I said as I sat down.
`Tom. What kind of a future should we plan for him?'
`I don't think you can do it for him. Let him do his own planning.'
Hillman said across the room: `But all he wants to do is go away by himself.'
`I admit that isn't such a good idea. We should be able to persuade him to tone it down. Let him live with another family for a year. Or send him to prep school. After that, he'll be going away to college, anyway.'
`Good Lord, do you think he'll make it to college?'
`Of course he will, Ralph.'
She turned to me. `But is he ready now for any ordinary prep school? Could he survive it?'
'He survived the last two weeks.'
`Yes. We have to thank God for that. And you.'
Hillman came and stood over me, shaking the ice in his glass. `Just what was the situation with those people? Was Tom in league with them against us? Understand me, I don't intend to punish him or do anything at all about it. I just want to know.'
I answered him slowly and carefully. `You can hardly talk about a boy being in league with his mother and father. He was confused. He still is. He believed you had turned against him when you put him in Laguna Perdida School. You don't have to be a psychiatrist to know that that isn't the kind of school he needs.'
`I'm afraid you aren't conversant with all the facts.'
`What are they?'
He shook his head. `Go on with what you were saying. Was he in cahoots with those people?'
`Not in the way you mean. But they offered him an out, physically and emotionally, and he took it. Apparently his mother was kind to him.'
`I was always kind to him,' Elaine said. She shot a fierce upward glance at her husband. `But there was falsity in the house, undermining everything.'
I said: `There was falseness in the other house, too, at Dack's Auto Court. There's no doubt that Mike Harley was conning him, setting him up for the phony kidnapping. He didn't let his paternal feelings interfere. Carol was another matter. If she was conning Tom, she was conning herself, too. Tom put it something like this: she knew Harley was up to something, but she didn't let herself know. You get that way after twenty years of living with a man like Harley.'
Elaine nodded slightly. I think it was a comment on her own marriage. She said. `I'm worried about Tom's heredity, with such parents.'
The blood rushed into Hillman's face. `For God's sake, that's really reaching for trouble.'
`I hardly need to reach for it,' she said quietly. `It's in my lap.'
She looked at him as if he had placed it there.
He turned and walked the length of the room, returned part way, and went into the bar. He poured more whisky over the ice in his glass, and drank it down. Elaine watched him with critical eyes, which he was aware of.
`It settles my nerves,' he said.
`I hadn't noticed.'
He looked at his watch and paced up and down the room. He lost his balance once and had to make a side step.
`Why doesn't Bastian come and get it over with?' he said. It's getting late. I was expecting Dick tonight, but I guess he found something more interesting to do.'
He burst out at his wife: `This is a dismal household, you know that?'
`I've been aware of it for many years. I tried to keep it together for Tom's sake. That's rather funny, isn't it?'
`I don't see anything funny about it.'
I didn't, either. The broken edges of their marriage were rubbing together like the unset ends of a bone that had been fractured but was still living.
Bastian arrived at last. He came into the reception hall carrying a black metal evidence case, and he was dark-faced and grim. Even the news that Tom was safe at home failed to cheer him much.
`Where is he?'
`Taking a bath,' Hillman said.
`I've got to talk to him. I want a full statement.'
`Not tonight, Lieutenant. The boy's been through the wringer.'
`But he's the most important witness we have.'
`I know that. He'll give you his full story tomorrow.'
Bastian glanced from him to me. We were just inside the front door, and Hillman seemed unwilling to let him come in any farther.
