Thomas Cook - Red Leaves

"Yes, we would," Kraus said.

"I'll get him."

"He's not here," Meredith said quickly.

I looked at her, puzzled. "Where is he?"

"He went for a walk."

Before I could say anything further, Kraus said, "Where does he walk?"

For some reason, Meredith merely repeated the question. "Where does he walk?"

Peak looked out the large window that fronted the thickly forested grounds behind the house. "Back there, that's conservation land, right? No houses. No roads."

"Yes, it's all conservation land," I told him. "No one can ever build back there or—"

"So it's very isolated," Peak said. He turned back to Meredith. "Is that where Keith takes these walks, in the woods back there?"

Suddenly the words "these walks" took on an ominous quality and I imagined Keith as I knew Peak and Kraus imagined him, a figure crouching in the undergrowth, desperately digging in the moist ground, burying something that linked him to Amy Giordano, a bloodstained lock of hair.

"No, he doesn't walk back there," I said quickly. "You can't. The undergrowth is too thick and there are no trails."

Kraus's eyes shifted to my wife, fixing on her an unsettling intensity. "So where is he?"

"The baseball field," Meredith answered. "When he goes for a walk, he usually goes down to the baseball field."

"There and back, you mean?" Peak asked.

Meredith nodded faintly, and I expected that to be the end of it, but Kraus said, "When does he go for these walks? In the morning?"

"No," Meredith answered. "Usually in the afternoon. Or after dinner."

"Not in the morning then," Kraus said. "Except this morning, right?"

Again, Meredith nodded delicately, like someone reluctant to give assent, but unable to withhold it.

"I noticed a bike at the end of the walkway," Peak said. "Is that Keith's?"

"Yes," I said. "He uses it to make deliveries for me after school."

"Where does he make these deliveries?" Kraus asked.

"Anywhere in biking distance from my shop," I said.

"And that would be where, Mr. Moore?" Peak asked.

"My shop is in Dalton Square," I said.

"What does he deliver?" Kraus asked.

"Pictures," I said. "Of families, mostly."

"Family photographs," Peak said with a slight smile. "Got a few of those myself."

Kraus shifted his weight like a fighter preparing to deliver the next blow. "How long has he been delivering these pictures?"

Again, there was a sinister, oddly accusatory, use of "these," but I was no longer sure if the accusation was intended to incriminate Keith or if Kraus had now extended his accusatory tone to me.

"A couple of years," I answered. "There's no law against that, is there?"

"What?" Peak asked with a slight chuckle. "Well, of course not, Mr. Moore." He glanced toward Kraus then back to me. "Why would you think that?"

Before I could answer, Meredith cut in. "I'll go get him if you want me to."

Peak looked at his watch. "No, we'll do it. The ball field's on the way back to the station, we can—"

"No!" I blurted. "Let me bring him here."

Both of them looked at me, stonily silent, waiting.

"It would scare him," I explained.

"What would scare him?" Kraus asked.

"You know, two men he's never seen."

"He's a scared type of kid, your son?" Peak asked.

It had never occurred to me before, but now it struck me that in fact Keith was a "scared type of kid." He was scared he'd disappointed Meredith by doing poorly in school and scared he'd disappointed me by never having had a girlfriend. He was scared he wouldn't get into a good college, scared that he'd never find what he wanted to do in life or that he'd fail at the thing he did find. He had no friends, and I supposed that that scared him, too. Add them up, one by one, and it seemed that he was scared of almost everything, lived in a subtle crouch. And yet, I said, "No, I don't think Keith's scared of anything in particular. But two men—police—that would scare anybody, wouldn't it?"

Again, Kraus and Peak glanced at each other, then Peak said. "All right, Mr. Moore, you can go get him." He regarded me distantly. "No reason," he repeated, "to be alarmed."

I expected to find Keith on Vernon Road, which fronts our house, then shoots directly to town, where it becomes Main Street, then winds another mile to the ball field, a distance of little more than three miles. But instead, I spotted him standing idly at the little playground near the town square, a place where people routinely bring small children to scrabble in the sandbox or race around the wooden castle. He was slumped against the playground's wrought iron fence, his shoulder pressed into it, rhythmically kicking at the ground with the toe of his shoe.

He didn't see me when I pulled up to the curb a few yards from the playground, so that by the time I'd gotten out of the car and walked across the lawn, it was too late for him to hide the cigarette.

"I didn't know you smoked," I said, as I came up to him.

He whirled around, clearly startled, his gaze first on me, then darting nervously about the grounds, as if in fear of snipers.

I nodded toward the pack of Marlboros that winked from his shirt pocket. "When did you start?"

He took a long, defiant draw on the cigarette, his body now assuming a sullen teenage swagger. "I don't do it all the time."

"So, in this case, what's the occasion?"

He shrugged. "I guess I'm jumpy." He let the cigarette drop from his fingers, lifted the collar of his parka, and in that instant he seemed to retreat to an earlier time, taking on the sullen hunch of a fifties teenager, a rebel without a cause.

"This thing with Amy," I said. "It makes everybody jumpy."

"Yeah, sure." He ground the cigarette into the dirt with the toe of his shoe, snatched the pack from his shirt pocket, thumped out another and lit it.

"It's okay to be a little nervous," I told him.

He waved out the match and laughed. "Oh yeah?"

"I would be," I said.

"But there's a difference, Dad." He took a long draw on the cigarette and released a column of smoke that narrowly missed my face. "You weren't at her fucking house."

He'd never used that kind of language in front of me before, but it didn't seem the right time to quibble about matters that now struck me as infinitely small. The last thing he needed, I decided, was a scolding.

"I have to take you back home," I told him.

This appeared to disturb him more than my having caught him with a cigarette.

"I want to hang around here for a while," he said.

"No, you have to come with me," I insisted. "There are a couple of policemen who want to talk to you."

His face stiffened and an icy fear came into his eyes. "They think I did it, right?"

"Did what?"

"You know, whatever happened to Amy."

"There's no evidence that anything happened to Amy."

"Yeah, but something did," Keith said. "Something did, or she wouldn't be missing."

"Keith," I said. "I want you to be very careful when you talk to these cops. Think before you answer. And be sure you don't lie about anything."

"Why would I lie about something?" Keith asked.

"Just don't, that's what I'm telling you. Because it's a red flag."

He dropped the cigarette and crushed it with an odd brutality, as if he were angrily stomping the life out of a small defenseless creature. "I didn't hurt Amy."

"I know that."

"I may be bad, but I didn't hurt Amy."

"You're not bad, Keith. Smoking cigarettes doesn't make you bad."

A dry scoffing laugh broke from him, one whose exact meaning I couldn't read. "Yeah, right, Dad" was all he said.

Meredith had served Kraus and Peak coffee and cookies by the time I returned with Keith, but I couldn't imagine that she'd been able to do it in a way that actually made them feel welcome.