I remembered being numb that day, thinking,This isn’t happening, it can’t be happening.The days, then weeks, then years of guilty agony over my baby brother. “I don’t care what you think. I didn’t murder my brother, and neither did Dodie or Vail.”
“If I still thought you killed him, would I have let you read the file?”
“Yes, because you hoped I’d give something away.” What I couldn’t figure out was why he’d insisted on sending Bradley with me instead of observing me himself. Bradley was hardly a Sherlockian detective genius.
“Have you found anything?” Gus asked. He’d dropped his world-weary attitude and sounded curious.
“You think I would tell you if I had? I’d rather eat glass.”
“You said your brother’s ghost is in the house. Have you—”
“I’m asking the questions,” I said. Behind me, Vail had finished the dishes and was standing in the edge of my line of sight, vigorously drying his hands. I wasn’t going to tell Gus Pine about Ben crawling into bed with Dodie, about lights that only Vail saw, about the wordsscrawled on the living room wall. Words that meant nothing to us. Unless one of us was lying.
On the phone, Gus turned cranky again. “Well, if you’re not going to tell me anything, then I don’t have all day. What do you want?”
“I’m not finished with my investigation. I’m just getting started. I want information, and you’re going to help me get it.”
“You saw the records I have. I told you—”
“I don’t want police records,” I interrupted. “I can see that not only were you incompetent, but your theories were insulting. What I want today is hospital records.”
“We checked for your brother’s medical records at the time. He didn’t have any. At least, not that we could find.”
Heavy lead threatened to settle in my stomach. He’d just given me a big piece of the information I wanted, and it wasn’t good. “Did you check Fell Hospital?” I asked.
“Of course we did.” He paused. “Let me guess. You want to double-check my work?”
“It seems reasonable,” I shot back. “But if Ben has no records, then I want my parents’ records.”
“I can’t get you that.”
“They’re dead, so yes, you can.”
“You think I run the hospital?”
God, he was being a pain in the ass. “I think you’re as old as God, and you know everyone in town, so you can call someone and get those records for me, yes.”
“You’re crazy,” he grumbled, his tone telling me that my assumption was absolutely right.
“Yes, crazy. Just as your insightful investigation file says,” I replied. “Did they give you a psychology degree along with your Deputy Dawg badge? ‘Something seems off’ is going to crack the case wide open, I’m sure. Any day now. It’s only been twenty years.” Next to my shoulder, Vail laughed softly, darkly.
“Somethingisoff, since you’re home because you think there’s a ghost,” Gus snapped, but there was no bite in it. This was Fell, the town of graves where they shouldn’t be and a missing girl’s shoes placed neatly outside her dorm room door. Fell, which had swallowed my little brother whole like a ravenous monster, like a great white whale. Fell, where twelve-year-old girls fell dead next to the train tracks, where I’d found a book about how to draw pentagrams to summon demons tucked neatly on the back of a shelf in my middle school library, where there was that tree that everyone knew not to go near and that bus stop that seemed to go nowhere, where the pool at the local motel never had water in it. Fell was where your childhood night terrors had a taste and a smell.
“You owe me,” I said to Gus, thinking of that file. Those words:the oldest daughter harmed her brother and the others are covering it up.He should pay for writing those words, even in a file that was locked in a haunted storage unit for no one to see.
“I’ll make the call,” Gus said.
“Thank you. And I want one more thing.”
His tone was sarcastic. “Yes, Your Majesty?”
“I want Bradley to come with me.” The words surprised me as they left my mouth. I hadn’t planned to say them. “Have him meet me at the hospital in half an hour.”
“You can have him.” Gus agreed to this one quickly, probably because he wanted Bradley out of his hair and was counting on Bradley to report back to him as a spy. “He’s eating cereal in his Jockeys right now, but I’ll make him get dressed.”
“For the love of God, please do,” I said, and hung up.
Vail watched me with his arms crossed, his look thoughtful. “Remind me,” he said softly, “never to cross you.” It was halfway between an insult and a compliment.
