Evil Behind That Door Read online

  I thought I’d covered up pretty well, but this time Aunt Penny gave me the eyebrow too.

  “Why? Has Barry said something?”

  I shook my head quickly. Then I had a stroke of genius.

  “That’s the thing. I thought I saw signs of another kid, but I don’t want to upset him by asking. You know Barry.”

  The frown disappeared. She sighed and leaned across the counter, like she was sharing a secret.

  “Poor Pete and Connie have had more tragedy than any family should have a right to, and ending the way they did…it’s just so sad.” She bowed her head. “Sad, sad. There were supposed to be other children, Ricky. Connie wanted a whole house full. But the good Lord had other ideas.”

  It wasn’t often Aunt Penny brought up the good Lord. She figured if he was running things, he wasn’t doing that good a job and she was better off doing it herself. But sometimes people are funny when it comes to life and death.

  “What happened?”

  “Started years ago, when Connie lost her first child. Girl, stillborn.” She stopped and looked at me. Like she was trying to decide how much to say. “Pete loved Connie, don’t get me wrong. But it’s no secret he was a drinker, even back then. I’m not saying he caused it. Might have been just the stress of all his yelling, but anyway, the birth was rough. Wrecked up Connie’s insides so the doctors weren’t sure she’d ever have another. Then along came two boys, Barry and his younger brother, I forget his name. Cute little boy, Connie’s favorite. Blond like her, where Barry’s burly and dark like his dad. Things were looking up. Connie was never strong, but in those years I remember she came out of herself.”

  I was holding my breath, like it would stop the awful thought running through my head. There was no younger brother when Barry and I were at school. Aunt Penny looked sad. Ed Higgins from the bank came in. She didn’t laugh at any of his jokes and waited for him to go before she sank back on her stool. She rubbed her arms as if they were sore.

  “The little boy got leukemia. It came out of the blue. They took him to the hospital in the city and Connie stayed there with him for weeks. Pete had to be here with Barry, but it was hard on everyone. Back then there wasn’t much you could do. I was surprised she ever came back. She was like a ghost. All they had left of him was a little copper urn.”

  “How old was he?”

  “I don’t remember. Barry and you were in kindergarten, I remember that. She was never the same after that.”

  Neither was Barry, I thought. Doors punched in, chairs thrown across classrooms. Fight after fight. By the time he got sent away, no kids were allowed to play with him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The bell over the shop door rang and I turned just as two cops came in. Sergeant Hurley, the commander of the local unit, and behind him Constable Swan. My pulse spiked.

  Hurley slapped me on the back. For some reason he was always trying to take me under his wing. Give me advice, like he was my father.

  “Well, O’Toole, keeping out of trouble?”

  Beneath her cap, Constable Swan’s blue eyes twinkled at me. My face burned. Before I could untangle my words, Aunt Penny piped up.

  “Ricky’s working for Barry Mitchell. Fixing up the old place for sale.”

  “Oh yeah?” Hurley said. His grin faded, and I saw a frown cross Swan’s face.

  “You guys still looking at him?” Aunt Penny asked.

  Hurley hitched his pants over his gut. He wasn’t a big guy, but he managed to look like a bear in his cop gear.

  “Aunt Penny, you know I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation. But yeah, we’re sending the canine unit out there today, and until we know what happened to them…”

  Constable Swan was watching me. Her blue eyes were serious now. She wasn’t from around here, so she didn’t know all the local gossip, but she caught on fast. It would be so easy to blurt out that I’d found some bones. But the thought of Barry held me back. He’d be freaked out enough already with the police bringing dogs to nose around.

  So I ducked my head and made for the door. I felt Swan’s hand on my arm as I brushed past. Her voice was a whisper.

  “Be careful, eh?”

  I walked out of Aunt Penny’s in a daze. My skin felt hot where Jessica Swan had touched it. She’d never in a million years be interested in a scrawny, dirt-poor handyman like me, but it was nice to know she worried. My mind spun as I tried to make sense of what I’d learned. Not just from the cops, but also from Aunt Penny about Barry’s brother. I couldn’t ask Barry about him. There were too many walls in that family, too many walls in his mind. I needed more answers before I could figure out what to think.

  The Mitchell family was another that didn’t put much stock in God. Sunday mornings Pete would still be at home sleeping it off, and I’d never seen Connie in town without him. But if she’d brought back an urn, it should be buried someplace.

  I knew it wasn’t in the cemetery where my mother was buried, because I knew every tombstone in the place. So I headed to the Protestant church in town, the old one down by the creek. It was a peaceful kind of place, if that’s important to you.

  In April the trees were still bare, but their branches were beginning to turn green. Some little blue flowers were already out and the grass was full of daffodils. At the bottom of the slope, the creek brimmed over its banks.

  I searched the tombstones, looking at dates. Close to the church, the stones were over a hundred years old. Farther out near the parking lot, they were polished and new. Faded plastic flowers leaned against some of them. I hate walking in graveyards, imagining the dead bodies under my feet. When the cops took me to identify my mother, the car windshield had pretty much wiped out her face. But there was enough of her left that I can’t forget.

  I shivered. I was about to give up when I stumbled upon a bunch of small plaques down by the creek. They were spaced only a few feet apart, just big enough for an urn. As I pushed aside the wild rosebushes with my foot, I read the names. Familiar village names—Bud’s father, Ripley’s brother. Then a plain little stone on the ground.

  Louie Mitchell, beloved son.

  January 4, 1979–April 20, 1982

  Three years old, I thought. About the size of a yearling lamb.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I lay awake half the night, imagining the sound of a little boy screaming in the dark.

  By morning I’d decided I was never going back to the Mitchell house. I knew Aunt Penny would kill me for quitting a real job, but I didn’t need the money that bad. Spring was here. Spring meant cottagers looking for handymen to fix their decks or leaky roofs, or to get rid of the mice that had moved in over the winter.

  It also meant the snow had melted off all the stuff in my yard. Aunt Penny called it junk. I called it supplies. I’m an inventor. A broken lawn mower could have a new life as a winch or a scarecrow. Even a three-legged chair was good for something. I knew everyone in the village laughed, but what inventor hasn’t had lean times before he made his big discovery?

  It was a sunny day. I sat on my front porch with my dog and my coffee and wondered where to begin. I had six and a half cars and trucks sitting in the mud by the back barn and quite a few junked appliances too. That didn’t count the fourteen lawn mowers in my back field. The snow hadn’t done them any good. I needed another shed. That’s what I’d do today.

  Chevy snatched her ball as soon as I got up. She’s a border collie that thinks life is one long fetch. I tossed the ball as I walked toward the barn. I heard the phone ringing and thought of not answering it. I almost never get phone calls from real people. But then I thought of the cottagers. A new job would hold off Aunt Penny.

  It was Barry Mitchell.

  “Jeez, O’Toole, where are you?”

  “I went yesterday. You weren’t there.”

  “I know, I know. I got held up. Lawyers. Cops. Never ends. But I’m here now.”

  “I don’t know, Barry. Not sure it’s worth fixing up.”

  “L
et’s at least put some nails and a few licks of paint on it.” His voice took on a whine. “Help me sell it.”

  “I got a couple of jobs lined up.”

  The whine edged up a notch. “Rick, I’m sorry. I gotta get out of this town. I’ll never get a break here. Yesterday they brought dogs out here, for fuck’s sake.”

  I held my breath, waiting for the rant. But none came.

  “Gave me the creeps,” was all Barry said. “There’s a thousand bucks in it for you if you help me sell this place.”

  I looked out the window at my dirt bike parked where the truck should be. Before I knew it, I was caving.

  In less than an hour I was back at his place. I was glad to see he was sober. Even smiling. I guessed the cops hadn’t found anything.

  “We’re going to work on the kitchen today,” he said, heading inside. “My lawyer says that’s where you sell the house or not. So first thing, we’re going to get rid of that hole in the ceiling.”

  I looked at the rusty wires sticking out of the hole in the kitchen ceiling. They were almost touching. One small power surge and pow!

  “You got any caps for those wires?”

  “I figured we’d just shove them back in the hole and put a patch over it. I got the patch.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not fixing up Buckingham Palace here, Rick!”

  His face was turning red, so I shrugged. I grabbed a rickety stool. “Fine. We’ll cut the power off at the panel and I’ll tape them. Can you go down—?”

  “I’m not going down there!”

  I was up on the stool by this time, so I decided not to argue. His smile had been paper thin.

  “You know what?” I said. “I’m in the mood to paint. Let’s start on the cabinets.” I find painting calms me down. I was hoping it’d do the same for Barry.

  We worked away without talking for a while, taping and sanding. It was peaceful, and Barry even began to smile again.

  “Aunt Penny was talking about your folks yesterday,” I said. “Remembering when we were kids, all our friends…”

  “I never had no friends, Rick.”

  I had no good comeback for that. Barry had scared off just about everybody. So I kept going. “I even remember your little brother. What was his name?”

  Barry stopped, paint brush dripping. “Louie.”

  “Louie, right. Little blond kid. Must have been hard on your folks.”

  Barry grunted. Went back to his painting.

  “You must have missed him too.”

  “I don’t hardly remember him.”

  “I would have liked to have a little brother like that.” I actually had an imaginary brother growing up. Not as good as the real thing, but all I would ever get. “Did you visit him when he was…you know, sick and all?”

  His paint brush went all squiggly on the cabinet door. “I don’t know. What are you asking about him for?”

  “Just passing the time, Barry. No big deal.”

  “No.” He threw down his brush. The green drops on the tile didn’t improve the look any. “What the fuck you sticking your nose in for, O’Toole? What you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything. Just that it kind of explains things, you know? About your folks.”

  “It was thirty fucking years ago! Louie was here, then he died. I got over it.”

  I shut up. Bent my head and moved to another cabinet farther away. Barry picked up his brush again, gave a few good swipes at the cabinet door. Green paint smeared the fridge. He cursed, wiped it off, got it on his pants and tossed his brush in the pan.

  “Fuck it! I’ve had enough.”

  I held up my hands. “Okay, maybe we can—”

  “Don’t be a wuss, Tool. You’re always such a wuss. I’m going out! You do whatever the hell you want.”

  The whole place shook when he slammed the door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I let out my breath. I hadn’t even realized I was holding it. Keeping one step ahead of Barry could make a guy dizzy.

  Painting is not something you can leave midway through, so I finished the first coat on the cabinets and cleaned up. It was peaceful without Barry. Afterward I explored the house. If Barry came back and asked what I was doing, I’d tell him I was figuring out our next job.

  But I was really looking for clues.

  Upstairs, the master bedroom was over the kitchen. In these old houses, that was the warmest place. The sheets looked like they hadn’t been washed in a year and the place stank of old socks and piss. Pete’s underwear and clothes were all over the floor. Connie’s drawers hung open. Underneath the jumbled clothes I found a stash of empty Valium bottles. On her dresser, a small velvet jewelry box lay open. Empty.

  In the back under the eaves were two more bedrooms. They’d be cold as an arctic cave in winter. One had a mattress and electric heater on the floor, and a few clothes piled on a homemade bookshelf under the window. The room was full of empty beer cans and frozen-dinner boxes. Barry’s cave.

  The other bedroom was a junk room, so packed you could hardly open the door. Broken chairs and lamps, a cooler, an old TV with a smashed screen. I discovered a baby crib almost buried by boxes and garbage bags. I poked through these. Nothing but magazines, old clothes and broken dishes.

  The crib was the only hint that a child had ever lived here. There were no old Fisher- Price toys in the whole house. No trikes or LEGO or rocking horses.

  No pictures anywhere. Even my mother stuck my school photos up on the fridge with an Elvis magnet. It was as if Louie and Barry hadn’t grown up here.

  As if Louie had never existed.

  When my mind gets stuck on something, it doesn’t let go, so I searched the rest of the house. Lots of broken old stuff that even I wouldn’t keep, but not a single trace of the kids. I found Connie’s stash of Demerol and Pete’s hidden vodka bottles. I found stacks of romance novels, Soap Opera Digest and gossip magazines. Old porn movies stuffed behind the couch. I backed away. It felt wrong to peek into dead people’s lives.

  Outside I took deep breaths of the clean air. The sun was shining, melting the last of the snow from the boats, quads and snowmobiles in the yard. The barn roof had caved in, but the big shed beside it looked newer. Its door hung open a crack. I opened it wide to let the sunlight in. It looked like Pete’s workshop. Tools were hung on the walls, and a pine workbench ran across one end. Boxes of supplies and hardware were stored under the bench.

  The workbench was cluttered with junk. Tools, bits of wire, loose screws, empty oil cans and greasy work gloves. Had Barry been in here? Had he been working on something? Or had Pete done this?

  There was a book open facedown in the middle of the junk. Curious, I picked it up. It was a repair manual for the 1996 Wildcat 700 EFI, open to the page showing the wiring diagram and the electrical system.

  I knew Pete owned a few snowmobiles but the Wildcat 700 was the fastest. It was an old sled that had seen a rough life and had probably been rebuilt several times. I knew the clutch and the battery could be problems. Was that sled the one they had taken that day? Had the battery finally failed, stranding them in the backwoods? Or had Pete screwed up the repairs?

  Back in February when they disappeared, everyone in town had gone out on their sleds or snowshoes to join the search. They had checked every backcountry trail in the county. They had waded through the thick forest on either side. The cops had interviewed everybody and pieced together their last day. Pete and Connie hit the bar for Valentine’s dinner and stayed on to party. Around midnight the party turned ugly. At two thirty in the morning, the bartender finally threw them out.

  It was snowing hard outside, making it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead in the dark. The snowmobile headlight would have been worse than useless. Everyone figured they’d headed home and lost their bearings, but no one knew what trail they might have taken. It was two days before Barry reported them missing. By then the snow had wiped out all their tracks.

  The rumors abou
t Barry started right away. He’d had lots of run-ins with his father since he’d gotten out of prison. Once he showed up in town with two black eyes. Said he’d walked into a door. It would solve a lot of problems for him if Pete and Connie were out of the way. Even the cops thought so.

  I knew they’d been out to search the farm several times before yesterday. They’d tromped through the fields, the barns and the back woodlot looking for bodies. Always without any luck. But I wondered if they’d noticed the repair manual in the shed. And if they had, did they know what it meant? That something might have gone wrong with the sled Pete was driving?

  Once again I thought of Constable Swan. She’d listen. She might not even think I was crazy. With my mind on a roll, I crossed the muddy yard and followed the path down to the lake. In shady spots, I could still see snowmobile ruts in the melting snow. It looked as if Pete drove this path often. I stood on the shore and looked across the lake. The pack ice was still solid in the middle of the lake, but it was melted around the edges. Open water was beginning to shine through in sunny spots. Soon it would be gone altogether.

  The village of Lake Madrid was just a jumble of specks on the far shore. I could see the white marina, the blue tarps of boats stored over the winter and the steeple of the Catholic church poking through the trees. At the near end of the village, I could see the open water where Silver Creek fed into the lake.

  When I was a kid, there was a sawmill on the creek, back in the days before global warming and farm fertilizers turned it into a weedy swamp. Half the village had worked at the sawmill, including Pete. Now the sawmill was a bar, the Lion’s Head. It was still home to most of the guys who’d worked in the mill. Even more than the Legion, it was where people got together. They’d come by boat from all along the lake and in winter by snowmobile.

  Everybody knew the ice near the creek was tricky. The water ran fast enough that it never really got thick, even in February. People would still go across it. They liked the challenge. Skimming on thin ice, even open water, was a village sport. But you had to know what you were doing, and you needed to see ahead of you. To judge just when to gun the throttle and pull the sled up. It took some skill. And a clear head. Every year a few idiots stoked up at the Lion’s Head before trying their hand at the open water. Live and learn.