Bellweather Rhapsody (39 page)

The rain is chlorinated. She spits it out.

Someone is crying. Or laughing, she can’t tell, but she feels terrible. Her side. Some animal took a huge red bite out of her side.

Her eyes focus. Above her is Fisher Brodie. He’s sopping wet, dripping pool water all over her, and laughing and crying and saying what might be her name. She places her hands on either side of his feverish face and pulls him down, pulls him closer, pulls him to herself.

Grave e Cantabile

25

T
HE YOUNGER COP
brings Alice a paper cup of coffee. She doesn’t have any hands to take it, because one is holding Auggie’s leash and the other is gripping her brother. She isn’t sure she’ll ever be able to let Rabbit go.

Rabbit takes the coffee and thanks the cop shyly. Maybe he was bringing it to her brother all along.

The cop sits on the chaise opposite them and rubs his eyebrows. He looks tired. He should be; it’s one in the morning. The only reason Alice’s eyes are open is the adrenaline spiking her blood like punch at the prom. She wishes they weren’t still here at the pool. She hates the smell. Chlorine and dirt and blood, she swears she can smell the blood pooled by the water’s edge, brighter where it traveled along the white tile grout. It smells metallic and awful. The older cop is the same woman who spoke with Alice on Thursday night, who didn’t believe Jill was missing. Alice can see her sitting on the other side of the pool, behind a bank of foliage. She’s talking with Fisher Brodie. More like, she’s murmuring calmly as Fisher weeps.

Alice leans against Rabbit’s shoulder.

“This shouldn’t take long,” the younger cop says. “Normally I’d take you down to the station, but I don’t think we’d all fit on the snowmobile.” A weak smile. “I’m Officer Hockster. Would you state your full names?”

“Alice Louise Hatmaker. And this is my brother—”

“Bertram Hatmaker,” Rabbit finishes. He takes a sip of coffee.

“Could you please describe what you saw here tonight?” Hockster looks from Alice to Rabbit. “Take your time. I know you’re upset.”

Alice shuts her eyes. She’s never going to be able to erase that part of her brain. Poor old Hastings with a gun, his hand shaking, all of him shaking, and then his eyes when Dr. Brodie stepped in front of Mrs. Wilson: blank. Totally blank. Alice turned around in time to see Hastings’s entire expression—confused, angry, afraid—slide right off his face. Her first thought was that he’d had a stroke. He was
gone,
washed away like sidewalk chalk in a thunderstorm, but his body moved as though it had been waiting for this moment all his life. His arm rose. His finger squeezed. The sound. The
sound
in that room, bouncing, echoing, jamming itself into her ears. Alice had been watching Hastings and not Dr. Brodie or Mrs. Wilson, so when she turned to see Brodie flailing in the water and Wilson flat on her back, not moving, she was more confused than anything. A dark mass began to spread from Wilson’s right hip, and Alice watched it without grasping what it was, what it meant, or how she felt, other than freezing cold. It’s only now, gathering herself in front of Officer Hockster, that Alice knows she felt sick to the bottom of her soul.

“She.” She clears her throat. “She was standing next to the pool—”

“Not facing it?”

“No, she and Dr. Brodie were standing sort of . . . parallel to it. Mr. Hastings was very upset. At first it was like he was talking to his daughter, do you—know about her?”

Hockster nods. Alice wonders if he’s from this town, if he not only knows about but knew her.

“I was trying to calm him down. I’m afraid he got worse. I had no idea he’d—” She swallows. This isn’t your fault, Alice. Stop making everything about you. “Then he sort of . . . accused us.”

“Of?”

“Murder,” says Alice.

“Did he say whose murder?”

“He was really confused,” Rabbit says. “But I think he meant the girl who disappeared.”

“Faccelli, right?” Hockster makes a note.

“He made it sound like someone else was dead. Then he acted like he thought maybe
he’d
done something.”

“Did he say what he meant by that?”

Rabbit shakes his head. “No,” he says, lifting his eyebrows and his shoulders in a full-body shrug. As he does this, he squeezes Alice’s hand, and Alice realizes they are not going to tell Officer Hockster that Mrs. Wilson said Yes. Yes, she was the murderer. At first Alice thought Wilson had been playing along, just as she had, trying to calm Hastings down. But it didn’t sound like playing, and her face—Wilson’s face didn’t look like playing. Alice doesn’t understand, and doesn’t really want to.

“What happened next?” asks Hockster.

“Dr. Brodie stepped between them,” says Alice, “to kind of . . . shield Mrs. Wilson from Mr. Hastings and . . . I don’t know. Hastings was angry, and I think it spooked him. He fired.”

“She pushed him in the pool,” Rabbit says. His voice catches. “Then went down. Hastings sort of shouted.” Rabbit raises his hands to either side of his head, at his temples, in demonstration. “Held his hands up like this and the gun went off again. Firing up. I heard broken glass.”

“Must’ve hit one of the panes in the dome.” Hockster makes a note in his book. “Is that when Rin Tin Tin came in?”

“Yes,” Alice says, brightening. “Minnie—Minnie Graves?—and the ambulance crew were just getting off the elevator. Auggie—that’s her dog—he came tearing in and made a beeline for Hastings, jumped up against his legs, and knocked him down. Probably wouldn’t have taken much at that point, he was so shaky.” The sound of the elevator doors opening and the sudden sight of Minnie and several strangers carrying a gurney had immobilized Alice, and she had stared, thunderstruck, as Minnie’s dog bolted for Hastings.

Alice reaches down to give Auggie’s ears a gentle rub. He’d only been being friendly. He’s lucky he wasn’t shot.

“So the EMTs show up for a gunshot wound instead of exposure. For the same person.” Hockster grimaces. “And Hastings at this point is on the floor—”

Auggie had been all over him, licking his face, his hands, barking happy little barks.

“Where was the gun?”

“In the pool,” Rabbit says. “Hastings must’ve dropped it. Minnie followed her dog and kicked it into the pool.”

“And where was Brodie?”

“Dr. Brodie was out of the water,” says Rabbit, “doing CPR or something on Mrs. Wilson. I saw him pound her chest with his fist. The EMTs had to drag him off her.”

“It was horrible.” Alice is about to say more but can’t. Brodie soaking wet looked like a drowned, skinned cat, and he was shouting over the EMT’s shoulder to Mrs. Wilson. Screaming.
Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t leave me.

That was when Alice grabbed her brother’s hand. She hasn’t let go since. Not when the EMTs got Mrs. Wilson up on the gurney and into the elevator, not when Minnie had to pin Brodie’s arms behind his back to keep him from following, not when Rabbit, flushed, turned to his sister and said that they had to get help, had to call the police, and the Hatmakers in tandem rushed to the hotel phone to call the guy at the front desk. She didn’t let go when Fisher Brodie, eyes glassy, grabbed her brother by the arms and said,
We have to go too, you have to help me, come with me,
and Rabbit didn’t say anything but walked him to a chair and told him to sit down and wait, and Brodie did as he was told. And she didn’t let go when she noticed Hastings and Minnie on the floor together, side by side with their backs against an overturned chaise, Auggie lying with his head on Hastings’s lap.

They waited and she held her brother’s hand. As the events she had just witnessed began to thaw from the quick-freeze of shock, she felt their hands grow warmer and sweatier, and their grip on each other tighten. The cops came and took photographs, and the gun from the bottom of the pool, and Hastings. Minnie went with him, leaving Auggie in Alice’s care. That left the Hatmakers and the dog and Officer Hockster. Dr. Brodie and the policewoman. A pool of blood.

Alice inhales. When she exhales it’s as if she’s letting out all the breaths she’s ever taken.

“Would you like me to call your parents?” Hockster says. Alice straightens. Her parents. The world outside the Bellweather. Her life outside this strange hotel and this horrible room. She shakes her head.

“How old do you think we are?” Rabbit asks. It doesn’t sound bratty coming from her brother; it sounds like a genuine question.

Hockster could be twenty or he could be thirty-five. He has the kind of face that will look like a boy’s until it becomes an old man’s overnight. It’s the kind of face her father—their father—has. Alice does wish their parents were here. Not that they could do anything. Not that they could take any of this back, make it better, or fix it. The desire to defer to a higher power is an old habit, and a powerful one. She wants to take everything she’s seen and felt and pass it off to someone older, wiser, someone designated for that kind of heavy lifting, who will take her in his arms and tell her not to worry. Not to think about it anymore. To go back to sleep.

“Older than you look,” says Hockster. “And older than you were this morning.”

Her name is Officer Megan Sheldrake. Rabbit likes her immensely. He likes her salt-and-pepper hair and her tendency to smile with her eyes instead of her mouth, the casual way she rests her knuckles on her hips, and the manner in which she tells Brodie to calm the fuck down, sir. She uses those exact words, and her tone is so warm and gentle that Fisher Brodie, pinwheeling and despondent, calms down.

Rabbit is numb. Everything that happened tonight—how could he possibly have been a part of it? Not a guilty or responsible part, but still, he was a member of the cast. He, Rabbit Hatmaker, who admittedly had been playing fast and loose with his comfort zone all weekend, had witnessed a shooting. A shooting and possibly a murder. His eyes sting. He can’t think about it. If he thinks he might have seen Mrs. Wilson get killed, he’s not going to be any use to anyone.

And he wants to be of use, desperately, to Fisher Brodie. Officer Sheldrake can tell, which is another reason he likes her so much. She approached Rabbit and Alice after their cop, Hockster, finished his interview, with a request. Would they feel comfortable taking Mr. Brodie back to his room, making sure he got rest and wasn’t left alone? “I don’t think he’s a danger to himself or to others,” she said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t ask. He’s just tremendously upset. Exhausted. And he likes you both a whole lot. He wouldn’t stop talking about
you.
Rabbit this. Rabbit that. By the way, what’s your real name?”

“Rabbit,” said Rabbit.

“It’s Bert,” said Alice.

He doesn’t want to imagine what this night would’ve been like if he’d had to go through it alone. He doesn’t ever want to let go of his sister’s hand.

“Only if you feel comfortable.” What Officer Sheldrake said next clinched it. “He doesn’t seem to have anyone else.”

“Mr. Brodie, sir,” she says now, shaking him gently. Rabbit and Alice stand on the other side of the poolside ferns, watching, waiting for Officer Sheldrake to bring Brodie out. “Mr. Brodie, you’re going to have to calm the fuck down, sir.”

There is a long pause.

“The Hatmakers are going to take you to your room.”

“No,” he says.

“You can’t stay here.”

“Not my room. Any other room but my room.”

Alice nudges her brother. “I have Minnie’s key,” she whispers. “Minnie and Auggie’s room. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

“What’s wrong with your room?” Officer Sheldrake’s cop sense is obviously tingling.

Rabbit bends toward the conversation.

“Nothing.” Brodie sighs. “She’s there.”

“Officer?” Rabbit says. “We have another room we can take him to.”

She looks at Rabbit, eyes narrowing, thinking. “It’s a hotel. There’s nothing
but
other rooms,” she mutters. “Okay. Up, sir. Let’s go. I’ll leave you in the care of your friends, at least until tomorrow morning. Don’t leave the hotel. Don’t do anything but take off your shoes and lie down on a bed and rest.” She pats his back. “We’ll be in touch.”

Brodie, standing now and halfway visible through the ferns, stops suddenly. “You’ll call if you hear?”

“You aren’t her next of kin.”

“She’s our chaperone,” Rabbit says. He walks around the foliage and stutters over his next words, because Fisher Brodie is a wraith. What was once his conductor, his insane, magical conductor, is a jumble of dark clothes wrapped around sticks, with hollowed-out eyes and blood-smeared cheeks. Mrs. Wilson’s blood. “She’s responsible for us, so can we be responsible for her?”

Officer Sheldrake looks Rabbit up and down.

“Room four-oh-seven,” Alice offers.

“Take care of him,” says the cop, and Rabbit, still holding on to his sister for dear life, takes Brodie’s elbow with his free hand. The four of them, Rabbit, Alice, Brodie, and Auggie, make the short journey from swimming pool to elevator to the fourth floor in silence. Rabbit realizes how tired he is, how wonderful it would be to lean against the elevator’s mirrored walls and close his eyes and not open them for a very long time. The room—Minnie’s room, which his sister walks into as nonchalantly as if it were her own—is more spacious than the one Rabbit’s been sleeping in. Stacked on the desk are room service trays, rinsed dishes, and silverware. The room smells of French fries and garlic. There is only one enormous bed.

“I slept in one of the chairs last night,” Alice says. “They’re not bad.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s too long a story for right now. Help me with these?”

Fisher sits on the end of the mattress, docile as a kicked dog, and Alice and Rabbit untie and ease off his shoes. He falls back on the bed, feet still on the floor, and closes his eyes.

“Are you asleep?” Rabbit asks him.

“Yes.”

“Good.” He doesn’t mean it. Fisher looks like a corpse.

“He looks—” Alice says, and shakes her head, mouth hanging open. Rabbit squeezes her hand in his and lifts it to his mouth for a kiss—a quick kiss that astonishes and pleases them both. They let go of each other at the same time. His hand is red and cramped and he can still feel her there, like a phantom limb. It isn’t a superpower, twin or otherwise. He knows what his sister is feeling because he’s her brother and he’s feeling it too.