J. Gonzalez - Back From The Dead

“It’s about those detectives that came here earlier.”

“What about them?”

“They told me they wanted to question you about a guy named John Elfman. He’s gone missing. They asked if they could search the property. I denied their request.” Tom fixed his son with a steely gaze. “They didn’t bring up Tim Gaines at all. They didn’t mention the Reamstown Cemetery. Why did you lie to me?”

Scott rebounded from that direct question very well. He looked startled, then made a remarkable save. “I didn’t know anything about John Elfman. Honest. I thought they were going to razz me about Tim Gaines again.”

“I saw what you have in the guesthouse.”

There was no quick save for such a direct statement. Scott’s face went deathly pale. Tom could see his son’s hands twitch as he fought to remain casual. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“I mean, the two corpses in the guesthouse.”

“Corpses?”

“Scott, come up here on the deck. Sit down.”

Scott remained where he was, hesitating between bolting toward the house and approaching the deck.

“We need to talk about this, but I can’t do it if I have to shout at you from the deck. Your mother isn’t home, and we need to talk about this now before she gets home. I also don’t want to make a scene in case somebody happens to see it. So please, come here. Sit down.”

Scott looked like he was going to hesitate again, but common sense got the best of him. He quickly strode up the deck steps and slid into a chair on the other side of the glass table that so many late afternoon deck parties had been held around.

Tom saw Scott glance quickly at the guesthouse and he felt a momentary brush of shame as he saw the fear in his son’s eyes. This was the first time Tom had ever confronted his son about any of the crimes he’d participated in. When he was threatened with expulsion from Spring Valley Elementary School for his part in the assault on the Gaines boy, Tom had wanted Scott to see a child psychiatrist. Carol vehemently opposed it, and they’d had a bitter fight over it. Tom had relented. Carol had always been the one to coddle the boy; when Scott was thrown out of two private schools for his behavior toward other students it had been Carol that met with the school administrators. Her attempts at smoothing things over hadn’t been successful, and she’d never been one to discipline Scott. Carol was on the fast track up the ladder at her current firm at the time, and there was no way she could afford the time off to deal with the administrators, so she’d made a deal with their son: as long as he kept a clean academic record and didn’t cause them any trouble, they would support him financially through school and into college.

In hindsight, Tom should have held his ground. Should have insisted Scott be seen by a child psychiatrist. Should have insisted on having more influence on the way the boy was being raised. Should have insisted that with the bad actions Scott partook in that there were consequences.

On the other hand, Tom should have been around more to insure the boy never wound up like him.

He and Carol should have had a firmer hand in raising Scott. They shouldn’t have been so focused on their careers and maintaining their status in the neighborhood.

As Tom sipped from his drink, looking at his son, he didn’t see a monster sitting across from him. He saw himself almost forty years ago. A scared, troubled kid who had no guidance, no way to unleash his frustrations. A kid who had potential but was in danger of sabotaging it due to some unspeakable streak of violence that thrummed inside him that sometimes took control unexpectedly.

Tom had been in his son’s shoes before. He’d committed a similar crime. And despite that, he’d changed that part of himself. Became a contributing member to society.

And kept his dirty secret buried.

“I want to help you, son,” Tom said gently but firmly. “I saw those corpses in the guesthouse and they couldn’t have gotten in there by themselves. You and I know that our family has the key to the place. I also think Gordon and your other friends had something — ”

“ They did it, Dad. It wasn’t me.” Scott was looking at his father with a new sense of urgency, but it wasn’t working. Tom had knocked Scott out of his senses with that simple statement, I saw the corpses in the guesthouse , and he wasn’t even thinking ahead of how the lie would affect his body language, his facial expression. Tom could read Scott like a book. He kept fiddling with his hands on the table, one of the habits Scott displayed whenever he was lying. “Honest, I had no idea. They’ve been…threatening me the whole time to keep quiet about it and — ”

“I don’t believe you heard me the first time, Scott,” Tom said, injecting menace in his voice and body posture. He leaned forward over the table. “I said I want to help you. If I’m going to help you, you’re going to come clean with me. It’s the only way I can help keep you out of jail. I can’t do it if you’re going to feed me this bullshit story that Gordon, Steve, and Dave led you into this because you and I know that’s not how it happened . Is it?”

Tom glared at Scott, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. “I know about the trips out of town. The nights you told me you were going into Lancaster to the skating rink were bullshit stories. You and your friends went into Philly and Harrisburg and assaulted homeless people.”

Scott looked at him again and this time the evidence was clear in his eyes. Guilty as charged. “No! That’s not what happened! I swear!”

“I noticed the bruising on your knuckles one morning,” Tom continued. “I never brought it up, though. I should have asked you what happened, and if you would have told me you’d gotten into a fight I would have asked you why you didn’t have any other marks or bruises. You don’t go through any fight without getting a little banged up. Trust me, I know. I was in plenty when I was your age.”

“I wasn’t fighting with anybody!”

“No, you were only beating the crap out of somebody who couldn’t fight back. That’s how your knuckles got bruised and torn up. Isn’t that right?”

Scott averted his gaze. “No. That’s not it.”

“I did a quick check on the internet before you came home. If I hadn’t been so busy I would’ve noticed what’s going on, so I blame myself for letting this happen. You can’t bullshit me anymore, Scott. I know what you’ve been doing.” He lowered his tone, trying to be the buddy, the best friend to his son, something his father had never been to him, something he told himself he’d always do for his own boy but never did because he was always so goddamned busy. “I saw news items on John’s disappearance. I know you went to Susan’s party the night he disappeared. I also know you guys were at odds with each other.”

“That’s not true!”

“I also read about the wilding incidents in Philly and Harrisburg. I was especially interested in the few cases that reported white teenagers driving a dark SUV being seen speeding away from each crime.” Tom leveled his gaze at his son. “You drive a dark SUV, Scott. I’m surprised the cops didn’t come poking around earlier.”

“Coincidence.”

“It’s not a coincidence that a man named Neal Ashford, who was reported missing in Philly three weeks ago, was wearing a white coat, blue jeans, and dark tennis shoes. One of the corpses in the guesthouse is wearing a white coat. The article also said Neal’s black. So is the corpse in the guesthouse.”

This time Scott didn’t say anything. He sat stoically, arms crossed, not looking at Tom.

“I didn’t want to believe it, but I can’t help but see the pattern,” Tom continued. “The times you were kicked out of school in fourth and fifth grades for picking on other kids, and not just picking on them either, downright torturing them — ”