Twice

“Lola is clearly the dominant personality,” Irma went on. “But I sense that she’s just as afraid as Nathaniel is; she’s just better at hiding it under a sullen facade.”

“Do you think it’s possible that they saw who killed their father?”

“I’m inclined to say that no, they didn’t witness the murder. To be honest, there haven’t been that many studies done on children who witness the death of their parents. But to watch their father murdered so brutally and to display no evidence of trauma or distress would be highly unusual.”

“What if they’re repressing the memory,” said Ford.

Irma shook her head. “Repressed memory is far less common than you think. If anything, emotionally charged events are the least forgettable of all memories.”

“But it’s possible.”

She shrugged her assent. “It’s possible. But say they had completely blocked out their memories of the event, there would be other indicators of repressed memory of the trauma. Probably any mention of that night would cause terror and panic. But they remember every detail happily until they went to bed.”

“But Lola was down in that laundry room. We’ve got the videotape. And Piselli found Lola’s nightgown back at the apartment. She didn’t mention that.”

“But that doesn’t mean they’ve repressed the memory. It will take more time to find out what happened at that point. They’ve been instructed not to discuss that with anyone. That much was clear. Lola tried to warn Nathaniel to be quiet. But he couldn’t hold it in. He’s afraid of someone. They both are.”

“What about Nathaniel? If Lola went into the laundry room to move the washing machine…”

“Wait, she’s just a little girl. How is she going to move that machine by herself?”

“It was on casters, very easy to move.”

“Okay.”

“Is Nathaniel smart enough to turn off that camera, wait till his sister and whoever have cleared the laundry room, and then turn the camera on again?”

She thought about it for a second. “It’s hard to see Nathaniel acting like that on his own. He seems very dependent on Lola. He’d probably be able to follow instructions, but I doubt very much if he’d be able to carry out a task like that alone.”

Ford took a sip from his Perrier and wished it were a Manhattan. He turned the pieces around in his mind, circling the edge of his glass with his fingertip, trying to fit everything together, what he knew, what Lydia and Jeffrey had come across.

Things weren’t falling together, even with the possibility of James Ross as a suspect. There were just too many questions: Where had he been all these years? Why would he kill his sister’s husbands when it was her he supposedly hated? And logistically, how would he have gotten from Haunted to New York City and back again? How did he know there was a tunnel leading to the building? How was he communicating with the children? It just seemed too far-fetched. Maybe Lydia and Jeffrey had time to play X-Files, but he needed a chain of hard evidence. He could only hope that, after taking James Ross in for questioning and analyzing the evidence Lydia and Jeffrey had collected, some tangible connection could be made, that answers would start to evolve from the tangled mass of questions in his mind.

He felt Irma’s eyes on him and he looked up from his glass.

“Welcome back,” she said, and gave him a smile that reminded him how pretty she was. There was concern in her eyes, and something more.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Lost in thought.”

She put a warm hand on his arm and he looked down at her slender fingers, her perfectly manicured nails. Her blond hair looked like spun gold and framed her face in a delicate flattering way. He found himself remembering how long it had been since he’d been this close to a woman. It opened the hole in his heart that Rose had occupied, and for a moment he felt like putting his head down on his arm and sobbing. Luckily, his cell phone rang and he was spared the embarrassment.

“McKirdy,” he answered, looking at Irma with apology in his eyes. She withdrew her hand and looked down at her Cosmo.

“Henry Clay here. This better be good.”

Ford had put in a call to the Haunted PD and convinced the desk sergeant to rouse his chief from bed.

“Chief, you have someone residing in your town that I need to bring in for questioning. I’d like to send two of my detectives up to you tomorrow and I am hoping you can put some uniforms on this.”

“Who exactly are we talking about here, Detective?”

“James Ross.”

There was a leaden silence on the other end of the phone.

“Chief?”

“Are you fucking with me, Detective?” asked Clay, and Ford could hear an angry quaver in the man’s voice.

“I don’t have time to fuck around,” said Ford, dropping the polite formality he’d employed up to this point and turning away from Irma. Ford was old school, and old school men don’t swear in front of women, if they can help it.

“James Ross has not lived in this town for more than twenty years.”

“I have good information that he’s residing in his family home.”

Silence again. Ford could hear Clay breathing on the line.

“Where did you get your information?” he asked finally.

“That’s not important.”

“The hell it isn’t. We had reports of a break-in at the old Ross house tonight. Was that your people?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Ford lied.

More silence.

“Look, are you going to help me or not?” said Ford, at the end of his patience. “I’ll send someone up there either way. I was just giving you the respect of a phone call to let you know we’d be entering your jurisdiction to question a suspect in a murder investigation.”

“Well, you won’t get any of my men to go near that house.”

“What are you talking about? Why not?”

“Because it’s… not right, that house. It’s evil.”

Ford shook his head slowly in disbelief. He let out an uncertain laugh.

“Bad things happen to the people who go into that house,” Clay continued, his voice low and serious.

Ford let a second pass before saying, “You’re supposed to stop the bad things from happening, Chief. That’s what cops do.”

“Your men want to go up there, be my guest. But I guarantee you’re not going to be bringing James Ross in for questioning.”

“Why not?” Ford asked.

There was static on the line when Clay spoke, and Ford was sure he hadn’t heard him correctly. “Can you repeat that?”

The man issued a mighty sigh.

“I said, because he’s dead, McKirdy. James Ross is dead.”

chapter twenty

“When you love someone, I mean really love someone,” she said, “it hurts so much. Even the pleasure can feel like a blade. It’s all temporary and your heart recognizes that transience because it is temporary. Even the beauty of love is edged with the knowledge that an end will come horribly, sadly, inevitably.”

Marion Strong sat serene and beautiful at the edge of Lydia’s bed. Jeffrey slept soundly beside Lydia, his breathing heavy and even. The angry words they’d spoken before bed still danced in the air.