But she said, “When we were 11, and I was out walking on the ice of the lake… I forget why I was even doing that, but I fell through. I would have drowned if Aidan hadn’t seen and come out after me.” Her voice quivered as if tears threatened again. “We never told Dad what he’d done, so I wouldn’t get in trouble for being out on the lake. But when Aidan needed my help… if Aidan has-”
“Don’t think about it any more tonight,” I said. “Let’s both get some sleep.”
I doubt she slept. I know I didn’t.
Marlinchen’s story wasn’t much of a surprise; I’d already started to suspect it. The problem was that there was a part of Aidan’s story that I still didn’t know, because Marlinchen herself didn’t know it: Why was Aidan, alone, the lightning rod for his father’s rage and resentment?
I supposed there was always the soap-opera answer. Aidan and Marlinchen were both blond, and in looks took after their lovely German mother. The other three boys looked like Hugh. The twins were the firstborn. Hugh and Elisabeth were two vertices of a literary love triangle. The third point, Campion, had been frozen out of his friend Hugh’s life several years after the twins were born. Conclusion: Campion was the twins’ father. Somehow Hugh found out a few years later and had a falling-out with his old friend. Then Hugh had taken his feelings out on Aidan, Campion’s bastard son. Now for a word from our sponsor, Oxydol.
Unfortunately, the paternity theory didn’t really answer the question, it just rephrased it. “Marli” had been a favorite of her father’s, particularly after the death of her mother. If the Campion theory were true, the taint of his parentage hadn’t stained her, just her twin. Marlinchen have I loved, Aidan have I hated. What was the rationale there?
It was these thoughts that kept me awake for a while, long enough to notice a sound outside Hugh’s window: the wind shaking the grapevines on the trellis. Which was strange, because I was sleeping with the curtains open, and the treetops that were visible outside weren’t moving at all.
I crept over to the window. The trellis shook again. Harder.
With nothing to change into, I’d been sleeping in my T-shirt and leggings. I yanked my hooded sweat jacket on, wishing for the shoes that were drying out in the Hennessy garage below, took my gun from my shoulder bag, and ran down the stairs.
The lean, shadowed figure was nearly up the vine-covered frame when I came around the side of the house. “Stop right there!” I shouted up at him. “I want you to climb back down, slowly, and when you get to the base of the trellis, stand facing it with your hands up on the frame and your feet about two feet back and spread apart.”
The figure- male and lean, that was all I could see on this moonless night- did as I instructed. In silhouette, I could just make out that long, loose hair was swaying as he descended. When he got to the bottom and laid his hands on the trellis frame at about the height of his head, I felt a little ripple of recognition go through me. Then the side of the house was flooded with electric light, removing all doubt.
Marlinchen stood in the doorway. It was she who’d tripped the floodlight. She was staring at the boy leaning against the side of the house. Staring at his left hand, the one missing its smallest finger.
“Aidan!”
“Stay where you are, Marlinchen,” I called to her.
She looked from me to her brother with growing incomprehension. “Sarah, don’t you understand? This is Aidan!”
If only it were that simple, I thought.
Maybe I should have handled it differently, but it was in my training: never cede control of a situation, not until you’ve satisfied yourself that things are all right. This situation surely wasn’t, and although Aidan had obeyed my commands so far, he was taller and probably stronger than I was, and I wasn’t easy about that.
By now the older boys were also outside. “Aidan?” Liam said, disbelieving.
“The rest of you kids,” I said, nudging Aidan back over to the wall, “go back inside. I’ll handle this.”
Only Colm obeyed me. Liam stayed where he was, as did Marlinchen.
I was patting Aidan down, feeling for suspicious objects. He didn’t move, accepting my touch like a horse being shod. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, faded jeans, and a dirty hooded sweatshirt. In the side pocket I felt a narrow, hard object, about a finger’s length, and carefully drew it out.
“What are you doing?” Marlinchen demanded again, close by my side. “Stop it! That’s Aidan.”
“One, please step back,” I told Marlinchen. “Two, I know it’s Aidan. He was breaking into your house carrying a switchblade knife.” I showed her.
Colm reappeared at my side. “Do you need these?” he said, and my handcuffs gleamed in his hand. He looked pleased with himself for anticipating me.
I cleared my throat awkwardly. “That won’t be necessary,” I said. “I’m not arresting your brother, I’m just taking him downtown for some questioning.”
Marlinchen was about to speak again, when Colm put his hand on her arm and tried to pull her away. “Come on, Marlinchen,” he said. “Let Sarah do her job.”
Marlinchen yanked her arm away and shot him a glare. Colm’s attempt at authority melted away like a thin spring snow; he didn’t try again. Liam hadn’t obeyed my order to go back in the house, but at least he’d backed up to the open doorway. He was watching with a pained expression on his narrow face, as if he wanted to protest but didn’t know what to say.
I’d been in this situation before. A good number of arrests you make as a patrol officer are in front of appalled family members, standing around in harsh porch lights or in messy living rooms, half-dressed, looking at you as if to say, You can’t do this, that’s my husband. My daddy. My son. My brother. It was never easy.
“Sarah-” Marlinchen began, trying again.
“It’s okay, Linch,” Aidan said, speaking for the first time. His voice was rusty, as if with disuse.
“Sarah, can’t you just-”
“No,” I said, “I can’t. My first priority is keeping you and your family safe. I need to talk to your brother and find out what’s what, and I can’t do that here. I’m sorry.”
It’s a hard lesson to learn: good and evil aren’t like a game of cards. In cards, if you know that one player has three spades in their hand, then you can be assured that no one else at the table has more than one.
The mathematics of the human psyche are never that easy. Just because Hugh had proved himself a bad man, that didn’t make Aidan a good one. I had only Aidan’s word that his motives in climbing the trellis were innocent, and I wasn’t sure I could believe him. Victims of violence were at a higher risk of becoming perpetrators of violence themselves, and Aidan, by Marlinchen’s account, had been physically hurt and emotionally demoralized by his father.
Even if Hugh were safe in his rehab-center bed, the Hennessy kids weren’t. By Marlinchen’s account, they had enjoyed their father’s favor, and after Aidan was unjustly sent away, they’d gone on with their lives. Couldn’t he be more than a little angry about that?
I felt sorry for Aidan, but compassion was a luxury I could only afford in the abstract. Cops weren’t taught to discriminate among predators who were wounded by life and those who were merely vicious. That was a distinction made somewhere down the line from us, by judges and juries.
“So,” I said, taking a chair opposite Aidan, in an interview room at Juvenile Justice. “You’re climbing up the trellis to your father’s window, with a knife, at one in the morning after everyone’s in bed asleep. It looks pretty bad on paper.” I leaned back, inviting him to speak. “You don’t have to answer any of my questions, but it might help your situation if you could ease my mind about your actions tonight.”