Mr. 8 Read online

  After a long wait and two rings of the bell, the door was answered by a kid in a grubby sweatshirt. This had to be the surviving son, who was mentioned in the obituary.

  Greasy brown hair that looked as if it hadn’t been combed in days hung over his pale face. Dark circles under his eyes made him look gaunt, despite the chubby baby fat around his jaw. It was hard to guess his age, but he must have been old enough that he could be attending Milton. In fact, Denton had to look twice to make sure he wasn’t one of his students. Feeling very old, he wondered when it was that he started to think of people of that age as kids.

  “Edward Radcliff? I am very sorry for your loss. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “Are you another cop?” the boy asked.

  Denton said carefully, “I work with the police.”

  “Is this about the bodies they found last night?” Edward’s eyes narrowed, and he looked intently at Denton as though hoping to read the answer in the lines and contours of his face.

  Denton decided to try his luck. “Do you mind if I look around a bit?”

  “Why, you guys have already searched the place twice?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but in light of last night’s events, there have been new developments.” He pieced his words together from bits of half remembered dialogue from crime shows.

  The boy looked him up and down, searching for an answer in Denton’s clothes. Perhaps the gray wool overcoat and black dress shoes had an authoritative air to them because Edward sighed and stepped out of the doorway to let Denton enter. “Sure, have a ball. Just don’t make a mess, or I’ll get my lawyer on the phone.”

  “You have a lawyer?”

  “Yeah, I have a lawyer. What, you think I’m some kid? My mom’s stuff is in her bedroom, upstairs. First door on the left.”

  Denton stepped into the main hall of the house. The stairs were directly in front of him. On his right was a grand parlor. It had that delicate look of the type of formal living room he remembered from his childhood. The type that was always immaculate and never used.

  Opposite the doorway was a large marble fireplace. In front of it was a sitting area with a settee and a couple of Queen Anne Chairs. Above it was a large framed painting of a unicorn surrounded by swirling flowers. On their drive home from the gallery, Linda had called Agatha’s art: “Hippy, New Age watercolors.” He could see what she meant.

  He entered the room feeling guilty about crossing the threshold, not because the son hadn’t given him permission, but because of the unspoken taboo against using the room. It seemed to act like a spell, making his feet hesitate, an irrational remnant from his upbringing, as though his mother was going to jump out from some unseen corner and scold him.

  Denton leaned in to examine the canvas. The flowers were done with imprecise strokes. They seemed to be more impressions of flowers than depictions of them. Perhaps it was to give a sense of motion. The unicorn on the other hand was very exact and each of the creature’s muscles stood out with distinct form.

  On the mantle were a collection of framed photographs. Several were of people he didn’t recognize. One was of a young Agatha with a man of about the same age standing in front of the house on a summer day. There was a toddler in a green striped shirt between them. He didn’t see any resemblance, but he imagined it had to be the boy that let him in. Four of the pictures were of horses. In one of them, Agatha sat astride a light gray mount, in full equestrian gear, looking as if she were about to go on a fox hunt. The horse bore an uncanny resemblance to the unicorn.

  When he turned back around, he found Agatha’s son standing in the doorway, watching him.

  “Your mom liked horses.” Denton spoke to break the silence. It wasn’t a question or a statement.

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “I take it you don’t like them?”

  “They’re okay,” Edward said, as Denton stepped past him. “But now I have to sell the two at the stables. People don’t want to buy horses in the winter.”

  Denton headed up the stairs. There were two more paintings and several photos on the wall above the railing. Both paintings were of that classic symbol of a sun and a moon merged as one. The first was in bright colors and each part had a broad smile; the sun’s was head-on and the moon’s was in profile. The other had no faces and instead mimicked the yin-yang symbol. It was mostly monochrome, but there were highlights of metallic gold and silver paint. There was a mystical look to it.

  The photographs appeared to be of the family, dating from the invention of the camera to just a few years ago. He found it hard to concentrate on them, as a thought started brewing in his mind. It was a long shot, but he wondered whether the stables where Agatha kept her horses got deliveries from Baye’s. When he reached the top landing, he was about to ask Edward the name of the place, but the boy hadn’t followed him.

  The door that he’d been directed to opened with a slow creak. Agatha’s bedroom was stuffy, both the air and the décor. The room must have been closed up for a week or more. There was a strong smell of perfume, rich with roses and lilacs. But when he thought about it, there was also a hint of antiseptic.

  All the furniture was dark, heavy wood. They were undoubtedly antiques. The bedspread and the drapes were made of dense fabric, colored blue and gold. All the lamps in the room were highly ornate with bases of semi-tarnished silver and dusty brocade shades. All in all, it looked like the bedroom of a woman twice Agatha’s age. The only thing modern Denton could see were her paintings, spread out across the walls. They seemed to all be from the same series: all the subjects were horses.

  Although rare in this day and age, he suspected that Agatha had taken the room over from her mother. It used to be common for one generation to take the place of the last in homes such as these. Maybe one day when his grieving was over, Edward would move in here too. But somehow Denton doubted that. He couldn’t picture the young man in this old woman’s room.

  There was a small closet and a large oak wardrobe in the room. A perfunctory search of both found a collection of clothing ranging from jeans and peasant skirts to expensive designer gowns.

  Denton left the room feeling as if he’d learned very little about Agatha. He wandered down the hall to the next door and found a bathroom. It was small with a claw foot tub. Everything was white except for the black and white honeycomb tiles that covered the floor and ran halfway up the walls. It was spotless. The smell of heavy duty cleaner was unmistakable.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary in the medicine cabinet, except for an expired prescription of Naproxen. A quick search on his phone revealed that the drug was used to treat arthritis.

  The next two doors opened up on tidy guest rooms that were even more devoid of personality than Agatha’s was. The following door led to what could only have been the boy’s room.

  A quick glance revealed disorder. Dirty clothes covered the floor. A poster from The Two Towers movie was tacked to the wall next to a framed painting of a red dragon. The poster curled at the corners, and even from across the room, Denton could tell that the painting was dulled by a layer of dust. On the nightstand was an empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

  Denton was tempted to enter and examine the bedroom. This was finally a personalized space that could yield a psychological profile. But Edward Radcliff wasn’t his subject. He glanced nervously back to the stairs, expecting to see the boy standing there.

  He shut the door and headed back. The last thing he needed was for the kid to sic his lawyer on him. Besides, he’d been there long enough, and there was still one more room he had to see before heading home.

  Downstairs, he followed the sound of a TV, until he found the boy in a much more modern and well used living room, playing a video game. The giant LCD showed a hand holding a machete that rose and fell, killing a horde of zombies. With each hack, animated blood splattered the screen and fad
ed away in seconds. The furniture and the violent game seemed out of place with the room’s wainscoting and ornate crown moldings.

  Denton cleared his throat and interrupted him. “Your mother had a studio here, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, over this way.” The boy threw down the controller.

  He led him to a huge room that must have been a conservatory at one time. Linda would have been envious. It positively dwarfed her studio. The outer walls formed a semi-circle of tall windows. On one side of the door, stacks of paintings leaned against the wall. On the other side was a massive work table. In the center of the room, dozens of easels displayed her works. Some of the canvases had been finished, but most were in various states of progress. Denton walked through, trying to take in all the details, but it was an overload. There were all kinds of pictures of horses, suns, moons, dream catchers, trees, Celtic knots, mythical creatures, and on and on.

  He reached the end of the room and looked out the window at the snow covered expanse of back lawn; half an acre of land must have been back there. The house cast a long shadow of muted blue over the snow. Bare branches and burlap wrapped bushes gave evidence to a network of gardens.

  Turning back to the studio, he spotted two easels facing the window. The floor around them was speckled with dry paint. Between them sat a small table. On top of it was a box of paints with a palette resting on it. His long familiarity with Linda’s studio helped him with the conclusion that this was Agatha’s main work space. These were likely the last paintings she had worked on.

  There were two canvases. Denton examined the one displayed on the stand to the right. It was not in Agatha Radcliff’s usual style. There was none of the playfulness of the other works in the house. Instead of soft pastel colors, they were bright and bold. Instead of a vague, impressionistic background, it was stark and realistic.

  But the subject matter hadn’t changed much: it was of the cosmos. Top center was a sun, a yellow disk with a halo-like glow around its edge. Just below it was a moon. The three dimensional sphere seemed to be a swirling mass of various hues of gray. The background was dark blue and filled with stars, each one a precise pinhole of light.

  The other painting sat on the floor leaning against the easel on the left.

  It was almost identical to the first, but it was in her traditional style. The background was a cheerful indigo and the stars could have been straight out of a children’s picture book. The pale yellow sun had sharply defined radiating points. The moon, a single shade of gray, with stylized black vortexes scattered across its surface. Circling them was an aura of blue and white waves. Perhaps it was meant to be some kind of celestial energy. The pattern it formed was unmistakable.

  “What?” Edward asked.

  Denton hadn’t realized that he had spoken out loud. He tried to recover himself by repeating, “Eights.” Then he added, “Your mom had a thing for them. Was that a theme she was working on?” As he spoke, he traced his finger in the air demonstrating the pattern on the two paintings in front of him.

  “Huh, never noticed that before.”

  “Did she ever talk to you about her work?”

  “Not really. Is there anything else?” An impatient tone built in Edward’s voice with each word he spoke.

  “No, I guess that’s it.”

  As he retraced his steps back to the car, Denton’s mind was racing, trying to sort out all of the things he had seen. What was important? What wasn’t? The moment he was in the leather bucket seat, he pulled out his notebook and started scribbling down everything he could remember. He could sort it out later. It was getting dark; it was time to get home.

  He stopped at the next intersection and waited for two cars to go by. He was about to turn, when he looked in his rearview mirror and saw a van pulling into the driveway of Agatha Radcliff’s house.

  Chapter 13

  The Three Boys

  IT WAS DARK BY THE TIME the van pulled away with the two boys in it. When it passed through the intersection at Walcott Avenue, Denton started his engine and followed, giving them a three block lead.

  About forty-five minutes earlier, the old Chevy lurched to a halt in the driveway. A boy, roughly the same age as Agatha Radcliff’s son, got out and went into the house. Through the reflection in the rear-view mirror, all Denton could make out was that he wore a gray winter jacket and that his hair was light brown or possibly even blond.

  As soon as the road ahead of him was clear, Denton spun the steering wheel sharply and made a hasty U-turn. He parked the Mercedes in front of a house a few doors down and waited.

  A light went on in one of the downstairs rooms, almost certainly the living room, where Edward had been playing video games. That’s all they’re doing, Denton thought. They’re sitting in there killing zombies, while I sit out here like an idiot. But every fiber of his being was screaming that this was the van that had abducted Maggie Biscamp.

  A small chrome insignia on the driver’s door identified it as a Chevrolet Savana. It was at least twenty years old and looked like a precursor to a modern minivan. Where it wasn’t rusted, it was a dark midnight blue. In poor light, it would easily look black. Perhaps that was why the police had been unable to identify it.

  Denton took out his cell phone and snapped a picture of it, before the rapidly fading light was gone. He zoomed in and took another of the license plate. His finger hovered over the e-mail app, while he considered sending the photos to Bill, but he decided to wait and see what happened. It would be better to have something suspicious to report than to have Bill thinking he was now just sending him photos of random vehicles.

  But so far they had done nothing that he could consider suspicious. The driver didn’t keep exactly to the speed limit, and the van slid through a couple of stop signs, but there was nothing out of the ordinary with that.

  He did not have an easy time staying with it, as it wound its way out of the neighborhood. Red lights and other cars blocked him, and his target slipped away more than once. If its roof hadn’t been visible above the rest of the traffic, he would have lost them.

  When they started heading out of town, he had the opposite problem to deal with. On the deserted back roads, Denton was certain they’d spot him. He dropped back, giving them more room, until the van was swallowed by the darkness. Only the glow of the taillights gave any indication it was still in front of him.

  Out past the Bloodgood Berry Farm, the Savana climbed a hill and passed over it, disappearing from sight. He accelerated to keep his speed constant on the incline but had to will his foot not to press down too hard on the gas, in response to his anxiousness. He was impatient to get those taillights back into view. Each second of empty road filled his mind with the image of the van turning off and disappearing into the night. Logically, he knew there were no other roads for miles. They would be there, waiting for him, when he reached the top of the hill.

  Except, they weren’t. The road was empty. They had gotten away.

  They must have spotted his car and used the brief interval to speed up and lose him.

  A cold, sour knot twisted in Denton’s gut, and there was a tender, strained sensation in the center of his chest. He hit the accelerator and felt the engine rev. Perhaps he could still catch up to them. The speedometer was just reaching seventy, when he spotted the van parked in front of an old ranch house, off on the right-hand side of the road. He lifted his foot off of the gas and was about to slam on the brakes, but he managed to stop himself. Squealing to a halt would draw too much attention. Instead, he left both pedals alone and let the car slow down gently.

  At the speed he was going, he was past the house in seconds. All he could see was the van’s passenger door opening and a figure standing under the porch light. Denton drove another mile before he found a driveway where he could turn around.

  The plowed strip of gravel led off to nowhere. If there was a house somewhere in th
e fields, it was hidden from sight. Tires crunched over the frozen ground until they slowed to a stop. Then, there was nothing but a deep silence. Even the grumble of the car’s engine seemed to vanish in the remote stillness. He put the car into reverse and was about to get back onto the road, when his phone rang. The first few notes of a Norah Jones song played: it was Linda.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  Denton struggled to come up with an answer. He wasn’t about to tell her he was playing cop and following people around town, but he should have been home an hour ago.

  “I had to go to the Home Shop in Westfield, they were all out at Jim’s.”

  “They were out of windshield wiper fluid at Jim’s Hardware?”

  Denton couldn’t blame her for sounding skeptical. It was about as lame an excuse as he could possibly have come up with.

  “Sorry, I got carried away looking around the tool department. I’m on my way back now. I should be there by six.” More like ten after, he thought gauging the distance.

  “Okay.” She still didn’t sound convinced. “Just get back here soon. I’d like to eat sometime tonight.”

  “I’m on my way,” he repeated.

  Denton looked out of the windscreen at the snow covered field in front of him. Stars were beginning to show in the winter sky. The lonely vista chilled him in spite of the heat blowing through the car’s vents. What was he doing out there? What was wrong with him? He should be home with Linda cooking up the pork chops he’d defrosted earlier. Instead, he was out there indulging in his own paranoid delusions.

  Denton mentally slapped himself; it was time to snap out of it and re-join reality. He pulled onto the road and headed back to town. As he approached the ranch house, he tried to keep his eyes away from it. He tried not to look at it and see what those boys were up to. But he wasn’t strong enough for that.

  There were three of them standing out by the van. Both of its rear doors were wide open.