“It looks like he was shot twice at point-blank range. I doubt he had warning and I’m sure he didn’t suffer any pain. We found his sleeping bag where it had been tossed down the hill. No shell casings and no weapon. That’s as much as we know at this point. We’ll do everything we can to find the person responsible.”
Their reaction to the news was muted and they responded with a conversational acceptance. They didn’t seem surprised. Hollis went through an explanation of what had gone on in the past few weeks. Lauren offered the occasional correction or comment, but neither exhibited distress. Hollis had been stripped of his anger and hostility. Lauren’s hopes had fallen away. Neither one of them could marshal defenses of any kind. Wearily, she covered her face with her hands, but she didn’t weep. He remained on the far side of the room, silent for once. He didn’t resort to pouring himself a drink. I’ll credit him for that.
Hollis said, “His friends will be devastated. They’re young and I’m sorry they have to deal with this. He hadn’t been home a month, barely time to renew those old bonds.”
His words defined the gap between reality and his view of his son. Hollis and Lauren spoke as though Fritz had friends who held him in high regard, which I knew to be untrue. They believed Fritz had been made whole again, that he’d paid for his moral shortcomings and returned to them a wiser man. This was the fiction they lived with, the fable that kept them afloat. I could see how they’d been functioning for years. Fritz was the center of their world. Even the friction between husband and wife had Fritz at its core. His participation in the killing of Sloan Stevens had set the family on a downward spiral and nothing had gone right for them since. Sloan’s death had upended the delicate family balance and toppled their expectations. They’d tried to right themselves. They’d done what they could to integrate their errant son into the world he’d left. In truth, Fritz was already out of control and the threat of blackmail had swept away any chance of regaining their equilibrium. This was what they had come to, this loss. Their money and social status didn’t render them immune.
Even now they didn’t sit together. They didn’t touch. They didn’t even make eye contact. They would deal with the finality of their son’s death in their own way. There was no right or wrong to it. I wasn’t a touchy-feely person myself so I didn’t fault them for their chilliness, which was in keeping with what I knew of them. I didn’t picture them turning to one another for comfort or solace. Fritz’s actions had driven a wedge between them and his death would trigger the final blow. It might take six months or a year, but in the end Lauren and Hollis would sever their ties and struggle forward on divergent paths. I was looking at the end of a marriage, the final flicker as that last wee ember winked and went out.
Hollis asked Cheney a few questions, but his curiosity seemed disconnected from any emotion. The conversation shifted to clerical matters: when the ME would perform the autopsy, how soon the results would be made available. Hollis asked about the procedure for reclaiming the body and Cheney told him he could contact a funeral home and have them take care of the details. Hollis mentioned a memorial service, but he wasn’t discussing it with Lauren. This was his musing about trivia as it occurred to him. She hadn’t moved except to place her cupped hands over her nose and mouth as though recycling her own air was the only hope she had of surviving the suffocating disaster that had erupted in her living room.
The air seemed weighted, as though the forces of gravity had accelerated and we were all anchored to the earth. I thought it was Cheney’s place to break the spell, but he seemed to want to keep himself available. The Santa Teresa police are sensitive to occasions like this when a different skill set is required. Neither Lauren nor Hollis gave any sign of recognition, but I appreciated the reservoir of patience Cheney offered.
Finally, he said, “Is there anyone you want us to call?”
Lauren shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone. Can you, Hollis?”
“My brother, I suppose, but not at this hour. We can address the subject tomorrow when we have a better sense of where we stand.”
Lauren smiled briefly. “I think we should let you go. We appreciate the courtesy of the visit. These can’t be easy calls to make.”
? ? ?
By the time Cheney dropped me back at Henry’s, I was so exhausted I could barely see. I’ve noticed that my homecomings of late have been marked by the unexpected, but for a change, it was quiet. I let myself in the gate. Henry’s house was dark and the pup tent was zipped tight so I assumed we were all home and safely tucked in for the night. I let myself into the studio and took a quick look at my answering machine. Nothing from Celeste. I stifled my disappointment. It hadn’t even been one full day since I’d called and left my number. For all I knew, she would never contact me, and that was her prerogative.
I locked the door and was on the verge of securing the chain when a horrendous ruckus went up in the backyard. Killer was loose and on some kind of rampage. Apparently, the dog had managed to dig his way out from under the tent. He was still barking savagely as I stuck my head out the door. I reached for the light switch in haste. With one flick, the whole rear portion of the property was bathed in hot light. Henry must have been at Rosie’s because under ordinary circumstances, uproar of this sort would have brought him out his back door like a shot, wielding the baseball bat he brandishes to protect hearth and home. No sign of Pearl either, which meant she was probably at Rosie’s, too.
Killer lunged at the fence in a frenzy. I’d never seen him in this state. Even on our first meeting when he was holding Henry and Pearl as virtual hostages, his aggression hadn’t been this pronounced. There was no point in calling him down. He ran parallel to the shrubbery along the property line, throwing his body at the barrier that separated him from the object of his hostility. I thought about Ned Lowe. How could I not think of Ned? In moments of alarm, in moments when I was on high alert, during times when my interior radar picked up danger of any kind, Ned Lowe was always at the core.