“I was a cop,” Carl whispered to her. “And we were working with the state police. It’s not such a big lie if you think about it.”
She shrugged. Big lie or not, it was out there. She couldn’t take it back.
It seemed to take Drey Windsor forever to come to the door and open it. Yet when she did, she was much younger than Tess had expected, barely in her fifties. She must have given birth to Billy when she was all of twenty.
Still, it was a hard fifty-something. The sun had left her face scored with deep lines, and Tess guessed she had been a smoker as well. She had those telltale lines around the lips, the ones that come from drawing hard on a butt end. Her hair was the flat noncolor that comes from a bottle, a minky brown. But it was arranged neatly and she was dressed in a pair of flowery cotton pants and a bright T-shirt. She was one of those older women who kept their hourglass figures.
“Police?” she asked. “Has something happened?”
Tess looked at Carclass="underline" It’s your lie, go with it.
“No, ma’am, quite the opposite. We think we might have some good news. Could we sit down?”
The bungalow was built in what Tess thought of as the new ass-backward style, with a small formal living room at the front, a large kitchen-family room across the back. She understood why this floor plan was desirable to families with children, but she didn’t see why a retirement village had decided to ape it. Older people should be encouraged to move away from television sets, to have meals at tables, to entertain in formal rooms. With children grown and gone, this should be the time of life to eat from fine china, not from a television tray set up in front of a Barcalounger. If not now, when?
Mrs. Windsor took a seat in just such a Barcalounger, perching on the edge, folding her hands in her lap. Tess and Carl dragged two wooden chairs from the low counter that separated this room from the kitchen.
“You believe you have good news?” she asked, her voice cautious, almost skeptical. It seemed to Tess that she found it all too credible for police officers to be on her doorstep but was less convinced that they might bring glad tidings.
“Possibly,” Carl said. “I don’t want to overstate it or get your hopes up. There’s still a lot of work ahead of us. But, Mrs. Windsor-do you think it’s possible your son is still alive?”
Mrs. Windsor swallowed hard and blinked her eyes rapidly, as if trying to fan back tears. “Billy? My Billy’s been dead for almost fifteen years.”
“Well, technically he’s been missing, right? They never found him.”
“Under the law, I could have him declared dead. But there’s never been any reason to do that.”
“Really?” This was Tess, remembering the old crone’s statement that Audrey Windsor had probably done just that, to collect the insurance that enabled her to live among the rich at Golden Shores.
Or maybe she had merely allowed people to assume this was where her newfound wealth came from.
“If he had been my husband-but he’s not. Or if there had been life insurance-but there wasn’t. What seventeen-year-old boy needs life insurance? There didn’t seem to be any point to it. Besides, I didn’t want-”
She broke down, quite convincingly. But it occurred to Tess that Audrey Windsor could have finished that sentence in any of a number of ways.
“You didn’t want to make his death official?”
She nodded through her tears, face downcast so her expression was unreadable.
“I suppose a mother can’t help feeling that way. You’d want to hold on to the hope that he was alive, as long as his body was never found.”
Mrs. Windsor nodded again. Tess thought she saw a cunning glint at the top of her eyes, as if she were studying them, trying to figure out if they were buying her act.
“Well, that’s the possible good news,” Carl boomed. “You see, there’s a man of Billy’s age and description, up in Washington County Rehabilitation Hospital.”
He paused. Tess realized he was gauging Audrey Windsor’s reaction to that piece of information. After all, it was a temporary home to at least two of Billy’s various personas over the past few years. But all she showed was genuine concern and even more genuine confusion.
“He’s been in a car accident and there was a lot of head trauma. He has short-term memory loss and what he does remember about his past is kind of scattered. But he says his name is Billy Windsor. Now, that’s not an unusual name. Could be any number of people-”
“A bad car accident?” There was no doubting the fear in Audrey Windsor’s voice. “When?”
“Oh, six-eight weeks ago.”
Her body relaxed. So she had seen her son since then. She knew he was okay more recently than that. “And you think it’s my Billy?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“What does he look like?”
“Blond. Hazel eyes. About five-ten, with a small frame.” Carl, who had the advantage of having seen Billy Windsor once, was flipping the information, describing the man’s polar opposite.
“Oh.” Audrey Windsor’s voice was almost a purr. “Well, that’s not my Billy, I’m afraid. He was brown-haired and hazel-eyed, and he grew to be much taller than that. I mean-even at seventeen, he was already six feet.”
“I’m so sorry, ma’am. As I said, it was possible good news. Now I feel as if I got your hopes up for nothing.”
“No,” Drey Windsor assured him. “I know my Billy’s gone. I know. He made sure of that.”
“A suicide,” Tess said, hitting the word hard, and the woman recoiled a little bit, as if no one had ever dared to speak that word in her presence.
“Yes.”
“That’s why he never came up, right? He weighted himself down with something.”
“Most likely.”
“What a jerk.”
The contradiction was swift, automatic. “You shouldn’t say that.”
“Why not? I think suicides are selfish. When Billy decided to drown himself, he was thinking only of himself. What about you? Didn’t your feelings count for anything? If someone I loved did that, I’d hate them forever. On some level, he was trying to hurt you, to punish you. What was that about?”
“You have no right to talk about Billy that way. He was a good boy. He tried to do right in every way. That girl broke his heart. He couldn’t help himself.”
Tess shrugged. “If you say so. But all I know is, it’s fifteen years later and you’re sitting here, unable to have your son declared officially dead. I think that’s because you don’t want to admit he is dead. And maybe that’s because he isn’t. Is that possible? He faked his death, just to get away from you?”
Drey Windsor’s mouth opened and closed, like a beached fish trying to breathe. Finally, she said, “Are we done? Is that all you wanted to ask me?”
Carl looked at Tess, unsure of what was going on. But Tess just nodded. “We’re done. But Mrs. Windsor-we do have some bad news for you.”
She stood up and leaned over the woman, as if to whisper in her ear. But her voice was clear and cold. “Billy is dead to you now. He can’t come back here ever again. Do you understand that? He can’t visit you or even risk calling you here because we’re going to have you under surveillance. If Billy tries to see you, we’re going to have him arrested. We know what he’s done. Tell him that, if he calls. We know what he’s done and we’re coming for him.”
“Something come up, didn’t it?” Mrs. Windsor was crying now. “I always said something would come up, that it was only a matter of time they’d find a piece of bone or something. But he didn’t mean to do it, you have to understand. It was an accident. And it was so long ago. A boy shouldn’t be held accountable for such things.”
“What about a man, Mrs. Windsor? What about a man who keeps doing this, over and over again?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Billy made a fresh start, that’s all I ever wanted for him. What he does for a living-well, what else is he to do? At least he’s responsible. Really, he’s protecting the rest of us, don’t you see? It has to go somewhere.”