Reunion at Red Paint Bay (23 page)

Garrity hitched up his holster, which had slid below his belly. “I don’t figure that will help right now.”

Why would he say that? Publicity always helped in missing person cases, unless the person wasn’t able to be found. Simon put out his hand. “Never know.”

“That’s true, I guess.” The chief dropped the photo on the counter, face up.

When Simon stepped outside
into the parking lot at Red’s, the sun was shining brightly, as the morning weather forecast had promised, but with a few clouds hanging in the eastern sky, drifting inland, an uncommon direction for this time of year. The clouds were light on top and dark across the bottom, giving them the illusion of a solid object. He wondered if it was true what he had read, that a cumulous cloud could weigh as much as one hundred elephants. It was hard to look at clouds the same, knowing that one fact about them.

He flipped open his cell phone and dialed Amy. The call immediately kicked over to her message, as usual. He could count on it, and he often did when he didn’t want to deal with her questions. “Hey Amy, it’s me. Listen, I was just talking to Tom Garrity about the guy missing at the lake. It seems like it might be that client of yours you were telling me about. Tom’s going to get in touch with you, I think, since I hinted that you were seeing the guy. I know you can’t really say anything for
privacy reasons, right? I told Tom that. But he’ll probably still try to coax something out of you. He wants to find out where the guy is, and you don’t know that, so you can’t really help anyway. Okay, this is kind of a long message. Call me if we need to talk.”

When he clicked off he wondered if he had been clear enough—don’t tell the police anything.

Joe Armin reported
in by phone. “They’re getting divers out to search the bay,” he said. “Apparently they’re checking on a report of someone falling off the dock Monday afternoon.”

Falling off—
still the phrasing of an accident. Apparently Lenore was not being believed.

“Yeah,” Joe said in the excited tone of a young reporter on the scene, “a counselor over at the Boy Scout camp spotted him.”

Simon’s hand stiffened on the phone. It amazed him, how hearing something threatening could instantly manifest in a physical reaction, the tightening of muscles. “How could he do that, Joe? You can’t see across the bay.”

“They were doing bird watching over there looking through binoculars, so he had a good view. I think I should go talk to him.”

What were the chances that a Boy Scout counselor, an unimpeachable observer, would be looking out into the bay for birds and see a man fall in the water? What
else had he seen through his binoculars? And why hadn’t Garrity mentioned such a credible eyewitness?

“Sure, Joe, go interview him and find out exactly what he saw.”

She said
, “
Why did you
send Tom Garrity to me?”

He was kneeling in the garden, yanking handfuls of weeds from around the spindly tomato plants, barely two feet high in July, and with only a few yellow flowers on them promising fruit. It would be another lousy year for tomatoes. He had thought that leaving work early to do something outside with his hands would help him forget for a while the predicament he was in. But there was Amy standing over him, demanding an answer.

“Hello to you, too,” he said sitting back on his heels. “I suggest next year we just throw some wildflower seeds in the garden and forget trying to grow tomatoes and cucumbers. It’s wasted effort.”

“You do the weeding, so plant what you want.” She moved away a step, letting the late afternoon sun hit his face. “Could you tell me why you sent the police chief to me?”

Simon yanked more weeds, spraying her shoes with dirt. She brushed off her shoes, lifting one foot up at a time to do it. Bits of dirt still stuck to her tan shoes like purposeful specks of contrasting color. He thought they looked interesting that way. “I saw him at Red’s
at lunch,” Simon said, “and he started asking all these questions about the missing guy, Paul. Since you saw him a couple of times …”

“You’re counting on me not saying anything, aren’t you?”

“I know you’re not supposed to talk about people you see. But I didn’t think I should hold back that he was your patient since he’s missing and may have committed suicide. I didn’t actually say you were seeing him anyway. I implied it. I figured you’d sort things out with Tom.”

“Well, he’s sorting it out. Apparently once I called 911, it became a police matter.”

“You mean you
can
talk about him?” Simon tried to portray only casual surprise, a kind of ethical inquisitiveness in his voice, but he was sure she could sense something more.

“I can talk about how a man who said his name is Paul Chambers prevented me from leaving my office this week, but I won’t reveal anything he told me during our sessions. That’s what’s important to you, isn’t it, that the police don’t know why he was in Red Paint?”

Simon straightened a limp stalk to its pole and re-fixed the tie holding it. He had little hope a tomato would grow on the plant, but he thought he should give it the opportunity. In his garden, everything had its fair chance. He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand. “It probably would be better if they didn’t know that.”

“They could get a subpoena. Then I’d have to decide what to do.”

“Would you cooperate, if you were subpoenaed?”

“I might,” Amy said, “if they just want information to help find him.” She noticed the dirt still on her shoe and bent down to rub it away, but the dark brown just rubbed deeper into her tan sandals. “You don’t want the police to find him, do you?”

He yanked a dead leaf off the stalk. “Why do you say that? Of course I hope they find him.”

She shifted side to side, blocking the sun and then letting it strike him again, a strobe effect. She said, “Do you know where Paul Chambers—Paul
Walker
—is?”

He shielded his eyes to see her. “How would I know that?”

“That’s not answering my question. Do you know where he is?”

Simon didn’t, exactly. The last he’d seen the man he was sinking into the dark waters of the bay. Perhaps he climbed out when Simon dove under looking for him. Perhaps he floated away unseen to a different shore. Perhaps he did drown. There were several possibilities at least. Without a body, who could say he was really even dead? “No, I don’t know where he is.”

“Why would it take you so long to answer, Simon? You either do know or you don’t.”

“Like I said, I don’t.”

“Then why take so long to answer?”

“What are you doing, timing my answers to see if I speak fast enough for you to believe me? Is there some two-second rule I don’t know about?”

“The rule is we tell each other the truth.”

“Are we talking about Jean Crane again? Because I explained that to you, I didn’t force her to have sex.”

Amy cocked her head, adjusting to the shift in subject. “This isn’t about Jean Crane. It’s about her husband who came to Red Paint to get revenge on the man he thought raped the woman he married—that’s you, Simon. Now he’s disappeared.”

“And you think I had something to do with that?”

“Did you?”

He stood up to face her, just a few feet between them. It felt good to be so much bigger. “Now you’re avoiding the question,” he said. “Do you think I had something to do with this guy’s disappearance?”

Her eyes narrowed, trying to bore into his soul where surely the truth must lie. Souls should come with protective armor, he thought. They shouldn’t be open for inspection. Four seconds, five, six …

“Why are
you
taking so long to answer?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I think you know something about him being missing.”

“I can’t tell you how comforting your faith in me is,” Simon said. “Makes me realize how strong our marriage is after sixteen years.”

“I haven’t been living with a secret. I’m an open book to you. But for our whole married life you hid from me the rather important fact that a girl accused you of raping her.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again. Apparently in your mind I’m
Simon the husband who doesn’t tell his wife he’s a rapist
. And now you can add to it that I’m
Simon the husband who may have done what? Killed a man?
Is that what you think?”

“I didn’t say anything about you killing him, Simon.” She squinted at him, as if to see more clearly. “Tell me you didn’t kill him.”

He would have liked to declare that he hadn’t, make her feel bad for even considering the idea. But there was the nagging possibility that he may have caused the death of another human being.
Killed
him, at least in some sense of the word. With this possibility in mind, he found it incongruous to be outraged at her suspicions, but he felt outraged nevertheless. She had no good reason to think him guilty. It was her inherent distrust of him that brought her to this conclusion. A failing in her. He said, “If I tell you I didn’t kill the guy or do anything else to him, you still won’t believe me, will you?”

“Try me.”

He turned back to the garden and dug his hands into the hard, dry dirt.

He came inside
to a familiar scene: Davey sitting on the hot seat, the leather-covered stool in the family room, his feet still unable to reach the floor, with Amy circling him like a cop in an interrogation room. He wasn’t needed for this performance.

“Dad!” Davey said at the sight of Simon and jumped off the stool.

Amy grabbed the boy’s arm at the thin bicep and squeezed.

“That hurts,” he said, twisting out of her grasp.

“Then get back on the stool. We’re not done here.”

Davey climbed back on.

“What’s going on?” Simon said as he pulled off his work gloves.

Amy turned toward him as if addressing a jury. “It seems that your son was playing with knives at his friend Kenny’s house, and according to Dora Reed, who just called, he threw a knife at her son’s forearm and drew blood. She had to rush him to the emergency room for a tetanus shot. It’s just a day full of good news around here.”

Simon glanced at Davey, sitting behind his mother, and the boy spit on his hand and flashed it in the air. The message was clear.

Amy turned her attention back on their son. “So I’m asking you again, did you throw a knife at Kenny?”

“No, Mom, he threw it at his own stupid arm.”

Amy squinted at him. “Why would he do that?”

“He was showing off how close he could get without hitting it but he missed—I mean he didn’t miss, he hit himself and started bleeding. I’m the one who said he had to tell his mother to take him for a shot so he wouldn’t get lockjaw. He was going to just put on his sweatshirt and not tell her. I saved his life, didn’t I?”

She ignored his plea for praise. “Then why did he tell his mother you threw the knife at him?”

“He always says I do stuff that he did so he won’t get in trouble because his father would kill him for something like that.”

“His father isn’t going to kill him.”

“He’ll hit him for sure, he does that all the time for the littlest little things.”

“You’ve seen Mr. Reed hit Kenny?”

“Not exactly, but he yells a lot, I know that ’cause I heard him lots of times.”

“I imagine Kenny deserves to be yelled at, just as you do more times than I can count. The point is that you and Kenny were playing with knives and he got hurt.”

“No, Mom, cross my heart, I wasn’t playing with knives. Dad told me not to touch them because they’re dangerous. It was just Kenny doing it.”

Simon watched his son’s right hand crisscross his
chest, the thin index finger extended, a surprisingly delicate gesture. The boy stared up at Amy, his expression unwavering, so innocent, so convincing. Then he looked toward Simon. “You believe me, don’t you, Dad?”

A clever move, trying to lure him into the scene. But Simon wouldn’t let himself get drawn in. He was just an observer to this little courtroom drama where the savvy interrogator went up against the cunning suspect. Whom would the jury believe? “It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said, heading toward the kitchen. “It’s your mother you have to convince.”

That evening, Simon waited
till Amy closed herself in their bathroom for a long soak in the tub, carrying a stack of
Psychology Today
s with her. She’d be an hour at least. He went to Davey’s bedroom, where she had banished their son for the night on the premise that at the very least, he was on site when Kenny knifed himself. Guilt by proximity. The boy was lying on his bed, staring upward, with Casper curled on his chest. Simon turned his head up to see what was so interesting on the ceiling. Nothing. To be eleven, lying on your bed, a cat on your chest, staring at nothing. Was this to be envied or not?

“It isn’t fair,” the boy said, his gaze fixed upward. “Mom grounded me for not doing anything.” He glanced
over at Simon with his sad brown eyes and their incredibly long eyelashes. “Can’t you talk to her, Dad?”

“You did do something, remember? You
were
playing with knives yesterday with Kenny.”

“She doesn’t know that. She shouldn’t punish me for something she doesn’t know I did.”

“She knows, Davey, believe me. She just doesn’t know she knows.”

“What?”

“Never mind. When we made our pact, you didn’t tell me Kenny got hurt with the knife and his mother had to take him to the hospital.”

Davey grasped Casper and then rolled over, pinning the cat on her back. “You didn’t ask, Dad, that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“Mom asked if you were playing with the knife, and you lied to her.”

The boy held the back of Casper’s neck with one hand and rubbed his belly with the other, a hard massage. “That’s because I didn’t want to get her all upset, you know, because she wouldn’t understand.”

The old cat twisted from side to side, trying to free herself. “Don’t hold Casper that way,” Simon said.

“She likes it. I do it all the time.”

“You don’t know she likes it, so let her go.”

Davey released his grip, and Casper jumped off him and bolted toward the door.