Cold Springs(72)

He remembered Katherine's bed in the corner, the crisp white sheets, the headboard he had painted—little pink stars, a cow jumping over a smiling moon.

Chadwick remembered the imprint Katherine's slender body had left on the sheets, the tarnished he**in spoon discarded on the floor, the police lights pulsing in the windows. A female plainclothes officer kneeling next to the black leather chair in the doorway, holding Mallory's hand while the little girl chewed on a silver necklace, sobbing if anyone tried to take it away from her.

Chadwick sat heavily in the wooden chair, in the middle of the empty room, surrounded by his memories.

Piano Quartet No. 3.

Chadwick closed his eyes. He thought about the number three, tried to strip away the years, imagining himself in 1903, then in 1803, trying to think of major events for those years.

When he was in high school, he used to sit by these windows and watch the younger kids play basketball across the street. Even then, he knew he wanted to be a teacher. He and Ann would someday teach together. He had enlisted in the Air Force for the education money, pure and simple, knowing that his parents couldn't provide college tuition even if they'd been inclined to do so. And later, after discharge, with Norma harping at him to get a business degree, he'd studied history instead, because it was the opposite of everything his father stood for—his father who spent his life oiling chronometers, making time go forward as smoothly and flawlessly as possible—no drama, no breaks, never a surprise. Certainly nothing ever went backwards.

Thinking about his father, Chadwick instinctively checked his watch. Seven o'clock. Nine o'clock in Texas. Mallory Zedman would be bunking down for the night. Hunter would be in his office, catching up on paperwork. Olsen . . . where would she be? Her room in the Big Lodge, or out for drinks in Fredericksburg, perhaps—a counselor's big night out.

It bothered him, what John had said about his blackmailer describing Mallory's day.

Chadwick had tried to dismiss the comment at first. No one got on the Cold Springs campus without Hunter's approval. Security was tight. And even if John was telling the truth, and the blackmailer had said something, it could've been a bluff—some facts recounted from daytime talk shows where boot camp schools got plenty of lurid publicity. Hell, some of that publicity Hunter had generated himself.

But Chadwick kept returning to what Kindra Jones had said—about how he should go back to confront John. She was right, though part of him wanted to stay bitter, to leave John to his fate.

John thought he had a monopoly on suffering?

Race Montrose was right: What could anyone do to Chadwick that was worse than leaving him alone?

Chadwick heard light footsteps on the stairs. He thought he was imagining it, but then the Brahms piece ended, and the creaking didn't.

“House isn't vacant!” he yelled. “I've got a gun.”

Norma appeared in the doorway, looking embarrassed, still wearing her wrinkled red dress from that morning. She raised her hands in surrender.

“I was . . . just driving past. Saw that car in front.”

Almost a decade since they'd been divorced, and Chadwick was surprised how quickly he still picked up on her signals. Her statement wasn't so much a lie as a request that he not ask. He read the truth—Norma came here often. The coat on the chair was not from many years ago. He remembered she'd been wearing it that morning, which meant she'd been here once today already.

Chadwick suddenly realized that if he'd stayed in San Francisco, he would've made the same pilgrimages, torturing himself, hating that he was drawn back to the source of the wound, but returning to this empty room nonetheless. How much Norma must resent him for not selling the property—how much easier it would've been for her if he hadn't kept this shrine open for visitation. Better it be painted mauve, trimmed with gingerbread, sold to some young business grad whose definition of history was any amount of time longer than a Super Bowl commercial.

“I found Race Montrose,” he told her. “Claims he never talked to you.”

“He's lying.”

“The boy is scared. He told me his big brother Samuel has been extorting John for years. Stealing the school's money is the final act.”

Norma shivered, hugged her arms. “You're sitting on my coat.”

Chadwick tossed it to her.

She stepped into the room, pacing, her eyes on the floor. “I know about Samuel. The real story—that Katherine wasn't just getting drugs from him, that they were in love. I heard it last week, from David. He felt sorry for me, that I didn't know this about my own daughter. How do you think that made me feel?”

A lowrider cruised by on San Angelo, the bass of its stereo loud enough to rattle the house's windows.

“David Kraft is a disturbed young man,” Chadwick told her. “He wants the school razed, preferably with all of us inside.”

“So we're going to shift the blame again?”

“No.”

“Because what I think? I think you knew about Katherine and Samuel a long time ago. That's why you went to Texas the week before she died—you didn't know what to do. So you ran to Hunter. You and Hunter came up with some f**king scheme to send my daughter to that . . . place. And meanwhile you don't tell me shit. Not only are you sleeping around behind my back—you are hiding things about my daughter. And if I'd known . . . if you'd bothered to f**king tell me . . .”