“Today is a very special day for all of us,” Mary Seebohm began unpromisingly. “It marks the end of our high school careers. For some, it marks the end of our academic careers. For many, it marks the end of our athletic careers. For each one of us, it also marks the beginning of our freedom.
“For eighteen years, give or take, we have been human beings without choices. Sure, we made little decisions – what color to paint our room, what instrument to pursue in band, whether to try out for cheerleader or pom-pom squad, quiz bowl or debate, whether to run for student council, or to take metal shop instead of wood shop. But when it came to the most important aspects of our lives, we had no choices. Today that changes.
“Seated in this footba – I mean basketball gym are one thousand one hundred and twelve individual destinies. Each of us has the potential to make a difference. To be heard. To help our fellow man, or to hurt him. To achieve great things, or to vanish into obscurity. To be graceful, courageous, uninhibited, powerful, merciful, caring, cruel, callous, artistic, creative, productive, promiscuous” – cheers – “mischievous, inspiring, beneficent, intimidating, loving, cautious, fearful, dominant, truthful, fair, generous, law-abiding, kind. We will never have more choices, and thus more freedom, than we do right now. Every day between now and the day we die is a day with fewer choices than the one before it. And so I implore you, my fellow graduates of Northwood East, my friends, my classmates: choose wisely.”
Mary continued. Davis checked his watch. Seven minutes. Ten minutes. His clothes stuck to him in uncomfortable places. The man just behind him and to his right exhaled through his nose in quick whistles. Davis took a step forward. The line to the men’s bathroom had grown by a dozen in just the last few minutes as parents heard nothing from Mary that sounded like a summation. Davis thought about a visit to the urinal himself. He even thought about taking Joan’s hand and suggesting they leave. She didn’t want to be here, anyway.
Martha Finn appeared in the foyer through a parting curtain of bodies, her eyes at maximum aperture, her skin tight and angry over her skinny jaw. She looked old, and Davis wondered how many years it had been since he’d last seen her. Not that many. She should see a doctor. Even her intense rage couldn’t account for the unhealthy pallor on her face.
“Dr. Moore,” she whispered tersely. Her eyes directed him to the glass-and-metal doors leading outside. He nodded and followed her, putting a hand on Joan’s arm, telling her to stay put. He’d be back. It will be all right.
Outside, under a narrow asphalt roof over the entrance, rain pelting the concrete just a few yards away, Martha hugged her own arms and said, “I know you’ve been seeing my son.” She was trembling as if a combustion engine inside her were both powering her speech and keeping her anger in check.
“He came to see me,” Davis admitted. “After you told him he was a clone. We’ve done nothing but talk.”
“Since you’ve been meeting him, he’s changed. Did you know he’s been doing drugs?”
Davis started. “Drugs? That’s crazy,” he said. “There’s no way.”
Unconvinced, Martha said, “Have you been giving him drugs?”
“Of course not.”
“Have you tried to make him stop?”
“Mrs. Finn, I assure you, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Justin isn’t doing drugs.” As he said it, however, he wondered. She seemed so certain. Had she caught him? As close as he felt to Justin, how well did he actually know him? How much time had they really spent together? Would I know if Justin were on drugs? He answered himself. Yes. Yes, I would.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’m so scared. Scared of him. Scared of what he might do. To himself. To me. To somebody else.” She looked Davis in the eyes. “And there’s nothing I can do or say. How can he be so sure of himself when I’m so insecure?”
Davis said he was sorry. It was wrong to have met with Justin behind her back. He didn’t make excuses. He didn’t try to explain why he and Justin had been meeting. Why they had been sneaking around. To his surprise, she accepted that small concession with a nod and then opened the door and disappeared into the foyer, making her way back to the gym.
“That was weird,” Joan said when he returned. “What did she want?”
“An apology,” Davis said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Are you okay?” she asked. Davis dipped his head in a way that resembled a nod.
They stepped out to an open area of the foyer to put on their jackets. A girl, perhaps five years old, in a pink dress, with sun-blond hair, approached them from the direction of the gym. “Excuse me,” she said.
“Yes?”
“That boy asked me to give this to you.” She handed Davis a program from the commencement.
“What boy?” Joan asked. The girl shrugged.
Davis opened the folded booklet. Scribbled in black pen: 415 Saint Paul Rd. 11:00. Tonight.
– 91 -
“Thanks for coming,” Justin said. “This might be the closest we get to a celebration.” He threw his arms in the air. “Congratulations! We got the bastard.”
The spring surf licked the beach on the other side of the dunes. Across a hundred yards on either side of them, couples made out on blankets thrown over the wet sand at irregular intervals. Muffled shouting over a muffled stereo marked the epicenter of the graduation party at 415 Saint Paul Road, just steps from the water. It was unclear to Davis if it was being supervised by freethinking adults or if there were still parents so apathetic and stupid they would leave town the weekend of their kid’s graduation and expect him not to turn their home into a three-million-dollar frat house.
Davis said, “Should I be celebrating, Justin? Tell me.”
“Of course you should. Coyne’s been arrested and, according to the papers, already convicted. Quote: The trial, it seems, is almost a formality. ”
“What happened to your theory?”
“What do you mean?” Justin smiled in the manner of a comedian waiting for his audience to get his last joke.
“You said that when Coyne kills in Shadow World, he doesn’t feel the urge to kill as the Wicker Man. Didn’t Coyne just murder someone in the game a few weeks ago? The night he attacked Sally?”
“It’s an inexact science.” Justin smirked.
“It’s bullshit,” Davis said. “Your whole Wicker Man/Shadow World theory is bullshit.” He turned and pressed his shoe into the damp spring sand. His footprint made a detailed impression, outlining every tread and recess in his sole.
“I know what you did,” Davis said, and as he said it he knew the accusation could not be undone. That it would change things between them. The significance was not in the truth of the statement, and Davis would admit he had no evidence to support it. Indeed, before the idea occurred to him he never would have thought Justin capable of such a thing. Sure, he had read Justin’s psych reports, and once worried over missing dogs in the Finns’ neighborhood, and he and Joan had held endless discussions about what Justin might one day become (in her office and, more recently, across the low valley where their pillows met). Even so, they had never considered it anything but a remote possibility. Davis had never entertained the notion, not for a moment, that their darkest fears had become real.
But now he knew it to be true. The moment Martha Finn told Davis she suspected Justin was taking drugs, he began to accept it. Mothers know things about their sons. Justin wasn’t taking drugs, but there was something else profoundly wrong with him.
From the day Justin knocked on his door, he and the boy had been connected by a priori truths, not facts in evidence. It was true that Sam Coyne had killed Davis’s daughter. It also must be true that Coyne had killed others, in numbers impossible to figure. For the past year he and Justin had kept these awful truths between them, and their inability to share them with the world had felt like a penance to Davis. For being a selfish person. A bad husband and a mediocre father. Unmasking AK’s killer had once been something like his religion, but he became resigned to life as a monk, with silence in service of the truth being its own reward. The final secret he shared with Anna Kat would be the face and the name of her killer.