You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (23 page)

His father's back was to them. He'd put on a pair of khakis and an undershirt. He was still barefoot. Looking dazed and half-asleep, Spencer's mother was sitting up in bed. She wore a light yellow nightgown. The closet door was open, and the light was on in there. His father had also switched on his nightstand lamp, but the room was still shadowy.

Spencer's mouth went dry as he started to speak. “Dad . . .”

“Hey, asshole,” Garrett interrupted, his voice raised. “Look at this. Look at what we found . . .”

Spencer's father turned toward them, looking startled. His pants weren't completely fastened in front yet. “What the hell?”

“Shoot him!” Garrett yelled—practically in Spencer's ear. “Kill that motherfucker!”

Spencer froze. He still had the Glock pointed toward the floor.

Staring at it, his father seemed to realize what was happening. He shook his head. But he didn't appear frightened at all. “Goddamn it!” he growled, stomping toward them. “What do you think you're doing?” He looked as if he was ready to tear into both of them.

It all happened so fast.

Spencer felt Garrett behind him, grabbing his arm and lifting it up so that the gun was pointed at his father. His dad came at them with his fist clenched. Spencer was terrified. He just wanted to stop him. He didn't want to kill him.

He didn't even remember pulling the trigger.

The shot rang out, and he screamed. He saw the explosion of blood under his father's chin. He watched him stagger back and grab his throat with both hands. His dad had a strange, bewildered grimace on his face. His father kept blinking as he gaped at him—like he couldn't fathom how his own son had just shot him in the throat.

He collapsed on the floor in front of the bed.

His mother's shrieking filled the room. Still sitting in the bed, she held the sheets up to her neck.

“Shoot her,” Garrett hissed, tightening his grip on Spencer's arm. “Do it, do it!”

“Oh, God, no!” she begged. “Spencer, wait—”

Spencer recoiled as the gun went off again. This time, Garrett's finger was over his. It was as if he were Garrett's puppet.

The first shot must have missed because his mother was still screaming.

“No!” he yelled.

But Garrett now had both arms around him and pressed his finger again.

Another shot rang out. It silenced her screams. Spencer saw the blood on the white sheet over his mother's chest. Horrified, he watched her flop back in the bed, suddenly lifeless.

Stunned, he stood in the doorway, looking at the carnage in his parents' bedroom. Garrett slowly let go of his arms, and the gun dropped to the floor with a clatter. Spencer could hear his friend breathing heavily.

“We're going to have to change our story,” he said.

After that, everything was just a blur. But he remembered how Garrett kept his cool. His friend was the one who came up with the idea about an intruder shooting his parents while the two of them hid under the bunk bed. Garrett took money from Spencer's father's wallet—along with his father's Rolex and some jewelry from his mom's drawer. He'd made Spencer strip down to underpants—in case blood had spattered his clothes. The jewelry, the money, Spencer's clothes, and the Glock 19—all went into Garrett's overnight bag.

Sick to his stomach, Spencer threw up in the bathroom. Meanwhile his friend went downstairs and staged a break-in by opening a kitchen window and pushing out the screen. Afterwards, he bragged to Spencer that he'd worn his mother's dishwashing gloves to do it—so as not to leave fingerprints. He claimed he'd gotten some of his ideas from the
CSI
shows, but Spencer wondered how much he was operating on sheer killer instinct.

He went over the intruder story with Spencer twice—so there would be no contradictions in their versions of what had happened. Then he'd coached him on what to say to the 911 operator. Spencer was his puppet. Garrett was so clever. It was his idea to leave the knapsack full of evidence half-open on Spencer's desk chair—so it would look like they had nothing to hide. And by some miracle, it worked. The police never examined it.

Later, Spencer wondered if his friend had left the bag out in the open like that just to push the envelope a little. It probably gave him a thrill to see the police checking over the rooms—coming so dangerously close to uncovering Garrett's ruse.

But as clever as Garrett was, he was still just a thirteen-year-old kid. By the following day, the police were already seeing through the boys' deception. The next afternoon, Garrett sold most of Spencer's mother's jewelry to a landscaper at the club, who had gotten him some drugs once. That same night, Spencer broke down and confessed everything to his aunt.

The one thing he didn't admit to her was that Garrett had been naked when his father had walked in on them. He convinced himself that it was an unnecessary detail—and besides, it was embarrassing. He merely said they'd been “horsing around” and making too much noise. Ironically, without any kind of collaboration, Garrett's confession had left out that same detail. In his version, they'd just been “goofing off” when a drunken Mr. Rowe had stormed into the bedroom and attacked him. His account of that night had him begging Spencer not to shoot anyone, and the gun going off when he'd tried to stop him. In Garrett's version, the break-in story had been Spencer's idea. He'd merely helped Spencer stage the scene.

At the hearing, the lawyer Spencer's aunt had hired was able to discredit Garrett's claims.

Just when Spencer didn't think he had a friend in the world, his aunt had come to his rescue. If she hadn't stepped in and worked so tirelessly with the lawyer, the Beales' attorneys would have piled all the blame for the murders on him. Andrea had made certain Garrett was held accountable for his part in what had happened that night.

Both boys were found guilty of second-degree murder. They were sentenced to a minimum of four years in a juvenile correctional facility—following extensive psychological evaluations. They split them up: Garrett was sent to a place in Richmond, and Spencer to the Behavioral Health Center in Arlington.

Earlier this year, when he'd learned about the house fire that had killed Garrett and his parents, Spencer couldn't help thinking that his ex-friend had probably started it. That would have been so like him—playing with fire.

If his theory was true, it meant that they'd both ended up killing their parents.

Even with Garrett sharing the blame and after years of counseling, Spencer still felt culpable for his mother's and father's deaths. And all that while, he missed them, too. He missed them terribly.

His Seattle therapist, Diane Leppert, was helping him learn to forgive himself and move on. They'd made some progress, but still had a long way to go.

The Metro bus let him out on Nineteenth Avenue, by St. Joseph's Church, three blocks from Diane's office. This was mostly a residential area—with a few quaint, specialty shops and a couple of restaurants along Nineteenth. Diane's office was above a candle and soap store.

Putting the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, Spencer walked briskly in the rain. He decided to tell Diane about Reed's baseball cap. He'd ask her what to do. He had the list in his head of other things he needed to tell her: Reed's murder, the police questioning, Luke finding out the truth about him, and his conflicted feelings for Bonnie. He kept thinking he was forgetting something. Was it even something he was supposed to discuss with Diane?

Reaching the old, beige brick building, Spencer passed by the darkened storefront of Blissful Scents, and pushed open the second door. It was mostly glass with a dark wood frame. The street number and the second floor businesses were listed on the window:

As soon as Spencer entered the tiny lobby, he got a whiff of the aromatic candles and soaps from the boutique next door. He pulled back his hood and started up the worn maroon-carpeted stairs to the second floor. On the landing at the top of the stairs, he suddenly remembered what had been on his mind earlier.

All his daydreaming on the bus had made him forget about the black Toyota Corolla that may or may not have been following him. He'd forgotten to look for it when he'd gotten off at his stop.

Spencer glanced out the rain-beaded window on the stairway landing. He didn't see the car on the dark, wet street below.

He turned and started down the hallway toward Diane's office. Maybe he'd tell her about the car, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY

 

S
pencer hadn't been in Diane's office for five minutes when he broke down crying. He couldn't help it. He'd started telling her about everything that had happened in the last few days, and he lost it. He kept wiping his nose on his sleeve—until Diane nodded at the Kleenex box on the table beside him. He took out a tissue. Practically every flat surface in her office had a box of tissues on it, but he'd never needed one until now.

They sat across from each other in matching easy chairs. Diane was in her late fifties with a handsome, careworn face and short-cropped, sandy-colored hair. Spencer imagined his mom—if she were alive now—might have looked like a younger version of his therapist. Diane always wore “librarian” glasses on a chain around her neck, and she favored suits. Tonight she had on a dark blue suit with a lavender blouse.

Spencer's hooded sweatshirt was draped over the chair arm, and his backpack was at his feet. His paperback copy of
The Grapes of Wrath
for English class was underneath it. He'd been reading it in the waiting room before his appointment.

He wiped his eyes and blew his nose, but then didn't know what to do with the soiled Kleenex. He didn't see a wastebasket anywhere, so he stuffed the tissue in the pocket of his jeans.

For their sessions, Diane always kept the lights dim in her office. Spencer never got a good look at anything—including the titles of the books on her bookshelves and the fancy script on the framed diplomas on her wall. She had a few beautiful glass pieces that caught the light—including a green pyramid on her desk, a multicolored vase on the shelf, and a purple Saturn sculpture about the size of a softball on the table beside her chair. Diane absently stroked it from time to time while she talked to him. There was only one window in the room—by her desk. From where Spencer sat, it offered a view of the treetops and the church steeple. It was still raining out.

He plucked another tissue from the box and wiped his nose. “I'm sorry,” he muttered. “I can't believe I'm bawling like this . . .”

“It's okay,” Diane said. “It sounds like a hell of a week you've had. Keep going. Unload . . .”

She'd gotten that term from him, because he so often said to her, “I need to unload this on you . . .”

He liked Diane, and opened up to her more easily than he had to any other therapist before. Maybe that was because he'd felt everything he said to the doctors in Virginia might be used against him. But after
unloading
on Diane, he always felt better.

Diane was the only one who knew about Garrett getting naked in Spencer's room the night of the murders. During the police questioning, the trial, and all the sessions with all those doctors at the institution, Spencer had kept that essential detail a secret. If Garrett had ever admitted it to anyone, Spencer certainly never heard about it. But he'd told Diane during their third session.

She'd seemed totally unfazed. She'd just nodded.

“You act like it's not important,” Spencer remembered saying. “I mean, I haven't been able to tell anyone else about it. You're the first . . .”

“Well, it does give me some insights,” she'd said. “It explains your friend's desire for wanting your parents out of the picture. He didn't want his father finding out that he'd exposed himself to another boy. But you—you never wanted to kill your parents. You weren't the one caught with his pants down. You weren't a willing participant in anything that happened that night. Still, it's perfectly understandable why you wouldn't want that portion of the evening available for public consumption. It's embarrassing. You were eleven years old, and you were involved in a double murder. You didn't want your sexuality questioned on top of everything else. And let's face it, that part of the night would have been the lurid detail a lot of people would have focused on . . .”

They'd talked about it for the rest of the session. She pointed out that once he'd decided to omit that detail from his confession, he'd been trapped into keeping it secret from then on. Maybe he didn't want anyone thinking his relationship with Garrett was sexual, which up to that point, it hadn't been. If anything, it was more of a case of misguided hero worship on Spencer's part.

“I keep thinking had my dad not walked in, Garrett might have taken it further than just ‘I'll show you mine if you show me yours,' ” Spencer had admitted.

“I wouldn't doubt it,” she'd said. “From everything you've told me about him and what I've read on the case, I think he would have taken it a lot further than you were willing to go. The scary thing is, I don't believe he was acting out of curiosity or attraction or anything really sexual. In my opinion, as far as your late friend, Garrett, is concerned, it was all about control, power, and manipulation. I keep thinking about him and his poor, doomed pets. That's all classic sociopathic behavior.”

She'd reminded Spencer that despite Garrett's influence, he'd never stolen anything or intentionally hurt anybody. And he'd been forever telling his friend, “That's not nice.”

“You held your moral ground with him,” she'd said. “You didn't give in to him. Your parents would still be alive if he hadn't been there behind you that night with his hands on the gun. I think you got a raw deal, Spencer. I think the only thing you're guilty of is picking the wrong friend.”

Spencer remembered walking away from that session feeling for the first time in years that maybe he wasn't some kind of monster. He'd even gotten a little choked up about it.

But today was the first time he'd actually cried in Diane's office.

Now he pulled himself together and
unloaded
on her about all the traumatic events from the past week.

Diane seemed to have an answer for everything—or in some cases, a question. On the subject of Luke and his Aunt Dee possibly breaking up: “That was your aunt's decision not to tell him about your history. That's between her and Luke. Let them work it out. With everything that's happened, do you really want to take that on as your responsibility, too?”

On the murders of Reed and his parents: “You need to be totally honest with your aunt and the police. Anything you hide from them is liable to come up later and bite you on the fanny. This business with the baseball cap is very disconcerting. Either someone's playing a sick joke on you or it's a setup. Either way, tell your aunt about it and talk to the police. Nip this in the bud. I'm going to be at my place on Vashon Island from tomorrow through Sunday. But I'll be checking my messages and emails. If the police want to talk to me, I'll vouch for your character. Give them my number.”

Sometimes, her answers weren't what he wanted to hear. On the topic of Bonnie Middleton: “It's obvious you like her a lot and you're attracted to her. But you're right to be a little wary of her. If she's been running around with that crowd, she could be the one who's setting you up . . .”

Spencer shifted in the easy chair. “I'm not sure that's true, because she's broken away from that group. Plus she seems pretty nice—”

“Just a second,” Diane interrupted, turning toward the door to her waiting room. She got to her feet. “Excuse me.”

She glanced at her watch and then moved to the door. “Is anyone out there?” she called, her hand on the knob. She waited a moment and then opened the door. “That's strange,” she murmured. She stepped into the anteroom, and Spencer heard a door shut. A moment later, she came back into the office and closed the door behind her. “Weird. I thought I heard someone. And I could have sworn that door to the hallway was closed before.”

Spencer shrugged. “I must not have closed it all the way.”

She smiled and nodded. “Maybe that's it. Sorry for the interruption.” She sat down again. “Anyway, I think it's terrific you like this girl. But proceed with caution, okay? I'm not sure she can be trusted. The same goes for that Tanya. If I were you, I'd watch my back with both of them. Right now, you need to put your trust in your aunt—and me.”

One of the things he liked about Diane was that she didn't hesitate to tell him what she thought. She was so unlike those doctors at the institution who would answer his questions with another question, like, “What are your feelings on that?” Diane was more direct—and almost always had an answer for him. Sometimes it just wasn't the answer he wanted.

At the end of the session, he wasn't quite as buoyant as he usually was after talking with Diane. He had a feeling the police were going to jump all over him once he told them about the baseball cap—and how long he'd had it. His aunt certainly wouldn't be happy that he hadn't told her about it sooner.

Walking down the hallway toward the stairs, he noticed that the frosted windows in the doors of the other offices were dark. Diane and he were the only ones left in the building. No wonder she'd been concerned when she'd thought she heard someone in her waiting room. Spencer figured if she was leaving soon, maybe he should walk her to her car—just to be on the safe side.

He went back to her office door and saw the light was off in the waiting room. He tried the knob: locked. There was a second door in her office. Maybe she'd already gone out that way. Maybe the building was completely deserted—except for him.

He turned and started toward the stairs. But he heard a door hinge squeak. He stopped and swiveled around. “Diane?”

Spencer gazed at the empty hallway. There was an alcove at the far end—on the right. He didn't see anyone. He waited for another sound, but there was nothing.

He suddenly wanted to get out of there. He backed away toward the stairs and then hurried down to the little lobby. Heading toward the door, Spencer glanced over his shoulder at a shadowy nook on the other side of the stairs. He didn't see anyone, but couldn't be certain that somebody wasn't hiding there.

“You're freaking yourself out,” he muttered. Then again, he had every reason to be scared.

Spencer grabbed the doorknob and gave it a pull. The door didn't budge.

For a moment, he thought he was locked inside this empty building, which might not actually be empty.

He'd never been here this late. The door had always opened easily when he'd left on previous visits. Then he noticed the second lock on the door—just below eye level. It was a little brass box with a small knob. He twisted the knob and then tugged at the door again. The door opened, and he ran outside.

The cold air and rain actually felt refreshing.

Catching his breath, Spencer started toward the bus stop—three blocks away. He pulled his sweatshirt hood over his head and adjusted the shoulder straps to his backpack. He glanced around, keeping his eye out for that black Toyota Corolla.

He thought about Bonnie again, and wondered if she was all right. She was the only person at school he considered an ally, and he wanted to trust her. He hoped Diane was wrong about her. He really liked her.

But then, he had a history of liking the wrong person.

* * *

Diane switched off the light in the waiting room and locked the outside door. She jotted a few notes about her session with Spencer. She'd been following the story about the murders of the Queen Anne family, but had no idea the police had questioned Spencer about the murders until his phone message yesterday. She had a feeling she'd be hearing from Spencer or the police while she was at her house on Vashon Island this week.

She was turning off the lights when she found Spencer's copy of
The Grapes of Wrath
beside the chair. His name was in it—along with some notes in the margins and yellow-highlighted sections. The poor kid, along with everything else that was going wrong, he'd be without his book for school. The last thing she wanted to do tonight was drive to Queen Anne and return it to him. But Spencer probably needed it before Monday. And he probably needed some help talking to his aunt—and to the police. Diane had a feeling she'd be stuck there for hours. She hadn't even had dinner yet.

She thought she heard the front door shut downstairs. It was supposed to be locked after seven-thirty, but sometimes it didn't close all the way. She wondered if it was Spencer, coming back for his book.

With the paperback in her hand, Diane opened the door to the waiting room—and then the door to the hallway. She heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Spencer?” she called. “You forgot your book.”

The footsteps stopped. There was silence.

“Spencer? Is that you?”

No answer.

Suddenly uneasy, Diane ducked back into the waiting room. She locked the door and retreated inside her darkened office. She wondered if it was a burglar or a vagrant. They'd had a break-in about two months ago—some idiot thinking these were medical offices full of drugs. And last month, they'd found a homeless man sleeping under the stairs.

She could hear the footsteps again—this time, in the corridor.

Could it possibly be Spencer? Maybe he just hadn't heard her call to him. He could have been plugged into his smart phone music like every other kid out there. She didn't want to call the police if it was him.

She had a small canister of mace in her purse, which was on her desk.

She tossed Spencer's book onto the easy chair and hurried to her desk. But she heard something that made her stop in her tracks. It was the sound of keys jangling—a lot of keys. Someone was trying to unlock the door to the waiting room. She knew it couldn't be the custodian. He worked only on weekends.