Shades of Simon Gray (15 page)

Both she and Roger suspected that whoever printed out the English test might have installed a keystroke recorder program they’d downloaded from the Internet, using it to record Abel Dodge’s password when he logged on. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had used such a program illegally. Lieutenant Santino was glad they had Roger working on the case. If there was anything suspicious in the server’s log, Roger would find it.

In the meantime, she would keep prodding away at Simon’s PC, because all her instincts told her there was something there. Something she normally wouldn’t be
looking for. Something that would give her a clue, something to go on, maybe even the evidence she needed. She didn’t expect this to be easy, and she was willing to put in as much of her own time as necessary.

She knew from what George McCabe had told her that Simon Gray was bright. Knew he probably had a brilliant future ahead of him. Knew from questioning some of the other teachers and a few of Simon’s neighbors that he was practically the poster boy for the perfect son, the one they all wished they had. And that was the problem, as far as she could tell. Simon Gray was just too good to be true.

Liz had spent all Saturday afternoon scrounging through stacks of dusty cardboard boxes in the basement of the building that housed the local historical society. She had all but given up when she pulled an old leather-bound book from one of the unmarked boxes. It had been buried beneath junk from someone’s attic, or so Liz had decided—the kind of stuff you might find at a rummage sale. The leather binding was worn and cracked.

The overhead lights were so dim, Liz could barely make out the ink on the pages of what appeared to be someone’s journal. On the first page, in elegant cursive and ink faded to a pale brown, were the words:

If nothing else, this old journal, donated to the historical society along with countless other documents and objects by well-meaning families who wished to preserve their family history and its deep connections to the town of Bellehaven, was written during the time when the Wildemere trial and hanging took place. Liz ran her hand over the page, as if she could somehow make a connection with Lucinda Alderman.

Overhead, the muffled sound of crepe soles crossed the floor. The basement door opened and Mrs. Neidermeyer’s gravelly voice floated down to her, alerting her that they would be closing the building in ten minutes.

Liz clutched the journal as if she expected Mrs. Neidermeyer to come tearing down the stairs and rip it out of her hands. After spending the entire afternoon in this musty basement, going through dirty boxes that had turned her fingers gray, she wasn’t about to let her discovery be taken from her.

The upstairs rooms were already filled to overflowing, and it seemed unlikely that any of this stuff would ever see the light of day. At least not anytime soon, not until the society found a larger building. All these boxes of donated information had yet to be cataloged—mostly by senior citizens who volunteered their time. It would take years.

That was what Liz told herself as she unzipped her backpack and slipped the journal inside. Mrs. Neidermeyer would never allow her to take anything from the building. And the thought of waiting until Monday after
school to read through this latest find, the only thing she’d discovered that was even remotely related to the period she was investigating, was agonizing. The journal had probably not even been cataloged. They would never miss it. She would return it in a few days, and no one would ever be the wiser.

S
IMON HAD RETURNED TO THE
L
IBERTY
T
REE
. T
HE
streetlights cast eerie shadows on the road and sidewalk. At first he saw only a dark filmy cloud at the base of the oak. There was something familiar about the shape, something unsettling. But as hard as he tried to remember, he drew a blank.

The shape seemed to take on solid form, and that was when Simon realized he was staring at Jessup Wildemere. Again. Only now Jessup sat beneath the tree, his knees drawn to his chest, his head bowed, as if he were asleep. He wore the same clothes as before. Simon wasn’t sure how much time had passed since their previous encounter. It seemed like only seconds since he’d last been there.

When Jessup looked up, Simon watched his expression change from hopeful to disappointed. He wondered if Jessup was still waiting for someone. “What are you doing out this time of night, lad?” Jessup asked.

“Nothing. Just walking.” Simon didn’t know what else to say.

Jessup held out his arm, pointing a finger at him. “In your nightshirt? And not much of a nightshirt at that.” He laughed.

So Jessup Wildemere
could
see what he wore. Simon wondered why Jessup hadn’t mentioned it before. Maybe he had been embarrassed for Simon and pretended he didn’t notice.

“Sometimes I sleepwalk,” Simon said. To his way of thinking, this answer wasn’t all that far from the truth.

Jessup narrowed his gaze. He looked suspicious. “A body walking about while he sleeps?” He shook his head. “Sounds like the devil’s work.” Jessup got to his feet and brushed off the seat of his breeches. “Judging by those cuts and bruises on you, I’d say this sleepwalking is a dangerous pastime.”

Simon didn’t want to talk about his injuries. He wanted to leave this place. He didn’t want to talk to Jessup Wildemere, because none of what was happening made sense. He had no rational explanation for these encounters, and that made him uneasy.

Jessup had taken a few steps away from the base of the tree. He stared up into the night sky. “Did you ever see so many stars?” he asked.

All Simon saw when he looked up were a few scattered
stars blurred by the ground light. The windows in the Neidermeyer house were dark. But the fluorescent lights inside the Gulf station across the street were on. Curious, he nodded toward the station and asked Jessup what he saw.

Jessup scratched the back of his neck and stared in the direction Simon had indicated. “That’s the road to the green,” he said. He eyed Simon suspiciously. “Did you not tell me you were from around here?”

“What else do you see?”

“What else? Why, the western portion of Joseph Alderman’s pasture, of course.”

Simon had begun to understand this much: he and Jessup were standing in the same place, but not in the same time. They were somehow together in space but with more than two hundred years separating them. Everything around them, everything they saw, except for each other, was part of their own time. Neither could see what the other saw.

Nothing in Simon’s experience or in his belief system had prepared him for such an incomprehensible situation. But then nothing had prepared him for the long blocks of time he spent in gut-wrenching pain in the empty dark, either. Yet as much as he hated being in the hospital, being here with Jessup Wildemere, in this haunted place, by this tree, was equally disturbing, but in a different way, although he couldn’t explain why.

Simon closed his eyes and tried to will himself back into his body. But if there was one thing he had learned on these spontaneous out-of-body journeys, it was that he
didn’t seem to be in control of when they happened, where he ended up, or when he returned.

When he looked over at Jessup, the man was watching him with curiosity. Simon crossed the grass by the sidewalk and sat beneath the tree. The back of his head rested against the tar-coated gash. He remembered the conversation he’d had with Jessup during their last visit, and staring up at the figure standing next to him, he asked, “Didn’t the person you were waiting for show up?”

A chill night breeze set the bare branches above them dancing. The glare of the streetlight covered the sidewalk and road in dappled, shimmering light. But no such light appeared on Simon, or on Jessup, whose face was bathed in the silvery blue light of a full moon, although Simon could see only a muted, cloud-covered moon in the sky. Jessup’s gaze seemed far away. “She’ll come,” he whispered, more to himself than as a response to Simon’s question.

Simon expected the ground beneath his thin gown to be cold and damp. But he felt nothing. And even there, outside, with the night air wafting about him, he could still detect the faintest odor of bleach.

He looked at the branches overhead and wondered which one Jessup Wildemere had dangled from the day the townsfolk hanged him. Did Jessup remember that day? Did he even know he was dead? Simon decided he wasn’t going to be the one to break the news. If Jessup Wildemere thought he was alive, that was fine with Simon. As long as he wasn’t stuck here with him for the rest of eternity.

Jessup reached into a leather pouch that hung from
his breeches and pulled out a small object. He hunkered down in front of Simon and opened his hand. The object was a ring with a dark green stone. It shone in a pool of moonlight in Jessup’s hand. “It belonged to my mother,” Jessup said. “My older brother, Samuel, inherited my father’s farm when my father died last year. My mother wanted me to have something, too. So she gave me this when I left to strike out on my own. It belonged to her grandmother. It’s a fine emerald, wouldn’t you say?” Jessup gently rubbed his thumb back and forth over the green stone. “Do you think she’ll like it?”

“Who?”

As if he were coming out of a trance, Jessup’s head bobbed up. He blinked at Simon, stuffed the ring back into the leather pouch, and turned to look down Edgewood Avenue—although Simon knew Jessup didn’t see a road there. Who could tell
what
he saw? Maybe woods. Maybe a path.

Simon felt the familiar tingling, the tug, and knew he was about to leave. He wanted to know whom Jessup was waiting for, whom the ring was for. But all he heard, before he was pulled back into his prison of flesh, was the hopeful echo of Jessup Wildemere’s voice. “She’ll be here. Before the moon falls beyond those treetops over there. You’ll see, lad. You’ll see.”

The smell of bleach coming from the isolation room next to the one her grandmother was in made Devin gag. The nurses were disinfecting the room next door where a
woman with a highly contagious, rare skin ailment had spent the past week.

Devin’s grandmother was also in an isolation room and would remain there until the doctors could figure out what was wrong. Whatever she had could be contagious. Until they knew what they were dealing with, they weren’t about to put her in with another patient. Devin had to wear a white mask that looped over her ears and covered her nose and mouth whenever she was in the room.

The day before, she had overheard two of the nurses whispering about West Nile virus, but as soon as they realized Devin was listening, they changed the subject. Devin had since checked out information on the virus on several Web sites. She knew if the virus developed into encephalitis people could die from it. Usually old people or those with weak immune systems. She was terrified for her grandmother.

That was why she was there. That, and because her mother, doing the fifty-yard dash around the kitchen table, stuffing Pop-Tarts into the toaster, plunking down cereal bowls in front of the six younger kids and getting everyone out the door to school, was feeling too shaky to drive that morning and had asked Devin if she’d mind missing school to take her to the hospital. It was on the tip of Devin’s tongue to tell her mother she wouldn’t mind missing school for the rest of the year, but all she’d said was “Sure. No problem.”