The dramatic Old Testament frescoes on the ceiling. The gold-framed portraits of men in formal eighteenth-century dress, mocking me.
Feeling my oxygen depleting, taking shallow breaths and keeping my chin up, my wits about me, as the childish cackling and taunting echo through my ears.
Please, don’t make me go there
Please, don’t do this
I wanna go home
The anteroom angling sideways, the lighting in front of me spotty, but I’m not turning back, there’s got to be something here and I’m going to find it— Into the foyer, the staircase to the second floor before me, a parlor of some kind to my right, antique furniture and custom molding and chandeliers, an ornate fireplace. I turn toward the parlor but can’t move toward it, as if a gravitational pull is drawing me in the opposite direction, and suddenly I’m staggering to my left instead, nearly losing my balance— The dining room. Elaborate carvings on the walls, tall windows with fancy trim, a chandelier hanging over a pentagonal oak table with high-backed chairs. I reach for one of the chairs and grip it as if holding on for my life.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper, the childish taunts still banging between my ears, drowning out even my own voice. I need to be here, but I can’t be here.
I push myself off the chair and start across the dining room, headed toward what must be the kitchen, my nerves scattered about, my vision unfocused, oxygen coming as if I’m taking breaths through a straw.
I draw my sidearm, for no reason that makes sense.
Get out of here
Stay and investigate
My legs finally give out, and I fall to my knees as if in prayer.
Let me go
Don’t make me do this
Someone please help me
Let me out of here
I put my hand on the windowsill for support, push myself up with my free hand, my Glock held forward with the other hand, trembling.
Then I look down.
On the windowsill, jagged letters carved into the wood.
DP + AC
Black spots before my eyes, my body turning, my legs like gelatin, moving in slow motion, like my feet are wading through thick sand, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe— Let me out of here
Bam-bam-bam
Let me out of here
Bam-bam-bam
The ornate patterned tile floor, then my hand on the door, pushing it, pushing it, why won’t it—then turning the handle and pulling, fresh air on my face, sunlight— I take a deep, greedy breath of fresh air and slam the door behind me.
I fall to a knee on the porch and gather myself. I don’t know what just happened, why it always happens, why I’m having these dreams, why it all seems to be getting worse, and suddenly tears are falling off my cheeks, my body is trembling uncontrollably, my breath seizing, and I don’t understand any of this, I don’t know why something inside me seems to be breaking and I don’t know how to stop it.
I only know one thing I didn’t know before.
“They were here,” I say to nobody.
Dede Paris and Annie Church were in this house.
57
THE MOTORCYCLE TAKES a left off the turnpike onto the gravel drive, and I keep driving north, but the first chance I get, I turn left into a side street, do a quick U-turn, and head south. I pull into the parking lot a few minutes later, my car bouncing over the uneven gravel.
When I push the door open and walk into Tasty’s, Noah Walker is at a corner table, just getting started on a beer. He’s halfway to raising the bottle to his lips when he sees me. I see the hunky, clean-cut owner, Justin Rivers, behind the counter. He gives me a soldier’s salute—kind of dorky; he’s a looker but sort of a nerd—and I nod back.
“If it isn’t Bridgehampton’s finest,” Noah says, taking a swig as I approach. He wears the grunge look well—T-shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals. Since his hair was cut tight while he was at Sing Sing, he looks less like Matthew McConaughey and more like a muscle-head weight lifter. A thick vein runs along his rippled biceps as he lowers the beer bottle to the table.
Not that I’m looking at his rippled biceps.
I stand near his table in the near-empty shack of a restaurant, hands on my hips. “Y’know something, Walker, I can’t decide if you’re the smartest criminal I’ve ever met, or a guy with a lot of really bad luck.”
He sets down the bottle and finishes his swallow. “Good evening to you, too, Detective.”
I look around the place. Only two other customers this time of night, past the dinner rush, and they’re at the other end of the shack.
I drop two photographs on the table, next to his beer. “You know those women?”
Noah looks at the photos casually at first, then with what looks to me like a glint of recognition in his eyes, and he lifts the photos, peering at them. His eyes drift off them, like he’s recalling something. After a long moment, he looks at me.
“Why?”
“It’s a simple question, Noah. If you have nothing to hide, why shouldn’t matter.”
“They look familiar, but I don’t know why.” He drops the photos back on the table. “Okay?”