It was only a few days after Morris got out on bond that her grandfather didn’t come home from work.
Ben and Morris hadn’t said much about that. They talked to the detective who worked the case, denying that they’d seen the old man after breakfast the day he disappeared. Morris had been tight-lipped about the whole thing. He didn’t even look familiar sometimes. He was jittery and had bloodshot eyes, and he talked nonstop. She wondered if there were mental problems that Morris and her father were keeping from her. Not for the first time, she was sorry that her mother had married Ben. On the other hand, if she hadn’t, there would be no Tad. And Clancey loved Tad, more than anyone on earth except her grandfather. That they couldn’t find the old man tormented her. She was certain that it had been something drastic, because you could set a watch by her grandfather’s actions. He was never late coming home or going to work. It broke her heart when weeks passed and detectives moved the file aside because they couldn’t find the old gentleman. They told Ben they suspected foul play, but they had no viable suspects. Odd, she thought, how Morris had looked when they said that. Very odd.
Ben had taken Morris’s side over the assault on Clancey. He said Morris had been having a hard time with one of his friends, and he was sure Morris hadn’t meant to do anything to his siblings. She knew better, but Ben never saw any problem with his son from a previous marriage. He loved Morris and defended him constantly.
Morris had things to say to Clancey afterward. He told her that she’d better never interfere again when he was playing video games, and that went double for Tad. Next time, he said ominously, he’d do a lot more to her. And he gave her a look that still made her uneasy years later. It was an adult look, as if he knew what was under her clothing. She’d folded her arms over her chest and left without another word. But after that, she caught Morris watching her sometimes.
Her grandfather had told her, before his disappearance, that Morris was running with a very tough crowd and he thought the boy was using drugs. He didn’t want Clancey and Tad exposed to his friends, who sometimes showed up at the house when Clancey was at work. He’d been going out in the afternoons, after work, to talk to people about the gang Morris was getting mixed up with. He found a man who said he knew that Morris was using, and he also knew who was supplying the drugs. Her grandfather said that he was going to meet the man the next day after work and get the names from him.
Her grandfather didn’t come home from work the next day. They searched, but they didn’t find him. Clancey had bawled when they finally realized he was never coming back. So had Tad. Morris had been stiff lipped and silent, like his father. Clancey was suspicious of both of them. Neither had liked her grandfather. She was certain that Morris, at least, had some idea what had happened to the old man.
The charges against Morris were serious, because, in addition to beating up Clancey and Tad with a weapon, Morris had attacked the police officer who tried to handcuff him, yelling that it wasn’t his fault, that they were framing him. Assault on a police officer was another felony, added to the two he was already being indicted for. Morris only had a public defender who, though eager, had little experience of trying cases. Ben was anguished that he couldn’t afford a classy lawyer to help his son beat the rap.
A year after his arrest, because the court system moved slowly, Morris was found guilty of second-degree assault and battery, and assault on Clancey and Tad, and assault on a police officer, and resisting arrest. He was sentenced to six years in prison after Clancey reluctantly took the witness stand and told the jury what Morris had done to her little brother and herself. There were photos of both of them, taken after the incident, which helped prove the case.
The trial had almost killed Ben, who was a maintenance man for a local corporation and didn’t make much money. He couldn’t afford to even go and see his son, sent to a penal facility hundreds of miles away. It made him even more bitter.
Ben had died soon after Morris went to prison, when Clancey was nineteen, in a freak accident, after he’d gone to some apartments nearby to talk to a man who had some information about the thugs that Morris had been running with. He told Clancey that Morris had been on drugs when he hit her, and that he was going to find out who had been supplying him. If he couldn’t get his son out of prison, he was going to make the people who gave Morris the drugs pay for it.
Ben had been hit by a speeding car when he started back toward the lot where his car had been parked. The driver was never found, despite vague descriptions of the car by a bystander. It went down on the record as a hit-and-run. Ben was buried, with only Clancey and Tad to mourn him. Morris was refused permission to make the long trip to the funeral. Clancey had written to him, explaining what had happened and how sorry she was. Morris wrote back, a terse little note thanking her for her kindness. She
