The Hour Before Dark (20 page)

“I am ... not... losing...” she said, and then went quiet.

She nearly fell, trembling into my arms. She was hot with fever as I held her, briefly. “Oh my God, did you see it, too?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said, but inside I knew this was a lie. “Yes. Yes. I saw it.”

Her voice was a whisper. “Sometimes I see it at night. Something is in here. Something’s in the house with us.”

“We’re stressed,” I said. I let her go, and she wiped her hands across her face and smoothed out her hair.

“It’s not just stress,” she said. “Dear God, Nemo, I thought I was losing it. I’ve thought so since October. But you saw it?” Tears of what might have been relief—or even gratitude—flooded her eyes and streamed down her face.

3

I went to wake up Bruno. I got a bit of a shock going into his room—he lay there, the quilt pulled back, his naked back with a yin-yang tattoo near his lower spine. Next to him, slightly overlapping leg upon leg, snoring away, was Cary Conklin, the guy who had brought me over in the boat. Bruno’s boyfriend.

I didn’t really think to react—I had only just gotten used to Bruno being gay, so seeing his boyfriend in his old bed—far too small for the two of them, so they were draped over each other—made me feel a bit the way the three bears must’ve felt upon finding Goldilocks. I didn’t want to wake Cary, so I tapped Bruno on his left foot. After a few taps, he snarfled awake and glanced back at me.

“Hey, Nemo.”

“Bruno,” I said. “Sorry to, um, wake you up so early. But something’s up.”

“Up as in ‘important’?”

I nodded.

He sighed. “Okay,” he whispered. “I’ll be down in a few.”

4

“You notice anything strange here?” I asked as soon as he bounded down the stairs, wearing a long T-shirt and red boxers. He had a harsh look in his eyes, as if he were furious for being dragged out of bed so early.

“Strange?” he asked.

“Things missing?”

Bruno shook his head.

“We were in the greenhouse a little while ago,” I said, glancing at Brooke. “Something weird happened.”

“Like?”

“Like the glass moved.”

“Moved? Broke?”

“No,” I said. “It was like ...”

“Like quicksilver,” Brooke said.

“What’s quicksilver?”

“Like liquid,” I said.

Bruno squinted and looked at Brooke. “You’ve been up all night.” Then at me. “You don’t exactly look all there, either.”

“We saw it, tired or not,” I said.

“Did you ask her?” Bruno turned to me.

“Ask me what?” Brooke raised an eyebrow at me,

“No,” I replied. Then to her, “You walk up and down the house all night long.”

“I know,” she said.

“Why?” Bruno chirped.

“Why do you think? Our father was murdered. I can’t sleep.”

“No,” Bruno said. He pointed a finger at her. “You were doing it before Dad died.”

“No I wasn’t.”

Bruno half-grinned. “Come on. I saw you. I’d wake up and see you in my room. Just walking.”

“I’m telling you,” she said. She shot a glance at me. “I wasn’t.”

“You sure?”

“I don’t lie,” she said.

Bruno let out what I can only describe as a repressed breath, through his nostrils.

“I don’t,” she repeated.

“So the bathtub story is accurate,” he said. “You fell asleep. You weren’t trying to—”

“God!” Brooke closed her eyes. “God, I’m going to have a headache.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said to him. “I was there, too. I saw it. It was this rippling ... thing.”

“What time?”

I shrugged. “Six, maybe.”

“Well,” he said, spreading his hands out as if this solved everything. “No sleep, the light barely up outside. And you—” he nodded to Brooke. “Miss Xanax.”

“I haven’t taken one since the day after Dad was killed.”

I closed my eyes, trying to figure out how this all could be. How could I have seen the same thing Brooke had seen: the glass of the greenhouse moving. “What about the painting?” I asked Brooke.

“I didn’t paint it,” she insisted.

“You did,” I said. “It’s the same as the others. And it’s exactly what the dream was. The one you told me about."

"Let’s not get into this again. Maybe we didn’t see anything on the glass.”

“Wait,” I said. “You saw something on the glass?”

“You did, too,” she said.

“No, I saw it move—like it was rippling or... I don’t know... that’s not what it was like ... it was like it was blurring or something.”

“I saw a woman’s face,” she said.

5

“Bruno’s right. I’m exhausted,” she added. “I’ve been up all night. It was a hallucination. You didn’t see it?”

“I saw movement on the glass,”

“Could’ve been clouds overhead,” Bruno said. “It’s foggy. In the greenhouse, it makes the walls look different.”

“Who was it you saw in the glass?” I kept my gaze on my sister.

“Just a woman,” Brooke said.

I watched her face—my beautiful, smart sister. The stress of what had happened had no doubt scrambled her mind a bit. Who wouldn’t be a little shaken, a little traumatized, by finding her father dead, butchered? Bathed in blood. How could she not? How could she sleep? How could she function? That she could even speak to us about any of this was a bit of a miracle in and of itself.

“You need rest,” I said. “We all do. And I think it’s time we get some professional help.”

“No shrinks,” she said sharply.

“Then Dr. Connelly. Just a check up. We can all use one.” I turned to Bruno for support.

“Sure,” Bruno said.

“I guess I should talk to someone,” Brooke said finally, a note of defeat in her voice. “And I can’t exactly go to Father Ronnie anymore for counsel.”

“Not since Dad told him to fuck off,” Bruno said.

6

Bruno insisted on going to the greenhouse immediately after Brooke went back up to bed.

“I saw it, Bruno,” I said. “The wall.” I went over to the panes of glass and touched lightly against one of them. Tapped it. “It was as if it were made out of gel or something and just moved.”

“How many hours of sleep did you get?”

“Five.”

“You need to go back to bed, too,” he said.

7

I went back to bed and woke up around one in the afternoon. The greenhouse seemed just as it had before. I sat in it, sipping my coffee, for a good half hour, wondering if I’d get that sensation again. The glass turning to rippling water. But it didn’t. Wide awake, with the day well under way, I realized that perhaps I had, after all, been half asleep when Brooke and I had gone there at daybreak. Bruno, I figured, had been at least partially right. There had been a light fog that didn’t bum off ‘til three, and that might’ve accounted for at least some of what I’d seen—accompanied by my lack of sleep and my sister’s rage. I went looking for the picture again, but it was gone. I assumed Brooke had taken it and put it somewhere else. I called Dr. Connelly’s office and tried to schedule my sister in—even though it was a week or so ‘til Christmas, his assistant knew, as the current local tragic celebrities, we might be able to cut in line. Called Pola, and wanted love to take me away from my fears about my sister.

8

And I thought about my father. He was never away from my mind. I thought about his face. His hands. His way of speaking that was a gentle twist of Yankee islander.

And I wondered why I had never really gotten along with him.

9

Got a strange phone call late one night. About two A.M.

When I picked it up, it was Paulette Doone. “You demons,” she said. “You did it. You did it”

Then she hung up on me. I fell back to sleep, not really knowing what had possessed her.

In the morning I got a call from Joe, and he told me Ike Doone had shot himself in some cockamamie illegal hunting accident going after some wild turkeys he’d flushed out, and Paulette had begun telling everyone in the village, almost immediately, that the “Raglan curse” was upon them and that the Devil was all around our house.

Ike was not dead, just had a helluva wound on his left thigh.

“Try and ignore this kind of stuff,” Joe said.

10

Pola and I went to dinner, for long walks—but my mind was too much on a murder and on my family.

Then, just before the weekend, Harry Withers found me.

1

The day was sunny and bright, and even though another snow had fallen recently, it felt warmer outside with the yellow sun and clear blue sky. When the winter’s gray as in New England, you’ve got to get outdoors on those days that the sun finally shines.

On a dog’s ass.

Stepping out the door, I was greeted with the bounding leaps and nips at my elbows of Madoc, the greyhound that seemed more like a skinny horse than a dog. He followed me a ways, and then, after a quarter mile or so, ran back for the house and his companion, Mab, who was barking down by the duck pond.

I wanted to enjoy a good walk on a lone country road.

Just as I was setting off, Harry Withers showed up.

2

Harry was impossibly dressed in a broad-brimmed hat and a duster jacket, and his square glasses, and a flop of thick brown hair nearly over his eyes. I laughed when I saw him.

“You look like the sheriff of Sagebrush,” I said.

“I know, I know,” Harry said. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? I thought I looked like an Italian prelate.”

“You found me.”

“I gave you a little time,” he said, somewhat sheepishly. “I heard you were in the pubs with Bruno, but I didn’t come looking. Out of respect.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Want to walk a bit?”

3

He hadn’t changed much in the years since I’d been gone. He looked as if he were eighteen still, but with a bit of a paunch. His eyes had the kind of brightness to them that only someone who loves his life seems to have. His crooked smile was disarming, but painful for me to remember. It was some kind of muscle problem that he’d had since an accident when he was a baby.

He smiled at the worst times—always had.

His smile was some kind of permanent scar on his face. Happy or sad, he smiled. He told me he couldn’t help it. “They believe,” he said, referring to the police, “that the killer must have escaped right after the murder.” He paused and added, “Is this going to upset you, hearing about it?”

“Not as much as it should.”

He went off the road and bent down in the snow, practically squatting. He drew up a longish thick branch that had come down in the storm, broke off the weak branches’ from it, and said, “Instant walking stick.” He took it with him and used it as a pointer.

“Over there, from the woods. That’s what they think. Then, from there, to the harbor. Their own boat.”

“Could be,” I said.

Harry’s smile intensified. Then it dropped to a straight line on his face. “I don’t think so. In fact, it’s basically not possible, but try telling that to Joe Grogan. First, I doubt one man did this. I suspect there were a few. And second, getting off the island during a Nor’easter is suicide. If they got in a boat that night, particularly some little motorboat, they’d have been lucky if they made it to the Vineyard. They’re still here.”

“Interesting,” I said.

Harry pointed at the smokehouse, which lay back toward the house itself. He seemed about to say something, but stopped himself. Then he held the stick parallel to the ground and pressed it down. “They probably didn’t tell you about the footprints.”

“The killer’s?”

“They’ve kept things quiet. Joe Grogan’s seen to that. All the mainlander investigators have combed and questioned and pretty much turned over every rock. They even hauled Carson’s butt in for questioning, and the poor guy could only weep and tell them that he thought he saw a demon that night. They almost took him away. If Joe hadn’t stepped in, Carson McKinley would probably be in some state hospital in Boston getting drugged up every time he thought of sheep. Everyone on the island is scared.”

“All six hundred?”

He shrugged. “Fewer this year. The McWhorters and the Carrs moved. When the propane delivery changed, the entire McHenry clan had to move back to Providence, and then one of the Women Whom God Forgot died. Sarah Hatchet was ninety-six. So we now have approximately, five hundred seventy-two. But then, you’re back, and Bruno. Five hundred seventy-four.”

I looked at him as if I had never known him. We’d had some bad stuff between us in the past. We’d had some good stuff as well. I had never been sure how much I really trusted Harry. “What do you want from me?”

He looked at me innocently enough. Like a puppy that just got slapped on the nose. “‘Want’?”

“Yep. Want. You and I don’t speak for just about a decade, and now you want something. I can tell. I can sense it.”

He chuckled. “Jesus, Nemo. You haven’t changed much."

“Probably not.” He was right. I really hadn’t changed much in those intervening years. All my wounds were fairly fresh, at least now that I was back on the island: Maybe worse because of the murder.

“Okay, let me cut to the chase,” he said. “I want to be a big-time reporter. I want to be on CNN someday. Or network news. I’m nearly thirty and on an island nobody cares about, writing up local gossip. I want something more. It’s not an industry that wants middle-aged men joining it. It’s an industry where you work up when you’re young. And I’m not gonna get there from Burnley Island and a winter circulation of under a thousand—most of whom use the six-page newspaper to line their birdcages and paper train their puppies and wipe their asses—writing the occasional odd story about the octogenarian great-great grandmother who still knits sweaters from yaks that gets picked up by the AP wire because suddenly yaks are a hot topic.”

Had to laugh at that last string of images.

“So you want a big murder story.”

“Listen, I got a big murder story,” he said. “But it’s not enough. I need to solve a big murder story. I need to solve it. And I need whatever information I can get.”