Red Leaves

EIGHTEEN

Monday morning I got up early, walked to the kitchen and made coffee. For a long time I sat alone at the small oval table that overlooked the front yard. I recalled the previous night's search through my father's papers, the incriminating documents I'd found among them, and felt again a searing need to get to the bottom of what, if anything, had actually happened to my mother. At the same time I knew nowhere to go with what I'd found. I recalled how Meredith had come down to the basement, the strange accusation my mind had seized upon, the licking flames that had suddenly sprung up all around me, which I now laid at the feet of the undeniable strain I'd been under since Amy Giordano's disappearance. It was this tension that had created the false fires I felt still burning in me, I decided, fires which, when the mystery of her circumstances was finally resolved, would surely weaken and gutter out.

Keith came down the stairs at just past seven. He didn't bother to come into the kitchen. He'd never been hungry in the morning, and neither Meredith nor I any longer insisted that he eat something before going to school. And so on this particular morning, like most others, he simply swept down the stairs and out the door to where his bike lay on its side in the dewy grass, mounted it, and peddled away.

He'd already disappeared up the hill when Meredith came into the kitchen. Normally by this time she would be fully dressed for work, so it surprised me that she was still in her housecoat, the belt drawn tight, her feet bare, hair in disarray. She hadn't put on the usual light coat of makeup either, and I noticed dark circles under her eyes. She looked tense and un-rested, worn down by what we'd been going through.

"I'm not going in to work today," she said. She poured a cup of coffee, but instead of joining me at the table, walked to the window and stared out into the yard.

Her back was to me, and I admired her shape, the way she'd so carefully maintained it. She had broad shoulders, and long sleek legs, and despite her drawn appearance, I knew why men still turned when she came into the room.

"Keith's already gone," I told her.

"Yeah, I saw him out the window." She took a sip of coffee and kept her eyes fixed on the front yard. "I'll just call it a personal day," she said. "They don't ask questions when you take a personal day."

I walked over to her, wrapped my arms loosely around her shoulders. "Maybe I'll take off, too. Go to a movie or something. Spend the whole day. Just the two of us."

She shook her head and pulled out of my arms. "No, I have to work. It's not that kind of personal day."

"What work?" I asked.

"I need to write a lecture. On Browning."

"I thought you'd written all your lectures. Wasn't that what all those late nights at the library were about?"

She returned to the coffee machine. "All but Browning," she said. "I have the notes here."

"Any chance of finishing it by afternoon? We could go for a long walk together."

"No, I won't be finished by then," she answered. She came over to me and pressed an open palm against the side of my face. "But I'll cook a nice dinner. French. With candles. Wine." She smiled thinly. "We might even persuade Keith to join us."

I drew her hand away and held it lightly. "What about Rodenberry?"

Her eyes tensed.

"Are we going to talk to Keith about him?"

My question seemed to put her at ease. "I think we should," she said.

"All right."

I left her, walked upstairs, and finished dressing. She was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping from her cup, when I came back down.

She smiled when she saw me. "Have a nice day," she said.

***

Detective Peak was waiting for me when I arrived at the shop. This time he was dressed casually, in a light flannel jacket and open-collar shirt. As I came toward him, he edged away from the side of the building and nodded.

"I wonder if we could have a cup of coffee," he asked.

"I've already had my morning coffee," I answered coolly.

"Just one cup," Peak said, but not in the distant professional tone he'd used with Meredith. Instead, there was now something unexpectedly fraternal in his manner, as if we were old war buddies and so could talk to each other in full trust and confidence.

"You'll be able to open on rime," he added.

"All right," I said with a shrug.

We walked to the diner at the end of the block. It was owned by the Richardsons, a couple who'd moved to Wesley from New York only a few years before. They'd shunned the sleek art deco look of city diners and tried for a homey design instead, wooden tables, lace curtains, porcelain salt and pepper shakers in the form of a nineteenth-century sea captain and his wife. Before that morning, I'd hardly noticed the décor, but now it struck me as false and unnatural, like a bad face-lift.

"Two coffees," Peak said to Matt Richardson as we took a table near the front window.

Peak smiled. "May I call you Eric?"

"No."

The smiled vanished. "I have a family, too," he said. He waited for me to respond. When I didn't, he folded his arms on the table and leaned into them. "It's my day off," he added.

I immediately suspected that this was Peak's new approach and that it was meant to soften me up, a way of telling me that he'd taken a special interest in the case, was trying to be of help. A week before, I might have believed him, but now I thought it just an act, something he'd learned at police interrogation school.

The coffees came. I took a quick sip, but Peak left his untouched.

"This doesn't have to go any further," he said. His voice was low, measured. It conveyed a sense of guarded discretion. "Absolutely no further."

He drew in a deep preparatory breath, like a man about to take a long dive into uncertain waters. "We found things on Keith's computer."

My hands trembled very slightly, like shaking leaves. I quickly dropped them into my lap and put on a stiff unflappable face.

"What did you find?" I asked.

Peak's face was a melancholy mask. "Pictures."

"Pictures of what?" I asked stonily.

"Children."

The earth stopped turning.

"They aren't illegal, these pictures," Peak added quickly. "They're not exactly child pornography."

"What are they?"

He looked at me pointedly. "You're sure you don't know anything about these pictures?"

"No, nothing."

"You never use Keith's computer?"

I shook my head.

"Then the pictures have to be Keiths," Peak said. He made a show of being genuinely sorry that the pictures had turned up. Part of his new act, I decided, his effort to suggest that he'd come to me in search of an explanation, one that would get Keith off the hook. I had a photo shop, after all. Maybe I was interested in "art pictures." If so, as he'd already assured me, nothing would go further.

"The children are all girls," Peak continued. "They look to be around eight years old." He bit his lower lip, then said. "Nude."

I felt the only safety lay in silence, so I said nothing.

"We've talked to Keith's teachers," Peak said. "He seems to have self-esteem problems."

I saw Keith in my mind, the limp drag of his hair, how unkempt he was, the slouch of his shoulders, the drowsy, listless eyes. Was that the posture of his inner view of himself, hunched, sloppy, worthless?

"Low self-esteem is part of the profile," Peak said.

I remained silent, afraid the slightest word might be used against my son, quoted by the prosecution, used to buttress the case, contribute to conviction.

"Of men who like children," Peak added.

I clung to silence like the shattered bow of a sinking boat, the only thing that could keep me afloat in the rising water.

"Do you want to see the pictures?" Peak asked.

I didn't know what to do, couldn't figure out Peak's scheme. If I said no, what would that mean? And if I said yes, what would he gather from that?

"Mr. Moore?"

I raced to figure out the right answer, then simply tossed a mental coin.

"I guess I should," I said.

He had them in his car, and as I made my way across the parking lot, I felt like a man following the hangman to the waiting gallows.

Peak got in behind the wheel. I took my place on the passenger side. He picked up the plain manila folder that rested on the seat between us. "We printed these off Keiths computer. As I said, they're not illegal. But I'm sure you can understand that they're a problem for us, something we can't ignore."

I took the envelope and drew out the pictures. The stack was about half an inch thick, twenty, maybe thirty photographs. One by one, I went through them, and just as Peak said, they weren't exactly pornographic. All of the girls were posed alone in natural settings, never indoors, little girls in bright sunlight, their tiny budding breasts barely detectible on their gleaming white chests. Naked, they sat on fallen trees or beside glittering streams. They were sometimes shot from the front, sometimes from the rear, sometimes their whole bodies in profile, standing erect, or sitting, knees to their chins, their arms enfolding their legs. They had long hair and perfectly proportioned bodies. They were beautiful in the flawless, innocent way of childhood beauty. None, I guessed, was more than four feet tall. None had pubic hair. All of them were smiling.

So what do you do at such a moment? As a father. What do you do after you've looked at such pictures, then returned them to the manila envelope, and lowered the envelope back down upon the car seat?

You do this. You look into the closely regarding eyes of another man, one who clearly thinks your son is, at best, a pervert, and at worse, a kidnapper, perhaps a rapist, a murderer. You look into those eyes and because you have no answer to the terrible accusation you see in them, you say simply, "What about his room? Did you find anything?"

"You mean, magazines ... things like that?" Peak asked. "No, we didn't."

I hazarded another question. "Anything connected to Amy?"

Peak shook his head.

"So where are we?"

"We're still investigating," Peak said.

I looked at him evenly. "What did you hope to get by showing me those pictures?"

"Mr. Moore," Peak said evenly, "in a case like this, it always goes better if we can stop the investigation."

"Stop it with a confession, you mean," I said.

"If Keith voluntarily gives us a statement, we can help him," Peak said. He studied my face for a moment. "The Giordanos want their daughter back They want to know where she is, and they want to bring her home." He drew the envelope up against the side of his leg. "And, of course, they want to know what happened to her," he added. "If it were your child, you'd want that, too, I'm sure."

He was into the depths of his kinder, gentler ruse, but I'd had enough. "I assume we're done," I said sharply, then reached for the handle of the door. Peak's voice stopped me dead.

"Has Keith ever mentioned a man named Delmot Price?" Peak asked.

I recognized the name. "He owns the Village Florist Shop. Keith delivers there sometimes."

"And that's all you know about them?"

"Them?" I asked.

"We traced the call," Peak said. "I'm sure your lawyer has told you about it. The one the pizza deliveryman saw Keith making at the Giordanos'. It was placed to Delmot Price."

I started to speak, then stopped and waited.

"He knows Keith quite well," Peak added significantly.

I saw the car draw into the driveway as it had that night, its twin beams sweeping through the undergrowth, then Keith as he made his way down the unpaved road, brushed past the Japanese maple, and came into the house.

"Were they together that night?" I asked.

"Together?"

"Keith and Delmot Price."

"What makes you think they were together?" Peak asked.

I couldn't answer.

"Mr. Moore?"

I shook my head. "Nothing," I said. "Nothing makes me think they were together."

Peak saw the wound open up in me. I was a deer and he was an archer who knew he'd aimed well. I could almost feel the arrow dangling from my side.

"Did you know Keith had a relationship with this man?" Peak asked.

"Is that what he has?"

"According to Price, it's sort of a father-son thing."

"Keith has a father," I said sharply.

"Of course," Peak said softly, "but he talks to Price, you know, about himself, his problems. That he's not happy. Feels isolated."

"You think I don't know that about him?"

Peak seemed to be peering into my brain, looking through its many chambers, searching for the clue to me.

"I'm sure of one thing," he said. "You want to help Keith. We all want to help Keith."

It was all I could do to keep from laughing in Peak's face because I knew it was an act, scripted, a carefully laid trap to get me to incriminate my son; Peak had been moving at just the right pace, dropping little bits of information, then holding back, waiting. Which he was doing now, his eyes very still until he blinked slowly, released a small sigh, then said, "Did you know that Keith steals?"

I drew in a quick breath but did not reply.

"Price caught him stealing money from the cash register in his shop," Peak said. "Keith begged him not to say anything, and that's how they started talking."

I pretended to scoff at the outrageous nature of this latest charge. "That's ridiculous," I said. "Keith has everything he needs. And in addition, I pay him for the work he does at the shop."

"Not enough evidently."

"He has everything he needs," I insisted. "Why would he steal?"

Again, Peak waited for just the right amount of time before releasing his next arrow. "According to Price, he's trying to get enough money to run away."

"Run away? To where?"

"Anywhere, I guess."

Meaning, anywhere as long as it was away from me, from Meredith, from the burden of our family life.

"When was he going to do it?" I asked icily.

"As soon as he got enough money, I suppose." Peak leaned back and raked the side of his face.

"Unless this whole thing about Keith stealing isn't true," I said quickly. "Have you thought of that? Maybe Price is lying. Maybe Keith never took anything."

"Maybe," Peak said. "Why don't you ask him?"

He was setting me up, and I knew it. He was setting me up to do his work for him, interrogate my son.

"What have you asked him, Mr. Moore?" Peak said. "Have you asked him directly if he hurt Amy Giordano?"

He saw the answer in my eyes.

"Have you asked him anything about that night?"

"Of course, I have."

"What?"

"Well, for one thing, I asked him if he had any reason to think that Amy might have run away," I said. "Or if he'd seen anything suspicious around her house. A prowler, something like that."

"And he said no, right?"

I nodded.

"And you believed him, of course," Peak said. "Any father would." He leaned toward me slightly. "But Keith's not exactly who you think he is," he said gravely.

It was all I could do not to sneer. "Yeah, well," I said, "who is?"