The Unquiet Dead (27 page)

“Da likes the marina,” she said to her mother. “He always has. He used to take me and Zach all the time.”

She rarely mentioned her brother. She still hadn't told either of her parents that she'd found him. Over the past few days, she'd brought up his name in one innocuous context or another to test their reaction. For the most part, her father had ignored her. Her mother, however, had darted anxious glances at her, opening her mouth to speak before changing her mind.

“I did, girl, you remember that?”

Rachel patted her father's hand, another rare gesture.

“'Course. You taught Zach everything there was to know about boats. Sorry the water wasn't my natural element.”

“Seasick. That's what you were. But you were a fine swimmer, Rach. Built like one of those East German girls.”

She didn't bother to correct him. In his day, there had been an East Germany, and Don Getty hated to acknowledge change.

“Thanks, Da. It's helped me with hockey too.”

“Strong shoulders. Nothing wrong with that. Don't let any man tell you otherwise.”

“You know our Rachel doesn't date, Don.”

It was another subtle put-down. A contradiction for its own sake, intended to annoy her father with little thought to Rachel's feelings. She'd never noticed this about her mother before. But then she'd been blind to her mother's seven-year secret.

“I would if the right guy asked me, Mum. I've met someone, actually.”

Her father grinned at her. He wasn't used to her defiance of her mother. He was taking his own small pleasure in it. Christ, but her parents were messed up.

“Good-looker? Cop? Got some heft on him?”

“Be realistic, dear. Rachel has to take what she can get.”

She'd been making it up, some hazy thought of Nate in her mind, but now she felt furious. What kind of mother said something like that to her daughter? In that moment, the meek and mild Lillian Getty reminded her of Melanie Blessant.

“I don't, actually, Mum. He's great-looking. And tough, Da. And smart as hell.”

“You sure he's real?” Her father slapped her knee with a laugh. It was the big, blustery laugh she remembered from scarce moments during her childhood. It made her smile.

“I've pinched myself, I can tell you.” She eased out of her blazer, folded it across her knees. “It's not serious. We've only just met. I'll let you know how it goes.”

“How about some dinner then for our girl?” He narrowed his eyes at his wife. “You've been sitting there for hours doing nothing but turning pages.”

Lillian coughed. “I did try to be quiet, dear. For Rachel? I don't think … I didn't make enough. She's usually not home.”

Rachel was used to this. She lived under her parents' roof but was otherwise completely self-reliant. She took most of her meals on her way to or from a pickup game. She could see her father was getting angry. Best to defuse the situation at once.

“It's good, Da. I've got a game to get ready for and then I'll grab a bite. You know you can't load up on carbs right before a game.”

“I know you would if you had a choice.” He glared at his wife who held up her hands in dismay. Helpless, useless Lillian Getty. Or had that always been Rachel's own delusion? Had she missed the steely core that had allowed her mother to shield the only relationship whose loss she still grieved?

“Honestly, I'm okay. Thank you, though.”

“You don't need to thank your father for watching out for you,” Lillian snapped.

Rachel raised her eyebrows. What was this little game of her mother's? She had seen Lillian through the lens of helpless anger for so long that she'd assumed her mother possessed no agency of her own. She was Don Getty's passive foil, her moods conditioned by her husband's rage.

This wasn't the same woman, with her careful jabs and her sly taunts at Rachel.

This was a woman fully equipped to keep a devastating secret, playing some twisted game of revenge against her husband with no regard for the fact of Rachel's loneliness and guilt.

Was she nothing to either of them? Had Zach been everything?

Her mouth turned down. It was enough to know she had caused her mother's pain. It was too much to accept that her mother might wish to hurt her in turn.

Maybe the only way forward was to talk about Zach—to bring her brother out in the open.

“There's something I've been meaning to tell you, Da, about Zach.”

“Rachel!” Her mother's voice shook the small room. “I've told you again and again not to upset your father.”

It was true. It was the constant refrain of their childhood.

Children, hush. You're disturbing your father.

She must have had reasons that Rachel hadn't known, and still didn't know to this day.

Don Getty scowled at his wife but he stayed in his seat. “Let the girl talk. She's got something on her mind. You've been looking for the boy, I know. I've seen the posters.”

Rachel swallowed. It was a day of sea changes, she thought. Before this moment, her father hadn't mentioned Zach in seven years.

“You've found him then.”

Tears pricked at her eyes, muffled her throat.

“I didn't know you knew. That I'd been looking, I mean.”

“Ah, girl. I'm not much use as a father but I know when my girl's upset. I know why, too.”

It was the drink, she realized. Without the veil of alcohol between them, she could see her father as clearly and acutely as he was seeing her.

“Tell me then, Rach.”

“She has nothing to tell. It's nothing but foolishness.”

The television blared commercials in the background. She heard the anxiety ring clear as a bell in her mother's voice. And made the decision to continue.

“I've been looking and I found him. He's a student at university. A friend of mine recognized his name.”

“University.”

“Yes.” Rachel gave him a tremulous smile. “He's a year from graduating, Da. He's studying art. He'll be going to Europe soon.” She held her breath for the last part, afraid of his reaction.

Her mother stood up, her hands shaking. “You're lying,” she breathed.

Rachel turned on her.

“You know I'm not, Mum. You
know
I'm not.”

Her father disregarded this. His breath came out of his strongly built body in a collapsing whoosh of air. His shoulders sagged. He reached for the remote to shut off the sound from the television.

“He's well, then? My boy's well? He's happy?”

It was the last reaction she'd expected from him.

“Yeah,” she said. “He's doing really well. He's not in any trouble or anything. He's really smart. He's standing on his own feet.”

Her father turned his face away from her. She could see that his throat was working, choking on words.

“I'd tell you more if I could, I've only just seen him. I don't know very much. Shall I tell you if I see him again?”

Without speaking, he nodded his head.

She stood up, not knowing what else to say, and met her mother's gaze. All the fuzziness and weakness of will she'd associated with her mother evaporated under that gaze. What she saw was a woman, wretched and determined. For a moment, she couldn't speak.

Nothing made sense.

No one made sense.

She grasped at her game like a lifeline. “I'd better go up and change.”

Her father brushed a hand over his eyes. He straightened his shoulders and turned the television back on. “You get ready, girl. I'll take you. It's been a while since I've seen you play. Left wing, aren't you?”

“That's right, Da. Are you sure?”

“Sure as sure.”

As she turned to the stairs, she caught sight of her mother's reflection in the mirror above the console.

She mouthed six words at Rachel, each as clear as daylight.

You don't know what you've done.

Shocked, Rachel flew up the stairs to her room.

 

27.

When I close my eyes, I don't see the men.

 

In fourteen days, Srebrenica will be gone.

Rachel parked in the driveway of the blue and white house at the corner of Sloley Road and Lyme Regis. It was a plain two-story with a double garage, its shutters painted periwinkle blue, its white siding crisp and fresh. The maple that bordered the sidewalk was still aglow with autumn loveliness. The lawn was covered with unraked leaves.

A wreath hung above the letter slot on a plain blue door.

She paced the sidewalk waiting for Khattak. Dec and Gaffney had compiled a first run of background information on David Newhall for her; the house on Lyme Regis belonged to him.

She considered its geography off Cathedral Bluffs. Here was another neighbor of Drayton's. A neighbor of Winterglass and Ringsong. The house was a little further back from the escarpment. A neighborhood or two away from Melanie Blessant. A small stage for the actors of this drama. Significant? She couldn't tell.

David Newhall was a legal name change, unlike Christopher Drayton's alias.

She understood now that Newhall's clipped manner of speaking had been an attempt to mask his accent. He'd come to Canada just after the fall of Srebrenica, legally, as a Convention refugee. He'd changed his name two years ago. Around the same time he'd moved into this neighborhood. Before that, he'd lived alone in a small apartment not far from the mosque.

If their last visit with Imam Muharrem hadn't ended on such bad terms, she would have sat him down for a lengthy discussion on the true identity of David Newhall.

Masks, she thought. First Drayton, then Newhall.

It struck her that in the short time since she'd met Nathan Clare, whom she viewed as a touchstone, she'd been the audience to a pantomime. Players moving together and apart in a complex orchestration.

That was one thing she'd learned from studying Damir Hasanović's file.

Newhall was the one who'd sent the letters.

*   *   *

She gave a slight wave as Khattak pulled up on the driveway beside her. They'd talked on the phone in the morning. She'd given her report on Newhall, he'd told her what Justice had found. Justice had a statement prepared. They were holding off on the announcement until Khattak's investigation turned up a result.

Time was definitely not on their side.

If Drayton had been pushed, she hardly expected Newhall to own up to it.

If he
had
assisted Drayton to his death, sent the letters, planted the lilies, she couldn't say she blamed him. Newhall's account of survival was harrowing, his losses inestimable.

When the Serbs took Srebrenica, they wiped from the earth three generations of men.

She envisioned grandfathers, grandchildren. Rows upon rows of exiguous green coffins, wept over by the wretched. The resting place of the men of Srebrenica.

The unquiet dead and those who mourned them.

How had she become one of them?

Her Da had always said of her that her problem wasn't that she thought too much. Her problem was that she felt too much.

As well as she could, she understood Newhall's anger, his terse dismissal. He'd not only had something to hide—he'd had to suppress his tragedy in its entirety.

The young boys were crying out for their parents, the fathers for their sons. But there was no help.

She understood the letters with perfect clarity now, the chronicle of the fate of Newhall's family. Zach had been resurrected after seven pitiless years. Newhall held no such hope.

“This doesn't feel right, sir.”

“I know, Rachel, but we need to see this through.”

He moved to the door and rang the bell, his elongated shadow falling across the lawn. Rachel's steps crunched over the leaves.

When Newhall opened the door, she had the same impression of jittery energy as before. He ushered them into a parlor with the jumpy movements of a cat, nervy and quick-jawed. The room was simply furnished with a white chesterfield and a pair of suede armchairs placed beneath two windows. Late-afternoon light threw shadows upon a worn Turkish rug with a geometric pattern. Newhall took a seat in the corner that left him in darkness. He didn't offer refreshments.

He focused on Rachel.

“Have you learned anything?”

This time she caught it. The hint of a foreign pattern of speech: she would have guessed it as Russian.

“We've learned a great deal, sir. We know who you are, for example.”

He straightened in his seat. Beyond his shoulder, she glimpsed a dining table piled high with stacks of file folders.

“What do you mean? I've told you who I am.”

“Your name is Damir Hasanović, isn't it?”

“If you look at my driver's license, you will see my name is David Newhall.”

“You're denying it, then?”

“There is nothing to deny. It was a perfectly legal name change.” He leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees, composed and at ease.

He'd been waiting for this moment, she realized. Anticipating the confrontation.

Khattak spoke. “Mr. Hasanović, you changed your name to Newhall two years ago. Why?”

“It was a fad. It seemed to be going around.”

Rachel sucked in a breath. “Then you knew about Drayton.”

“Christopher Drayton, Dra
ž
en Krstić. I knew the moment I first laid eyes on him. So?”

“When was that, sir?”

“At Clare's house. Two years ago. Before I moved here.”

“And why did you move here?”

He shrugged. “I like the Bluffs. I like to walk along the escarpment.” He threw down the words like a challenge.

“Did you ever confront Mr. Drayton with your knowledge?”

“I did not. Next question.”