Thomas Cook - Red Leaves

"Nobody," Keith answered softly.

"Keith, I have to know the truth," I said. "I have to know about those pictures. And I have to know about that car."

"I didn't have any pictures," he said with surprising firmness. "And nobody brought me home that night."

I felt nearly drunk with exasperation, dazed and staggering. "Keith, you have to tell me the truth."

Without the slightest warning, a wrenching sob broke from him. It seemed to come from an unexpected depth, a sob that all but gutted him. "Fuck me," he cried. He dropped his head forward then brought it back against the wall so hard that the force rattled the shelf that hung above him. "Fuck me!"

"Jesus, Keith, can't you see I'm trying to help you?"

"Fuck me," Keith cried. He jerked forward, then, like a body caught in a seizure, he slammed his head back against the wall.

I shot out of my chair and jerked the black cloth from the wire. " No more fucking lies! "I screamed.

Keith thrust forward, then slammed back again, his head pounding violently against the wall. He seemed caught in an uncontrollable spasm, his body moving like a puppet in the hands of a murderous puppeteer,

I grabbed his shoulders and drew him tightly into my arms. "Stop it, Keith," I pleaded. "Stop it!"

He began to cry again, and I held him while he cried, held him until he finally stopped crying and slumped down on the bed, where he wiped his eyes with the palms of his hands, then looked up and started to speak. That for a moment I thought he'd decided to come clean, admit what there was to admit about the pictures, the car that had brought him home that night. Even at its worst, I thought, it would be a relief to have it out, done with, known. It was the suspense that was killing us, slowly, hour by hour, like a long drawn-out strangulation.

"Keith, please tell me," I said softly.

His lips sealed immediately, and his eyes were dry now. "I didn't do anything," he said softly. He closed his eyes slowly, then opened them again. "I didn't do anything," he repeated. He slithered out of my arms and sat bolt upright on the bed, no longer broken. I felt him harden before my eyes. "May I please be alone now?" he asked stiffly. "I'd really like to be alone."

I knew there was no point in challenging him further. The moment had come and gone. This had been my chance, and his, but nothing had come of it, and it was over.

I walked out of the room and down the stairs to where Meredith now sat in the living room.

"Nothing," I said. "He denied everything."

Her eyes took on a kind of animal panic. "He has to tell you the truth, Eric."

"The truth, yes," I said.

I glanced at the outline of her cell phone in the shallow pocket of her robe and considered all that now demanded to be truly known, things my father had told me, things Warren had told me, things Keith had told me, all of them now in doubt. In my mind I saw them posed together, Meredith and Keith, along with my other family, the living and the dead, Warren and my father, my mother, Jenny. They stood on the steps of the lost house, shoulder to shoulder, as in a family photograph.

None of them was smiling.

PART IV

A figure appears beyond the diner's rain-streaked window, and for a moment you think it is the one you're waiting for. You recall it in photographs, but so much time has passed that you can no longer be sure that you would recognize the eyes, the mouth, the hair. Features sharpen then blur as they mature, and time has a downward pull, creating folds where none existed when the photographs were taken. And so you scan the onrushing faces, preparing your own, hoping that time has not ravaged your features so mercilessly that you will go unrecognized as well.

You notice a little girl, her hand tucked inside her mother's, and it strikes you that everyone was young back then. You were young. So were Meredith and Warren. Keith was young and Amy was young. Vincent and Karen Giordano were young. Peak was no more than fifty; Kraus no more than forty-five. Even Leo Brock seems young to you now, or at least not as old as he seemed then.

The figure who first called your attention vanishes, but you continue to stare out the window. An autumn wind is lashing the trees across the way, showering the wet ground with falling leaves. You think of the Japanese maple at the end of the walkway and recall the last time you saw it. It was fall then, too. You remember your last glance at the house, how your gaze settled on the grill. How desolate it looked beside the empty house, its elaborate and sturdy brickwork awash in sodden leaves. You wonder if you should have taken a picture of the cold grill, the unlit house, something to replace the stacks of family photographs you burned in the fireplace on your last day there. In a movie, a character like you would have fed them one by one into the flames, but you tossed whole stacks of them in at once. You even tried not to look at the faces in the photographs as the fire engulfed them, turning every life to ash.

TWENTY-ONE

Over a week passed after my confrontation with Keith. Day after day, as I worked at the shop, I waited for the call from Leo, the one that would tell me that Keith was going to be arrested, that I should go home, wait for Peak and Kraus to arrive, warrants in hand, and read my son his rights, then, one man at each arm, lead him away.

But when it came, the phone call from Leo brought just the opposite news.

"It's looking good, Eric," he said happily. "They're running tests on those cigarettes they found outside Amy's window, but even if it turns out they can prove Keith smoked them, so what? There's no law against a kid going out for a smoke."

"But he lied, Leo," I said. "He said he didn't leave the house."

"Well, contrary to popular belief," Leo said, "lying to the police is not technically a crime. And as for those pictures on his computer? Same answer. They were completely harmless."

Pictures of nude little girls didn't strike me as harmless, but I let it go.

"So, what happens then, if they can't arrest him?" I asked.

"Nothing happens," Leo answered lightly.

"It can't just go away, Leo," I said. "A little girl is missing and—"

"And Keith had nothing to do with it," Leo interrupted. He spoke his next words at a measured pace. "Nothing to do with it, right?"

I didn't answer fast enough, so Leo said, "Right, Eric?"

"Right," I muttered.

"So like I said, it's good news all around," Leo repeated cautiously. "You should take it as good news."

"I know."

"So, is there a reason you're not?"

"It's just that this whole experience, it's dredged up a lot of things," I told him. "Not just about Keith. Other things."

"Things between you and Meredith?"

It seemed an odd question. I'd never discussed the state of my marriage with Leo, yet something "between you and Meredith" was the first thing that had entered his mind. "Why would you think it's something between me and Meredith?" I asked.

"No reason," Leo said. "Except that a case like this, it can create a certain strain." He quickly moved on to another subject. "Everything else okay?"

"Sure."

"No harm to your business, right?"

"Just the usual off-season lull."

There was a pause and I sensed that something bad was coming.

"One thing, Eric," Leo said. "Evidently Vince Giordano's pretty upset."

"Of course, he is," I said. "His daughter is missing."

"Not just that," Leo said. "Upset with the way the case is going."

"You mean, about Keith?"

"That's right," Leo said. "My people tell me he went ballistic at headquarters yesterday. Demanded that Keith be arrested, that sort of thing."

"He thinks Keith did it," I said. "There's nothing I can do about that."