But the uneasiness he felt here remained constant. Luther liked nothing about this place, not the street nor the sidewalk nor the yards nor the houses.
Especially one house.
He glanced over at it now. It was an address at which nothing illegal had ever happened, a quiet, nondescript residence where an old widow lived by herself. That widow, Mrs. Hernandez, was the one who had called in about the Daniels murder. He had talked to her afterward, asking what she had seen, and she’d seemed a nice enough old lady, but he had conducted the interview on her porch because he did not want to go into her house.
The house frightened him.
The weird part was that he wasn’t frightened by any one particular thing. No, it was the overall atmosphere of the house that made his skin crawl, that set his nerves on edge. It wasn’t what had happened here but what could happen here that scared him. If there was a source for the evil on this street, an origin point from which everything else spread out, it was this house. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did, and he was glad that he wouldn’t have to go over there today.
Jim had handcuffed the woman, who was still spitting and screaming, and hauled her to her feet. “Do you want me to take her in?” the deputy asked.
“No. I’ll do it. You watch those kids. Take them into the house or the backyard. I’ll send Mrs. Biederman over to get them; then I’ll come back and we’ll cut those other kids down, take them over to Jake’s.”
“Why do you think she did that?” Jim wondered, looking at the two hanging children.
Luther shook his head, said nothing.
But he knew the answer
It was Rainey Street.
Twenty-seven
After calling to make sure Claire and the kids were all right, talking to each of them in turn and assuring them he was okay, Julian made himself a turkey sandwich for dinner and ate in front of the TV while he watched the nightly news. He missed his family, but he was glad they weren’t here. If he had any sense at all, he would have left as well, shoving a For Sale sign into the grass of the front yard and hightailing it out of the neighborhood as quickly as he could.
But he could not do that.
Why? What did he have to prove?
That he wasn’t a coward.
Julian carried his plate and cup into the kitchen, placing the dishes in the sink. He thought of Miles, and had the sudden urge to see a picture of his son, to once again look upon the little boy’s face. He could see it in his mind, of course—the blond bowl cut, the wide green eyes, the mouth that was almost always smiling—but he wanted to look at a photograph, to view not just a memory but a tangible object, a real recording of the boy in a specific place at a specific time.
No one was home, so there was no need to be discreet, and he went down to the basement and began digging through boxes, searching for the photo albums that they kept hidden, the ones they never showed Megan or James, the ones they wanted to save but never looked at.
It took him a while to find the photo albums, and halfway through his search, he realized that the basement did not seem scary to him. Had it ever—or had he just accepted the verdict of the rest of his family? He wasn’t sure, but he knew that he was alone in the house, it was night, and he was down here and not afraid. There was something reassuring about that, and he found himself able to fully concentrate on his search for Miles’s picture without being troubled by any of the usual distractions.
Finally, after what could have been one hour, could have been two—he’d lost track of the time—Julian found, at the bottom of a Hefty bag, beneath Claire’s old maternity clothes, a familiar green album with the gold-embossed word Photos on the cover. Even the sight of the photo album made his heart lurch in his chest, caused him to catch his breath, and he stared for a few moments at the green cover, steadying himself, building up his courage. Finally, he took a deep breath and opened it.
Miles was right there on the first page.
He’d thought he’d have to go a little way in, past pictures of Claire that he’d taken while they were dating, past their wedding and their first apartment. But nothing was in chronological order, and the photo that greeted him immediately upon opening the album was one of Miles that he’d taken at the beach that last summer, when his son was four. Miles was sitting in a hole that they’d both dug together in the sand, looking up at the camera and grinning. He was holding his little blue plastic pail, and there was a smear of sand on his cheek where he’d rubbed it with his dirty hand. He had on his Thomas the Tank Engine bathing suit, and his blond hair was sticking out in every direction. In the upper right corner of the photo, just past the rim of the hole, were Claire’s feet.
Julian didn’t realize he was crying until it became hard to see, and when he wiped his blurry eyes, he felt wetness on his cheeks as well.
He turned the pages until he found another picture of Miles, this one taken at his fourth birthday party. Miles was wearing his little suit, hair neatly combed, standing behind a pile of wrapped presents, and smiling. This was the way Julian saw his son in his mind. He used his fingernail to pull up the edge of the clear plastic sheet that covered the photos on the page, and drew the sheet back, peeled off the photograph and put it in his shirt pocket.
He missed Miles. It was a loss that time had not softened or made easier, and there was a physical pain in his chest right now, as though his heart actually ached. The depth of the hurt was why he and Claire never discussed their first son, why he tried so hard to live in the present and not think about the past. He knew from a lifetime of media exposure that such an attitude was probably unhealthy, that it was always better to let emotions out than keep them in, but he didn’t feel that way. This was the approach that seemed to work best for him, and while it might not be politically correct or socially acceptable, it was how he had chosen to do it.
It kept the guilt at bay.
He’d thought more about Miles in the past month than he had in the last thirteen years. It was the house’s doing, and Claire was right: once or twice, at the beginning, he had considered the idea that it was the ghost of their son who was haunting them. But that was obviously not the case, and with that possibility excluded, he was left with the discomforting memories that thoughts of Miles dredged up within him.
Memories of Miles’s death.
Julian closed the photo album, closed his eyes, tried to get his mind to go somewhere else.
It wouldn’t.
“Daddy!”
It was the last word Miles ever said, and it remained as fresh in his mind today as it had when his son shouted it, two terrified syllables that cut straight through his heart and would be perfectly preserved in his brain until the day he died.
As a college student, as a young man, Julian had enjoyed hiking. He’d belonged to the Sierra Club, had met one of his former girlfriends on a club-sponsored hiking trip, and had enjoyed taking Claire on backpacking excursions to various wilderness areas throughout the state. Even after they had Miles, they’d continued hiking on weekends, although, necessarily, closer to home.
It was on one of these treks, into the Santa Monica Mountains, that it had happened.