Eph turned to the administrator, wanting more information, but to his surprise found her retreating a few steps down the hall, glancing back at him as she spoke with the cops.
Setrakian said, "We should go now."
Eph said, "But I have to find out where his remains are."
"They are gone," said Setrakian. "They will never be recovered." The old man gripped Eph's arm with surprising strength. "I believe they have served their purpose."
"Their purpose? What is that?"
"Distraction, ultimately. For they are no more dead than their fellow passengers who once lay in the morgues."
Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
NEWLY WIDOWED Glory Mueller, while searching online about what to do when a spouse dies without leaving a will, noticed a news report about the missing corpses from Flight 753. She followed the link, reading a dispatch labeled DEVELOPING. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was due to hold a press conference within the hour, it said, to announce a new and larger reward for any information about the disappearance from the morgue of the bodies of the victims of the Regis Air tragedy.
This story struck a deep note of fear. For some reason she now remembered, that previous night, awaking from a dream and hearing sounds in her attic.
Of the dream that had awakened her, she remembered only that Hermann, her newly deceased husband, had come back to her from the dead. There had been a mistake, and the strange tragedy that was Flight 753 had never actually occurred, and Hermann had arrived at the back door of their home in Sheepshead Bay with a you-thought-you-were-rid-of-me smile, wanting his supper.
In public, Glory had played the part of the quietly grieving widow, as she would continue to do so throughout whatever inquest and court cases might come her way. But she was perhaps alone in considering the tragic circumstances that claimed the life of her husband of thirteen years a great gift.
Thirteen years of marriage. Thirteen years of unrelenting abuse. Escalating throughout their years together, occurring more and more in front of their boys, ages nine and eleven. Glory lived in constant fear of his mood swings, and had even allowed herself-a daydream only, too risky to attempt in reality-to consider what it would be like to pack up the boys and leave while he was away this past week, visiting his dying mother in Heidelberg. But where could she go? And, more important-what would he do to her and the boys if he caught up with them, as she knew he would?
But God was good. He had finally answered her prayers. She-and her boys-had been delivered. This dark pall of violence had been lifted from their home.
She went to the bottom of the stairs, looking up to the second floor and the trapdoor in the ceiling there, its rope pull hanging down.
The raccoons. They were back. Hermann, he'd first trapped one in the attic. He'd taken the fear-crazed intruder out into the backyard and made an example of it in front of her boys...
No more. She had nothing to be afraid of now. The boys wouldn't be home for at least another hour, and she decided to go up there now. She had planned to start going through Hermann's things anyway. Trash day was Tuesday, and she wanted to have it all gone by then.
She needed a weapon, and the first one that came to mind was Hermann's own machete. He had brought it home some years ago, and kept it wrapped in oilcloth in the locked plastic toolshed against the side of the house. When she asked him why he would ever want such a thing-a jungle tool here in Sheepshead Bay, of all places-he'd just sneered at her, "You never know."
These constant little insinuated threats were part of his daily menacing. She pulled the key from the hook behind the pantry door, and went outside and sprang the lock. She found the oilcloth buried under yard tools and an old, splintered croquet set they had received as a wedding gift (which she would use for kindling now). She took the package into the kitchen and set it on the table, pausing before she unwrapped it.
She had always ascribed evil to this object. Had always imagined it would be somehow significant in the fate of this household, possibly as an instrument of Glory's own demise at Hermann's hands. Accordingly, she unwrapped it with great care, as though unswaddling a sleeping baby demon. Hermann had never liked her touching his special things.
The blade was long, wide, and flat. The grip was formed of wrapped leather straps worn to a soft brown by the hand of the former owner. She lifted it, turning it over, feeling the weight of this strange object in her hand. She caught sight of her reflection in the microwave door, and it scared her. A woman standing with a machete in her kitchen.
He had made her crazy.
She walked upstairs with it in her hand. She stopped beneath the ceiling door and reached for the bottom knot of the dangling white rope handle. It opened down to a forty-five-degree angle on groaning springs. That noise should have scared any lurking critters. She listened for scattering sounds, but there were none.
She reached for the high wall switch, but no light came on above. She flicked it a couple of times, but still nothing. She hadn't been up here since after Christmas, and the bulb could have burned out at any time between now and then. There was a small skylight cut into the rafters. That would provide enough light.
She unfolded the hinged stairs and started up. Three steps brought her eye line above the attic floor. It was unfinished, with foil-backed pink fiberglass insulating blankets unrolled between the exposed joists. Plywood was laid out north-south and east-west, in a cross pattern, creating a walking path to each of the four quadrants of storage space.
The space was darker than she had expected, and then she saw that two of her old clothes racks had been moved, effectively blocking the low skylight. Clothes from her life before Hermann, zipped up in plastic and left in storage for thirteen years. She followed the plywood and moved the racks to allow more light in, with the idea of maybe sorting through the clothes and revisiting her old self. But then she saw, beyond the plywood walkway, a bare lane of floor between two long joists where the insulation had, for some reason, been pulled up.
Then she noticed another bare lane.
And another.
She froze there. She sensed something at her back suddenly. She was afraid to turn-but then she remembered the machete in her hand.
Behind her, against the vertical edge of the attic, farthest from the skylight, the missing strips of insulation had been piled up into a lumpy mound. Some of the fiberglass had been shredded, as though by an animal feathering an enormous nest.
Not a raccoon. Something bigger. Much bigger.
The mound was completely still, arranged as though to hide something. Had Hermann been tending to some strange project without her knowing? What dark secret had he stored under here?