The Silent Sister (23 page)

She opened her own post office box under her new name, Ann Johnson. Then, sitting at the kitchen table in her little cottage, she wrote a long, heartfelt letter to her father, weeping through every sentence. She couldn't send it. She didn't dare. She dried her tears and started over.

Dear Fred,

I plan to attend school, majoring in education. The only problem is transportation. Although I'm working and will continue to do so, I don't have enough money to buy a used car. I hope you can help.

Sincerely,

Ann

She sat back from the table and read the note aloud, stumbling over the cold sound of the words. The formality, when what she really wanted to write was,
I miss you so much! How is everyone? Tell me about Riley. Please tell me she's still the happy little girl at four that she was at two. Is Danny all right? Has he forgotten that terrible day? Is there any way—ANY WAY—I can see all of you? Please!

She folded the letter in thirds and put it in an envelope. There was a good chance he would be angry, but so was she.

*   *   *

She began checking her post office box three days after mailing the letter and of course it was empty. Her spirits sank each time she saw the hollow space behind the glass window in the small metal door. But on the nineteenth day, a shadow blocked the glass. She opened the door and pulled out a long fat envelope. There was no return address, but the postmark was from Pollocksville, North Carolina, and she let out a joyous yelp before she caught herself. Her address was written in block print she would never recognize as her father's, but it could be from no one else. She trembled as she put the envelope in her purse, and she nearly ran all the way home.

Sitting on the big couch in her living room, she carefully slit open the envelope. There were bills inside—twenty one-hundred-dollar bills—and tucked in the middle of the stack, this note:
You are loved and missed.
She held the note close to her heart. Of the twenty-one items in the envelope, this was the most precious.

*   *   *

She bought a rickety old white VW bug for four hundred dollars from an aging hippie in Ocean Beach and put the rest of the money in her bank account. She also got a California driver's license. Even after living in San Diego for a couple of years, she'd felt nervous walking into the DMV, turning in the fake Maryland license, having her new picture taken. The process was easy, though. Facing her fear turned out to be the only hard part.

Late in July, she made her first drive to the university to take a special placement test. The test took two hours to complete and struck her as easy. When she'd finished, she wandered around the campus. She would have denied even to herself that she was looking for the music building, but there it was—standing between the building where the test had been held and the parking lot—and because it was so hot out, she told herself it made sense to cut through the building to cool off.

The sound of an oboe greeted her in the hallway. It was only playing scales, briskly, then slowly, then briskly again. She was due to work at Grady's in an hour, but she slowed way down as the oboe began to play an étude, the haunting sound echoing through the deserted hallway.

The air in the building began to smell like Violet. She walked even more slowly, filling her lungs with the woody, dusky scent, knowing it was only in her imagination but not caring. The oboe accompanied her down the hall until she went through the first set of double doors that led outside. In that small vestibule were two bulletin boards, both covered with posters. She stopped. Would it hurt to go to a concert? Nonmusicians went to concerts all the time. She moved from poster to poster to see who'd be in San Diego over the summer. There were so many performances she would love to see! Then one small poster made her stop and stare.
THE STUDENT STRING ORCHESTRA OF THE PEABODY CONSERVATORY.
Her heart pounded. Matty'd had early acceptance into the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins. Surely he went; it had been his first choice. He would have finished his sophomore year by now, and the chance that he might be touring with the string orchestra for the summer made amazing, wonderful, extraordinary sense.

She studied the poster for the longest time, squinting at the dark photograph of the orchestra, but it was impossible to make out faces. She committed the date and time to memory, fantasizing about seeing Matty, and maybe if she was very brave—or very stupid—talking to him. She was going to that concert. There was no way she would miss it.

She left the music building, her heart skittering in her chest. She nearly ran the rest of the way to her car, feeling so alive and excited that she couldn't walk slowly. She doubted the concert would be a sellout, but she would get her ticket right away. She needed a good seat. She needed to sit close enough to be able to scrutinize every musician. She would die if Matty wasn't one of them.

But she would also die if he was.

*   *   *

The concert was poorly attended, so much so that she felt embarrassed for both the string orchestra and for San Diego State that it couldn't turn out a better crowd for a classical concert. The poor attendance, though, had enabled her to get an excellent seat in the middle of the second row and she got there early, sitting alone in the row, staring at the stage and barely breathing as she waited for the musicians to take their seats.
Please be here,
she pleaded to Matty in her head.
Please, please.

Ever so slowly, the seats around her filled. The audience was made up mostly of music students and they talked and laughed like they were in a classroom rather than the small auditorium. She envied them, not for their camaraderie, although that was certainly part of it. She envied them for being able to study music. They could go home tonight and pick up their instruments, while all she could touch was air.

When the lights dimmed, a hush fell over the students and polite applause echoed in the building as the musicians took the stage. She recognized Matty right away. He went directly to the first chair of the second violins, and she caught her breath, pride welling up inside her. He was only heading into his third year at Peabody, and already in a leadership role. He'd always been a strong and passionate musician, though he'd never been at her level. But he was doing well. He was being appreciated.

His dark hair was still a wild mass of curls, but although she wasn't quite close enough to make out his features, she could tell from the shape of his face alone that they had changed. What if he'd changed along with them? she thought. What if he'd come to hate her?

The orchestra opened with Barber's Adagio for Strings and no one in the audience seemed to breathe as the wistful music filled the space. She hadn't anticipated the pain, although perhaps she should have. Why had she thought seeing him, hearing him, was a good idea? It hurt so much. She couldn't possibly talk to him. It wouldn't be fair to ask him to keep a secret so enormous. She loved him too much to put him in that position. It hurt, too, to see him doing the thing she longed to do: play the violin. Watching him was agony in too many ways to count.

Still, as she sat there choking back tears, she imagined going backstage after the performance. Finding him. Pulling him aside. Pressing a finger to his lips to keep him from saying her name. She would wrap her arms around him and settle into the safety of his embrace. But the fantasy was only a fantasy, and when intermission came and she stood up, she knew she wasn't going backstage. She was leaving the theater, moving away from temptation. Away from the danger.

 

26.

Riley

“There were definitely two sets of footprints in the area the night Lisa supposedly killed herself,” Danny said the moment I walked into his trailer. He sat barefoot on his bed, his back against the wall and his computer on his lap.

“How do you know?” I sat down on the bench seat by the table.

He lit a cigarette and inhaled, his gaze never leaving my face. “I hacked into their data system.”

“
Whose
data system?” I asked, perplexed. “The Kyles'?”

“The state police of ol' Virginny.” He smiled. “They need much better security.”

“Danny! Tell me you're kidding. How did you do that?”

“Do you literally want me to tell you how or would you rather just know what I found out?”

“Can they catch you?” That thought wiped all others from my mind. The last thing Danny needed was time in prison.

He shook his head. “Very doubtful. I'm sure no one up there is looking at records from 1990.”

“They were using computers back then?”

He nodded. “At least partly. I got the feeling they were just starting to digitize. I'm sure they had more on the case than I could get my hands on.”

“You're amazing.” I laughed. I couldn't help it; I felt proud of his skill, even if he'd used it for something illegal. “What did you find out?”

He took a pull on his cigarette. “It snowed pretty heavily that night,” he said through a stream of smoke, “and that apparently screwed up the investigation. But there were definitely signs of two people being there. Here's the weird thing, though.” He moved his computer from his lap to the bed and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “That second set of footprints? They withheld that tidbit from the media. There's no way Tom Kyle could have read about them anywhere.”

“How could he know, then?”

“That's a really good question, isn't it?” He blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. “They're sure the second set of prints was from a man's boots, but—”

“Matty,” I wondered out loud. “Remember I told you about him? They were really close friends, and we have pictures of—”

“Matthew Harrison,” Danny said. “Assuming it's the same guy as the one mentioned in the police report, that's his full name. They questioned him because he was there the night she killed her teacher, so—”

“He was?”

“Yes, but they don't think he had anything to do with it. He didn't get there till after the guy was shot. But since he was already on their radar, they questioned him about the suicide. Turned out he was out of town the night she supposedly killed herself.”

“Oh, my God!” I said, excited now. “Supposedly? Did the police think she—”

“Don't get your hopes up,” he said. “Most likely, she did it, but—and don't freak out about this—one of the theories they were looking at was that the second set of prints might have belonged to someone who killed her and made it
look
like suicide.”

“But she left a note, remember?”

“Could have been faked. And the other set of tracks could have been from before she was in the area, or it could have been someone who saw her abandoned car and was checking it out.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the glass ashtray on his bed. “Like I said, the snow made checking out the scene a challenge. Anyhow, it seems they stopped looking into it, so it's a cold case at this point.”

“If she's alive, I want to find her,” I said.

“Well, good luck with that wild-goose chase,” he said, “but if you
do
happen to track her down, let me know, so I can give Harry a call. He loves a cold case.”

“Danny.”
I stared at him and he stared right back. “You're teasing me, right?”

“When have you ever known me to tease?”

As a boy, he'd teased me relentlessly and good-naturedly, but the grown-up Danny had lost that playful side. “I know you didn't like her,” I said. “I know you blame her for everything that's ever gone wrong with our family. But you were only six when she died … or disappeared. You never really knew her.”

“You need to accept the fact that she's a murderer, Riley.” He shook another cigarette from the pack on his bed.

“She never got to have a trial,” I said.

“And whose fault was that?” he asked as he lit the cigarette.

I stood up. “If I find her,” I said, “I just won't tell you.”

He leaned back against the wall again, his face momentarily clouded by a puff of smoke. “That's probably a good idea,” he said.

 

OCTOBER 1992

27.

Jade

She sat on the cool floor in the hallway of the music building, leaning against the wall outside a classroom. Inside the room, an ensemble rehearsed a Bruch concerto. They were good. A dull ache traveled down her arms as she listened to them, and her throat was tight from the effort of holding back tears. She'd skipped her child development class to sit here and listen, like an addict who couldn't stay away from her next fix, and she knew she was in trouble.

Her first few weeks of college had been an out-of-body experience for her. The campus swarmed with students and she didn't remember ever feeling a part of something so enormous. Having been homeschooled all her life, she found it hard to adjust to moving from one classroom to another. The structure was so impersonal; the crush of students daunting.

She was quiet in her classes, afraid to draw attention to herself, and she didn't interact with her fellow students. The only people she could sincerely call her friends were Grady and Ingrid and some of the regular customers, like Charlie, who came in every week to talk music.

The ensemble reached her favorite part of the concerto and she rested her head against the wall, shutting her eyes to listen. She didn't know why she tortured herself this way, hanging out in the music building, but she couldn't stay away.

When the ensemble had finished rehearsing, she opened her eyes and noticed a bulletin board on the wall across from her. Unlike the boards where she'd found the poster about Matty's concert, this one had small typed or handwritten notices: students advertising instruments they wanted to sell. She caught her breath. Standing up, she crossed the hall to scan the notices. There were three violins, none anywhere near the quality of Violet, but there was a Jay Haide for five hundred dollars. More than her car had cost her, but probably in better shape.