Locust Lane(41)

And now this. Another blow. Another nightmare. One from which it would be difficult to recover, no matter how quickly and thoroughly he was exonerated. He could already see hints of the reemergence of the old, shattered boy in the interview room. He wondered what kind of voice his son was speaking in now; if it was once again hollow and echoey, or if he’d be driven into an abyss so deep that Michel wouldn’t hear him at all.



* * *



Alice arrived. At first, he was shocked and angry to find her at his back door. But then she showed him her arm, smeared with blood and mud.

“What happened?” he asked as he let her in.

She gestured toward the back of his yard.

“Fence mishap.”

Despite everything, he managed an incredulous smile. This woman.

He led her to the sink and turned on the hot water, then handed her a fistful of paper towels. There was a first aid kit in a nearby drawer. Three decades in frantic kitchens had made Michel adept at dressing wounds. He sat her at the kitchen table and set to work. The cut wasn’t as bad as it first seemed. He lathered it with antibiotic and then wrapped it in gauze. It felt good to be this close, to be touching her.

They spoke as he worked.

“Tell me that it isn’t true that they’re actually holding Christopher.”

“As a witness, supposedly,” he said. “But they think he did this.”

“That’s insane.”

“I tried to tell them.”

“I just came from the station. They’re talking to Hannah and Jack.”

“Then they’ll clear it up,” Michel said.

“But what’s Christopher saying happened?”

“They’d gathered at the house,” he said. “It was something they’d do. The girl, Eden, was looking after the place. Jack and Hannah left around midnight and then Christopher left later. Nobody knew anything bad had happened to her until this afternoon.”

“I don’t think that’s true, Michel. I saw Hanns at four in the morning and she was freaked out. I mean, really freaked out. And Celia says Jack was acting weird when she saw him first thing this morning.”

“It was the same with Christopher. When he got home … I’ve never seen him like that.”

They sat through a silence as Michel worked on her wound.

“There were scratches on his neck,” he finally said.

“What kind of scratches?”

“Fingernails.”

“The cops saw these?”

“They found them. He said he must have done them to himself.”

“Do you believe that?”

He finished dressing the wound. He met her gaze. There was no suspicion in her eyes, no doubt. She was simply waiting for his answer.

“There’s no possibility that he hurt that girl, Alice. He just … wouldn’t. You believe that, right?”

“Of course I do.”

And it was true. She did. This woman he’d been ready to spurn. She believed it with all her heart.

“Okay,” she said. “Let me talk to Hannah. If I get her alone she’ll tell me what the fuck’s going on.”

She put her hand on his forearm.

“Don’t worry, Michel. I got this.”

And then something gave way in him. The doubts he’d been having since last Friday vanished. Here she was. Another man’s but his as well. A sin but also deliverance. Four nights ago it had been strange having her here: alien and wrong. Now, it felt only right. He found himself wishing that time would freeze and they could stay like this forever; that the bad things that happened today would vanish and nothing bad would ever happen again.

His phone rang. It was Cantor.

“So. I just finished with Christopher.”

“How is he?”

“He’s holding up. Look, I know it’s late, but I’m coming over.”

“Why, what’s happening?”

“Let’s put it this way. It looks like it was a much more eventful night at the Bondurants’ than initially reported.”





PATRICK


They were saying it was an Emerson youth. A seventeen-year-old boy. Because of his age, news organizations weren’t releasing his name, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be available soon. If he was a student at Waldo, it would be whispered throughout town by midnight. The internet would follow, and then he would be the wrong kind of famous.

Patrick had been following the story ever since he got home from his disastrous visit to the police station. Mostly on Twitter, though some of the local Facebook pages were frenzied as well. Early discussion had been tinged with a decidedly hysterical note, but that died down with the news that someone was in custody. Panic turned to gossip. It had become so intense that the cops had been forced to put out a statement on their own Facebook page: “EPD is currently questioning an Emerson youth over the killing of Eden Perry. Details will be released as they become available.”

Maybe seeing his photo would shake something loose in Patrick’s brain. Not that he relished another go-round at Public Safety Plaza. His visit had been a mistake. He must have seemed like a drunken fool. To date, he’d taken pride in his ability to conduct himself with decorum as he moved about his hometown. Friends and colleagues were concerned, but no one could point to a specific incident that allowed them to say definitively that Patrick Noone had gone off the rails. Rushing over to the cops with an improbable story might possibly be overlooked, but another visit would certainly peg him as delusional.