Chris Bohjalian: Before You Know Kindness

“So, no one at the state police removed the casing?” Keenan inquired.

“Mr. Barrett, you’re a lawyer. I shouldn’t have to lecture you about the collection of evidence. When I confiscated the weapon there was the chance this would become a criminal investigation. I therefore tried to preserve the weapon in the condition I found it.”

“Thank you,” Keenan said, not exactly contrite but humbled slightly.

“You’re welcome. Forgive me, sir, but I wish someone in this case-you or Mr. Seton’s lawyer-knew the first thing about guns. I wish Mr. Seton had known the first thing about guns. I hate to be glib when a man has been so badly injured, but the truth of this matter is that all of your questions combine to make for one great argument for serious gun control.”

“Tell me,” Keenan said. “You said you found the weapon by an apple tree.”

“That’s right.”

“But in the drawing I saw of the accident scene-the reconstruction, if you will, that showed where the players were that night-when the child fired the weapon, she was closer to the driveway itself than to those apple trees.”

“That’s correct.”

“Why weren’t the locations where the rifle was discharged and where you found it the same?”

“The girl’s mother wanted the firearm as far from the child as possible after the shooting. It was a gun, she’d just seen firsthand its ability to inflict monumental damage, and she didn’t want the girl anywhere near the thing anymore.”

“So she moved it?”

“I believe that’s what she told me that night. I could check my notes. But I believe she said she tossed it.”

“And then you recovered it?”

“Yes.”

“Then where did the casing go?” Paige asked.

“If this were a criminal investigation, we would have begun our search on the property. Near where the child discharged the firearm and then where we found the rifle.”

“But you didn’t…”

“Ma’am?”

“You didn’t search the property…”

“No. The state’s attorney chose not to press charges. It was pretty clear it was an accident.”

“A horrible one,” she said simply, and breathed in deeply through her nose. In somewhere between twenty-six and twenty-seven hours, she was going to have to say something. No one in that press conference was going to ask about the missing casing: There was no reason to believe they would even be aware it was gone. But someone was bound to ask why John Seton had left his rifle loaded, and that would demand they have an explanation for his inability to extract the cartridge.

“Yes,” Howland agreed. “A horrible one.”

“I guess we should try to find the casing,” she mumbled, though she knew also that this wasn’t going to happen-at least not in the next twenty-six hours. And even if, by some unprecedented miracle, the casing did turn up that afternoon, it couldn’t be analyzed in time for the press conference. She wondered briefly if they should postpone the event, but these things had a momentum of their own. They had been working toward tomorrow since well before Spencer had returned to work. The lawsuit was just about ready to be filed: Sections of it were being proofread in a room down the hall that very moment.

But the casing could still affect it. Their contention was that the rifle was inherently unsafe because a round remained in the chamber when you emptied the magazine, and there was no mechanism on the barrel to warn a person that the gun was still loaded. Perhaps if they had the casing and could show that the rim was damaged, then they could sue the ammunition manufacturer as well.

“Thank you, Sergeant Howland,” Keenan was saying. “We appreciate your getting back to us.”

She thanked the trooper, too, but her mind already was elsewhere. She was trying to imagine what she would say tomorrow when someone asked her why that dimwit in Vermont-though the reporter would not frame the question quite that way-had been unable to pop out the cartridge that remained in the rifle.

“In college,” Spencer was saying, “I never thought I would be a bald, angry man when I hit middle age.”

“No one does,” John answered, and he guessed it was the truth. Certainly he’d never presumed that he would hit forty with a receding hairline and eyeglasses.

On the other hand, he wasn’t angry. Not like Spencer, anyway. Lately he’d been pretty damn pissed at his brother-in-law, but that irritation had been triggered by a fairly precise set of circumstances.

It was Monday morning, not quite nine thirty, and the two of them were sitting in his mother’s living room with its sweeping views across Park, Madison, and Fifth, and into Olmstead’s vast commons-these days a series of baseball diamonds, skating rinks, and paths for exercisers on their in-line skates and air-cushioned Nikes. His mother’s dog had lumbered over to Spencer, sniffed out Tanya’s scent, and-satisfied-was sitting now with his snout draped on the man’s lap. Nan was somewhere on the other side of the apartment, in that long series of rooms that looked south on the spires of midtown Manhattan, and Catherine and Charlotte were at Brearley.

“I mean, why didn’t someone tell me I had so much rage?” Spencer said.

He shrugged. “We did. We tried, anyway.”

“And I wasn’t listening?”

John considered agreeing that, yes, this was precisely the problem: Spencer didn’t listen to anyone, because he was right about everything. At least he believed that he was. But his brother-in-law already was so abashed that John saw no reason to make him feel any worse. “We are who we are,” he said simply. “And you have your strengths.” He watched the light through the gauzy curtains accentuate a flying buttress of dust.

“But listening is not among them.”

“Guess not.”

The dog rolled over onto his back, imploring Spencer to stroke his tummy. His brother-in-law reached down awkwardly to pet the animal with his left arm, grimacing slightly at the effort.

“Look, Catherine says you’ve changed in some very positive ways since the accident,” he continued. “And this weekend Charlotte told Willow that she’s having a great time working with you on the musical she’s in.”

“Getting shot does wonders for one’s priorities-that and being crippled. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but it seems to have worked in my case.”

He sat forward in the heavy chair in which, years earlier, he would watch his father flip quickly through Advertising Age and the Wall Street Journal. “Can I ask you something? And this is none of my business, so feel free to take the Fifth. But are you and my sister going to seek counseling? Or will you two crazy kids try to figure out your next steps on your own?”

“Counseling.”

“Good.”

“But she’s not leaving and we’re not separating. I’ve gotten a stay of execution.”

“I’m relieved.”

“Me, too. I think we both are. And Charlotte. Charlotte might talk a tough game, but it’s all bravado. Inside she’s a cupcake.”

John wasn’t sure if he could ever envision his niece as a cupcake, but he also wasn’t about to disabuse the girl’s father of this notion.

“Anyway,” Spencer went on, “that’s not the only reason I’m here.” He pulled himself away from the dog, wincing as he sunk back into the couch. The animal looked up at him with wide eyes that, alas, reminded John of a deer’s. “Given my morning, I’m glad you stuck around.”

“Honestly, Spencer, I really don’t know why I’m going to the press conference. At one point I’d had some vague idea that I could defend myself. But I gave that notion up. Yesterday I just decided I had to be there to… to see it. It was all very spontaneous.”