I got up, walked to the window, and peered out into the tangled, night-bound woods. In my mind, I saw the car that had brought Keith home that night, its phantom driver behind the wheel, a figure who suddenly seemed to me no less mysterious than my son, my wife, my father and mother and brother, mere shadows, dark and indefinable.
'Eric?'
It was Meredith's voice.
I turned toward the bed but couldn't see her there.
'Something wrong?'
'No, nothing,' I told her, grateful that I hadn't turned on the light, since, had she seen me, she would have known it was a lie.
SIXTEEN
Leo Brock called me at the shop at eleven the next morning. 'Quick question,' he said. 'Does Keith smoke?'
He heard my answer in the strain of a pause.
'Okay,' he said, 'What brand does he smoke?'
I saw the face of the pack as Keith snatched it from his shirt pocket. 'Marlboro,' I said.
Leo drew in a long breath. 'And he told police that he never left the house, isn't that right?'
'Yes.'
'For any reason.'
'He said he never left the house,' I told him. 'What's happening, Leo?'
'My source tells me that the cops found four cigarette butts outside the Giordanos' house,' Leo said. 'Marlboro.'
'Is that so bad?' I asked. 'I mean, so what if Keith went out for a smoke?'
'They were at the side of the house,' Leo added. 'Just beneath Amy's bedroom window.'
'Jesus,' I breathed.
In my mind I saw Keith at the window, peering through the curtains of Amy's window, watching as she slept, her long dark hair splayed out across her pillow. Had he watched her undress, too? I wondered. And while doing that ... done what? Had he gone to the water tower in search of similar stimulation? Before that moment, I would probably have avoided such questions, but something in my mind had hardened, taken on the shape of a pick or a spade, prepared to dig.
'So they think he was watching her,' I said.
'We can't be sure what they're thinking.'
'Oh come on, Leo, why would his cigarettes be there, at her window?'
'Not his,' Leo cautioned. 'Just the brand he smokes.'
'Don't talk to me like a lawyer, Leo,' I said. 'This is bad and you know it.'
'It doesn't help things,' Leo admitted.
'They're going to arrest him, aren't they?'
'Not yet,' Leo said.
'Why not?' I asked. 'We both know they think he did it.'
'First of all, no one knows what was done,' Leo reminded me. 'Remember that, Eric. Whatever the police may be thinking, they don't know anything. And there's something else to keep in mind. Keith didn't have a car. So how could he have taken Amy from her house?'
I made no argument to this, but I felt the water around me rise slightly.
'Eric?'
'Yes.'
'You have to have faith.'
I said nothing.
'And I don't mean that in a religious way,' Leo added. 'You have to have faith in Keith.'
'Of course,' I said quietly.
There was a pause, then Leo said, 'One final ... difficulty.'
I didn't bother to ask what it was, but only because I knew Leo was about to tell me.
'Keith ordered a pizza for dinner that night,' Leo said. 'The pizza guy delivered it at just after eight. He said that when he arrived, he didn't see Amy, but Keith was there, and he was on the phone.'
'The phone?'
'Did he call you that night?'
'Yes.'
'When did he call?'
'Just before ten.'
'Not before?'
'No.'
'You're sure about that,' Leo said. 'You're sure that Keith only called you once that night.'
'Only once,' I said. 'At around ten.'
'And that's when he told you he'd be late and that he wouldn't need a ride, correct?'
'Yes.'
'Because he had a ride?'
'No,' I said. 'He said that he could get a ride.'
'But not that he had one?'
'No, not that he had one.'
'Okay,' Leo said.
'So who was he on the phone with?' I asked. 'When the pizza guy was there.'
'I'm sure the police have the number,' Leo said. 'So it won't be long before they tell us.'
We talked a few minutes longer, Leo doing what he could to put the best light on things. Still, for all his effort, I could sense nothing but a spiraling down, a room closing in, slowly dwindling routes of escape.
'What happens,' I asked finally, 'if they never find Amy?'
'Well, it's awfully hard to convict when there's no body,' Leo answered.
'I wasn't thinking of that,' I told him. 'I mean, Keith would have to live with it, wouldn't he? The suspicion that he killed her.'
'Yes, he would,' Leo answered. 'And I admit, cases like that, without any definite resolution, they can be painfid to all concerned.'
'Corrosive,' I said softly, almost to myself.
'Corrosive, yes,' Leo said. 'It's hard, when you can't get to the bottom of something.'
I had never known how true that was before that moment, how little whiffs of doubt could darken and grow menacing, urge you forward relentlessly, fix you in a need to find out what really happened. 'Otherwise your whole life is an unsolved mystery,' I said.
'Yeah, it's just that bad,' Leo said. 'You become a cold-case file.'
I remember thinking that that was precisely what I was becoming, and that for the rest of that day, as I dealt with customers, framed a few pictures, I felt a fierce urgency building in me, a need to know about Keith, the life he might have hidden from me, the terrible thing I could not keep myself from thinking that he might, indeed, have done.
Just before I closed, I called Meredith and told her what Leo Brock had earlier told me. I expected her to be irritated that I hadn't called before, accuse me once again of refusing to confront things, but instead she took the latest development without surprise, as if she'd been expecting it all along.
'I have to work late tonight,' she said. Her voice struck me as oddly wistful, like a woman who'd once lived in a perfect world, known its beauty and contentment, a world that was no more and would never be again. 'I should
