Iron House (27 page)

“Come with me.”

She disappeared into a side entrance, and Michael followed. Inside, he saw hints of steel and glossy paint, keys on a long row of hooks. Abigail did not waste time. The car she chose was a thing of exceptional beauty. He didn’t know much about Mercedes Benz, but guessed that this car was the most expensive one they made.

Abigail handed him the keys. “The Land Rover’s terrible on the highway.”

“What’s the best way to get Julian out?”

“Julian’s not going with you. Neither am I.”

“You heard my reasons.”

“We don’t run from our problems in this family. I trust the senator. Whatever his faults, he always does what needs to be done.”

“Julian could implicate himself.”

“He needs to be in his home, with people he loves. He’s not strong enough to go tearing around the state with you.”

“If this is about trust—”

“I trust your intent,” Abigail said. “I know nothing of your ability to care for Julian.”

“So, come with me.”

“I’m staying with my son.”

Michael looked at his watch. Minutes were ticking past. “Give a cop a body, and he’s like a dog with a scent, especially if it’s a headline case, which this will be. These cops…” Michael paused to give his words weight. “The only thing they smell is Julian. Understand? They missed him last time. This time, they’ll come with the weight of the world behind them. They’ll eat him for lunch.”

“Julian’s under a doctor’s care. The lawyers say that will buy us time.”

“Lawyers can only do so much. We need to find out why Ronnie Saints was here. We need to know who the other body is. If Julian didn’t kill these men, we need to know who did. And if he did do it, we need a plan to save him. We can’t do any of that without information. We can be in Asheville in five hours. It’s a start, Abigail. It’s what we have.”

“Just take the car and go.”

“They’ll break him. Do you understand? Julian’s mind will not handle a custodial interrogation.”

“I’m sorry, Michael. I have to stay with Julian, and my heart says he should stay home, where he feels safe. You’ll have to go without me.” Abigail pushed a button and the bay door began to rise. They saw pavement, then trees and a hint of sky. Michael saw the cops first.

“Ah, shit.” He stepped to the door. Cars were on the lake road, lights flashing as they accelerated for the house. “We’ll never get him out.”

The police were a quarter mile away, and coming fast. Abigail’s cell phone rang. “It’s Jessup,” she said, then answered, her face still and smooth, her gaze on the police cars. “Hello, Jessup.” A pause while she listened. “Yes, I know. I see them coming now.” Another pause. “No, I’m in the garage. Yes, Michael is with me. They found something in the lake.”

She listened for a long minute, then covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Michael. “Jessup was on-scene when the body came to shore. He says its been in the water for a few weeks; a male, mostly skeletal. Weighted with cement blocks. No identification.”

The first police car disappeared around the front of the house.

“They’re at the front door,” Abigail said, back on the phone. “I’m going in now.” She listened for a moment, and then said, “No. I want to be there.”

Michael heard Falls’s voice this time, tin-like in the quiet of the garage. “That’s not wise.”

“But I need to be there. I need…”

“I don’t want you involved with this. It’s not smart. You know it. The senator’s there, the lawyers. We need to keep emotion out of this, let the professionals handle it.”

“But Julian…”

She stopped talking. Falls’s voice faded to a low thrum, and Abigail seemed to shrink as she listened. Finally, she said, “Okay. Yes. I know you’re right. Yes. May I—”

A light died in her face, and she lowered the phone. “He had to go.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“He’s afraid I’ll lose it. Emotionally.”

“Would you?”

“Normally, no, but it’s different with Julian. I get protective. I overreact. It won’t help Julian to see that.”

“Come with me, then.”

Abigail looked momentarily lost, her gaze uncertain as it moved from Michael to the car, the house. “Do you really believe Julian didn’t do it?”

“Ronnie died about the same time that Julian had his breakdown, so maybe he had something to do with it. But you say the other body is skeletal. That means weeks have passed, maybe more. How was Julian a week ago?”

“He was fine.”

“Two weeks ago?”

“Same thing.”

Michael shook his head. “He didn’t do it. We need to know more.”

“But, Asheville…?”

“Elena’s gone. I can’t get to Julian. This is what I have: my brother, who needs me.” Abigail looked at the house, and Michael said, “You can’t help him here.”

“Just there and back, right?”

He nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go.”

They got in the car, and the road out was silent and smooth. Abigail said little.
Turn here. Straight ahead.
At the perimeter wall, an arched gate opened in equal silence, and Michael pushed down on the gas, the heavy car sliding into light traffic. Michael worked his way west around the edge of town. Fields gave way to subdivisions. Shopping centers marred the roadside. Traffic thickened.

“You want the main highway north.” Abigail spoke softly. “A few miles up. That’ll take you to Interstate 40. The interstate goes all the way to the mountains.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s how I brought Julian home.”

She said it quiet and small, and when Michael looked at her, their eyes met as a very simple idea hung in the air between them. Iron House was not far from Asheville.

An hour, maybe.

A lifetime.

Fifty minutes later, Michael gunned it onto the interstate, the Mercedes at 110 before the speed even registered. He took his foot off the gas and settled down at nine over the limit. Put the car on cruise.

When he checked his phone, Abigail noticed. “She hasn’t called?”

“No.” He put the phone in his pocket.

“Did you two have a fight?”

“Something like that.”

“She’s a pretty girl.”

“She’s my life.”

“Are you married?”

“Not yet.” A mile of tarmac slid under the car. “She’s pregnant.”

Abigail turned her head, and Michael expected to hear something predictable and bland:
Congratulations.

That’s not what he heard.

“If a schizophrenic has a sibling, that sibling has a forty to sixty-five percent chance of being schizophrenic. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Forty to sixty-five. Better than half. It tends to run in the family. Siblings. Children.”

She was talking about Elena’s pregnancy. Michael tensed.

“Have you ever been diagnosed?”

“No.”

“Have you ever felt—”

“I’m not schizophrenic.”

She watched hills rise and fall, shook her head. “It’s a terrible affliction.”

“A violent one?”

“Different people suffer differently.”

“How about Julian?”

“Memory loss. Hallucinations. Muddled thinking. It’s why he still lives at home. Home is safe. Less chance of stress. Less chance of delusions.”

“What kind of delusions?”

“Voices.” Her jaw tightened. “The medicine helps.”

“Does he ever talk about what it feels like?”

“Once, a long time ago. He said the voice hurts, but keeps him strong. He said it props him up, makes him big when he knows he’s small. He was drunk that night, distraught. It sounded pitiful, and he knew it. I think he’s always regretted telling me. Sometimes I catch him looking at me, and he always looks worried. He asked me once if I love him less.”

Michael pictured Hennessey, dead on the bathroom floor. He saw the blade in his throat, squares of black tile etched in red. Julian’s disconnect. “What about stereotypical schizophrenia?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you see in the movies. Multiple personalities.”

“That’s rare, and overdramatized, a Hollywood inflation that helps no one. The disease is more complicated than that. It has infinite degrees. Julian is confused, but his problems don’t rise to that level.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“I know this disease inside and out.”

The senator called when they were an hour from Asheville. Abigail asked a few questions, then listened for a long time. When she hung up the phone, she said, “Media’s at the gate. It’ll go national soon.”

Michael was not surprised. “What else?”

“Julian’s okay for now. A superior court judge granted a temporary injunction protecting him from police interrogation until he hears evidence from medical experts. They’ve bought a day, maybe two. Cloverdale put him back on antipsychotics.”

“Is that it?”

“They’re still searching the lake.”

Asheville nestles into the Blue Ridge Mountains in the western part of North Carolina, a jewel of a city surrounded by places with names like Bat Cave, Black Mountain and Old Fort. There was culture in Asheville, music and art and money; but there was poverty, too, great swaths of it in the deep mountains that stretched out in all directions. North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee—it didn’t matter. Abigail explained it as they rolled across the city line. “Iron Mountain is forty miles further west, deep in the mountains, three thousand feet higher, close to Tennessee. It’s not much more than an hour’s drive, but may as well be in a different country.”

“A poor part of the state?”

“State lines don’t really mean much down here. Lost Creek, Tennessee. Snake Nation, Georgia. Blackstrap Pass. Hells Hollow. It’s all mountains. It’s all history.”

“You’ve never been back, have you?”

“Iron Mountain?” Abigail shook her head. “No desire to, and no reason. Julian was safe and you were lost.” The road dropped off and Asheville flattened out beneath them. “This part of the world has felt wrong to me ever since.”

They found Ronnie Saints’s house where the Asheville line rubbed against a broad valley at the base of steep mountains. The road was narrow, black and winding. Michael saw small houses with kids’ toys on short grass. Pickup trucks sat in driveways, and American flags flew on short poles. Water flowed fast in the streams and hemlocks rose close to a hundred feet.

“This is somehow not what I expected,” Abigail said.

“Ronnie Saints was a horror story figure from your son’s worst nightmare. No reason to suspect he’d be human.”

They turned onto a short street. The houses were yellow and brick and white with green shutters. Ronnie’s house was the smallest on the street, old but decent, the paint just beginning to crack. A panel van was parked in the driveway,
SAINTS
ELECTRIC
on the side in white letters.

“Looks like the right place.” Michael drove slowly past. He checked the neighbors’ houses, the side yards and parked cars. “That’s his work truck. He must have a second car. That could mean he’s married. No kids’ toys, though. Maybe a roommate.”

“This feels wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” She was agitated, hands closed tight. The truck sat like a barrier in the drive. The house was dark and still. “Deep down, something says this is dangerous.” She shook her head. “I can’t place it. It’s like a vibration.”

Michael turned around where the street ended, drove back and parked at the curb. The Mercedes stood out on the narrow street. So far, nobody seemed to care. “Let’s do this.”

He opened his door, and Abigail said, “Michael…”

She looked frightened, pale, and Michael felt a stab of sympathy. “You should probably stay in the car. If the cops in Chatham County find Ronnie and ID the body, they’ll have Asheville PD out here first thing. You’re recognizable. It would be best if no one here sees you. Could be hard to explain back home, senator’s wife rings dead man’s doorbell. You see what I’m saying?”

“Are you sure?”

“Just sit tight.”

Michael closed the door and she locked it. He looked back once, then the house was coming up, a white bungalow with a wide driveway, a covered porch and a single car garage. The gutters were clear of debris. A tall tree grew in a patch of grass near the sidewalk. Michael studied the windows. The truck’s hood was cold when he touched it. Stepping onto the porch, he looked back once, then rang the doorbell.

Nothing.

He rang it again.

A third time.

Michael stepped left and cupped his hands at the window. No crack in the curtains. He listened for a long minute, then he tried the door.

Locked.

Solid oak.

He found the key under a planter.

Abigail saw him check under the mat and on the lintel above the door. She saw him find the key, watched him open the door and slip inside. Her heart hammered for reasons of its own, her breath so short she wondered if she were having a panic attack, if everything had simply become too much. Bodies. Secrets. A broken son.

What the hell?

Sweat rolled beneath her shirt.

Jesus ...

She could barely breathe.

Michael felt the lock give. Metal slid over metal and he was inside. He listened for movement, and heard nothing but the rush of air through vents. The room was neat and orderly, with hardwood floors that needed stain, a brick fireplace and furniture that didn’t quite match. On the right, an arched opening led through to a dining room with burgundy walls and better furniture on a cream-colored rug. Ahead, another opening led to a small study. He smelled chicken and cigarette smoke that had not yet had time to fade. His hand found the forty-five at the small of his back. He moved farther into the room, saw a table that could seat four, and shelves with cheap crystal and ceramic ducks. He paused in an archway, and the woman spoke even as he rounded into the room, gun up and tracking right.

“I already called the cops.”

She had both legs pulled up on the broken-down sofa, an eight-inch butcher knife in her fist. She was small-boned and pale, with pretty features and thick, wavy hair. Twenty years old, maybe, with eyes that were deep and afraid. The knife shook. A cardboard shoebox was clenched under her left armpit.

“Anyone else in here?” Michael kept the gun up.