The Guilty One (12 page)

“What, honey?” Her eyes had filled and her hand went to her mouth, and Ron set down the glass and went back to her. She leaned on him, her thin shoulders shaking.

“It's just I was thinking of all the times she sat here—right here, in our house. That poor girl.”

“I know, I know,” Ron murmured. He pulled a chair around and helped her sit so that his knees were touching hers, holding her hands in his, rubbing them.

“She was . . . she was just so
good
. You know?”

Ron nodded. Calla had been a sweet girl, the sort, frankly, who wouldn't have caught his eye when he was eighteen . . . but not all that different from the woman he ended up marrying. But when you looked at them, these Gale Academy girls with their long shiny hair and shimmering makeup, weren't they all innocent? Weren't they all guileless and fragile, at least to their parents?

All over town, now, as women saw it on the news and called their husbands, as kids texted on phones hidden under their desks, parents were thinking the same things. One of ours. And all of them thanking God that the sacrificed child wasn't their own.

Ron was grateful too—of course. Imagining something happening to Karl—he almost couldn't bear it, couldn't allow the thought to fully form in his mind. Even now, with Karl moving away from them these last few years, growing up and becoming distant, he was the heart that beat inside Ron, he was the hard kernel of meaning in his days. Life without his son wouldn't be life. And when he thought of Jeff and Maris, confronted with this loss that would decimate them in ways they couldn't even imagine now, his heart filled with grief for them.

But his grief was tinged with unease.

“Deb,” he said, willing his voice to be even, “I think I will pick him up after all.”

At the school, Ron took his place in the carpool line, wishing for greater invisibility. He had driven the old Explorer they'd bought a few years back and kept around for skiing in the winter and towing the boat in the summer. Deb and he occasionally talked about how ridiculous it was for a family of three to own three cars, but what could you do? The registration on the old Explorer was cheaper than renting would be, and the guy they'd bought the house from had been something of a car nut and had built a six-car garage out back, so room wasn't an issue.

He'd pulled on a baseball cap and pushed the seat back, trying to stay out of visual range of other drivers. Mostly, it was only the parents of freshmen who came to pick up their kids; older kids either drove themselves or rode with friends, or were too embarrassed to be picked up and found other ways home. Karl himself had only lasted halfway through freshman year before managing to arrange to be picked up by a sophomore who lived a couple of blocks away. And then the next year, Deb and Ron had bought him the Explorer. Used, of course, and they'd consoled themselves that it wasn't exactly the sort of car that would inspire recklessness and showing off: they weren't dumb enough to buy him a sports car, anything that would elevate his status among his peers.

They didn't spoil him, in other words. Hadn't even paid for a parking spot for him so he could drive to school. Ron had kind of a thing about that, abhorrence for the sense of entitlement you saw in some kids, especially at a school like Gale. The Pickard boy, for instance, who had wrecked his Camaro a month after his sixteenth birthday and was rewarded with another, a model year newer—and had responded by getting suspended for breaking into the snack shack and vandalizing the refrigerators with a few other equally repugnant kids. Karl would never do something like that. But the same firm discipline and solid moral foundation that Ron and Deb had tried to instill in him—in Ron's case, with punitive measures and withholding that other parents probably would have found draconian—there were times that he wondered if he'd taken the right path. Sure, he had a kid other parents admired, one who could be counted on to be respectful. But Karl had also become silent, reserved, keeping things to himself. Had Ron quashed something in his son, something that, in himself, had managed to survive his own father's heavy-handed discipline?

The car in front of Ron inched forward, and he followed suit. Three eighteen—school had gotten out eight minutes ago, and the line had barely moved. Some of these parents must have been here half an hour early; as it was, Ron was all the way back by the chain-link fence surrounding the parking lot, only now rounding the corner with a view into the back of the school.

Ah, there it was. Evidence that this was not an ordinary day, that news had reached the kids. Deb said no name had been released yet by the media, but they had to know. Over there, by the shade structure, a cluster of girls were hugging each other and crying. There was Blake, the school's head of security, talking with two other men, both wearing ties—detectives, maybe. He pressed further back in his seat.

Perspiration popped out along Ron's forehead, even with the air-conditioning on full blast. It wasn't as effective as it once was; he probably needed to have it serviced, next time he took the Explorer in for an oil change.

The cars inched forward.

There was Karl. Coming out of the exit, talking to some girl Ron didn't recognize—short, thickset, wearing glasses. They stood, talking, on the steps for a few minutes. Karl didn't look up. He didn't look upset, did he? Or was that some sort of numbness on his face, the stunned feeling he must have, receiving the news? Hell, half these kids looked like they were in shock—all of them in little groups, no loners today.

Ron rolled the windows down and shut off the A/C—it wasn't working anyway—and tried to hear what people were saying.

“—Said they were going to have it on Channel 2 at six—”

“—Just saw her at the softball dinner—”

“—Can't believe they didn't make an announcement—”

“—Said animals got to the body—”

Someone knocked on the passenger window, making Ron jump. He peered over, saw Adrian Hern. His mouth was twisted in a tense grimace—he fought to relax it. Not a smile, of course. Adrian herself looked like she was trying not to cry. No, she
was
crying, her mascara smudged, her nose running.

“Ron. Oh, God, did you guys hear? Is Deb all right? Is she at home? I tried to call her.”

“Adrian,” Ron said. “We're—I mean—it's awful. It's terrible. I can't believe it.”

“You're picking up Karl,” she said, her fingers curling over the edge of the window glass. Ron thought that if he pushed the button, her fingers would be squeezed painfully. The correct thing would be to roll the window down, but he just couldn't bear the idea of conversation right now. This was how women processed things—Deb had tried to explain that to him a hundred times—but he wasn't a woman and he shouldn't be here, in their territory, in their milieu. “That's probably a good idea. Poor kid. Oh, they were so close, the two of them.”

Ron was caught off guard, unsure what to say. Everyone had known that Karl and Calla were dating—Gale wasn't a big school, barely 150 kids in the senior class, and they had been well liked. Good kids.

“Look, I should go get back in the car,” Adrian said, taking her hands off the glass. “Tell Deb to call me. I'm just so sorry.”

So he'd escaped. Relief washed through him. The cars moved ahead, a couple of them moving into the U-turn as the parking lot cleared out. Already most of the kids' cars were gone, only those staying for after-school activities remaining.

Karl spotted him and gave a wave, his face somber. He said something to the girl he was talking to, who went back inside the school. Karl jogged to the car, his backpack bouncing over his shoulder, and got in.

“Dad. Oh my God. Did you hear about Calla?”

Ron wanted to reach for him, to hug him, but it was impossible; he had to maneuver out of the lane and into the U-turn. He patted his son's shoulder briefly and examined his face, taking in as much as he could before he had to turn his attention to the road.

“Mom talked to Mrs. Lipsky. We don't know much. Only that they found her. That they found . . . Calla.”

For a moment Karl was motionless, his expression almost wooden. Ron took the long way, past the school, right on Olive, a narrow street most people avoided because two cars couldn't easily pass.

Karl made a sound, half sob, half grunt. “Dad . . .”

Ron pulled the car over, turned the keys. Took Karl into his arms, awkwardly, the console between them. Karl was already sobbing. After a long while, he wiped his face on his sleeve and pulled away.

“They told us in fifth period. But people were talking all day. You know? Ever since second period, someone said they found a body out by Byron Ranch. A girl. There were all these rumors. I mean . . . I was in English, I wanted to leave, to find out if it was true, but Mr. Duarte said anyone who got up, he would consider it a missed quiz, he would . . . and I was going to anyway, but girls were crying, like, everyone was crying.”

Ron patted his back like he did so long ago, when Karl had been a restless toddler, one given to fits of inconsolable sobbing. The only thing that could quiet him, all that time ago, was to be held, bounced, rocked, walked . . . for hours, sometimes.

Too many times, Ron handed Karl off to Deb. Too many times, he woke her up with a few words of apology—“big meeting tomorrow,” “got to catch that flight,” whatever excuse was convenient, and Deb wouldn't complain, she'd take the baby and get up from their bed, go downstairs so the sound wouldn't travel.

But once in a while Ron held him, and rocked him, and patted him. Like this.

“Someone said she'd been attacked. Her body.” Ron could feel Karl swallow, wrestling with himself, trying to get the sobbing under control. “That she was almost . . . her arms, they were like,
eaten
. I can't. I can't.”

After a while the crying slowed and then stopped, Ron making the hushing sounds he remembered. Funny how it came back to you, like nearly two decades hadn't passed. Someday, he'd have grandchildren, and he'd have another chance—God willing, he'd be granted another chance—to do this right.

“Son,” he said, his own voice hoarse. “No one knows what happened yet. These things, before there's official word, things tend to get out of control. I wouldn't think, I wouldn't believe the things you hear. I mean . . . I think it's safe to say it was her. That much is true.”

So what did the rest really matter, then? Calla, whatever she meant or didn't mean to Karl, was dead. Maybe he was taking the wrong tack here.

But even as he grappled for the words, the right ones, the ones that would help his son make some sense of this, another emotion shaded everything: relief. Because Karl was devastated. He was shaken to the core.

And that meant he must be innocent.

DESPITE TAKING HIS
time, despite keeping his speed down after the close call with the tomato truck, Ron was still twenty minutes early. He stared out at the rows of cars in the prison parking lot. Surely these weren't all visitors. Ron didn't remember all these cars being there last time. Certainly they didn't have to park all the way in the far corner of the lot like today.

He tried to ignore the familiar nudge of guilt. No one made Deb come every week. That was her choice. Still, he didn't like the idea of her making the trek, in her pressed skirt and purse clutched tight, across the parking lot in heat like this.

At least his parking spot was in the partial shade of a spindly young tree, and for the first five minutes after his arrival, he tried to figure out if the angle of the sun meant that the car would grow more or less shaded as the afternoon wore on. The temperature had registered ninety-five degrees on his car's thermometer, and he had the door open and both windows rolled down, but still his shirt was soaked under the arms and sweat trailed down into his eyes. Dozens of people already lined the steps leading to the entrance, waiting to go in; what kind of conversation could you possibly have in such a line? Especially Ron:
yeah, I'm
that
kid's dad, the one you've heard about, the one who's worse than yours.

By unspoken pact, Deb never shared the homely details of her visits: who she talked to while she waited and where she parked, for instance. But Ron could see now that there was a whole other world here that she had experienced without him.

The last time Ron had seen his son, he hadn't realized that he would have so much trouble returning. Ron thought he had it in him to set aside the complex tangle of emotions that had taken permanent residence inside him. But he'd learned just how weak he was, hadn't he? Though the offer he'd made on the bridge had felt brave at the time (perhaps, even, if he was honest with himself, heroic), he now understood it was the opposite. That the duality he hated so much in his father—that of the bully/coward—was present in him as well.

And not just in him: it proved a vigorous legacy, undiluted over generations. While Karl was still in county jail, awaiting sentencing, it had been possible for him to pretend that it was all temporary. That like the inmates on parole violations and drug charges, he was just passing time while waiting to be arraigned. But once Karl had been moved to Panamint, he had seemed to both finally accept his fate and give up. He had been familiar yet somehow barely recognizable in the pale yellow, shapeless clothes the inmates wore, his swollen face so assiduously blank, his hair shorn and his posture slumped. Ron had weathered that first visit in a robotic haze, letting Deb carry the conversation, his glance skittering away whenever Karl looked his way. “See you soon, son,” Ron had said when they left (unlike at the jail, no touching was allowed here, not even at the end of the visit, so he'd stood with his arms hanging uselessly at his sides), and then he'd never returned, because how could he stand to see the fear in his son's eyes?