Was David jealous? Enough to . . . burn down Hunter’s house?
No. The way he’d said it was so flat, like he felt like he had to be sarcastic. Right?
Larry put on his reading glasses and got out his phone. He watched the video of David, freezing it at the end.
“Stevie,” Larry said, holding up a shot of David’s bleeding face, “someone willing—as you’re telling me—to pay someone to do this to him and then put the footage up online is capable of lots of things. The King . . .”
He lowered his voice quickly.
“. . . that family, there’s trouble there.”
“He did that”—Stevie pointed at the phone—“to get at his dad.”
“You’re not helping his case,” Larry said. “Look, I feel for the kid. He’s not all bad. I think the dad’s the problem. But he always acted out. I know he was good friends with Element Walker. I bet he took it hard when she turned up dead and he found the body. That does something to a person.”
It had. David had broken down completely, and Stevie, unable to process what was happening, had freaked out. She’d let him down because she could not handle it all. Guilt crept around the edges of everything—the taste of the coffee and the smell of the room and the cold coming from the window. Guilt and paranoia. She felt the thrumming in her chest, the engine of anxiety rumbling, making itself known.
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
She shook her head.
“Have you been in touch?”
She shook it again.
“You willing to show me your phone and prove it?” he asked.
“It’s the truth.”
“You need to promise something to me right now—if he gets in touch, you tell me. I’m not saying he had anything to do with the fire—I’m saying he could be a danger to himself.”
“Yeah,” Stevie said. “I promise.”
The room was starting to throb a bit, the edges of things jumping out in her vision. There was a panic attack just under the surface, and it would arrive quickly. She surreptitiously reached into her bag, grabbing at her key ring. She kept a little screw-top vial on it. She got this off with a shaking hand and poured the contents into her palm under the table. One emergency Ativan, always there if needed. Breathe, Stevie. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.
“I need to get back,” she said, getting up.
“Stevie,” Larry said. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”
He didn’t need to say what it was she needed to be careful about. It was everything and nothing. It was the specter in the woods. It was the creak of the floors. It was whatever was underneath all these accidents.
“I’ll keep in touch,” she said. “I’ll tell you if I hear from him. I promise. I just have to use the bathroom.”
She grabbed the bag and stumbled back toward the restrooms. Once inside, she popped the pill into her mouth and stuck her face under the faucet for a swig of water. She stood up, wiped the dripping water from her mouth, and looked at her pale face. The room throbbed. The pill wouldn’t work immediately, but it would work soon.
She left the bathroom but waited in the hallway for Larry to leave. As she waited, her eyes ran across the community bulletin board, with its cards for yoga instructors, massage therapists, music lessons, pottery classes. She was about to turn and leave when something about the blue flyer at the bottom right caught her eye. She stopped and read it more carefully:
BURLINGTON CABARET VON DADA DADA DADA DADA
Come see nothing. Have a noise. Dancing is mandatory and forbidden. Everything is yum.
Burlington Art Collective Action House
Every Saturday night, 9:00 p.m.
You are the ticket
There was a picture of a person painted gold and blue playing a violin with a carving knife, another person with cardboard boxes on their feet and fists, and, in the background, holding a saxophone . . .
Was Ellie.
April 4, 1936
ELLINGHAM ACADEMY WAS RICH IN DYNAMITE.
There were boxes of it piled high, beautiful, dull beige sticks with warnings on the side. Dynamite to blast rocks and flatten mountain surfaces. Dynamite for tunnels. Dynamite ruled her heart. Not Eddie. Dynamite.
When she’d first arrived, Albert Ellingham teased her with a stick and then laughed at her interest. After that, Francis kept watch. There was less of it now that most of the campus was built, but every once in a while she would hear a workman say the word, and then she would trail along behind him. It was during one of these walks that she heard someone inquire about what to do with some bits of wood.
“Throw them down the hole,” his coworker replied.
She watched as the man went over to a statue. A moment later, he sat on the ground and was lowering himself into an opening.
Francis immediately investigated when the coast was clear. It took her some time to work out where the man had gone. Just under the statue, there was a bit of rock. This, she was sure, was a hatch in disguise. It took her some time to work out how it opened—Albert Ellingham liked his games and architectural jokes. She found it and the rock dropped, revealing an opening and a wooden ladder to aid her descent.
The space she entered had the look of an unfinished project—much like the time Francis’s mother decided she wanted a music room before she remembered that she neither played nor particularly liked music. The half-finished idea, the first blows of the chisel before the sculptor decided that the subject and the stone were not to their liking . . . rich people did this. They left things unmade.
This project was grander in scale than her mother’s music room. The first part of the space was hollowed out and walled up in rough rock to look like a cave. This space narrowed at the end and turned. There was a rough doorway made of rock. Once she passed through this, she found herself in an underground wonderland—a grotto. There was a vast ditch dug out, about six feet deep. Inside of this there were bags of concrete and piles of brick waiting to be used. Along the back wall was a fresco, that Eddie would later identify as being a painting of the Valkyrie. In the far corner, there was a boat in the shape of a swan, painted in gold and red and green, which was tipped over on its side. Half-constructed stalagmites and stalactites lined the area, so it looked like a mouth full of broken teeth. There was garbage strewn about the place—beer bottles, broken shovels, cigarette packs.
For months, the rock had been frozen over, but now the ground was yielding and Francis could introduce Eddie to the lair. They slipped into the grotto several times a week to go about their secret activities. There were the physical ones, of course; the grotto’s privacy was also very useful when working on their plan.
On the day they decided to leave Ellingham for good, it would be Eddie’s job to get the guns. Shotguns were easy to get—there were loads of them stored around the school. Francis would see to the dynamite. They would steal a car from the garage behind the Great House to make their initial escape, but they would quickly get a new one in Burlington. They got maps and spread them out on the ground of the grotto, plotting their route out of Vermont. They would go south through New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky . . . cut through coal country. Start with small towns. Get in at night—blow the safe. No bloodshed if they could avoid it. Keep going until they got to California, and then . . .