The younger one mumbled, “What the—?”
Fred put his head down and cried in relief, purging himself, draining his emotions into his sleeve. After a minute or so, he looked up. “What happened? Did you find her? Is she all right? Is she dead? Did you find the killer?”
The older one just repeated, “You can go home now.”
Fred pulled himself together and went to the bathroom to wash his face. He held his hands over the sink and stared into his own eyes. They were hollow and dark and he could not see himself in them. He was afraid of the depth of the darkness, the emptiness that stared back at him.
He walked towards the front door, but was stopped by the younger agent. “No, there are too many reporters out there. We have a back way.” They went down into a cellar, across a long dark alleyway, and emerged almost a block away from where they had entered the night before. Another late-model black sedan was waiting for him, engine running, with a different agent in it, one he had not met before. Again, they drove in silence. As they turned the corner on his block, he saw the throng: multiple satellite dishes, TV vans, and at least fifty people hanging around on his front lawn. He asked the agent to pull all the way up into the driveway and he made a run for the back door before they could organize to block him. The door was locked, and he banged on it till Sheila finally came and let him in. The agent left without saying a word.
As he quickly closed the door behind him, locking it before the horde of reporters could muscle in, he reached for his wife and put his arms around her. He began to sob, crying openly, and repeating, “I’m sorry, Hon, I’m so sorry.” It took him a long minute before he realized that Sheila was not hugging him back, was not responding with any feeling at all. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, her body almost rigid. He stepped back a little, sliding his arms away, but kept his hands on her shoulders and looked into her face. Obviously, she had had a miserable night as well. She had been crying, her face swollen, her eyes red and puffy, her hair unkempt and damp. She wore no makeup and looked as if she hadn’t slept a moment, either.
He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what she knew. He took a deep breath and tried again. “Sheila, I’m sorry, but I didn’t do anything, you know that, don’t you?”
“Please, spare me. No more lies. I can’t take it.” She turned away from his grasp, walked out of the kitchen, through the living room where the kids were sprawled on the floor with blankets and pillows, past the blaring television. She kept going, up the stairs towards the bedroom, but he stopped in his tracks, his very being pulled as if by a tractor beam into the TV screen, where he saw pictures of the killer: a young, disheveled, hirsute man in a dirty flannel shirt and torn jeans. Fred sat down on the edge of the chair, noticed the CNN logo in the corner, and tried to read all of the text crawling along the bottom of the screen: “Drifter followed victim home from local mall. Suspect chose victim at random. No prior relationship. Victim apparently strangled. No signs of sexual assault. Long Island salesman freed.”
His vision had tunneled, he could only see the television, and it took the third or fourth time that David called, “Dad, Dad, snap out of it,” before he could acknowledge his son’s presence.
“What, David, what?” He was defensive, almost screaming. “What do you want?”
“Whoa, that was scary... Are you okay?”
He lightened up a little. “Yes, son. I’m fine.”
“Why did they suspect you? Do you know this girl? Do you know the killer? Did you have ANYTHING to do with this?”
He saw that his son was near tears and that his daughter was just as frightened, hugging her pillow tightly to her chin, attempting to squeeze out the fear. “No, no, of course not. Apparently, I was once in the same on-line chat room as her, that’s all. There’s nothing more.”
At first relieved, David then seemed puzzled. “What kind of chat room? I didn’t know you even knew about chat rooms.”
“David, it’s not important. The important thing is that I had nothing to do with this. It was all a big misunderstanding. I love you, and I love you, Connie. I am so tired; it has been a terrible ordeal. I have to go see your mother.” When he arrived in the bedroom, he saw that she was asleep, curled in the fetal position, fully dressed on top of an unmade bed, hugging her pillow in much the same way that Connie had been hugging hers.
He took a long, hot shower. As the sweat and grime flowed down the drain, he tried to wash away the dirty feelings, but the pounding water was unable to cleanse his spirit. He slipped beyond remorse into emptiness. He felt that his very soul was vacant. He had hurt his family, and the whole world knew it. He had suggested something filthy to somebody’s daughter. He felt shame dragging him into an abyss, deeper than any darkness he had ever feared. For just a nanosecond, he imagined slitting his wrists with his straight-edge razor. He pictured his lifeblood flowing into the swirling drain, imagined himself crumpled into a heap on the floor of the shower, and wondered how long it would be before Sheila would find him.
He shook his head as he turned off the faucets, forcing the evil thoughts away. No, he said to himself, you’ll get through this. Your family needs you to get though this. He used the razor to shave and then peeked out the window to see that the number of reporters and cameras had been halved. But there were still a few satellite-dish equipped vans, one from the Long Island cable news channel. At least the national networks had bailed, he thought, as he went down to make some coffee, turning off the television as he passed through the living room, stepping over the children, both of whom had finally found some solace in sleep.
He saw that the phone was off the hook, the receiver sitting in the towel drawer, and he took it out and hung it up. It rang instantly. “Fred Miller. This is Eyewitness News. Can you tell us why the FBI arrested you?”
“I wasn’t arrested, just questioned.”
“Then tell us why they suspected you.”
“Uh, not right now. Give us some space, please.”
He hung up and the phone rang again immediately. “Is this Fred Miller?”
“Yes.”
“Joan Summers, Cable News 12. I’m right in your driveway. Can you come out for an interview, please?”
“No.”
“Don’t you want to clear your name and tell your side of the story?”
“No.”
He hung up and the phone rang again. He stuck it back in the towel drawer.
Forgetting about coffee, he sat at the kitchen table, held his head up with his hands, and cried uncontrollably, muttering to himself, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” But he was no longer clear for what.
“DADDY! DADDY! LET ME IN!” He awoke with a start, unaware until waking that he had fallen asleep. He lifted his head off the table and felt a twinge of pain in his neck. He looked at the back door and could see his oldest daughter, Susan, peering through the blinds, several reporters sticking their microphones in her face, trying to get their cameras in position to see into the house. As he unlatched the door, he opened it only slightly, creating just enough space to let his daughter in but keep the flock out. Susan hugged him and began to cry. “Oh, Daddy, what’s going on?”
“Everything is going to be okay, Sugar; I didn’t do anything. It’s all a big misunderstanding.” He said it as if he were trying to convince himself. “What are you doing here? What about school?”
“I know Mom told me not to. But I couldn’t help it. I started driving almost as soon as I hung up with her, after she called to tell me the FBI took you into custody. Oh, Daddy, what was I supposed to do? Go to sleep and then to class? I just couldn’t, so I got in the car and started driving. I kept switching stations, trying to get news. I didn’t want to call Mom ’cause she’d tell me to go back, but I kept calling my friends to keep me busy. I was so relieved when they said they had arrested someone else, but just for a moment. Then I thought about that poor little girl. Oh, Daddy, did you know her?”