alice looks at me as if she’s considering how much I’m worth. As if she’s considering which side she’s on. Then Davis slams the empty beer bottle to the table. “Let’s go have a look, Allie. You might’ve made our fortune by landing here!”

DAVIS GIVES ME the hurricane lamp to hold and has me walk ahead to the study while he follows behind, his arm linked with Alice’s, the gun pointing at my back. I could crash the lamp to the floor and start a fire, but I can’t risk that with Oren hidden somewhere. If I were sure of Alice’s cooperation, I could kill the wick, plunging us into darkness, and whack Davis with it, but I’m no longer so sure she’s on my side.

When I shine the light on the study door, I see it’s closed. “That’s funny,” Davis says. “I left it open.”

“It’s a drafty old house,” I say. “Doors swing shut on their own all the time. Sometimes they swing shut when there’s no draft at all.”

“Are you saying a ghost closed the door?” he says with heavy irony that fails to hide the tremor in his voice.

“There is something creepy going on in this house,” Alice says. “I saw something down in that crawl space.”

Did she? I wonder as Davis snaps, “Shut up, Allie. You’re always imagining shit like that, like the poltergeist you and Oren dreamed up to mess with me.”

I look back at Alice to see that she’s white around the mouth. She’s genuinely scared and not just of Davis. What did she see in the crawl space?

“Well, there must be a fucking key, Mattie.” Davis jabs me in the back with the gun. “Where the hell is it?”

I consider for a moment pretending not to have the key, but I have a feeling that Davis is about to snap. He really doesn’t like the idea of a ghost. There might be a way to use that to our advantage, and if it’s ghosts I need, the best place to look is my father’s study.

“It’s over here on the sideboard.” I swing the hurricane lamp toward the cut-glass bowl, which refracts the light into a kaleidoscope of prisms that dance over the wall and ceiling. It’s an unnerving effect and Alice gasps.

“Yeah, yeah,” Davis says, his voice high and nervous, “that’s a good trick. Cut it out and get the key.”

I obey, shifting the beam so that it doesn’t touch the glass as I withdraw the key with a shaking hand. For a moment I thought I’d seen something forming in the play of light too. When I put the key in the lock, something occurs to me. If the door slammed shut after Davis it shouldn’t be locked. It’s the kind of lock that needs to be turned with a key on either side of the door. But it is locked.

As I turn the key to unlock the door I feel an icy chill. I pause in the doorway, reluctant to cross the threshold, but Davis gives me a nudge with the barrel of his gun. I hold the lamp up, suddenly terrified that I’ll see my father sitting at the desk . . . but what I see is the broken window. Of course. This is how Davis got into the house in the first place. “We’ll freeze to death in here with that broken window,” I say.

“Draw the curtain over it and light that kerosene heater I noticed when I was in here earlier,” Davis says. “Here, I even brought the kerosene.” He draws a bottle out of his jacket pocket and gives it to me. While I pour kerosene into the heater, he nudges Alice into one of the straight-backed chairs in front of the desk. Again I think of how easy it would be to start a fire. Throw some kerosene on Davis, light him up. Burn the whole place down to the ground. But that would leave Alice, Oren, and me out in the snow, and we don’t even know where Oren is. If he’s holed up in the attic he could get trapped in the burning house.

When I’ve adjusted the flame on the heater I turn around. Davis is ensconced in my father’s chair behind the desk, his gun lying on the blotter in front of him. It makes me sick to see him sitting there, but whether it’s because of the insult to my father’s memory or that Davis is beginning to remind me of my father, I’m not sure.

“Have a seat, Mattie.” Davis gestures to the other straight-backed chair. “The show’s about to begin.”

I do not want to sit in that chair. It is where I sat when my father called me in, and I have not sat there again in all the years since my family died. “I don’t mind standing,” I say.

“SIT DOWN!” Davis bellows, pointing the gun at me.

I sit. Instantly I become the frightened little girl who’s done something wrong. When I wasn’t in trouble, my father would pat his knee and beckon me to sit on his lap while he read to me or showed me the constellations in the star globe. I knew I was in trouble when he motioned to the chair as if seating a witness in the dock.

I notice that I’ve folded my hands in my lap, the way I was supposed to when I awaited my father’s judgment. I am digging my nails into my palms as I used to. I pry my hands apart and spread them on my knees and look at Davis. His face is framed by the figurines of Lady Justice and Lady Liberty that stand on either side of the pen set, just as my father’s face used to be when I sat here.

“You two look like you’ve been called into the principal’s office for . . . hmm . . . let me see . . .” He strokes his goatee. “Oooh, I know! Diddling each other in the little girls’ room. Well, I’m gonna have to think of an appropriate punishment for that. But first, let’s look at these files I found in your daddy’s drawers . . .” He slaps his knee. “Ha! Get it? Your daddy’s drawers?” When neither of us laughs he frowns. “You’re right. This is a very serious business.” He picks up a file. “I was just looking for some credit card numbers, loose cash, et cetera, and of course the first place I think to look is the locked drawer in the desk. Luckily the key to it was sitting right there in that little statue.” He wags his finger at me. “You really ought to be more careful of your valuables, Mattie. I mean, sure, they look like just a bunch of old papers—I was kinda disappointed at first—but then I recognized the gold seal on them from my own judicial dealings with the great state of New York.” He turns the file folder around to show us the front. It’s stamped with the great seal of New York: Lady Liberty and Lady Justice holding up a shield containing mountains and a river, an eagle on top. The same image that is depicted in my father’s pen set, the same image—

I look over at Alice and see she’s leaning forward, her brow furrowed. I wonder if she’s put two and two together. The great seal of New York is the image on the button she found in the crawl space. I slip my hand in my pocket and rub the rough metal surface—

“Hands where I can see ’em!” Davis barks.

I take my hand out and lay both hands flat on the desk.

“At first I thought, snore, what could be more boring than a bunch of old court cases—and they are old. They date all the way back to the early seventies. They’re all juvie cases, all tried by your father, the Honorable Matthew T. Lane, and guess what? Your daddy found every one of them guilty!”

“He adjudicated them delinquent,” I automatically correct. “There’s no guilty verdict in juvenile court.”

Davis sits back and makes an O with his mouth. “Well, la-di-da, look who knows her legalese. Why didn’t you follow your daddy’s footsteps into the law?”

“I didn’t have the best experience with the legal system,” I say.

Davis grins. “No, you didn’t! Your own father adjudicated you a delinquent for . . . let me see . . .” He picks up another file. “Public indecency, apparently for making out with one Frank Barnes in a stolen car.”

“Isn’t that the name of that cop?” Alice asks.

“What cop?” Davis asks.

“The one Mattie’s friends with.”

“The plot thickens,” Davis says gleefully. Digging through my family’s secrets has banished all thoughts of ghosts. The only ghosts here are ghosts of my benighted childhood.

“I told Alice all this before,” I say, affecting boredom. “Yes, Frank’s father, the town chief of police, caught Frank and me making out in the backseat of his dad’s Dodge Dart. Frank got sent to Camp Maplewood—a boot camp—for six months and I got three months at the Hudson Training School.”

“I thought you said you were away for a year,” Alice says.

“I—I got more time for bad behavior,” I say. “So yeah, I was a bad, bad girl and my father was a draconian hard-ass—”

“Who sent all his juvies to a place called Pine Crest Child Care after 1975,” Davis supplies. “Why didn’t he keep sending them to Hudson?”

“Because Hudson closed down in 1975. My father led the fight to have it closed down.”

“Because of what happened to you there.”

“In part.”

“Oh, I think in large part, Mattie. It says here”—he plucks a loose sheet of paper off the desk—“that you were raped by a guard there.”

I don’t answer. I am gripping the edge of the desk to keep from shaking, but it’s making the desk shake instead. Lady Justice’s scales tremble and chime.

“Is that true, Mattie?” Alice asks in a small voice.

“Yes,” I say. “My father hadn’t counted on that consequence of my adjudication. Ironic, huh? They sent me away to teach me a lesson for making out with a boy and I get raped by a thirty-four-year-old guard.”

“Your father had the place closed down. The guard was sentenced to ten to twenty. The next year Pine Crest Child Care opened up—a brand-spanking-new juvenile facility! I’m surprised he didn’t name it for you, Mattie. You must have felt proud!”

“Hey,” Alice says, “I was at Pine Crest. It’s—”

“Not as bad as Hudson,” I say, “but that’s not saying much.”

“No, but your daddy sure thought it was great. He sent every one of his adjudications there . . . almost as if he had a financial interest in the place . . . oh wait . . .” Davis whips out a piece of paper from another pile. I’d be impressed with how he’s put the whole story together if I didn’t know how all the papers had been stacked in that bottom drawer. I’ve made it easy for him. “Look, he did! Pine Crest was built on land your family owned. Your father held a ten percent share of the facility, so every time he sent some kid there he made a pretty penny.”

“It’s like that ‘kids for cash’ scandal in Pennsylvania,” Alice says, staring at me.

“Exactly,” Davis crows. “Only Judge Lane never got caught—at least he hadn’t gotten caught. This here letter, though, from the federal prosecutor, says that they were gonna be looking into some irregularities and unorthodox connections between Judge Lane’s adjudications and his financial interests in Pine Crest. It’s here with all the other files.” Davis waves his hand at the stacks arrayed on the desk. “And here’s another thing I noticed.” He holds up another page, this one splattered with bloodstains. I know what’s on this one. It’s my father’s suicide note. It was on his desk when I found him.

“Forgive me,” he’d written, “but justice must be served.”

“Your daddy shot himself, didn’t he, Mattie? Because he knew the feds were coming for him.”

“I thought your family all died from carbon monoxide poisoning,” Alice says, giving me a suspicious look.

“He tampered with the pipes on the furnace so that the house would fill with gas,” I tell Alice. I don’t care about explaining to Davis but Alice deserves the truth. She’s too young to have been one of those kids my father sent to Pine Crest for a minor offense, but if she had ever been in my father’s courtroom that’s what would have happened to her. “I think he thought that the shame of the scandal would be too much for us to live with. He may have been right about my mother; she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and would have been truly lost without him. I can even forgive him for including me in his plans. He thought I was ruined after what happened to me at Hudson. He blamed himself—that’s why he contributed to having Pine Crest built—but I once overheard him saying to my mother that it would have been better if I had been murdered. He said being raped had turned me into a promiscuous slut.”

“Why didn’t you die that night?” Alice asks.

“I wasn’t here. I was, true to my promiscuous nature, out with a guy. Frank Barnes, to be precise. Only we had a fight and I came back early. I came in through the basement and up the back stairs. I didn’t realize that there was gas in the house until I got to Caleb’s room. I could barely rouse him. I dragged him down the front stairs and met my father at the bottom.” I pause, as breathless as I’d been in that headlong flight from my home all those years ago. “He was coming out of this room, a bandanna over his mouth, waving his gun. I turned and pushed Caleb out the front door—I told him to run—and I was right behind him in the doorway when I heard a gunshot. Then everything went black. When I came to, Frank was here. He’d found me lying in the doorway, outside in the air enough that I didn’t asphyxiate, but inside enough so I didn’t freeze to death. The bullet had only grazed my scalp, knocking me out but not causing any real injury. Caleb . . .” I gulp air that tastes like blood and gasoline, the smells I’ve carried with me since that night. “Caleb wasn’t so lucky. Frank’s father found him in the barn, his head caved in. My father must have chased him out there and killed him. Then he came back in, stepped over my body, presumably thinking I was dead, went into his study, and shot himself.”

I look away from Alice to Davis. “He was sitting where you are now, blood splattered all over the papers on his desk, those papers you’ve got out now, and even over that window . . .” As I look up at the window my voice freezes. Part of the window has been covered by the drapes to keep the cold and snow out, but the uncovered part is frosted by mist and covered with the same splatter marks I saw that night when I made Frank and his father show me what had happened.

No one has to know he went like this, Hank Barnes had said to me. You don’t want the world to see him like this. They’ll drag his name through the mud and yours and Caleb’s along with it. It will bring up all that old business about your time at Hudson. That’s how people will see you, Mattie, like you’re tainted by your father’s deeds. Do you want that?

No, I had told him.

Then let me help you put this behind you. The medical examiner is a good friend of mine and your father’s. He’ll say they all died of carbon monoxide poisoning. It’s what your father wanted. After all, the person who is guilty has been punished. I think your father would agree that justice has been served.

That’s what the splatter pattern on the window looks like. The constellation of Virgo. Justice. The same pattern that has appeared on every window in the house, in the stars in Caleb’s room, written in the dust on my father’s desk. If justice has been served, then why is Caleb still demanding it? Is it because I hid the truth?

As if in answer to my unvoiced question I see a figure rise up on the other side of the frosted glass—a specter coalescing out of swirling snow. But it’s not Caleb; it’s Frank Barnes. He has a gun in one hand; his other hand is clenched in a fist. When he’s sure that I see him he holds one finger up. This is a signal we had when we used to play war games in the woods with Caleb. He’s counting to five. I’m supposed to do something on the count of five. But what? Out of the corner of my eye I see that Alice is leaning across the desk looking at some paper Davis is showing her. That’s why she doesn’t see Frank—who’s put up a second finger and is pointing the gun at Davis. Oh. I nod, and Frank puts up a third finger. I brace my left foot on the ground and pivot slightly toward Alice while keeping Frank in my peripheral vision. Four fingers. I check that there’s nothing behind Alice that will strike her head. Then as Frank begins to lift a fifth finger I spring forward and tackle Alice to the ground at the same second that the window explodes.