The Night Strangers (24 page)

“This floor is gross,” she grumbled. “It’s bad enough with shoes on. Have you gone crazy coming down here barefoot?” Her feet made soft squishing sounds as she navigated her way over to the coal.

“You’re barefoot, too,” Garnet reminded her.

“Duh. But only because I was in bed when I came to look for you.” She exhaled in exasperation.

“Look,” said her sister. “See it? I think I dug it up.” Her right hand was indeed brown with dirt, as were the knees of her pajamas.

Hallie peered in, but she didn’t see anything at first, just more dirt inside the cubicle and the wooden framing darkened by earth and coal. “What do you mean you dug it up? Dug what up?”

“That,” said Garnet simply, and the word stuck a tiny bit in her throat.

And so Hallie squinted, reflexively rubbing at her new bracelet, and she leaned in more toward the doorway. Then, a little maddened, she decided that her feet were already a mess so what did it matter if they got even dirtier, and she plowed ahead, crossing the coal and walking right up to the remnants of the hacked door. There she held on to one of the dangling boards, realizing only after she had grabbed it that she was lucky she hadn’t gotten a splinter, and gazed into the dark. And there it was, the object that Garnet in one of her unpredictable though characteristic stupors had dug up. For a second Hallie stared at it, convinced this was some strange Halloween prank, because it couldn’t possibly be real. But it was. Had to be. There on a pile of dirt, beside a hole deep enough to bury a small dog, if necessary, was the unmistakable top of a human skull: the coral-colored Wiffle ball of the cranium, the deep sockets where once there had been eyes, and the tiny beak that she knew was the only part of a nose made of bone. There didn’t seem to be a jaw, and, when she turned back to Garnet, she understood why: There in her sister’s left hand was that piece of the skull, and it was evident that she had used it like a trowel to scoop out the dirt.

“Garnet,” she whispered, “how?” She didn’t know what she meant by the word, she wasn’t precisely sure what she was asking. But then the presence of the skull and the night and the idea that a body had been buried in their house all came crashing down upon her and she batted the jawbone out of her sister’s hand as if it were some sort of violent animal and dragged the girl as fast as she could up the stairs, screaming all the way for their mother.

T
he state trooper who arrived in the middle of the night was a slim young woman with short dark hair and an aquiline nose. Her badge said
C
.
PAYNE
. She knew all about Chip Linton, and not merely that he was
that
pilot. Emily had the distinct sense that she was aware that he had spent the night before at the hospital. The trooper acted surprised when Emily told her, but she wasn’t much of a thespian.

“Tomorrow morning the state will send a team from Concord,” she said matter-of-factly, referring to the State Police’s Major Crime Unit. Her voice was pleasant but laconic: Emily recognized a trace of a Yankee drawl. The trooper was leaning against the kitchen counter, explaining to Chip and her what was next, while the girls sat wrapped in a blanket on the living room couch. It was evident that they weren’t going to let their parents out of their sight, and Emily presumed that the two of them would be sleeping tonight with Chip and her in the queen-size bed in the master bedroom.

“The mobile crime lab will search for any remaining bones and probably nose around the basement—especially behind that door—for anything that might have been a murder weapon. Even a big rock,” she said.

“This house seems to be filled with them,” Emily observed.

The trooper smiled at the small, dark joke and said, “I guess you mean murder weapons and not big rocks.”

“Yes.”

“You want to be more specific?”

Emily looked at Chip to see if he wanted to answer, but he remained silent. And so she described the crowbar, the knife, and the ax.

“And you really found them hidden around the house?” the trooper asked.

“We did.”

“Well, be sure to give them to the investigators tomorrow. And I know you’ve probably handled them a bunch, but try not to handle them anymore. Okay?”

“No problem there.”

“That Tansy Dunmore was quite a piece of work.”

“That’s what I hear,” Emily agreed.

The trooper turned to Chip. “So, you took down that door,” she said.

“I did.”

“Why?”

He shrugged and smiled. “Same reason men climb mountains, I guess. Because it was there.”

“And you never found any bones in the dirt on the other side?”

“I did not.”

“Okay.” Then she peered through the doorway into the living room at the twins. “Really, there’s nothing more to be scared of,” she told the girls. “It’s just a skull. We all have one. You’re not in any danger.”

Her daughters were staring at the woman, their faces a little blank. Emily couldn’t imagine what they were thinking. “Whose body was buried down there?” she asked, lowering her voice, though she feared that her girls could still hear her. “Do you have any idea at all?”

“My guess? And it’s just a guess from growing up around here. But I’d say it was Sawyer Dunmore. We’ll see if there are any open homicides or missing persons going back a long while. But my money would be on Sawyer. He killed himself years and years ago, and became the sort of ghost story we’d all tell each other at sleepover parties and Girl Scout campouts.”

“You were a Girl Scout?” Emily asked.

The trooper grinned a little sheepishly. “I guess I’ve always liked uniforms.”

“I was, too.”

“There you go,” she said. “You probably had your share of ghost stories founded on nothing.”

“Well,” Emily said, “this was something.”

“Yes and no. I mean, it’s real and it’s scary. But it’s all explicable. Everything you’re going through is explicable and, soon enough, will be behind you.”

“Tell me more about ‘explicable.’ I want my daughters to get a few hours of sleep tonight. I want to get a few hours of sleep tonight.”

“Sawyer’s parents were, I gather, a little … off. Especially his mother. And when Sawyer killed himself, she really lost it. At least that’s what people say. I mean, it must be awful to lose a child like that. Just awful. I know I would have been willing to cut her a bunch of slack. Know what I mean?”

Emily thought about the weapons she had found in the house. She thought about the paranoia the woman had been enduring at the end of her life. “Go on,” she said.

“We all used to try and scare each other by saying that Sawyer wasn’t really buried in the cemetery. We used to go on and on with stories straight out of
Psycho
. You know the movie, right?”

Emily nodded. “Absolutely.”

“We’d tell ourselves that Tansy and Parnell had kept their son’s body around the house. They’d talk to it, dress it up. But his actual death was before my time, and we didn’t really believe it. Not a word. After all, his twin brother had grown up in that house, too, and when I was a kid he was an adult living not all that far from here. St. Johnsbury, I think.”

“Yes,” Emily said. “It is St. Johnsbury.”

“Anyway, it seems that maybe they really did bury their boy right downstairs. Built a little vault. But the Major Crime Unit and the medical examiner will look at what we have here. They’ll make sure the skull and whatever bones are down there really are Sawyer Dunmore’s. Dental records, most likely. If that doesn’t work, then DNA. As you said, the brother still lives in St. Johnsbury. I just guess, Mr. Linton, you hacked your way into a personal crypt.”

“But wouldn’t Hewitt Dunmore have told us there was a body buried in the basement of the house?” Emily asked. “Wouldn’t he want the grave respected?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure it’s legal. And, somehow, I don’t think leaving a corpse in the cellar does a whole lot for a property’s resale value,” the trooper said, and she actually chuckled just the tiniest bit as she started walking toward the front hallway. She paused for a moment and waved at the girls. “You’ll be okay,” she told them, and she sounded a bit like an older sister. “You’ll be just fine.”

As they were saying good-bye, the porch light caught the badge with the woman’s name, and it sparkled. “Tell me,” Emily said, “What does the
C
stand for?”

The trooper looked her straight in the eye and said—just a hint of a smile on her lips—“Celandine. It’s an herb.” Then she turned and marched down the slate walkway to her cruiser.

Chapter Twelve

A
gain today the girls are not going to school. Not after last night. But you’re not worried, they’re smart. They’ll catch up. Instead Emily has taken them shopping in Hanover and West Lebanon for the day. Anything to get them out of the house. She didn’t want them here when the state troopers from the Major Crime Unit appeared, and she didn’t want them present when this new psychiatrist makes her house call.

The Major Crime Unit came first, soon after the girls left, and you found that you rather enjoyed giving the four investigators in their crisp uniforms a tour. The men were roughly your age, and you took pleasure in showing them the door in the basement you destroyed and that strange back stairway between the kitchen and the second floor. You shared with them your work spackling and sanding and painting, and you showed them the new wallpaper you have started to drape upon the walls. You moved carefully because of your stomach, but it was only when you twisted your torso in that back stairway that you felt a real spike of pain—and even that was rather minor compared to the agonies you experience when Ethan or Ashley or Sandra is present. For a time you sat on the basement steps and watched as they dug and sifted through the dirt in the chamber. You were there when they exhumed more of the skeleton and when they found the small brown medicine bottle—uncorked, empty, and perhaps three inches long. It’s just like the one with the homemade pain reliever John gave you. They took that old bottle with them, as well as the bones they unearthed and what they presumed were remnants of clothing. They placed in Ziploc bags the skull and the jawbone that Garnet dug up last night. They labeled and brought to their van the crowbar and the ax that Tansy Dunmore left for you. But they did not leave with either the bones you found or Tansy’s knife. They did not know to ask about those other bones, and you did not volunteer the information that they existed and were stored at that moment in your bedroom armoire. And the knife? It must have gotten lost when you were brought to the emergency room. At least that’s what you told them. The last time you saw the knife was here in the kitchen, you explained. You worked with the troopers to search the kitchen and your car and the basement. You suggested that, perhaps, it had wound up in Emily’s station wagon, because that was the car your wife had driven when she followed the ambulance to the emergency room. You told the troopers you would be sure to look there when she and the twins returned later that day. And then they left, the van rumbling down your driveway, and they were out of your life—at least for the moment. You waved to them casually from the porch, the wind seeming to slice through the gray sweatshirt with your airline’s logo on the chest.

Now, before going back inside, you stroll to the greenhouse, where you gather up three of Hallie and Garnet’s American Girl dolls. Your own children won’t be back for hours, and Ashley might enjoy them. The dolls have been out there since the night Molly Francoeur was over for a playdate. Sadly, Molly won’t be back. That is painfully clear. A lost opportunity. Despite the pain that comes with grasping the dolls like bags of groceries—you can feel the pressure against your stitches—you carry them in precisely this fashion back into the house. No sooner have you pulled open the screen door than your skull starts to throb and you feel that daggerlike pain in your lower back, and you know from experience that, at the very least, Ethan and Ashley have returned. Perhaps Sandra, too.

And, sure enough, there is Ashley in the den, her face melancholy, sitting before the woodstove. Already a small puddle is forming beneath her on the brick hearth. She looks up at you when you walk into the room, and instantly she notices the dolls in your arms.

“Here,” you tell her, and you place them on the floor before her, watching as the white bonnet on one of the dolls soaks up the lake water like a sponge. “I thought it might be fun for you to have some more dolls. My girls wouldn’t mind.”

She smiles, and it dawns on you that you have never before seen her smile.

“Your breathers,” she says.

You move her Dora the Explorer backpack so you can sit beside her. “Yes. My breathers.” And then, just the way you did with Hallie and Garnet before Flight 1611 crashed into Lake Champlain, you suggest a story line for the dolls, the barest outline of a tale about three sisters—triplets—who all fall in love with the same prince. Then you step back from your role as creator and allow Ashley to add the details that will bring the story to life.

Y
ou look up from Ashley and the dolls when the doorbell rings. Apparently, you had been so engrossed in the game that you hadn’t heard the vehicle as it bumped along the gravel driveway. When you turn back to the child, planning to tell her that you’ll be gone just a moment, she has vanished. And so you nod to yourself and climb to your feet. You pass through the kitchen, peering once down the stairs to the basement as you cross the room to the entry hallway, and then open the front door. The woman there introduces herself as Valerian Wainscott, the psychiatrist John Hardin wants you to meet.

You tell her you are sorry for the muddy footprints that you and the troopers from the Major Crime Unit have left in the hallway and the kitchen, but she waves off any apology. The woman is roughly Emily’s age, slight, with short blond hair in natural ringlets and dark eyes that seem to be laughing. She smiles easily as she pulls off her Windbreaker and motions toward the kitchen table.

“Shall we talk here?” she asks.

You consider the other possibilities, including the living room with the wet American Girl dolls. You would love to show her those. But she would presume they are damp for any one of a variety of reasons, none of which begin and end with the water from Lake Champlain and a dead girl named Ashley.

“Here is good,” you agree, and you offer her coffee. Which she declines. She tells you she is tea drinker, though she doesn’t want a cup right now, thank you very much, and you find yourself smiling. Of course she drinks tea. Her name is Valerian. And valerian is a plant or a flower or an herb of some kind. Valerian root. A sedative, maybe. A muscle relaxant. You wonder how much you should trust her, whether your misgivings are grounded in anything tangible. But then you ask yourself whether tangibility really matters. Is Ashley Stearns tangible? Or Ethan? No, not at all. But their pain is as real as yours. Ethan’s anger (and grief) is as profound as any father’s.

Valerian slides onto the deacon’s bench, and you sit in one of the ladder-back chairs.

Despite the reality that Valerian has come to see you for the businesslike purpose of trying to assess your mental health—to offer your wife a second opinion—she has brought with her four chocolate cupcakes. She unveiled them from inside the large shoulder bag that seems to double as both her pocketbook and her attaché case. Your regular psychiatrist here in New Hampshire, Michael Richmond, only offers you coffee and water when you see him. Same with the therapist you saw back in Pennsylvania.

“I was baking for my daughter’s class,” Valerian is saying. “Today’s her seventh birthday, and so I brought the class cupcakes. Still, I think I went a little cupcake crazy. I had extras. But how is it possible to make cupcakes from a box and wind up with extras? I actually needed to find an extra cupcake tin. That’s what I mean by cupcake crazy.”

Given the reason why the two of you are meeting, you have the sense that she wanted to wink when she said
cupcake crazy
. But she restrained herself. Instead she sighs. “Please, have one. You must. I’m starving, and there is nothing more pathetic than eating cupcakes alone. Now
that
is sad.”

“Okay. I never had lunch.”

“God, me, too,” she says. “What’s that bumper sticker? ‘Life is short. Eat dessert first.’ ” And then she takes one of the cupcakes and peels off the paper and takes a very healthy bite for a woman who otherwise seems so petite. She licks a bit of chocolate icing off the tip of her index finger. Her nail polish is the red of a maple leaf in early October.

You reach for the one nearest you and take a bite, too. It’s delicious, much tastier than most of Anise’s confections.

“Really, thank you for letting me dive into one,” she says. “I didn’t plan on attacking the cupcakes like this, but I realized when I got here that I was completely, totally famished. And let’s face it: Buttercream frosting is irresistible—if I say so myself.”

Cupcake crazy. Attacking the cupcakes like this
. There is something almost taunting about her terminology. As if she knows what you have been asked to do by the dead. But then again, perhaps you are reading more into her remarks than really is there. Maybe she is merely linguistically clumsy. Isn’t it possible you are hearing things in this conversation that she honestly hadn’t meant as gibes? You recall Reseda’s offhand remark about the geese when you were in her office last week. The truth is, Valerian really did attack that cupcake just now. She certainly seemed ravenous.

“I wish I had brought some of the ones I decorated for the kids. Sprinkles and jimmies and faces made out of M&M’s. Trust me: Those bad boys were seriously tricked out.”

“I’ll bet they were. I’ve seen my share of cupcakes at elementary school birthday parties.”

“With twins? I’ll bet you have.”

The two of you then finish your cupcakes in a strangely companionable silence. You recall that this woman works a few days a week at the state psychiatric hospital. She probably has lots of experience with patients who don’t say very much. “So,” she says finally, “shall we get down to business?”

“Why not?”

“Indeed, why not? Do you understand why I’m here, Chip?”

“I do.”

“Good. That’s a start.” She wipes her hands on a paper napkin and daubs at her lips. Her demeanor visibly changes as she pulls a pad and a clipboard and a fountain pen from that bag.

“I don’t see a lot of people using fountain pens these days.”

“That’s because you’ve spent so much of your time in the air. You want to see a mess? Bring one of these on a plane. You have not seen a mess until you’ve seen a fountain pen explode at ten thousand feet.”

“Probably not,” you tell her, marveling at the way she can make everything sound vaguely disturbing. Explode. Mess. Ten thousand feet. Some people are capable of making innocuous sentences sound sexual—they can twist everything into a double entendre. Valerian seems to have a similar, perhaps inadvertent, talent when it comes to breathing life into your own particular subconscious fiends.

She motions with both hands at the room in which you are sitting and out the window at the carriage barn and the greenhouse and the sloping meadows beyond it, and continues, “Okay, then. How are you doing here? How are your neighbors? They treating you well? Tell me honestly.”

“They are. Honestly.” You wonder: Did your repeating the word
honestly
sound like you were being flip? And if it did, should you care? You wonder why this woman’s opinion should matter more than Dr. Richmond’s. Again, you experience a wave of misgiving. What do these women whose names belong in a garden want from you? Do they want anything, anything at all? But Valerian simply nods. She doesn’t seem to find your response in any way impolite. She simply asks whom you have met and where, and what sorts of plans you have for the house. She asks, parent to parent, what you think of the school system here in this secluded corner of the White Mountains, since of course she has a girl only three grades behind Hallie and Garnet. Finally she gets around to the issue that matters most to Emily—the reason Valerian is here. She glances ever so slightly at your stomach, barely moving her head. It’s all done with her eyes.

“Tell me about the other night,” she asks.

“Well, without wanting to be glib, there are at least two ‘other nights’ that didn’t end well. There was the night when the girls had a friend over for dinner and a playdate and I wound up in the hospital. And then there was last night, when Garnet found a human skull and jawbone in the basement. Which?”

“Let’s start with the night of the playdate. What do you recall of your accident?”

You think about this. She said
accident
without a trace of sarcasm. Good for her. And so you tell her, as you have told others, about having Molly over for dinner. How you and Emily asked Molly a lot of questions about what she liked about the school and what she didn’t. She seemed like a good kid. A nice kid. Then you pause, recalling where everyone sat around the table in the dining room. There once again is Molly’s face, her elbow on the table and a fork balanced on the ends of her fingers. Behind her, on the wall, is one of those menacing sunflowers.

“I’m sure she is a good kid,” Valerian agrees, and the sound of her voice brings you back. “Go on.”

And so you do. “I felt we were running out of hot water after we ate,” you hear yourself saying, “which didn’t make any sense. One extra set of dishes? Oh, please. Besides, we were just putting the plates in the dishwasher.”

“What did you have for dinner?”

“It was all very easy. Mexican food. Rice. Beans.”

“Where were the girls?”

“By then they were out in the greenhouse. Hallie and Garnet view it as their playhouse.”

“A waste,” she says, and you can’t decide if she is kidding.

“They’ve had their dolls out there ever since we arrived.”

“Well, they’ll outgrow that soon enough,” she adds, as if she is trying to reassure you. “So, you and your wife were washing the dishes in the kitchen.”

“Yes. And the water felt lukewarm to me,” you explain, and then you tell her about the pilot light and going downstairs with the knife in your hands, and how you must have fallen down the wooden steps. You add that everything after that is now a bit of a fog. You shrug, hoping the motion does not appear theatrical.

“Did you hear Emily calling for you?”

“Not for a long while. Emily thinks that maybe I knocked my head and was unconscious for a few minutes. Do you think that’s possible?”

“Sure.”

“Anyway, when I did hear her, I started back up the stairs, and the next thing I know, I’m in the kitchen and I’m covered in blood.”