“I thought you said you were away for a year,” Alice says.
“I—I got more time for bad behavior,” I say. “So yeah, I was a bad, bad girl and my father was a draconian hard-ass—”
“Who sent all his juvies to a place called Pine Crest Child Care after 1975,” Davis supplies. “Why didn’t he keep sending them to Hudson?”
“Because Hudson closed down in 1975. My father led the fight to have it closed down.”
“Because of what happened to you there.”
“In part.”
“Oh, I think in large part, Mattie. It says here”—he plucks a loose sheet of paper off the desk—“that you were raped by a guard there.”
I don’t answer. I am gripping the edge of the desk to keep from shaking, but it’s making the desk shake instead. Lady Justice’s scales tremble and chime.
“Is that true, Mattie?” Alice asks in a small voice.
“Yes,” I say. “My father hadn’t counted on that consequence of my adjudication. Ironic, huh? They sent me away to teach me a lesson for making out with a boy and I get raped by a thirty-four-year-old guard.”
“Your father had the place closed down. The guard was sentenced to ten to twenty. The next year Pine Crest Child Care opened up—a brand-spanking-new juvenile facility! I’m surprised he didn’t name it for you, Mattie. You must have felt proud!”
“Hey,” Alice says, “I was at Pine Crest. It’s—”
“Not as bad as Hudson,” I say, “but that’s not saying much.”
“No, but your daddy sure thought it was great. He sent every one of his adjudications there . . . almost as if he had a financial interest in the place . . . oh wait . . .” Davis whips out a piece of paper from another pile. I’d be impressed with how he’s put the whole story together if I didn’t know how all the papers had been stacked in that bottom drawer. I’ve made it easy for him. “Look, he did! Pine Crest was built on land your family owned. Your father held a ten percent share of the facility, so every time he sent some kid there he made a pretty penny.”
“It’s like that ‘kids for cash’ scandal in Pennsylvania,” Alice says, staring at me.
“Exactly,” Davis crows. “Only Judge Lane never got caught—at least he hadn’t gotten caught. This here letter, though, from the federal prosecutor, says that they were gonna be looking into some irregularities and unorthodox connections between Judge Lane’s adjudications and his financial interests in Pine Crest. It’s here with all the other files.” Davis waves his hand at the stacks arrayed on the desk. “And here’s another thing I noticed.” He holds up another page, this one splattered with bloodstains. I know what’s on this one. It’s my father’s suicide note. It was on his desk when I found him.
“Forgive me,” he’d written, “but justice must be served.”
“Your daddy shot himself, didn’t he, Mattie? Because he knew the feds were coming for him.”
“I thought your family all died from carbon monoxide poisoning,” Alice says, giving me a suspicious look.
“He tampered with the pipes on the furnace so that the house would fill with gas,” I tell Alice. I don’t care about explaining to Davis but Alice deserves the truth. She’s too young to have been one of those kids my father sent to Pine Crest for a minor offense, but if she had ever been in my father’s courtroom that’s what would have happened to her. “I think he thought that the shame of the scandal would be too much for us to live with. He may have been right about my mother; she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and would have been truly lost without him. I can even forgive him for including me in his plans. He thought I was ruined after what happened to me at Hudson. He blamed himself—that’s why he contributed to having Pine Crest built—but I once overheard him saying to my mother that it would have been better if I had been murdered. He said being raped had turned me into a promiscuous slut.”
“Why didn’t you die that night?” Alice asks.
“I wasn’t here. I was, true to my promiscuous nature, out with a guy. Frank Barnes, to be precise. Only we had a fight and I came back early. I came in through the basement and up the back stairs. I didn’t realize that there was gas in the house until I got to Caleb’s room. I could barely rouse him. I dragged him down the front stairs and met my father at the bottom.” I pause, as breathless as I’d been in that headlong flight from my home all those years ago. “He was coming out of this room, a bandanna over his mouth, waving his gun. I turned and pushed Caleb out the front door—I told him to run—and I was right behind him in the doorway when I heard a gunshot. Then everything went black. When I came to, Frank was here. He’d found me lying in the doorway, outside in the air enough that I didn’t asphyxiate, but inside enough so I didn’t freeze to death. The bullet had only grazed my scalp, knocking me out but not causing any real injury. Caleb . . .” I gulp air that tastes like blood and gasoline, the smells I’ve carried with me since that night. “Caleb wasn’t so lucky. Frank’s father found him in the barn, his head caved in. My father must have chased him out there and killed him. Then he came back in, stepped over my body, presumably thinking I was dead, went into his study, and shot himself.”
I look away from Alice to Davis. “He was sitting where you are now, blood splattered all over the papers on his desk, those papers you’ve got out now, and even over that window . . .” As I look up at the window my voice freezes. Part of the window has been covered by the drapes to keep the cold and snow out, but the uncovered part is frosted by mist and covered with the same splatter marks I saw that night when I made Frank and his father show me what had happened.
No one has to know he went like this, Hank Barnes had said to me. You don’t want the world to see him like this. They’ll drag his name through the mud and yours and Caleb’s along with it. It will bring up all that old business about your time at Hudson. That’s how people will see you, Mattie, like you’re tainted by your father’s deeds. Do you want that?
No, I had told him.
Then let me help you put this behind you. The medical examiner is a good friend of mine and your father’s. He’ll say they all died of carbon monoxide poisoning. It’s what your father wanted. After all, the person who is guilty has been punished. I think your father would agree that justice has been served.
That’s what the splatter pattern on the window looks like. The constellation of Virgo. Justice. The same pattern that has appeared on every window in the house, in the stars in Caleb’s room, written in the dust on my father’s desk. If justice has been served, then why is Caleb still demanding it? Is it because I hid the truth?
As if in answer to my unvoiced question I see a figure rise up on the other side of the frosted glass—a specter coalescing out of swirling snow. But it’s not Caleb; it’s Frank Barnes. He has a gun in one hand; his other hand is clenched in a fist. When he’s sure that I see him he holds one finger up. This is a signal we had when we used to play war games in the woods with Caleb. He’s counting to five. I’m supposed to do something on the count of five. But what? Out of the corner of my eye I see that Alice is leaning across the desk looking at some paper Davis is showing her. That’s why she doesn’t see Frank—who’s put up a second finger and is pointing the gun at Davis. Oh. I nod, and Frank puts up a third finger. I brace my left foot on the ground and pivot slightly toward Alice while keeping Frank in my peripheral vision. Four fingers. I check that there’s nothing behind Alice that will strike her head. Then as Frank begins to lift a fifth finger I spring forward and tackle Alice to the ground at the same second that the window explodes.