One of Us Page 16

  He notices me looking at the painting.

  “Oh, that.”

  He shrugs away my discomfort.

  “Walker the First. A show-off. Come. Sit.”

  I remain rooted to the floor. Next to the painting is a framed black-and-white photo of the “pluck me,” circa late 1800s, one of the few buildings still standing in town originating from the time of the Nellies. Now it’s Kelly’s Kwik Shop.

  The “pluck me” was the miners’ name for the company-owned stores where they were forced to shop by the owners. Prices were much higher there and buying was done on “tick,” meaning the purchases were recorded in a book and never revealed to the purchaser. Not that it would have mattered, since he was probably illiterate. If a miner and his family refused to deal with the pluck me, the manager would report him to his foreman and he’d not only be fired but be blacklisted and would find it impossible to get another job in the region.

  Any thought of a miner ever seeing any actual cash money quickly became a fantasy. Most of the time what a man received at the end of the month was a “bobtail” check good for absolutely nothing except to show his current debt, and those debts never disappeared. They were handed down from fathers to sons. There were families in Lost Creek who were so deep in the tick that the men went their entire lives without ever receiving a dollar in cash from their labor.

  Walker pulls a small, thin cigar from a tin sitting on his desk and lights it with a wooden match he takes from a drawer. He closes his eyes and blows a stream of blue smoke toward the windows.

  “Sheridan Doyle. Crazy mother killed his sister and went to jail. Alcoholic father worked in the mines until he hit the disability jackpot. Young Danny somehow rises above his less-than-sterling parentage and earns both academic and athletic scholarships to the Ivy League. Bravo. That is no easy feat. Undergrad degree from Penn. Graduate degrees from Yale. PhD and JD. A shrink and a shyster. Never married. No children. Successful forensic psychologist. Three best-selling books. TV appearances.”

  I turn around slowly.

  “Did I leave anything out?” he asks pleasantly.

  “My shoe size.”

  “Twelve. Anything else?”

  “Don’t call me Danny.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You know a lot about me.”

  “I know a lot about everyone. Your grandfather, too. He’s still alive at a very advanced age and just recently survived a bout of pneumonia. The first of the McNab men not to be killed by the mines. Do you smoke, Doctor, or should I call you Counselor?”

  “I don’t practice law. And no, I don’t smoke.”

  “Please, sit.”

  I lower myself into a chair on the other side of the desk from him.

  He gives me a patronizing yet affable smile. I’m amazed at his ability to seem appealing and repugnant at the same time, but I’m no stranger to his type. He’s a textbook narcissist; a sophisticated playground bully who throws barbs instead of punches.

  “A psychologist but not a psychiatrist. Interesting. Do you mind if I ask why?”

  “I thought a law degree made more sense than a medical degree, since I knew I wanted to specialize in forensic psychology.”

  “But then you’re not really all you can be, are you? You can’t prescribe medication.”

  “I don’t need to prescribe medication. I study and explain human behavior.”

  “In other words, you’re not interested in trying to make anyone better.”

  “It’s not my area of expertise.”

  “I saw you on some show a few years back,” he goes on. “You were discussing the Wishbone murders. Jane Fonda was a guest, too, on an unrelated topic of course. Did you meet her? What was she like?”

  “Aside from some radical cognitive bonding issues and bad taste in shoes, she seemed very nice.”

  He smiles again. A meaningless expression. A mask.

  “All right, then. Enough small talk.”

  He pushes his chair away from the desk and opens a drawer. He glances in it then up at me.

  “I want you to understand that I’ve had my life threatened many times.”

  “Someone has threatened your life?”

  “I just said that.”

  “Recently?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s why I called you.”

  “Why would you call me? Why not the police?”

  “Because I wanted to talk to someone with a brain. This might not mean anything,” he says, standing up from his chair and putting his cigar in an ashtray. “I might be making a mountain out of a molehill or a vulture out of a canary, as it were.”

  He takes a small yellow bird out of the drawer and lays it delicately on the desktop.

  “I suppose it’s always disturbing to have someone give you a dead bird, but since I own coal mines this particular one takes on a menacing aspect. You understand the significance?”

  “The canary dying meant the mines were filled with lethal gas,” I answer. “Where did you find it?”

  “That’s the other thing that was disturbing. Right here. I just got back from New York last night and it was waiting for me.”

  “Who has access to this room?”

  “Just the staff and my wife, and I can promise you nothing in the world could make my wife touch a dead bird.”

  I pick up the canary. Its neck hasn’t been broken, which is the easiest way to kill a small bird like this one. I wonder if its killer suffocated it to mimic what would have happened to it in a carbon-monoxide-filled mine. I picture a pair of hands sealing it into a Ziploc bag and a pair of eyes watching it madly flap its wings then slowly weaken and die.

  “How long were you in New York?”

  “Just for a day.”

  “Did you hear about Simon Husk’s death?”

  “Of course. I knew him. His family and mine have had business dealings from time to time. Small ones.”

  “Some people are saying his death is related to his decision to sell the gallows back to you and your intention to tear them down.”

  “Yes, yes,” he says. “I know. The big curse. Revenge of the Nellies. But if that were true, I suppose I’d be their number-one target. What do you think? Do you think a Nellie put the canary in my desk?”

  “No, but maybe someone wants you to think a Nellie did it,” I say. “Do you know a woman named Marcella Greger?”

  “We had a nanny named Anna Greger.”

  “This would be her cousin.”

  “Anna Greger. I haven’t thought about her in years. She killed herself in our house. Horrible ordeal. No, I didn’t know her cousin or any of her family. Why do you ask?”

  “I still don’t understand why you called me,” I say instead of answering him.

  He puts the bird back into the drawer and takes up his cigar again.

  “I wanted someone to know about this. Just in case something else might happen. But I didn’t want to tell my family and I certainly didn’t want to involve the police. Now you have your first clue if I end up dead.”

  “That makes no sense. You’re lying.”

  My accusation elicits another unctuous smile from him.

  “Would you believe that I simply wanted to meet you?”

  “No.”

  I don’t know what kind of stupid game he’s playing with me, but I know that’s exactly what this is for him. An amusement. A diversion. His type of wealth isolates a man. The very rich get very bored. They also get very jaded. It takes extremes to excite them, and what could be more invigorating than controlling a real live person as easily as a child moves a gingerbread marker across a Candyland board?

  “But I did want to meet you,” he insists. “I find you intriguing. Our culture loves to celebrate those who rise to great heights from very humble beginnings, but the truth is it rarely happens, and w
hen it does it almost always involves a guitar or a football. You did it with brains and sheer determination to get away from here.”

  “You don’t know anything about me and you certainly don’t know what motivates me.”

  “Then what was it? Was it money that motivated you? That’s an expensive suit. I’m sure you enjoy the fruits of your labor, but you could have made far more money in private practice. Or was it fame you were after? You make far too many appearances as an expert commentator on those lurid crime docudramas. Is it because you like to see yourself on TV?”

  “You can’t get a rise out of me,” I inform him as I stand to go. “And if there’s a reason for you calling me other than you had nothing to do on a sleeting January afternoon, I will figure it out.”

  He ignores my comments.

  “It can’t be because you wanted to make your hometown proud,” he continues. “You’re not like them. Surely you must feel much more comfortable here with me than you would drinking with the locals at the Red Rabbit. Have I hit a nerve?”

  “No,” I answer him.

  I turn to leave and once again I’m stopped in my tracks by some artwork on his walls. It’s been behind me hanging next to the door.

  This painting I’ve seen many times before. I was practically obsessed with the image as a child after seeing it pictured in an anthology Tommy owned titled Irish Tales of the Macabre and Supernatural. I was mesmerized by the ravished sleeper’s soft outflung arms wrapped in gauzy bedclothes and her exposed alabaster throat and the foul incubus squatting on her chest staring out of the scene with a gargoyle’s warning glower.

  “Are you familiar with Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare?” he asks me. “It’s one of the most reproduced images in European art. Unfortunately that’s what this is, too. A reproduction. The original is in a museum in Detroit. Seems a pity to have it buried there, but I suppose it’s an apt place to showcase a nightmare.

  “Interesting theory those Victorians had, attributing bad dreams to malevolent spirits raping us in our sleep. They understood there’s no such thing as safety. Anywhere. For anyone. Not even for a baby in her mother’s arms.”

  His words make the skin crawl on the back of my neck, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of letting him know he’s getting to me.

  I turn back around and offer my hand.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Dawes.”

  He rises from his desk and takes it.

  “Good luck solving your mystery, and if you see any dead coal miners, I’d advise you to run.”

  Run. That’s what I want to do, but I manage to maintain my composure all the way back through the house until I arrive outside again, where I take big gulps of the cold air.

  I most ardently don’t believe in ghosts or spirits of any kind or that anyone has the ability to communicate with the dead, predict the future, or know which card I picked through telepathic means. But I do believe humans possess a sensory level that reaches beyond our accepted faculties. I’ve met people who for lack of a more accurate descriptive phrase give me the creeps. This isn’t merely a mental sensation but a physical one, as well. Refined, polished, attractive, well-spoken, wealthy Walker Dawes is one of those people. I’d rather spend an afternoon with Carson Shupe.

  The freezing rain has stopped, but it’s still an unpleasant day and I’m surprised to see someone out walking. A woman comes toward me from the end of the driveway in a leisurely stroll, smoking a cigarette.

  She’s a leggy beauty in jeans, high-heeled boots that hit her midthigh, and a long black mink coat draped over her shoulders. Her hair has a chestnut sheen to it and is expensively unkempt. It might even be considered tousled.

  She approaches without showing any sign that she’s seen me, but heads right toward me, stops, and blows smoke in wreaths above her head the same way Walker did.

  “Who are you?” she asks bluntly.

  “Danny Doyle. I mean, Sheridan. Sheridan Doyle.”

  She stares openly at me. I try to read some kind of emotion in her steady gaze but get nothing but flat appraisal. Her eyes are an oxidized copper. Greenish brown. Brownish green. They’re not blue.

  “Which is it, Danny or Sheridan?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “I think I prefer Danny.”

  She reaches her free hand toward me, pulls open my overcoat, and appraisingly strokes my suit jacket.

  “Gucci?” she asks.

  “Armani.”

  “Really?”

  She bites her lower lip.

  “Double-breasted,” she says appreciatively. “They’re back in style.”

  “But with a modernized cut,” I tell her. “Shorter length, and a peak lapel rather than a notch.”

  She takes her hand away and starts to stroke the lushness of her coat instead.

  “You can’t be from around here.”

  “I grew up in Lost Creek but I’ve lived in Philadelphia for many years.”

  “Why are you here now?”

  “I’m visiting family.”

  I watch the rise and fall of the cigarette to her lips. I wonder with morbid fascination if the ring she’s wearing is made from the same ruby that was pinned to Walker Dawes’ chest the day of the execution. If it is, the stone was present the day Tommy’s father stood clutching his mother’s hand and watched his own father hang. It was an inanimate witness to the beginning of what my family would become.

  “I’m visiting, too,” she says. “I haven’t lived here since I was a child. Scarlet,” she introduces herself. “Scarlet Dawes.”

  “Anna Greger was your nanny.”

  I realize it’s a strange thing for me to have said, but it was the first thing to pop into my head. I wait to see if she’s put off by the question but she doesn’t appear to be.

  “Yes. She was.”

  “Did you know any of her family? Her cousin Marcella?”

  “I didn’t even know she had a family.”

  “You were here the night she killed herself?”

  “I was ten.”

  “I’d imagine something like that would leave a lasting impression on a young child.”

  “I’ll never forget the smell.”

  She takes another drag off her cigarette.

  “You talk like a shrink,” she says while finally offering up a smile.

  The expression is pretty but not inviting.

  “Do you have a lot of experience with shrinks?” I ask.

  “Some.”

  She keeps staring at me with the bored yet wholly alert gaze of a cat.

  “I should be going,” I tell her.

  “Do you have a card, Danny?”

  I give her one.

  She reads it and smiles.

  “Ah, I was right. You are a shrink.”

  She continues to look at the card and I notice the crimson sparkle of the ring again and suddenly see myself, a pale, skinny kid wearing my school’s red track uniform, crashing through the dense, dark woods surrounding our town. It’s not a race. I’m fleeing from someone, something.

  My pulse races, my breath quickens as if I’m actually running. I feel faint. I used to have panic attacks as a child but none were ever severe enough to make me pass out.

  I see less and less of me as I get deeper into the trees, just a flash of bone white and blood red, until I disappear completely into the lawless shadows.

  When I come to, she’s gone and I’m facedown in the whitewashed gravel staring at the glowing orange embers of her discarded butt.

  ON MY WAY BACK to Tommy’s house I drive through town past the Red Rabbit and see Rafe’s car parked on the street.

  I slow down as I recall Walker’s comment that I’d be more comfortable with him in his mansion than here with someone like Rafe at this very bar.

  I park my car and go in.

 
It’s barely noon on a weekday but there are about a dozen men sitting at the bar and the few scarred wooden tables. There’s no music playing. No TV blasting. No women. No pool tables. No food. Barely any light. These patrons don’t come here to unwind or socialize. They come here to drink. The reason they drink is to get drunk. Sex, noise, and conversation only get in the way.

  I take a seat next to Rafe. He doesn’t look surprised to see me.

  He takes in the dirt on my coat, the tear in the knee of one of my pant legs, and the scrape on my nose and forehead, but doesn’t ask what happened. He knows I’ll tell him when I’m ready.

  I used to come to the Rabbit as a child searching for my father before I learned that it was better to be scared alone in my house than to be scared by him at home with me. The Rabbit was never much to look at from the outside: a simple two-story square of whitewashed brick. Over time the paint had flaked revealing patches of pink underneath. At night the other buildings blended into the dark hills behind them, while the Rabbit glowed like a skull still mottled with flesh. I’d keep my head down the last fifty feet or so as I walked toward it and pushed open the heavy front door.

  If my dad was in a good mood he’d sit me up on a stool next to him and order me a ginger ale. I’d look around me through the haze of cigarette smoke at the methodically drinking miners, many of them silent, others communicating with each other in low rumbles. All of them had showered after their shift but their necks, the palms of their hands, and the insides of their ears were still lined with grime, and the smell of sour sweat still clung to them. Their hooded eyes would occasionally flick in my direction, and I’d see the guarded curiosity and hostility of an animal that’s been beaten but also fed by the same man.

  I knew they had all just returned to the surface of the earth after spending eight hours working a mile beneath it. During the short days of winter, they became entirely nocturnal creatures, leaving their homes in darkness to go work in darkness only to return in darkness.

  I could never figure out if they were more or less than human: gods or beasts? Should I respect or pity them? All I knew for sure was I didn’t want to be one of them.

  I stare at the old black-and-white framed photos of mines and miners hanging behind the bar in the midst of shelved liquor bottles and automatically fall into the silent reverie required by the atmosphere.