I felt exhaustion wash over me. All that had happened in the last few days, and now this. “The son of a bitch. The fucking pervert. He forces himself on Thomas, and knows he can get away with it, because if Thomas ever says anything, Len can just say, ‘Hey, you know that kid—he’s nuts.’”
“It’s part of the pattern,” Duckworth said. “They target the vulnerable, people they can control.”
Blood pulsed in my temples. I wanted to get in the car, go over to Len Prentice’s house, and throttle him. Strangle the bastard with my bare hands.
“Thomas went years without ever talking about this,” I said.
“Because he got into so much trouble before, when he told his father about it,” Duckworth said. “He just wanted it to go away.”
“And when my father brought it all up again, when he tried to tell my brother that he now believed him, how must that have made Thomas feel?” I wondered aloud. “It must have made him angry. That now, finally, Dad was prepared to do something about it. When the damage was already done.”
Duckworth nodded solemnly. “Maybe so.”
I clasped my head with my hands. “I’m on overload.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
We were both quiet for a moment. I was the one who finally spoke. “There’s something that’s been troubling me from the moment I came home, after I got word that my father was dead.”
Duckworth waited.
“The circumstances. They’ve always bothered me.”
“How so?”
“I know it looked like an accident. He was riding the tractor along the side of a steep hill, and rolled it. But he’d been mowing like that, safely, for years.”
“A lot of people do the same foolish thing for years, and one day it catches up with them,” Duckworth offered.
“I know, I know. But when I went down to bring the tractor back to the barn—it hadn’t been moved since the accident, other than when Thomas pushed it off Dad—I noticed that the key was in the OFF position. And the housing for the blades? It was raised. It was what he’d have done if someone had come down the hill and wanted to talk to him. He would’ve had to turn off the engine, and he would have lifted the blades up, because he wasn’t cutting grass anymore.”
“No one ever came forward to say they’d talked to your father before the accident. That they were there when it happened.”
“Who would?” I asked. “If they’d pushed him over.”
Duckworth thought about that. “I don’t know, but that’s an interesting theory.”
“While Dad was debating what to do about Len Prentice, Len Prentice must have been going out of his mind. Would Dad go to the police—well, he did, but he never gave you a name. Or would Dad tell Len’s wife, his friends? If he couldn’t actually bring him up on any kind of charges, maybe he’d try to ruin his reputation. Let everyone know just what kind of man Len Prentice was.”
“It’s possible.”
“Len gets so worried, he comes out to the house one day, trying to talk Dad out of doing anything, maybe coming up with some cockamamie explanation for why there are pictures of naked boys on his cell phone. Finds Dad cutting grass on the side of the hill. Dad stops the tractor, they get into an argument, Len gives Dad a shove, and he goes back, taking the tractor with him, and it kills him. Len might have had time to get help, or get the tractor off Dad, but he chooses not to. Len’s known, for years, that my Dad took chances on that hill. Mom used to beg Len to tell him not to do it.”
Detective Duckworth pursed his lips while he thought about all this.
“You think a guy’s going to keep those kinds of pictures on his phone?” he asked. “His wife might find them.”
I put up my hands. “I don’t know. Marie, she’s not much of a gadget person. Look, I don’t have all the answers, but there’s something wrong with that man. I can just feel it.”
“I suppose,” he said, “that at the very least it might be worth going over to talk to him about it. See what he has to say.”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” I said.
“Whoa,” he said, putting up his hand.
“I’m coming. I have some things I want to ask him. If you don’t let me come with you, I’m going to be banging on his door two seconds after you leave.”
Duckworth considered this. “You let me do the talking.”
I said nothing.
“Okay, let’s take a ride over there. You can direct me?”
“I can,” I said. “First, I want to tell my brother I’m heading out for a little while. And there’s just one other thing I have to do.”
“I’ll be waiting for you out on the porch.”
Duckworth got up and was heading outside as I went up the stairs.
Maps still hanging everywhere. They had, for the first time, a comforting effect on me. I went into Thomas’s room.
He was sitting in his computer chair, staring at his computer monitor and keyboard. Without the tower, they were a car with no engine.
“Are we going to get a computer now?” he asked.
“Not right this second,” I said. “You be okay here for a while, on your own? There’ll still be a cop out by the road.”
“I guess. Where are you going?”
“I’m going over to see Len Prentice.”
Thomas frowned. “I don’t like him.”
I considered asking Thomas, right then, to tell me what had happened to him, who had done it, but decided not to. He’d been through enough in the last few days without me forcing him to talk about that event.
“I don’t like him, either,” I said.
I turned my attention to the phone on his desk. “Have you touched this?” I asked.
“You told me not to.”
“I was just asking.”
“I haven’t touched it.”
I reached across the desk, pulled the phone closer to me. I hit the button that would give me the call history.
There had been no calls to this phone since the night we’d been abducted.
There was a call at 10:13 p.m. that night. It was the only number in the call history.
It was, I was pretty sure, a local number.
“Thomas,” I said, “this is showing only one call to this phone, ever. You’ve never gotten any other calls up here? Not even telemarketers?”
“I always delete the history after every call,” he said. “That’s what President Clinton started telling me to do.”
But Thomas hadn’t been able to erase the history that night, when Lewis Blocker answered the phone.
I didn’t think it was smart to dial this number directly from Thomas’s phone. I used my cell. I entered the number, put the phone to my ear, and listened.
“Who are you calling?” Thomas asked. “Are you calling the president? He told me never to call him myself. And if that’s his number it should have been deleted.”
I held up a hand to silence him. The phone at the other end rang once.
Then a second time.
A third.
Then a pickup. Some fumbling, and finally, a voice.
“Hello, Harry Peyton here.”
SEVENTY-FOUR
“HELLO?” Harry said again. “Someone there?”
“It’s Ray,” I said, when I’d found my voice.
“Ray!” Harry exclaimed, his voice full of exuberance. “Jesus Christ! You’re back!”
“We’re back,” I said.
“My God, what happened to you? The details coming out on the news are sketchy, but you found out Morris Sawchuck’s wife had been murdered? Good God, man, how on earth did you get all mixed up in that? Well, okay, I know Thomas had something to do with it, but Christ almighty, you could have ended up dead.”
“Came close to it,” I said, thinking. Trying to put it together.
“We called your place a few times, couldn’t reach you. At first we figured maybe you’d gone back to Burlington for a couple of days and took your brother with you.”
“No.
”
Harry laughed. “Yeah, well, we know that now, don’t we? Are you okay? I mean, physically? You guys all right?”
“Wrists a bit sore,” I said. “Kind of hurt all over.”
“Hell of a thing,” Harry said. “Listen, these things I need you to sign, we can do that anytime. You get your life back to normal and then—”
“No,” I said. “Let’s do it now.”
“Well, sure, let me just check my book—”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Ray, wait. Ray? You know you called me on my personal cell. Why didn’t you call on the office line? Where’d you get this number?”
“See you soon,” I said, and ended the call.
Thomas looked at me. “How’s the president?” he asked.
I walked down the hall to my father’s room, closed the door, and sat on the edge of the bed. I set the phone on the bedspread, ran my hands across the fabric, feeling the texture of its ridges on my palms.
What the hell was going on?
Harry Peyton had phoned the house pretending to be former president Clinton. The only person he could have hoped would have believed it was my brother. Harry knew about my brother’s fantasies.
He was playing into them.
The call Lewis took couldn’t have been the first one. No, there had to have been others before that. Calls my brother took. Conversations my brother believed he was having with Bill Clinton.
But I also knew, from my own observations, that Thomas had had these conversations when there really was no one on the other end of the line. I’d seen him conducting imaginary chats without the aid of a telephone.
Harry Peyton knew about those chats.
And had decided to make them real.
I grabbed my phone, came out of Dad’s room, and went back in to see Thomas, who was still sitting, dejectedly, in his computer chair.
“When you’d get a call, on that phone, from…you know, what would he tell you?”
Thomas blinked. “You remember I told you, how he hadn’t been as nice lately?”
“Yeah.”
“He said something bad would happen to us if I talked to you about things. About things that had happened to me, and things that the president was telling me now. He’d say everything was just between us, and he wanted to know about me personally, about you, and Dad. He didn’t used to ask those kinds of questions, when he would talk to me without the phone. When I would just hear him.”
“What did he ask about Dad?”
“He wanted to know if he talked about his friends, whether Dad had told me anything bad about them. Because Mr. Clinton had to be sure that no one in my circle was an enemy or a spy or anything.”
“What did you tell him?”
Thomas shrugged. “Not that much. I told him I didn’t like Len Prentice, and that I really didn’t like Mr. Peyton, which was why I didn’t go to Dad’s funeral, because I figured he would be there.”
“Thomas,” I said gently, “the thing that happened to you, a long time ago, in the window, it was Mr. Peyton who did that, wasn’t it?”
His eyes looked distant. “Dad said I wasn’t supposed to talk about that. Ever. Even after he said he was sorry, after he knew it was true. He said I couldn’t talk about it until he knew what to do about it. But then, eventually, I might have to.” He looked away. “I didn’t want to ever do that. Dad made me try to forget about it for so long, I didn’t think I could do that. Tell the police, or talk about it in a courtroom. No, never.”
I went to my phone, went looking for a number that turned out not to be in its memory. I needed a phone book.
“We’ll talk later, okay, Thomas?” I said. “And go get you a computer?”
“Okay,” he said. “Do you want me to make dinner?” It was such an unexpected offer I thought I might cry.
“I don’t even know if we have anything,” I said. “We’ll sort it all out when I get back.”
I came down the stairs, glanced outside, saw Detective Duckworth standing out on the porch, waiting for me. I found the phone book in a drawer in the kitchen, opened it, looked up a home number for Len Prentice.
“Hello?” It was Marie.
“Hi, Marie. It’s Ray.”
“Oh Ray, oh my, Len and I, we heard about you and Thomas on—”
“I have a quick question for you. I just need you to answer this for me.”
“What? What do you want to know?”
“When Len went to Thailand, I know you didn’t go with him, but did anyone else?”
“Yes, of course. Harry went with him. Harry Peyton. Although Len was a bit disappointed because Harry was always off doing his own thing. Tell me how you and Thomas are—”
I hung up, went out on the porch to join Duckworth.
“Change of plan,” I said.
ON the way into town in Duckworth’s car, I tried my best to explain what I believed had happened. That when Harry Peyton found out Dad knew about his Thailand adventures, and that Dad now believed Thomas’s tale of what Harry had done to him when he was a boy, Peyton panicked.
“I think he killed my father,” I said. “Or at the very least, did nothing to save him. And maybe even before Dad died, and certainly after, Harry started calling my brother on his line, played into his delusion. He was trying to make sure Thomas didn’t talk about what Harry had done to him, I think. Figured Thomas would keep quiet about it if it was a presidential order.”
“This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever come across,” Duckworth said. “And believe me, I’ve come across some things.”
“What did Harry say when he called you?” I asked. “About Thomas, and what he’d seen on the Whirl360 site?”
“What’s that?” Duckworth said, his wrist resting atop the steering wheel.
“I went to see Harry, told him about what Thomas had seen online, that maybe it really did mean something, that I needed to talk to the police but was going to have a hard time convincing them. Harry said he knew you, that he’d give you a call on my behalf.”
Duckworth shook his head slowly. “I’ve known Harry Peyton a long time, but he never called me about that.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “The goddamn son of a bitch.”
Duckworth glanced over at me. “You think he knows that you know?”
“Last thing he asked me was, why did I call him on his cell? Wanted to know how I got the number.”
Duckworth ran his tongue over his upper lip. “I’d say he knows.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think he does.”
WE walked into Harry Peyton’s law office. Duckworth had insisted on taking the lead, and went through the door ahead of me.
Peyton’s secretary, Alice, looked up from her desk. She smiled at the two of us.
“Hi, Barry,” she said to Detective Duckworth. Then, “Ray, my God, I can’t believe what you’ve been going through.”
“We need to talk to Harry,” Duckworth said.
“The two of you are together?” Alice said.
“We need to talk to Harry, Alice,” Duckworth repeated with a sternness he hadn’t used before.
Alice’s smile faded. She picked up her phone. “Some folks here to see you,” she said.
The heavy wood door ten feet beyond her desk opened a couple of seconds later. Harry kept hold of the knob on his side as his eyes landed on us. First me, then Barry.
It was seeing me there, with a police detective, that did it. I could see it in his eyes. He knew it was over.
“Harry,” Duckworth said, starting to walk toward the door, “I need to ask you a few questions.”
Harry stepped back and slammed the door closed.
Duckworth bolted forward, turned the knob, and pushed, but the door wouldn’t budge. I got up next to him and, like an idiot, tried the door myself.
“Harry!” Duckworth shouted. “Open the door!”
Harry said nothing.
Duckworth snapped at Alice, “Is there another way out o
f that office?”
“No,” she said. “The windows don’t open.”
“You got a key?”
While Alice rooted through her desk drawer, I put my mouth up to the door and shouted, “I know, Harry! I know what you did! To my dad, and to my brother!” I banged on it with my fist. “Come out here! Come out here, goddamn it! We know! Dad found those pictures on your phone and—”
“Get the fuck out of here!” he shouted from inside his office.
“He found those pictures on your phone and he knew! He knew Thomas had been telling the truth!”
“Find that damn key,” Duckworth told Alice.
“You’re finished, Harry!” I shouted. “Even if they don’t convict you for what you did to Thomas, or my father, you’re ruined in this town.” I brought my voice down, but loud enough that he could still hear me. “Everyone’s going to know what you are, Harry. I’m going to make damn sure of that. That you’re a pervert, and a murderer.”
“Here it is,” Alice said.
“Give it,” Duckworth said, taking the key from her.
“There’s something you need to know,” Alice said.
“You hear me, Harry?” I said, raising my voice again. “Do you hear me?”
Duckworth nudged me aside, getting ready to slip the key into the lock. “What’s that?” he said to Alice.
“He keeps a—”
That was when we heard the shot.
“Down!” Duckworth said and instantly put his arms around me and carried the both of us to the floor.
Alice, still behind her desk, screamed. And kept screaming.
“Stay down,” Duckworth said, pressing his hand on my back as he got to his feet. He took a gun from his jacket and called out, “Harry!”
No answer.
“Harry!”
Duckworth slipped the key into the lock, turned it, then put his hand on the knob and turned, pushing slowly on the door at the same time.
“Oh, man,” he said.
SEVENTY-FIVE
“I’VE only been here once before,” Thomas said as we turned off the main road and into the well-manicured grounds of the Promise Falls cemetery. “When Mom died, remember?”
“I remember,” I said, taking the Audi down to a crawl as we meandered along the narrow, paved roadway, stones and memorials gliding past our windows. Thomas, who did not think much of the navigation skills of Maria, my in-dash GPS lady, didn’t touch the system on the way over.
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