Within These Walls (26 page)

“How could Halcomb and Schwartz talk to each other? Aren’t they in solitary confinement?”

“The cell doors have ports. We call them slop slots, where we slide the food trays through. It isn’t exactly regulation, but maybe some of us are a little too soft for our own good. We leave those ports open for the guys who haven’t been causing trouble, and they can talk to each other through them if they feel like it.” Marty shrugged, his reproachful expression giving him away. He was guilty of leaving the port doors open as well. “It’s hard sometimes,” he said. “These guys are human beings. Locking them up the way they are, it gets to you sometimes. Occasionally we bend the rules because it makes us feel a little less grisly.”

“What do you call that?” Josh cut in. “The ability to make people do what you say.”

“Mind control?” Lucas said.

“You think that Halcomb guy can really do that?” Josh asked.

“I know he can,” Lucas said. “How else do you explain eight kids killing themselves in unison in the name of one man?”

And how else did someone explain why Lucas was living in Halcomb’s former residence? He knew damn well what the man was capable of, and Halcomb was
still
able to pull one over on him.

All it took was a letter.

You want my story, you live in my house.

Gee, okay,
Lucas may as well have replied.
What else can I do for you, Mr. Halcomb?

“Good teacher,” Morales said under his breath, “what good thing
shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” He looked up at Lucas and Marty. “That’s from the Bible. It’s repeated over and over again.”

Lucas gave him a curious look. Josh looked far away, as if contemplating something he’d never considered before.

“What about the visitor?” Lucas asked, turning his attention to Marty. “Josh mentioned something about a woman. And the gatekeeper receptionist at the front desk—I’ve talked to her many times. She’s verified that Halcomb has cut off all visitation except to one person. That must be her, right?”

“I’ve walked Halcomb down to the visitation room a few times,” Marty said. “In the past few months, I’ve noticed one particular visitor that sees him on a semifrequent basis. I don’t have her name. We have to request clearance to get info like that from the front desk, and we have to have a good reason for asking. Obviously, I can’t do that if we’re off the record . . . which we are.”

“Do you remember what she looks like?” Lucas asked.

“Not really. Halcomb doesn’t often see people the way he was going to see you—you know, one-on-one with guards standing by. He does on occasion, but every time I’ve noticed this woman, he’s been seeing her in regular visitation, behind Plexiglas, just talking through the phone.”

“So what?” Lucas shook his head, not getting the point.

“So when you go to regular visitation you don’t have to surrender all of your belongings. The chick wears these big dark glasses, like Jackie O. She pulls her hair back and wears a scarf. If you took one look at her you’d think she didn’t want to be seen going in and out of the prison, and I guess that’s just as well. Maybe she’s family or something. Whoever she is, Halcomb seems to know her pretty well. Maybe she’s ashamed of that. Or maybe she’s just a Froot Loop who thinks she’s Marilyn Monroe.”

“But there’s no chance . . . ?” Lucas asked.

“Sorry, no chance,” Marty said. “Not without painting a giant target on my back.”

Lucas leaned back in his seat, tapped his fingers against the edge of the table, and contemplated his options. Marty went back to his nachos while Josh remained oddly quiet, his gaze fixed on the soda fizzing in his mug. After a few moments, Lucas reached out and pressed STOP on the digital recorder, but he left it on the table just in case.

Josh spoke up only after the red light of the recorder went out. “What if it’s true?”

“What if what’s true?” Marty gave his coworker a look.

“The stuff Halcomb is saying, the stuff about eternal life? If Hillstone mentioned it in his letter, he must have gotten it from Halcomb. Maybe Halcomb told him that if he killed himself, he’d live forever or something. I mean, millions of people believe they’ll be granted eternal life as long as they repent for their sins and love their neighbor and go to church, right? I was taught that stuff when I was a kid. Halcomb isn’t, like, reinventing the wheel, you know?”

Marty frowned at his younger cohort. “There’s a difference between believing in God and believing some guy sitting in a supermax, Josh. Besides, the eternal life stuff isn’t coming from Halcomb, right, boss?” Marty gave Lucas a questioning look.

Lucas nodded. “Halcomb hasn’t said a word to anyone about his true beliefs,” he said. “Even if Hillstone did talk about it in his letter, we’re only speculating that he got it from Halcomb.”

“So if you want to know what his true belief is on eternal life,” Marty said, his gaze focused back on Josh, “I guess you’d have to ask him yourself.”

“But there’s something about Halcomb,” Josh said. “Something you can’t put your finger on. He’s creepy, right? Everyone thinks so.”

“Yeah, creepy as hell,” Marty confirmed.

“Well, what if he’s that way because there’s something about him . . . something we as regular people can’t understand? I mean, how do you convince someone to kill themselves?” Josh shot a look at Lucas, as though Lucas had the answer to how mind control worked. Lucas shook his head to say that he didn’t know.

“We as
regular
people,” Marty repeated, looking more restless by the second. “What does that make Halcomb, an irregular one?”

“Well,
yeah
,” Josh scoffed. “I mean, look at him.”

“Point taken,” Marty murmured, “but that’s not what you meant.”

Josh said nothing.

“You meant regular as in we’re just everyday joes while he’s something more . . . which sounds to me like some dangerous thinking.”

Morales lifted his shoulders in a faint shrug. “All I’m saying is that maybe there’s something more to it than just, like, parlor tricks. Maybe this guy isn’t what he looks like.”

“Which is what?” Marty asked.

“Crazy,” Josh said.

A chill crab-walked up Lucas’s spine. Now
there
was something to contemplate: what if Jeffrey Halcomb wasn’t crazy?

If he
was
preaching eternal life . . . what if it was true?

37

Sunday, April 4, 1982

Eleven Months, Ten Days Before the Sacrament

O
NLY THREE OF
them went over—Avis, Jeffrey, and Gypsy. Arriving at Maggie’s small bungalow tucked into the trees, Avis led them around the side of the house to the back sliding glass door. Just as predicted, it was unlocked.

Somewhere inside the house, Maggie and Eloise slept. At least that’s what she assumed, but Eloise’s visits had become few and far between. Maggie always had an excuse—day care or Grandma’s. Part of her hoped that Eloise
wasn’t
home, just in case something happened, just in case something went wrong.

Avis’s heart thudded in her chest at the thought of being caught. What would she say? She justified the break-in with the fact that they were stealing something that Maggie could easily replace. They were in it for boxes of mac and cheese and cans of Campbell’s soup, not for money or jewelry or anything that held sentimental value. Avis told herself that Maggie would have given up the things Gypsy was piling into paper grocery bags if she had only asked. But Jeff had made it clear that asking wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about whether she could bat her eyelashes and score some handouts. This was about having the guts to go through with the things the family had to do to survive.

If stealing some groceries was the entry fee to a life of companionship and acceptance, Avis was all in. She couldn’t let a little guilt get in the way, not even if the person she was betraying was her own best friend.

It took them less than a couple of minutes to load up three grocery bags full of dried food and canned goods. They took a few packs of meat from the freezer for good measure and some cellophaned leftovers for Shadow as well. Other than that, they left the place just the way they found it. Avis knew Maggie would notice so much missing.
But she would have handed it over if I had asked,
she told herself.
If she blames me, I’ll just explain.
Right. Because saying that Jeff had talked her into sneaking into a house in the dead of night would go over well. Because confessing that she
had
to do it or the group would know she wasn’t serious would paint her as a loyal compatriot. If she said any of those things, they would deem her a defector. And then they’d leave her behind, and she wasn’t sure what she’d do without them.

Except three bags of groceries for ten people wasn’t much, and Maggie didn’t have a dog, which got Shadow nothing but scraps. When Avis muttered something to that effect in the car on the return trip, Gypsy stated that they’d simply “have to get more.”

“Get more,” Avis said. “We can’t get more, not without Maggie noticing . . .”

Gypsy and Jeffrey looked at each other but didn’t speak, allowing Avis to stew in her own wariness. Getting more would mean going to different houses—something
they
were used to doing. But the proposition turned Avis’s stomach inside out. It was one thing to break into the house of a friend who, with a bit of pleading, would come to understand their predicament. It was altogether another to steal from total strangers. That was a whole new level of theft.

Avis’s heart just about leaped out of her chest when she saw
Maggie’s Volvo come up the road bright and early the next morning. She watched her from the girls’ bedroom window while chewing a fingernail, sure that Maggie was about to storm inside and demand to know who raided her pantry.
I know it was you, Avis. Or Audra. Or who
ever
you are now
 . . .

As a kid, someone had broken into Audra’s family home and stolen a bunch of stuff—their TV, the good silver, her mother’s jewelry. They tore the house apart looking for valuables while Audra and her parents were out to dinner, celebrating one of her father’s many political victories. She still remembered the sickening feeling of violation when they came home that night. Things flung everywhere. The TV stand upended in the living room. Couches moved. Lamps pushed off tables and glasses shattered on the kitchen floor. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t taken anything that belonged to
her
. She’d been ten at the time, and the childish appearance of her room must have turned the trespassers off. All that mattered was that someone had come into her family home without being invited. That in itself was enough to make her skin crawl, and Maggie had just as much reason to rage as anyone. Avis had violated her trust. Maggie would more than likely never forgive her.

But as Avis waited for Maggie to fly up the stairs and shove her against the bedroom wall, quiet laughter sounded from the ground floor instead. Avis could hear Maggie speaking to members of the group in low tones, as if not wanting Avis to hear. Maggie pulled away from the house a few moments later without ever seeking Avis out.

Eventually, Avis went downstairs, and that’s when she discovered the reason for Maggie’s visit. There, on the kitchen table, was bag upon bag of food. There was even a giant bag of Alpo dog food propped up against the wall, unopened, fresh from the store. Maggie had noticed the robbery, but instead of fury, she had shown mercy.
For a brief moment, Avis loved her more intensely than she’d loved anyone in her entire life. She wanted to run through the woods that separated their homes, throw her arms around Maggie’s neck, and kiss her into oblivion.

But that notion was a fleeting spark. It gave way to something ugly, something akin to hate. Because Avis’s twisted, noble act of offering Maggie up as a sacrificial lamb had been outdone. In one graceful swoop, Maggie had transformed herself from victim to savior, and suddenly, Avis’s risk felt little more than childish. Maggie had stolen the attention, like always. Mother fucking Teresa, quietly living out her life in the Washington woods.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, Clover gave Avis a knowing smile, as if sensing her humiliation. “Well,
that
was pointless,” she said, lifting a mug of coffee to her lips. “I guess you’ll just have to prove yourself some other way.”

38

V
EE AND ECHO
walked along the coast, Echo’s long skirt flapping in the breeze like a patchwork flag. Vee kept her hands shoved deep in the front pockets of her jeans. She wasn’t one to open up, let alone to be friendly with strangers. She’d always been aloof, forcing her mother to give family friends apologetic smiles.
She’s shy.
Vee had heard that excuse a hundred thousand times—so much that, for a while, she adopted her mom’s cover story as a personality trait. But the truth of it was that Vee wasn’t shy as much as she was an introvert. She wasn’t fond of too much conversation, never did like being part of a big group, had always preferred silence to talk.

But Vee’s desperation to slough off at least a little of her growing loneliness was too strong to fight. She needed to subdue the pain of her father’s betrayal, her mother’s dishonesty. There was something about the way Echo had smiled at her, about how this strange woman had so easily confessed her own father’s negligence. Somehow, that admission assured her that she and Echo were alike. The ease of her movements whispered
we’re the same.
The way she walked beside Vee in comfortable silence urged her,
take my hand.
Something about the way she carried herself promised Vee that Echo understood her pain, the sad and lonely feelings of being brushed aside.

Eventually, Echo spoke, her words cutting through the salty breeze and the rolling in of the tide. “Has he told you about the house?”

Vee peered down at the sandy tips of her sneakers as they walked. Her dad had waved her off when Echo had first come to visit, as if afraid that Echo would say something he didn’t want Vee to hear—secrets about the house that Vee had already discovered but her father couldn’t come to terms with. “You know about that?” she asked, looking up from her feet to the woman beside her.

Echo gave her a sage nod. “Yes, I do. And I’d garner a guess that you know more about it than your dad does.”

Vee shrugged at that. She was sure her father had a bunch of newspaper articles that didn’t appear anywhere online. He had spent a lot of time at the library before they left New York. Yes, she knew a lot, but would be hard-pressed to say she knew
more.

“You’ve seen them, haven’t you?” Echo asked, her question freezing Vee in her tracks. Echo paused her steps as well, turning to look back at the girl who was now standing statuesque upon the beach, and smiled. “Ah.” She nodded again. “Yeah, I had a feeling.”

“Y-you did?” Vee blinked at the strange woman before her. She didn’t want to come straight out and ask if Echo meant what Vee
thought
she meant. Maybe she was mistaken. Perhaps the moment she dropped the word
ghost
into the conversation, Echo would burst into a fit of laughter and ask her what in God’s name she was talking about. But Echo kept her gaze steady on Vee and nodded again.

“I knew you were the one from the first moment I saw you, Vivi.”

Vivi.
That was new. She kind of liked it.

“The one?” Vee shook her head, not understanding what that meant. The one for what?

“You’re just like them, you know. Lost, wanting more than what you have, deserving of more than what you’re being given. Kids like you—that’s who Jeffrey loved the most. That’s why they turned to him, Vivi. He knew what they needed, and Jeff gave them everything he promised.”

Vee swallowed against the lump that had risen in her throat. Her thoughts drifted to the empty cardboard box shoved into the corner of her closet, the printed-out pictures she’d tacked to the wall behind it for no reason other than being compelled to do so by some ineffable force. That same force was what had kept Jeffrey Halcomb’s photo glowing bright on her laptop screen for the past day and a half. She had saved more than a dozen photographs of him onto her computer. When she considered closing them to shut down her system, she hesitated, backed down, as though closing them would somehow make the man who wasn’t present disappear. She’d spent hours staring into his eyes, wondering what he had been like, not once thinking about Tim or her friends or the old life she’d left behind. She wondered if, perhaps, those people had killed themselves not because Jeffrey Halcomb had been some terrible oppressor but because he had been wonderful enough to die for.

Echo placed a hand on Vee’s shoulder. “You’ll get to meet him soon,” she said. “He’s looking forward to it, Vivi. But you have to keep that a secret . . . you understand? Even after you meet him, whatever you do,
don’t
tell your father. Do you know why?”

Yeah, because he’d think Vee was crazy. Because the moment she told him she was seeing Jeffrey Halcomb, the house would be history. He’d move them out within hours. Then it would be endless therapy sessions to get her head examined. Her father would do whatever it took to convince her it was all in her head.
No, it never happened. You just imagined it, Jeanie. You fell down the rabbit hole, did too much research, read too many articles, got all mixed up.

Jeanie. That name hardly felt like hers anymore. Virginia, even less so. Maybe, as a fresh start, Vivi was the girl she needed to become.

“Yes, I understand,” Vee said.

“Can you tell me why?” Echo asked, and while Vee didn’t know
exactly what it was Echo wanted her to say, she murmured the first thing that came to mind.

“Because he’ll ruin everything.”

That’s all he ever did. Both her dad and her mom. They messed everything up and didn’t even care. But Vivi didn’t
have
parents. She could forget them, forget the past and the pain.

“Do you think I should try to help them?” she asked, her gaze flitting to Echo’s face. “The people in the house, I mean. Is that what they want, for me to help?”

Echo smiled, as though having expected that very question. “Oh, honey, don’t worry. You
will
help them,” she said. “That’s what being the one is all about. Look.” Drawing something out of her cross-body bag, Echo held a small photograph out for Vee to see. It was a picture of Jeff Halcomb—young and handsome. His smile was nothing short of dazzling in the light that dappled down onto his shoulders from between branches overhead. “Turn it over,” Echo told her. Vee did so, blinking at the handwritten note scrawled onto the back.

Dearest Vivi,

See you soon.

—J.

Vee’s eye went wide. “Is this . . . ?” She paused, flipping the photograph over again in her hand. “But how?”

Echo exhaled a quiet laugh and placed a hand against Vee’s back. “Magic,” she said. “And he’s waiting to show you his best trick, Vivi. Any time now. It’ll be soon.”