Ninety-Six

Rhonda said hello to Mrs. Collins at the reception desk in the anteroom of her brother’s small accountancy practice and pointed to his office door.

‘He’s not with anyone, is he?’

Mrs. Collins smiled kindly as she shook her head.

‘I think he was just getting ready to go out for lunch, dear. You can go right in, Rhonda.’

Rhonda knocked twice and pushed the door open before a reply.

Ricky was pretty much the opposite of his sister. Tall with neatly trimmed hair and a sportsman’s physique, he was dressed conservatively in a light gray suit, baby blue shirt and a blue on red tie. The introductions were quick and to the point, and Ricky’s smile dissipated once Rhonda told him why she’d brought Hunter to see him.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t see how I can help,’ he said to Hunter, looking a little rattled. ‘I was ten when it happened and we weren’t even here, remember?’ He directed the question to Rhonda, who nodded. ‘It happened during Christmas vacation and we had gone over to Grandma’s house in Napa. We only heard about it when we got back.’

‘I understand, and I don’t want you to tell me about the incident. I know you know nothing about that. But if you could tell me a little about Andrew himself, that could help. Rhonda told me that you were friends?’

Ricky looked at his sister in a reprimanding way. ‘I guess.’ He shrugged. ‘He . . . didn’t have many friends.’

‘Why was that?’

Another shrug. ‘He was very quiet and shy. He much preferred spending time with his comic books than with people.’

‘But you guys did spend some time together, right? Played games, that kinda stuff?’

‘Yeah, sometimes, but not always. He was . . . different.’

Hunter’s eyes narrowed a fraction. ‘In what way?’

Ricky paused and checked his watch before crossing to the door to his office and sticking his head outside. ‘Mrs. Collins, if anyone calls, I’m out for lunch.’ He closed the door behind him. ‘Why don’t you have a seat?’

Hunter took one of the two chairs in front of Ricky’s desk. Rhonda preferred to lean against the window frame.

‘Andrew was . . . sad most of the time,’ Ricky said, returning to his desk.

‘Did he ever tell you why?’

‘His parents argued a lot, and that really upset him. He was very close to his mother.’

‘Not so close to his father?’ Hunter asked.

‘Yes, he was as well, but he talked about his mother more.’

Hunter’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he subtly checked the display window – Whitney Myers. Hunter returned the phone to his pocket without answering it. He’d call her later.

‘Kids always talk about their mothers,’ Rhonda offered.

‘No.’ Ricky shook his head firmly. ‘Not the way he did. He talked about her as if she was a goddess. Like she couldn’t do anything wrong.’

‘Idolizing her?’ Hunter asked.

‘Yes. He put her on the pedestal. And when she was sad, he was really sad.’ Ricky started fidgeting with a paper clip. ‘I know that sometimes he used to watch his mom cry and that just ate away at him.’ A nervous chuckle escaped Ricky’s lips. ‘He used to watch her a lot . . . in a weird way.’

Rhonda cocked her head. ‘What does that mean?’

Ricky’s eyes moved from her to Hunter, who kept his face steady.

‘Andrew told me about this secret hiding place he had. And I know he used to spend a lot of time there.’

Hunter knew that a secret or special place wasn’t uncommon amongst kids. Especially ones like Andrew – sad, quiet, with few friends – the bullied ones. It’s usually just an isolated location where they can get away from everything and everyone that upsets them. A place where they feel safe. But if a child starts reverting to it more and more, it’s usually because they feel the need to increase their isolation – from everyone and everything. And the consequences can be severe.

‘That’s not so bad,’ Rhonda said. ‘Me and my friends used to have a secret place when we were kids.’

‘Not like Andrew’s,’ Ricky countered. ‘At least I hope not. He took me there one day.’ A muscle flexed on his jaw. ‘He made me promise to never tell anyone.’

‘And . . . ?’ Rhonda asked.

Hunter waited.

Ricky’s eyes moved away from both of them. ‘I’d pretty much forgotten about that place.’ His stare returned to Hunter. ‘His secret place was this secluded bit in the attic in his house. Their attic was packed with boxes and boxes of junk and old furniture. There was so much stuff piled up that it created a wall, a partition of sorts, dividing the attic into two separate spaces. If you went up there via the stairs in the house, you could only see one of them. The other one was completely hidden behind this barricade of stuff. You couldn’t even get to it, unless you started moving things. And you’d have to move a lot of things.’

‘And this hidden space in the attic was Andrew’s secret place?’ Rhonda asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘But you just said no one could get to it,’ she challenged.

‘Not through the house,’ Ricky clarified. ‘Andrew used to climb up the trellis on the outside wall and get in through this tiny round window on the roof.’

‘The roof?’

‘Yes. He was good at it too. He could climb that wall like a real-life Spiderman.’

‘So what was so strange about his secret attic place?’ Rhonda asked.

‘It was directly above his parents’ bedroom. He said that when they were in the room, he could hear everything.’

‘Oh my God.’ Rhonda pulled a face. ‘You think he used to listen to them while they were doing it?’

‘More than that. You remember his house, right?’

She nodded.

He turned towards Hunter. ‘It was an old-style wooden house, with high ceilings. Andrew had scraped away at the gaps between some of the wooden planks in the attic’s floor, at different locations. I know because he showed them to me. Through them he could see the entire bedroom. He used to spy on his parents.’

‘No way,’ Rhonda said with wide eyes. ‘That’s just nasty. What a pervert.’ She cringed.

‘But what freaked me out about the place,’ Ricky continued, ‘was that in this little corner I saw a few cotton balls and rags stained with blood.’

‘Blood?’ Hunter asked.

‘Blood?’ Rhonda repeated.

Ricky nodded. ‘I asked him about it. He told me it was from a nosebleed.’

Hunter frowned.

‘When Andrew was younger he’d got really ill with flu, and that somehow messed up the inside of his nose. I know that’s true because it happened in school a few times. If he started sneezing or if he just blew his nose a little too hard, blood would go everywhere.’

Hunter sensed Ricky’s uneasiness. ‘But you didn’t believe the bloody cotton balls and rags came from his nosebleed, did you?’

Ricky looked at his sister and then at the paper clip he’d been fidgeting with. It was all bent and out of shape. He lifted it up and showed it to Hunter. ‘I saw some of these on the floor next to the cotton balls. They also had blood on them. Maybe he was picking at his nose with paper clips, who knows? As I said, he was stranger than most. I didn’t know what was going on, but the whole place felt creepy. I told Andrew that I had to go home and got out of there as quick as I could.’

Hunter knew why the bloody cotton balls, rags and paper clips – Andrew was self-harming. He was substituting pain for pain, trying to take hold of his suffering. He couldn’t control the emotional pain he went through every time his parents argued, so, to disconnect from that hurt, he created his own, by inflicting his own wounds. That way he could calmly watch himself bleed, detached from his own suffering and his underlying rage. It was a pain he could completely control, down to how deep the cut was, and how much he’d bleed.