Tom frowned as he drew closer to the guesthouse. The detectives hadn’t accused Scott of anything, but the first thing they’d asked was to speak to him. The second thing they’d asked was to conduct a brief search of the property. Tom had said no to both. The detectives told him they only wanted to question Scott about a missing classmate of his, a guy named John Elfman. They had reason to believe John was hurt and might have wandered onto the property, that he might even now be lying somewhere hurt and unconscious in the woods that bordered the yard, or maybe behind the guesthouse. As the detectives related this, Tom watched them casually and noticed something that troubled him.
One of the detectives had been glancing around the property, making sweeps with those robo-cop eyes police officers and detectives always seemed to possess. He supposed it was standard procedure for a pair of detectives to give locations the quick once-over, only this guy seemed to be really interested in the area where the guesthouse was located, which he could see thanks to a direct view through the large windows in the living room of the house, which opened up to the rear of the property. He kept darting his gaze toward it, then averting it during the conversation. Tom feigned ignorance as he denied their requests to talk to Scott.
So naturally, Tom wanted to see what it was that had interested the detective.
He noticed the smell about ten yards from the guesthouse. It was masked with an underlying scent, one of freshly-scented pine. Tom wrinkled his nose. His limbs grew light, his heart raced as he approached the guesthouse and stopped.
The sun beat high overhead, already bearing down on what was going to be an unbearably hot day. Tom listened for any sounds within the guesthouse. He heard nothing.
Tom fished the key to the guesthouse out of his shorts and unlocked the door.
He pushed the door open.
The smell wafted out of the guesthouse, nearly bowling him over with its intensity. Tom took an involuntary step back and gagged.
Then he got a look at what was inside the guesthouse and choked back a scream.
His heart raced faster. His stomach lurched in his belly.
All the breath seemed to run out of him.
And then, tapping into a sudden burst of energy, he took a quick step inside, grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door closed.
Then he turned and ran like hell back to the house.
Tom Bradfield was waiting for Scott on the side deck when he came home an hour later, the Corvette newly washed and shining in the morning sun.
Scott grinned as he exited the vehicle. “Here we go! Clean as the day it rolled off the lot!”
Tom Bradfield was nursing a scotch — no ice, no water. He hardly drank alcohol before noon and here it was, barely a quarter till ten in the morning. “Scott, we need to have a talk.”
Scott was on his way to the side door of the house when Tom said this. He froze. “What’s up?”
“It’s about those detectives that came here earlier.”
“What about them?”
“They told me they wanted to question you about a guy named John Elfman. He’s gone missing. They asked if they could search the property. I denied their request.” Tom fixed his son with a steely gaze. “They didn’t bring up Tim Gaines at all. They didn’t mention the Reamstown Cemetery. Why did you lie to me?”
Scott rebounded from that direct question very well. He looked startled, then made a remarkable save. “I didn’t know anything about John Elfman. Honest. I thought they were going to razz me about Tim Gaines again.”
“I saw what you have in the guesthouse.”
There was no quick save for such a direct statement. Scott’s face went deathly pale. Tom could see his son’s hands twitch as he fought to remain casual. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“I mean, the two corpses in the guesthouse.”
“Corpses?”
“Scott, come up here on the deck. Sit down.”
Scott remained where he was, hesitating between bolting toward the house and approaching the deck.
“We need to talk about this, but I can’t do it if I have to shout at you from the deck. Your mother isn’t home, and we need to talk about this now before she gets home. I also don’t want to make a scene in case somebody happens to see it. So please, come here. Sit down.”
Scott looked like he was going to hesitate again, but common sense got the best of him. He quickly strode up the deck steps and slid into a chair on the other side of the glass table that so many late afternoon deck parties had been held around.
Tom saw Scott glance quickly at the guesthouse and he felt a momentary brush of shame as he saw the fear in his son’s eyes. This was the first time Tom had ever confronted his son about any of the crimes he’d participated in. When he was threatened with expulsion from Spring Valley Elementary School for his part in the assault on the Gaines boy, Tom had wanted Scott to see a child psychiatrist. Carol vehemently opposed it, and they’d had a bitter fight over it. Tom had relented. Carol had always been the one to coddle the boy; when Scott was thrown out of two private schools for his behavior toward other students it had been Carol that met with the school administrators. Her attempts at smoothing things over hadn’t been successful, and she’d never been one to discipline Scott. Carol was on the fast track up the ladder at her current firm at the time, and there was no way she could afford the time off to deal with the administrators, so she’d made a deal with their son: as long as he kept a clean academic record and didn’t cause them any trouble, they would support him financially through school and into college.
In hindsight, Tom should have held his ground. Should have insisted Scott be seen by a child psychiatrist. Should have insisted on having more influence on the way the boy was being raised. Should have insisted that with the bad actions Scott partook in that there were consequences.
On the other hand, Tom should have been around more to insure the boy never wound up like him.
He and Carol should have had a firmer hand in raising Scott. They shouldn’t have been so focused on their careers and maintaining their status in the neighborhood.
As Tom sipped from his drink, looking at his son, he didn’t see a monster sitting across from him. He saw himself almost forty years ago. A scared, troubled kid who had no guidance, no way to unleash his frustrations. A kid who had potential but was in danger of sabotaging it due to some unspeakable streak of violence that thrummed inside him that sometimes took control unexpectedly.
Tom had been in his son’s shoes before. He’d committed a similar crime. And despite that, he’d changed that part of himself. Became a contributing member to society.
And kept his dirty secret buried.
“I want to help you, son,” Tom said gently but firmly. “I saw those corpses in the guesthouse and they couldn’t have gotten in there by themselves. You and I know that our family has the key to the place. I also think Gordon and your other friends had something — ”
“They did it, Dad. It wasn’t me.” Scott was looking at his father with a new sense of urgency, but it wasn’t working. Tom had knocked Scott out of his senses with that simple statement, I saw the corpses in the guesthouse, and he wasn’t even thinking ahead of how the lie would affect his body language, his facial expression. Tom could read Scott like a book. He kept fiddling with his hands on the table, one of the habits Scott displayed whenever he was lying. “Honest, I had no idea. They’ve been…threatening me the whole time to keep quiet about it and — ”
“I don’t believe you heard me the first time, Scott,” Tom said, injecting menace in his voice and body posture. He leaned forward over the table. “I said I want to help you. If I’m going to help you, you’re going to come clean with me. It’s the only way I can help keep you out of jail. I can’t do it if you’re going to feed me this bullshit story that Gordon, Steve, and Dave led you into this because you and I know that’s not how it happened. Is it?”