Rough Draft (28 page)

Hal's arms were getting tired. Heavy and slow. His muscles were burning. He was a tortoise. Slow and steady and unyielding.

He paddled the board across the black water. He watched as Hannah Keller and the FBI man came to a house and then one of them, then the other, stood up carefully in the kayak and hauled themselves up the ladder that dangled down to the water's surface.

Hal's arms were so tired, he was starting to think he might not make it back to shore. He might have to do something radical if he was going to survive.

From halfway up the ladder, Hannah turned and watched Sheffield lash the bowline to a piling, then haul himself up to the first rung. It was tricky work. Between the wobbly kayak and the bleached and pulpy wood of the ladder, Hannah was expecting any second to go crashing back into the bay. But somehow she kept her balance, got her feet moving up the last few rungs, and though the ladder shifted and creaked beneath her weight, it held.

Frank hung back, waiting for her to reach the top and wriggle through the small hatch door and step onto the deck before he tested the ladder's strength. She stooped down and watched him scuttle up toward her, moving fast across the bars of frail wood. On the top rung, he hesitated a half second, giving her a quick smile of relief. But as he was taking his last step the wood cracked beneath his foot and he lost the grip, whirled his arms, tipping backward. Hannah shot out a hand and grabbed the collar of his shirt. She levered her legs hard against the railing and with a short grunt and heave, she hauled him upright.

Sheffield got hold of the ladder again, stepped over the broken rung, and whispered his thanks as he emerged through the hatch.

They moved silently to the railing, leaning against it, catching their breaths, staring out into the black breeze.

After a moment, Frank turned to her and was about to speak, but she shushed him with a finger to his lips. Then pointed below at the dark unsettled water.

She thought she'd heard the splash again, but now as she
listened, she wasn't certain. It could be the tide jostling against the pilings of the house, or the awkward bump and gurgle of the kayak on the shifting current. It could be a mullet leaping, or the plop of a stilt-house rat bailing out of its nest. Her jitters magnifying every sound.

Hearing nothing more, she turned from the water and surveyed the house. From what she could see, the deck wrapped around the entire structure. Above the front door the tattered remains of an awning fluttered in the rising wind. Off to the east a pulse of lightning brightened the sky miles out to sea, a small thunderstorm riding up the Gulf Stream.

The sea's fertile scent was everywhere, and a wilder fragrance was filtering in from farther out, riding the onshore breeze. A teasing mingle of scents. Odors carried directly from the islands, lobsters grilling over charcoal, the hard sweet fragrance of sunbaked sand, and the quiet hint of nutmeg and cloves and rum and fresh green mint. Scents that were possible only out there on the edge of the ocean, borne by the freshest winds.

The last time she'd smelled that perfumed blend, she was a child, standing on the porch of one of the ghostly, long-gone houses of Stiltsville, a two-story affair that once stood somewhere off to the east Her father had brought her along with him to a party. It was someone's birthday, a judge, a state senator, someone with an old teak yacht that was anchored in the nearby channel. They'd used rowboats and skiffs to ferry people back and forth between the yacht and the stilt house. Everyone was giddy. The sun was bright, and she remembered how clear and blue the water looked and how cool it was, jumping from the deck of the house, twenty feet down into the sheer streaming bay, kicking back up from the white sandy bottom. She was the only kid that day, twelve or thirteen at the time, on the brink of adulthood, watching her father drink beer from a bottle and smoke cigars and trade jokes and stories with policemen and lawyers and those rich judges and politicians. A glorious day. Permitted a glimpse into a world she'd never seen. Adults acting like schoolkids.
Squealing women, pranks and skirmishes around the deck of that house. Large brightly colored beach balls and helium balloons bouncing everywhere. Everyone shirtless or in bikinis. No one shy about showing skin. She'd seen some bare breasts that day. A couple of the younger women showing off. Reveling in the attention of important men. She remembered the swirl of the party, someone giving her a sip of beer, then another. Hannah remembered the cops particularly, how funny they were, how droll. And how when one of the women sliced her foot on the barnacles that encrusted a piling down below, it was a cop who hauled her to safety and performed the first aid. It was a cop who didn't shy away from the blood. And probably it was on that very afternoon, during that bright sunny July bacchanal that the seed was planted for Hannah's brief career as a police officer. Those men. The silent respect that even the senator and the judge and the rich, arrogant lawyers gave them.

“You ready?” Sheffield whispered.

She nodded and pushed back from the railing.

His hand touched hers. She gripped it, gave him a quick squeeze, then let go and turned toward the doorway.

The knob was aluminum and turned easily in her hand. Before her the room was dark, only a small trail of light shone from one of the other stilt houses, a few hundred yards away. She stepped into the room, Frank just behind her. She inhaled the musty, mildewed air. Old canvas that never completely dried and tennis shoes with their lingering reek. The smell of decaying wood, and fried food and stale beer and conch shells imperfectly cleaned. A house hard-used, rich with the sour haze of ocean living.

As she turned to pat the wall for a light switch, she glimpsed something at her feet and lurched hard to the right.

“What!”

Frank caught her as she was about to tumble. With an arm around her shoulders, he steadied her.

“That,” she said.

She motioned at the red laser light, taut as a trip wire, at ankle level just inside the doorway.

Apparently triggered by the broken beam, a dull light switched on behind the one closed door. In the slit at the bottom there was a flutter of movement. As Hannah stepped toward the door, she heard their voices. Recognizing them instantly, like ghostly echoes across some broad and bottomless canyon. Her mother, Martha Keller, her father, Ed, calling out for her in unison.

“Hannah, Hannah, come on, sweetheart. We're going to be late.”

In an instant she was at the closed door. She ripped it open and stood in the flickering glow.

“Jesus H. Christ” Frank was beside her, his hands on her shoulders as if he meant to turn her around and steer her back to the safety of the living room.

Across the room was a Super 8 projector mounted on a wood dresser. The large reel unrolled its narrow tape, sprockets turning, spraying colored light on the opposite white wall. Showing in grainy detail the house in Gables by the Sea where she had served her childhood, where her parents were murdered. A basic ranch-style in yellows and whites with a red-tiled porch and double doors with gleaming brass handles.

Positioned about ten feet down the sidewalk, her mother, the family historian, was filming another special occasion. Ed Keller waited on the front porch in a white shirt, red tie, and a blue seersucker suit, identical to the one he'd been wearing the day he was murdered. But this was Easter Sunday, a cloudless day, with nearly twenty years left in Ed Keller's life. The breeze was stirring her father's thick, dark mane. And then he began to smile as Hannah emerged from the doorway, stepping forth into the sunny day and the camera's welcoming eye. Seven years old. Her lush blond hair was long and loose down her back. Dimples in her chubby cheeks, standing with legs and feet together, prim but with her head cocked demurely to the side, some copied gesture of coyness that she'd probably seen on television or in a magazine. A little girl so detached from the grown-up woman who watched her, so untroubled and hopeful and
certain about the underpinnings of the world, that it was as if Hannah were staring through an interstellar peephole, given a quick glimpse of the inhabitants of some utopian moon, orbiting off in the deepest reaches of the cosmos.

“There she is,” Ed Keller said. “There's my princess.”

She wore a simple yellow dress tufted with white nubby flowers. She was gripping a white patent leather purse that matched her shoes, a strap across her arch. One of her white socks had rolled down below her ankle. Her blue hat was as small and round as a robin's nest. She stood for a moment next to her father, posing for the camera, a smile of artless pleasure. He had his arm around her back, bending down so their cheeks were brushing.

She'd forgotten that look of his. That impish smile, that wink he gave Martha, their secret joy exposed.

“Okay, then,” he said. “Come on, Martha. Your turn.”

“No,” she mumbled, and the camera wobbled.

“Come on, you shy goose. Let's get one of you for a change.”

He left his daughter's side and walked directly toward her. Martha, filming him, protested all the while.

“Come on, Mother,” Hannah called out. “It's your turn.”

And as Ed Keller reached out for the camera, his hand approaching the lens, the film went dark and there were the
X
's and
O
's and coarse gray light of badly spliced film.

“That was your parents,” Frank said.

“Yes. That was them.”

“Those fuckers.”

She looked at him.

“Who're you talking about?”

“Whoever did this,” he said. “The sons of bitches.”

When the film resumed, the color was more vivid, the focus precise.

J. J. Fielding reclined in his hospital bed, staring into the lens. His shrunken face was gray beneath his outsized silver pompadour, all that hair balanced atop his head like some ill-fitting helmet

“Is it on?” he said. “Yes? Okay, then.”

The camera jiggled, then jerked to the right, giving a quick glimpse of the rest of the room. A television mounted high on the wall, the open door of a sterile bathroom, a visitor's green leather chair, nothing more than a basic hospital room interchangeable with all other hospital rooms. Then the camera panned slowly back to Fielding and jiggled a few more times as if someone was locking it into place on its tripod stand.

“We're a little low-tech here,” Fielding said. “Good equipment, bad operators. But we're doing the best we can on short notice.”

He coughed and the rattle in his chest sounded papery and wet. He continued to hack for several minutes, a breathless seizure. Finally he grew still, settled himself beneath the sheets, smoothing them over his lap and thighs. Eyes down as if summoning his strength, taking a last run through his speech before he began.

“Well then,” he said, lifting his head and peering into the camera.

Hannah inched closer to the wall, studying Fielding and his room. As far as she could tell everything was identical to the Internet image. But something was bothering her, a small detail she couldn't identify.

As Fielding dissolved into yet another spasm of coughing, she saw it On the old man's bedside table was the same stack of magazines she'd noticed before. Only now the copy of
People
was gone, replaced by a
New Yorker,
its cover showing what looked like a snowy skyline of Manhattan, and a silhouette of Santa steering his sleigh through the gauntlet of skyscrapers. An issue that had to be at least ten months old.

Fielding wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“All right then,” he said. “So, what I wanted to do was to speak to you directly, my dear, tell you exactly why I fled. Although you probably believe you know the reasons for my disappearance, I hope you realize there is more to the story than what you read in die newspapers and what little the police shared with you. Please hear me out, my dear. Please be
patient with me. There is so much you don't know. So much I need to get off my chest.”

In a sudden crackle of light Fielding's image disappeared and the bedroom wall went white. Behind them the loose end of the film began to slap against the housing of the projector.

As she stared into the bright square of light, Hannah's eyes were blurry with swelling tears. She wiped them angrily.

“Look,” Frank said and stepped past her. Pointing at the letters framed by the projected light. Hidden while the movie image ran, the careful printing in black Magic Marker was now fully visible.

See page 276.

Hannah nodded. She rubbed the last of the blur from her eyes, then walked over to the projector. She yanked the cord free from the wall, and lifted the bulky machine off the dresser. She raised it above her head, held it a moment, then hurled it down against the floor.

Hannah stood in the dark and felt the sift of ocean breeze through the leaky walls, the warm air passing across her bare legs and arms. Beneath the floorboards she could hear the nervous dance of the bay.

Frank touched her back, steering her gently toward the living room, then out to the deck. They came to a halt at the railing facing back toward the shore. The glimmer of houses and condos.

“You've seen that piece of film before? You and your parents.”

She stared out into the dark breeze.

“I haven't watched it since I was a kid. I thought it was in an old Army footlocker of my dad's, along with a lot of other paraphernalia of his. Someone must have stolen it from my attic. God knows how or why.”

“To motivate you, pump you up,” he said. “In case your spirits were flagging. To keep you on the chase, remind you why you care.”

She turned her face and looked at him.

“It was a shitty thing to do,” he said. “Unnecessary.”

“This whole thing is shitty, Frank. Start to finish.”

He was quiet for a moment, shifting beside her, then settling his weight against the rail.