professional silencers you see in movies, that screw on like a lightbulb. Usually they're homemade, a length of aluminum tubing filled with steel wool or fiberglass.'
'Forensics is checking for both,' Makhoulian added.
'It's not just professionals who use them. Some hunters use silencers out of season. Even guys in their backyards shooting beer bottles who don't want their neighbors to hear. Of course, there's a chance the killer simply did it the old-fashioned way,' Binks said, 'and covered the muzzle with a pillow. The killer didn't need to be an expert in weaponry. In fact, there's a reason you see that in the movies. It's not going to dampen the noise completely, but as a quick fix-'
'Please,' I interrupted, pleading to either man.
'Explain to me what the hell all this means.'
Makhoulian said, 'It means whoever killed your brother shot him once in the back of the head with a silenced weapon. Then while he was lying on the ground, dying, the killer shot him one more time to finish the job. Your brother wasn't just killed, Henry. He was executed.'
4
I followed Detective Sevi Makhoulian out of the examiner's office. An unmarked Crown Victoria sat outside, and Makhoulian approached it. He leaned up against the door. He took a white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped his forehead. I stood there watching him, unsure of what to do. What the next step was.
'You still haven't told me why you're so convinced
Stephen Gaines is my brother. And even if he is, why did you call me? ' I asked. 'I barely spoke two words to Gaines in the entire thirty seconds I knew him. So again, why me?'
'You weren't our first choice, Henry,' Makhoulian said, pocketing the cloth. 'The first person we called was James Parker, your father. And Stephen's father.'
'Wait,' I said. 'We had the same father?'
The detective nodded with no emotion. 'You thought you were related through osmosis?'
I hadn't had much time to really think about every thing, to consider what all this meant, but if Makhou lian was right and Gaines was my brother, we had to share a parent. And I could never picture my mother holding on to that kind of secret. There was no way she could keep that from me.
My father was another story.
From the first time I could think clearly, I recognized my father was the kind of man, who, if not your blood, you would go out of your way not to know.
Even as a younger man, he was mean, belittling, nasty, vicious. Violent.
That man was fifty-five now. In the last twenty years he'd never held a steady job. Never made enough money to move out of the house I grew up in, never desired to give my mother anything more than he had when they married. If anything, he took much of it away.
He preferred swinging from branch to branch on the employment tree, always looking for a vocation where the bosses didn't mind if you showed up late, left early to drink, and showed no ambition to rise above foot soldier. Comfort was given highest priority. When I began to write first for my school paper, then took various internships before taking a paid job with the
Bend Bulletin, James Parker approached it like I was up setting the gods of apathy. And hence upsetting his life.
The harder I worked, the more work came home with me. My editors and sources would call at all hours of the night, and because this was before cell phones were more common than pennies, they would call my family's landline.
I remember sitting at my desk, the phone resting inches from my hand while I wrote, my eye always flickering to the headset, waiting to pick it up the mil lisecond it rang. The system wasn't foolproof, but it's
the best I could come up with. The trick was to simply be the first to answer the phone when it rang. The moment that shrill bell rang, the phone was in my hands. 'Henry Parker,' I would say, hoping if the call was for me, my father would simply leave it alone.
Every now and then I was slow, distracted or in the shower, and he'd pick up. It meant I had to deal with hang-ups from sources who were scared off by unrec ognized voices on the other end. And if, heaven forbid, someone called during dinner, I could count on James
Parker locking me in the garage. If I was lucky. And if
I wasn't-I had a scar or two to motivate me to quicken my reaction times.
My mother, Eve Parker, was withdrawn. I hate to say aloof because that wasn't it, but it seemed as though she'd been shell-shocked by her husband into a per petual state of submission. She rarely flinched, just went through the motions like an automaton who forgot that at one point she was human. I wondered what she had been like before she'd met James. If she'd been strong or vivacious. If she'd hoped to marry the man of her dreams. Or if somewhere, deep down, she was resigned to a life married to this thing that called himself a man.
If anything, though, I had to credit James Parker with making me stronger. He made me work harder, longer, better, if only to give myself every chance of getting the hell away from that house. When I was growing up, I wasn't strong enough, mentally or physi cally, to stand up to him. Now, I was twice the man he ever was. And I considered him lucky that his son left before he could stand up to him the way that he deserved.
'Wait,' I said to Makhoulian. 'If Stephen Gaines and I had the same father…who's Stephen's mother?'
Makhoulian nodded, as though expecting this question to be asked sooner or later.
'According to the birth certificate, her name is
Helen Gaines.'
'I've never heard that name before,' I said. 'Where is she?'
'Actually, I was hoping you could tell me,' the de tective said. 'All we know about Helen Gaines is that she was born in Bend, Oregon, in 1960. Her financial records show that she closed out her bank accounts in
Oregon in 1980, and moved. Where, we don't know.'
'So if she was born in 1960, and Stephen Gaines was thirty, that means he was born in, what, 1979?'
'March twenty-sixth,' Makhoulian replied.
'Then Helen Gaines was only nineteen when she gave birth to Stephen.'
'That's right.'
'And my father was…twenty-six. I know he married my mother when he was twenty-five. Jesus Christ, my father's mistress gave birth to his child while he was married to my mother.'
Makhoulian stood there silent. I don't know what he could have said. I rubbed my temples, still trying to process everything. I still hadn't spoken to Amanda all day. I felt like crawling into her arms, just sleeping for a while, hoping this would all have been some dream when my eyes finally opened.
'Have you contacted my father yet?' I asked.
'We've left several messages for him and your mother at home. None of them have been returned.'
'Not totally surprising,' I said.
'Is your father prone to ignoring calls from the police?' Makhoulian asked.
'He's prone to ignoring any calls that aren't either
Ed McMahon with a giant check or someone offering him a free longneck.'
Makhoulian let out a small laugh, not wanting to distort the gravity of the situation too much. 'What about your mother?'
'I think he purposely bought an answering machine she wouldn't know how to use. Let's just say last I heard, she didn't get many calls, didn't return many calls.'
The detective nodded. 'Listen, if you do hear from your father, tell him to call me.' Makhoulian took a card from his wallet, handed it to me. I looked it over, put it in my pocket.
'I promise you I won't hear from him.'
'But if you do…'
'If I do, I'll make sure he calls.'
'That's all I ask.'
