“Did you tell him what Skelton had done? Did he know what you’d been given?”
Cyrus reached for his pocket. “You mean the keys? No. I don’t think so.”
Horace sighed. “Well, his ignorance may be some little protection.”
Antigone looked at her brother, cocked her head, and turned back to Horace. “This is about keys? They burned down the motel and killed Skelton for a key ring?”
“Yes,” Horace said. “They did. And for what is on that ring. Although I’m sure an overarching mean- spiritedness played into their motivation as well. And forgive me if I point out the terribly obvious, but as they didn’t actually get the keys, we can expect them to make further efforts.”
“Keys!” Antigone yelled. She walked toward her brother. “Cy! I told you to give them back. What were you thinking?”
Cyrus stepped backward, raising both hands. He didn’t want his sister angry. Especially not now. “Hold on! I tried, Tigs. I did!”
Antigone stopped in front of him and raised a pair of vicious eyebrows.
“He didn’t want them,” Cyrus said. “He made me keep them.”
Horace snorted loudly. “Mr. Cyrus, I may be a lawyer, but I was a witness to the event, and I know the truth.” Again pulling out his watch, he flipped open its face and pressed down a small knob. “Mr. Skelton offered you the keys. He did not force them on you.” The watch went back into his pocket. “And the gift was, if I recall — and I do — accompanied by a string of rather morbid admonitions and dark metaphysical threats.” He glanced back at the road.
“Why didn’t you take the keys?” Antigone asked the lawyer. “You knew they were dangerous, and you let a kid take them?”
Horace nodded. “Yes. Another reason why I am grateful to your brother for his rashness. I prefer this circumstance to that one.”
He looked at Cyrus and smiled grimly.
“Now, I’ve called my car, and it’s just around the corner. I have stretched and torn the boundaries of professional courtesy in this rather unusual situation, but I cannot remain in this place any longer than I have already. As Skelton’s lawyer, I am an obvious target at this point, as I am bound to have information about the location of the keys. I must move to safer territory. You come with me to a brief explanatory breakfast, or you do not.” Turning, he looked back at the road. “If you come, I can explain more to you about the nature of what you have been given, and who will be coming to collect it. If you do not, it is unlikely that we will ever see each other again, and I will consider your inheritance null and void.”
A very low and extremely wide black sedan swooped around the corner and bounced into the parking lot.
Horace hurried toward it. “Leave a note if you like,” he called. “But come now.”
Antigone glared at Cyrus. “I’m leaving a note. Don’t get in that car until I’m back. Got me?” She poked him in the chest and began jogging toward the courtyard.
Cyrus watched his sister leave. He watched a tall, lean driver in a black suit open the rear door for Horace and the stout little lawyer slide himself in. And he waited, leaning against the old wooden camper on the back of the yellow truck.
The camper.
Cyrus’s heart skipped, and he straightened. The wooden planks ran horizontally above the truck’s bed. Some sort of earwax-colored sealant was flaking off around the seams and above every knot in the wood. He’d seen the same stuff on old sailboats. There were no windows. Dragging his fingers down the side, Cyrus moved to the rear of the truck and stopped in front of a narrow door. A small T-shaped knob with a center keyhole had been snapped down and was dangling from a crushed spring.
Holding his breath, Cyrus tugged open the door and looked into the dim light of a dank and stale cave.
The floor and wheel wells were covered in a heavy carpet, which was in turn covered with filthy blankets, cardboard boxes, empty whiskey bottles, a cracked milk crate, tattered books, a stained pillow, and used tissues. Glass from a small skylight had melted out and rehardened in the carpet. The space smelled like wet dog.
He leaned in.
Photos lined one side of the camper. They were hung neatly, in two parallel rows of ten. Most of them were black-and-white. All of them were of faces, and over the top of each face, drawn crudely in blue ink, there was a skull. Just beneath the ceiling, the whole wall had been labeled with black sticker lettering:
GUILT
“Okay.” Cyrus exhaled slowly. “This is creepy.” He looked back over his shoulder. The black sedan was idling. Horace wasn’t visible.
Cyrus climbed into the camper and knelt in front of the photos. Men. Women. Happy. Serious. Young. Old. All hidden behind skeletal scribbling. But there was a woman’s face near the end of the second row with only half a blue skull. White hair spread out on a starched hospital pillow. Eyes were closed in sleep.
Catherine Smith.
“No.” Cyrus tried to swallow, but his throat slammed shut. That was his mother’s halo of hair. Those were her closed eyes. Gulping, he snatched the picture off the wall. He wanted to crumple it, but he couldn’t do that to her. He looked up, eyes racing over the others. Top left. Second from the end. Blond hair in one of the few color shots. Eyes smiling behind a mask of ink, barely visible teeth and a prominent nose. The ocean and its cliffs were visible over his father’s shoulder.
Antigone had the same picture in one of her albums.
Cyrus reached for it and stopped. Something else was tucked behind it, another photo. Pinching the white corner of a Polaroid, he slid it out.
The picture had been taken in the camper. Daniel’s head was lolling against the bottom row of skull photos. Blood had dried on his forehead.
Slowly, stunned, Cyrus turned the image over in his hands. Someone had scrawled on the back.
“Cy!” Antigone’s voice jerked at him. Tugging down his father’s picture, he slid out of the dim camper and into the sunlight, eyes watering in the brightness. Antigone was storming toward him, fists clenched, mouth open.
“Jeepers, Cy!” Flustered, relieved, Antigone brushed back her hair and then hit Cyrus in the chest. “No disappearing!” Blinking, he stepped backward. He didn’t know what to say or how to say it. “If you disappear, too, I’ll take your scalp.”
The sky seemed to slip out of place as Cyrus looked up, fighting to breathe, fighting to keep hot, angry eyes from overflowing. Fear, with all its enormous weight, pressed down on his chest and slid through his ribs, filling him, stifling his lungs. In his hands, the three photos felt as heavy as tombstones. His sister took them.
“What?” Antigone asked. “What are these supposed—” She stopped. Cyrus turned away, numb, unwilling to watch his sister’s face. His legs somehow carried him to the waiting car.
The drive was hardly quiet. It was a big car, with two backseats facing each other. Even though the seats were wider than some couches, Antigone was right next to Cyrus and she couldn’t hold still. She yelled at Horace. She demanded a phone. She demanded the police. But by the time the Archer had disappeared around a bend, Cyrus heard none of it and he ignored her thumping. His forehead was resting against his window, bouncing with the road. While his fingertips mindlessly tracked the blistered braille around his neck, his eyes were racing through the drainage ditch, skimming over gravel, faded soda cans, plastic jugs, and cattails and grass and scum-spotted puddles. Just like his life. He had no answers. He had no control. He couldn’t make anything happen, and he couldn’t stop anything from happening. And only one kind of anything ever happened. He was a paper cup in the surf, a bulb of kelp torn up and thrown onto the beach, thrown all the way to Wisconsin.
Dan was gone. Why? There were people who would happily kill for the keys in Cyrus’s pocket. An old man — his godfather? — had been murdered for them in Cyrus’s room. Did those killers think Dan had them? That he knew where they were?
Another home was gone.
Lifting his head slightly, Cyrus let his skull thump back against the window. He shouldn’t have taken the keys. Skelton would be just as dead either way. The Archer would be just as burnt. But Dan would be stressing out about the motel and food and clothes and showers. He would be here, coming to breakfast.
