“True that,” Nick said. “Let it be. Whatever happens, happens. Man, I know how much you want to control them, if only because you want to prevent them from making the same mistakes you made. Trust me, I know. But this matter is just something that you’re going to have to live with. We are in a different world these days, a different time. As wild as we were, we were nothing compared to the kids of today. Cold comfort, I know, but you just have to play the odds and realize that your kids most likely won’t end up being killed in their schools. Some kids do, I know. It happens. But it probably won’t happen here, and you can’t let the possibility that it might happen get you down, buddy. Really, life is too goddamned short for such worries.”
I smiled. “Oh, you speak the truth. Okay, well, let’s try to brainstorm on this Silas thing. Do your research, and I’ll do mine, and I’ll try to figure out just what happened here.”
“Will do, buddy, will do.”
Chapter 8
I decided that before I paid a visit to Ava’s parents, I first was going to pay a visit to Silas’ parents. I wanted to get a fuller picture of my client, before I went to Ava’s family to try to get a fuller picture of her.
I drove to the house of Mr. and Mrs. Porter, which was in an older neighborhood in South Kansas City. This was a neighborhood that profoundly changed over the years. Back in the day, a thriving shopping mall was within blocks of this street, along with a host of restaurants – Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s, and other casual chains. The mall was at capacity with its stores, with large anchor stores that included Macy’s, Jones and JC Penney’s, and it was largely considered to be “the place to go” for people living in the South Kansas City area. The movie theater would pack them in to see new movies, such as The Empire Strikes Back and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There was also a free-standing movie theater just down the road a bit, that also packed kids in on the weekends, with lines forming on the street. Also in the neighborhood was what was known as a “hyper-mart” – this was back when Walmart was just starting to became the behemoth that it was, and it anchored a shopping district that included many thriving stores, from a Best Buy to a Toys ‘R’ Us, to sporting goods big-box chains.
However, around the mid 80s to the early 1990s, everything changed. Shootings happened in the mall parking lot, and gangs moved in and took over. The anchor stores fled, leaving large empty buildings at each ends of the once-powerful and thriving mall. Eventually, the mall was razed, leaving nothing but an empty field. There was talk of re-developing the area with a soccer stadium, but that fell through. When the mall closed, so did the restaurants, one by one. The Red Lobster building was still standing, as was the Olive Garden building, but they were now empty and lifeless, just like the neighborhood itself. Then the Hypermart went out of business, along with all the other stores around it. The Best Buy, the sporting goods store, the toy store, the eyeglass place, the gym, the restaurants - they were all gone.
The closing of the mall was the beginning of the end for this sad neighborhood. What was once a haven for working-class families was now a distressed area with run-down properties and little hope. Weeds grew up high on people’s lawns, several houses had boarded-up windows, and there was even a drug house or two on the block. The Porter’s house was no different. It was a ranch-style home, probably about 1000 square feet, with shutters that desperately needed painting and overgrown weeds on their front lawn.
I knocked on the door. I knew that they were expecting me, as I called them this morning.
A lady answered my knock. It was impossible to know how old she was – she could have been in her 50s, 60s or 70s. Her hair was short, but she looked like she had slept in curlers. She had deep lines around her mouth and eyes, and her skin looked like orange leather. She was still in her bathrobe, which was long with a floral pattern.
The thing that struck me most about this woman was that she looked sad - as if she had long since given up. When she answered the door, she barely nodded her head, as that seemed to take too much effort. She stepped aside, allowing me into her living room, which was tiny. The furniture consisted of an ancient gold couch, a non-matching love-seat in worn pleather and an old recliner. None of it matched and, even though the furniture was sparse, it still overwhelmed this tiny room. She had a couple of dogs who were sitting on the couch, and they both wagged their tails when I came in the door.
She looked apologetic. “I know this place doesn’t look like much, but it’s all we can afford. Can I get you a cup of tea?”
I nodded my head, trying to be polite. “I would appreciate that very much.” I looked around, seeing that the ceiling had water stains on it, which meant that the roof was leaking, and I imagined that there soon would be mold on the walls from the water. It didn’t appear that this woman did much to try to prevent the water from coming in - there wasn’t even a bucket on the floor to catch it, so the carpet was soaked in spots and smelled like mildew.
She bustled around the kitchen, and then brought out a floral pitcher that had steam coming out of its neck. She poured a cup for us both. “I understand that you are representing my son on a murder charge,” she said, then shook her head. “I never quite understood him. When I heard about the charge, I was not entirely surprised. I somehow always knew that it might come to this with him.”
I was curious about what she just said. What kind of mother would admit to “always knowing” that her son would one day be arrested for murder? “I’m so sorry, but what did you mean by that? You always knew that Silas would one day be arrested for murder?”
“Well, he’s had a very troubled life. We took him in as a foster child when he was only seven years old. I wanted nothing more than to give him a chance. Before I met him, he had such little chance in life.”
This was definitely a new piece of information for me. Silas had never told me that he was in foster care, and he certainly never told me that he was adopted by his parents.
“I’m so sorry, I guess I wasn’t aware that Silas was in foster care, and that he was adopted. Can you tell me what the circumstances were? How you came upon him?”
She shook her head. “Bob and me, we tried for many years to have a child of our own. But it just didn’t work. I guess that it just wasn’t meant to be. God just didn’t want me to have children of my own. I guess I was always meant to be a foster mom, and an adoptive mom. Like they always say, God never gives us more than we can handle, so I knew that when I got Silas in my house, even though he had some very special challenges, I was meant to handle them for him. I was meant to be his mother. I truly believe that.”
I wondered what kind of “special challenges” she was talking about. “So tell me the circumstances. Why was he in foster care, and how did you end up with him in your home?”
She sighed. “Well, here’s what the deal was. Silas’ biological father was a very troubled man. He set fire to the family home, while Silas’s mother was asleep. She was killed in that fire. Silas himself managed to get out of the house, without any burns, which was a miracle. All this happened to him long before I ever knew him - when he was only five years old. I guess that his birth father was a schizophrenic who was hearing voices that told him that he had to burn down the house. The reason why Silas was able to get out, was that his bedroom door opened into the backyard. His mother wasn’t so lucky. Silas’ father was institutionalized, and then Silas himself went from one foster home to another for a few years before I got to him. His therapists told me that he was suffering from Attachment Disorder. Do you know what that is?”
“I believe so.” From what I understood, attachment disorder occurred when a child does not bond with anybody when he or she is very young. However, I wasn’t quite clear on what the particulars were of someone who suffered from this disorder. I understood that, amongst other symptoms, the person who suffered from Attachment Disorder didn’t always develop much of a conscience, and they often had problems with trusting people. They usually had p
roblems, in general, with forming lasting relationships with other people.
She shook her head again. “I did my best with him. I know that I tried. But the damage was done by what happened long before I ever knew him. Growing up, he was just very hard to control. Thank God he was smart, and he was able to get it together enough that he was able to be very successful.”
“What kind of problems did you have with him when he was young?”
She took a sip of her tea. “There were problems around the neighborhood, and the cops came to our door several times. There were a lot of burglaries, people breaking into cars, that sort of thing. Nobody was ever able to say that Silas was involved in any of it, but I could never control him. From the time he was 10 years old, he was running away from home, and we were always looking for him. He would disappear for a day or two, and he would come back, as if nothing ever happened. In the meantime, crimes would happen around the neighborhood, and they usually occurred when Silas was not in the house.”
I made notes as she spoke. “Was he ever arrested for any of these crimes? Did he ever go into juvy or anything like that?”
“No, but I think it’s just because he was too smart to get caught doing what he was doing. That was the one thing about Silas, he has a genius level IQ. Just off the charts. He was so smart that I was able to enroll him in college when he was only 15 years old. It was a relief, to get him out of the house, to be perfectly honest with you. His test scores were so high that he was able to go to the local university, UMKC. As you probably know, he ended up getting a PhD at Stanford. That’s because of his scores on his Graduate Record Exam. He scored perfect on all the sections. Plus, he managed to get a 4.0 GPA at the university, even though he never studied. I know that him going to college at such a young age saved him. It gave him a purpose in life. At least that’s what the psychologist said to me – she told me that part of the reason why he was running away, and getting in so much trouble, was because he was so bored. School bored him, and he was just going out of his mind.”
I wondered if this was significant that Silas went to college at such a young age, and the fact that he had such a high IQ. I knew that he was intelligent – you don’t become a billionaire before the age of 35 if you’re a dummy. Especially a self-made one. So that part of what she was telling me was not surprising at all. What was surprising was the trouble he got into. “Let me ask you something. Were there any suspicious fires that were set around the neighborhood, that the police questioned Silas about?”
She appeared to think about it for a second. Then she shook her head. “No, I don’t believe that there were. At least, not in this neighborhood. I can’t tell you if other neighborhoods might have had some suspicious fires that maybe Silas was involved in when he was a young child. When he would run away, he could have possibly gone to other neighborhoods and set fires. I don’t know.”
“And you say that Silas was diagnosed when he was young with attachment disorder. You also talked about a therapist. Did you take him to this therapist?”
She nodded her head. “I had a court-appointed therapist assigned to Silas when he first came to live with us. That was because Silas had the special mental health needs. I was able to take him to a therapist once a week. She was the one who diagnosed him with the attachment disorder. She told me I was going to possibly have problems with him, as far as him not having empathy for others, not being able to trust, and not being able to bond with me or Bob. And, sure enough, that’s what happened. Silas was never somebody who was cuddly. He was always very standoffish. He was never one to show affection. He was always very… remote. He wasn’t a bad kid. He just didn’t have very authentic emotions. I think that’s probably the best way to describe him. I mean, he could put on a face, when people came over. But it wasn’t real. You have to understand, because he was so intelligent, he was able to think his way through social situations, if that means anything at all.”
I think I knew what she was talking about. That was the way some people were, if they suffered from narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder or something of the sort. I knew this, because I had done research on all these disorders, and psychology was my minor in college. My knowledge of psychology had always helped me in my job of being a criminal defense attorney. Lack of empathy was the hallmark of many personality disorders, and I wondered if Silas was not suffering from bipolar disorder at all, but something else. Some kind of personality disorder. If that were true, then the situation just got more complicated. In the meantime, I was going to have to brush up on what the symptoms were of someone who was suffering from attachment disorder.
“What else can you tell me about Silas? Do you know anything about his relationship with Ava?”
She looked sad again. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about that. You see, Silas decided when he got out of Stanford that he didn’t want to have a thing to do with me or Bob anymore. I think that we embarrass him. You have to understand that Silas feels that he has a certain image to uphold to the world. And having parents like us, living hand to mouth, in a tiny little house like this, it did not fit in with the image that he wanted to portray to the world. So he stopped answering my phone calls.” At that, she got out a box of Kleenex and blew her nose. I could see that there were tears in her eyes. “I suppose that I don’t blame him. I mean, Bob and me, we never had much. Bob works a lot. He has several jobs. In fact, he’s at work right now, at the local Walmart, as a part-time job. He got laid off his job at the factory, several years ago. Since then, he’s been working part-time jobs, and so have I. I work the night shift at a local Denny’s as a waitress, and I clean office buildings in the mornings. Bob works at Walmart and as a cook at the same Denny’s that I work at. Thank God this house is paid for, otherwise I think that the two of us would probably be homeless.”
I suddenly got a different picture of my client. Here he was, a billionaire, while his father was working part time at Walmart and at Denny’s, his mother was working part-time at Denny’s and cleaning office buildings, and his mother was saying that if they didn’t have the house paid for that they would be homeless. What kind of son would just ignore his parents like that? Especially when it seemed as if his parents had nothing but love for him. These parents saved him from being in the foster care system, yet he now just ignored them?
I supposed that went along with Silas apparently having a lack of empathy, or a conscience. Because only somebody who didn’t have empathy or a conscience would do that to their parents. When a person has money to spare, yet they don’t spare any of it on the people who raised them…I had no use for people like that. My own mother didn’t live much better - she lived in a trailer and she, too, worked at Walmart. But I tried to give her money. She just refused to take it. I also tried to make sure that her car was in good shape, as I changed her oil and rotated and inflated her tires whenever I saw her, and I also always took a look under her hood. Plus, I did basic repairs around her place. That was all that she allowed me to do, however. I wanted to do more.
Apparently, Silas didn’t want to even do that for his parents. Judging from the way the place looked, I knew that Silas probably didn’t do any repairs around this house.
Arlene appeared to read my mind. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that our son has billions of dollars, so he really should help us out financially. I suppose you’re probably right. But at the same time, we don’t expect it. We don’t ask for it either. It would be nice to be able to get some new furniture for this place, and some new carpeting.” She looked down at the patches in her carpet that were worn thin, so thin that you could see the floor underneath. “As you can probably tell, this carpet has not been changed for many years, and it was cheap to begin with. I think the last time that the carpet was new in this house was in the 1970s. There’s a lot that we would like to have, but, at the same time, Silas doesn’t owe us anything.”
“No offense, but how can you say that? You saved him fr
om foster care, and you did your best with raising him. And this is how he treats you?”
She looked at a Kleenex, and held it in her hands, wringing it over and over again. “He’s a good boy. I know he’s had a lot of problems, but he’s a good boy.” That was all she said. She didn’t address my question directly. Probably because she didn’t have a good answer for why Silas would be so negligent and downright cruel to his parents.
I decided that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with that line of questioning, so I changed the subject. “So, I guess you don’t know anything about Silas’ relationship with Ava, then?” I knew that since Silas had apparently cut off communication with his parents when he went to Stanford, then it was probably true that Arlene did not know about Silas’ life with Ava. I had already read in his bio that he had attended Stanford, after graduating from UMKC at the age of 18. He graduated from Stanford with a PhD at age 22, and he had met Ava when he was 25. I had a feeling that Arlene probably was not going to be able to tell me anything about Silas’ relationship with Ava for that reason alone. However, maybe she didn’t have to. She told me enough when she explained how it was that Silas treated her and her husband.
I was starting to think that Silas might be somebody who was as dangerous as what that letter had said. If there was one thing that I knew about people who had personality disorders was that oftentimes, it was coupled with a sense of rage, which could be a very dangerous combination indeed. I was just going to have to find out exactly what the deal was with Silas’ mental issues.
What I did know was that, to say the very least, Silas was a very crappy son.
Whether or not that meant anything for this case, I didn’t know.
Secrets and Lies Page 6