Thomas Cook - Red Leaves

I pulled in the driveway a few minutes later, got out of the car, swept past the branches of the Japanese maple and headed on down the walkway to the front door.

Through the window, I saw Meredith clutching the phone. She seemed very nearly frantic, her eyes wide in an unmistakable look of alarm. I thought of the other time I'd come upon her abruptly, the way she'd blurted, "Talk to you later," and quickly snapped her cell phone shut and sunk it deep into the pocket of her robe. I had caught her again, I supposed, and, with that thought, fully expected her to hang up immediately when she heard me open the door.

But when I opened the door, she rushed over to me, the phone trembling in her hand. "It's—Warren," she said. "He's drunk and"—she thrust the phone toward me almost violently—"Here," she blurted. "He's yours."

I took the phone. "Warren?"

There was no answer, but I could hear him breathing rapidly, like someone who'd just completed a long exhausting run.

"Warren?" I said again.

Silence.

"Warren," I snapped. "Either talk to me or get the fuck off the phone."

The silence continued briefly, then I heard him draw in a long slow breath.

"Bro," he said softly, "your troubles are over."

Then I heard the blast.

TWENTY-FOUR

The ambulance and police had already arrived by the time I got to Wirren's house. The whole neighborhood strobed with flashing lights, and a yellow tape had been stretched across the driveway and along the borders of the yard.

I had called 911 immediately, though even at that moment, I wasn't sure exactly what Warren had done. He'd been drunk, after all, and on such occasions in the past, he'd not been above making some melodramatic gesture in order to win me back. Once, as a boy, he'd taken a plunge off a high embankment after I'd yelled at him. He'd pulled similar stunts after my father had laced into him for one reason or another. It was a pitiful attempt to regain whatever he thought he'd lost in our affection, and it had never worked. Warren had never been one to learn from experience, however, and even as I watched the flashing lights that surrounded his house, I half expected to see him stagger out into the yard, arms spread in greeting, all bleary good cheer. Hey, Bro.

But as I closed in on the house, I knew that this time, it was different. The front door was wide open, and Peak stood, backlit by the light of the foyer, scribbling in a small notebook.

"Is he okay?" I asked as I came up to him.

Peak sank the notebook into his jacket pocket. "He's dead," he told me. "I'm sorry."

I didn't shudder at the news, and even now I can hardly recall exactly what I felt, save the curious realization that I would never see my brother alive again. A moment ago, he'd spoken to me. Now he was utterly and forever silent. If I thought or felt more than this at that moment, then those feelings were too vague and insubstantial to make a sustained impression.

"Do you want to identify him?" Peak asked.

"Yes."

"Mind if I ask you a few questions first?"

I shook my head. "I've gotten used to questions."

He drew the notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open. "You spoke to him just before he did it, right?"

"I heard the shot."

This did not faze Peak, and for a moment it struck me that he probably thought it a way of gaining the sympathy he was not inclined to offer.

"What did he say?"

"That my troubles were over," I answered.

"What did he mean by that?"

"That he wouldn't be a bother to me anymore, I guess."

Peak looked at me doubtfully. "You don't think this had anything to do with Amy Giordano?"

"Just the pictures you found on Keith's computer," I said. "They were his."

"How do you know?"

"Warren stayed at our house while he was recovering from a broken hip," I said. "He stayed in Keith's room."

"That doesn't mean the pictures were his," Peak said.

"I know they weren't Keith's."

"How do you know?"

I shrugged. "Why would Warren have done this if the pictures weren't his?"

"Well, he might have thought we'd shift away from Keith," Peak said. "I mean, he all but confessed, didn't he?"

"No, he didn't," I said. "Except that the pictures were his. But he said they weren't ... sexual. That he didn't use them that way."

"Then why did he have them?"

"He said he just thought the kids were ... adorable."

Peak looked at me squarely. "Do you think he had anything to do with Amy Giordano being missing?"

I gave the only answer I could be certain of. "I don't know."

Peak looked surprised by my answer. "He was your brother. If he were capable of something like that, kidnapping a little girl, you'd know it, wouldn't you?"

I thought of all the years I'd spent with Warren and realized that for all we'd shared, parents, the big house we'd lost together, the joint trajectories of our lives, for all that, I simply couldn't answer Peak's question, couldn't in the least be sure that I knew Warren at all, or knew any more than his glossy surfaces. "Can you ever know anyone?" I asked.

Peak released a long frustrated breath and closed the notebook. "All right." He glanced inside the house, then back at me. "You ready to make the identification?"

"Yes."

Peak turned and led me up the stairs, then down the short corridor to Warren's room. At the door, he stepped aside. "Sorry," he murmured. "This is never easy."

Warren had pulled a chair up to the window, facing out toward the elementary school's dimly lit playground. His head was slumped to the right, so that he looked as if he'd simply gone to sleep while staring out the window. It was only when I stepped around to face the chair that I saw the shattered mouth, the dead eyes.

I don't know what I felt as I stared down at him during the next few seconds. Perhaps I was simply numb, my tumorous suspicion now grown so large that it was pressing against other vital channels, blocking light and air,

"Was that all he said?" Peak asked. "Just that your troubles were over?"

I nodded.

"How about before he spoke to you? Did he talk to anyone else in your family?"

"You mean Keith, right?" I asked.

"I mean anybody."

"Well, he didn't talk to Keith. He talked to my wife briefly, but not to Keith."

"What did he say to your wife?"

"I don't know," I told him. "When I got home, she handed me the phone. Then Warren said that my troubles were over—nothing else. When I heard the shot, I called 911, then came directly here."

"You came alone, I noticed."

"Yes."

Peak looked as if he felt sorry for me because I'd had to come to the scene of my brother's suicide alone, without the comfort of my wife and son.

"Do you want to stay a little longer?" he asked finally.

"No," I told him.

I gave Warren a final glance, then followed Peak back down the stairs and out into the yard where we stood together in the misty light that swept out from the school playground. The air was completely still, the scattered leaves lying flat, like dead birds, in the unkempt yard.

Peak looked over toward the playground, and I could see how troubled the sight of it made him, the fear he had that some other little girl was still in peril because whoever had taken Amy Giordano was still out there.

"I read that leads get cold after a couple of weeks," I said.

"Sometimes."

"It's been two weeks."

He nodded. "That's what Vince Giordano keeps telling me."

"He wants his daughter back," I said. "I can understand that."

Peak drew his gaze over to me. "We're testing the cigarettes. It takes a while to get the results."

"And what if they were Keith's?"

"It means he lied," Peak said. "He told Vince Giordano that he never left the house. He said he was inside the whole time."