29

A knock on the barn door interrupted Rufus’s story.

He gasped, sucking his last word back in.

“Who’s in there?” The voice was female.

Rufus raised a single index finger to his lips, gesturing for me to not say a word.

“I know you’re in there. I see the damned truck at the road. I’m opening the door, and I’ve got a gun.”

Shit. I turned to look for Rufus, but he was already gone, faded into the back corner of the barn.

The door swung open, and harsh light nearly blinded me. I stepped out into the sun and saw the woman did indeed have a gun. It was a shotgun, actually, and she had it aimed right at me. She squinted at me and motioned for me to step off to the side, away from the door.

“You alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not. Listen, could we go inside and talk for a minute? I’m a private investigator. I wanted to talk to you about someone who used to live here.”

“My father lived here until he died ten years ago, and I have no desire to talk about him. Especially not to a man who doesn’t know how to knock before he goes snooping around private property.”

“Again, I apologize. I just … I didn’t think you were home.”

“Doesn’t matter if I was home or not. This is my property. You got no right to be here.”

“I apologize. Truly. Sometimes, in my line of work, it’s easy to forget my manners.” I reached back and pulled the door shut behind me. “Anyway, it’s not your father I want to talk to you about. It’s your sister.”

She lowered the shotgun, nearly dropping it.

“Which sister?”

“Harriet.”

“Harriet’s dead.”

There it was. The conclusion to Rufus’s sad story. It wasn’t too surprising. Rufus’s face had told me that much. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

“It looks like you were here to snoop inside my barn.”

I shook my head. “No, I just … I’m sorry. Like I said, I didn’t think you were home. Could we possibly talk?”

She was silent for a moment before raising the gun again and aiming it at my head. “Sure, but I’m keeping this with me the whole time.”

“Fair enough,” I said and followed her up to the house.

*   *   *

Sometimes the seeds to the way a story will turn out are contained in the very beginning. That was what I had to assume with Harriet. I’d already learned she was dead. The next leap wasn’t a big one: she’d tried to jump across the ravine and failed.

We sat in the den, her in a large rocking chair with the gun across her lap and me on the couch, right across from the fireplace. The mantel above the fireplace was covered in framed photographs. I was too far away to get a good look, but I assumed they were pictures of her family.

“Are you married, Ms.…?”

“It’s Duncan, and no, I’ve always been single. But I thought this was about my sister, not me?”

“Well, I’m getting to that. Sorry. Just trying to get oriented. One more question. Harriet had two sisters…”

“I’m Lyda, the eldest. Lord knows where Savanna is these days.” She shook her head. “Frankly, I’m glad she’s no longer in my life.”

“Savanna? Not Harriet?”

“Of course. Harriet was a soul in pain, but she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“And Savanna would?”

“I have to say, Mr. Marcus, you are trying my patience more than a little. First, you don’t have the common decency to knock, and now I have to ask myself what your real motives are. You said you wanted to talk about Harriet, not Savanna.”

I studied her closely. Once she had certainly been attractive, but time had done a number on her. Her face was pitted and scarred, her eyes dull and washed free of almost all their green. She was older than I’d expected, too, or maybe that was an illusion brought on by the perils of a hard life.

And she was right. I had told her this was about Harriet, and it was. I needed to focus. I just couldn’t help but be curious about Savanna. It was obvious Rufus had a thing for her. And based on the way Rufus had reacted when the knock came on the barn door, he must have believed she lived here. He hadn’t had time to finish the story, but it was clear it must have ended badly. Love stories were like that. You always knew the ending. If it had ended well, they would still be together.

“Okay, let’s talk about Harriet.” I paused. The trouble was I didn’t know exactly how to ask about Harriet. Her story was much more complex. “I’m investigating a death out at the Harden School, and I was hoping to find out about your sister’s time there.”

“You’re talking about the kid who jumped recently?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, for starters, I think it’s a lot like Harriet.”

“Right, which is why I wanted to hear from you. How do you see the deaths as similar?”

“Harriet was gay. At one time, she wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but most people who knew her understood it. She liked other girls. That’s pretty much why my father sent her there. To make her straight. Paid his brother-in-law a lot of money to do it, too.” She shook her head. “Sometimes humans are so stupid. I mean, the idea you can change someone from something they have no control over to begin with.”

“And you think that’s why she killed herself?” I said.

“Of course it’s why. She wrote me letters. They were torturing her. Calling her names, telling her she was worthless. Spitting on her. Grown men spitting on a girl. And there was more too. Stuff she wouldn’t even tell me in the letters. Stuff that gave her panic attacks to even think on. She never explained, but I feel certain it was sexual abuse.”

“Do you still have these letters?”

“No. They were lost.”

“How?”

“I feel like I’m being put on trial here. Do you not trust me, Mr. Marcus?”

“I apologize again. I’m just trying to gather all the relevant details.”

“I don’t see how me losing the letters is relevant. They’re gone, lost in a fire a long time ago. My life hasn’t been easy.”

“I understand, but the letters are relevant because they could directly link her death to abuse. What gave you the sense she was being abused?”

“Harriet told me once that at the end of each day, a counselor would come into her room to ‘test’ her. She never went into details about what these tests were like, but I know there was one particular counselor who she dreaded more than others.”

“What was his name?”

“Harriet never told me.”

“That seems odd.”

She shrugged. “Not really. I don’t think it’s odd at all to be reluctant to name names when you’ve been sexually abused.”

“It’s just a name. Surely—”

“Have you ever been sexually abused, Mr. Marcus?”

“No.”

“Then you wouldn’t really be an expert on this, would you?”

I shook my head. She was right. I was pushing too hard. No, it was more than that. I was being an asshole. My natural state these days, it seemed.

“Okay, so did the letters say what it was about this one counselor she dreaded?”

“His test methods, best I could tell.”

“Go on.”

“I think he might have forced Harriet to have sex with him or someone else.”

“And you feel confident about this?”

She just stared at me, expressionless.

I tried again. “So, it’s your belief that Harriet decided to jump because of the bullying and abuse she received at the Harden School?”

“I’m almost positive of it.”

“Did you try to get the police involved at the time of her death?”

“I was shut up.”

“How so?”

“My father. He didn’t believe women should become involved with matters such as those.”

I nodded. Not surprising. It was the same way my father had treated women—as if they had a narrowly defined role that began and ended with pleasing the men in their lives.

“Ms. Duncan, would you be willing to testify to what you are telling me in a court of law, or at least make a statement to the police?”

She was silent, obviously thinking over her options. She bit her lip, tearing a small piece of flesh from it with her teeth.

“The men you are dealing with will stop at nothing to protect their good names.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a no.”

“Which men are we talking about? Harden? Blevins? Or maybe Deloach?”

“Deloach is dead. I don’t know Blevins, nor do I care to.”

“So, Harden then?”

She shook her head. “This is hard for me for a variety of reasons.”

I leaned back in the chair, stretching my legs. I felt as if she was telling the truth. There was something guileless about her, as if she was both sad and surprised to be asked these questions, to be here now talking with me about something she’d obviously tried hard to put behind her.

“Can I give you a piece of advice, Mr. Marcus?”

“Of course.”

“Next time you want to interview a woman about the past, make an appointment. Better yet, do a little research of your own. The Harden School is an institution that has survived tragedy after tragedy, not to mention many controversial situations that would have taken other schools down. You and I aren’t going to be able to affect change there. If I thought we could, I’d throw caution to the wind and do whatever you asked me to, personal consequences be damned, but I don’t believe we can change it. It’s like trying to move a stone that weighs so much more than you do. The harder you work, the more likely it is you throw out your back. Why do that when you know you can’t move the stone?”

“I’m here to help you,” I said. “We can move it together.”

“You’re not as strong as you think,” she said. “None of us is. Especially compared to her.”

“To who?”

She gave me a look that suggested I was an idiot for not keeping up. “Savanna, of course.”

“What does she have to do with Harriet’s death?”

“I wish I knew.”

“You’re not making sense.”

She shrugged. “The world doesn’t make sense.”

“Right,” I said, “but it’s our job to make sense of it.”

She just looked at me as if I were a child, uninitiated into the ways of adulthood and the hidden forces at work in this world.

Maybe if I hadn’t just come off the breakup with Mary and the binge-drinking episode that had nearly killed me, I would have pressed her, maybe I would have demanded she explain to me about Savanna, but instead I let it go, afraid that in doing so I would have to face the inevitability that she was right, that the world wasn’t something that was ours to understand.

*   *   *

In the end, I felt like Rufus would be able to put my conversation with Lyda Duncan into context, and if he couldn’t, he would at least be able to finish his story, and I’d be able to go from there. I thanked her and left her my card, pleading with her to call me if she came up with anything else more concrete. I wasn’t very optimistic. You can always tell if someone is eager to work with you by how they react to your card. If they reach for it, that means they’re interested. The ones who plan on throwing it away as soon as you leave usually let you just lay it on the table. It’s as if they think touching it obligates them to use it in the future. She didn’t touch it. Hell, she hardly even looked at it.

I figured Rufus would be in the truck and was more than a little surprised when he wasn’t. I glanced around, thinking maybe he’d wandered past it, confused. That didn’t sound like Rufus, but he was blind, for God’s sake. Surely he had to make mistakes sometimes?

Maybe he was still in the barn? I didn’t want to risk going back. If Lyda saw me snooping around there again, she’d certainly peg me for some kind of criminal or, at the very least, a nut job. I chuckled. Too late. I was pretty sure she already thought I was a nut job.

I headed for the barn again, moving quickly. Once inside, I called out his name.

No reply.

I looked up into the loft. He wasn’t there.

I called his number, pretty sure he hadn’t brought his phone. He never did. It rang several times before going to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message.

I jogged to my truck and scanned the road. Nothing, just a shimmering haze in both directions.

Shit.

I drove slowly on my way home, keeping an eye out for him walking along the road, but I didn’t see him. Could he already be home, back at the old church? Not likely. Feeling a little anxious, I reminded myself that Rufus was capable despite being blind. Hell, he might have decided to take a shortcut home instead of walking along the road. That actually made more sense. In some ways it was safer for Rufus to stay off the road, considering he couldn’t see traffic.

By the time I reached Riley, I’d just about talked myself out of being too worried. What did I think had happened, after all? Rufus had gotten lost? That was laughable. Even blind, Rufus knew this area better than anyone. So, what then? Was I really going to consider the possibility he’d been picked up, taken away by someone? Nah. The truth was somewhere in between, I convinced myself. Rufus had thumbed a ride back to the old church on Ghost Mountain.

But when I pulled up to his place, I began to doubt my own logic. I checked inside the church and found it empty. I checked around the graveyard and the creek again but found no sign of him.

How was it possible for him to just vanish?

I wasn’t sure, but I needed to talk it over with somebody. I glanced across the creek and saw Ronnie and his friends working on the studio. They’d framed the whole thing out now and were busy hanging sheetrock. It wasn’t very large, but I figured it would be plenty big enough for them to practice and record. I couldn’t help but feel my spirits lift a little looking at Ronnie’s progress. Somehow, Ronnie seemed to be doing better than anyone these days, and it was just another one of life’s inexplicable blind curves that you could never see coming no matter how careful you were, how hard you tried to be ready.

I took a deep breath and walked across the creek toward just about the steadiest influence I had left in the world.