Laura Lippman - The Last Place

He paused. Tess realized he was gauging Audrey Windsor’s reaction to that piece of information. After all, it was a temporary home to at least two of Billy’s various personas over the past few years. But all she showed was genuine concern and even more genuine confusion.

“He’s been in a car accident and there was a lot of head trauma. He has short-term memory loss and what he does remember about his past is kind of scattered. But he says his name is Billy Windsor. Now, that’s not an unusual name. Could be any number of people-”

“A bad car accident?” There was no doubting the fear in Audrey Windsor’s voice. “When?”

“Oh, six-eight weeks ago.”

Her body relaxed. So she had seen her son since then. She knew he was okay more recently than that. “And you think it’s my Billy?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“What does he look like?”

“Blond. Hazel eyes. About five-ten, with a small frame.” Carl, who had the advantage of having seen Billy Windsor once, was flipping the information, describing the man’s polar opposite.

“Oh.” Audrey Windsor’s voice was almost a purr. “Well, that’s not my Billy, I’m afraid. He was brown-haired and hazel-eyed, and he grew to be much taller than that. I mean-even at seventeen, he was already six feet.”

“I’m so sorry, ma’am. As I said, it was possible good news. Now I feel as if I got your hopes up for nothing.”

“No,” Drey Windsor assured him. “I know my Billy’s gone. I know. He made sure of that.”

“A suicide,” Tess said, hitting the word hard, and the woman recoiled a little bit, as if no one had ever dared to speak that word in her presence.

“Yes.”

“That’s why he never came up, right? He weighted himself down with something.”

“Most likely.”

“What a jerk.”

The contradiction was swift, automatic. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“Why not? I think suicides are selfish. When Billy decided to drown himself, he was thinking only of himself. What about you? Didn’t your feelings count for anything? If someone I loved did that, I’d hate them forever. On some level, he was trying to hurt you, to punish you. What was that about?”

“You have no right to talk about Billy that way. He was a good boy. He tried to do right in every way. That girl broke his heart. He couldn’t help himself.”

Tess shrugged. “If you say so. But all I know is, it’s fifteen years later and you’re sitting here, unable to have your son declared officially dead. I think that’s because you don’t want to admit he is dead. And maybe that’s because he isn’t. Is that possible? He faked his death, just to get away from you?”

Drey Windsor’s mouth opened and closed, like a beached fish trying to breathe. Finally, she said, “Are we done? Is that all you wanted to ask me?”

Carl looked at Tess, unsure of what was going on. But Tess just nodded. “We’re done. But Mrs. Windsor-we do have some bad news for you.”

She stood up and leaned over the woman, as if to whisper in her ear. But her voice was clear and cold. “Billy is dead to you now. He can’t come back here ever again. Do you understand that? He can’t visit you or even risk calling you here because we’re going to have you under surveillance. If Billy tries to see you, we’re going to have him arrested. We know what he’s done. Tell him that, if he calls. We know what he’s done and we’re coming for him.”

“Something come up, didn’t it?” Mrs. Windsor was crying now. “I always said something would come up, that it was only a matter of time they’d find a piece of bone or something. But he didn’t mean to do it, you have to understand. It was an accident. And it was so long ago. A boy shouldn’t be held accountable for such things.”

“What about a man, Mrs. Windsor? What about a man who keeps doing this, over and over again?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Billy made a fresh start, that’s all I ever wanted for him. What he does for a living-well, what else is he to do? At least he’s responsible. Really, he’s protecting the rest of us, don’t you see? It has to go somewhere.”

Tess looked back at Carl, but he was as baffled as she was by Drey Windsor’s sobbing confession.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re DNR, aren’t you? Not real police, but the damn DNR. Well, I’ve never talked to you folks before and I’m not going to start now. You get out of here unless you have a warrant or a reason to take me in. And I don’t think you do.”

“Why do you think we’re from the Department of Natural Resources, Mrs. Windsor?”

Something shifted. Tess had betrayed some ignorance and Drey Windsor had regained control of herself. She knew something they didn’t, and that gave her power. Her tears slowed. She drew herself up, proud and closed off.

“We may very well come back with a warrant,” Tess said, knowing they could never come back, that they had pushed this lie too far already. “For you and your son, because you clearly knew all this time what happened to Becca Harrison and that makes you an accessory. But remember what I told you, Mrs. Windsor. Billy is dead to you now. Your only hope of seeing him again is turning him in to the police. At least that way you’ll be able to visit him in prison.”

“Billy won’t go to prison,” his mother said. “He could never live so confined. He’ll kill himself before he lets you take him.”

“He’ll probably pretend to kill himself. But I don’t think he’s brave enough to die, more’s the pity.”

“You went too far back there.”

Carl had beaten Tess to her own accusation.

“I went too far? Pretending to be a cop is stupid. It’s something you can get arrested for.”

“I was a cop.”

“Was being the operative word. I noticed you didn’t say you were a Toll Facilities cop.”

“A cop is a cop.”

“If you are a cop. But you’re not, not anymore. We agreed to pretend to be social workers from the hospital. Which would have allowed us to be warm and friendly, gain her confidence. The moment you said police she was on alert, looking for traps. She may not know everything her son has done, but she knows something.”

“She knows a lot more than she did, thanks to you. Billy Windsor’s going to run now, because of you. He’s out of here, we’ll never find him. When you’re in an investigation, you play your cards close to your vest.”

“From what movie did you pluck that cliché?”

Carl ignored the taunt. “All we had to do was wait, and he would have come back.”

“Do you seriously believe the two of us were going to pull off surveillance in a gated retirement village with a private security force? They would have thrown us out in the first fifteen minutes. True, Billy Windsor won’t be able to go near his mother, may not even dare to call her at home. That will make him more desperate to accelerate his plan, whatever it is. And speeding up might make Billy sloppy.”

Carl was driving for the first time since Mickey Pechter took batting practice on his knee four days earlier. He suddenly wrenched the steering wheel to the right and pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned restaurant.

“Let me ask you something. When did we decide you were the boss? I thought we were partners on this, but you’re always calling the shots, the one who’s always right. Is it because I didn’t tell you about what happened to me, or because I didn’t tell the cops about Mary Ann Melcher? Well, I’ll remind you that I was right-he isn’t dead. I’ll also remind you that I saved your life.”

“Saved my life?”

“When that creep broke into your house.”