FAÇADE
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Copyright Information
Façade
Copyright © 2012 Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published 2012 WMG Publishing
Cover Photo Linda Bair/Dreamstime
Cover design Copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing
First published in United States by Dell Abyss Books 1993.
Smashwords Edition
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Table of Contents
To Dean for introducing me to the sea,
among other things
And in memory of Buglet,
who was always there,
always opinionated,
and always loved.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a large debt on this book to Jeanne Cavelos, for providing me with her insightful comments which helped in the revision; to Alan Brennert for letting me see his little corner of Hollywood; and to Harlan and Susan Ellison for the fun, and the great conversations.
OPENING
SCENE
Take One
(Now)
FADE IN:
EXT. VILLAGE STREET ALONG ROCKY SEASHORE.
OPEN with water breaking along the rocks, surf splashing over the edges of the cliff, spraying bypassers on this street in a small seaside town. In the distance, a lighthouse looms. Gray clouds overhead, old gray buildings weathered by the ocean—even the bypassers are gray. The entire area evokes a mood of gloomy darkness. Shoot almost FILM NOIR, gritty and shadowy, à la 1930s B movies.
ANTHONY SHORT and his cat, RUMBLES, stroll across the road. Rumbles is half Siamese, half everything else, all mouth and no substance. Short is tall, lanky, and very impressive. His rain cape billows out behind him, making him look as if he is flying.
“Cut! Cut! Dash it, Thomas, the coat is supposed to billow out behind you. You’re supposed to look important, not like the Wicked Witch of the West after she’s met with a bucket of water.”
Thomas shakes the moisture out of his black hair. Skizits, the cat, easily drops her Rumbles role and runs for a drier section of road.
“Sorry,” Thomas says.
The camera crew relaxes. One of the grips reaches beside his chair for a thermos. The assistant director checks the script as if it is at fault for the flub instead of Thomas.
“Sorry? Sorry?” Michael takes a step closer to him. “We only have the morning to do the damn opening scene, and all you can say is sorry?”
Fifteen people wait for him. The cameras and equipment hide the road. Thomas turns away from them, and gazes at the lighthouse, half lost in the morning mist. “I’m not much for grimy seascapes,” he says.
(Then)
The house had a heavy, wet look. Ocean-logged, as Heather would have called it. A shutter banged against the frame. The wind off the sea rose bitter here; its cold bit into his unprotected skin. Thomas climbed onto the porch without grabbing the rail. The wood groaned beneath his feet.
“Twenty-five thousand?” he asked the realtor.
She nodded. The wind whipped her brown hair against her face. She looked reluctant to enter the house. He had been the one who suggested it. The place looked perfect, off on a side road, near the ocean, private and cheap. Too cheap to trust.
He waited for her to open the door. She shrugged. “It’s not locked,” she said, hanging back.
The shutter banged again. The wind gave this old house life. He grabbed the brass knob, twisted it, and shoved the door open. No one had entered for a long time. A thin layer of dirt carpeted the floor. The air smelled musty, damp, closed in. He glanced back at the realtor. She huddled against the house, her arms crossed in front of her chest as a protection against the wind. He could see the ocean behind her, waves wild, foaming, crashing on the beach. “You coming in?”
For a minute, he thought she was going to say no. Then she smiled tightly and pushed past him. He watched her walk into the empty, open living room as if she had never seen it before. Slowly, he let the door slide closed. It slammed, making him jump even though he expected the sound.
“Tell me what is going on.” His voice echoed in the room.
Her hands clutched at her sweater and a slow flush rose in her cheeks. She looked like Heather at three—trapped and unable to lie. “A woman was murdered here. Awful thing. Her blood painted across the walls—” The realtor laughed nervously. “Here I am trying to sell you the house and I tell you something like that.”
“At least you’re honest.” Thomas took a step inward. A large brick fireplace dwarfed the room. The walls were white, the paint carrying an unused, new look. The kitchen stood off to the right. Thomas walked into it. Under the dust, the cabinets wore a fresh coat of varnish. The appliances were about three years old—he recognized the make and model from his year as Mr. Appliance— and still bore a local store’s stickers. No-wax tile, obviously not original to the house, covered the floor.
“The kitchen is big enough for a table and a china hutch. The appliances are new, never been—”
“Yes, I see that.” Thomas didn’t care if he sounded harsh. He had given her a chance to do her job earlier. Trying to sell the house now only irritated him. “She died down here?”
“No.” The realtor’s voice had become small. “Upstairs. But then he dragged her down the steps—”
“He? They caught the guy?”
“No, but he was sighted, running from here, his cape billowing out behind him in the fog.”
Thomas smiled. It sounded like a gothic. Something in black and white. Not film noir, but using shadows like poetry used words, to obscure and enlighten at the same time. “Enough to know he wasn’t local, huh?”
“It was three years ago.”
“Then why are you so frightened?”
“Steve usually shows this place. He’s on vacation.” She rubbed her hands against her upper arms. “I’ve never been here before.”
Thomas nodded. “I’ll look at the upstairs by myself,” he said. The stairs ran off a small hallway opposite the kitchen. He climbed the steps slowly, noting the high polish and the nail holes in the wood. The stairs opened into an attic room with no hallway. The ceiling was low; he had to walk in the middle so that he could stand upright. The faint scent of fresh paint still lingered, but the window was covered with three years’ growth of spiderwebs and grime. He cleared the dirt away.
The ocean roared below him, in constant motion. Waves broke against the rocks off to his left. The waves pulled at the beach, as if trying to drag it back into the ocean—recapture it, reclaim it. Thomas watched, finding the water’s violence both soothing and disturbing.
The room felt cozy. He could imagine himself, lying on his bed, staring at the ocean in the dark.
He gave the rest of the house a cursory look, noting the bathroom’s old paint and rusty shower, the tiny laundry room, and the dank, dark basement. Then he stopped beside the realtor. She was standing in front of the large picture window, still hugging herself as she stared at the sea.
“Steve picked a bad time to go on vacation.”
She jumped. One hand covered her mouth as if to block a scream. When she saw him, she relaxed slightly.
Thomas smiled. “I’m going to buy it.”
Take Two
(Now)
FADE IN:
EXT. LIGHTHOUSE, tall and imposing against the broad expanse of sky. The white paint has turned gray from years of standing so close to the ocean. A railing runs about the base of the house, though no one stands before it. Waves hit the cliffs below, spraying the area with water as dark as the clouds.
ANTHONY SHORT and his cat, RUMBLES, walk to the edge. Short grabs the railing and leans into the spray. Rumbles stands at his feet, ignoring the water as it pours over her.
“Cut! Cut!” Michael stands up. His rain slicker is dry. “Thomas, we’ll never finish this bit if you don’t follow the bloody script.”
Thomas nods and picks up Skizits who is rooted to her spot. “I don’t understand why standing at the railing is necessary. It looks slippery and dangerous there.”
The members of the crew get up and move away. These conversations have become commonplace, and the crew uses them as breaks.
“It’s an establishing shot.” Michael takes a deep breath and then releases it, as if he is trying to calm himself. “You’re the first actor I know who can handle the interior dialogue but mucks up the establishing shots. They’re the bloody easy ones, Thomas.”
Water splashes against Thomas. He turns, protecting the cat from the droplets, but she shudders anyway. The sea froths below them, laughing at Thomas for cringing.
“I don’t know what’s so easy about them,” Thomas murmurs.
(Then)
He found her sitting on the doorstep his third day in the house. She had her jacket wrapped tightly about her body, her hands stuck in the pockets. She didn’t say hello as he approached, but stood, sniffled, and wiped her nose with her sleeve.
He didn’t say hello either. He shifted the grocery bags slightly so that he could extend the hand holding his keys. She grabbed them and opened the door as if she had been doing so for years. He hurried into the kitchen, set the bags down on the counter, and turned to see if she had followed him.
She hadn’t. She was standing in the living room, staring at the poster for his latest film. Finally, she looked at him. Her cheeks were ruddy with the cold and there were deep shadows under her brown eyes.
“You’re taller,” he said, knowing that he had to make an obligatory remark about her appearance.
“Thinner,” she corrected. She shoved her hands back into her pockets, uncertain about her welcome. “And no. Mother doesn’t know that I’m here.”
He reached into the grocery bag and pulled out food for his single lifestyle: TV dinners, hamburger, boxed meals, and four six-packs of Diet Coke. “You want something?”
“Coffee.” She sniffled again. He dug further in the bag, brought out a box of Kleenex, and handed it to her. His mother would never have allowed him to drink coffee at thirteen, but he didn’t say anything.
“All I got is instant.”
“Fine.” Heather opened the box, tossed the oval-shaped cardboard onto the counter, and pulled out a tissue. She blew her nose loudly, then set the used Kleenex beside the cardboard.
“Garbage is under the sink.” The first fatherly thing he had said. He didn’t feel like much of a father—it was a role he played for one week annually, a part in summer stock forgotten as quickly as it had been learned.
Heather grabbed her garbage, opened the door under the sink, and tossed everything away. Then she closed the door and leaned against the basin, still hugging her coat to her chest.
Thomas handed her the kettle. “Take off your coat and stay awhile,” he said.
She took the kettle from him. He turned his attention back to the groceries. The bag rattled against his arm as he pulled out lettuce, cucumbers, and some Ivory soap. He glanced over at Heather; she was struggling to turn on the faucet. He reached over and yanked it for her. With a squeal of rusted metal, the handle turned. Water splooshed out of the pipe and sprayed against the top of the kettle. Heather wiped her face with her free hand, then shut the faucet off.
“What the hell are you doing on the Oregon coast?” She didn’t look at him. Her tone was not conversational. It had an element of blame.
He watched her set the kettle on the front burner and turn on the stove. “Hell” was a new word. The attitude was new too. He pictured three scenarios: in the first, he took his father’s tactic and yelled about Heather’s vocabulary and immediately alienated her; in the second, he answered her question, ignoring all the complexities; and in the third—
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“Connie.”
His agent. She was probably wondering why she hadn’t heard from him. “I’ve got to let your mom know you’re here.”
Heather sighed. Beside her the kettle rattled. “I know. Connie explained it to me. ‘He’s famous, you know’”—Heather mimicked Connie’s nasal Brooklyn tones perfectly—“‘We can’t have some kidnapping scandal hit him now.’”
Not exactly the most tactful woman. But then that was Connie’s strength in Hollywood. Thomas reached up and took a mug from the cupboard. It was tall and had a lighthouse painted on the front. He had picked it up the morning before in one of the little touristy shops that lined Highway 101. “I was actually thinking she might be worried,” he said.
“Mom? She doesn’t worry.” Heather pulled open a cupboard door. “Where’s the—oh.” She took the coffee off the shelf, twisted off the top, and poured the freeze-dried granules into the mug. “Can we at least wait until tomorrow to call her?”
“No,” Thomas said. He folded up the grocery bag and put it next to the garbage under the sink. The kettle made a slow whine. “You’ll call her tonight, tell her you’re with me, and you don’t know when you’re coming home. Tell her I’ll talk to her later.”
The kettle screamed. Heather shut off the burner and poured the hot water into the mug. “I suppose you want me to do that now.”
He handed her a spoon. She took it, swirled it in the mug, then wrapped her hands around the lighthouse.
“It would probably be a good idea,” he said. “The phone’s in the living room.”
She sighed, took her mug with her, and headed out of the kitchen. She had gotten thinner. Much thinner. Her legs were like sticks. “And take off your coat,” he said.
Heather didn’t seem to hear him or, if she had, she didn’t want to obey. She sat in the big green armchair by the picture window and cradled the phone’s receiver between her ear and shoulder as she dialed.
Thomas watched her, wondering what role to slide into—father or friend. He decided not to decide, to wait and see what she needed most.
Take Three
(Now)
FADE IN:
EXT. HOUSE ON DESERTED BEACHFRONT. OPEN with wild sea. Waves compress into the rock crevices, then spout into the air as they break, sending spray to the edge of the lawn. The empty house stares at the sea. No one has lived here in decades.
ANTHONY SHORT walks purposefully up the porch steps. His cat, RUMBLES, follows, but stops on the second step to lick her paws. Short approaches the door and Rumbles screams.
“Cut! Cut!” Michael’s voice follows Thomas across the beach. Thomas runs in sand, his feet sinking, his legs aching. The wind whips across his face and he can taste sea salt in the air. Spray washes his face. The ocean pounds with his footsteps. “Will someone stop that lunatic?”
Thomas stops running on his own. He can’t see the man anymore—hasn’t seen him since leaping off the porch. Two grips run up alongside him, tall men, big, like bouncers in a single’s bar. One puts his hand on Thomas’s arm. “You okay, Mr. Stanton?”
Thomas wipes the sweat off his forehead. “Did you see him? The man in the cape?”
The grip looks at his companion, then frowns. “That was you, sir. They caught your reflection in the glass they were moving for the next scene.”
“Are you ready to work?” Michael yells. He is still standing by the house, the cameras crowded behind him like bodyguards. He looks tiny, ineffectual, D.W. Griffith beside a director’s chair, clutching a bullhorn.
“Not here,” Thomas whispers. “Not ever.”
(Then)
He bobbed into wakefulness, narrowly missing the low ceiling as he sat up. His throat was dry, his heart pounding. Moonlight streamed across the bed. Downstairs, a shutter banged.
He threw back the covers, grabbed a robe, and started toward the stairs. Then he stopped. Heather was thirteen. If she was frightened, she would come for him. The creaking stairs would probably wake her and she would resent him for interrupting her sleep to calm his own fears.
He never worried about her when she was with Marge. Strange that he would worry now.
The shutter banged again. In the morning he would have to fix it so that he could sleep on windy nights. He tossed his robe on the bed and walked over to the window. The moonlight trimmed fifteen pounds off his naked body, hiding the paunch he was gaining, making him look twenty-five again. He ran his hands down his sides, feeling the layer of skin that was still there. In the morning, too, he would start running and maybe ask Heather to join him.
She had changed, his daughter, become tight, suspicious, too thin and cold, always cold. She had picked at dinner and said nothing. He wasn’t the enemy, but he was little better since he had made her make the phone call. He hated the anger he felt wave off her, never permitted it in himself. Perhaps, in time, she would tell him why she had run away. Or maybe she wouldn’t. He still hadn’t decided what role to play.
A final bang—loud, sharp, like a pistol shooting blanks. Thomas leaned out the window in time to see a figure running down the beach. The water foamed and once Thomas thought the figure would get dragged in. The moonlight reflecting off the sand sharpened the world’s edges with the clarity of day. Thomas stared at the runner—a man, his cloak billowing out behind him—and then remembered the realtor’s words about the three-year-old murder.
His fear was back, strong, rising in his throat like bile. He grabbed his robe and shoved his arms in its sleeves as he ran down the stairs. His feet thudded against the wood—Heather would hear the panic in all of his movements. He ran across the hardwood floor and into the living room.
Covers trailed off the couch. The pillow was crumpled between the back and the armrest, and the bottom sheet had been scrunched. The kitchen door stood open, the room dark and empty.
“Heather?” His voice echoed in the still house. “Sweetheart?”
Nothing. No reply. Her clothes were piled beside the couch, where she had left them, her coat tossed casually over the armchair by the phone. The screen door was open. As he watched, it banged against the frame, and slowly eased open again.
“Heather?”
He went to the door, pushed it open, and stepped out on the porch. The weathered wood was cold against his bare feet. He traced the length of the porch, shivering in the damp, looking across the sand and seeing nothing but the ocean, frothing ghostly white in the moonlight. Finally he went in the back door—unlocked, damn his absentmindedness—and through the foyer.
“Heather?”
She wasn’t upstairs or down. He checked the basement, turning on the light so that he could see past the cobwebs, afraid he might find her, crumpled like her bedclothes at the bottom of the stairs. Nothing. No one.
He walked to the living room, feeling shell-shocked, trying to ignore the fright. He turned his back on the empty couch as he picked up the phone to tell the authorities that his daughter had disappeared.
Take Four
(Now)
FADE IN:
EXT. RUGGED CLIFF-FACE SHROUDED IN FOG. The sea has receded—the tide is out. The sand below looks black and wet. An occasional gull cries, but the land is deserted.
ANTHONY SHORT stands on the edge, dangerously close—is he going to jump?—and stares wistfully at the sea. His cat, RUMBLES, sits beside him. She wails. Short leans—
Thomas falls. Rocks scraping his legs, his back. He brings up his arms to protect his head. All around him he hears the slither of falling rocks, the screams from above—Michael—“Cut! Cut! Stop the goddamn cameras. Catch him, someone, and move that blooming cat!”
Thomas clutches at the rock face, but it is slippery, wet. He can feel the skin along his palms tear. Something pops as his shoulder rips, and the pain of bumping, slipping, falling against hard pointed stone takes his breath away.
He can hear the roar of the sea, and he wishes it were there to catch him as the sand looms toward him, damp, and cold, and flat. They make concrete from sand, he thinks, then tucks himself into a ball. Balls bounce. Thomas doesn’t.
ACT ONE
1
Marge called it morbid, and perhaps it was—returning to the site of his daughter’s disappearance and death—but Thomas thought it fitting somehow. He leaned on his crutches and stared at the ocean. The sun sparkled off the waves as they tumbled their way to shore. The smell of salt and moisture was strong here, natural, not cloying, almost soothing. A group of tourists—a mother, father, and two daughters—bumped him in their haste to get to the beach. He watched them, feeling wistful.
He had never had a traditional family. His parents divorced when he was twelve, and he had been shuttled back and forth between his mother’s house and foster homes. He had married Marge, dreaming of a ranch house with a two-car garage, but somewhere that dream had been lost in casting calls and bit parts. By the time Heather was born, he spent more than half the year away from home, working, and sleeping with women not his wife. When Heather turned five, he left home for good and thought he had no regrets.
The mother spread a blanket on the beach. The father helped his daughters take off their shoes. Then they walked along the sandy edge, tracing the morning’s water line and examining stones half buried in the wet. The sea slid up the shore, tickling their feet. The girls giggled and ran, and their father watched, smiling.
Thomas’s leg ached. He turned away from the lookout point and crossed the parking lot. A young couple necked in the front seat of the first car he passed. The second car, a dark blue station wagon with California plates, was filled with toys, pillows, and luggage. It probably belonged to the family.
He walked across the street to a large bakery. A bell tinkled as he pulled the door open. The bakery smelled of fresh dough and chocolate. Three families still crowded the tables, but a chair near the window was open. He hung a crutch on it and limped toward the counter. The woman behind it flashed him a smile—the one she gave all the tourists—as she grabbed the bismarck he ordered from the two remaining on the tray. He paid her for the food and a cup of coffee that he had to pour himself from a side table. The coffeepots were full, but the table bore the marks of heavy usage—spilled creamer, cup rings, crumpled napkins, and used swizzle sticks. He hadn’t been on the coast in the summer, hadn’t realized what the locals had complained about, how the tourists took over everything. But Seavy Village, although it was sprawled along the coast, had a population of ten thousand and even a handful of people would have been noticed. The tourists arrived by the dozens, filling every restaurant, hotel, and sidewalk to capacity.
He moved his crutch and sat down, watching the people through the window. The ones who wore shorts and tank tops were tourists; the natives had enough sense to wear jeans and summer sweaters. The temperature hovered around fifty-five here, although on some sunny summer days it might rise as high as seventy-five.
All of the people worried him. He kept expecting to hear the familiar squeal, followed by “Thomas Stanton! Are you Thomas Stanton?” or even more likely, “Jason Michaels! My God, it’s Jason Michaels!” the soap character he hadn’t portrayed in nearly five years. Only a few—the semicultured ones—would call “Anthony Short! Jesus, honey, look. It’s that detective!” But so far, no one had recognized him.
Not that he blamed them. His bruises were fading—the left side of his face was a dull yellow now instead of deep purple—but he still had thirty pounds to lose from his hospital stay. Thomas Stanton was a slender, darkly handsome man who played the melancholy detective Anthony Short for public television. The man sitting in Seavy Village’s only bakery was pudgy and unshaven, with a cast that ran up his entire left leg and eyes gray with pain.
He bit into the bismarck, relishing the doughy chocolate taste, and then took a sip of his coffee. A few people had recognized him, locals, people he had met in the few short weeks he had lived here before. A girl at the grocery checkout the night before asked him if he had really tried to commit suicide in Depoe Bay. He smiled at her, shook his head, and reassured her that it had been an accident, he had slipped on a rock during filming. If he was going to commit suicide, he almost added, he would do something surer, like a gun to the head.
The Short series was in hiatus, perhaps permanent hiatus, while he got his health back. He could have started shooting last week when they let him out of the hospital, but he refused. Marge’s visit had thrown him. He needed time to think.
Superficially, Marge had looked lovely: she was still slender, and her brown hair had silver-gray highlights. But the circles beneath her eyes and the long, deeply etched lines in her face showed him that Heather’s disappearance had weighed as much on her as it had on him.
Thomas took a sip of his coffee and pushed the half-eaten bismarck away. Two years. Heather had been missing for two years and finally they found her body, her skeleton actually, in one of the sea caves a mile from his house. “Sometimes the sea gives things back,” the detective had said. But Thomas didn’t believe it. He knew that nothing had been given back, only taken. Bones and dental records were not Heather—they were symbols of Heather’s loss.
Marge thought him ridiculous, returning to Seavy Village once Heather’s death had been confirmed. But it wasn’t ridiculous; it was something he should have done earlier, but had lacked the courage. He had known two years ago that Heather was dead. She wouldn’t have run away, not without her coat or the fifty dollars he had found in her pockets. They hadn’t had a fight, and even though things were strained, they were getting along. She had come to see him, to talk to him, and in the middle of the night, while he slept, something had happened to her.
Now that he knew she was dead, he could find out what killed her. And, he suspected, it was something that the bevy of detectives he had hired wouldn’t find. The secret was in the house, in the moonlight, locked in the confines of what the tourists saw as Seavy Village.
Thomas drank the last of his coffee and sighed. The time had finally come to move his things from the overpriced hotel room with a view of the highway to his house by the sea. The tiny, windswept house on a deserted stretch of beachfront road where he had last seen his daughter alive.
2
The house had the barren, forlorn look that most abandoned houses had, even though he paid a woman to clean it weekly. The house attracted him, and even after losing Heather, he hadn’t been willing to give it up. Now, as he pulled into the gravel driveway, he had the strange feeling of coming home.
The sea was louder here. The waves lost their gentle shush-shush. They pounded against the beach as if they were beating it. Thomas’s heart tapped a rhythm that matched the water.
He shut off the ignition and leaned his head back against the seat. Driving hurt. He wasn’t supposed to do it at all, but he had gotten a dealer in Portland to customize a truck for him, and he had driven down the coast. Without a vehicle, he couldn’t live in the house, and the house had been his destination ever since Marge’s visit.
Thomas opened the door, grabbed his crutches from the seat beside him, and set them against the frame. The smell of sea foam and damp sand filled the cab. He pivoted his body, swung his legs out, and eased himself onto the ground. Pain shot up his leg, sending tears to his eyes. He would have to find a doctor near Seavy Village, someone to look at his leg and make sure that he hadn’t done any serious damage to it in his travels.
A trail of fear settled in his stomach. The house’s windows caught the light, reflecting it like the fathomless eyes of a cat. He half expected to see Heather sitting on the porch stairs, huddled in her coat, waiting for him.
Marge had never told him why Heather ran away. He suspected that there wasn’t any one reason. Heather seemed to have left because she didn’t like life with Marge—and she had come to him expecting something better.
He slipped the crutches under his arms. Something better from a man who bounced from project to project, whose entire experience of fatherhood was a series of strained “special” evenings in which the two of them stared at each other and tried to pretend they had something in common. Thirteen-year-olds were idealistic, Heather more than others.
The crutches leaned awkwardly in the gravel. He felt unsteady, uncertain, doubting his decision. The house had stood empty for two years. It held very few memories for him, but it held some: Heather spraying herself with water; the cloaked figure running in the moonlight. The Short filming in Depoe Bay had been the first time Thomas had returned to the Oregon coast. Heather had haunted him there in the grayness and the wet. What would happen here, where she had actually stayed? Where she had died.
He leaned his weight on the crutches and pulled himself forward, careful to move only when he was certain that the crutches were securely placed. He would bring his luggage in later, when he was less tired, or maybe see if he could get someone out here to help him with the groceries and the other chores. He was supposed to be off his leg as much as possible. He knew that the doctor had meant bed rest, but Thomas wasn’t the type to lie down. Especially when something bothered him.
The stairs were unevenly spaced and difficult to climb. He lifted himself carefully, knowing that if he fell it might be days before someone found him. The thought of falling made his heart ache. He got dizzy from standing up too fast, leaning over any edge. He had developed vertigo—and he had an irrational fear of the fear. Fear of falling reminded him of Jimmy Stewart and Hitchcockian camera angles spinning, spinning, creating a slightly sick feeling in the stomach—a feeling that he had too often lately, whenever his balance slipped slightly.
At the top of the porch, he stopped to catch his breath. The sea edged toward the beach, the white waves rolling in at irregular intervals. Living here would be like living next to a wild animal, unpredictable and lovely. He remembered the dreams he had had in the hospital—memory dreams of falling, landing on the sand, and then being eaten by the salt water seeping into his wounds. He shuddered. The sea didn’t frighten him, but the sand did. He remembered its gritty taste against his teeth, the doctor saying that he had cleaned sand out of every wound in Thomas’s body.
Thomas looked away and hobbled the last few feet to the front door, then fished for his keys in the front pockets of his pants. Nothing but some change and a few loose dollar bills. He had forgotten the keys in the ignition. A tiredness, deeper than any he had felt in days, swept over him. He would have to go back to the truck. Down the stairs and back.
Then he heard a smacking as the door opened. He took one quick step backward and nearly lost his balance. Fear jolted through him as, in his memory, sand rushed up to greet him. He leaned on the crutches, taking the weight off of his bad leg, his breath coming in heavy bursts. A girl stood behind the screen and, for a moment, he thought it was Heather.
“Mr. Stanton?” she asked. Her question snapped him to himself and he realized that she wasn’t a ghost, but a girl, a real, live girl, a woman actually, the woman he had hired to clean the house.
“You startled me,” he said.
She smiled and swung the screen door open. “I heard you were in town. I was getting it ready for you.”
She stepped back so that he could go through the door. The house had a musty, unused odor. The furniture, the movie posters, everything looked as if it had been waiting for him, as if he had been gone only a few hours. He could almost see Heather’s coat tossed across one of the chairs.
“Thank you, Mrs.—” Damn. He had forgotten her name.
Her smile grew wider, cracking lines in her face and revealing one missing tooth. “Carolyn.” She closed the door behind him, then walked back to the kitchen. “I opened the windows to air out the place. And I put some fresh flowers in every room to lighten things up. My boy is going to bring over some groceries if you want and can help with anything you need.” She shook her head. “Looks like we have to rig you up some kind of downstairs bed.”
Her effervescence startled him, this woman with skin the texture of weathered wood. He remembered hiring her, remembered how quiet she had seemed, how serious. He had gotten used to that kind of treatment—his fame had given him a curious type of power—and he had almost forgotten how people acted when they were simply being themselves. In all the years of caring for his house, and of receiving his short notes along with the check, Carolyn must have felt as if she had gotten to know him.
“I was sorry to hear about the accident, sir,” she said. “If there’s something we can do. . . .”
“You’re doing plenty. The place looks wonderful.” And it did. The gray light from the picture window bathed the furniture. The wild roses on the end tables made the living room look like something out of House Beautiful. He got the sense, as he had on that strange, windblown afternoon with the realtor, that he could be happy in this house.
“That fall crippled you up pretty bad.”
He looked back at her. Her gray eyes were filled with warmth. It tugged at a loneliness in him. “I’m doing a lot better than I was.”
“Not good enough to be living way out here alone.” She picked a dust rag off the arm of the couch. He hadn’t even seen the cloth until she touched it. “If you want, me or my boy could check up on you every day, see if you need something.”
Their presence would intrude on his solitude, bring something to the house that didn’t really belong, but he knew that in a day or so, he wouldn’t want to be so solitary. And she was right, in his condition, he needed someone to check up on him.
“I would like that,” he said. “I’ll pay you extra, of course.”
“Do that, and I’ll have to see to it that you get one good meal every day.” Carolyn leaned against the couch. A slight blush touched her cheeks. “I got to say I was awful worried when I read about your accident. They weren’t real sure there for a time what was going to happen to you, and, well, I did my talking to the Lord. Then when they found your little girl—” Carolyn shook her head. “You’ve had your share of burdens, Mr. Stanton.”
The crunch of gravel echoed in the room as a car pulled into the driveway. Thomas welcomed the sound to free him from Carolyn’s good wishes.
“That must be my boy,” she said as she walked to the door. “That’s who I thought you were ‘til I saw you trying the stairs.”
The ache in Thomas’s leg had grown fiery. He limped to the couch, set his crutches against the coffee table, and propped his leg up. Sitting down felt good. He watched as Carolyn opened the door to admit a man in his early twenties. Thomas had been expecting a boy; Carolyn hardly seemed old enough, despite her tough skin and bad teeth, to have borne the young man who towered over her.
“This is Ken,” Carolyn said as if they were at some important social function. “Ken, say ‘hi’ to Mr. Stanton.”
Ken nodded through the groceries. He hurried into the kitchen to set his burden down. Thomas could hear bags rattling, cans clinking, and cupboards closing, as Ken put the groceries away. Carolyn brought Thomas a pillow, and he leaned back, savoring the exhaustion in his body. The home sounds drifted around him as he sank into sleep.
3
Thomas awoke to the sound of children screaming. The light had moved out of the window; it was near dusk and the house was empty. Carolyn and Ken had left, but not before they set up a cot on the far side of the fireplace, and left his keys on the end table beside the couch. Thomas smiled, wondering what he had done to deserve such good treatment, and then decided not to reflect on it, uncertain about whether he would like the answer.
The scream came again, long and cold. Not the scream of a child having fun, but the cry of someone in pain.
He bolted upright, his mind already racing on how he could help, how he could move fast if someone needed him. He grabbed his crutches and made himself stand up carefully—he couldn’t do much if he hurt himself again.
He hobbled over to the window. The beach was empty. A gull eased down onto the shore, picked in the sand, then flew off again. The ocean whispered to him, but the sound was more a part of the house than the outdoors. He saw no children, heard no more screams.
His heart pounded. Thomas limped toward the door, let himself out, and stood on the porch. The evening air was cool and he could feel the spray in it. The beach was empty for what seemed like miles. He shook his head. He must have dreamed the sound.
His heart was still pounding. He took several deep breaths to calm himself. Everything would not be peaceful here. He shivered in the cold and went back into the house.
The semidarkness made the place look foreign, grainy, like the stuff of a dream. He flicked on the light by the sofa and bathed everything in softness. It felt as if no time had passed since the evening Heather came to visit, as if he had just found the house and moved in.
He went into the kitchen, took out some hamburger, and made patties. He fried one and froze the others, relishing the simple tasks that no one had let him do in months. Maybe he wouldn’t take Carolyn up on her cooking offer. Maybe he would do that himself.
He set the burger on the table, then pulled the thick file of detective reports out of his duffel. He had read the reports before, but now, living here, he hoped he would find a clue, something different, something he hadn’t seen before.
The first file came from a reputable firm out of Portland. Of course, the reputation had come from successful divorce cases, but at the time, Thomas hadn’t known that. Inside the file, he had stashed the report, police papers, and pictures.
Thomas put the papers aside and stared at the pictures. There it was again, that horrible evening, captured in black-and-white glossy. Heather’s makeshift bed, with its crumpled bedclothes, dominated the living room. A footprint in the sand, a footprint that later turned out to belong to a careless sheriff’s deputy. And finally, Heather herself. The photo had been taken three months before she had come to see Thomas. She had applied at a modeling agency—and a friend had taken enough pictures to fill a portfolio. Marge had brought the pictures with her. This one was the best of the lot, but the least like Heather.
Expertly applied makeup had leveled out the planes and hollows in her face, making them look like the caress of years rather than the results of excessive dieting. Her eyes were large, luminous, and dark—the eyes he had seen on Anthony Short, the detective—their expression alluring, mysterious. Her lips were parted slightly and an unseen wind blew her long hair behind her.
He stared at her hair for a moment, wishing the picture wasn’t in black and white. He couldn’t remember what color her hair had been. Not really. If pressed, he would have said brown, but whether it had been sandy brown or dark brown, with copper highlights or blond streaks, he couldn’t say. The tragedy wasn’t that he couldn’t remember his daughter’s hair color. The tragedy was that he had probably never even noticed.
He set the picture aside and took a bite out of the burger. The meat was cool and raw inside, but he ate it anyway. He grabbed the stack of reports and thumbed through them, stopping occasionally as something caught his attention.
Heather had arrived on one of those buses tour groups chartered. She had booked at the last minute, taking a bus that was doing a quick tour of the coast, and she had asked to get off in Seavy Village. No one had talked to her on the trip except an elderly man, traveling alone, who later said that she had reminded him of his granddaughter. Then she had asked directions from the clerk in a local gift shop and had walked the three-plus miles to Thomas’s house where, presumably, she had waited until he had arrived an hour or so later.
The detectives found nothing in the house. All the fingerprints belonged to Thomas and Heather. No footprints led to the beach or down the road. No one had seen her leave Seavy Village, and no one saw her in the surrounding area.
Thomas turned another page and found an analysis of his lie detector test. He stared at the document for a moment, the undigested hamburger twisting in his stomach. For three days, they had questioned him over and over, and his attorney had let them.
“You have nothing to hide, Thomas,” he had said. “The worst they can decide is that you let her go for a midnight stroll and the sea took her.”
They made him take the test twice. The first time, he had sat in the tiny room, listening to the scritch of needles behind him, his heart pounding against his chest. He had been so nervous that he had choked on his own name. He remembered everything he had read about the test—how it recorded differences in pulse rate and breathing—and he grew angry at his own nervous reaction. Still, somehow, he had passed. The little machine had claimed that Thomas had not killed his own daughter.
But a few items had made the tester curious and so they tested Thomas again. This time, he resisted. He had not been the perfect father to Heather, he knew that, acknowledged it, but that didn’t mean that he had killed her. His attorney maintained they were doing it strictly for the publicity value, but he knew they actually believed he had gotten up in the middle of the night, strangled his daughter, given her to the sea, and then crept back into the house to call the police.
He had gone into that test upset at the police. So upset that he had called up his own shell, his acting shell, the one that protected him against stage fright, and answered each of the questions. Twice he had lied on purpose and neither time the machine caught it.
They had left him alone after that. The final verdict was that Heather had taken a midnight stroll and had lost a battle with the ocean. The cloaked figure Thomas had seen must have been Heather herself, running across the beach, pursued by her own demons.
The Portland detectives had concurred with that verdict. Thomas stuffed their report, along with the police reports, back into the file. He left Heather’s picture out.
He picked up his dishes, rinsed them, and set them in the sink. The next firm he had hired had specialized in criminal investigations. They had been from San Francisco. He could almost quote their report from memory. They had cited Thomas’s knowledge of the house’s history, the lack of footprints, fingerprints and other evidence, and had implied that Thomas made up the entire story. They hadn’t gone far enough to suggest that he had killed Heather—after all, he was paying their fees—but the accusation was buried in the pages of the report.
Thomas had paid them, denying any requests for additional expenses, and immediately turned around and hired their rivals.
DeFreeze and Garity had spent nearly a year investigating the matter. They would send him tiny, updating reports with expense vouchers clipped to the paperwork, telling him nothing. The actual report, a tome the size of a script for a feature film, had arrived at his home in Hollywood while he was in Depoe Bay, filming Anthony Short. His agent had forwarded the report while he was in the hospital, but he had never read it. He could not face the thick pages after he had seen Margery.
Thomas sat back down at the table and pulled the report from its manila envelope. AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF HEATHER STANTON was emblazoned across the top. They had used a Macintosh computer and the report almost appeared professionally published.
Heather’s photo stared at Thomas. His eyes burned. He was getting tired again. For some reason, this report frightened him. It was the last one written before they discovered Heather’s body, the last one to have any hope that Heather was still alive. By reading it, the fact of her death might come clear to him, and he would know with a certainty, without that startled pain running up his belly into his heart, that his daughter was truly dead.
The scream echoed again outside. Thomas froze, his hand on the clear plastic cover of the report. He turned and looked out the kitchen window. A gull flew by, its cry whipped and molded by the sea wind until the thick, throaty bird-sound had human qualities.
He stuffed the reports back into his duffel. He had had enough for one night. The final report could wait for morning.
4
The air in Seavy Village always smelled like fall. Cool, crisp, with a tang of salt. Thomas kept his windows up, but the smell seeped into the pickup, rich and strong. Highway 101 was filled with campers and RVs, fast cars with out-of-state plates and drivers who shook their fists at anyone who got in their way. The pace made him think of California where everyone was late, late, running late, and he sighed. One of the things he had loved about the coast was its relaxed atmosphere.
He turned on Rhododendron Drive and immediately left the tourists behind. The town became sleepy again. An old man wearing loose trousers and a flannel shirt walked toward the lake. Seavy Village was sprawled between the beach and a small natural lake. Although the population was small, the town appeared twice as large as it was. And in the illogic of town planning, the ideal home sites were along the dying lake shore, near the thick weeds and algae, instead of the sand and expanse of the Pacific Ocean. The old man tipped his pipe at Thomas in greeting, and Thomas waved back. He followed the narrow, winding road around the rows of ranch houses half-hidden by rhododendron bushes, flowers, and thick pine-shaped shrubs until he saw the small sign. THE SEAVY VILLAGE GAZETTE. He stopped the pickup, swung himself out, and grabbed his crutches.
The building was an old white house, built in the late twenties, with wild roses climbing a trellis outside. The lawn was neatly mowed, and a red brick sidewalk led up to the door. If Thomas squinted slightly, he could imagine it as a single-family dwelling instead of an office. But the clack of typewriters, the open screen door, and the blinds on the picture window ruined the family effect.
He yanked the screen door open and hurried inside before it had a chance to close on his back. The door banged shut. The young man sitting at the desk looked up with a startled expression. His hair was red, he had a sprinkling of freckles across his cheeks and, if it weren’t for the scruffy blue jeans and the Def Leppard T-shirt, he would have looked just like Jimmy Olsen out of the old Superman comic books.
“Hi,” Thomas said.
The boy scrambled out of his seat, nearly knocking over the stack of papers near his typewriter. “Jillian!” he called, an edge of panic in his voice. “Jillian!”
A woman came around the beige office dividers. She too was wearing jeans, and a stylish white sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up past her elbows. Wide glasses hid her nose and accented her eyes. Her hair, cropped short, looked as if she constantly ran her fingers through it.
“Can I help you, Mr. Stanton?” she asked and he blinked twice, not because she knew his name, but because such a cool, professional voice emerged from a woman who looked like she had been cleaning the garage. He was used to city women, Hollywood women, who felt naked without makeup and the latest Bill Blass.
“I, um, I would like to look in your archives.” His voice sounded nervous, and he recognized the tingling in his stomach. Normally he would have been calm in a situation like this—he was Thomas Stanton, after all—but lately he thought that he had scraped off his self-confidence along with his skin as he slipped down that rock face.
The woman smiled. “We’re just a weekly, Mr. Stanton. We don’t have much. If you want information, you should drive up to the Newport library and dig through the Oregonian.”
“I want to look up something local.”
She pushed her glasses up with one finger. They slid back down to the edge of her snub nose. She glanced at the boy who hovered near the typewriter, eyeing Thomas nervously. “I suppose you can at least get a start here,” she said. Then she extended her hand. “I’m Jillian Maxwell.”
He had to lean forward and let his crutches dig into his armpits in order to shake her hand. Her palm was warm and dry, her bones delicate beneath his. “Thomas Stanton,” he said unnecessarily.
“Let me take you into the morgue, such as it is.” She turned around and headed for the back of the house. Thomas started at the ghoulish word, then remembered that “morgue” was a newspaper term for file room. He got a good grip on his crutches and followed her.
Three empty desks sat near the picture window. Another, its top covered with papers, coffee cups, and half-eaten pieces of fudge, dominated the center of the room. A hand-painted sign, with letters like little quill pens, read JILLIAN MAXWELL. Jillian stopped at the desk, opened a top drawer, and pushed the contents around. Pens rolled against the metal. Thomas looked at the pictures hanging around the desk. One showed a long-haired Jillian standing with President Carter in front of Air Force One. Another was of Jillian bent over her desk, head in her arms, asleep. A framed quote written in black calligraphy—God May Be the Supreme Being, But Even the Bible Had an Editor— hung above a newspaper clipping bearing Jillian’s picture and a headline—FIRST WOMAN NAMED EDITOR OF GAZETTE.
“Found em!” she said. She clutched a ring of keys in her hand. “We were vandalized in June and since then we’ve been keeping most of the office locked. I’ll be glad when the damn tourists leave.”
Thomas nodded. He was too busy watching Jillian. She was built small and slender and she moved like a girl fresh out of college. But the pictures and the responsibility she had put her in her thirties, at the youngest.
She unlocked a door, flicked on a light, and walked down two small steps. The musty, metallic scent of old books, ink, and file cabinets wafted up at him. “You be okay on the stairs?” she asked.
His answer was to take them, carefully, and stop in front of her. She smiled. Laugh lines were forming in the corners of her eyes. “Guess so,” she said.
Then, as quickly as it appeared, the smile was gone. Jillian turned to the first file cabinet and touched the label. “Nineteen-eighty-six to the present,” she said, “and it goes down from here. Sorry we’re not real modern and don’t have things on microfiche. You’re going to have to be careful with the old clippings. We just don’t have the money.”
“I understand,” he said.
The cool contempt in her gaze told him that he didn’t. He found himself wondering what she made every year. Thirty thousand? Twenty? Ten? How could anyone live on sums that low?
“I’ll come get you around quarter to twelve. We lock up for lunch.”
“Thanks,” he said. He watched her go back up the stairs and close the door. Then he headed for the drawer labeled 1982-85. He had to use the cabinet itself for support to pull the drawer open.
It took nearly a half an hour of leaning on his good foot before he found the stories on the murder. He pulled the papers surrounding the incident, set them on the desk, then sat down. His entire lower body ached, his head throbbed, and tears lined his eyes. He pushed himself too hard. He should have waited another month, until his body had had a chance to recover.
He didn’t know how long he sat with his eyes closed, willing the pain to go away. Finally, it subsided enough for him to take a deep breath and thumb through the paper.
Her name had been Lisa Wilson. She had lived alone in the house, purchasing it after her husband had died. She had moved to Seavy Village from Seattle, and some of the locals speculated that she was running from something, although that had never been proven. What people did know was that she moved to Seavy Village in September and had made few friends by the time of her death in April.
The moon had been full that night. A young couple, newlyweds, were strolling along the road that ran parallel to the beach when they saw a figure in a cape running near the water’s edge. The husband shouted to the figure, trying to warn him that the sea, tricky in the daylight, could be deadly at night. But at the sound of the man’s voice, the figure ran harder and disappeared near the sea caves where Heather’s body had been found.
The next morning, the mailman discovered Lisa Wilson’s naked body sprawled on the porch. She had been stabbed nearly fifty times. Apparently, she had been attacked in her bedroom, then dragged down the stairs into the living room and left on the porch.
Grainy black and white photographs illustrated the articles. The pictures made his stomach turn. He lived in that house, had walked across the porch where a woman had died, had slept in the same room where she had first been stabbed. His movie posters covered the spot where her blood had decorated the walls and his daughter had disappeared through the same door as Lisa Wilson’s murderer.
“That wasn’t the first murder on that stretch of beach, you know.”
Thomas jumped, his heart leaping into his throat. Newspapers scattered across the desk and his crutches clattered to the floor.
“Sorry.” Jillian leaned over to pick up the crutches. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“That’s all right,” Thomas said, taking deep breaths to slow his pulse. “I’ve been nervous ever since the fall.”
Jillian set the crutches against the desk and helped him gather up the papers. “What are you trying to do?”
He didn’t know quite what he was trying to do. Saying he was looking for Heather’s killer sounded too melodramatic, like the TV movies he had starred in around the time Jillian was posing with Jimmy Carter. Yet that was what Thomas was doing, searching for the way Heather had died, so that he could vindicate himself and move forward.
Jillian sat on the edge of the desk and studied him. He watched her look through him, into him, as if she were trying to see past the bruises, bit parts, and starring roles to Thomas Stanton. “Your daughter’s death is part of a pattern,” Jillian said. “She isn’t the first woman to die on that stretch of beach, and I don’t think she’ll be the last.”
“Why?” he asked.
She looked up at him, her eyes big through her glasses. He realized that she wasn’t used to being questioned; she was used to asking the questions herself.
“Two years before Lisa Wilson died, a little girl was playing on the beach with her brother and her dog. The girl was about nine. It was the middle of the afternoon, dark—the clouds were thick. The children shouldn’t have been outside, but their mother was sick and asleep in the house. She didn’t even know they were gone until the boy came running in, saying a ghost had stolen his sister.”
“In a cape?”