Page 20 of The Family Plot
The wordstalksurprises me. I wouldn’t have expected Edmond’s son to see it that way.
“But my father’s in a nursing home now,” he adds. “Early onsetdementia. He began to need more from me than I could handle, and I…” He raises a helpless hand. “Most of the time, when I visit, he doesn’t know me. So I’ve had to let a lot of things go. It’s hard to hold grudges against someone who can’t remember what they did to earn them.”
“But you agree,” I say, “that the way he treated my family wasn’t right.”
Elijah tilts his head, thoughtful. “He used to keep these Lighthouse notebooks,” he says after a moment. “Black journals where he’d tape in photos he took, record every detail he could discover about your family. There was this filing cabinet in our house, and you’d open it and see dozens of these things, organized according to year.”
Elijah scowls at his knee, then flicks something off his meticulously ironed slacks. “He didn’t hang on to a single photo of me, but”—he chuckles bitterly—“he had those notebooks.”
He says this while holding a notebook of his own.
“So yes. I know what my father did with your family was inappropriate. And I hated it. Though, admittedly, as a kid, I hated it for my sake instead of yours.”
He chuckles again, a mirthless sound. “I saw you once, you know. You and Andy. My father had taken me with him, for one of his drop-ins. I stayed in the car, and I saw the two of you, playing around with John Fritz in the yard. You were running from him, and he couldn’t keep up—his leg, you know—and Andy pulled you behind some bushes to hide.
“Mr. Fritz was baffled at first, and then alarmed. He called your names, frantically searching for the two of you. And I saw Andy peer out from behind the bush, and he was laughing.
“It wasn’t until Mr. Fritz was a foot away that Andy jumped out at him. And he was so startled he fell back onto the ground, wincingand grabbing his leg as soon as he went down. And your brother’s laughter… Even from the car, I could tell there wasn’t any playfulness in it. Only cruelty.”
Silence pools around us. I remember that day, the shock of seeing someone I cared about lying on the ground, someone who—despite his limp—seemed so solid and strong. But it wasn’t cruelty that kept Andy from noticing what he’d done to Fritz; it was this unnameable energy, this fierce rebelliousness, that would well up inside him. And before it came out as whacks against a tree, it would come out like that: tricks on Fritz or Mom; frenetic laughter that, I’ll admit, seemed inappropriate, at times.
“I told my dad about it,” Elijah says, “when he returned to the car. I thought he’d be proud of me. He was always looking for reasons to mistrust your family, and here was this… really mean thing I’d seen.” He taps his pen against his notebook, a slow and steady rhythm. “Only… you know what my dad said? ‘Don’t waste my time, kid. I’m not looking for mean. I’m looking for evil.’?”
He strikes the paper harder with his pen. Once. Twice. I blink both times. “So no,” he says, “I’m not like my father. Because I’m not looking for evil. I’m looking for answers.”
His gaze slinks away, taking in the stacks of newspapers on the shelves, as if the answers he seeks are filed with the stories of all those victims. Then he studies another of Tate’s paintings and makes a note.
“But you’re suspicious of my family,” I say—because it’s clear to me now: it’s not just Fritz he suspects; it’s all of us.Any tension between family members?he asked.
“I’m not ruling anyone out,” Elijah confirms.
The temperature in the victim room drops. Cold snakes beneath my clothes.
“Getting back to it,” he says. “I wanted to ask you about your sister’sInstagram.” He glances at his notebook as if he needs the reminder. “Die-underscore-orama, I believe it’s called? Die_orama?”
Dread punches at me. I’d almost forgotten. Right now, Tate is in town, buying supplies for a diorama in which our brother will be glued, for eternity, to an ax and a grave.
“What about it?” I snap.
Elijah’s eyebrows shoot up. “A few of the crime scenes she depicted of the Blackburn Killer’s victims—the positions the bodies were found in, where on the shore they washed up—they’re… oddly accurate.”
I cross my arms, let out a huff. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“No?”
“She’s obsessed with accuracy. She researches each case until she can’t see straight anymore. And then there are her ‘studies.’?”
Elijah flips back through his notebook, hunting for something. Then he taps a page. “Her hashtag BehindTheCrimeScenes posts?” He sayshashtaglike it’s a made-up word. “I found those particularly interesting. Sketches of every angle of the crime scene.”
I nod. “So she can perfect the details before she commits them to the diorama. Like I said: obsessed with accuracy.”
I bet she’s out there right now, collecting handfuls of dirt to make the hole in which Andy was found appear more authentic.
“And where does she get her information?” Elijah asks. “When she researches the cases.”
“I don’t know. Newspapers? Internet? You’ll have to ask her.”
He scribbles once again. “It seems there’s a lot you don’t know.”
