It was when Colt had been young, seven, maybe eight, and ill. Colt didn’t get sick often but he was then, so sick he didn’t go to school, which he’d always liked, even as a kid, it was an escape from home. He didn’t even go over to Morrie’s which meant he had to be really sick because he always preferred to be at the Owens’s, not to mention he knew even then Jackie was a helluva lot better at taking care of a sick kid than Colt’s Mom was. In fact, he was so sick his mother braved the world she didn’t often go out into unless it was to hit a liquor store and she took him to see Doc. Then later, with no one to watch him, even though she was half-snockered, she put him in her car and took him to Norm Lowe’s pharmacy to pick up Colt’s prescription.
Colt remembered Norm looking down at his mother from the raised station, the white shelves of medicine behind him, wearing a crisp white labcoat with his name embroidered in cursive with blue thread over the coat pocket, the filled prescription bag in his hand, the bag held back from Colt’s mother, and saying, “Now, Mary, we both know this wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Colt remembered it clearly, like it happened the moment before, but until that second he’d buried it. He’d buried it because, that day long ago there were people in line behind his mother. Everyone knew Norm’s meaning, refusing his mother Colt’s medications. He was intimating that she’d take them herself. Even Colt knew it, at his age, and he’d been humiliated, mainly because Norm Lowe was probably right.
His mother didn’t fight it. She grabbed Colt’s hand, ducked her head and walked as straight a line as she could muster right out of the store. She took him back to Doc and Doc saw them right away. Handing her the prescription from his cabinet, Doc said to Colt’s Mom, “Next time we’ll remember this, Mary. You got somethin’ you need for Alec, you’ll get it direct from me.”
Colt couldn’t remember if his mother ever gave him the drugs and it was the only time he remembered ever needing any.
He did remember, years ago a new chain store pharmacy was put in at the edge of town and he’d talked Melanie into moving her prescriptions to the chain, though he never could understand why he wanted her to do this. Most of the folks on insurance or Medicare didn’t have a choice but to go to the chain. If they did, they’d go to Norm just because he was a local. Not Colt.
Since Colt was seven to the time that chain opened, he never stepped foot in Norm Lowe’s pharmacy, partly because he had no need, partly because that buried memory kept him back.
Now, staring at him, Norm’s back ramrod straight, his face looking carved from a rock, his wife a mess in front of him, his son on the road carrying out a violent rampage, Colt found he could call up no empathy for the man.
He would soon understand why.
“We’ll give you some time,” Sully, seated by Evelyn, said quietly.
Everyone waited for Evelyn to pull herself together and Colt watched as Norm squeezed her shoulder. Colt didn’t know why but this gesture looked to him less like a show of support and more like a demand for his wife to get control. It was then Colt knew Norm Lowe was not the kind of man who would allow his wife to walk down the street with frosting on her lip. Not because of how this would reflect on her, but because of how it would reflect on him.
Evelyn nodded her head and lifted it, wiping the tears from her face and swiping under her nose.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant Sullivan,” she whispered.
“You okay to talk now, Mrs. Lowe?” Sully asked and she nodded again but it wasn’t her who talked.
“We found that,” Norm announced, dipping his head toward the medium-sized box on the table beside two untouched Styrofoam cups of coffee, “in the house.”
“And what is that, Mr. Lowe?” Sully asked and Evelyn made a noise that sounded painful, a choked sob, a sob Norm ignored.
“Dennis asked his mother to hold some things at the house. She did. Never told me. I knew about that, well…” he let that hang and Colt watched Evelyn’s face blank so much it was void. One second, she was tearful, the next, her face was a clear slate. She was so good, it only took a second. A defense mechanism, a practiced one. It was then Colt knew Evelyn Lowe lived under a tyrant.
As had Denny.
“I never looked in the box either,” she said quietly. “I just thought it was stuff he and Marie couldn’t hold in their house.”
This earned her another shoulder squeeze from her husband as he reminded her at the same time telling Sully that his wife was an idiot and he himself had not one thing to do with that box or what was going on with his son. “They got five bedrooms in that house, Ehv.”
“Yes, yes, I didn’t think. Stupid of me,” she said quickly.
“After we heard of the goings-on, Evelyn remembered the box,” Norm stated and Colt thought his choice of the words “goings-on” to describe a killing spree was both interesting and sickening, more the last than the first, far more. “She pulled it out, opened it up and showed it to me. That was less than an hour ago. We brought it right here.”
In other words, my son is a psychopathic killer but I’m a decent citizen here to help.
“May I look in the box?” Sully asked and Evelyn pressed her lips together. Norm nodded curtly.
Sully got up and pulled back the flaps to the box. The room went wired as he looked inside. He dipped in his hand and it didn’t have to go very far. Colt could see from his vantage point the box was filled with photos and he knew what they showed. Colt had no reaction to this. It wasn’t surprising and he was finding it was better to store up his reactions for shit that was worth it.
Sully pulled out only a handful. He managed to keep his expression neutral as he flipped through them. Then he put them down on the table and turned to the Lowes.
“That’s a lotta pictures of Feb Owens and Alec Colton,” he remarked.
“Box’s full of ‘em,” Norm agreed amicably.
“Denny take these?” Sully asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Norm answered.
Sully looked down at the box, dug his hand in and pulled out more from the middle, flipping through them he said, “Looks like someone’s been takin’ pictures of Feb and Colt for years.”
“Looks like,” Norm replied.
“You have any idea why Denny would have these?”
Evelyn Lowe made a high-pitched sound in the back of her throat but Norm talked over her, saying, “No idea.”
Sully looked to the woman. “Mrs. Lowe?”
She got another squeeze from her husband, therefore she repeated, “No idea.”