He leaned against the counter, with his back to the double sink and to the window above it. Lightning flared, enlivening his shadow, which sprang forward and leaped back through the half-dark kitchen, forward and back again, as if the distorted silhouette were an entity with a mind of its own and with a keen desire to be free of him.
He sipped the coffee, which was as hot as he could tolerate, perhaps a cure not just for his unsteady nerves but also for the chills that plagued him. He was of half a mind to skip his scheduled meeting, to remain here and drink spiked coffee until his eyes grew heavy and he could no longer stay awake. Even in retirement, however, he was a lawyer who respected not just federal, state, and city laws, but also and primarily natural law, the code with which he believed that all men were born, a code of responsibilities that included the duty to love truth and always to pursue it.
Sometimes truth was elusive.…
After Tolliver, the butler, murdered the Ostock family and his fellow workers in 1935, Belle Vista stood empty for three years, until a bachelor oilman named Harmon Drew Firestone, undeterred by the history of violence, purchased the great house at a bargain price. He spent a fortune to restore it to its former grandeur. By World War II, Belle Vista had become
Firestone’s estate sold Belle Vista to a property-development trust that converted the building into twenty- three condominium apartments of various sizes. The high ceilings, the lavish and well-crafted architectural details, the hilltop views, and the elegant public spaces ensured that the units sold out quickly in 1974, for the highest per-square-foot cost in the history of the city. Thirty-seven years later, a couple of the original owners still lived in their apartments, but other units had changed hands more than once.
Only the previous day, Silas learned that the Pendleton’s history of bloodshed didn’t end in 1935, with Nolan Tolliver’s killing spree. Not only had there been more recent violence of a bizarre nature; apparently, the incidents also occurred with a predictable regularity, every thirty-eight years, give or take a day, which suggested that another atrocity might occur soon.
Margaret Pendleton and her two children, Sophia and Alexander, disappeared on the night of December 2, 1897.
Thirty-eight years later, on December 3, 1935, the Ostock family and seven members of their household staff were murdered.
In 1973, thirty-eight years after the Ostock tragedy, no one had been living in Belle Vista because it was being remodeled into highend apartments; no residents died. However, in late November and early December of that year, tradesmen and craftsmen working on the conversion had experiences so unsettling that a few quit their jobs and for all these years kept silent about what they witnessed. One of them, Perry Kyser, was meeting Silas at five o’clock.
At the coffeemaker, he refilled his mug. He hadn’t put away the brandy. After a hesitation, he decided not to spike the brew again.
As he capped the bottle, he glimpsed movement from the corner of his eye, a dark and fleeting something. Heart quickening, he turned toward the open door to the hallway. Light from a pair of crystal ceiling fixtures revealed cream-colored walls, a Persian-carpet runner, a gleaming mahogany floor, but no trespasser.
His recent discoveries had pulled his nerves taut. If the Pendleton was destined to be a death house once more, as in certain other Decembers, time might be running out. This was Thursday, December 1, 2011.
Silas wasn’t in a mood to dismiss the fleeting figure in the hallway as a misperception. He put down his coffee mug and ventured out of the kitchen, head cocked, listening for an intruder.
The dining room lay to the left, the study and a half bath to the right. All were unoccupied.
Beyond the dining room lay the large living room with its cast-iron firebox and elaborately carved limestone surround that extended to a fourteen-foot-high ceiling ornamented with reeded and egg-and-dart moldings. Directly opposite the fireplace, snakes of rain wriggled down the tall windows.
At the farther end of the living room, in the foyer, both the deadbolt and the security chain were engaged on the front door.
Across the hall from the living room, no one lurked in the bedroom or in either of the two walk-in closets. The quiet seemed deeper than usual, an expectant hush, although he might have been imagining the uncanny quality of this silence.
As he approached the half-open door to the spacious bathroom, a domain of gold-veined white marble and large expanses of mirrors, he thought that he heard susurrant voices or perhaps the slithering noise that had arisen within the wall during the night. But when he crossed the threshold, the bathroom also proved to be hushed—and deserted.
He stared at the room in one mirror and then in another, as if a reflection of the space might reveal something that could not be seen by looking directly. Because the mirrors faced each other, he stood among multiple Silas Kinsleys who were either advancing toward him single file or receding from him with their backs turned.
A long time had passed since he had studied his face in a mirror with full self-awareness. He appeared far older than he felt. He had aged ten years in the three since Nora died.
He glanced from face to face, half expecting to discover that one of them was that of a stranger, a malevolent Other hiding among the infinity of diminishing Silas Kinsleys. What a curious thought. The images were of course all identical old men.
As he returned to the hallway, a low and menacing rumble arose, not thunder, from underfoot, as if a subterranean train were passing beneath the building, although the city had no subway system. The Pendleton shuddered, and Silas swayed with it. He thought
In the study, Witness turned in a circle, wanting first to get the feel of the space. He might be there only seconds, a minute or two at most. This was a man’s room but warm, with one wall given to a gallery of photographs showing Silas Kinsley with some of the clients he had so ably represented; Silas and his late wife, Nora, in different exotic locales; and the two of them with various friends on celebratory occasions.
