Too Close to Home

After Barry gave me one of his cards and got in his unmarked car to drive back into Promise Falls, and as Derek and I were walking slowly back down the lane toward our house, he said to me, “Why’d you do that?”

“Why’d I do what?”

“Tell that cop you heard me come in?”

“Was I wrong about that? Didn’t I hear you come in around nine-thirty?”

Derek hesitated.

“You saying that if I thought I heard you come in then, I’d be wrong?”

He still didn’t know how to respond. “I don’t think you heard me come in, is all I’m saying.”

“Is that because you didn’t come in, or you snuck in so quietly you don’t think we could have heard you?”

Derek shook his head in frustration. “Either way, I just don’t understand why you lied to him.”

It was my turn to figure out how to respond. “I was just trying to help. Like, I don’t know, if you really were with Penny or something, if she’d snuck out even though she was supposed to be grounded, and you don’t want to have to drag her into this. It’s just easier for me to say I heard you come in.”

Derek thought about that. “Okay.”

I stopped walking and put my hand on my son’s arm. “Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked, looking him in the eye.

“No.” He looked down at the gravel.

“Look at me,” I said. “I understand what a shock this has been to you, losing your best friend, what something like that must do to your head. So I get it, you acting funny. It’d be weird if you weren’t acting this way. But sometimes I think there’s something more going on. That there’s something you’re holding back, something you should be telling us. If not Barry, certainly me and your mother. We can’t help you if you don’t level with us. This is serious shit here, Derek.”

“I know. You don’t have to tell me that. I’m not stupid.”

“So, is there something you want to tell me? About when you got home?”

He paused. “It was sort of around when I said. I don’t know the exact time. I think you guys were asleep is all. I know how you are on a Friday night. You’re beat, so I came in real quiet because I figured you and Mom would have gone to bed early. Maybe not nine-thirty, maybe a little later.”

I waited.

“So that’s all.”

“What about what Barry asked you?” I said. “What were you up to between eight and when you got home?”

“Nothing,” he said defensively. “Nothing really.”

“Where were you?”

“Jesus, what the fuck is this, anyway? You think I killed our fucking neighbors?”

I didn’t flinch or back down. “No,” I said evenly. “Of course not. But I am starting to wonder whether you know something about what happened there. Answer my question. Where were you between the time you left the Langleys and the time you came home? I’m figuring you weren’t with Penny, that she wasn’t allowed to leave the house.”

“I went for a walk,” he said.

“To Penny’s house? She’s all the way into town. That’d take you thirty, forty minutes.”

“No. Just around. Is that a crime? That I took a walk?”

“Where?”

“Huh?”

“Where did you walk?”

“Around. Down the highway, to the creek. I sat down there, called Penny on my cell, we talked for a while, I guess for an hour or something, and then I walked back home. I guess I was feeling kind of down. We’re kind of going through a rough patch right now.”

That was either the truth or bullshit designed to garner sympathy, get me to back off. I was inclined to believe the latter.

“Things looked okay between you two in the middle of the night.”

“Yeah. It’s mostly her parents, you know. They don’t like me.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have some idea.”

“Well, it might have something to do with her dad kind of finding us, you know, making out. In her room.”

“You think?” I said.

“He’s a real tight-ass,” Derek said.

“You don’t have to be much of a tight-ass to get upset finding some guy making out with your daughter in her bedroom. Under your roof.”

“Yeah, well, that was sort of why she had to sneak out here to see me.”

“For Christ sake, Derek, you’re just going to make things even worse with her dad, you start letting her do things like that.”

“Jesus,” he said, adopting a tone I didn’t much care for, “you gonna start getting all tight-ass on me too?”

I squeezed his arm and shook him. “Don’t you ever speak to me like that. I don’t care how much shit you might be in, you talk to me like that and I’ll knock your fucking block off.”

If I’d actually struck him he couldn’t have looked any more stunned. I kept my grip on him for another second, then let go.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“We clear?”

“Yeah.”

“So you were saying.”

“Uh. .” Derek had lost the thread of his story. Then, “Okay, what I was trying to say is, please don’t say anything about her being here, because she snuck out of the house after her dad fell asleep. One of her friends picked her up and dropped her off on the highway and she came in. She got right past that cop parked up at the end of the drive.”

That was a comforting thought, but hardly surprising. There was so much tree cover out here, it would take a team of cops to keep watch in all directions at all times.