He pushed himself off the bench and ambled through the back door and into the house, out of sight. I stood and leaned back, my hands on my hips, and caught a glimpse of another rose bush, brimming with flowers of the most unusual shade of pale purple. The bush bloomed along the back wall of the garden, a good fifteen feet away.
“Have you ever seen roses that color, Finn?” I asked, and he shook his head, distracted by the ring of his cell phone. I picked my way along the flagstone path until I stood before the bush, admiring the flowers.
As I turned to leave, I stubbed my toe on the base of an alabaster birdbath, nearly hidden from sight by an aggressive vine that wrapped itself around the marble like a vise.
The basin held a few inches of stagnant olive-green water, thick with slimy, moldy leaves. A pair of mosquitos buzzed just above the surface, their tiny bodies throbbing like microscopic drones. I backed away and when I did, I saw a plaque at the base of the column of the birdbath. The vines were pushed back and I saw the plaque bore an inscription, and a raised relief of children dancing, holding hands in a circle.
Two boys.
I slowly walked back to Finn, and Canyon Kirshbaum, who’d returned. They were deep in conversation when I interrupted.
“Sir, did you grow up here?” I asked. “In Cedar Valley?”
He nodded. “Born and bred. Aside from school in Chicago, I’ve been here ever since.”
“And your mom, she was an artist?”
He nodded again. “In her younger years, she was quite wonderful. She painted, drew, even dabbled in sculpture. How did you know that?”
I jerked a thumb toward the birdbath. “Her name is on that piece, right below the dedication to the McKenzie boys.”
“Well, I’ll be. That’s right,” Kirshbaum said with a snap of his fingers, his face brightening. “I’d forgotten all about that old birdbath. They had it up at City Hall for years and years, right in the front, by that fountain, and then it cracked, at the base, so my mother brought it back here.”
Finn stood and peered back at the birdbath. He looked at me, his eyes wide, and then he asked Kirshbaum, “Did you know them? The kids?”
The heavy man moved his head in a half shake, half nod. “Sure, I was a few years behind them in school. I was quite young.”
“Your mother, she knew them?”
“Of course. Everyone knew them,” he said. “Cedar Valley is a small town. It was even smaller thirty years ago.”
I thought of what I’d told Moriarty in the bar after Nicky’s funeral, about not believing in coincidences. The cop in me places a deep-seeded trust in facts, figures, and cold, hard evidence. But I’ve always thought that there are currents running through our world and our lives, threads if you will, that touch and connect all things. Events, years after they’ve happened, leave faint fingerprints that linger and change the surface of places over time.
I’ve known that the Woodsman left his mark on Cedar Valley thirty years ago. Chills ran down my spine as I realized, truly, completely, for the first time, just how deep that mark might run.
Kirshbaum said, “My mother’s ready for you, if you still want to speak with her.”
Oh, boy, did I ever.
He motioned us to follow him. The house was dim; window shades were drawn against the heat and the air was cool and smelled of floral potpourri and something else, like sawdust or a woodshop.
Kirshbaum led us to a narrow stairway. He said, “Come on, she’s upstairs.”
I pushed Finn in front of me with my elbow and we headed up the stairs after Kirshbaum, his enormous behind swaying before us like the rear of an elephant. At the top, the attorney took a sharp right. We passed a room with a door half-open and I heard a low cackle.
I paused by the door and while I didn’t sense anything was amiss, we were in a strange house with a strange man. “Is there someone else here, Mr. Kirshbaum?”
He stopped at the end of the hallway and came back to us and pushed the door open the rest of the way. Inside the room was a daybed, covered in a pale blue and white quilt, and a sewing table, and a wooden cage the size of a person. Inside the cage, perched on a thick branch, a black bird with an orange beak and legs stared at us. The bottom of the cage was lined with wood chips and overripe pieces of fruit.
The bird cackled again and then said, “Honey, I’m home,” in a woman’s voice with a harsh New York accent.
“Jesus, that’s creepy,” Finn said.
Kirshbaum laughed. “That’s Margaret, my wife’s Mynah bird. They are incredible mimics. Margaret likes to imitate my wife.”
“That exercise bike won’t pedal itself,” Margaret said, and laughed. Kirshbaum’s face darkened and he reached around me and pulled the door shut.
“My mother’s waiting,” Kirshbaum said, and led us down to the last doorway at the end of the hallway. He called into the darkened room and a quiet, firm voice answered back.
Kirshbaum whispered to us, “We keep the lights low, my mother has sensitivity issues with her eyes. The dimness seems to help.”
We followed him into the bedroom, a small space with framed lace handkerchiefs on the walls and faded oriental rugs on the floor. An older woman, somewhere in her early seventies, lay in the bed, propped up against a stack of ivory silk-covered pillows. Her gray hair hugged her head in tight curls, framing an attractive face. She was petite, and the handmade quilts and afghan blankets pulled up to her chin almost swallowed her.
I introduced myself, and Finn, and sat on the edge of the bed. Finn stood in the corner, his hands in his pants pockets, his expression saying he’d rather be anywhere than here, in this woman’s bedroom, where she’d likely stay until she died.
I touched the threads on the top blanket.
“This is an echo quilt, isn’t it?”
Her voice was worn but steady. “Yes, it is. Are you a quilter?”
I shook my head. “My mother had a real passion for quilts. She couldn’t afford to buy many, so she took pictures of them instead. I have a whole scrapbook with photographs. I always loved the names: album, clamshell, crazy, memory, in-the-ditch, echo.”
“It’s a lost art, quilting. I had to ask Canyon to take away my television; I couldn’t stand all the horrible shows on TV now, where women attack one another. There used to be a real sisterhood. Women would come together and share their stories and their troubles and together, create something from nothing-like this quilt,” she said.
I thought of Tessa and Lisey and the cruel things they had said about, and to, one another. “There are a lot of things that are different nowadays, aren’t there?”
Mrs. Kirshbaum eyed me out of the corner of her eye and nodded slowly. “Canyon, make yourself useful, dear. Make us another pitcher of that iced tea, would you?”
Kirshbaum stood at the foot of the bed and excused himself. Finn’s cell buzzed again, and after checking the caller ID, he too left the room.
“Ma’am, you’ve lived here a long time, haven’t you?” I asked.
She sighed. “Yes, a long time. It won’t be much longer, though, I think. My time is coming and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Not that I’d want to stop it, mind you. I’m ready. I’m tired.”
There was a confessional tone to her words and her voice and I thought of the birdbath in the backyard, and the effort it would have taken her to call the police station.
Something weighed on this woman’s mind, something dark and heavy.
I said, “In all the years you’ve lived here, how much evil have you been a witness to? I’m talking about real evil. Like two kids disappearing thirty years ago. Like a young man being killed last week. Like a cop-a friend of mine-getting hit by a car and losing his leg.”
Her face paled but her voice never wavered. “Do you believe in God, Detective?”