She reached her hand into the hamper again, but whatever she felt was hard and solid. She grabbed the object and pulled it out, shocked to see what sat in her palm.
A gun.
Susan felt thunderstruck. Where had he gotten it? Why was it here? Why was he hiding it? How had she lost control of her own home? They didn’t have guns in the house. They didn’t know anything about guns. Neil hadn’t known a damn thing about guns. She didn’t know much about guns, either, but she knew enough to know that this one was a revolver, with a silvery muzzle and a brown handle.
She walked the gun over to the bed and set it down carefully, with the muzzle facing away from her. She didn’t know if it was loaded and she didn’t know if the gun had a safety, or if revolvers even had safeties. She didn’t understand why Raz had it or where he had gotten it. But she was going to find out. She went to the bathroom and heard the shower water still running. She knocked on the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. She didn’t know why Raz had locked the door. Did he always do that? Did he ever do that? And why didn’t she know?
“Raz!” Susan shouted, banging on the door. “Raz, come out!”
“I’ll be out in a minute!”
“Now!” Susan shouted, louder, then got her temper in check. Being angry wouldn’t help, and she wasn’t angry, she was terrified. “Raz, please, right now!”
“All right!” Raz called back, irritably, and the next minute, the shower water went off.
“Hurry, please, I want to talk to you.” Susan tried the knob again. She wanted him out of that bathroom. She wanted to see his face. Panic rose in her chest, for some reason.
“Mom, what’s your problem?”
“Come out!” Susan turned the doorknob and pushed at the same moment that Raz opened the door, and she almost fell inside the bathroom. “Why is there a gun in your hamper?”
“A gun?” Raz’s dark eyes went wide. A towel was wrapped around his waist, and he had barely dried off his chest, slick with water. She hadn’t seen him naked to the waist in a long time, and she realized he wasn’t a kid anymore, but a full-grown adult man, who had secrets.
“Raz, are you telling me you didn’t know there was a gun in your hamper? Where did you get it? What’s it doing there?”
“Oh, jeez.” Raz stepped out of the bathroom, tucking the towel tighter around his waist.
“Is it loaded?” Susan pointed at the bed, but Raz made no move toward the gun.
“Yes, I think.”
“Raz, you had a loaded gun in your room? Where did you get it?”
“From Ryan.”
“Ryan!” Susan couldn’t begin to process the information. Just when she thought it was bad, it went worse. Now both boys were involved. “Where did he get it from? And why do you have it?”
“Are you mad at me? Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad, honey,” Susan said, realizing that the words were absolutely true. “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. You and Ryan have a gun? Why? How?”
“He got it from a guy that he knows.”
“What guy?”
“He didn’t say, I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember or he didn’t say?” Susan thought he was lying.
“I don’t know, it was, like, awhile ago, and he gave it to me and he asked me to put it in my room, so I did.”
“Did he tell you what he got it for?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea?”
“No.”
“Oh God.” Susan found herself rubbing her face. She had put on makeup for the therapy session, but her foundation was coming off on her finger pads.
“Don’t be mad,” Raz said again.
“How do you know it’s loaded?”
“He told me.”
“Did it come that way or did he buy bullets?”
Raz smiled his goofy smile. “Bullets are like batteries. They’re not included.”
Susan didn’t laugh. “This isn’t funny.”
Raz looked at her directly, seeming to focus. Then after a moment, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“I am too,” Susan heard herself say, her voice softening.
“What are you sorry for? You’re just the mom.”
Susan felt the words cut through her chest, though Raz hadn’t meant it in a bad way. “I haven’t been acting like a mom, not for a long time, and I’m sorry about that.”
Raz frowned. “It’s all right, I get it. It’s because Dad died.”
“No, it’s because he lived. I stopped being the mom when he was still alive because he was such a good father. But you still needed me. You still needed a mom.”
“It’s not your fault.” Raz swallowed hard.
“Yes, it is. I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry I didn’t notice your room was getting this bad. I’m sorry I didn’t know how sad you were.”
Raz blinked, and for a moment he didn’t say anything fresh or come back with a wisecrack. “I am sad.”
“I know, honey. I know that now.” Susan reached out, hugged him, and held him again, the same way she had the other day in the car, and she stopped herself from saying I’m sad too. Because it couldn’t be about her anymore, not for another minute. She held him close, her youngest son, as wet and slick as the day he was born and she had held him in her arms for the first time, and she realized that she had hugged him more in the past two days than she had probably in the past two months, and when she let him go, they both wiped tears from their eyes.
“I just had the gun for safekeeping, Mom. I wasn’t going to do anything with it.”
“I’m afraid you were,” Susan said, her heart speaking out of turn.
“No, I would never hurt anybody.”
“I know that.” Susan kept her tone quiet, even grave, which wasn’t hard to do because it was exactly how she felt. Deep inside, she knew the answer to the question she was about to ask him, as if her very soul housed the two of them, mother and child, the way her body once had, long ago, back at their very beginning. “I know you’d never hurt anyone else. I’m worried you would’ve hurt yourself. Did you ever think about that, honey? Did you ever pick up that gun and think about that? About hurting yourself?”
Raz nodded, then his lips began to tremble, and tears came to his eyes. Susan reached for him again, hugging him closer while he began to cry, and they sank to the floor together, surrounded by the debris of their lives. She cradled him against her chest while she told him that she loved him more than she had ever loved anybody in her life, that he was her special and spirited son, and that she would always be there for him and that they were going to sort this out together, the three of them.
As a family.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chris made his way to the kitchen and shook Jamie’s hand. “Jamie, thanks for having me today. I really am so sorry about Abe. He really was such a nice guy.”
“Thanks.” Jamie met Chris’s eye, his gaze sad, but strong. “I’m glad you could come. It was so kind of everyone to bring the food, and they won’t leave me alone, which is fine with me. And Abe would have loved that you came and got the pictures. I know you two would’ve been great friends. The Wyoming thing and all.”
“I think you’re right.” Chris felt guilty. He realized that, unlike his typical operation, he was undercover among a wonderful group of people, a true community. It affected him in a way he’d never experienced, conflicting him. But he reminded himself to stay on track.
“It’s just so hard to imagine that we’re here, but he’s not. I mean, I know he was depressed and I guess you heard he tried once before, everybody knows, he was open about that. He even volunteered at a suicide hotline.
“He didn’t give any sign or anything, this time?”
“No, I knew the rejections were starting to mount up. He counted them and there were twenty-one.” Jamie shook his head. “I think the number just got too high. He felt hopeless, like it would never happen for him.”
/> “Did you talk to him Friday night?”
“Yes. He called me around eight o’clock, asking me how long I’d be, and we spoke for about five minutes. I couldn’t talk longer, I had people. He sounded bummed about the latest rejection, he told me about how there were twenty-one. He said he wanted to talk to me when I got home.”
“Did he say what about?”
“I assumed it was about the rejections.”
“That’s what Courtney and Rick said, too. I wonder if he talked to anybody else.”
“No, he didn’t. I asked everybody. So when I came home, that’s why I figured he wasn’t here, that he went out to forget about it and have a drink. But otherwise he was looking forward to summer.” Jamie paused. “And those pictures he pulled for you, he couldn’t wait for you to see them. I’d love to show them to you but,” Jamie hesitated. “They’re in the cottage. I guess you heard that’s where he…”
“Yes, I did. That must be so difficult for you.”
“It was, it is, finding him was the most horrific thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.” Tears came to Jamie’s eyes, but he tilted his chin up. “We designed this house together, and the cottage is where he loved to go. It was his man cave, only with books instead of a TV. I just ran out when I saw him and called 911. I left everything in there.”
“What do you mean by everything? His phone?”
“No, his laptop. He probably had his phone on him when they took him away, and I assume the police or the funeral home have it. I know the Wyoming pictures are in the cottage because I saw them Thursday night, on his desk. He printed them out for you.”
“If you want, I can go in there and get that stuff for you. I can see if his phone is there, too.” Chris kept his tone low-key, but he was asking for legal reasons. A consent search was lawful, and if any evidence of foul play turned up, it would be admissible.
“Would you do that?” Jamie asked, hopeful. “I mean, I just don’t want to do it myself. Our friends are already talking about me moving, but I would never do that. This was our house.”
“Of course, you have memories here. I’ll go look for his phone and get the pictures.”
“Thank you, I’d love that. Don’t forget about his laptop. He had a passcode that I don’t even know, but I’d feel better if the laptop was in the house.” Jamie gestured to a glass door at the end of the kitchen. “You can take the back door and go across the lawn to the cottage.”
“Is there a key or is it open?”
“It’s open. We never lock anything.”
Chris didn’t bother to correct him. Once again, the illusion of safety rendered people unsafe. “Be right back.”
“Thanks again.”
Chris headed for the back door, left the house, and walked across the lawn, then reached the cottage and opened the door, stepping inside and throwing the deadbolt behind him so he wouldn’t be interrupted.
Chris looked around, sizing it up. It was an A-frame with one large great room, which was undisturbed, with no signs of a struggle or a forced entry. A cherrywood table dominated the room, cluttered with papers and a MacBook Pro. Books lined both sides of the room on matching bookshelves, and the tall triangle of the ceiling was constructed of the same rustic wood as the house, with three thick oak rafters.
Chris crossed the room and stood underneath the middle rafter. Sadly, it was easy to see that it was the one Abe had hung himself from—or had been hung from. A stain soiled the beige rug, and Chris surmised that it was from bodily fluids, postmortem.
Chris gazed at the stain, and it struck him as obscene that such a kind soul had died on this very spot, now flooded with sunlight. The back wall was also entirely of glass, offering a view of a flagstone backyard, two green Adirondack chairs, and the woods beyond. There was a back door, and Chris opened it and went outside, trying to understand how Abe could have been murdered.
He passed the patio and kept going to the edge of the woods and looked down. There were trees all the way down a steep hill, and at the bottom was a single-lane country road. He could see that the trees weren’t that dense, so a killer could have parked along the road, climbed the hill to the back door of the cottage, and let himself inside. Escape would’ve been accomplished the same way, with the car left on the road below, which looked hardly traveled, like the roads he had taken on the way here.
Chris returned to the cottage, entered, and went directly to the spot, deep in thought. There was a random cherrywood chair sitting near the middle rafter. He looked over at the desk, seeing that the chair’s mate was sitting in front of the desk and that it also matched the desk chair itself, which was on rollers.
Chris mentally reconstructed the murder. The killer wouldn’t have chosen the desk chair because it had rollers, so the side chair was a rational choice. The killer could’ve entered the back door, surprised Abe at his desk, and either chloroformed or injected him to incapacitate him, then used the side chair to hang him. Abe would have kicked the chair over in his struggle or death throes. It was likely that the police, when they came to cut him down and take the body away, would have righted the chair.
Chris reasoned there had been more than one killer, because Abe would have been too heavy for one person to lift and hang from a rafter, deadweight even if he wasn’t struggling. Chris walked over to the desk but didn’t touch anything, looking around. His first impulse was to go to the computer, but Jamie had said it was under passcode that even he didn’t know.
The bright sun illuminated the cluttered desk, covered with correspondence, pages of poetry in draft, and notes written on lined paper. He read the notes to try to see if they contained any clues, but no luck. He slid his phone from his pocket and took pictures of the papers, the desk, the rafter, the stain, and everything else, to be reviewed later, in case he had missed anything.
Chris stood next to the spot, looking around in a 360-degree turn. The circular motion stirred up dust motes, the tiny specs visible in the solid shaft of sunlight, sending them swirling. It brought him to a realization. If killers had come in and hung Abe, there would have been signs of a struggle, even if they only had to hoist the body up. But the room was undisturbed, which meant that everything had been put back in order—and if that had happened, the proof could be in the dust.
Chris bent over and looked at the desk more closely. There was a clean square, book-sized, on the left side of the desk, and it was the only place not dusty. His gaze went to a paperback dictionary, which sat on top of another note-filled legal pad. It was the same size as the dictionary. So somebody had moved the book, and that wasn’t something the police would do. They might have righted the chair, but they wouldn’t have straightened up a desk.
Chris felt his heart beat faster. He continued scrutinizing the desk, finding more blank spaces where an object had been but was placed somewhere else. He didn’t get the impression that the desk was searched, but merely put back in order so it would look as if Abe had simply been reading his rejection letters, rose from them, moved the side chair, and hung himself with the power cord.
Chris felt a bitter taste in his mouth, knowing it would be difficult to prove murder now that Abe had been cremated. But even so, he had to know who killed Abe and why. His gut was telling him that it was linked to the baseball team, but he couldn’t connect the dots.
Chris moved papers on the desk to find the phone, but didn’t see one, also consistent with his theory. The killers could have taken the phone, worried that it contained information or phone calls that implicated them. The police wouldn’t have taken a personal effect, and the funeral home would have let Jamie know by now. Chris’s best guess was that Abe’s phone was in the hands of whoever had killed him, so cruelly.
Chris became aware that he was taking too long, so he picked up the laptop and gathered the Wyoming photos, taking pictures of them for later. They showed a scenic array of mountains, a lovely home in the woods, then Abe’s parents and siblings, Jamie, Courtney, Rick, and their respective
spouses.
Chris knew they would be grieving for years to come. He made a silent vow to the murdered teacher.
I’ll get your murderers, Abe.
And I’m sorry I didn’t get them before they got you.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Mindy glanced at the kitchen clock, on edge. It was 11:15, and she couldn’t wait for Evan and Paul to get home. When she’d awakened this morning, having overslept through yoga, there’d been a note from Paul saying he and Evan had gone to play golf. She’d texted back, come home ASAP, family meeting, and he had texted back, will be home after nine holes.
She paced, getting angrier. She thought that Evan had withdrawn the money and spent it on Amanda, but it was still possible that Paul had, on his new mistress. She was going to confront them both at the same time. She wanted the truth to come out, unvarnished and unprepared for, once and for all.
She checked her phone, which showed one of the naked pictures she’d found in Evan’s phone. There were more than one girl because they had pierced nipples, weird body jewelry, and tattoos, which she thought was disgusting. Plus you had to be eighteen to get a tattoo, so Mindy had no idea what was going on in the world anymore.
She heard the sound of Paul’s car in the driveway and reminded herself to stay in control. She didn’t want to fall into the Hysterical Mom category, in which Paul and Evan were so willing to place her. They acted like she was the numbskull in the house, and she was finally over it. She hadn’t had anything to drink, no G&T yet or wine. Deep inside, she was angriest at herself, for medicating herself with alcohol. For telling herself she had a happy marriage and perfect son, when she had neither. For not knowing what was happening under her own roof. That had to end, right now.
Mindy stormed out of the kitchen just as Paul and Evan entered the house, flush, happy, and sweaty in their golf clothes. “Boys, in the family room!”
Evan’s smile faded. “Mom?”
“Honey?” Paul did a double-take.
“We’re having a meeting in the family room.” Mindy stalked into the family room, seeing it with new eyes—a cheery red couch with matching side chairs, a beautiful glass coffee table, three walls of eggshell white, and a red accent wall. She had decorated it herself, but right now, she wanted to set it on fire. Mindy pointed to the couch. “Sit down, both of you.”