Turn to Stone (13 page)

20

“Where’s Mike?” Stride asked.

Ginnie Black stood breathless in the middle of her menagerie. She’d been dusting and vacuuming the small house in a frenzy, as if it would never really be clean. As if no matter what she did, the dirt and germs would always be there. Dogs howled and rampaged around the house at the arrival of a stranger, but she did nothing to stop them. Seven sets of green cats’ eyes studied Stride suspiciously from perches on the furniture. The iguana warmed its leathery body under a heat lamp, as if Shawano were the same climate as a desert.

“He’s out,” she said.

“Where?”

“He said he was meeting a friend,” Ginnie replied. Her face was flushed.

“Who?” Stride asked.

“He didn’t tell me.”

Stride sat down without being invited. He had the old school yearbook from his uncle in his hands. The black fur of a cat on the same sofa pricked up at his presence. “Tell me something, Ms. Black. Does Mike speak any German?”

Ginnie rubbed an invisible stain on the coffee table with the heel of her palm. “He’s taken a couple years in school. So what?”

“I was wondering if he’d ever heard the word
Teufel
.”

She stopped rubbing long enough to stare at him. Then, looking away, she took a soft cloth and worked it around a glass vase filled with multi-colored beads. She held the vase high in the air, watching it sparkle. “It means Devil. So?
Ich spreche Deutsch auch, Herr Stride
. All these years after school, and I remember bits and pieces of a language I never need to use. I find that ironic.”

“Does the word mean anything to you?”

“Nothing at all.”

“What about to Mike?”

“Of course not. Why should it?”

“Whoever murdered Greg Hamlin carved the word
Teufel
into his chest,” Stride told her.

Ginnie dropped the vase.

It fell to the table and shattered into dozens of sharp pieces. Beads flew like a rainbow. Animals ran.

“Shit,” she hissed.

Stride jumped to his feet to help her. Three of the cats crept in to investigate, but she shooed them away. Ginnie retrieved a small cardboard box, and the two of them gathered shards of glass and colored beads from the carpet. She was careless, and one of the fragments cut her finger, drawing blood. She sucked the fingertip between her lips. Her eyes were wet with tears. She slid to the floor with her back against an old armchair and breathed loudly through her nose.

“What do you want from me?” Ginnie asked, her voice drained of life. “Go away. Please. I don’t know anything.”

Stride finished finding all the glass he could, and he put the box on the table. “I remembered something you said to me. You said Jet used to take Mike everywhere. Like a prisoner. He made him watch when he hunted and killed things.”

“So what?”

“So I need to know. Did Jet have
two
prisoners at the Novitiate? Was Mike there, too?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“He was just a boy. He’s not in any trouble. But if there are things he saw—”

“He wasn’t there!” she snapped, with a sudden wildness bursting out of her throat. “He was here with me every night that week. Not with Jet. He doesn’t know a thing. Neither of us knew what was happening until Sheriff Weik came and told me that my husband was dead. That one of his cops had shot him. And you know what my reaction was? I was finally free.”

She was still bleeding. Stride grabbed a tissue and held it out to her. She pressed it against her skin, and a red stain bloomed through the soft cotton. He let her sit in silence.

“I understand how hard this is for you,” he said finally.

“No, you don’t understand anything.”

He held out the yearbook. “Do you remember this picture?”

She took the book from him and studied the old photograph of herself, Jet, and Greg Hamlin. Her eyes grew angry and hard. She slapped the yearbook shut and forced it back into his hands. “Our smiles were fake. Jet and I hated Hamlin. He was a son of a bitch who loved humiliating little kids.”

“Is that how Jet treated Mike, too?” Stride asked.

“Every day,” Ginnie snapped.

“That’s why I think Mike knows more about what happened at the Novitiate than you’re telling me. I think Jet forced Mike to watch what he did to Kelli Andrews.”

“Mike was home with me. He didn’t see anything.”

“Forgive me, Ms. Black, but I don’t believe you,” Stride said.

“I don’t care what you believe. I don’t have to talk to you.”

“No, you don’t. That’s true.”

“Don’t you get it? All I want to do is forget Jet. I don’t want to remember anything from those days. Neither does Mike. I’m not going to waste another second of my life on my husband. Jet deserved everything that happened to him.”

Stride stared at her. “Everything?” he asked softly.

“I mean he deserved to die,” she said, but she knew she’d made a mistake.

“Did you see your husband’s body after he was killed?” he asked.

“No. Tom Bruin took care of everything. Jet was cremated and the ashes buried. It’s more than I would have done for him.”

“Did Mike want to see his father?”

“No.”

Stride crossed to the small kitchen in the Black house and dampened a hand towel with warm water. He sat down next to Ginnie and wrapped the towel around her wounded finger. He held it there, applying pressure.

“Why did you drop the vase when you heard about Greg Hamlin’s body?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It’s shocking. Cruel.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, of course that’s all.”

“I was thinking it wasn’t the first time you’d heard about someone suffering that kind of torture,” he said.

Ginnie’s head turned. He could see weariness written all over her face, like a mask she could never take off. “Do you really want to be asking me these questions, Mr. Stride?”

“Why do you say that?”

“It seems to me they could take you somewhere that Kelli Andrews doesn’t want anyone to go.”

The message hung between them. She knew. All this time, she’d known what had really happened to her husband, and she’d never said a word.

“Kelli told me that she killed Jet,” he murmured. “Not Percy.”

“That doesn’t strike me as a smart thing for her to do.”

“I know. She took a risk by trusting me.”

“Well, I don’t trust you. I’m sorry. I don’t trust anyone.”

He leaned closer. “Do you think Kelli Andrews killed Greg Hamlin?”

“I have no idea. I wouldn’t blame her if she did.”

“Well, whoever killed Hamlin
knew
what happened to Jet. That’s a short list. At first, I thought it was only Kelli, but now I find out that you knew. So did Mike.”

“Greg Hamlin was a creep and a sadist. When he came to me, I had no interest in his sniveling apology. As far as I’m concerned, finding God and putting the bottle down doesn’t absolve you of anything. However, if you look around my house, you’ll realize that Mike and I treasure
life
. Not death. I didn’t kill Hamlin, and neither did my son.”

Stride eased back against the armchair. The dogs watched him, making sure he had no evil intentions against their master. He looked out the living room window, where it was almost dark.

“What really happened that week?” he asked.

Ginnie fingered the box that contained the wreckage of the glass. She seemed to be counting the broken pieces. “I didn’t know what was going on. Believe me. If I had thought for a moment that Jet was involved in Kelli’s disappearance, I would have done something immediately. I never would have let her suffer.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“Jet and I didn’t sleep in the same room. I had the bed. He used a cot in the garage. I never knew when he was gone. He took Mike with him to the Novitiate, but I didn’t realize it. All I knew was that there was something wrong with Mike. He became a different boy that week. He stopped talking. He had this look on his face like he’d seen the end of the world. I asked Jet why Mike was acting strangely, but he said I was making too much of it. It went on for days. I was scared.”

Ginnie stopped, and Stride waited. She didn’t want to go on, as if she’d already said too much. Finally, he prompted her: “You found out the truth when the police came?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s right. It was like the earth opened up under my feet and swallowed me. I knew Jet was violent, but this was depraved even for him. I was horrified by what had happened. At the same time, I have to be honest. I was happy he was dead. It was the greatest day of my life.”

“What about Mike?” Stride asked. “When did you realize he’d been there, too?”

Ginnie hesitated and composed her thoughts. She pointed to one of the cats, an under-sized Siamese with gray fur, who was following their conversation as if he understood every word. “He told Sheba. He was out in the yard one time, and he found this cat cowering in the shadows on the porch. Hungry. Scared. We took Sheba in. He was our first. Sheba still sleeps curled up against Mike every night. When Mike wouldn’t talk to me, I asked him to tell Sheba everything that had happened, and he did. Everything. How his father had brought him to the Novitiate. How Kelli was there, hooded, imprisoned. How Jet made him watch as he—”

She shook her head. Tears leaked down her face.

“I’m not sure which is more cruel,” she said. “To do what he did—or to force Mike to be there.”

“What about the last day?” Stride asked. “Did Mike tell you what Kelli did to Jet?”

“Do we really need to talk about this? What does it matter? Kelli told you what happened.”

“It matters.”

She stuttered. She didn’t want to tell him more. “Well, I guess—I don’t know. The last day, he heard something different. He heard a woman’s voice, but it didn’t sound like a woman. It was distorted and strange. He heard this odd, whining laughter. It was barely human. It was as if Jet was upstairs with—”

“With who?”

“With the Devil,” Ginnie said. “I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. Mike stayed there until the screaming stopped. Eventually, I guess he crept upstairs. Either Kelli was asleep or unconscious. Mike saw—well, you know what he saw. After that, he ran. He ran for miles all the way home.”

“I’m truly sorry for what he went through,” Stride said. “Did you get counseling for him?”

“He refused to go.”

“Were you shocked at what Kelli did? Did you think she should be punished?”

“Punished? After what Jet did to her? No. He deserved what he got.”

“The law might look at it differently,” Stride said.

“That’s why I never said a word to anyone. I didn’t want Kelli to get into trouble.”

“What about Mike?”

“He would
never
talk about what he saw,” Ginnie said. “He treats that experience like it’s a monster that he wrestled into a box. You don’t open those boxes, Mr. Stride. You leave them where they are.”

Stride frowned. “No, I’m sorry. I think Mike told people.”

“Absolutely not,” she insisted. “It’s not possible.”

“I talked to a girl who knows Mike. He told her about the Devil in the Novitiate. That the Devil killed his father. That’s what worries me. Who else at school did he tell? How far does the secret go? What if someone connected the dots and figured out that the Devil was really Kelli Andrews?”

Ginnie’s face was shadowed with worry. Sheba jumped up on the table and bumped against her face and licked her chin. Ginnie held the cat’s face as if it could give her answers.

“You must be wrong,” she said.

“I’m not wrong. I need to find him. Do you know where Mike is?”

She sighed and removed her phone from her pocket. “After all this, do you think I could ever stand not knowing where my son is? I have an app to track him. He bikes all over town on his moped, but I can always find when I need to.”

Ginnie punched a few buttons on the phone. She showed him a map marked with a cross, which moved slowly eastward along a country road toward the lake. “He’s near the arts center,” she said. “He spends a lot of time there. I’m not sure why. It’s empty during the winter. I asked him once, and he said he just likes to sit in the open-air theater and think about things.”

“Mike’s heading to the theater?” Stride said, getting up.

“Yes, so what?”

“We need to get over there, too,” he told her. “It’s no accident that he’s going there now. That’s where Kelli Andrews meets her clients.”

Kelli left her car where she usually did, in the children’s park on the other side of the creek from the theater. Snow covered the grass, with only a few blurred footprints left by toddlers earlier in the day. It was deep dusk. Blackness reached into the woods. The ribbon of water connecting Shawano Lake to the Wolf River was shallow and frozen. Algae and dead brush made the ice dirty.

A wooden footbridge led over the creek. Thick webs of branches leaned down, making an archway she passed beneath. On the other side of the bridge, the trail became a white snake slithering between the trees. With each footstep, acorns cracked under her boots, as sharp as rifle shots. She could barely make out the tree trunks packed tightly around her.

She stopped when she felt someone near her. Her breath clouded in front of her face.

“Hello?” she called.

There was no answer.

She continued through the woods to the amphitheater. It was really just a tiny flat stage, in need of a fresh coat of green paint, fronted by a handful of wooden benches on a shallow slope. The arts center building loomed behind the outdoor theater, but the building was closed and locked. She pushed through clusters of ferns and stood on the stage, as if she were Hamlet about to deliver a soliloquy to ghosts waiting on the benches.

“Hello?” she said again.

She was alone.

Kelli waited. Minutes ticked by. She brushed snow from a front row bench and sat down. Hair pricked up on the back of her neck, and she kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to see or hear someone. No one was there. The cold began to eat through the damp seat of her jeans and her down vest.

When fifteen minutes passed, she walked up the slope to the rear of the arts building. It was one-story, made of tan stucco. She peered into a window but couldn’t see inside. She made her way around the building, feeling oddly ill at ease as she turned the corners. In the front, several dirt roads came together through the tall trees. There were knolls cut into the forest where theatergoers parked, but most of the groves were hidden. She couldn’t see if anyone else was here.