Alex Barclay - The Drowning Child

Jesus Christ, Gary is scary.

I may want to fuck him.

Eye on the prize.

‘I told you,’ said John. ‘I’ve gone through – over and over – what happened that Monday morning. Nothing has changed since the statement I made. It’s all there.’ He had lowered his voice, taken the edge off the tone.

‘Well, I need you to go through it again,’ said Gary. He sat down.

‘I know you’re looking for inconsistencies,’ said John, ‘but there are none. I’ve told this a million times now.’

‘And we’re ready to hear it again,’ said Gary.

John Veir looked like he was about to blow. But he went through the details again, and they were the same. Gary cut in at the point where John Veir ran up the stairs to get Caleb to hurry up.

‘You walked in on your son in his bedroom,’ said Gary. ‘You had called up to him several times, he had ignored you, you were late for work, he didn’t care, he was disrespecting you, something he was increasingly doing, something you had called him out on many times. And it infuriated you. You grabbed him—’

‘I did not lay a finger on him,’ said John.

Steely. Calm.

‘You didn’t mean to hurt him,’ said Gary. ‘You shook him, he lost his balance, he fell...’

‘No, sir.’

‘He struck his head against the wardrobe, or against the bed, he fell back on the floor—’

‘No, sir. That is not what happened.’

‘You knew it was too late,’ said Gary. ‘You’d gone too far. You panicked. You knew you couldn’t tell your wife what you’d done. You took your son’s cell phone and you called your sister. You asked for her help. You asked her to talk you through what you should do—’

‘There’s no way my sister would—’

‘Then you went up into the attic, you took down your sleeping bag, you placed your son’s body inside, carried him down the stairs, into the garage...’

Tears welled in John Veir’s eyes.

Tears of... what? Guilt?

‘No!’ said John. He wiped away the tears. ‘That is not what happened. My son walked out of our house on his own two feet. He—’

‘You opened the trunk of your car and placed your son’s body inside,’ said Gary. ‘You closed the trunk. You were now late for work. Your only option was to show up at three p.m. and say that you got the shift time wrong. You could have called in sick, but that would have set off alarm bells.’

John shook his head. They all sat in silence. Moments passed.

‘And that’s it,’ said John. ‘You don’t know any more. Where did I put the body? Where is that sleeping bag now?’

In the landfill site?

‘In fact, where is there any evidence for what you’re saying?’ said John. ‘You talk about my sister? Well, you better watch out for her. You better watch out. That’s all I’m going to say.’

‘You tell me where the body is,’ said Gary. ‘And where that sleeping bag is.’

‘I don’t know anything about the sleeping bag,’ said John. ‘I have no idea why that’s not there.’

And the body?!

‘And I hope to God there’s no body,’ said John, his eyes boring through Ren as if he had read her mind. ‘You think I want to think about that? Are you that fucking cruel?’

Gary recalibrated. ‘I can see that you’re a good person, John. You’re an honorable man, you fought for your country, your boss respects you a lot. Apparently, you’re a disciplined and fair corrections officer. You like to be in control. I understand that. But I also understand what happens when things get out of control, when the pressure gets too much, or just when someone doesn’t have respect for the things you value. Caleb was twelve years old – it’s a difficult age.’

‘I agree with you,’ said John. ‘But that doesn’t mean I did anything to my son.’

‘John, we need your help on this,’ said Ren. ‘We need you to give us everything you got. You see all the people we have here coming together to help find your son. We care deeply about this. We need the truth. I believe you can tell us the truth.’

‘I am telling you the truth,’ said John.

‘I’m afraid I don’t believe that you are,’ said Ren.

He looked at her, his eyes suddenly black with anger. ‘I did not harm my son. If you hooked me up to a polygraph—’

Hello? ‘You declined a polygraph,’ said Ren.

He held eye contact with her. ‘I know. What I’m saying is, I’m telling the truth. And separate to that, I don’t trust polygraphs.’

‘That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,’ said Ren. ‘You either believe that the polygraph would prove you’re truthful, or, as per your original reason for refusing, you believe that it wouldn’t.’

‘I’m exhausted,’ said John. ‘I’m just... so exhausted. I am so goddamned stressed that I don’t know how my body’s going to react: my heartbeat, my sweat glands, whatever the hell else you measure. You know who my sister is. There is no way she would ever recommend anyone taking a polygraph, guilty or innocent. I know how these things work.’

‘Taking a polygraph means that, if you pass,’ said Gary, ‘we can eliminate you, and focus on—’

‘You won’t eliminate me,’ said John. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot? Not after the way you’re talking. At the very most, you might set me aside, until you can come up with a new fairy tale about how I hurt my own son.’

‘Of course we’ll eliminate you if new evidence arises pointing to someone else,’ said Gary.

John threw up his hands. ‘See what I mean? Now you’re thinking, “Oh, hold on – why would he think we won’t eliminate him if he’s innocent? He must know that no evidence will point to someone else!”’

‘We’ve been in this job a long time,’ said Gary. ‘You can’t be part of the CARD team without having logged the hours on child abduction cases. We don’t walk in, pick one of the parents, and go from there. We look at the evidence. And some of this evidence, I won’t lie to you, is not looking good for you right now, John.’

John looked away, sullen and dark-eyed. ‘What evidence? I had nothing to do with this. I’ll keep answering your questions, if you think that will help, but I’d rather you were spending your time focusing on finding my son.’

Ren and Gary left John and went back into the office. Paul Louderback was putting down the phone.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘I finally got a hold of Paula Leon. She apologized for not getting back in touch. She was in lockdown, preparing a case. Ren, you were right – she loaned her rental car to Alice Veir, who told her her own car wouldn’t start and that she had to run an errand. Alice brought it back with a full tank, so Leon couldn’t tell how far she’d traveled.’

‘And why would she give a shit, either way?’ said Ren.

Paul nodded. ‘She said Alice Veir was definitely back in the hotel by six p.m., and that she left right away. Her own car seemed to have come back to life. Alice Veir missed the dinner that night. She went straight home to Spokane.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Ren. ‘Was she transporting a body in that? We need to get on to AVIS – get that rental car in.’

‘I’m on it,’ said Paul.

Sylvie looked up from her desk. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but I’m just not buying the idea that in a matter of ten minutes on a Monday morning, Alice Veir gets involved in such a heinous crime.’

‘I know,’ said Ren. ‘The only rationale is that she owes her brother big time. The question is: what for? I mean, could she have taken away the body of his son and dumped it? And where? And how would she even manage that – she doesn’t seem like a very strong woman.’