Parting Shot

Seventeen

Duckworth did not need to look up Craig Pierce’s address.

He knew where he was living, and it wasn’t at his own apartment. He’d given that up after the incident, and now — like Trevor — was back living with his parents. Thank God that was the only thing about their situations that was similar.

He didn’t see any point in calling ahead to ask whether this was a good time to drop by and talk to Pierce. There’d never be a good time.

Pierce’s parents lived in the west end of Promise Falls on an older, tree-lined street. It was a two-story home that, while not run down, needed attention. The grass was overgrown, the shrubs crying out for a trim. The woodwork around the doors and windows could have used a coat of paint.

Duckworth parked at the curb, walked up to the door and rang the bell. It took Pierce’s mother — Duckworth remembered her name was Ruth — nearly a minute to come to the door. She peered through the window first, then opened the door a crack.

“Ms. Pierce, it’s Detective Duckworth.”

“Oh, yes, hello,” said Ruth Pierce. She opened the door far enough to admit him, as though opening it wider would allow unseen forces to invade the house. “Forgive me. You wouldn’t believe the people that show up. Awful, awful people. Not quite as many as there used to be, but they still come.”

“I’m sorry,” Duckworth said.

“People can be so cruel. The ones that want to make fun of him, to laugh at his misfortune. They’re no better than whoever did this to him.”

“They can be pretty awful, it’s true.”

As he stepped into the house, he sniffed the air.

“That’s scones,” Ruth Pierce said. “They just came out of the oven. Craig loves my scones and I try to do whatever I can to make him happy. Would you like one? With some jam?”

Duckworth felt his resolve weakening, not unlike that time, on another investigation, when he arrived to question a woman just as she’d finished baking banana bread. There were some things one could not say no to.

“That sounds wonderful,” he said.

“It would give us a chance to chat before you go upstairs to talk to Craig,” she said. “That’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Talk to Craig.”

“I do, yes.”

“He probably knows you’re here. He sits and looks out the window a lot of the day.”

Her eyes drifted northward. If Craig kept an eye on the street, his bedroom had to be right above their heads. It occurred to Duckworth that there wasn’t a sound coming from up there.

As if reading his mind, his mother said, “I’ve got the TV hooked up in there but he almost never turns it on. Mostly he’s on his computer. Come to the kitchen.”

Duckworth followed her, and the scent of scones. He took a seat at the kitchen table as Ruth transferred the scones from a cooking sheet to a plate. “I love them when they’re still warm,” she said.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“You look like you’ve lost some weight.”

“A little.”

“Isn’t your wife looking after you?”

Duckworth chuckled. “It’s because she is looking after me that I’ve managed to lose it.”

She shook her head. “That’s no way to live, denying yourself the pleasures of life.” She briefly froze, and then her chin began to quiver. “Oh my poor, poor boy.” Her body shook with one brief sob. “There are so many pleasures he’ll never know.”

Duckworth contemplated whether to get up and comfort her, but she saved him the trouble, suddenly standing up straight and saying, “We have to move forward. That’s all we can do.”

She brought a plate with half a dozen scones to the table. “Coffee?”

“Uh—”

“You have to have some coffee. You can’t have a scone without coffee. I already have some going here.” She put a hand to her mouth, as though she’d just realized she’d made a terrible mistake. “I suppose what really goes with scones is tea. Would you prefer tea?”

“Coffee’s perfect.”

“That’s good. I don’t know if I even have any tea. If there are any tea bags in the back of that cupboard, they’re probably ten years old. Does tea go bad?”

“I don’t know.” Duckworth cleared his throat, hoping to steer the conversation away from hot beverages. “How’s Mr. Pierce?” he asked, meaning her husband, not her son.

Her face fell. “Oh, I guess you didn’t hear.”

Duckworth felt the air going out of him. “What happened, Mrs. Pierce?”

“I think it all just became too much for him. First, those horrible accusations against Craig. Brendan found that terribly difficult to deal with. Well, so did I, but he took it badly. Then the outrage that followed when the charges were dropped.”

Duckworth was well aware.

It was alleged that Craig Pierce had sexually molested an eleven-year-old girl he’d encountered in a Promise Falls park. That would have been serious enough, but it was worse than that. The girl was mentally disabled, and her intellectual handicap made it easy for Craig’s defense lawyer to challenge her ability to accurately identify the man who had dragged her into the bushes. The prosecutors had no DNA sample to tie Craig to the assault, and ultimately had to dismiss the charges.

Some might actually have been inclined to give Pierce the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it had been someone else. Perhaps the girl’s confusion over identifying Pierce meant she had it wrong. But Pierce’s behavior after the incident suggested guilt. He’d had hair nearly down to his shoulders, but immediately after the incident had it all cut off. When the girl was asked to pick him out of a lineup, she was looking at someone with a buzz cut.

But the clincher was what Pierce was heard to have said after the charges had been dropped. With news cameras rolling nearby, he’d been caught whispering to a buddy, “Let this be a lesson. Always pick the dumb ones.”

The comment wasn’t enough to re-lay the charges, but it was enough to persuade everyone Pierce was guilty, and not just folks in the Promise Falls area. The soundbite went viral. Craig Pierce became the world’s most despised man on the Internet for several days. There were emailed death threats, harassing phone calls. He’d had to go into hiding until things blew over, which took the better part of a month.

Turned out not everyone had forgotten about him.

Duckworth let Ruth Pierce continue with her story.

“My husband was devastated by all of it. He was so... ashamed. He wanted to believe Craig was innocent, but he knew... we both knew he’d done what they’d said he’d done. But he had a sickness, you know? Something was wrong in his head. We were going to get treatment for him.”

“About your husband,” Duckworth said, steering her back.

“Then, when Craig was... when he was attacked, and the aftermath... When Craig finally came home from the hospital, Brendan couldn’t even go into his room, couldn’t bear to see him, the way he was. He couldn’t look at him. I don’t think it was shame by that point. He just couldn’t bear to see his son that way. I made him... I made him go up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Aren’t you going to have a scone?” she asked.

“Of course.” Duckworth reached for one, buttered it, then scooped out some strawberry jam the woman had put out and dropped it onto the scone.

Ruth smiled sadly. “I always used to love to watch a man eat.”

Duckworth took a bite. “Wow. That’s fanatastic. It’s still hot. The butter’s melting.”

Her smile faded. “But it’s hard to watch Craig have his dinner. I mean, there was so much damage.”

They were both quiet for a moment. Duckworth waited for Ruth Pierce to finish her story.

“So I said to my husband, he’s your son. You can’t stay out of his room forever. He needs you, I told him. I’d made Craig some lunch. Tomato soup with crackers. He’s loved tomato soup ever since he was three years old. He can make the crackers soft by putting them in the soup. That makes it easier for him. I said to Brendan, take your son his soup.”

Ruth Pierce took a breath before continuing.

“And he finally said okay, he would do it. He took the tray and he went up the stairs so slow. I stood at the bottom and waited. I heard him go into Craig’s room. I asked Craig later what his father said, and apparently he said nothing. Brendan came back down the stairs, and when he got to the bottom... he just collapsed.”

Duckworth stopped chewing his scone.

“What was it?” he asked.

“They said it was a massive heart attack. They said he was gone before he hit the floor.” She looked at the detective with damp eyes. “I killed him. I killed my Brendan.”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t have made him go up. I shouldn’t have let him see how bad his son looked. Not until he was ready. He needed to do it in his own time. It wasn’t a heart attack, you know. It was a broken heart. That’s what it was. His heart was so broken he couldn’t continue.”

Duckworth reached across the table for the woman’s hand and held it. “How long ago was this?”

“Five weeks,” she said.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Duckworth said.

“Oh my gosh, I forgot your coffee.”

She jumped up from the table, filled a mug, and put it on the table in front of him.

“Do you have any help?” he asked. “Other children, extended family?”

Ruth shook her head. “Just me.” She wrung her hands. “I’m not quite sure what we’re going to do. I’ve had to quit my job to look after Craig. There’s some insurance money from Brendan’s policy, but it won’t last long. And then there’s all the reconstructive surgery that Craig needs. I don’t know how I’m going to manage that. He did qualify for some therapy, to help him, you know, psychologically, with what’s happened to him.”

She glanced at the wall clock. “In fact, she’s due here pretty soon. But the surgery he needs — plastic surgery, other things — would cost a fortune. They have these things on the Internet, I think they call them crowd-funding? Where you ask people to donate a little money? And if enough do, then you can do whatever it is you need to do. But no one’s going to donate to help Craig.” She dug a tissue out of her sleeve and dabbed her eye. “No one cares. People think he got what he deserved.”

Duckworth took a sip of his coffee and another bite of his scone.

“Are you here because you caught them?” she asked. “Did you catch the people who did this to him?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Her shoulders sagged. “I figured as much. You know, I like you, Detective Duckworth, I do. I think you’re a very nice man. But I can’t help but think that the police really aren’t trying that hard, you know? That they think Craig got what was coming to him too.”

“That’s not true,” he said.

“Then what have you been doing? It’s been three months. I heard you found out who owned that monstrous dog.”

“Yes,” Duckworth said. “But the dog had been stolen. We don’t think the owner had anything to do with your son’s assault.”

“No one saw anything?”

“It was the middle of the night.” Duckworth grimaced. The park next to the falls the town was named for was getting something of a reputation for horrific crimes.

“If you don’t know anything, then what point is there in talking to Craig? He upsets very easily.”

Duckworth hesitated. “There’s been another incident.”

“Oh dear me.”

He raised a palm. “Not as serious as what happened to Craig. And it may not be related. But I’d like to speak with your son just the same. Maybe, since the last time we spoke, he’s remembered something else.”

Ruth Pierce nodded resignedly. “All right, then. If you have to do it, you have to do it.”

“I want to thank you for the scone. I really shouldn’t have had it, but it was irresistible. The coffee, too.”

“It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

“Do you get out?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes. I mean, Craig can be left home alone. And sometimes I take him for drives. He likes to go for drives. If we’re out in the daytime, he’ll wear something on his head, so people can’t see him. He’s even been going out some on his own, but only late at night, when no one can see him and he doesn’t have to cover himself up. But I worry when he does that. If he has an accident or something, what will people think when they see him? When he’s with me, I can sort of run interference. You know what I mean?”

“Sure,” said Duckworth.

Given that Pierce was known to be a sex offender — although not an actual convicted one — Duckworth pondered the wisdom of him going out at night on his own. Although he didn’t quite pose the threat he might once have.

“The best news is, he’s feeling a little more confident,” Ruth said. “He’s getting interested in things again, like hobbies. He’s been ordering little gadgets off the Internet.”

Duckworth stood and waited for Ruth to get to her feet.

“I’ll try not to be too long,” he said as he started to leave the kitchen.

The woman reached out and gently took his arm.

“There’s something you need to know before you see him.”

“What’s that?”

“First of all, he’s gotten a little... I don’t want to say crazy. But considering everything, he sometimes becomes quite... irreverent.”

“And what else?”

She let out a long breath.

“The last of the bandages have come off.”