The Chosen One

50

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Sunday March 26, 20.55 PST

In normal circumstances, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho would have been a perfectly lovely place to visit. Not that Maggie could remember what normal circumstances were. But a weekend here, in this snow-covered ski resort of a town, with its alpine chalets and cosy, crackling fires, would have been a treat. With the right person.

It had taken two tiny planes to get here, first the short hop from Aberdeen to Seattle then a connection for the longer flight to Coeur d’Alene – Maggie willingly dipping into the Sanchez slush fund to pay cash for a whisky miniature on each leg, the better to suppress the fact that her battered, aching body was now folded into a glorified baked beans can bobbing through icy skies powered by no more than a propeller.

She thought about the upcoming encounter with the Everetts. Should she stick with the story Mr Schilling had imagined for her? That she was an insurance agent needing to check out a claim that might lead to a windfall? Too cruel. So she came up with something else. Not brilliant, but it would have to do.

The cab now turned off the main thoroughfare through the town, with its cafés and charming bookshop, past several residential roads, and finally onto a lane that wound its way up a mountainside. So far up the mountain that she felt compelled to ask the driver to check his satnav was working properly. He gave her a look that told her she was not in New York any more.

She checked her watch. Nearly 9pm. It was crazy to do this in the evening – who wanted to open the door of their remote home to a stranger emerging out of the darkness? – but urgency drove her on.

The headlights were set on full-beam now; the street lighting had long gone and the last car they had seen had passed nearly ten minutes ago. Maggie looked over her shoulder: some distant lights still twinkled.

‘You a journalist?’ the driver said suddenly, breaking the silence.

That took her by surprise. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Only, we don’t get much call to come up round here. ‘Cept to see the compound. And that’s usually media.’

‘The compound?’

‘That’s right. The Aryan Nations compound. They’re not far from here.’

Maggie dimly recalled reading about the sect of white supremacists who had tried to set up a racially pure colony in the Idaho snow. ‘I’d forgotten that. How near?’

The driver pointed towards the top right of his windscreen. ‘Couple of hills that way.’

‘But round here, it’s not…’

‘Oh no. I’m not saying anything negative about the folks who live up here. They’re not all like that, no way.’

Maggie could hear a ‘but’ in his voice.

‘Except?’

He twisted his head over his shoulder. ‘All I’m saying is, people who come all the way up here – it ain’t for the nightlife. They’re trying to get away from something. Or someone.’

Maggie nodded.

‘With the Aryan Nations, it’s black people. With some of the others, in these little shacks-’ they had passed one or two barely-discernible outlines of buildings a long way off the road, surrounded by acres of nothing, ‘-it’s the Feds. You know, the guys who think the federal government is coming to take their guns away? And some folks just need to run away.’

Like Anne and Randall Everett, thought Maggie.

They drove for another ten minutes, climbing ever steeper, until the satnav told them their destination was approaching on the right.

Maggie asked the driver to pull up twenty yards away and to stay: she would pay him once they were back among what now seemed like the bright urban lights of Coeur d’Alene.

‘How long you gonna be?’

‘That’s the trouble. It might be thirty seconds, it might be an hour or more. But keep the meter running.’

He grumbled, but finally agreed and she stepped out into the bracing air. It was not just cold but fresh enough to make the skin tingle, the way it does after a plunge into iced water. Standing there listening, she became aware of a sound she had probably not heard in years: complete, impeccable silence.

The darkness was total, too. There was no fraying at the edges, no dull, electric orange of city lights hovering above the horizon. The only light to break this darkness came from the stars and the lamp above the entrance of what she dearly hoped was the Everett residence.

This house was much closer to the road than the others. There was a modest fence, but no hint of the quasi-military compounds she had seen on the way up. Indeed, as she got nearer, she could see that the house itself would not have looked out of place in most American suburbs. It was timber-fronted, with a two-step walk-up, a porch with two neatly arranged outdoor chairs covered in tarps, waiting for the winter to end, and a wind-chime, jangling in the chill air.

The porch light was encouraging, but it was hard to tell if there was any light within. Heavy curtains were drawn across both the upstairs windows. It was late, no doubt about it. Folks out here – in Idaho, for heaven’s sake – were bound to be early to bed. And the Everetts would be in their sixties by now…

Maggie did what she always did when faced by a moment of fear: closed her eyes for a moment, then took a step forward. She knocked on the door.

There was a creak and then the sound of an interior door opening, followed by a brief cone of light, visible in the pane of glass above the door, pushing forward into the hallway. And now another light came on. Maggie waited for a voice to call out asking her to identify herself. But it did not come. Instead, without fear or hesitation, the door opened.

That the woman was the mother of Pamela Everett, Maggie could tell instantly. All Principal Schilling had told her was that Pamela was strikingly pretty, nicknamed Miss America. This woman had the fine features, the clean lines, of a long-ago beauty queen.

‘Hello,’ Maggie smiled, hating herself for what she was about to do. ‘My name is Ashley Muir and I’m so sorry to disturb you so late at night. But I’ve come a long way to fulfil the wish of a dying man. A dead man, now. My late husband. This is something I promised him I would do. I know it’s crazy, but can I ask if you are Mrs Anne Everett?’

The woman looked aghast, as if even the uttering of her name out loud violated a sacred taboo. But, Maggie noticed, she did not slam the door. Nor did she call for her husband.

Maggie pressed on. ‘My husband died a few months ago. In one of our last conversations he told me about his first love. Your daughter, Pamela.’

Now the woman’s face turned white, and it was as if she had aged by twenty years. ‘How did you find me?’

‘My husband did that. Worked that computer for months, I don’t know how he did it. But he was determined, Mrs Everett.’

The woman remained frozen to the spot, still holding the door, unable to speak.

‘Do you think, Mrs Everett, we could speak inside? I promise this won’t take long.’

Still unspeaking, staring at her as if at an apparition, Anne Everett widened the door to let her in. Maggie stepped inside hesitantly, wanting her body to convey what she felt: that she was treading carefully here, not wanting to bring more pain to this house of loss.

There were reminders everywhere: a large photograph of Pamela Everett in the costume of high school graduation, several smaller photos of a girl at the seaside, on a rocking horse, blowing out birthday candles on the hallway table. For the second time in a week, Maggie looked at a woman she had never met and thought of her mother.

‘Could we sit down?’

Still in silence, Mrs Everett ushered Maggie into a sitting room organized around a single chair facing a TV set; next to it, a side table bearing a tray with a half-eaten supper of cold meat and boiled potatoes.

Maggie sat on a couch whose smooth lines suggested it was rarely used. Anne Everett perched on the edge of her chair.

‘My late husband was in the class below your daughter. He told me she’d have never even noticed him. But he had a crush on her. His first.’ Maggie smiled, the rueful smile of a widow. ‘He said he had hardly thought about her for years, until he got his own diagnosis. And then he remembered what he heard about Pamela Everett. The “beautiful Pamela”, he called her. And how she had died from a sudden illness. And it hurt him, Mrs Everett. It hurt him to think that maybe people would think your daughter had been forgotten. Because she hadn’t been forgotten. He had remembered her. And it was so important to him that you knew that. Because, and this is what he said, if people remember us, then it means a little part of us lives on.’

Maggie had told herself it was a white lie, but that did not reduce the shame she felt for what she had done. When she saw the tear falling slowly down the cheek of Anne Everett it made her loathe herself all the more. She had crossed the line, she realized. Nothing – not Stuart, not Baker’s presidency, not Forbes, not her own safety – could justify this. She began to stand up, mumbling the beginnings of an apology.

‘Please don’t go!’ The woman spoke with such urgency that her voice pushed Maggie back onto the cold, stiff couch.

Anne Everett wiped the tear from her eye and, to Maggie’s great surprise, revealed the beginnings of a smile. ‘Young lady, I have waited twenty-six years for this day.’

Involuntarily, Maggie’s face turned into a mask of surprise.

‘Oh yes. Twenty-six years and nine days, I have waited for someone to come and say what you just said. That my daughter lived. That her life meant something.’

‘Why did you doubt it?’

‘Doubt it? I was never allowed to believe it.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Of course you don’t. How could you? How could anyone? No one ever knew. Except me. And Randall.’ She was animated now, leaping up from the chair. ‘Are you a whisky drinker, Mrs Muir? I am,’ she said, without waiting for Maggie’s answer. From under the side table, she produced a bottle, now down to its last third, and a used glass. She poured herself a healthy measure and downed half of it.

‘My daughter’s only “illness” was to have a beautiful face. That was her illness. She wasn’t sick. Pamela never had a day’s sickness in her life. She was healthy as an ox, like her mother. Same bones, same genes.’

She looked to the wall, to the picture of Pamela in a ball gown, at the James Madison High prom.

‘We said that she had gotten sick. That was the deal.’

‘The deal?’

‘That’s what he made us say. After the fire.’

Maggie felt herself shudder. ‘What fire?’ But she knew the answer already.

‘Twenty-six years ago, on March 15, there was a fire at the Meredith Hotel in Aberdeen, Washington. Huge blaze. They said that everyone survived. That they got all the guests out of the rooms, standing outside in the street in their pyjamas and all.’ She paused, a shadow falling over her face again. ‘But it wasn’t true.’

‘Pamela was in that hotel?’

Slowly, as if her head weighed heavily on her neck, Mrs Everett nodded. ‘We don’t know who with. Some boy, on spring break. Using her for sex. She was cursed with a body that men hungered for.’ She looked down at her hands, clasped together. ‘We didn’t know she had been in the hotel. We thought she was having a sleepover with her girlfriends.’

She smiled a bitter smile at her own naïveté.

‘It was early the next morning. We weren’t even aware she was missing. We hadn’t called the police. We were just waiting for her to come home, like she always did on a Sunday after a Saturday night. And then there he was, at the door.’

‘Who was there?’

‘The man. From the hotel, I thought – at first, anyway. He explained there had been an accident, a fire. Pamela had been killed.’ The last word came out in a croak. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You take your time.’

Anne Everett poured the rest of the bottle into a glass and swallowed it whole. ‘You see,’ she said, looking up at Maggie, ‘I’ve carried this for so long. Randall never would let me tell. But it’s eaten me alive, this secret. He took it to his grave, but it killed him too.’

Maggie nodded, knowing she needed to say nothing.

‘The man said Pamela was dead. And there would never be anything we could do to bring her back. All that would be left was her reputation. She could either be remembered as a “goodtime girl” – those were the words that man used – who had died in someone’s bed, or as prom queen Pamela Everett of James Madison High. It was up to us.

‘All we had to do was tell people, starting that day, that Pam was not feeling well, that she’d come down with something. That she couldn’t see anyone. Then, a week or so later, we should say it was more serious. That she was being transferred to Tacoma. Still no visitors allowed. Then, a week after that, there would be an announcement of her death. He would take care of everything. We wouldn’t have to do anything, except stay home and tell people our daughter was sick.

‘And in return he would pay us a lot of money, more than Randall would make in a year. Hell, in five years. To show he was serious, he had one of those attaché cases with him. The kind men used to carry back then. And inside it was cash. A lot of cash. I don’t think I’d ever seen that much money in my life. And he promised there would be more.

‘Well, Randall threw him out, of course. Said it was blood money. How dare he? Lots of noise. But the man left the case there. Just sitting in that room in Aberdeen where Pamela should have been.

‘The hours went by and we were sobbing about our daughter, our little baby. But we were also looking at that money. All that money. Might have been fifty thousand dollars in that bag.’

Now she hunched over, making small, noiseless sobs. Maggie crossed the vast space between them and placed a hand on her shoulder. Instantly, like an animal reflex, Mrs Everett grabbed it and held it tight. Raising her head, her eyes rheumy with tears, she let out a howl of anguish. ‘I said we should take the money! God curse me for it, I accepted it. I did it.’

‘I understand,’ Maggie said, shaken.

‘I believed what he said, you see. He said we could get away; we should get away. Aberdeen would only ever be a “place of death” for us. And we could use the money to set up some kind of memorial for Pamela. Perhaps a scholarship. Some way of keeping her memory alive. So we said yes. We called the number on the card. Randall made the call.

‘Of course we never did set up that memorial. We were too ashamed. Everyone there at the funeral, believing Pamela had suffered through a terrible illness. Imagine that, lying about your own child’s death. We deserved to be cast out. So that’s what we did. We cast ourselves out. As far away as possible. Middle of nowhere. So that we wouldn’t have to see anybody ever again. But you can’t run away from your own shame. It stays with you.’

Maggie spoke softly. ‘The money? Did the man ever pay it?’

Anne Everett looked up, as if jolted from a daydream. ‘Oh yes, all of it. It kept coming into the bank account, a few thousand more, piling up month after month. I can’t bring myself to spend a penny of it, of course. Nor could Randall. It’s filthy.’

‘And who did it come from?’

‘Like I said, we never knew. We were too grief-stricken to ask. Too stupid too, probably. We talked about it, of course. Wondering and guessing. Until Randall stopped talking, a few years ago. His mouth just clammed up, I guess. That’s shame for you.’

Maggie had a question burning to get onto her tongue until it could be held back no longer. ‘And what about this…boy she was with that night? Did you ever-’

Anne Everett shook her head furiously. ‘Never did, never wanted to. We would have killed him with our bare hands if we’d have found out who he was.’

‘Do you have your suspicions?’

‘Well, it’s funny you should ask that.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Put it this way, this last year or two, I’d been wondering when somebody would knock on that door and ask about Pamela. No one ever did, but I thought they might. I thought a journalist might come here.’

‘Why a journalist?’

‘Because of the boy my Pamela loved when she was at high school, the boy she adored until the day she died.’

‘What boy?’

‘Haven’t you guessed? I thought you’d have guessed by now.’ She looked into the bottom of her glass as if it were a deep well. ‘Pamela was in love with Stephen Baker.’