There’s humiliation and humbleness, and then there’s stupidity. Michael was feeling all three. “She was just a girl. Eighteen, maybe nineteen.”
“Hold still.” Michael sat on the hood of the Land Rover, his shirt a bloody mess on the dirt beneath him. Abigail stood between his knees, a first-aid kit open on the hood beside her. “This is going to hurt.”
The cut was shallow but long, a ten-inch diagonal slice that ran from the sixth rib on his right side to a spot just above his heart. Abigail cleaned it with alcohol, then pressed gauze against it and told Michael to hold it there while she unpackaged a dozen butterfly bandages.
“What did she look like?”
“Beautiful but dirty.” He closed his eyes to picture her. “Five-two, maybe, and all of ninety pounds. She had tangled hair, shoulder length and kind of blond. Small jaw. Large eyes.”
“Blue?”
“Like some kind of stone.” Michael lifted the gauze, frowned at the cut then put pressure back on. “She had a mouth like a sailor.”
“Let me guess the rest.” Abigail kept her eyes on the work she was doing. “Half-naked and wild as a cat in heat.”
“You sound like you know her.”
“Victorine Gautreaux. I know her mother.”
“What’s she doing here?” Abigail looked up, lips pursed, and Michael said, “Julian?”
She shrugged. “I’d call it a suspicion, but I’m pretty sure.”
“Why was she in the guest house?”
“I think she ran away from home. Maybe she was looking for Julian. Hang on. Give me that.”
He handed her more bandages. She pressed on the wound, then switched out gauze and applied more pressure.
“Did she run away for a reason?” Michael asked.
“I don’t much care to speculate about the workings of that family, but I do know social services took her away a few times when she was younger-once when she was about seven, then a couple more times when she was twelve or thirteen.”
“Why?”
“Various types of abuse and neglect. No medical history, basically illiterate. The kid barely went to school, and when she did she was fighting all the time, wild and unmanageable. She bit some students, and hurt a few pretty seriously. It went to court, but those idiots in county government never had the courage to take her away. Probably scared of her mother.” Abigail lifted the gauze, studied the wound, then pushed harder. “Kid never had a chance.”
“And you think she’s with Julian?”
“You saw how she looks. I doubt Julian had a chance.”
“She’s pretty, yes. But how would they have met?”
“Walking in the woods. Hell, I don’t know.”
When the bleeding stopped, she held the lips of the wound together and worked from right to left, sealing it shut with butterfly bandages. Afterward, she put fresh gauze over the wound and taped it in place. “You can get it stitched if you want, but that’ll hold it. It won’t be a pretty scar, but looking at the rest of you, I don’t think that’s an issue.” She gathered up the bloody shirt, the bandages. “Let’s go inside.”
Michael put on a fresh shirt, and they checked the house from front to back. Beyond the broken window, nothing looked disturbed. Michael tried one window frame and then the other. “Painted shut.”
“That explains the broken glass.” Abigail fingered raw wood where shards had been knocked out. “But not why she was here in the first place. Has to be a reason.”
They found it on the second pass-through.
“Abigail.” Michael called from the back bedroom. When she came in, she found him in the door of the closet. “Check it out.” He pointed up, and she slipped in next to him. The closet was basically empty-just a rod and a few wire hangers-but a trapdoor was visible in the corner of the ceiling. Around it, white paint was smeared with fingerprints and grime.
“The house has an attic. I don’t think there’s anything up there.” She looked around. “We need something to stand on.”
“I know where to find a stool.”
They retrieved the stool from the ferns outside, and put it down in the closet. “Those look like footprints to you?” Michael pointed at the stool, which was scuffed and muddy.
“Could be. Maybe.”
“Well, let’s take a look.”
“After you.”
Michael said, “I don’t suppose you have a flashlight?”
“Sorry.”
“Can’t have it all, I guess.” He mounted the stool, which wobbled but held his weight. The trapdoor opened, hinged at the back seam. “There’s a ladder. Step back.” Michael opened the trap all the way and pulled the ladder down as he descended from the stool. The ladder was hinged as well, and when it touched the floor, its angle was almost vertical. “That’s better.”
He climbed slowly, a vague, black emptiness above him. When his head broke the plane of the attic, he gave his eyes a few seconds to adjust. Enough light penetrated through ventilation cutouts in the eaves for Michael to get a sense of the space, which was low, but floored. The ceiling was sloped and close enough to touch, the air dry and hot.
“See anything?”
“I see a candle.” It was just a few feet away, a thick shaft of wax melted onto a saucer. “Hang on.” There were matches, too, and he lit one, flame surging, then burning low. He touched the flame to the candlewick and watched light ripple over the floor. He picked up the saucer, and held it high.
“What do you see?”
Michael lifted the candle higher. “You should probably come up here.”
“What is it?”
“Hang on. I’ll make room.”
The pentagram was eight feet wide and looked to have been scratched on the floor with charcoal or the end of a burned stick. It was well drawn, but black and flaky, darker in some places than in others. Around it, another dozen candles were jammed into bottles or melted onto the floor. A giant circle enclosed the pentagram, and in the center of it all lay a pillow and a tangle of rough blankets.
Michael lit more candles, so that light wavered and spread. Outside the circle was a pair of flip-flops, a jug of water and another pair of cutoff jeans. He also saw a bowl, a toothbrush and small tube of lip balm. “Looks like she’s been sleeping here.” Michael toed the blankets. “Hard to say how long.”
“But…” Abigail turned a slow circle. “What is all this?”
“Something weird. Pentagrams. I don’t know.”
“There’re plenty of people around here who’d be willing to swear her mother’s a witch.”
“I’m sorry. You said a witch?”
“From a lengthy line of them. It’s a long story.” Abigail lifted a candle and made her way toward the far corner of the attic. She had to stoop, but it was not far. She peered into dark places where the rafters came down, then turned and looked the length of the room. “What the hell was she doing up here?”
“I have some idea.” Michael nudged the blanket again. He bent and came up with a long, rolled strip of foil wrappers. He let the strip unfold from his fingers. “Condoms.”
“Great.”
He toed the blanket a final time, froze. “And this.”
Abigail came closer, and Michael stood. A revolver rested heavily in his palm, blued steel that showed rust on the barrel and a shine on the trigger. “Colt.357.” He cracked the cylinder and checked the loads. “One round fired.”
Outside, they stood on the porch and gazed down to boats on far water. Michael spread his hands on the railing, and watched for a long time. Both of them shared the same, terrible thoughts. “Big lake,” he finally said.
“We built it just after we married.” Some memory softened her face. “It was my husband’s idea, a great jewel in the middle of the estate. It was supposed to be a sign of change, and of permanence, a metaphor for our new life together.”
Lines flew out. Another diver dropped.
“I wish he’d made it bigger,” Michael said.
“They’ll find it, won’t they?”
“Is the lake deep?”
Abigail looked forlorn. “Not deep enough.”