The Secret Hour (35 page)

 
Teddy loved playing soccer, and they were helping him to get really good at the sport. They worked his ass off at practice, drilling him up and down the field, forcing him to “get down and give me fifty.” Or sixty, or, today, a hundred push-ups. While Teddy’s father was busy at the office, his coaches were working with him, praising him, telling him he could play for Yale-Harvard-Dartmouth, wherever he wanted.

 
Mr. Phelan kept his car radio tuned to some call-in show, with a loud, friendly-sounding host who was always talking about what was wrong with the country. Mr. Phelan would listen, pitching in when the topics had to do with country-club prisons and guys released from jail to offend again.

 
“It’s the system,” Mr. Phelan said yesterday, not directly criticizing Teddy’s father. “Cops are so concerned about criminals’ rights, they aren’t given the power they need to catch the bad guys—or make the convictions stick, or give out the sentences these people deserve.”

 
“And God forbid you stick a killer on death row,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Some people think the killer has more right to live than the girls he kills!”

 
Teddy had cringed at that; the coaches were too polite to say his father’s name, but Teddy could feel them wanting to.

 
“C’mon, Hunt.” Mr. Phelan had laughed. “Merrill’s a moron. He was stupid, he got caught, he left the cops a roadmap to catch him—he definitely needs all the help he can get.”

 
“Yeah, the guy’s definitely not playing with a full deck. Insanity, diminished mental capacity, whatever: Give it to him.”

 
Teddy hated the coaches for saying those things about his father—because Teddy had known what they were really talking about. It hurt to live in such a small town, and to be right in the middle of controversy.

 
Maybe the worst part—and it hurt to admit it, even to himself—was that he was really angry with both his parents. His mother for whatever she’d been doing, his father for working all the time. Because, whether they meant to or not, they had made it so Teddy and Maggie were alone too much. They needed some adults around them, and the only ones Teddy could find were saying bad things about his dad.

 
Teddy wished Kate were still here. She’d only gone to one of his games, but he’d had the feeling she would have liked to go to lots more. He had loved looking over at the sidelines, seeing her jump up and down and call his name. Maybe she didn’t know, but he’d been able to hear her voice above all the others. And she understood him better than any other adult he knew.

 
Brainer came padding over now, wanting to be petted. Teddy kneeled by the window, watching for his sister to come home from school. Stroking the dog’s coat, Teddy realized that the mats and ticks were back. It had been almost a month since Kate had washed and brushed him.

 
Teddy longed for a normal family. He didn’t want it all to be so odd. Living with his retired grandfather and Maeve, having to hold up his father’s honor to kids and coaches alike, being the only one at the door to greet his sister when she came home from school.

 
And if she wasn’t here in twenty seconds or less, Teddy would call Dad to tell him she wasn’t home, and then Teddy would jump on his bike to start the search. He could see Amanda’s newspaper picture, her arm sticking out of the breakwater.

 
And just then, he heard Maggie’s wheels on the driveway. Relief flooded through him in a huge rush. He couldn’t believe how hard his heart was pounding as he heard the thump of her bicycle as it hit the ground. Her feet on the stairs, the click of the latch, and her breathless entrance. Teddy pictured Amanda in the breakwater again and couldn’t stop the flood of tears scalding his eyes.

 
“Teddy,” Maggie shouted, bursting in. “You’re home before I am! If I’d known you didn’t have practice today, I’d have taken the bus instead of riding my bike this morning!”

 
Teddy slid his sleeve across his eyes, so she wouldn’t see him crying. He watched her fly across the room, thrilled to see him.

 
“Hey, Mags,” Teddy said, giving her a big grin, taking the knapsack of books from her arms, welcoming her home and not letting on how worried he’d been. “How’s my best girl?”

 
When Kate got home from seeing Andrew at eight-thirty Monday night, the phone was ringing. Bonnie was barking, and the town house was freezing cold—in her abstracted state these days, Kate had turned the heat off before leaving the house that morning. She placed Willa’s painting on a kitchen chair and grabbed for the phone.

 
“Hello?” she said, frowning, hand on the thermostat as she cranked it up to seventy.

 
“Kate? It’s John O’Rourke.”

 
“Oh,” Kate said, gripping the receiver with both hands. Why was he calling? Hearing his voice made her feel warmer already. Back against the wall, she slid all the way down, till she was sitting on the floor, Bonnie climbing right onto her lap. “Hello.”

 
“Hello.”

 
“Are you calling to see whether I got the kids’ letters? I did. And I’ve already started to write back to them…I miss them. No one like Maggie down here, and no one like Teddy, sweet enough to care that his dog has mats in his coat…”

 
“Um, that’s not why I’m calling,” John said.

 
“Then…what?” she asked.

 
The line was silent. All the pleasure and warmth suddenly drained out of her body, and Kate put her head down. There could only be one reason he’d be phoning her; she’d been foolish to think it was personal.

 
“It’s your client, right?” she asked, her heart stopping. “He’s told you something?”

 
“No, Kate. Something else. Did you see the papers?”

 
“Yes—why?”

 
“You don’t know…it must not have made the Washington papers. Another body was found up here. In a breakwater.”

 
“John,” she said, hands shaking.

 
“It’s not Willa,” he said.

 
Her eyes flooded with tears. She stared at the painting her sister had done of her. The gentleness, the love came pouring out, as if Willa were in the room with her. “How do you know?” she heard herself ask.

 
“Because the police identified her—Amanda Martin.”

 
“Who is she?”

 
“She’s a young woman from Hawthorne. Her parents own a boatyard, and she worked there part-time. Nineteen, went to the UConn branch at Avery Point.”

 
“Merrill,” Kate said. “He didn’t get out, did he? Escape, or—”

 
“No,” John said quickly. “He’s still in Winterham, still on death row…It wasn’t him.”

 
“But the style, leaving her in a breakwater…”

 
“Yes, it’s very similar.”

 
“What else do they know? Are there others?”

 
“Not that anyone has found.”

 
“My sister’s still missing; what if it wasn’t Merrill who found her, but someone else? This one…”

 
“I’ll keep close track of the case and stay in touch with you.”

 
“I can’t believe it…”

 
“I know,” John said, his voice quiet and steady. “I’m sorry to tell you about it, to stir everything up. But I wanted you to know, in case you’d heard another body had been found in a breakwater, that it wasn’t Willa.”

 
“You’re really kind to call, John.”

 
Her words hung in the air; she could hear him breathing through the line.

 
“Not many people accuse me of kindness,” he said. “I’m a little surprised you would.”

 
“I can’t understand why,” she said, a smile coming into her voice. “You showed your true colors in Fairhaven.”

 
“In what way?”

 
“You proved you have a big heart.”

 
“For a lawyer, you mean?”

 
“For anyone,” she said.

 
“I’m an only child,” John said. “But seeing you suffer over your sister made me think of Maggie and Teddy. I can’t imagine either of them being without each other for any length of time.”

 
“It’s hard,” she whispered, her eyes fixed on Willa’s brushstrokes. “It’s unbelievably hard.”

 
“Be brave, Kate. Maggie would tell you that herself. If you want the scarf, we’ll send it back to you.”

“I want Maggie to keep it,” she said, staring at the picture, at the white scarf blowing in the wind. “Tell her to be careful…”

 
“I know. I have.”

 
“Because of what just happened, and because of everything,” Kate said, her mind swimming with the knowledge that shocking things happen every day; that you could walk home after work with an armful of tulips and find your world falling apart. That you could be too angry to say good-bye one day and never see your sister again.

 
“Good things happen, too, Kate,” John said. “Remember that.”

 
“You, too, John.”

 
“Next time we talk,” he said, letting out a laugh, “will you remind me of what they are?”

 
“I’ll try,” Kate said, saying good-bye.

 
Sitting on her kitchen floor, she held tight to the phone. Her sister’s dog lay in her lap; she heard the wall clock ticking and felt the heat beginning to come up through the vents. The house was warming up—or maybe it was just her heart beating so fast.

 
The white scarf in the picture shimmered across the room. Kate took it as a message.

 
The scarf was Maggie’s now, connecting their two households. If John were still on the phone, she would tell him two good things: Maggie and Teddy. Brainer and Bonnie, too. Kate’s sister Willa. And John himself. Six good things.

 
Her eyes filled with tears as she realized what a struggle it had been to come home without knowing what had happened. There was so much unfinished business. Was it true that Kate had never really forgiven her sister? She would never know, she now believed, until Willa was found. She had tried to make peace with her sister’s mystery, told herself it was time to get back to her life.

 
But now that she was here, in Washington, it felt as if she was moving in the wrong direction. Her life—or, at least, her mind and her heart—was in Connecticut. The answers to Willa’s disappearance were there, and so, Kate realized as she sat on the floor, holding the phone, were the people she cared about most.

 
Kate glanced at Bonnie and raised her eyebrows. She had the feeling the dog could read her mind.

 
“We have to do it, don’t we, Bon?”

 
The Scottie wagged her tail.

 
Kate nodded, petting her back.

 
Billy Manning called to tell John he wanted to question Greg Merrill, to hear what he might have to say about Amanda Martin’s murder. Although he obviously wasn’t a suspect, he might have some insights into the crime; his cooperation would be noted for the record, and it might help at his next sentencing hearing.

 
John and Billy met at Winterham. The two men waited together in the prison conference room, while the guard joked with Billy about hanging out with the Merrill defense squad enemy, and Billy set him straight.

 
“Hey, John’s all right,” the detective said. “We go back to high school together—we’re teammates.”

 
“Huh,” the guard replied. “Looks like he’s on the wrong team, now. Or at least a goddamn different one.”

 
“Watch it, buddy. O’Rourke’s a good guy,” Billy said, as the guard left the room.

 
Waiting for Greg Merrill to be led in, Billy threw John a narrow glance. “Hear all that? You treat me right when Greg comes out, okay? Let me ask what I need to ask. Who covers you, buddy?”

 
“What makes you think I need covering?”

 
“Ahh, you’re a white-shoe guy. You should’ve bucked your old man and joined the cops with me. We have the real fun—solving the crimes instead of undoing the investigations. Next thing, you’ll be on the bench like your old man, wearing the black robes.”

 
“Just like you and your old man, Billy, wearing the badge.”

 
“Like father, like son. When’s Teddy gonna join the family firm?”

 
John got quiet suddenly; Teddy hadn’t said much lately. While Maggie danced around, begging to go home before Thanksgiving, Teddy had kept to himself, practicing soccer moves in the backyard after dark, doing pushups in the upstairs hall. John felt the invisible wall between them, and he knew he had to do something to break it down.