“You were supposed to pick up your son after the movie,” I said.
“Yes. Kyle and Andrew.”
“Both?”
“Yes.”
“And when they didn’t show up?”
“I called Kyle’s cell phone.”
“Cell phone?”
“Yes,” he said wearily. “There was no answer.”
“So you…?”
“Parked in the lot. Looked around. Went inside the lobby. Went back to the car.”
“You were worried?”
“I was, God help me, angry. I blamed Andrew Goines. I thought he had convinced Kyle to forget about me and go off and do something stupid. I was going to tell Kyle he couldn’t see Andrew again, not when he was staying with me.”
“And then?”
“I waited in the car, cell phone on the dashboard. Called Andrew Goines, asked about Kyle. Waited for an hour, gave up and drove home. When the phone rang, I thought it was Kyle with a lame apology asking me to pick him up or telling me he was staying at Andrew’s. It was the police.”
He opened his mouth and sucked in air. His eyes were red.
“Did Kyle ever run away, stay out all night, do things that-”
“Never, nothing. He wasn’t perfect. We weren’t buddies. But we weren’t enemies either. He was straight. No drugs. No drinking. One of the perks of being a physician is you know such things. It also helps when you go through your kid’s drawers and pockets.”
We sat silently for a few seconds. He looked at his hands. I looked at him.
“Do what you can,” he finally said without looking up. “If you need more money for, I don’t know, people who might help…”
“Your ex-wife’s paying me,” I said.
“If you find out anything,” he said now, looking up, “you let me know.”
“I will.”
“Have you ever felt that you could kill someone?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“My job is to save lives,” he said. “For the dozens, maybe hundreds I’ve saved, I think I deserve to take one, the life of the person who murdered my son. Well?”
“I don’t think it’s in you, Doctor,” I said.
“You don’t know me,” he said with a touch of anger.
“I could be wrong,” I said.
There was nothing more to say except to ask for the number of the cell phone Kyle had been carrying. He pulled a flap-top silver cell phone from a pocket, pushed a couple of buttons and gave me the number. I wrote it in my notebook.
A knock at the door.
McClory said, “Come in.”
A woman in nurse’s whites, probably mid-forties, strong features and eyes that looked at McClory with sympathy.
“Mr. Saxborne is here,” she said.
“Thank you,” said McClory.
She closed the door slowly, eyes on the doctor.
“Raymond Wallace Saxborne is going to die soon,” he said, getting up. “Raymond Wallace Saxborne is almost eighty. Fonesca, between you and me and whatever God is not out there, I am going to have a hard time giving my bedside best to Mr. Saxborne. Kyle was fourteen.”
He walked around the desk, past me and out of the office without a word or a glance in my direction.
9
I should have been delivering summonses to two people. I should have been going to see Yolanda Root, Andrew Goines and the four people who had been released from Seaside Assisted Living. I should have gone back to Nancy Root for more information. I should have done a lot of things, but I didn’t.
Back in my office, I sat behind my desk and looked over at the painting on my wall, the dark jungle foliage with the nighttime sky and just the touch of red, and the hint of a bird.
I picked up the phone and hit the buttons that connected me to the office of Ann Horowitz. Ann never let a call go by even if she was in the middle of a confession of matricide from a raving client. How do I know this? From the calls she had taken over the past three years when I sat in front of her, one of which came while I was trying to remember what might have been a telling dream about… I don’t know what it was about. When she ended the call, the dream was gone.
“Dr. Horowitz,” she answered.
“Are you alone?” I asked.
“Lewis?”
“Yes.”
“I’m alone for the next ten minutes,” she said.
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Face any more of them.”
“Them?”
“The grieving, frightened, angry, depressed,” I said. “I’ve got a list in front of me.”
“People you are supposed to help?”
“Why am I supposed to help? I can’t help myself.”
“You are helping yourself. You’re talking to me. Who told you that you had to help those people on your list?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It happens. They find me. I’m a magnet for despair.”
“What do you think you want to do?” she asked. “Notice I said think, because what you want to do may not be what you think you want to do.”
I took off my cap and rubbed the top of my head.
“I think I want to buy a cheap car, throw in all my things I want to keep, which probably wouldn’t even fill the trunk of a Honda, and drive away.”
“Never come back?” she asked.
“Never.”
“Where would you go?”
“Away. You’re going to say I can’t run away from what I am.”
“No,” she said. I could tell she was eating something. “You can run. You can hide. Sometimes it works very well. I’ve even recommended it, but the problem is that wherever you go, you will always be with you. You are your own God, your own judge, your own executioner.”
“Freud,” I said.
“No, the German actor Klaus Kinski,” she said.
“What are you eating?” I asked.
“Ham and cheese on thin white,” she said.
“You’re Jewish.”
“I appreciate your calling this to my attention,” she said.
“You don’t eat ham.”
