Silent Son (7 page)

“What the hell
can
I do? Somebody’s got to get this thing going. Before that maniac kills again…”

“What about me?” It just popped out. She had given it no thought, but it was a logical answer. She could captain the case.
Gardner had trained her to be a pro. She had the basic moves down pat. The only thing she lacked was experience.

“You?” Gardner’s voice had carried surprise, not condescension.

“Me. I can run the investigation, and you can advise me…” She was making it up as she went along. “I think I can keep my perspective…”
A fleeting vision of Granville’s face flashed through her mind, and she swallowed. “I think I can…”

Gardner had tried to smile, but the pain did not allow more than a brief upward turn to the corners of his lips. “I don’t
know if I can stay out of it,” he said solemnly.

“You won’t have to,” Jennifer replied. “You’ll still be there, just not up front…”

Gardner’s silence signaled his agreement. There was no other choice, really. He was too emotionally involved to lead.

And now he was asleep by her side, snoring deeply while she lay awake, wondering if she could make good on her promise.

Gardner’s sleep was deep, but not without dreams. As Jennifer clung to his back in the waking world, he was locked in a bizarre
prison somewhere on the other side. There was no structure, no bars or gates. It was far away in a flat-surfaced desert whose
white sand stretched endlessly to an undefined horizon. Beyond the horizon was the nothingness of space.

He and his companions were trapped. They were watched and controlled by faceless beings who set them to tasks that had no
purpose. Gardner was the leader of the prisoners.

In the center of the scene was a wall. A single panel of stone, standing alone. In front of it was a line of chairs.

Suddenly, there was a commotion. The ritual was about to begin. The keepers yelled at him to move. To mount the chairs and
scale the wall. Gardner helped the weak ones climb. Pushing their feet, pulling their hands. He was the strongest. The only
one who could get them out of the danger zone. But there were not enough chairs! Hurry! Gardner screamed. Hurry! They are
coming!

Gardner tried, but he couldn’t help them all. Several people were stuck on the sand, terrified.

Hurry! Gardner screamed. But it was too late. The keepers had arrived with the dogs. Giant snarling beasts that fed on human
flesh. In an instant, they were ripping and slashing with their teeth, tearing the helpless ones to shreds. Their screams
were lost in the growling chaos. And Gardner clung to the top of wall and watched, unable to save them.

Purvis Bowers sat at his computer and tried to work, but he couldn’t concentrate. His aunt and uncle lay in Frame’s Funeral
Home, and they had nothing to wear. Delivered this morning from the morgue in Baltimore, they were still naked. They needed
clothes to be buried in, and Purvis had been asked to supply them.

The thirty-five-year-old accountant was the only son of Henry’s deceased brother Burton. A small man with a sharp mind, he
had grown up in the town’s backwaters. He was a genius with the numbers of commerce. He loved numbers, and he could always
find a way to make them sing.

Purvis had set up a solo accounting practice after his father died, crunching digits for everyone up and down Main Street.
He’d saved a lot of money for a lot of clients. But his ambitions stretched beyond the county line. He saw himself someday
at the head of a giant corporation, giving orders, poring over reams of billings that his numbers had created. And in his
dream he was away, far away from the town, in a city that he owned.

Purvis picked up his telephone and dialed.

“Frame’s Funeral Home,” a female voice answered.

“Ms. Frame, it’s Purvis Bowers.”

“Hello, Mr. Bowers.”

“Hello.” He took a breath. “I got your message.”

“About the clothes.”

“Yes, ma’am. About the clothes.” His voice was hesitant.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Bowers? We didn’t know who else to call.”

Purvis was the closest relative to Addie and Henry. They had no children of their own, and their siblings were all dead. In
a crisis, he was the logical choice.

“Ms. Frame, I was wondering if you could send someone from your place over to see about the clothes…” Purvis asked. “I just…
it wouldn’t…”

“I think I understand, Mr. Bowers,” the lady replied. “You’d rather not go over to the store. With the shooting and all, I
do understand.”

The line went silent.

“Mr. Bowers?”

“Yes, Ms. Frame…”

“That right? You’d rather we pick something out for them?”

“I’d appreciate it,” Purvis said. He sounded relieved.

“We can do that. What about the key? How are we going to get in?”

“The police will help. If you call the station, they can let you in.”

“All right. Don’t you worry about this now, Mr. Bowers. Don’t you worry at all. We’ll take care of everything. Addie and Henry
are going to look just beautiful—”

“Thank you, Ms. Frame,” Purvis interrupted. “Bye.”

He hung up the phone and rubbed his cheek. Then he picked up the receiver again and dialed.

“Kent King’s office,” a voice answered.

“This is Purvis Bowers. May I speak to him?”

“Moment please.”

“Yeah?” King sounded rushed. “What’s up, Purvis?”

“I need to shelter some money,” Bowers said. “Can you help me out? It has to be legal.”

King sighed. “How much?”

“A lot of zeros.”

“How sheltered do you want it?”

“Out of sight.”

King laughed. “Make an appointment. We’ll talk about it.”

Brownie stood on the porch at Bowers Corner, and looked down Mountain Road. There was a short curve, then a straightaway,
then another curve that snaked into the woods. That was north. In the other direction, it was more or less the same thing:
excellent sight distance for at least two hundred yards before the road disappeared. That provided plenty of advance warning
for a criminal. Brownie put his hands on his hips. The fucker must have gone in blind with no lookout on the porch, and no
wheel man in the lot. He had no warning that Granville was on his way.

Brownie pushed open the front door and looked in. The rockers around the stove were still, the room dark. The shelves were
still stocked with food. Nothing had been disturbed. It was in, do the job, and then out. But why no eyes out front? The planning
had been meticulous, up to a point. There were no fingerprints, no shell casings, no intact bullet fragments, no hairs or
fibers. And there was no apparent motive.

Twelve paces marked the distance from the door to the spot where the bodies were found. It would take about ten seconds at
an adult’s leisurely walk, seven or eight at a child’s run. Ellen Fahrnam had reported hearing a shot almost immediately after
Granville had entered. She’d panicked, and hesitated before going in. Add another five or six seconds. Then, with her entry,
perhaps cautious, perhaps hurried, add seven seconds more. Twenty seconds. It all went down in less than twenty seconds: Addie’s
and Henry’s executions, Granville’s injury, the escape. The last part was well planned. The lookout part may have been sloppy,
but the retreat was worked to perfection.

Brownie skirted the chalk lines on the floor and walked to the rear exit. It was three paces to the door. That would take
one and a half seconds at a run. He opened the door and looked out. There was a narrow passageway between the petting zoo
cages and the base of a steep hill behind the store, then twenty yards to the end of the yard, a rocky ten-foot drop, and
finally, the wilderness: thirty acres of trees stretching down a long inclined slope to a meadow on the other side. It had
been scouted and then searched by two squads of patrol officers, and later followed up by the dog team. But, not surprisingly,
they hadn’t found a thing. A forty-minute head start was all the bastard needed. And now he could be anywhere.

Brownie walked around the building to his lab van. There was something very strange here. The perpetrator seemed to be a bungler
and a genius at the same time. Some aspects were brilliant, others not so smart. The characteristics of a schizoid personality.
Brownie stopped suddenly and slapped his side. “That’s it!” A man intelligent enough to plan so well would not have left himself
unprotected. He would have covered all angles, and that meant he could not have done it alone. There
had
to be at least two people involved, or it would never have been attempted. One smart, and one stupid. A schizoid
team
!

Two men stood on the skeet range of Prentice Academy, below the main campus. It was late afternoon, and the Gothic tower of
the administration building blocked the path of the falling sun. Modeled after a British university, the school was an academic
enclave for the wealthy and high-born, an architectural masterpiece of cloistered courtyards, stone dormitories, and leaded
glass windows.

“Pull!”

A clay’pigeon suddenly twirled through the air like a miniature flying saucer.

IV Starke took aim with his shotgun, smoothly guiding the barrel along the trajectory and then slightly ahead.

Blam! The pigeon was instant dust.

“A good one!” coach Thomas Randolph yelled.

Starke lowered the gun, and adjusted his dark glasses. “Show me a double,” he called to the concrete pit ten feet below.

There was an adjustment in the bunker. “Okay, ready!”

Starke steadied the gun at his chest. “Pull!”

This time two saucers spun out, one high the other low. The shooter tracked the low one first. Blam! Another puff of dust
where the pigeon had been. Then he aimed at the high one, just now dropping from its apogee. Blam! Dust again.

Starke lowered the gun and smiled. “Any questions?”

“Not from me,” coach Randolph said. “But Sutton Hill may have some next week. They’re already grumbling about your eligibility.”

IV’s smile faded. He was twenty years old, and not yet out of high school. A retread, some joked. Rolled in and out of a slew
of Northeastern prep schools, now the stalwart of the Prentice Academy skeet team. He was a handsome young man, with bright
blue eyes, and a conservative close-cropped haircut. The teachers found him to be polite and reserved. He was no Einstein,
to be sure, but his bookwork was passable.

“You think they’ll disqualify me?” IV asked.

“They’ll try. Division rules cut off participation at eighteen.”

The student frowned. “Do they have to know? I mean we’re not gonna volunteer it or anything…”

The coach smiled. “Well, I’m sure as hell not gonna tell them.”

IV grinned and shouldered his weapon. “Good. I’d hate to miss the meet because of a mickey-mouse rule.”

The two men started walking toward the main campus. As they neared the running track, IV hesitated. The grounds crew was laying
in cinders from a two-ton dump truck. Several workers leaned on shovels, while others raked the black sooty granules from
the upturned bed. Their backs were turned, but Starke’s eyes widened slightly when he saw the man in the middle.

“Coach, I have to get back to my room. Something I forgot to do…” He began to break ranks, to leave the pathway and cut across
to the dormitory in a course that would take him far clear of the workmen. He’d taken three steps, when the coach yelled,
“IV!”

Starke whipped around suddenly. The coach had a look of reprimand on his face. “Sir?” his voice wavered slightly.

“The gun, Starke. You forgot the gun!”

IV let out his breath, and squeezed the shotgun in his hands. Weapons were off limits everywhere but the range. When not in
use, they were locked in the rack in the coach’s office.

“Uh, sorry, sir,” the student said, handing over the gun. Then he bolted and ran straight to his room, never slowing or stopping,
or even turning his head.

S
USPICIONS

A week had passed since the murders, and the doctors had finally okayed Granville’s release from the hospital. They had done
all they could. Now it was up to time and therapy to complete the healing. Carole had brought him back from Baltimore and
sequestered him in the safety of the large brick house on Watson Road that Gardner’s ancestors had built. It was still owned
by Gardner, bequeathed to him in the same tradition that all firstborn Lawson sons had received it. But title to the property
currently carried no privilege. Carole had won the right to live in the house for five years following the divorce, and Gardner
was barred entry, except by permission of his ex-wife. Not surprisingly, she had not let him inside since the day he was ordered
to leave.

Gardner knocked on the heavy paneled door, and Carole opened it a crack and peeked out.

“Hi,” Gardner said into the narrow gap.

Carole attempted a polite smile. “Hello.” The door came open, but not wide enough to permit Gardner in.

“How is he?” Gardner asked.

“Better,” Carole answered. The door stayed in place.

“Are you gonna let me see him?”

“Yes, of course,” Carole said civilly. but the door still blocked his path.

Christ, Gardner thought, can you ever give it a rest? The shredded fabric of their relationship was never, ever going to be
mended. They both knew that. All that mattered now was Granville.

“Go around back, and I’ll send him out,” Carole said finally, realizing that Gardner had expected to come inside. “Things
are a mess, and I haven’t had time to straighten up.”

Gardner glanced over her shoulder into the front hall. It was immaculate. “Okay,” he said.

Then she closed the door.

Gardner walked around the porch and turned the corner. Spring was in full bloom now, and the lawn furniture had been set up
in the English garden behind the house, just as it used to be. Gardner watched several birds hopping across the grass, and
let his mind drift as he settled into the porch swing.