Red Leaves

ELEVEN

It was a horrible vision, a fear for which I had no real evidence, and yet I couldn't rid myself of it. All through the night, I thought of nothing but that car, the ghostly driver, my son, all of it tied to the fact that Amy Giordano was incontestably missing and my growing suspicions that Keith had lied to me and to others for no reason I could figure out.

I alone knew about the car, of course, but by morning I also knew that it wasn't a knowledge I could keep to myself anymore. And so, just after Keith trooped down the stairs, mounted his bike, and headed off to school, I broke the news to Meredith.

"I think Keith may be hiding something," I blurted.

Meredith had already put on her jacket and was headed for the door. She froze and immediately faced me.

"He said he walked home that night, but I'm not sure he did."

"What makes you think he didn't?"

"I saw a car pull into the driveway up by the road," I said. "Then, just a few seconds later, Keith came walking down the drive."

"So you think someone brought him home that night?"

"I don't know," I answered. "Maybe."

"Did you see who the driver was?"

"No," I answered. "The car didn't pull all the way down the driveway."

"So you couldn't tell if Keith got out of that car?"

"No."

"Why didn't you tell me about this?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "Maybe I was afraid to—"

"Confront it?"

"Yes," I admitted.

She thought for a moment, then said, "We can't say anything about this, Eric. Not to the police or Leo. Not even to Keith."

"But what if he lied, Meredith?" I asked. "That's the worst thing he could have done. I told him that when I saw him in town the day the police were here. Before I brought him back. I told him that he had to tell the truth. If he didn't, then he has to..."

"No," Meredith repeated sternly, like a captain taking charge of a dangerously floundering vessel. "He can't take anything back. Or add anything. If he does, they'll keep at him. More and more questions. He'll have to lie again and again."

I heard it like distant thunder, dark and threatening, inexorably closing in. "Lie about what?"

She seemed to struggle for an appropriate answer, then gave up. "About that night."

"That night?" I asked. "You think he knows something about—?"

"Of course not, Eric," Meredith snapped. Her voice was strained and unconvincing, so that I wondered if, like me, she'd begun to entertain the worst possible suspicion.

"The problem, Eric," she added, "is that if they find out he lied, there'll be more questions. About him. About us."

"Us?"

"About why we covered it up."

"We're not covering anything up," I said.

"Yes, we are," Meredith said. "You've known about that car from the first night."

"Yes," I admitted, "But it's not as if I was trying to cover up something Keith did. Like hiding a bloody hammer, something like that. It was just a car. Keith might not even have been in it."

Meredith glared at me, exasperated. "Eric, you sat in our living room and listened to two cops question our son. You heard his answers, and you knew that one of them might have been a lie, but you didn't say anything." Her eyes flamed. "It's too late to take any of this back, Eric." She shook her head. "It's too late to take anything back."

For a moment I couldn't tell exactly what she was talking about, what, among perhaps scores of things, could not be taken back.

"All right," I said. "I won't say anything."

"Good," Meredith said. Then, with no further word, she whirled around, opened the door, and fled toward the car, the heels of her shoes popping like pistol shots on the hard brick walk.

Despite Meredith's conclusion that we couldn't say anything about the car I'd seen pull into our driveway that night, I thought of calling Leo Brock and telling him about it. But I never did. Meredith would no doubt argue that it was because I knew Leo would be irritated that I'd withheld something from him and I didn't want to confront that irritation.

But the reason is simpler even than that. The fact is, by midmorning I'd entered an irrational state of hope that it might all simply go away. This hope was based on nothing, and because of that I've come to believe that we are little more than machines designed to create hope in the face of doom. We hope for peace as the bombs explode around us. We hope the tumor will not grow and that our prayers will not dissolve into the empty space into which we lift them. We hope that love will not fade and that our children will turn out all right. As our car skids over the granite cliff, we hope, as we fall, that a cushion will receive us. And at the end, the last fibers of our hope throb for painless death and glorious resurrection.

But on that particular morning, my hope was more specific, and I have no doubt that it sprang from a groundless feeling that things were getting back to normal. Customers came and went, but none of them looked at me in precisely the same way as Mrs. Phelps had the day before. Instead, they nodded polite greetings, smiled, looked me dead in the eye. Perhaps the case was growing cold in their minds, the events distant, their former urgency dissipating. Perhaps my customers had come to accept the fact that Amy was missing and we might never know what had become of her. If this were so, then soon the flyers with Amy's picture would peel from the town's shop windows. The yellow ribbons would unravel and fall to the ground, to be picked up and tossed into the garbage. For a time, the people of Wesley would vaguely consider that my son might have had something to do with Amy's disappearance, but day by day, the stain of their suspicion would fade, and eventually his association with whatever had happened to Amy Giordano would fade as well, and we would all be back to where we were before that night. That was the illusion I allowed myself all that morning, so that by the time I came back from lunch, got out of my car, and headed toward the shop, I half believed that the worst was over.

Then suddenly, like a creature rising from dark, brackish water, he was there.

I saw him get out of the delivery van he used to haul his fruits and vegetables, the bright green cap and vest, his lumbering, muscular figure oddly hunched, like a man carrying a huge invisible stone.

"Hello, Vince," I said.

I could see what the last few days had done to him, the toll they'd taken. His eyes were red with lack of sleep, and large brown crescents hung beneath them. His face looked as if it were hung with weights, everything pulled down slightly.

"Karen didn't want me to talk to you," he said. "Cops probably wouldn't like it, either."

"Then maybe it's not a good idea," I said.

He steadied himself with a shifting motion, and had it been Warren, I would have suspected he'd been drinking. But as far as I knew, Vince Giordano was not a drinking man, especially one who'd have a bag on at one-thirty in the afternoon.

"Maybe it's not," he said. "I don't know, maybe it's not." He glanced toward my shop, then back at me. "But I got to."

He'd always had a ruddy complexion, but now I noticed that the side of his face looked as if it had been roughly scraped. I pictured him clawing at himself with an agonizing desperation, like an animal gnawing at its paw, frantic to escape the metal trap.

"Karen cant have more kids," he said. "Amy was hard. And after her, Karen can't have another one."

I nodded softly, but I could feel my skin tightening, becoming armor. "I'm sorry, Vince."

His eyes glistened. "I got to have Amy back," he said. "She was all we had, Eric. All we'll ever have. And we got to have her back ... one way or the other." Again his eyes fled from me. He sucked in a long trembling breath, but continued to stare out across the parking lot. "If she's in some"—his voice broke—"some ditch or something, you know?" He looked at me pleadingly. "You know?"

"Yes," I said quietly.

"Some ditch where ... animals can ... where—" He suddenly staggered forward, leaned into me, buried his face in my shoulder, and began to sob. "Oh, Jesus," he cried. "I got to have her back."

I draped a single arm over his shoulder, and he drew away quickly, as if stung by an electric charge. "You tell him that, okay?" he said. "Keith." His eyes were dry now, a desert waste. "You tell him that I got to have her back."

"Keith doesn't know where Amy is, Vince," I said.

His gaze fixed on me like two hot beams. "Just tell him," he said.

I started to speak, but he spun around and made his way to his truck, his short powerful arms sawing the wind mechanically, like a furious wind-up doll.

"Keith doesn't know anything," I called after him.

Vince didn't turn, and when he reached his van, he yanked open the door and pulled himself in behind the wheel. For a moment, he sat, head dropped forward, eyes downcast. Then he turned toward me, and I saw the depth of his pain and knew beyond doubt that his world had shrunk to the dark, pulsing nucleus of Amy's loss. All that had mattered to him before no longer mattered. Nor did all that still mattered to others touch him now. I heard his words again, fraught with desperate warning, I got to have her back. Beneath the anguish, there was a festering rage. Vince would level cities, vaporize oceans, burn all the fields of earth to hold Amy in his arms again, hold her dead or alive. For him, all existence weighed no more than sixty pounds, stood no higher than four feet. Everything else was dust.

***

I didn't want to go into the shop after that, didn't want Neil to see how shaken I was. He'd ask questions I didn't want to answer. And so I walked to the other end of the mall and dialed Leo Brock.

"I had a little ... confrontation with Vince Giordano," I told him.

"When?"

"Just now."

"Where?"

"In the parking lot outside my shop."

"What did he say?"

"That he wants Amy back," I answered. "He told me to tell that to Keith."

I see.

"He thinks Keith did something, Leo," I added. "He's convinced himself of that."

There was a pause, and I could almost hear the tumblers of Leo's brain.

"Listen, Eric," he said at last. "The police seem to think that there's something wrong. Something somebody isn't telling."

"What do you mean?"

"That's the most I could get out of my source," Brock said. "Nothing concrete. Just a feeling that something's wrong."

"With Keith?"

"With something," Leo said. "The guy who tells me these things, he just gives hints."

"Something wrong," I repeated. "Where would they come up with an idea like that?"

"I don't know. Maybe they got a tip."

"A tip? From whom?"

"It could be anybody," Leo answered. "It could have come from that hotline they've set up. You know how that works. Anonymous. Anybody can call in, say anything."

"But the cops don't have to believe it, do they?"

"No, they don't," Leo said. "But if it has any credibility, then they're apt to look into it. Especially in a case like this. Missing girl. They're under a lot of pressure, Eric, as I'm sure you know." He paused, like a priest in the confessional, using silence as a spade, digging at me. "So, if you know of something ... wrong."

I choked back the reflex to tell him about the car. "This isn't enough," I said. "This isn't enough for me to go on, this business of something being wrong. Jesus Christ. It could be anything. Something 'wrong.' Jesus, could they get more vague?"

"Which is why I'm asking," Leo said.

"What exactly are you asking, Leo?"

"Eric, listen," Leo said evenly. "This business of Vince Giordano, don't worry about that. I can get a restraining order in two seconds. But understand, on this other matter, the police are going to be looking into things."

"What things?"

"Whatever looks promising from their point of view," Leo said. "They don't have to go in only one direction. If something comes in, like on that hotline, they can run with it. It could be anything. Some rumor. This is a police investigation, Eric, not a trial. The rules aren't the same."

I shook my head. "Hotline. Jesus Christ. Just something somebody says over the phone, and—"

"That's right," Leo interrupted. "So let me ask you this, is there any reason why someone out there might want to hurt you or Meredith?"

"By doing what? Blaming this whole thing on Keith?"

"Perhaps that. Or maybe just by planting stories."

"What kind of stories?"

"Any story that might get the attention of the police."

I laughed coldly. "Like we're drug dealers ... or Satanists?"

Leo's tone was grave. "Anything, Eric."

Suddenly I felt drained, all my energy dissipated, my earlier optimism flattened like an animal on the road. "God," I breathed. "My God."

"I don't know what this 'something wrong' is," Leo said. "My guess, it's probably nothing. But they don't need much, the cops. Not in a case like this."

I lifted my head slightly, like a battered fighter rallying before the next bell. "Well, the answer is no," I said. "There is nothing wrong."

After a pause, Leo said, "All right." He cleared his throat roughly. "Do you want me to take action regarding Mr. Giordano?"

I saw Vince's stricken face bury itself in my shoulder, felt the tremble of his sobs. "No," I said. "Not yet."

"All right," Leo said again, his tone the same as seconds before, carrying a hint of disappointment. "But let me know if he approaches you again."

"I will," I assured him.

He hung up with no further word, but a mood continued to reverberate around me, weird suggestions about "someone out there" who might want to hurt me or Meredith or Keith, strike at our little family circle, rip it apart. I heard a whispered voice, anonymous and malicious, recorded on the police hotline, mouthing accusations of incest, abuse, all manner of deviance, but the longer the list became, the more I dismissed the dark accusing voice. Charges had to be proved, after all. Suspicion alone could not destroy anything.

Or could it?

Suddenly another question sliced through my brain, one directed not toward Keith or Meredith, as should have been expected, but to the mysterious man who'd shown up at the house, asked Warren questions, come on an insurance matter only a week or so after my mother's car had shattered the guardrail of the Van Cortland Bridge and plunged into the icy stream below.

What, I wondered with an inexplicable sense of dread, had he been looking for?