Once Shunned

by Blake Pierce

  “Come in,” she repeated, standing aside.

  Then he said, “Thanks,” and came on into the room.

  He looked around and said, “It looks like you’re getting ready to leave. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

  “No, not at all,” Riley said.

  She figured that Bill and Jenn and the plane were going to have to wait just a little longer. If Meredith wound up angry, she’d take the blame for her two partners. Meanwhile, she was surprised by Wesley’s perfectly normal tone of voice.

  “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, offering him the stuffed chair.

  Wesley looked at the chair for a moment, as if trying to make up his mind.

  Then he tilted his head and said, “No, I don’t think so.”

  Riley couldn’t help but smile at his slightly odd response. Then she remembered Kevin Bayle’s abrupt departure from the Szymko Aquarium. She’d assumed he was on his way back to Wilburton House.

  She asked Wesley, “Does Dr. Bayle know you came here?”

  Wesley stood a bit straighter. Riley sensed that he was rather proud of himself.

  “Yes he does,” he said. He still wasn’t making eye contact with Riley, but otherwise he seemed quite self-assured. “So does Dr. Rhind. So does the whole staff at Wilburton House. They’re all pleased that I’m doing so much better. They say I can start coming and going on my own again. Dr. Bayle was especially pleased that I wanted to talk to you.”

  Riley asked, “Did Dr. Bayle drive you here?”

  With just a flicker of a smile, Wesley said …

  “No, he offered me a ride, but I told him I’d rather call a cab. It feels good to be independent again. I was really going through a hard time for a while.”

  Then he nodded and said …

  “But now I’m better.”

  Riley was starting to dare to hope. She figured Wesley must have had some good reason to come and see her.

  Unless he’s just here to be friendly.

  The thought suddenly worried her. As happy as she was that Wesley was doing so much better, she really didn’t have time to spend just visiting with him. Besides, she wasn’t sure she even had the skills to carry on a conversation with him. But what would happen if she asked him to leave? Would that set him back? Might he even have another meltdown? If so, she knew better than to think she could cope with it.

  In the meantime, Wesley just stood there, looking around as if he’d forgotten that Riley was in the room. She was just wondering whether to say something when he spoke up.

  “I keep thinking about this morning, when you told me about being locked in a cage. I think it was very brave of you to tell me that.”

  Riley almost said, “It was nothing.”

  But of course, it hadn’t been nothing, and telling Wesley anything less than the truth right now was surely a bad idea. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Wesley had never told a lie in his life, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be lied to, even out of politeness. It had been very hard for Riley to share that trauma with somebody she barely knew, let alone someone whose mind she really didn’t understand.

  Instead she said, “It was kind of you to listen.”

  “I was glad to listen,” Wesley said.

  Wesley fell quiet for a long moment, then added …

  “Before you left, I told you … I felt like I was in a cage in the dark, and I couldn’t tell you what you wanted to know.”

  He took a long, slow breath and then continued speaking in his flat, emotionless voice.

  “But I feel better now. I don’t feel like I’m in a cage anymore. I think I can tell you what I saw.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  Riley waited breathlessly for Wesley to speak again. He was still standing, and for a few moments he stared off into space, again shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

  Is this really happening? she asked herself.

  Is he going to tell me …?

  As she forced herself to be patient, there came another knock at the door—a much sharper knock this time.

  Riley fought down a groan of despair.

  That’s got to be Bill this time.

  She really didn’t want any interruption right now. She didn’t want anything to spoil Wesley’s attempt to communicate.

  Riley said to Wesley nervously …

  “Please sit down. I’d feel better if you do. I’ll be back with you in just a moment.”

  Wesley nodded and obediently sat in the big flowered chair.

  She opened the door just a little and saw that both Bill and Jenn were standing in the hallway. She whispered through the door opening …

  “You’ve got to give me more time!”

  Bill looked at his watch, then looked at Riley incredulously.

  He said, “Riley, we’re really, really late.”

  “What’s going on in there?” Jenn asked.

  Riley let out a moan of frustration, slipped out into the hallway, and pushed the door nearly shut behind her. Standing with her back to the door, she kept her voice low as she told her partners …

  “Wesley Mannis is in there. He says he’s ready to tell me what he saw.”

  Bill and Jenn both stood there with their mouths hanging open.

  “Give me just a few minutes, please,” Riley said.

  Neither of her partners made any objection.

  Without another word, Riley ducked back into the room and closed the door. She pulled one of the room’s smaller chairs over near Wesley and sat down facing him.

  To her surprise, he looked utterly unperturbed, as if he hadn’t noticed that any interruption had taken place.

  “Now please tell me what you were going to say,” she said.

  Wesley nodded, and, looking off somewhere over his shoulder, he began.

  “It happened on Victoria Street. There was a broken gate at one-forty. I saw a swing on the porch at two-thirty, and another at two-forty-five …”

  Riley was seized by an odd feeling of familiarity.

  Is this déjà vu?

  She could swear that she’d heard Wesley describe exactly those same places before.

  She listened as he continued …

  “The garage door was open at three-fifty-two like it always was …”

  As he kept on talking, she realized—he was repeating almost word for word what he’d said to Dr. Bayle yesterday. She was starting to panic now.

  Is that all he’s going to tell me? she wondered.

  Just exactly the same stuff he said before?

  But she knew better than to interrupt his flow of words. He was either going to tell her the whole story or he wasn’t. Any effort to force him might lead to disaster. She knew she had to let him do this his own way.

  So Riley sat quietly as Wesley continued …

  “No cars are allowed to park on Victoria, but there was a new car in the driveway at four-sixty. I didn’t see any pedestrians, but I saw the same fluffy black cat that I often see walking around in that neighborhood …”

  As she listened, Riley couldn’t help but be impressed by the photographic detail of his descriptions. It seemed like everything he saw was permanently imprinted on his memory. She figured he could be a great detective if it weren’t for his disability.

  He said, “I had to stop to pick up a milk carton that had fallen out of its bin, then I had to run to catch up with the truck, and …”

  His flow of words slowed to a stop, and he seemed to turn inward. Riley wondered if maybe he was going to get stuck again while trying to relive his trauma.

  But he nodded and said …

  “Then the truck and I got to four-sixty-five on Victoria Street.”

  Riley’s breath caught with excitement.

  Robin Scoville’s address!

  Finally looking into Riley’s eyes, Wesley said …

  “I want you to know, I’m not a peeper.”

  “I know you’re not, Wesley,” Riley said.

&n
bsp; “It’s just that … well, the woman who lived at four-sixty-five sometimes had her lights on at that time of morning. Whenever that happened, she’d be standing right there in her living room at her big window. She wore some kind of cuffs on her arms—they were crutches, I think. I guessed there was something wrong with her legs, although I could never see her legs. She’d look right out at me. And she’d take one arm out of the cuff, and she’d wave at me.”

  He leaned toward Riley and added …

  “So you can see, I’m not a peeper. I just couldn’t help noticing her. I always worried that maybe she’d think I was rude, pretending not to see her, not waving back to her. She was just being friendly. But I didn’t wave because I’m not supposed to be looking at people in their homes. I’m not supposed to be looking through anybody’s window.”

  “I understand,” Riley said.

  And indeed, she felt as though she was understanding Wesley better with every word he said. He not only noticed physical details, he was extremely sensitive to people’s moods.

  He knew she was being friendly.

  He was afraid she’d think he was rude.

  She remembered something Dr. Bayle had told her about him.

  “His empathy is so powerful and overwhelming that he can’t control it. It floods through him all the time.”

  Riley realized now that it must be painful for him to live with that kind of rampant empathy. Small wonder that he tried to shut himself off from the world, tried to stay emotionally disconnected from everyone around him.

  He lowered his eyes and said …

  “But this time, when she was standing there looking out the window, I saw someone else. It was a man who came in from another room. He was behind her. She was looking at me, not at him. I’d never seen him before. But I figured she at least must have known he was in the house with her. I thought maybe he was …”

  Wesley paused, seeming to search for polite words.

  “Spending the night with her,” he said. “I had no idea …”

  He looked off into space, as if slipping into his own world again.

  Riley said in a firm but gentle voice …

  “Then what did you see?”

  He seemed to be struggling with his thoughts now.

  “The time before, when I was nine years old, that time I told you about … I was looking outside through a window, when I saw what the boys were doing to the puppy …”

  Trying to coax him back on track, Riley said, “But this time you were looking in. Please tell me what you saw. What did the man look like?”

  Knitting his brow with concentration, Wesley said, “He was taller than she was. He had brown hair, slicked back, parted on the right. And when he walked toward her from behind, he was …”

  Wesley fell quiet again, then said …

  “He was limping.”

  Riley felt a tingle of excitement.

  “Limping?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. He limped toward her through the room. He was moving slowly and he definitely dipped down with every other step.”

  He limped! Riley thought.

  She sensed immediately that this was an important detail, but she didn’t have time to consider why.

  Wesley continued, “I realized that he must be moving very quietly and I thought maybe he was going to surprise her with a hug. But then he held up something in his left hand. It glittered a little under the light from the ceiling fixture. I thought maybe it was a knife, but it wasn’t, it was too thin for that.”

  An ice pick, Riley realized.

  She suspected that no one had ever mentioned to Wesley that Robin Scoville had been killed with an ice pick. In fact, probably no one had talked to him in detail about the murder at all. This gave Riley further assurance that his account was accurate and reliable—not that she’d had any doubts so far.

  Wesley said, “Just when she raised her hand to wave at me, I realized he was going to do something bad to her. I raised my own hand and pointed … trying to tell her that someone was behind her. But …”

  He gasped for breath and said …

  “He stabbed her … in the ear,” he said. “The narrow shiny thing went in and out of her ear. And when it came out, she dropped straight to the floor.”

  He was trembling and gasping now.

  “I should have done something,” he said in a thick, agitated voice. “I should have …”

  He fell silent again, shivering almost convulsively.

  “There was nothing you could do,” Riley said. “You pointed. You tried to let her know.”

  He nodded and echoed Riley’s words …

  “I pointed. I tried to let her know. But it was like with the puppy. There was a window between us. I couldn’t … go through the window.”

  Afraid he was on the verge of another meltdown, Riley said, “Listen to me, Wesley. Take a couple of deep, long breaths. Very slowly. In and out. You’re right here with me. Everything’s all right.”

  Wesley inhaled and exhaled slowly.

  Then, seeming to recover from his agitation, he said in a calmer voice, “After she fell, the man looked out the window, but I don’t think he saw me. I think I had stepped back out of the streetlight.”

  Riley asked, “Do you think he saw the garbage truck?”

  “No, he couldn’t have. The truck had driven on while it was happening. The man stood and smiled down at her for a moment. Then he just … turned around and walked back the way he’d come, walked out of the room, and …”

  Wesley squinted curiously, as if something had just dawned on him.

  “He wasn’t limping anymore,” he said.

  Riley felt that tingle of excitement again.

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  “I’m sure. He walked out of the room just fine.”

  He shook his head and said, “After that, I don’t remember much. Everything went blank, and the next thing I knew I was back in my room. They told me I’d walked off my job, but that I wouldn’t tell them why. I guess I … really didn’t want to remember.”

  Then he slumped in his chair.

  “That’s all I can remember,” he said. “That’s all I can tell you. I wish I could have done something to help her.”

  Riley wanted with all her heart to take his hand and offer him some comfort.

  But no, he can’t deal with that.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

  “Maybe when I got home I should have called the police,” he said. “I think that’s what you’re supposed to do …”

  “You were in shock,” Riley said. “You were traumatized. You couldn’t talk to anybody about it … then. But you talked to me, right now, and that was very brave …”

  And it might save someone else’s life, she thought.

  He looked thoroughly drained now, but hardly on the verge of a meltdown.

  “I’m tired,” he said. “I think I should go back to Wilburton House.”

  Riley briefly wondered whether it might be possible for him to tell her anything else. But she quickly decided that he’d already said everything he possibly could, down to the very smallest detail.

  She suggested, “My partners and I can drive you back.”

  Wesley shook his head. “No, I’ll call for a cab. It’s important for me to do things like this on my own.”

  He got up from the chair and walked over to the room phone and started to punch in a number. Meanwhile, Riley opened the door to the hallway, where Bill and Jenn were still standing with anxious expressions on their faces.

  Bill said, “Riley, what the hell’s been going on in there?”

  Where do I begin? she asked herself.

  Her own head was buzzing with questions.

  She could think of only one thing she could say to her partners for certain.

  “We’re not flying back to Quantico. Not yet.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  Jenn Roston glanced up at Bill. He looked
even more flabbergasted than she felt.

  As they’d been standing there in the hallway wondering what was going on, Riley had popped out of her room and announced …

  “We’re not flying back to Quantico. Not yet.”

  Then Wesley Mannis had come out of Riley’s room, spoken to them shyly, and wandered down the hallway to the stairs.

  It all boggled Jenn’s mind, and she didn’t know what to say.

  Bill didn’t seem to have that problem.

  “What are you talking about?” Bill barked at Riley. “What the hell happened just now? Did you and Wesley just solve the case between the two of you?”

  “Not exactly,” Riley replied calmly.

  “Then what’s going on?” he asked.

  Riley said in a determined voice, “We’ve got some work to do, that’s what’s going on. And we’ve got to do it right here and now.”

  “But the plane …” Bill began.

  “The plane will have to wait,” Riley said. “Come on into my room, both of you, and let’s get started.”

  Bill growled, “I’ll call Meredith. He’s going to have a fit about this.”

  “That’s too bad,” Riley said. “I’ll call room service. We didn’t have breakfast, so we’d better get some food in our stomachs. We’ll think better.”

  Reluctantly, they both followed Riley into her room. As Bill started his phone call, Jenn crossed to the window and looked outside. She could see Wesley Mannis standing down by the curb with his hands in his pockets.

  “What’s Wesley doing down there?” she asked Riley.

  “Waiting for a cab,” Riley said. “That’s how he got here. He’s headed straight back to Wilburton House.”

  Jenn was thoroughly baffled now.

  He’s catching a cab?

  How could Riley be sure where he was really going?

  The truth was, Wesley gave Jenn the creeps. She’d felt that way since the very first time she’d met him. He’d reminded her too much of Gerard, the autistic kid she’d known when she’d been living in Aunt Cora’s so-called “foster home.”

  Now, gazing down at Wesley standing out there, she flashed back to Gerard holding a screwdriver to her throat. He’d cornered her alone in the house and was threatening to rape her. Fortunately, one of the other kids happened to show up, and Gerard had pretended nothing had happened.