'Why?' I asked.
'Because,' she said, 'they're here.'
FIVE
There were two of them, both dressed in dark suits, a tall, hawk-faced man named Kraus, and another, shorter and rounder, whose name was Peak. They were sitting in the living room when I arrived, and both smiled pleasantly as they introduced themselves.
'I understand,' Kraus began, 'that Mr. Giordano called you this morning?'
'Yes.'
We were all standing, Kraus's dark deep-set eyes leveled directly upon me; Peak a little to my left, seemed more interested, or so it seemed, in a family portrait I'd taken four years before, the three of us posed before Keith's sixth-grade science project, a plaster of paris sculpture of the body's internal organs, red heart, blue lungs, brown liver, and so on.
'Amy is still missing,' Kraus told me.
'I'm sorry to hear that,' I said.
Peak abruptly turned from the photograph. 'Interested in anatomy, is he?' he asked.
'Anatomy?'
'It looks like a science project,' Peak said. 'In the picture here. Organs?'
'Yes.'
'So, he's interested in that, your son?'
I shook my head. 'Not really, no.'
Kraus's smile was thin, anemic, forced rather than felt. 'So why did he do a project like that?' he asked
'Because it was easy for him,' I answered.
'Easy?'
'Other kids had much more elaborate projects,' I explained.
'He's not a great student then?'
'No.'
'How would you describe him?' Kraus asked.
'Keith? I don't know. He's a teenage boy. A little odd, maybe.'
'In what way is he odd?'
'Well, not odd exactly,' I added quickly. 'Quiet.'
Kraus looked at Peak and gave a faint nod, which brought the smaller man suddenly back into the game.
'No reason to be alarmed,' Peak said.
'I'm not alarmed,' I told him.
The two men exchanged glances.
'I suppose you'd like to talk to Keith,' I added, careful to keep my voice firm and confident, a father who has not the slightest doubt that he knows his son thoroughly. I wanted them to believe that nothing could have escaped my notice—that I had searched Keith's closets and the drawers of his bedroom bureau, smelled his breath when he came in at night, routinely dragged him to the family physician for drug tests; that I monitored the books he read, the music he listened to, the sites he visited on the Internet; that I had researched the family histories of the friends he hung around with; that only God could possibly know more than I did about my son.
'Yes, we would,' Kraus said.
'I'll get him.'
'He's not here,' Meredith said quickly.
I looked at her, puzzled. 'Where is he?'
'He went for a walk.'
Before I could say anything further, Kraus said, 'Where does he walk?'
For some reason, Meredith merely repeated the question. 'Where does he walk?'
Peak looked out the large window that fronted the thickly forested grounds behind the house. 'Back there, that's conservation land, right? No houses. No roads.'
'Yes, it's all conservation land,' I told him. 'No one can ever build back there or—'
'So it's very isolated,' Peak said. He turned back to Meredith. 'Is that where Keith takes these walks, in the woods back there?'
Suddenly the words 'these walks' took on an ominous quality and I imagined Keith as I knew Peak and Kraus imagined him, a figure crouching in the undergrowth, desperately digging in the moist ground, burying something that linked him to Amy Giordano, a bloodstained lock of hair.
'No, he doesn't walk back there,' I said quickly. 'You can't. The undergrowth is too thick and there are no trails.'
Kraus's eyes shifted to my wife, fixing on her an unsettling intensity. 'So where is he?'
'The baseball field,' Meredith answered. 'When he goes for a walk, he usually goes down to the baseball field.'
'There and back, you mean?' Peak asked.
Meredith nodded faintly, and I expected that to be the end of it, but Kraus said, 'When does he go for these walks? In the morning?'
'No,' Meredith answered. 'Usually in the afternoon. Or after dinner.'
'Not in the morning then,' Kraus said. 'Except this morning, right?'
Again, Meredith nodded delicately, like someone reluctant to give assent, but unable to withhold it.
'I noticed a bike at the end of the walkway,' Peak said. 'Is that Keith's?'
'Yes,' I said. 'He uses it to make deliveries for me after school.'
'Where does he make these deliveries?' Kraus asked.
'Anywhere in biking distance from my shop,' I said.
'And that would be where, Mr. Moore?' Peak asked.
'My shop is in Dalton Square,' I said.
'What does he deliver?' Kraus asked.
'Pictures,' I said. 'Of families, mostly.'
'Family photographs,' Peak said with a slight smile. 'Got a few of those myself.'
Kraus shifted his weight like a fighter preparing to deliver the next blow. 'How long has he been delivering these pictures?'
Again, there was a sinister, oddly accusatory, use of 'these,' but I was no longer sure if the accusation was intended to incriminate Keith or if Kraus had now extended his accusatory tone to me.
'A couple of years,' I answered. 'There's no law against that, is there?'
'What?' Peak asked with a slight chuckle. 'Well, of course not, Mr. Moore.' He glanced toward Kraus then back to me. 'Why would you think that?'
Before I could answer, Meredith cut in. 'I'll go get him if you want me to.'
Peak looked at his watch. 'No, we'll do it. The ball field's on the way back to the station, we can—'
'No!' I blurted. 'Let me bring him here.'
Both of them looked at me, stonily silent, waiting.
'It would scare him,' I explained.
'What would scare him?' Kraus asked.
'You know, two men he's never seen.'
'He's a scared type of kid, your son?' Peak asked.
It had never occurred to me before, but now it struck me that in fact Keith was a 'scared type of kid.' He was scared he'd disappointed Meredith by doing poorly in school and scared he'd disappointed me by never having had a girlfriend. He was scared he wouldn't get into a good college, scared that he'd never find what he wanted to do in life or that he'd fail at the thing he did find. He had no friends, and I supposed that that scared him, too. Add them up, one by one, and it seemed that he was scared of almost everything, lived in a subtle crouch. And yet, I said, 'No, I don't think Keith's scared of anything in particular. But two men—police—that would scare anybody, wouldn't it?'
