“Toward my house, you mean,” says T.J.
“Sure.”
“Well, that won’t work.”
“Why?”
“I can’t leave my dad here. He wanders. That door has to be locked.”
Judy sighs, exasperated. “Can he come with us?”
T.J. gives a half laugh. “Hardly. Look at him. I had to carry him up the stairs to get him here.”
For a moment, Judy and T.J. look at each other. Then T.J. says: “Tie us up.”
Judy blinks. “With what?”
“There’s rope downstairs. All kinds of stuff. Tie us up. I’ll help you.”
She hesitates. It feels like a trap; and yet there is no other option, in Judy’s mind, that doesn’t involve leaving at least one of the Hewitts alone.
And so she does it: she follows T.J. down into the slaughterhouse, and then around the side of it toward another building T.J. calls the granary, and from here they extract the rope, and back upstairs, in the little apartment above the slaughterhouse, Judy ties the Hewitts together, back to back on Vic Hewitt’s bed. Then she ties the rope itself to the bed frame.
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, she returns, with four investigators and five state troopers.
• • •
Thirty minutes later, she’s sitting in the passenger’s seat of a patrol car. The Hewitts are in the back.
Victor
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975
In the Director’s Cabin, Vic was speaking with a recalcitrant twelve-year-old boy, a child who had been shunned by his peers and had recently converted his embarrassment at this development into physical aggression.
In the middle of their conversation, the boy had stopped suddenly to point through a nearby window.
“What is it?” said Vic, turning.
“Something’s in the lake,” said the boy—his tone changing from bitter to unsettled.
Sure enough: in the middle of Lake Joan was a white-bellied object that looked at first like a surfacing whale.
Vic stood and walked to the window.
It was a rowboat, capsized.
“Stay here,” said Victor. “Don’t get up out of that chair.”
• • •
Outside, Vic broke into a run. A bad thunderstorm had just come through, sending counselors and campers inside, and the grass was slick with new rain. He stumbled, once. Fell to his knees. Then stood again.
The grounds felt empty. He swung his head around, but saw no human forms.
Even up the hill, at Self-Reliance, it was quiet—for the first time in a week, it seemed. The Van Laars had been having their annual party on the grounds—to which Victor, who used to be included when Peter I was alive, had not been invited in years.
Upon reaching the beach, Vic stood with his hands on his hips, observing the upside-down boat. One of the guests up at the main house, he thought; someone had capsized it and then left it to sink. They were always pulling stunts like this, drunken antics that resulted in more work for everyone else on the grounds. He scanned the shores, looking for movement, seeing none.
Then, sighing, he turned and jogged up the hill, toward Self-Reliance.
• • •
The thought occurred to him that he had not set eyes on Tessie Jo since morning. Normally, this wouldn’t have concerned him overmuch. All summer, she was given free rein to run about the grounds—usually with Bear on her heels. Her relationship with the Van Laars was different from her father’s; they accepted her as a playmate for Bear, as someone who could keep an eye on their adventurous son. She went freely in and out of Self-Reliance with the boy; Victor, meanwhile, avoided the house entirely.
Now he steeled himself, and squared his shoulders, and knocked at the front door of the Van Laars’ house.
It opened immediately.
On the other side was Peter II, Bear’s grandfather, who looked as if he’d been standing guard.
His face was stiff and pallid. His hair was wet.
“Everything all right?” said Victor. “I saw a boat—”
Peter II grabbed his shoulders swiftly. Manhandled him away from the threshold. The blackfly doorknocker clacked once in their wake as the door closed.
