Thomas Cook - Red Leaves

I drew her hand away and held it lightly. "What about Rodenberry?"

Her eyes tensed.

"Are we going to talk to Keith about him?"

My question seemed to put her at ease. "I think we should," she said.

"All right."

I left her, walked upstairs, and finished dressing. She was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping from her cup, when I came back down.

She smiled when she saw me. "Have a nice day," she said.

***

Detective Peak was waiting for me when I arrived at the shop. This time he was dressed casually, in a light flannel jacket and open-collar shirt. As I came toward him, he edged away from the side of the building and nodded.

"I wonder if we could have a cup of coffee," he asked.

"I've already had my morning coffee," I answered coolly.

"Just one cup," Peak said, but not in the distant professional tone he'd used with Meredith. Instead, there was now something unexpectedly fraternal in his manner, as if we were old war buddies and so could talk to each other in full trust and confidence.

"You'll be able to open on rime," he added.

"All right," I said with a shrug.

We walked to the diner at the end of the block. It was owned by the Richardsons, a couple who'd moved to Wesley from New York only a few years before. They'd shunned the sleek art deco look of city diners and tried for a homey design instead, wooden tables, lace curtains, porcelain salt and pepper shakers in the form of a nineteenth-century sea captain and his wife. Before that morning, I'd hardly noticed the décor, but now it struck me as false and unnatural, like a bad face-lift.

"Two coffees," Peak said to Matt Richardson as we took a table near the front window.

Peak smiled. "May I call you Eric?"

"No."

The smiled vanished. "I have a family, too," he said. He waited for me to respond. When I didn't, he folded his arms on the table and leaned into them. "It's my day off," he added.

I immediately suspected that this was Peak's new approach and that it was meant to soften me up, a way of telling me that he'd taken a special interest in the case, was trying to be of help. A week before, I might have believed him, but now I thought it just an act, something he'd learned at police interrogation school.

The coffees came. I took a quick sip, but Peak left his untouched.

"This doesn't have to go any further," he said. His voice was low, measured. It conveyed a sense of guarded discretion. "Absolutely no further."

He drew in a deep preparatory breath, like a man about to take a long dive into uncertain waters. "We found things on Keith's computer."

My hands trembled very slightly, like shaking leaves. I quickly dropped them into my lap and put on a stiff unflappable face.

"What did you find?" I asked.

Peak's face was a melancholy mask. "Pictures."

"Pictures of what?" I asked stonily.

"Children."

The earth stopped turning.

"They aren't illegal, these pictures," Peak added quickly. "They're not exactly child pornography."

"What are they?"

He looked at me pointedly. "You're sure you don't know anything about these pictures?"

"No, nothing."

"You never use Keith's computer?"

I shook my head.

"Then the pictures have to be Keiths," Peak said. He made a show of being genuinely sorry that the pictures had turned up. Part of his new act, I decided, his effort to suggest that he'd come to me in search of an explanation, one that would get Keith off the hook. I had a photo shop, after all. Maybe I was interested in "art pictures." If so, as he'd already assured me, nothing would go further.

"The children are all girls," Peak continued. "They look to be around eight years old." He bit his lower lip, then said. "Nude."

I felt the only safety lay in silence, so I said nothing.

"We've talked to Keith's teachers," Peak said. "He seems to have self-esteem problems."

I saw Keith in my mind, the limp drag of his hair, how unkempt he was, the slouch of his shoulders, the drowsy, listless eyes. Was that the posture of his inner view of himself, hunched, sloppy, worthless?

"Low self-esteem is part of the profile," Peak said.

I remained silent, afraid the slightest word might be used against my son, quoted by the prosecution, used to buttress the case, contribute to conviction.

"Of men who like children," Peak added.

I clung to silence like the shattered bow of a sinking boat, the only thing that could keep me afloat in the rising water.

"Do you want to see the pictures?" Peak asked.

I didn't know what to do, couldn't figure out Peak's scheme. If I said no, what would that mean? And if I said yes, what would he gather from that?

"Mr. Moore?"

I raced to figure out the right answer, then simply tossed a mental coin.

"I guess I should," I said.

He had them in his car, and as I made my way across the parking lot, I felt like a man following the hangman to the waiting gallows.

Peak got in behind the wheel. I took my place on the passenger side. He picked up the plain manila folder that rested on the seat between us. "We printed these off Keiths computer. As I said, they're not illegal. But I'm sure you can understand that they're a problem for us, something we can't ignore."

I took the envelope and drew out the pictures. The stack was about half an inch thick, twenty, maybe thirty photographs. One by one, I went through them, and just as Peak said, they weren't exactly pornographic. All of the girls were posed alone in natural settings, never indoors, little girls in bright sunlight, their tiny budding breasts barely detectible on their gleaming white chests. Naked, they sat on fallen trees or beside glittering streams. They were sometimes shot from the front, sometimes from the rear, sometimes their whole bodies in profile, standing erect, or sitting, knees to their chins, their arms enfolding their legs. They had long hair and perfectly proportioned bodies. They were beautiful in the flawless, innocent way of childhood beauty. None, I guessed, was more than four feet tall. None had pubic hair. All of them were smiling.

So what do you do at such a moment? As a father. What do you do after you've looked at such pictures, then returned them to the manila envelope, and lowered the envelope back down upon the car seat?

You do this. You look into the closely regarding eyes of another man, one who clearly thinks your son is, at best, a pervert, and at worse, a kidnapper, perhaps a rapist, a murderer. You look into those eyes and because you have no answer to the terrible accusation you see in them, you say simply, "What about his room? Did you find anything?"

"You mean, magazines ... things like that?" Peak asked. "No, we didn't."

I hazarded another question. "Anything connected to Amy?"

Peak shook his head.

"So where are we?"

"We're still investigating," Peak said.

I looked at him evenly. "What did you hope to get by showing me those pictures?"

"Mr. Moore," Peak said evenly, "in a case like this, it always goes better if we can stop the investigation."

"Stop it with a confession, you mean," I said.

"If Keith voluntarily gives us a statement, we can help him," Peak said. He studied my face for a moment. "The Giordanos want their daughter back They want to know where she is, and they want to bring her home." He drew the envelope up against the side of his leg. "And, of course, they want to know what happened to her," he added. "If it were your child, you'd want that, too, I'm sure."

He was into the depths of his kinder, gentler ruse, but I'd had enough. "I assume we're done," I said sharply, then reached for the handle of the door. Peak's voice stopped me dead.

"Has Keith ever mentioned a man named Delmot Price?" Peak asked.

I recognized the name. "He owns the Village Florist Shop. Keith delivers there sometimes."