The Murder House Read online

  Instead, he turns around and finds Paige in the fourth row by the aisle. She moves her head so they can see each other between the other spectators. She mouths the words I love you. He wants to stay there, looking at her, but his lawyer takes his arm and he gets to his feet for the reading of the verdict.

  He turns to face forward but doesn’t look at the jury. He finds a blank spot on the wall and stares at it, thinking through everything that has happened and wondering, How did it come to this?

  He hears a woman’s voice. It turns out the foreperson of the jury is the single mother of two who has her own graphic design business, the one who sits in the front row of the jury box, three people from the left end. Is it a good thing that a woman is the leader? Another question that doesn’t make any difference. All that matters is what she’s going to say next.

  “On count one, murder in the first degree with special circumstances, to wit the murder of Melanie Phillips, we find the defendant, Noah Lee Walker, guilty.”

  Noah sucks in his breath.

  “On count two, murder in the first degree with special circumstances, to wit the murder of Zachary Stern, we find the defendant, Noah Lee Walker, guilty.”

  Noah turns and sees Paige. He starts toward her and she runs up the aisle toward him. There are bailiffs covering the gate that cordons off the spectators, and there are other bailiffs assigned specifically to Noah. Both sets of deputies do their jobs. Paige nearly makes it through, coming within a few feet of the defense table. The deputies grasp Noah firmly, gripping his arms, holding down his neck. He goes limp, compliant, before surprising them by breaking free and reaching Paige.

  It won’t last, but he just wants to touch her one more time.

  “Oh, baby,” she says to him, her face wet.

  He puts his hand gently on the back of her neck and kisses her quickly. Then he moves his mouth to her ear. “Don’t give up on me,” he says as the deputies recover their leverage, pulling him back. When he refuses to go down, they shove a Taser against his neck, electrical current surging through him. His legs and arms go limp just before his mind does. He falls to the floor in a heap, his last memory of this courtroom.

  Book II

  Bridgehampton, 2007–08

  30

  DEDE PARIS and Annie Church have disappeared. They were last seen leaving their last final exam at Yale on May 9, completing their sophomore years. They said something vague to their friends about backpacking through Europe with the cash they’ve saved up while waitressing. They told their parents they were going to stay in New Haven for summer school and rent an apartment with their waitressing money. Neither set of parents made any attempt to verify their stories. Since May 9, over three weeks ago, no known acquaintance or family member has seen either woman.

  Which is exactly how they want it.

  Dede and Annie rush out of the ocean, holding hands, and find their towels and bags and umbrella. They slip into their flip-flops and don their shades. They are two beautiful, tanned twenty-year-olds, euphoric with love, with very few answers in life yet but, fortunately, very few questions, either. They will have the rest of their lives to discover their calling, to do their internships, apply to grad school, and brace for a hard world. This summer, they’re going to discover each other, and nothing else.

  By the time they reach the place where they’re staying, their skin has long dried, and the withering oven-hot sun beats down on them. Fortunately, they don’t have to go far. Their place is just a two-minute walk from the beach. They’re staying at 7 Ocean Drive.

  Well, it’s not their place, exactly. But nobody else is staying here, and it would be a shame for it to stay empty all summer, wouldn’t it?

  “I love how freak-show this house is,” Dede says, looking up at the scowling Gothic structure. She is tall and lanky, with bleached-blond hair cropped like a boy’s that practically glows against her suntan. “I keep waiting for Elvira to pop out or something.”

  They turn east, walking along the southern border of the estate, covered by thick shrubbery that is taller than they are. Dede, the more athletic and adventurous of the two, was the first to explore the shrubbery, looking for a point of entry. The coiled-wire fence hidden within the shrubbery was formidable but nothing that a good set of shears couldn’t handle, if you had time and patience, and they have plenty of both this summer. Besides, it didn’t have to be pretty, just a large enough hole for them to slip through, the slipping made easier by the thick pieces of rubber they’ve tied over the jagged edges of fence to avoid cuts and scratches during ingress and egress. Sure, they have to squat down and turn sideways to make it through, but it’s worth it—rent free and a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion all to themselves.

  As they slide through the opening, Annie looks up at the mansion, the faded multicolored limestone, the stained glass and sharply pitched roofs and medieval-style adornments. She remembers the week she spent in the Hamptons as a girl, when she and her sister heard all about this place.

  “No one ever leaves alive / The house at 7 Ocean Drive,” she says in her best ghoulish horror-movie voice, repeating the poem she’d heard. “Not friend or foe, not man or mouse / Can e’er survive the Murder House.”

  “That creeps me out,” Dede says.

  They head toward the rear of the house. The ten-foot shrubbery provides good cover on the grounds, but the mansion itself is perched on a hill, and they’ve decided their entries and exits should be as covert as possible. In the rear there is a door that, once upon a time, was probably reserved for the servants. The door doesn’t have a knob, just a latch held closed by a chain, another victim of Dede’s shears.

  The smell of disinfectant and soap greets them when they open the door. They scrubbed down the rear entrance the first time they came in, clearing out the cobwebs, mopping the floor, scrubbing the walls. The first thing they see is the door to the basement, which is likewise chained. Sure, they thought it was a little odd that an interior door would be locked in such a way, but they haven’t bothered to investigate. There’s enough house without it, and their tolerance for creepy has just about hit its limit. The basement will remain a mystery.

  They pass through the foyer, ignoring the museum-like rooms on each side, and climb the winding, creaky stairs. A veranda off a bedroom on the third floor that they found last week has a panoramic view of the ocean.

  Annie leans against the railing, sighing with satisfaction. Her hair, up in a ponytail, is the color of cinnamon but has lightened in the sun. Dede comes up behind her and kisses her long bronzed neck. She runs her hands along the outline of Annie’s figure. Annie leans back into Dede’s arms, gently humming as Dede cups her breasts, caresses the skin on her flat belly. “That tickles,” says Annie as she turns to face Dede. They kiss deeply and lie down together on the blanket they’ve spread out, their legs intertwined.

  And then they hear a noise. The hollow clink of metal tapping metal, and footsteps, and then a man whistling. Staying low, they inch toward the side of the veranda and peek through the wooden supports.

  A man approaches the side of the house with a long ladder held at his side. He is shirtless and looks pretty damn good that way, a V-shaped physique, rippled abs. His curly dark hair falls from a Yankees cap, turned backward.

  “Hot tool-belt guy,” Annie whispers. “If I liked boys…”

  The hot tool-belt guy drops the ladder against the side of the house and quickly climbs up. The women don’t move, holding their breath, as he reaches their level on the third floor.

  “Just behave yourselves, ladies,” he says without looking in their direction. “Deal?”

  Busted! Neither woman says anything. Neither woman moves.

  “Deal?” he repeats.

  Dede stands up, leans on the railing. “We have to behave? That’s no fun.”

  Annie stands up, too. “So what’s your story, guy?”

  The man gestures upward with his chin. “Me, I’m just patching up the flat roof. Not having as much fun
as you, looks like.”

  “That’s not fair,” Annie says, which sounds close to an invitation. She gets an elbow from Dede. “So what’s your name?”

  “Noah,” he says.

  “Are you going to turn us in, Noah?” Dede asks.

  He considers them a moment. “Well, that wouldn’t be very nice, would it?”

  “It sure wouldn’t.”

  “Just don’t make a mess while you’re here,” he says. “I’ll have to clean it up.”

  He starts to climb. Both girls can’t help but enjoy the view. Straight or gay, this guy is hard not to admire.

  “And one more thing,” he says as he reaches the flat roof. “Don’t go in the basement.”

  “Why’s that, Noah?”

  “Didn’t you hear? This house is haunted.” The man hauls himself up on the roof and disappears.

  31

  ANNIE’S BEATER VW Bug pulls up to the gate of 7 Ocean Drive. The sun has fallen now at nine o’clock, so all is clear. When they use their car, which isn’t very often, they prefer to enter and exit under the cover of darkness.

  Dede gets out to push open the massive gate, using all her weight to do so. Once it’s open, she turns back, squinting into the car’s headlights.

  Beyond the beams, across the street, she sees someone, standing flat-footed, looking at her. She does a double take, shields her eyes with a hand—which doesn’t really help—and moves away from the blinding beams to get a better look. It seems as if…the figure moves along with her, and then disappears—maybe into the shrubbery?—leaving Dede with spots in her vision from the car lights.

  Dede rushes back to the car and gets in.

  “What’s the matter?” Annie asks.

  “I thought I…saw someone. Across the street. Staring at us. Watching us.”

  Annie strains to look behind her. “I didn’t see anyone when we drove up.”

  “I know. Me either.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Dede lets out a shudder. “Couldn’t really see. A man, looked like. Kind of—you’re gonna laugh—like a scarecrow, sort of? Like, his hair was all stringy and sticking out. He had a hat on, too, I think.”

  “A scarecrow?” Annie looks at Dede with mock horror. “You don’t think…the Tin Man might be out there, too?”

  “Stop.”

  “Not the Cowardly Lion!” Annie brings a hand to her mouth.

  “Just drive the car.”

  Annie pats Dede’s leg. “You’re paranoid, girl. We’re not supposed to be here, so you think everyone’s looking to bust us. I mean, someone walking down Ocean Drive in the summer isn’t exactly unusual.” She puts the car into gear and drives through the gate. Dede closes the gate behind them, taking another look across the street and seeing nothing.

  “That’s the thing, though,” she says when she reenters the car. “He wasn’t walking. He was just watching us. I mean, I think. With the headlights, I couldn’t really see. It could just be my eyes playing tricks.”

  Annie pulls the Beetle onto the grass next to the massive detached garage, hidden from sight. She lets out a sigh. “Good to be home,” she says. “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like—”

  “Would you shut up?”

  As they walk toward the back entrance, they see the ladder the hot tool-belt guy used yesterday, broken down and lying in the grass. “Noah was cute,” Annie says.

  “Was he? Was he cute?” Dede throws another elbow.

  “Now, now, dearest, I only have eyes for you.”

  Inside, they unpack their groceries. They’ve found a place in Montauk that sells lobster tails and oysters at nontourist prices, and Dede apparently looks old enough to buy champagne—the cheapest they had. Tonight is an anniversary of sorts, exactly six months from the day they met on campus.

  Annie gets the food ready while whistling that Wizard of Oz song “If I Only Had a Brain.” Dede keeps punching her playfully in the arm, but it only emboldens Annie. As much as it gets under her skin, it’s one of the reasons Dede loves her.

  Yes, she thinks, I do love her. Dede has no trouble opening her heart to Annie. She’s accepted her sexual orientation for years now. She came out in high school, and she grew up in Santa Monica, where they practically throw you a parade for doing so. Annie, though, had never been with a woman before meeting Dede. Of course, she knew, on some level, but growing up in rural Michigan, she didn’t acknowledge her sexual preference to her friends or her devout Catholic parents, or even to herself. You’d think, by 2007, people would have loosened up enough, but Dede knows as well as anyone that discrimination doesn’t evaporate overnight but slowly fades over time.

  Dinner is great. The dining room is over-the-top ornate, full of all kinds of detail on the walls, little statuettes perched around the room, tall windows with ornamental trim, an enormous chandelier hovering over a big five-sided dark oak table that’s surrounded by high-backed chairs with leather cushions. It’s like Henry VIII meets Count Dracula.

  On their jam box, they play some symphonic music that Annie, the violinist, chose; she plays maestro, conducting the music with her fork. And the lobster and oysters are delicious. The cheap champagne is like Pop Rocks in Dede’s mouth. It goes to her head quickly, enhancing her euphoria. Annie is it, she thinks. She is my one and only.

  The window rattles and Dede turns to it. The wind, surely. But still, she walks over and cups her hand over the glass to block the interior reflection, looking out onto Ocean Drive.

  “Is the Scarecrow still out there? I’d be more worried about him, if he only had a brain.”

  “You’ve been waiting to say that, haven’t you?” Dede looks back and finds Annie sitting on the windowsill on the opposite side of the dining room. “What are you doing?”

  Annie has her Swiss Army knife open, carving into the wood.

  “Annie, you can’t do that! This place is, like, three hundred years old. And it’s not like you can just erase that.”

  Dede walks over to get a look at what Annie is doing. As Dede suspected, she is carving their initials in jagged letters:

  DP + AC

  “I don’t want to erase it,” Annie says. “I want it to be here forever.”

  Dede puts her arm around Annie and draws her close, breathing in her shampoo. “Forever?” she says tentatively. Her heart is pounding. This is one of those moments when she feels so vulnerable, her heart laid bare to be embraced or trampled.

  “Forever.” Annie looks up at Dede. The champagne tastes even better to Dede the second time, on Annie’s tongue.

  32

  THE GIRLS staying at 7 Ocean Drive are now on the second floor of the mansion, the southwest bedroom. The purple-and-gold bedroom, with the canopy bed and the velvet. The master bedroom where, over two hundred years ago, Winston Dahlquist once slept.

  They are naked, and they are doing very fun things to each other. Their young bodies are shapely and athletic and limber, fueled by lust and maybe love—who can say?—and helped mightily by the two bottles of champagne they’ve drunk. The alcohol has undoubtedly lowered their inhibitions, and also impaired their judgment a bit—which is probably why they’ve forgotten to pull the bedroom drapes.

  Now, to be fair, the bedroom window looks south, toward the beach and ocean, with only one house in between, which is not nearly as tall. A reasonable person would thus believe that, even with the drapes open wide as they are, she would not be visible to anyone.

  But a reasonable person might not expect a man to be standing on the beach, peering northward with a pair of binoculars.

  The man who thinks of himself as Holden lowers the binoculars and lets them hang around his neck. Wait—no—no, no. He removes the binoculars and throws them into his bag, which he calls his Fun Bag. This time of night, having binoculars is a dead giveaway—no chance of bird-watching or any other legitimate reason for using them, at ten in the evening. You might just as well wear a sign that says PEEPING TOM.

  Be more c
areful, Holden! He likes calling himself that name. It gets him in the mood, in much the same way the alcohol gets those girls feeling more sexually adventurous. He rolls his neck. Stretches his arms. Cracks his knuckles. Jogs in place a moment, some sand kicking up.

  He picks up his Fun Bag and climbs the beach onto Ocean Drive. He is happy, almost giddy. The sky is a deep purple and a soft wind plays with his hair. He is healthy and prepared. Tonight, he is Holden, and he can do anything.

  He wonders how long they’ll stay up in the bedroom. Could be they’ll fall asleep, exhausted from the alcohol and sex. It won’t matter. He’ll be prepared either way.

  They probably have the doors locked. They certainly should—there are scary people out there! Not that a lock will stop him.

  He has a key to the place, after all.

  But the front door isn’t an option—too creaky and noisy. No, he’ll use his private entry, his secret way into the house, reserved for special occasions.

  Because this has all the makings of a special occasion.

  33

  HOLDEN RESTS in the room that Winston Dahlquist once called the guest parlor, a waiting room of sorts off the ground-floor living room. It is ridiculously ornate, like all the rooms—candelabra and chandeliers and custom molding, a fireplace and a marble mantel, a Persian area rug.

  They are almost directly above him. He closes his eyes and listens to their laughter upstairs. They are in love, he thinks, or at least they sound like it. His heart is pounding. He is here, and they don’t know it. That is special all by itself—they think they’re sharing something intimate, but he gets to be a part of it.

  He opens up a small compact and checks himself over. His hair is smartly combed. His shirt is pressed. His beige trousers are new. His erection is at full mast, pushing against his trousers.