Red Leaves

TWELVE

For the first time in years, I didn't want to go home that night, though even then, despite my anxiety, I had no idea that before long I would be leaving my home for good.

I saw it for the last time on a chill October day. The closing was set for that afternoon, and the new owner, an attorney with a young wife and two small children, was anxious to move in. I walked through the swept and empty rooms one by one, first the kitchen and living room, then upstairs to the bedroom Meredith and I had shared for so long. I looked out its frosted window to a carpet of fallen leaves. Then I walked out into the corridor where I'd faced Keith that night, passed through the door he'd slunk behind, and stared out the window over which he'd once hung a thick impenetrable shade, the one I'd finally ripped down in a fit of rage, my words at that moment once again echoing in my mind, No more fucking lies!

Perhaps I'd actually begun to sense that steadily approaching violence the evening I decided not to go home directly after work, but called Meredith instead, told her I was going to be late and tried to lose myself in the repetitive labor of safely enclosing idyllic family photographs within neat square walls of perfectly stained wood and painted metal. Or perhaps I'd begun to feel that the protective walls that had once surrounded my own family, both the first and the second, were beginning to crumble, and that if I could simply ignore the leaks and fissures, then it would all go away and Amy would be returned to Vince and Karen and I could return to Meredith and Keith and by that means escape the ghosts of that other family, Dad and my mother, Jenny and Warren, who'd already begun to speak to me in the same suspicious whisper I imagined as the voice on the police hotline, sinister, malicious, ceaselessly insisting that something at the heart of things was wrong.

I don't remember how long I remained in the shop after closing, only that night had fallen by the time I locked up and walked to my car. Neil had lingered briefly, needlessly shelving stock, so that I knew he was keeping an eye on me, ever ready to provide what he called a friendly shoulder. He left just after seven. I worked another hour, perhaps two, time somehow flowing past me without weight or importance, so that I felt as if I were adrift on its invisible current, a frail rudderless craft moving toward the distant haze behind which waits the furiously cascading falls.

I sat down behind the wheel, but didn't start the engine. All the stores in the mall were closed, and briefly I peered from one unlit shop window to the next. What was I looking for? Direction, I suppose. I knew that strange suspicions were now rising like a noxious mist around my first family, but I also knew that I had to let them go, concentrate on the far more serious matter that now confronted my second family. So, what was I looking for? Probably a way of thinking through the current crisis, putting it in perspective, running the various scenarios, everything from Amy found to Amy murdered, from Keith exonerated to the look on his face as they led him into the death chamber. No thought was too optimistic nor too grim for me that night as I careened from hope to gloom. The fact is, I knew nothing concrete, save that I'd seen a car at the end of the driveway then Keith moving through the darkness toward home.

Suddenly, Leo Brocks voice sounded in my mind: Were you ever over around the water tower?

Keith's answer had been typically short—no.

And yet, between the question and the answer, something had glimmered in my sons eyes, the same dark flaring I'd seen when he'd said that he'd walked home alone the night of Amy's disappearance.

I'd let all of this go for days, despite the fact that Amy's pajamas had been discovered in the general area of the tower, a fact I'd hardly thought about until that evening, when I suddenly felt the urge to go there, see the place for myself, perhaps even find some small thing, a lock of hair, a scrap of paper, that would lead me to her. It was an absurd hope, as I knew even then, but I'd reached the point where absurdity joined with reality, my son accused, however vaguely, of a terrible crime, and I unable to feel certain that he was not also guilty of it. That was the pressure that drove me forward, made me start the engine, drive out of the parking lot in front of my shop, turn right, and head toward the northern edge of town where, within minutes, I could see the top of the water tower glowing softly in the distance, motionless, cylindrical, like a hovering spacecraft.

The unpaved road that led to the tower was a bumpy winding one that grew ever more narrow as I drove down it. Two walls of green vines crept in from both sides of the road, sometimes clawing at my window like skeletal fingers.

The road curled to the left, then made a long circle around the looming tower and the high metal legs that supported its enormous weight. There were no formal parking spaces, but I could see indentations in the surrounding vegetation, places where cars had pulled in and parked with sufficient regularity to leave their ghostly images in the undergrowth.

I followed the road on around, then stopped, backed into a phantom space, and cut my lights. Now there was nothing to illuminate the darkness but the beams that swept down from the outer rim of the tower.

For a time I sat in that covering darkness, my gaze moving about the softly illuminated area beneath the tower. It was weedy and overgrown, and the wind rippled softly through the grasses. Here and there bits of litter tumbled briefly in these same breezes, then gently came to rest.

I saw nothing that I might not have expected of such a place. It was lonely and deserted and far off the beaten track, but beyond these common characteristics, it might have been reproduced in a dozen other towns throughout the region. They all had their own water towers, and nothing distinguished this one from those others except my gathering sense that it was used in some way, a designated meeting place, the sacred territory of a secret society. I half expected to see animal bones scattered about the grounds, the remains of some occult group's bizarre religious sacrifices.

That thought gave me an eerie chill, the feeling that I'd stumbled into someone else's territory, the way casual hikers are said to stumble onto marijuana patches in the middle of otherwise perfectly innocuous fields and meadows. Could it be, I wondered, that Amy Giordano had been brought here not merely because it was secluded, but for some specific purpose? My imagination fired luridly, and I saw her standing, stripped and bound, surrounded by a circle of robed figures, all of them mumbling satanic incantations as they slowly circled her. Then, in my mind's bizarre scenario, she was laid upon a makeshift altar, silver blades raised high above her as the incantation reached a fever pitch. Then the knives came down one at a time, each figure taking his appointed turn until—

That was when I saw the light.

It came down the same unpaved road I'd taken only minutes before, headlights bouncing jerkily as the car bumped toward the tower. At the tower, it circled slowly, the shadowy driver staring straight ahead as the car drifted past mine, so that I caught the face only in brief black silhouette.

Clearly, he was familiar with the place, because he drove directly to what seemed a preordained spot, then stopped, backed up, and turned off his lights.

I had backed deeply into the undergrowth, and so I doubt that he saw me as he passed, though surely he must have glimpsed the front of my car when he backed into his own place. If so, my presence did not in the least alarm him. Through the eerie haze cast beneath the tower, I saw him as he sat in the shadowy interior of his car. He did not get out, and for a time he remained almost completely still. Then I saw a slight movement and after that, the fire of a match and the glowing tip of a cigarette, rhythmically brightening and dimming with each inhalation.

The minutes passed, and as they did, the man became less sinister. I imagined him a harmless night owl, maybe plagued by an unhappy home, and so he'd found a place where he could sit alone, undisturbed, and either think things through or let his troubles briefly slip his mind altogether.

Then, out of the darkness, a second car made its approach, moving slowly, its headlights joggling through the undergrowth until it made the same slow turn, found its place, and backed in.

A woman got out, short and somewhat overweight, her blond hair hanging stiffly, like a wig. She walked to the second car and pulled herself in on the passenger side. Despite the darkness, I could see her talking with the man. Then she leaned forward, curling downward, and disappeared from view. The man took a final draw on his cigarette and tossed it out the window. The woman surfaced briefly, and I think they both laughed. Then she curled forward and disappeared again, this time without resurfacing until the man suddenly thrust his head backward and released what even from a distance I recognized as a shuddering sigh.

I wanted to leave, of course, to skulk away unseen, because there is a kind of intrusion that comes very close to crime. I felt like a thief, someone who'd broken into a secret chamber, and for that reason I remained in place, my head down, my eyes roaming here and there, avoiding the two cars that rested in the darkness several yards away. The sound of a car door returned me to them. The woman had gotten out of the man's car and was heading back toward her own. On the way, she grabbed the purse that dangled from her shoulder, opened it, and put something inside. Seconds later, she pulled away, the other car falling in behind her, both cars making their way around the circle, through the grasping vines, and back out onto the main road.

Even then, I stayed in place for fear that if I left too soon I might come upon one or the other of them and reveal what I'd seen at the tower.

Five minutes went by, then ten, and at last it seemed safe to leave. I drove back to the main road and headed home to where I knew I would find Meredith reading in bed and Keith secreted in his room, listening to music or playing his computer games. I thought I knew the things that were on Meredith's mind, either Keith or some problem at the college. But Keith was much more of an enigma now, a boy who smoked, cursed, perhaps even lied to the police and me about—I couldn't even say how many things he might have lied about. I only knew that I couldn't stop my own growing suspicion that the anonymous caller on the police hotline had been right, that there was something wrong.