The Snow Garden (42 page)

     Randall’s eyes followed the beam.

     “There’s no way we can go through all of that back there. We have to unload it.”

     “Randall, this just looks like clothes and photographs. I mean .. .” Tim froze the beam in mid-scan, and Randall saw what had caught Tim’s attention. The sealed manila envelope rested on the carpeted floor behind them between the two middle seats. Randall reached back and retrieved it. He turned it over on his lap as Tim shined the flashlight down on the address.

     “David Handler?” Tim asked.

     “No clue.”

     “Maybe Lisa had something on the side too.”

     Randall grimaced, tore the envelope open, and dumped the contents onto his lap: a cover letter clipped to what looked like some sort of lease. Randall took the letter and handed the document to Tim, who turned the beam back to the ceiling.

     “Attorney at law!” Randall read off the address line at the top left corner of the page.

     “This is.. . Wait a minute ...”

     Randall began reading the letter aloud. “Dear Mr. Handler, my apologies for the delay in getting back to you, but since our phone conversation last month, I have gone on a sort of fact-finding mission that will hopefully make my case somewhat stronger than you considered it to be last month.”

     Wordy, Randall thought. Like the way her sister Paula Willis had tried to get everything out before her time was up. But Paula Willis was cancer-free, and Lisa probably had no idea that her own days were numbered.

     “This is a deed. Or something,” Tim said without looking up from the paper he’d flattened against the steering wheel.

     “I recently discovered that my husband is the owner of a property not far from our own home. He has, according to county records, owned this property since his senior year at Atherton, and has never seen fit to make me aware of it. This is probably because without my consent, or even advice, he decided to hand this peace of real estate over to one of his graduate students.”

     “Mitchell-fucking-Seaver?” Tim cried out. Randall looked up before realizing that Tim had read the name right off the deed, which he held up in one hand for Randall to examine. “He gave that loser a house?” Randall examined the real estate deed. It handed over ownership of 231 Slope Street to one Mitchell Clarence Seaver on the second day of October, the previous year. “The Adamites,” Randall whispered as he saw Kathryn emerging from Mitchell’s car, then typing furiously on the computer.

     Tim hadn’t heard. “All right, so this David Handler guy is obviously a divorce attorney. And if Lisa was jumping all over some real estate transaction, then I doubt she knew about you and Eric. So I guess we did what we came to ...”

     But Randall wasn’t listening. What had Eric told him when he asked about Mitchell? Not only is Mitchell not even homosexual, he’s barely what you’d call sexual, he said. He’d bristled at the mention of his name, turned his back on Randall in the kitchen, and accused Randall of not being able to understand an academic type like Mitchell. And he’d showed Randall the note when he knew what time the accident had happened, knew that Lisa hadn’t seen them in bed together that night.

     Randall slammed one fist against the closed glove compartment, an intoxicating blend of rage and relief running through his veins. Tim jerked in the driver’s seat. “Jesus! What?”

     “The file on Lauren Raines. Remember? The one you thought had nothing to do with this. It was an application, Tim.”

     “For what?”

     “Two-thirty-one Slope Street isn’t just a house. It’s some kind of cult!” 

     “Oh, come on, Randall! It was a girl feeling sorry for herself.” 

     “Yeah, and test results for every Venereal disease under the sun. Listen to me, Eric talks about this heretical sect in his book. They’re called the Brethren of the Free Spirit—”

     “Randall!”

     “Shut up, Tim. I’m serious. Supposedly, they were this group of people that believed if they held orgies they could cleanse themselves, or purge themselves, I don’t know but— ”

     “Get out of the car, Randall!” Panic sharpened Tim’s words. 

     Randall turned to see the air drifting in front of the windshield had a strange substance to it, parting and shifting in tendrils, driven by invisible currents through the darkness.

     Smoke.

     Without warning, his chest tightened and his throat began to close up, turning his breaths into stabbing gasps. The flashlight beam angled at the van’s ceiling revealed a thickening cloud, and when he heard a series of popping and ticking sounds, Tim pivoted against the driver’s seat and Randall, unable to breathe, saw flickering firelight silhouetting his profile from beyond the glass.

     “Tim . . . "But it came out in a breathy whisper.

     “All right. All right. Wait a minute.” Tim hadn’t heard him and was talking to himself. “Just get out and we’ll see. ...”

     “No!”

     A strange stench filled the van—the burning of pure fumes. A raw chemical smell that summoned images of twisted tracks, overturned fuel cars, and a wall of flame—specters that plunged Randall into a paralytic panic. Tim was tugging on his shoulder.

     “Randall. The whole place is metal. Calm down! We’ll just get out-”

     With a sound like muted thunder, the garage door flew open and suddenly a curtain of fire blossomed behind the van.

     “Tim!”

     Tim’s gaze shot from the flame-fringed doorway to Randall, his eyes widening when he saw his friend pitched forward, both hands braced against the glove compartment. Randall could hear Tim’s breaths , whistling through his nose, and Tim now seemed more alarmed by Randall’s panic than by the flame-filled exit behind them. Randall felt himself shaking his head in denial, and then saw Tim turn forward, hands tearing at the visor overhead before he scanned the steering wheel in front of him.

     “Son of a bitch!” Tim cried.

     When Randall saw him grasp the keys dangling from the ignition, he shouted, “No. Tim!”

     “There’s only one way out of here, Randall!”

     Randall just groaned. If he had been able to breathe, it might have been a scream. The van’s engine sputtered to life and Tim’s foot hit the gas. Randall fell backward against the seat and his hands flew to his face as orange light filtered in at the edges of his vision. As Tim backed out of the locker, Randall’s ears filled with a roar that had previously been confined to the nightmares of his past. His heart stopped hammering in his chest and his vision returned to total black.

On the second floor of Folberg, Kathryn found an individual study carrel bare of books on its single shelf. She glanced up and down the long aisle before hefting her backpack onto the desk. For the entire day, she had walked from class to class with half her mind focused on her imminent exams, and the other half focused on Jesse’s laptop shifting around at the bottom of her book bag.

     Now she sat staring at the bag. With a deep breath she summoned her nerve and removed Jesse’s computer, along with April’s power cord, which she had taken without asking because she couldn’t bring herself to tell April what she had found. She hooked the cord into the carrel’s power outlet and popped the monitor open.

     Unlike most students she knew, Jesse had not chosen to personalize his computer’s wallpaper; icons for only the essential programs stood out against a light blue background. April had been the one to tell Kathryn how to password-protect her computer. No one had done Jesse the favor, which probably explained his bizarre choice of hiding place.

     Upon their arrival, Atherton students were assigned E-mail accounts on campus, after which they could download the Eudora E-mail program from the campus network free of charge. The program had a feature that automatically saved all sent and received messages until the user instructed it to delete them, after which it transferred them to a folder aptly named “Deleted Messages.” Jesse had now missed two full days of class and she hoped to at least find some inquiries into his absence from professors or teaching assistants. But she knew from glances at his bookshelves—before they had been cleaned out—that Jesse’s schedule consisted of mostly basic lecture courses, and the reality of the situation was that no one would notice he was missing until some adept TA figured out he hadn’t signed in for at least two or three discussion sections, which itself was hardly a rare occurrence among freshmen. But maybe she would discover some E-mail transaction documenting an official break from Atherton. Or maybe she should fess up to herself and admit that it was a morbid curiosity that had led her to power up the computer.

     At first, she had trouble with the touch-sensitive mouse; one press of her finger against the pad would send the cursor sliding across the screen. Her sweaty fingers aggravated the problem. She managed to position the cursor over the Eudora icon and clicked. A logo indicated that the computer was trying to log on to the Internet with a connection it didn’t have. A password might be required to connect, but she knew from experience that sent and received messages could be accessed without it.

     Several more maneuverings of the mouse, and she was looking at an entire record of Jesse’s E-mail activities since he had arrived at Atherton University. She felt a wave of disappointment; Jesse was not an avid correspondent. The majority of it was obvious cyber junk, the rest bearing the addresses of academic departments—none of them queries into his absence—most of them reminders of imminent paper deadlines and last-minute schedule changes. Only a small smattering of student E-mail addresses appeared—full names divided by an underscored space and followed by
@Atherton.edu
.

     One of those names was Lauren Raines. Kathryn shivered and clicked the file open.

         Jesse,

            Is that how you spell it? I have a cousin whose name is JessIe, so I wanted to be sure.:) Thanks so much for the feedback on my story. It meant a lot. So I hope this doesn’t sound too forward, but  were you serious about dinner? Let me know. 

                                                                                                                                   Lauren

     Kathryn closed it, returned to the list. Shocked to find a guy’s name—Taylor Barnes—she opened the E-mail.

         Wassup?

              I’ve been giving your “suggestion” some thought. After you mentioned it, I think I remember meeting your roommate. Tim introduced us once. (Do you know Tim? He’s really cool. Helped me out a lot.) Anyway, I’ve been thinking about your “idea” a lot and . .. .I’m totally into it. Let me know what your roommate says.

                                                                                                                                    Taylor

     Kathryn puzzled over it for a second before determining that Taylor was male, and probably the guy Jesse was having sex with on the other side of the door while Randall listened. She made a mental note of his name, considering he was probably one of the last people to have seen Jesse at Atherton.

     Finally she spotted a non-Atherton address:
[email protected]
.

     When she opened it, she was surprised by it’s length.

       J Man,

            Hope you’re doing well after the uproar of our phone conversation last night. Without rehashing it too much, I just wanted to clarify some of the details of what your father and I have managed to work out. Keep in mind, the consensus is this is a bogus charge. While it helped that your father was honest about how intoxicated he was when the police arrived, the judge handling the case is known for being media sensitive. Due to the recent spate of celebrity-related drug arrests, I think his sentence was deliberately, and unfairly, harsh.

             In lieu of facing a trespassing charge, your father will be spending the next twenty-eight days at Bright Hill, a highly reputable rehabilitation center in Pacific Palisades. Terms of his stay are that his contact with the outside world will be limited, and he won’t be allowed to leave the facility for the duration. I accompanied him yesterday evening when he checked himself in, and I can assure you he's in good spirits. He asked me to let you know that finances and the like are all in order, and he expressed regret that all of this might have distracted from your new life up at college. However— and I have to stress this—he would very much like you to visit, and he suggested Thanksgiving.

            Jesse, I might be crossing the line here, but your father’s feeling a great deal of shame right now and while I know things between the two of you can get volatile, I’ve been around you two long enough to know you guys share a pretty deep bond. I think he feels he’s failed his only son. He’s getting some real good help now, and I know your support would help him even more. There. End of sermon.

            Please feel free to call the office if you need any more information, and I wish you every success at Atherton.

                                                                                                                                       Best,

                                                                                                                                       Bill

     Had Jesse gone home to visit his father in rehab?

     She checked the date on the E-mail.

     November 17. Almost a week before he told her point-blank he had no plans to go home for Thanksgiving.

     Was Jesse called home to take care of his father’s affairs? Nothing in the E-mail indicated such a demand. The lawyer seemed a pretty smooth character. He was also a family friend, and he had highlighted the fact that the finances were all in order, encouraging Jesse to go about his new life at college.

     This shot April’s theory dead. No one made Jesse go home. Worse, whoever had cleaned out his room in a hurry and left the computer behind wasn’t a parent. His father was basically being held prisoner and his mother had died.