Chapter 2 - The Sound of Bolt Cutters
The silence that followed my telephone call did not last long in the front of the house, though it lingered in the kitchen like grease in an iron pan.
I stood by the industrial sink, watching the second hand of the electric clock grind its way around the dial. Twelve-twenty. Twelve-twenty-two. Through the swinging doors, I could hear the tinny clinking of silver against porcelain resume, though the conversation was stiff, clipped into small, dry fragments. Pastor Hallowell was talking about the drought in the lower counties. Cole was laughing too loud at something Vance hadn't intended to be funny.
Then came the gravel.
The sound of tires on the river stone of the Aldridge driveway was distinct; heavy cruisers did not drift onto the crescent path like town cars. They came in with the thud of heavy suspensions and the dry crackle of stone thrown against the boxwood hedges.
Two car doors slammed. Not the polite, cushioned thud of an imported sedan, but the hollow iron rattle of county-issue Fords.
I took the oilcloth notebook from the sideboard, slipped it into the pocket of my wool skirt, and walked out of the kitchen. I did not use the service corridor. I walked through the main hall, beneath the Austrian chandelier, past the great mahogany door of the dining room.
Eleanor was already standing in the foyer.
She had heard the cruisers. Her face was set in that smooth, aristocratic marble that had terrified three generations of county commissioners. Her hands were clasped at her waist, her rings clicking together.
"What is the meaning of this?" she said as the heavy brass knocker on the front door fell twice, shaking the glass transom above. "Rosa, did you call the police because I dismissed you? Have you completely lost your senses?"
Grant was behind her now, napkin still crumpled in his right hand. The guests had spilled out of the dining room like cattle following a Judas steer, hovering in the wide portal between the library and the foyer.
I didn't answer her. I reached the double doors of heavy oak, turned the brass deadbolt, and pulled them inward.
Sheriff Tom Miller stood on the porch. He was fifty-eight, with a stomach that pushed against his duty belt and hair the color of road gravel. He had known the Aldridges since he was a boy delivering the evening paper to the senator’s father. Behind him stood Deputy Sarah Jenkins, young and angular, carrying a three-foot pair of red-handled industrial bolt cutters by the hinge.
"Eleanor," Sheriff Miller said, touching the brim of his campaign hat. His eyes were not friendly. They were the eyes of a man who had worked thirty years in a county where the wealthy thought the law was an advisory opinion. "Afternoon."
"Tom," Eleanor said, drawing herself up until her chin was tilted five degrees above his hat. "I assume there has been an absurd misunderstanding. Rosa has had some sort of emotional breakdown at the table. I was forced to terminate her employment, and it appears she has made an irresponsible call to your office. You may return to town. We will handle our domestic difficulties privately."
Miller didn't take off his hat. He stepped over the marble threshold without asking. Deputy Jenkins followed him, her boots squeaking on the waxed parquet.
"Didn't sound like a breakdown to me, Eleanor," Miller said. He looked at me. "Miss Rosa. You said on the horn that someone was being kept."
"She’s lying!" Cole shouted from the doorway of the dining room. He was red-faced, his tie pulled loose at the collar, a high, greasy sheen on his forehead. "She’s an old Mexican woman who’s angry because she got fired for scaring my niece! Tom, you know our family. You know my father put you in that office!"
"Your father’s been in the ground six years, Cole," Miller said, not even turning his head toward him. "And you aren't the senator. Miss Rosa, lead the way."
"Tom, I forbid this!" Eleanor stepped directly into Miller’s path. Her voice dropped an octave, vibrating with the authority that had once moved school board elections and county zoning lines with a single telephone call. "This is a private residence. You have no warrant. You have no probable cause beyond the hysterical ramblings of a discharged servant."
"Eleanor," Miller said, leaning down so his face was three inches from hers. "If I go out to my car and call Judge Henderson for an emergency warrant based on Miss Rosa’s sworn statement, I will come back in here with four state troopers and a news crew from Roanoke. If there’s nothing behind that door, I will apologize to you in the county paper. If there *is* something, you’ll be in the back of my car before the sun hits the mountain. Now step out of my way."
Eleanor didn't move for three seconds. Then, slowly, her fingers curled into claws against her silk skirt, and she stepped back against the wallpaper.
I turned toward the rear of the house.
The Aldridge estate was built in the style of an English manor, with two wings flanking a central hall. The west wing held the library, the drawing room, and the senator’s old retreat—the deep, windowless office where he had once met with party bosses while whiskey was poured from crystal decanters.
Since his death, the door had been locked. *A memorial*, Eleanor had told the family. *A sanctuary for his memory that no one shall disturb.*
We walked down the long carpeted corridor. The walls were lined with portraits of dead Aldridges: Aldridges in Confederate gray, Aldridges in judicial robes, Aldridges posing with bird dogs in the autumn grass.
At the very end of the hall, half-hidden by a heavy brocade portière, stood the door. It was solid white oak, three inches thick, fitted with a heavy brass plate.
Around the brass door handle, looped four times through an eye-bolt that had been drilled directly into the heavy door frame, was a hardened steel chain. The links were thick as a man’s thumb, coated in a dull gray zinc.
Fastened through the links was a brass Master Lock.
It was brand new. The gold lacquer was unscratched, and on the bottom edge, half-scraped away by a fingernail, was the orange paper price sticker from the Southern States hardware store in town:
**$9.98**
Grant pushed past Miller, his face twisted in a look of total, uncomprehending madness. He stared at the lock. He stared at the chain.
"Cole," Grant whispered. His voice was cracked, like dry sticks snapping underfoot. "You told me... you wrote to me in Dubai and said Dad’s study was sealed. You said you couldn't bear to look at his desk."
Cole stayed at the turn of the hallway, his back pressed against the wainscoting, his mouth half-open, breathing hard through his nose.
"Daddy!"
Lily came running down the corridor, her little shoes slapping against the floorboards. She ducked past Deputy Jenkins, ran straight to the locked door, and pressed her face against the white wood.
"Mommy!" she yelled into the seam. "Mommy, Daddy is home! Rosa is here! I made a card with the purple crayon!"
Inside the room, five inches beyond the heavy oak, there was a sound.
It was not the sound of a ghost. It was the sound of bedsprings groaning under the weight of a living body, followed by the dry, shuffling scrape of bare feet on a braided rug.
Grant dropped to his knees. He looked at the bottom of the door, where a draft excluder of heavy felt had been nailed into the oak to keep the light from spilling out into the hall.
"Hannah?" he whispered.
"Get back, Grant," Miller said. He nodded to Deputy Jenkins. "Sarah. Take the lock."
Jenkins stepped forward. She braced the lower jaw of the red bolt cutters against her hip, opened the long handles wide, and settled the hardened steel blades over the shackle of the brass lock.
Eleanor stood ten feet away, her arms folded, her mouth set in a thin, pale seam. "This is an outrage," she said, her voice shaking with an ancient, impotent fury. "You will never work in this state again, Tom Miller. None of you will."
Jenkins didn't look at her. She brought her full weight down on the handles.
The sound was like a rifle shot in the narrow hallway—*CRACK*.
The brass shackle snapped. The lock dropped to the parquet floor with a heavy, dead thump. The links of the chain rattled, slipped from the eye-bolt, and fell in a heap of gray iron around Deputy Jenkins’s boots.
The door swung inward three inches.
May you like
A wave of air came out of the room. It smelled of witch hazel, old tea, lavender soap, and the dry, sour smell of a human being who has not seen the noon sun in seven hundred days.
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