Page 49 of The Chain House

Carl told her she was being paranoid, but she didn’t think so. It wasn’t that she knew Minks well, but she knew him enough, and as the minutes passed since sketching Minks’s horrid face from the resurfaced memory of her time at the Freedom Ranch, she knew there were more memories in there, and snippets were beginning to stir up like dust devils on a windswept floor.

Most she couldn’t yet pinpoint, and therefore they made no sense, but because of the intense feeling of unease she’d experienced since leaving the prison, she knew they were in there lurking, waiting for the next trigger. She had a notion to draw them out, just like the art therapist her parents had arranged had wanted her to do twenty years ago, but she didn’t know how—how to draw something out without a clear vision of what that something might be. But one thing that was clear to her was that they needed to return to Louisville.

When Carl protested that he didn’t want to leave Sam at the prison, she promised him they’d come right back. Reminded him that Sam had his hands full and, according to his last text, may even be there with Batise until his execution.

Carl was full of obvious anxiety on the thirty-minute drive west back to Louisville. “This is way more than Sam bargained for,” he said. “It’s like he made a deal with the devil getting that interview, and now look.”

Jennifer said, “This was exactly what he wanted, Carl. He’s a filmmaker.”

“He’s Batise’s prisoner.”

“How about we agree to disagree,” she said, although she didn’t totally disagree with him. Batise couldn’t be trusted, especially in his last hours, and she feared for Sam’s well-being as deeply as Carl, but right now there was nothing they could do about it but find their own answers. It’s better, she’d told Carl before leaving Twisted Tree, than sitting here jerking off in your truck. He’d laughed at that, and said, You’re one cool chick, before putting his truck in gear and driving on, and now here they were, approaching Sam’s childhood home. “Turn here.”

“I know how to get there,” Carl said.

“Yeah, my bad,” she said. “It’s my nerves. I get bossy when I’m nervous.”

“You must be nervous all the time, then,” he said. She smiled. Carl glanced at her as he turned the corner toward the house. “You still want to do this?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t think we should warn Sam?”

“No.”

He turned into Trevor Harper’s driveway. “I still don’t get why you need to see his dad all of a sudden. He’s kind of boring.”

“Maybe not as boring as you might think,” she said, sure now she knew him from somewhere, and had a strong idea of where and when that somewhere had been. And she wasn’t going to let the professor off the hook this time.

As soon as Carl put the truck in park, she opened the door and hurried toward the porch. She smelled smoke. Over her shoulder, she asked Carl if he smelled it, too, and he said he did, but neither of them saw where the smoke was coming from. Maybe she did need to slow down and think this through, but she couldn’t. Her insides were thrumming. She opened the screen door and was about to knock when the wooden front door, already ajar, creaked open wider. She took that as her invitation to go in.

Carl, behind her, said, “What are you doing? You gonna freakin’ knock?”

“Mr. Harper?” she called out from the foyer. Music sounded from the kitchen, “Stairway to Heaven.”

“Professor Harper,” she called out again.

“This is breaking and entering,” Carl said from behind her.

“Did you see his car in the driveway?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then why was his door open?” she asked. “And why is the music playing?” She wasn’t expecting an answer. “He left in a hurry, Carl.”

“Yeah,” he said, “Maybe you’re right.”

I am right, she thought, peeling off toward the living room as Carl continued toward the kitchen, toward the music. The TV was on across the room, but the screen was paused on the news. The sketch she’d drawn of Justice Minks was frozen on the screen, as if Trevor Harper had paused it there on purpose before he’d taken off. On the table next to the recliner, she saw the Mallard Malone books she’d dropped off yesterday. Photo albums had been left on the floor in front of the TV stand, one of them open. Averting her eyes from the frozen sketch of Justice Minks on the television—it was like he was watching her—she knelt by the open photo album and studied the pictures inside the plastic sleeve. One of them was missing, and she felt sure Trevor Harper had removed it before leaving, but the rest, as she studied them one by one, justified her reason for coming. Because she instantly recognized the young man in all the photos. This was Trevor Harper as a young man, and the young woman smiling next to him, Jennifer recognized her too. It must be Trevor’s late wife, Annie. Although those weren’t the names she knew them by.

And the boy standing between them …

Jennifer swallowed hard, closed her eyes, opened them again, begging her mind for clarity and focus, because she knew the little boy from somewhere, too, and felt sure that it was Sam, but she just couldn’t connect the dots.

Her hands trembled as she removed the family photo from the album sleeve.

A man, woman, and a little boy.

They’re from the Freedom Ranch, Jennifer. But there were only four kids on the ranch, and that boy was not one of them. Think. Think. Even though she still had no recollection of drawing it, she pictured the mural on the inside of the closet wall and the erased fifth stick figure now loomed large. Because there were five kids on that ranch, not four.