Thomas Cook - Red Leaves

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Red Leaves: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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From Publishers Weekly
In this affecting, if oddly flat, crime novel from Edgar-winner Cook (The Chatham School Affair), Eric Moore, a prosperous businessman, watches his safe, solid world disintegrate. When eight-year-old Amy Giordano, whom Eric's teenage son, Keith, was babysitting, disappears from her family's house, many believe Keith is an obvious suspect, and not even his parents are completely convinced that he wasn't somehow involved. As time passes without Amy being found, a corrosive suspicion seeps into every aspect of Eric's life. That suspicion is fed by Eric's shaky family history-a father whose failed plans led from moderate wealth to near penury, an alcoholic older brother who's never amounted to much, a younger sister fatally stricken with a brain tumor and a mother driven to suicide. Not even Eric's loving wife, Meredith, is immune from his doubts as he begins to examine and re-examine every aspect of his life. The ongoing police investigation and the anguish of the missing girl's father provide periodic goads as Eric's futile attempts to allay his own misgivings seem only to lead him into more desperate straits. The totally unexpected resolution is both shocking and perfectly apt.
From Booklist
Cook's latest is proof that he is maturing into a gifted storyteller. An eight-year-old girl is missing. The police quickly zero in on her baby-sitter, Keith Moore. Keith's parents proclaim his innocence, but his father, Eric, has his own secret doubts. The way the author tells the story, it really doesn't matter whether Keith is guilty or not; what matters is the way the Moore family slowly disintegrates, as his parents deal in their own ways with the possibility that their son may be a monster. The novel is narrated by Eric; perhaps the story might have been slightly more effective if it were told in the third person, so we could watch Eric fall apart (rather than listen to him tell us about it), but that's nit-picking. In terms of its emotional depth and carefully drawn characters, this is one of Cook's best novels. 

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Across the room, Meredith laughed lightly and touched the man's arm.

"Not at all," I said. "She's always telling me some joke or story you've told."

Dr. Mays appeared surprised. "Really?"

I laughed. "She loved the one about Lenny Bruce."

He looked at me quizzically. "Lenny Bruce?"

"The one about the difference between men and women," I said.

Dr. Mays shrugged. "I'm afraid I don't know that one."

"You know, the plateglass window."

Dr. Mays stared at me blankly. "She must have heard that from someone else," he said.

There was another burst of laughter from across the room. I looked over to see Meredith with her hand at her mouth, the way she always held it when she laughed, her eyes bright and strangely joyful, so different from the way she'd been only a few minutes before. The man in the tweed jacket laughed with her, but the woman beside him only smiled quietly, then took a quick sip from her glass.

"Who are they?" I asked. "The people with Meredith."

Dr. Mays looked over at them. "Oh, that's Dr. Rodenberry and his wife, Judith," he said. "He's our college counselor."

"Oh, yes," I said. "Meredith has mentioned him."

"Brilliant man," Dr. Mays said. "And very funny."

He gave me a few more details about Rodenberry, that he'd been at the college for five years, turned a moribund counseling service into a vibrant school function. After that, Dr. Mays said he had to mingle and stepped over to another group of teachers.

I took the opportunity to make my way across the room, where Meredith still stood, talking to the Rodenberrys.

She glanced over as I approached her.

"Hi," I said softly.

"Hi," Meredith said. She turned to Rodenberry and his wife. "Stuart, Judith, this is my husband, Eric."

I shook hands with the two of them, smiling as warmly as I knew how. Then there was a moment of awkward silence, eyes shifting about, Rodenberry's back and forth between me and Meredith, his wife's eyes darting toward me, then quickly away.

"I've mentioned this situation with Keith to Stuart," she said.

I looked at Rodenberry. "What do you think?" I asked.

He considered the question briefly. "Well, Keith's certainly under a lot of pressure."

That seemed hardly an answer, so I dug deeper.

"But do you think he needs professional help?" I asked.

Again Rodenberry appeared reluctant to answer directly. "Perhaps, but only if he's willing to accept it. Otherwise, counseling would just add to the pressure he's already under."

"So how can we tell?" I asked. "If he needs help, I mean."

Rodenberry glanced at Meredith in what appeared a signal for her to jump in.

"Stuart feels that we should raise the subject with Keith," she said. "Not present it to him as something we think he should do, but only raise it as a possibility."

"And see how he reacts," Rodenberry added quickly. "Whether he's immediately hostile, or if he seems amenable to the idea."

"And if he seems amenable?" I asked.

Again, Rodenberry's gaze slid over to Meredith. "Well, as I told Meredith," he said, now returning his attention to me, "I'd be more than happy to provide whatever help I can."

I started to add some final remark on the subject, but Rodenberry's wife suddenly withdrew from our circle, her head turned decidedly away, as if shielding her face from view.

"Judith has been ill," Rodenberry said quietly once his wife was out of earshot. Again he looked at Meredith, and in response she offered a smile that struck me as unexpectedly intimate, which Rodenberry immediately returned.

"Anyway," he said, now returning his gaze to me. "Let me know what you decide about Keith." He drew a card from his jacket pocket. "Meredith has my number at school," he said as he handed me the card, "but this is my private number. Call it anytime."

I thanked him, and after that Rodenberry walked across the room to join his wife beside a buffet table. Once there, he placed his arm on his wife's shoulder. She quickly stepped away, as if repulsed by his touch, so that Rodenberry's arm immediately fell free and dangled limply at his side.

"I think the Rodenberry's have problems," I said to Meredith.

She watched as Rodenberry poured himself a drink and stood alone beside the window, where Dr. Mays joined him a few minutes later.

"Dr. Mays didn't remember that Lenny Bruce remark," I said.

Meredith continued to stare straight ahead, which was odd for her, I realized, since her tendency was always to glance toward me when I spoke.

"The one about the plateglass window," I added.

Her eyes shot over to me. "What?"

"You didn't hear it from Dr. Mays," I repeated.

Meredith glanced back into the adjoining room. "Well, I heard it from somebody," she said absently.

"Maybe from Rodenberry," I suggested. "Dr. Mays says he's very funny."

"Yes, he is," Meredith said. Her eyes glittered briefly, then dimmed, as if a shadowy thought had skirted through her mind. "He'll be good with Keith" was all she said.

We left the party a couple of hours later, driving more or less silently back to our house. The light was on in Keith's room, but we didn't go up or call him or make any effort to find out if he was really there. Such surveillance would only have struck him as yet more proof that I thought him a criminal, and his mood had become far too volatile to incite any such added resentment.

And so we simply watched television for an hour, then went to bed. Meredith tried to read for a while, but before too long she slipped the book onto the floor beside the bed, then twisted away from me and promptly fell asleep.

But I couldn't sleep. I thought about Keith and Meredith, of course, but increasingly my thoughts returned me to my first family—Warren's story of the insurance man with the odd questions, the strange remark my father had made, his bitter assertion that I had no idea about my mother.

Could that be true? I wondered. Could it be true that I had never known my mother? Or my father? That Warren, for all our growing up together, remained essentially an enigma?

I got up, walked to the window, and peered out into the tangled, night-bound woods. In my mind, I saw the car that had brought Keith home that night, its phantom driver behind the wheel, a figure who suddenly seemed to me no less mysterious than my son, my wife, my father and mother and brother, mere shadows, dark and indefinable.

"Eric?"

It was Meredith's voice.

I turned toward the bed but couldn't see her there.

"Something wrong?"

"No, nothing," I told her, grateful that I hadn't turned on the light, since, had she seen me, she would have known it was a lie.

SIXTEEN

Leo Brock called me at the shop at eleven the next morning. "Quick question," he said. "Does Keith smoke?"

He heard my answer in the strain of a pause.

"Okay," he said, "What brand does he smoke?"

I saw the face of the pack as Keith snatched it from his shirt pocket. "Marlboro," I said.

Leo drew in a long breath. "And he told police that he never left the house, isn't that right?"

"Yes."

"For any reason."

"He said he never left the house," I told him. "What's happening, Leo?"

"My source tells me that the cops found four cigarette butts outside the Giordanos' house," Leo said. "Marlboro."

"Is that so bad?" I asked. "I mean, so what if Keith went out for a smoke?"

"They were at the side of the house," Leo added. "Just beneath Amy's bedroom window."

"Jesus," I breathed.

In my mind I saw Keith at the window, peering through the curtains of Amy's window, watching as she slept, her long dark hair splayed out across her pillow. Had he watched her undress, too? I wondered. And while doing that ... done what? Had he gone to the water tower in search of similar stimulation? Before that moment, I would probably have avoided such questions, but something in my mind had hardened, taken on the shape of a pick or a spade, prepared to dig.

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