The big gray sky was swirling low, though the sprinkling had stopped for the moment. I shaded my eyes with the back of my hand and watched the clouds boil. “It’s a good thing you’re so smart,” I said. “Hey, you’d better get a move on. We’re about to get soaked out here.”
“I’m working on it. Shut up unless you want to go on tape.”
He zoomed and panned, grabbing footage of the burned-out block and some of the broken windows. Then he stepped up over the curb and got a closer look at the worst of it. True to his word, it didn’t take long.
“That ought to be enough. If it’s not, I’ll shuffle it up and loop it,” he said, unshouldering the camera and folding the tripod he hadn’t even used. “And because I’m feeling bold—or maybe stupid from sleep deprivation—I’ll go ahead and say this: I get the impression that something’s going on down here. And not just from you, either. Did you see that letter in the Enigma? The one from that construction worker?”
“I saw it, yeah.”
“It didn’t bother you?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then what did?”
A loaded drop of rain landed on my forehead. “Let’s go. I bet this equipment doesn’t like getting wet. If you really must know, my aunt has been bugging me about moving down here too. I can handle a little arson. I can even handle a little haunting, if there’s been some kind of archeological cover-up down here. But when Lu throws a fit about something, she’s usually got a good reason for it. This time, she won’t give me one.”
“How so?”
“She says I ought to move farther from the river in case of flooding, and that’s ridiculous. It’d be like me telling you I didn’t want to live here because I heard some punk had torched an empty building here twenty years ago. It’s a bullshit reason; it doesn’t stick. But she doesn’t seem interested in clueing me in to her real motives, so. Well. Whatever,” I finished lamely.
“I see.”
“No you don’t.”
“All right. I don’t. But I’ll quit asking, if that’s good enough.”
“That’s good enough.” I zipped up one of his bags while he finished stuffing the other one, and within minutes we were back in the gaudy SUV.
Though Nick had promised pizza, he recommended a Mexican place for lunch. I didn’t care, so I said it was fine. Over burritos, he dragged the conversation back to the Read House, and to Caroline.
“There was a flu epidemic,” he said, a trace of guacamole dangling from a crease in his lip. “Around 1919. Killed a whole bunch of people. Any cemetery will show you that much. It’s depressing; you wander around and see all these itty-bitty headstones—for kids, you know—and they’ll all have these expiration dates in the same year.”
“Expiration date. Real sensitive way to put it.”
“You know what I meant. I only mention it because that’s about the time our girl Caroline started going batty. According to the records I’ve found, they had her briefly institutionalized in 1919, but it didn’t work out and they moved her back home the next year.”
“Didn’t work out?”
“She was starving herself there, and Daddy brought her home. A few years later, they brought her into the hotel, and there she stayed until she killed herself in ‘33. At first I thought maybe they’d sent her away because of the flu, like they wanted to get her safely out of town. But it doesn’t sound right, and the rest of the facts don’t line up with it.”
I chewed on my chips and tried not to get interested in the story. If I got too interested, I’d get weak to the idea of going back inside. I don’t know if Nick knew me well enough to understand that or not, but he kept feeding me bits and pieces of it until I started asking questions. “Why didn’t they put her in the hotel right away? It seems like an easy halfway house, if she was too crazy to live at home and if they weren’t worried about the flu epidemic.”
“They were busy rebuilding it. It burned down a couple of times and was eventually rebuilt as the big brick monster we know and love, but it wasn’t finished until 1927.”
“So she wasn’t there very long.”
“It doesn’t sound like it. And for what it’s worth, I’m totally not going to ask you to go back inside and have another sit-down with her. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You know better.”
“I do know better. Which is why I wouldn’t ask. Not in a million years. But—”
“Here it comes,” I grumbled.
“But, if you ever do decide you’d like to give it another shot, I hope you wouldn’t do it alone. I’d like to think you’d give me a call, for back-up purposes.”
“You’re a sneaky bastard.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
Behind him there was a window, and as he wrapped up his non-proposal, the sky opened up in earnest. A flash of lightning and its follow-up thunderclap warned that the worst was yet to come.
Nick peeked over his shoulder and noticed it too. “We timed that well. Thanks for coming with me. I appreciated the company.”
It came out awkwardly and he knew it; he busied himself with his own burrito.
I didn’t know how to respond, so I just said, “No problem,” and kept on eating.
“If I hear anything,” he said quickly, “about the fire and everything, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks. That’d be great.”
I would have reciprocated the offer, but I needed to talk to Christ first.
9
Accusations
For a second there, I thought Nick was going to bring up coffee or dessert, so I preemptively begged out by telling him I had to meet a friend. It was true, more or less; except I probably couldn’t call Christ a friend without deliberately deceiving myself.
I rode with Nick back to the station and reclaimed my car.
The rain was gaining real momentum, but that wouldn’t necessarily deter Christ and his friends from skating. However, since I didn’t feel like going down to Ross’s Landing and looking for them in the unsheltered out-of-doors, I decided to check my second guess: the library.
As any good delinquent will tell you, the beauty of public property is that you can’t be kicked out of it easily. If the boys felt like taking a breather from the rain, they’d probably hole up beneath the library’s overhang and noodle around on the cement stairs there—if no one was watching.
I parked on the street and sat in my car for a minute, listening to rain hammer down on the windshield and wishing it would quit long enough for me to dash to the library’s overhang.
A harder hammering startled me. There were hands knocking against the passenger’s side window, and a glimpse of crayon-bright hair through the streaming downpour told me that Christ wanted me to let him inside.
I popped the locks. He flung the Death Nugget’s door open and a great spray of precipitation came into the cabin with him. He shook himself like a dog, sending the water all over my vehicle.
“What the—knock it off, would you? Some of us are smart enough to come in from the rain. I’m trying to stay dry over here.”
“Give up. It’s pissing like hell, and it’s only going to get worse. Good thing I can walk on water, right?”
“Whatever. Hey, I’ve been looking for you.” I tried to lend the words some threat, not that I thought it would bother him.
I was right, he didn’t care. “Good. I was wondering what it would take to bring you around. We need to talk, me and you.”
“Yeah we need to talk, but I’m not sure you’re going to like it much. How about we start this with you telling me what happened over at the North Shore Apartments last night?”
“North Shore. Yeah. So you heard about that, good.”
“What do you mean, ‘good’? It’s vandalism, and it’s all over the news.”
He kicked my dashboard with his torn-up shoes and swore loudly. “Goddammit, woman—people are dying, and you’re worried about a few broken windows?”
“First of all, I don’t know of anybody who’s actually dead yet, and second, those are windows in the place where I intend to live in a few weeks. So at the risk of sounding callous, yes, I’m more worried about the broken windows. I know you had something to do with it, too.”
He dropped the adolescent whine, and, just for a sentence or two, he sounded his age. “If I did—and that’s if—then it would have been an attempt to alert you to the underlying problems of that location.”
“You’re an idiot. And get your feet off my dashboard.”
“A prophet is never loved in his own land, I know, but this is important! Look outside, and what do you see?”
“Rain. Lots and lots of rain.”
“Exactly. It’s the water. At first I thought it was just the river, but now I think there’s more to it than that. It’s all the water—the rain, the river, the creeks and the runoff. It feeds a greater system. It sustains the chaos. It . . .” He fumbled for words.
I interrupted while I had the chance. “What are you talking about? And I mean it—I’m asking like a serious human being here, and I’d appreciate it if you’d do me the courtesy of answering like one. Drop the bullshit, and drop the slam-poetry speak. You’ve got exactly one minute to explain to me why I shouldn’t make an anonymous tip to the cops about the North Shore vandalism.”
“Tip all you like. They’ll never find me.”
“And again I say, you’re an idiot. It took me about thirty seconds to find you.”
“But you knew where to look. I wanted you to find me. I orchestrated this. I made myself available.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed the back of my head against my seat. “You’re down to forty-five seconds, asshole. Behave like a grown-up, or get the hell out of my car. You’re making the place smell like wet dog.”