And then, of course, the further microscopic examination included a search for at least several spermheads— defined by shape and staining—with necks attached. Luckily, the stain had not been changed by either friction or putrefaction. Had it been so altered, the search for the presence of spermatozoa might have been even more time-consuming and less fruitful.
So that's what they did with one stain. It consumed the major part of the day. Nor was it very exciting work. They were not searching for elusive cold germs. They were not seeking the cure for cancer. They were simply trying to compile a list of facts that might lead to the killer of Maria Hernandez or that, at a later date, might help to identify a suspect positively.
And if these men devoted long hours to the death of one junkie, another man was devoting long hours to the life of another junkie.
The junkie happened to be his son.
Peter Byrnes would never know how close he had come to washing his hands of the whole matter. He had fought first with the idea that the entire concept was a hoax. My son a drug addict? he had asked, my son? My son's fingerprints on an alleged murder weapon? No, he had told himself, it is a lie, a complete lie from start to finish. He would seek out this lie, pull it from beneath its rock, force it to crawl into the sunshine where he could step upon it. He would confront his son with the lie, and together they would destroy it.
But he had confronted his son, and he had known even before he asked "Are you a drug addict?" that his son was indeed a drug addict, and that a portion of the lie was not a lie. The knowledge had at once shocked and disgusted him, even though he had somehow expected it. For a lesser man than Byrnes, for a lesser cop than Byrnes, the knowledge might have been less devastating. But Byrnes despised crime, and Byrnes despised punks, and he had learned that his son was a punk engaged in criminal activities. And they had faced each other in their silent living room, and Byrnes had talked logically and sensibly, Byrnes had outlined the entire predicament to his son, never once allowing his disgust to rise into his throat, never once crying out against this punk criminal who was his son, never once saying the words of banishment.
His instinct told him to throw this person out into the street. This was an instinct nurtured over the years, an instinct that was an ingrained part of Byrnes' character.
But there was a deeper instinct, an instinct shared at fires in paleolithic times, when men clasped sons against the night, and the instinct had been passed down through the blood of man, and it coursed through the veins of Peter Byrnes, and Byrnes could think only He is my son.
And so he had talked levelly and calmly, exploding only once or twice, but even then exploding only with impatience and not allowing the disgust to overrule his mind.
His son was an addict.
Irrevocably, irreconcilably, his son was an addict. The caller had not lied on that score.
The second half of the lie turned out to be true, too. Byrnes checked his son's fingerprints against those that had been found on the syringe, and the fingerprints matched. He revealed this information to no one in the department, and the concealment left him feeling guilty and somehow contaminated.
The lie, then, had not been a lie at all.
It had started out as a two-part falsehood, and had turned into a shining, shimmering truth.
But what about the rest? Had Larry argued with Hernandez on the afternoon of the boy's death? And if he had, were not the implications clear? Were not the implications that Larry Byrnes had killed Aníbal Hernandez perfectly clear?
Byrnes could not believe the implications.
His son had turned into something he could not easily understand, something he had perhaps never understood and might never understand—but he knew his son was not a murderer.
And so, on that Thursday, December 21st, he waited for the man to call again, as he had promised; and he bore the additional burden now of a new homicide, the death of Aníbal's sister. He waited all that day, and no call came, and when he went home in the afternoon, it was to a task he dreaded.
He liked a happy home, but there was no joy in his house now. Harriet met him in the hallway, and she took his hat, and then she went into his arms, and she sobbed against his shoulder, and he tried to remember the last time she had cried like this, and it seemed very long ago, and he could not remember except that it was somehow attached to a senior prom and a corsage and the insurmountable problems of an eighteen-year-old girl. Harriet wasn't eighteen any more. She had a son who was almost eighteen now, and that son's problem had nothing to do with senior proms or corsages.
"How is he?" Byrnes asked.
"Bad," Harriet said.
"What did Johnny say?"
"He's given him something as a substitute," Harriet answered. "But he's only a doctor, Peter, he said that, he said he's only a doctor and the boy has to want to break the habit. Peter, how did this happen? For God's sake, how did it happen?"
"I don't know," Byrnes said.
"I thought this was for slum kids. I thought it was for kids who came from broken homes, kids who didn't have love. How did it happen to Larry?"
And again, Byrnes said, "I don't know," and within himself he condemned the job that had not left him more time to devote to his only son. But he was too honest to level the entire blame on the job, and he reminded himself that other men had jobs with long hours, irregular hours, and their sons did not become drug addicts. And so he started up the steps to his son's room, walking heavily, suddenly grown old, and beneath his own feelings of guilt ran the pressing undercurrent of his disgust. His son was a junkie. The word blinked like a neon sign in his head: JUNKIE. Junkie. JUNKIE. Junkie.
He knocked on his son's door.
"Larry?"
"Dad? Open this, will you? For Christ's sake, open it."
Byrnes reached into his pocket and took out his key ring. He had locked Larry into his room only once that he could remember. The boy had broken a plate-glass window with a baseball and then flatly refused to pay for the damage out of his allowance. Byrnes had informed his son that he would then deduct the money from the meals Larry ate, and that all meals would stop as of that moment. He had put the boy in the room and locked the door from the outside, and Larry had capitulated shortly after dinner that night. The incident, at the time, had not seemed terribly important. A form of punishment and really, really now, if Larry had still refused, Byrnes would certainly have fed him. Byrnes had felt, at the time, that he was teaching his son a respect for other people's property as well as a respect for money. But now, looking back, he wondered if he had not behaved wrongly. Had he isolated his son's affection by punishing him in that way? Had his son automatically assumed there was no love for him in this house? Had his son assumed Byrnes was taking the side of the shopkeeper and not that of his own flesh and blood?
But what is a man supposed to do? Consult a psychology textbook before he says anything or does anything? And how many other small incidents were there, how many incidents over the years, how many incidents piling up, inconsequential in themselves, gathering force and power as they accumulated until, together, they conspired to force a boy into drug addiction? How many incidents, and for how many of them could a father be blamed? Was he a bad father? Didn't he truly and honestly love his son, and hadn't he always tried to do what was best for him, hadn't he always tried to raise his son as a decent human being? What is a man supposed to do, what is a man supposed to do?
He unlocked the door, and then stepped into the room.