“What’s that?” Duckworth said, his wrist resting atop the steering wheel.
“I went to see Harry, told him about what Thomas had seen online, that maybe it really did mean something, that I needed to talk to the police but was going to have a hard time convincing them. Harry said he knew you, that he’d give you a call on my behalf.”
Duckworth shook his head slowly. “I’ve known Harry Peyton a long time, but he never called me about that.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “The goddamn son of a bitch.”
Duckworth glanced over at me. “You think he knows that you know?”
“Last thing he asked me was, why did I call him on his cell? Wanted to know how I got the number.”
Duckworth ran his tongue over his upper lip. “I’d say he knows.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think he does.”
WE walked into Harry Peyton’s law office. Duckworth had insisted on taking the lead, and went through the door ahead of me.
Peyton’s secretary, Alice, looked up from her desk. She smiled at the two of us.
“Hi, Barry,” she said to Detective Duckworth. Then, “Ray, my God, I can’t believe what you’ve been going through.”
“We need to talk to Harry,” Duckworth said.
“The two of you are together?” Alice said.
“We need to talk to Harry, Alice,” Duckworth repeated with a sternness he hadn’t used before.
Alice’s smile faded. She picked up her phone. “Some folks here to see you,” she said.
The heavy wood door ten feet beyond her desk opened a couple of seconds later. Harry kept hold of the knob on his side as his eyes landed on us. First me, then Barry.
It was seeing me there, with a police detective, that did it. I could see it in his eyes. He knew it was over.
“Harry,” Duckworth said, starting to walk toward the door, “I need to ask you a few questions.”
Harry stepped back and slammed the door closed.
Duckworth bolted forward, turned the knob, and pushed, but the door wouldn’t budge. I got up next to him and, like an idiot, tried the door myself.
“Harry!” Duckworth shouted. “Open the door!”
Harry said nothing.
Duckworth snapped at Alice, “Is there another way out of that office?”
“No,” she said. “The windows don’t open.”
“You got a key?”
While Alice rooted through her desk drawer, I put my mouth up to the door and shouted, “I know, Harry! I know what you did! To my dad, and to my brother!” I banged on it with my fist. “Come out here! Come out here, goddamn it! We know! Dad found those pictures on your phone and-”
“Get the fuck out of here!” he shouted from inside his office.
“He found those pictures on your phone and he knew! He knew Thomas had been telling the truth!”
“Find that damn key,” Duckworth told Alice.
“You’re finished, Harry!” I shouted. “Even if they don’t convict you for what you did to Thomas, or my father, you’re ruined in this town.” I brought my voice down, but loud enough that he could still hear me. “Everyone’s going to know what you are, Harry. I’m going to make damn sure of that. That you’re a pervert, and a murderer.”
“Here it is,” Alice said.
“Give it,” Duckworth said, taking the key from her.
“There’s something you need to know,” Alice said.
“You hear me, Harry?” I said, raising my voice again. “Do you hear me?”
Duckworth nudged me aside, getting ready to slip the key into the lock. “What’s that?” he said to Alice.
“He keeps a-”
That was when we heard the shot.
“Down!” Duckworth said and instantly put his arms around me and carried the both of us to the floor.
Alice, still behind her desk, screamed. And kept screaming.
“Stay down,” Duckworth said, pressing his hand on my back as he got to his feet. He took a gun from his jacket and called out, “Harry!”
No answer.
“Harry!”
Duckworth slipped the key into the lock, turned it, then put his hand on the knob and turned, pushing slowly on the door at the same time.
“Oh, man,” he said.
SEVENTY-FIVE
“I’ve only been here once before,” Thomas said as we turned off the main road and into the well-manicured grounds of the Promise Falls cemetery. “When Mom died, remember?”
“I remember,” I said, taking the Audi down to a crawl as we meandered along the narrow, paved roadway, stones and memorials gliding past our windows. Thomas, who did not think much of the navigation skills of Maria, my in-dash GPS lady, didn’t touch the system on the way over.
The events of the last week had changed him. Changed us all.
But Thomas wasn’t like the rest of us. He’d always seemed, certainly to me, incapable of change. He was a prisoner of his illness. And yet, he was not the same person he used to be.
A couple of days after Harry Peyton had taken his own life, I bought Thomas a new computer. We got it all set up at home, and he was right back onto Whirl360 as I went downstairs to open a beer.
Twenty minutes later, he was down in the kitchen. It wasn’t time for lunch, or dinner. He just needed a break. He took a Coke out of the fridge, sat at the table and drank it, and then went back upstairs. When I peeked in on him later, he was reading the Times online.
Wonders never ceased.
He’d been to see Dr. Grigorin, and when she spoke to me after his appointment, she said she’d noticed a change, too.
“Let’s just see,” she said, careful not to raise any expectations. “But I think he’s going to make the adjustment well. It’s possible, and I don’t want to read too much into this, but Harry Peyton’s death may have been, in some way, liberating. Maybe Harry was one of the reasons Thomas didn’t want to come out of the house.”
Thomas claimed to be looking forward to his new accommodations. “Staying in this house,” he’d said to me that morning, “reminds me too much of Mom and Dad. When it was me and Dad, that was okay, but with both of them gone, the place feels kind of strange.” He’d paused. “And I know you don’t want to live here with me.”
“Thomas, that’s-”
“You want to live with Julie. So you can have sex with her.”
“Yeah, well,” I’d said.
“I don’t want you to get me into any more trouble,” he’d said. A familiar refrain these days. Like I’d knocked over the first domino. Like it was me who saw Bridget Sawchuck online.
After breakfast, he’d asked to be driven to our father’s grave, so that he could finally pay his respects.
I’d told him what had happened at Peyton’s office, that I had figured out a few things. That Peyton had assaulted him back when he lived above a shop on Saratoga. That Dad, having seen the pictures on Peyton’s phone, had finally come to believe Thomas. Everyone was a believer now. The police, as part of the investigation into Peyton’s suicide, seized all his computers and found plenty of the kinds of images that made my stomach turn just to think of them.
I did not tell Thomas my belief that Harry Peyton was responsible for our father’s death. It was mostly conjecture on my part, but it made sense. I could imagine Harry coming out, trying to get my father to back off. The two of them arguing, the tractor flipping over.
