Lorna spoke up for the first time. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know.” Dustin paused while his receptionist came in with a pitcher of iced tea and three glasses. The room fell very silent while she poured and distributed the drinks.
“Anything else?” she asked Dustin.
“Not right now, thanks,” he told her. After she closed the door behind her, he said to Lorna, “Well, you know that Fritz is gay, right? I mean, everyone in Callen knows that, right?”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Not that I care,” Dustin was quick to assure her. “ ‘Course, back then, when we were kids, none of us had any idea. But everyone knows how his mother bullied him and Mike. It never seemed to affect Mike so much, he was always such a man’s man, you know? Aggressive, cocky. Big football star, wrestler. Bigger personality. He played in college, you know that? Over at West Chester. Then he got hurt-back injury? Shoulder? Don’t remember. Anyway, he couldn’t play anymore and he dropped out, married Sarah. Guess the rest is history, right?”
“But you think he wasn’t there that night at your house?” T.J. tried to steer the conversation back on course.
“I think I would remember if he had been, but I just don’t. Sorry.”
“The police report says that after you dropped Jason off at home, you saw him go into the house, heard his mother yelling at him.”
“I guess, if that’s what it says.” Dustin picked up his glass and drank.
“Well, did you see him go into the house?” T.J. pressed.
“I must have. Otherwise, why would I say…?” Dustin took another drink, then set the glass on the desk. “All right, I saw him go up to the house. I saw him go around to the porch as I was pulling away. That’s all I really saw.”
“The statement you gave to the police says otherwise,” T.J. reminded him.
“I don’t remember exactly what I told the police.” His face began to flush.
“Want me to remind you?”
Dustin shook his head. “No. I guess I must have exaggerated a little bit, maybe said I saw more than I did.”
“Why would you do that?” Lorna asked.
“I don’t know. I guess…” He shrugged. “I guess because it made me look important, you know? Like I was there or something. I can’t explain it now. I was just a kid then. I never thought it would matter much.”
He paused, then asked, “Does it matter much?”
“Only to make me wonder if you lied about anything else,” T.J. told him.
“No, I swear. Everything else is the truth.” Dustin looked from Lorna to T.J.
“Did it ever occur to you to go back to the police and change your statement?” Lorna asked.
“A couple of times I thought about it, but it didn’t seem to matter. Jason never came back. After awhile people stopped talking about it. We all just figured he’d run away, maybe the sister, too.” Dustin shrugged. “That’s what I woulda done, if I’d had a mother like that. I’d have run away and never looked back.”
“So what do you think?” Lorna said when they were back in the car, T.J. driving.
“I think Dustin reminds me of all the worst used-car salesmen I’ve ever known.”
Lorna nodded. “It’s the hair. Not a good look.”
T.J. laughed and drove out of the parking lot and stopped at the light.
“It wasn’t a complete waste of time, though. We came away with two possible suspects,” he said.
“We did?” She frowned. “What suspects?”
“The Keeler boys.”
“How do you figure?”
“Let’s start with Mike. He’s not telling the truth about where he was the night Jason disappeared. We’ve had three versions now, and two of them say he wasn’t out with the other guys. But he tells the story as if he were. Why? Maybe because he doesn’t want us to know where he really was that night.”
“Maybe Fritz and Dustin just don’t remember it clearly. It was a long time ago, and they were drinking.”
“They seem to remember the other details well enough. And I’m not sure I understand where Mike was when Melinda went missing. He says he was at Matt’s the whole time, but no one’s backing him up.”
“Again, it was a long time ago.”
“True, but that night turned out to be an event. Something important happened. A child disappeared, they all took part in the search. You remember things like that. My grandmother has days when she can’t remember the name of her next-door neighbor, but she can tell you in detail where she was and what she was doing the day President Kennedy was shot. People tend to remember the dramatic times, Lorna. Their friend’s younger sister disappearing was such a moment.”
“What about Fritz?”
“Well, let’s take a look at him. According to Dustin, everyone in Callen knows he’s gay-except you, apparently-and we’ve confirmed that at least three of the nine missing boys were.”
“That’s not much to go on.”
“Agreed. But it’s more than we’ve got on anyone else. Besides, he was around the night Jason disappeared.”
“He was home by then.”
“Was he? We have only his word for that. Remember, his mother was away that night. Jason had been home for a while, first arguing, then talking with his mother, before he went out that door into the yard. Billie’s already told us that. Fritz would’ve had plenty of time to ride his bike out to the Eagans’.”
“But why would he have done that? What would his motive have been?”
“I guess we’ll have to ask Fritz. In the meantime, let’s have Mitch run a trace, find out where Fritz has been going a couple of days every month over the past few years, and see if any bodies have popped up in his path.”
“I don’t see it.” She shook her head. “Fritz is just too gentle a soul, T.J. I don’t think he has an aggressive bone in his body.”
“That’s what some people said about John Wayne Gacy. And Ted Bundy.” He took his phone from his pocket and speed-dialed Mitch’s number. “If I learned one thing all those years I was with the Bureau, it’s that there’s no way of telling what goes on inside the head of another human being. The person who looks craziest might be harmless, and the person you least suspect might be a monster who is capable of things you can’t even begin to imagine.”
“A monster?” she said softly. “Where did that come from?”
He watched the light change, then made a left onto the two-lane road that would take them back to Callen.
“T.J.?” She reached over and touched his arm. “Where did the monster thing come from?”