Silent Son Read online

  “What are you going to do?” she had asked.

  “What the hell can I do? Somebody’s got to get this thing going. Before that maniac kills again…”

  “What about me?” It just popped out. She had given it no thought, but it was a logical answer. She could captain the case. Gardner had trained her to be a pro. She had the basic moves down pat. The only thing she lacked was experience.

  “You?” Gardner’s voice had carried surprise, not condescension.

  “Me. I can run the investigation, and you can advise me…” She was making it up as she went along. “I think I can keep my perspective…” A fleeting vision of Granville’s face flashed through her mind, and she swallowed. “I think I can…”

  Gardner had tried to smile, but the pain did not allow more than a brief upward turn to the corners of his lips. “I don’t know if I can stay out of it,” he said solemnly.

  “You won’t have to,” Jennifer replied. “You’ll still be there, just not up front…”

  Gardner’s silence signaled his agreement. There was no other choice, really. He was too emotionally involved to lead.

  And now he was asleep by her side, snoring deeply while she lay awake, wondering if she could make good on her promise.

  Gardner’s sleep was deep, but not without dreams. As Jennifer clung to his back in the waking world, he was locked in a bizarre prison somewhere on the other side. There was no structure, no bars or gates. It was far away in a flat-surfaced desert whose white sand stretched endlessly to an undefined horizon. Beyond the horizon was the nothingness of space.

  He and his companions were trapped. They were watched and controlled by faceless beings who set them to tasks that had no purpose. Gardner was the leader of the prisoners.

  In the center of the scene was a wall. A single panel of stone, standing alone. In front of it was a line of chairs.

  Suddenly, there was a commotion. The ritual was about to begin. The keepers yelled at him to move. To mount the chairs and scale the wall. Gardner helped the weak ones climb. Pushing their feet, pulling their hands. He was the strongest. The only one who could get them out of the danger zone. But there were not enough chairs! Hurry! Gardner screamed. Hurry! They are coming!

  Gardner tried, but he couldn’t help them all. Several people were stuck on the sand, terrified.

  Hurry! Gardner screamed. But it was too late. The keepers had arrived with the dogs. Giant snarling beasts that fed on human flesh. In an instant, they were ripping and slashing with their teeth, tearing the helpless ones to shreds. Their screams were lost in the growling chaos. And Gardner clung to the top of wall and watched, unable to save them.

  Purvis Bowers sat at his computer and tried to work, but he couldn’t concentrate. His aunt and uncle lay in Frame’s Funeral Home, and they had nothing to wear. Delivered this morning from the morgue in Baltimore, they were still naked. They needed clothes to be buried in, and Purvis had been asked to supply them.

  The thirty-five-year-old accountant was the only son of Henry’s deceased brother Burton. A small man with a sharp mind, he had grown up in the town’s backwaters. He was a genius with the numbers of commerce. He loved numbers, and he could always find a way to make them sing.

  Purvis had set up a solo accounting practice after his father died, crunching digits for everyone up and down Main Street. He’d saved a lot of money for a lot of clients. But his ambitions stretched beyond the county line. He saw himself someday at the head of a giant corporation, giving orders, poring over reams of billings that his numbers had created. And in his dream he was away, far away from the town, in a city that he owned.

  Purvis picked up his telephone and dialed.

  “Frame’s Funeral Home,” a female voice answered.

  “Ms. Frame, it’s Purvis Bowers.”

  “Hello, Mr. Bowers.”

  “Hello.” He took a breath. “I got your message.”

  “About the clothes.”

  “Yes, ma’am. About the clothes.” His voice was hesitant.

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Bowers? We didn’t know who else to call.”

  Purvis was the closest relative to Addie and Henry. They had no children of their own, and their siblings were all dead. In a crisis, he was the logical choice.

  “Ms. Frame, I was wondering if you could send someone from your place over to see about the clothes…” Purvis asked. “I just… it wouldn’t…”

  “I think I understand, Mr. Bowers,” the lady replied. “You’d rather not go over to the store. With the shooting and all, I do understand.”

  The line went silent.

  “Mr. Bowers?”

  “Yes, Ms. Frame…”

  “That right? You’d rather we pick something out for them?”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Purvis said. He sounded relieved.

  “We can do that. What about the key? How are we going to get in?”

  “The police will help. If you call the station, they can let you in.”

  “All right. Don’t you worry about this now, Mr. Bowers. Don’t you worry at all. We’ll take care of everything. Addie and Henry are going to look just beautiful—”

  “Thank you, Ms. Frame,” Purvis interrupted. “Bye.”

  He hung up the phone and rubbed his cheek. Then he picked up the receiver again and dialed.

  “Kent King’s office,” a voice answered.

  “This is Purvis Bowers. May I speak to him?”

  “Moment please.”

  “Yeah?” King sounded rushed. “What’s up, Purvis?”

  “I need to shelter some money,” Bowers said. “Can you help me out? It has to be legal.”

  King sighed. “How much?”

  “A lot of zeros.”

  “How sheltered do you want it?”

  “Out of sight.”

  King laughed. “Make an appointment. We’ll talk about it.”

  Brownie stood on the porch at Bowers Corner, and looked down Mountain Road. There was a short curve, then a straightaway, then another curve that snaked into the woods. That was north. In the other direction, it was more or less the same thing: excellent sight distance for at least two hundred yards before the road disappeared. That provided plenty of advance warning for a criminal. Brownie put his hands on his hips. The fucker must have gone in blind with no lookout on the porch, and no wheel man in the lot. He had no warning that Granville was on his way.

  Brownie pushed open the front door and looked in. The rockers around the stove were still, the room dark. The shelves were still stocked with food. Nothing had been disturbed. It was in, do the job, and then out. But why no eyes out front? The planning had been meticulous, up to a point. There were no fingerprints, no shell casings, no intact bullet fragments, no hairs or fibers. And there was no apparent motive.

  Twelve paces marked the distance from the door to the spot where the bodies were found. It would take about ten seconds at an adult’s leisurely walk, seven or eight at a child’s run. Ellen Fahrnam had reported hearing a shot almost immediately after Granville had entered. She’d panicked, and hesitated before going in. Add another five or six seconds. Then, with her entry, perhaps cautious, perhaps hurried, add seven seconds more. Twenty seconds. It all went down in less than twenty seconds: Addie’s and Henry’s executions, Granville’s injury, the escape. The last part was well planned. The lookout part may have been sloppy, but the retreat was worked to perfection.

  Brownie skirted the chalk lines on the floor and walked to the rear exit. It was three paces to the door. That would take one and a half seconds at a run. He opened the door and looked out. There was a narrow passageway between the petting zoo cages and the base of a steep hill behind the store, then twenty yards to the end of the yard, a rocky ten-foot drop, and finally, the wilderness: thirty acres of trees stretching down a long inclined slope to a meadow on the other side. It had been scouted and then searched by two squads of patrol officers, and later followed up by the dog team. But, not surprisingly, they hadn’t foun
d a thing. A forty-minute head start was all the bastard needed. And now he could be anywhere.

  Brownie walked around the building to his lab van. There was something very strange here. The perpetrator seemed to be a bungler and a genius at the same time. Some aspects were brilliant, others not so smart. The characteristics of a schizoid personality. Brownie stopped suddenly and slapped his side. “That’s it!” A man intelligent enough to plan so well would not have left himself unprotected. He would have covered all angles, and that meant he could not have done it alone. There had to be at least two people involved, or it would never have been attempted. One smart, and one stupid. A schizoid team!

  Two men stood on the skeet range of Prentice Academy, below the main campus. It was late afternoon, and the Gothic tower of the administration building blocked the path of the falling sun. Modeled after a British university, the school was an academic enclave for the wealthy and high-born, an architectural masterpiece of cloistered courtyards, stone dormitories, and leaded glass windows.

  “Pull!”

  A clay’pigeon suddenly twirled through the air like a miniature flying saucer.

  IV Starke took aim with his shotgun, smoothly guiding the barrel along the trajectory and then slightly ahead.

  Blam! The pigeon was instant dust.

  “A good one!” coach Thomas Randolph yelled.

  Starke lowered the gun, and adjusted his dark glasses. “Show me a double,” he called to the concrete pit ten feet below.

  There was an adjustment in the bunker. “Okay, ready!”

  Starke steadied the gun at his chest. “Pull!”

  This time two saucers spun out, one high the other low. The shooter tracked the low one first. Blam! Another puff of dust where the pigeon had been. Then he aimed at the high one, just now dropping from its apogee. Blam! Dust again.

  Starke lowered the gun and smiled. “Any questions?”

  “Not from me,” coach Randolph said. “But Sutton Hill may have some next week. They’re already grumbling about your eligibility.”

  IV’s smile faded. He was twenty years old, and not yet out of high school. A retread, some joked. Rolled in and out of a slew of Northeastern prep schools, now the stalwart of the Prentice Academy skeet team. He was a handsome young man, with bright blue eyes, and a conservative close-cropped haircut. The teachers found him to be polite and reserved. He was no Einstein, to be sure, but his bookwork was passable.

  “You think they’ll disqualify me?” IV asked.

  “They’ll try. Division rules cut off participation at eighteen.”

  The student frowned. “Do they have to know? I mean we’re not gonna volunteer it or anything…”

  The coach smiled. “Well, I’m sure as hell not gonna tell them.”

  IV grinned and shouldered his weapon. “Good. I’d hate to miss the meet because of a mickey-mouse rule.”

  The two men started walking toward the main campus. As they neared the running track, IV hesitated. The grounds crew was laying in cinders from a two-ton dump truck. Several workers leaned on shovels, while others raked the black sooty granules from the upturned bed. Their backs were turned, but Starke’s eyes widened slightly when he saw the man in the middle.

  “Coach, I have to get back to my room. Something I forgot to do…” He began to break ranks, to leave the pathway and cut across to the dormitory in a course that would take him far clear of the workmen. He’d taken three steps, when the coach yelled, “IV!”

  Starke whipped around suddenly. The coach had a look of reprimand on his face. “Sir?” his voice wavered slightly.

  “The gun, Starke. You forgot the gun!”

  IV let out his breath, and squeezed the shotgun in his hands. Weapons were off limits everywhere but the range. When not in use, they were locked in the rack in the coach’s office.

  “Uh, sorry, sir,” the student said, handing over the gun. Then he bolted and ran straight to his room, never slowing or stopping, or even turning his head.

  Part Two

  SUSPICIONS

  four

  A week had passed since the murders, and the doctors had finally okayed Granville’s release from the hospital. They had done all they could. Now it was up to time and therapy to complete the healing. Carole had brought him back from Baltimore and sequestered him in the safety of the large brick house on Watson Road that Gardner’s ancestors had built. It was still owned by Gardner, bequeathed to him in the same tradition that all firstborn Lawson sons had received it. But title to the property currently carried no privilege. Carole had won the right to live in the house for five years following the divorce, and Gardner was barred entry, except by permission of his ex-wife. Not surprisingly, she had not let him inside since the day he was ordered to leave.

  Gardner knocked on the heavy paneled door, and Carole opened it a crack and peeked out.

  “Hi,” Gardner said into the narrow gap.

  Carole attempted a polite smile. “Hello.” The door came open, but not wide enough to permit Gardner in.

  “How is he?” Gardner asked.

  “Better,” Carole answered. The door stayed in place.

  “Are you gonna let me see him?”

  “Yes, of course,” Carole said civilly. but the door still blocked his path.

  Christ, Gardner thought, can you ever give it a rest? The shredded fabric of their relationship was never, ever going to be mended. They both knew that. All that mattered now was Granville.

  “Go around back, and I’ll send him out,” Carole said finally, realizing that Gardner had expected to come inside. “Things are a mess, and I haven’t had time to straighten up.”

  Gardner glanced over her shoulder into the front hall. It was immaculate. “Okay,” he said.

  Then she closed the door.

  Gardner walked around the porch and turned the corner. Spring was in full bloom now, and the lawn furniture had been set up in the English garden behind the house, just as it used to be. Gardner watched several birds hopping across the grass, and let his mind drift as he settled into the porch swing.

  “Hi, Dad.” Granville opened the back door and ran out to greet his father.

  “Gran!” Gardner gave his son a big hug. Then he pulled back so he could see the boy’s face.

  The mark on his forehead was still visible, but it was beginning to fade.

  “How’re ya feelin’?” Gardner was still holding the child by his shoulders.

  “Head’s a little sore…” Carole had said he was still on Tylenol, but the dosage was being reduced.

  Gardner gently ruffled the boy’s soft blond hair. “Good thing you’ve got the patented Lawson hard head. Takes more than a little bang to keep us down.” Gardner looked into Granville’s eyes for a reaction as he spoke, but the boy remained passive. The “bang” reference had gone right past him.

  “Did you get the books?” Gardner had sent him a large stack of game, puzzle, and coloring books.

  Granville nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you do any of them yet?”

  Granville shook his head. “Uh-uh.” His pale face went blank for a moment.

  “How come?”

  “Didn’t feel like it.”

  “Are you gonna?” Two weeks ago Granville would have torn through the puzzles immediately. He loved them, especially the mazes.

  “Uh-huh.” His eyes had lost their usual spark.

  “Come up here,” Gardner said gently, pulling the boy up on his lap. “Do you know how much I love you?”

  Granville put his arms around his father’s neck and drew his knees up, almost into a fetal position. He didn’t answer the question.

  “I love you…” Gardner said.

  But Granville said nothing. He squeezed his dad’s neck tighter, put his head against his chest, and lay there quietly for a long, long time.

  They sat in silence, the hug substituting for words. Gardner could feel the tension in Granville’s body, and he had a sudden anticipation that the boy would convulse
hysterically like Miss Fahrnam, and let everything spill out. But it didn’t happen. The memory stayed inside.

  After a half hour of silence, Gardner encouraged Granville to get the puzzle book. With father leading, and son listlessly following along, the two of them threaded mazes and connected dots for another half hour. Finally, time was up.

  “Granny!” Carole called from the back door. “Come get your lunch!”

  Granville stood up in response to the command and gave Gardner the “sorry, gotta go” look. Mom was in charge, and their time together was always regulated by her.

  Gardner grabbed him tightly. “I’ll be back to see you soon,” he said against Granville’s hair.

  “Okay, Dad,” the boy replied. Then he dashed for the door that Carole was still holding open.

  Gardner watched Granville disappear into the house. “Bye, Gran,” he called. But the door closed on his words.

  * * *

  Brownie was on his fifth stop of the morning. Another witness interview in the Bowers case. One more name on his student list. The children who had gone on the field trip were now on an abbreviated school schedule.

  Brownie had wanted to talk with the kids, one at a time, to see if they might remember something that could help the investigation. Miss Fahrnam’s hysteria had left a jagged hole in his crime scene report. Her observations were disjointed and incoherent. Maybe one of the little people could do better.

  But the parents stood in the way. Each and every one had barred the door. “I’m sorry,” they said, “we don’t want little (fill in name) involved. This is too traumatic. He/she didn’t see/hear anything. He/she can’t help. Please find someone else.”

  In response, Brownie had argued, “If you won’t help, the killers could hurt other innocent people…”

  “Too bad,” they said. “Not our problem. Sorry. Very sorry, but please go away. We do not want our child in court.”

  So the first four attempts were strikeouts. Children can’t be forced to give statements the way adults can. In fact, they cannot even be approached without parental consent. And police rules decree that parents who do not allow their children to cooperate in a case will not be compelled.