Page 58 of The Chain House

He shrugged, like he didn’t know, and who could blame him because she didn’t know what they should be doing either. But she didn’t want to get caught by the police and fire department, with questions she didn’t know how to answer. Without sugarcoating it, they’d entered Trevor Harper’s home without him there and walked out with armloads of his stuff. Carl was right, with what he’d said hurrying from the house, it did look like they were looting, especially as they noticed the billowing flames from the neighboring house. But Jennifer couldn’t get past the notion that Trevor had left the door ajar on purpose, that he’d left the old comics on the kitchen table for someone to find. Maybe for Sam, to help explain things, but it also raised the question of why the professor had seemingly left in such a hurry that he’d be unable to explain things himself.

It seemed clear that Trevor Harper had been forced to leave in a hurry, and now she feared he was in danger.

She wished she had his phone number.

Sam would have it, of course. And everything happening now was connected to The Collective and the Freedom Ranch and Justice Minks, wherever he was, and she couldn’t trust what Batise might be telling Sam now, inside the walls of that prison with—she checked her watch—only eight more hours to live.

“Where to?” Carl asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, staring at the picture she’d pulled from the photo album of Mr. and Mrs. Harper and their son Sam, but who were really The Raven and Yellow and, she felt certain now, the fifth kid on the farm. The boy she’d once seen in the upstairs window of the blue house. “Why did I erase him from the wall?”

“What are you talking about?” Carl asked.

“The wall,” she said. “The closet wall. My stupid drawing. There were five stick figures, and one was erased. Why did I do that?”

“I don’t know,” Carl said. “But you really think Sam was the fifth kid on the ranch?”

“Yes,” she said. “I know he was.”

“But you don’t remember him?”

“I was six, Carl. We were young. But no, I don’t remember him. I don’t even know if we ever met before everything went down, and the ranch was raided.”

“What about the other kids … from the closet? You should see what they remember.”

“I plan to call them.” But then she was struck by another thought. “But why did Batise pick Sam? Of all the people trying to get that interview? He picked Sam …”

The same boy, she thought, closing her eyes for deeper concentration, the same boy her younger self had seen on the second floor of that house on the Freedom Ranch.

The same boy … who the other kids had thought had died because … because he’d gone into the woods where the demons lived. But he never died. He never went into the woods. That’s just what they’d been told. He’d been taken into that house. Sal’s main house.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing all day,” Carl said.

“Because he knows him,” Jennifer said, as it dawned on her like a lightning bolt. “He fucking knew him, Carl. He didn’t pick him because he was an outlier, or to be difficult, or to shove it in the networks’ faces. He knew exactly who he was picking,” she said. “And why.”

“Then why?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said, but thought maybe she did, and the thought sickened her. “Go back to the prison,” she said. “It worked as a trigger this morning, and I need it to again.”

Carl turned on his right blinker, changed lanes, turned around with a squealing of his tires, and began making his way toward the interstate like he couldn’t wait to get there himself, to get back to his buddy. Still studying the picture on her lap, she said, “But if the plan was for it to be Sam all along, what would he have done if Sam hadn’t put his name in to get the interview?”

“He would have revealed that he was Mallard Malone anyway,” Carl said. “It was Batise’s final card to play, no matter who he allowed in that room. He’s only trying to stay alive.”

He wasn’t wrong, but Jennifer noticed that Carl’s forehead, as he merged onto I-64, had broken out with some serious sweat. “You’re sweating like a horse, Carl.”

“Because it’s fucking hot.”

“No, it isn’t, and you just got a little overly defensive, Carl.” She watched him as he gripped and regripped the steering wheel, his chubby hands pink and seemingly void of any knuckles. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.” He wiped his brow. “And do horses really sweat? I mean, what does that even mean?”

“Carl.”

“Fine … Sam had heard of the stupid contest to interview Sal Batise, but he initially didn’t want to do it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s Sam. That’s not him, doing something like that.”