"What makes you think he didn't tell the truth?"
"Just the look in his eyes," I said. "It was the same one he had when he told the cops he came home alone." I shrugged. "Anyway, the water tower, it's sort of a meeting place ... for men and ... prostitutes—or at least I think they're prostitutes. She was putting something in her bag. My guess is it was money."
Meredith looked dazed.
"I went there," I said. "To the water tower. Leo brought it up, and then the way Keith looked when he said he'd never been there, I just got curious."
"And you saw all this?" Meredith asked. "These men and—"
"Yes," I answered. "I don't know why Keith goes there. I mean, if he does. Maybe he just watches. Maybe that's his ... outlet."
For a moment. Meredith seemed unable to deal with the tawdriness of what I'd just told her. "Okay, so there's this place and people go there. But why are you so quick to believe that Keith goes there ... to watch ... or for any other reason?"
I had no answer, and she saw that I had no answer. "Oh, Eric," she said exhaustedly. "What's happening to us?"
Meredith had put on her tightly controlled, professorial face by the time Peak and Kraus arrived. They brushed past the limbs of the maple and strode down the walkway at a leisurely pace, chatting to each other like two men on their way to the local tavern.
I met them at the door, and the instant I opened it, I noticed that their easy manner changed to one of cool professionalism. Now they stood erect, with somber faces, hands folded in front of them.
"Sorry to trouble you again, Mr. Moore," Peak said.
Kraus nodded to me, but said nothing.
"How do we do this?" I asked. "I've never had my house searched."
"We have a warrant for the house and grounds," Peak explained. "We'll try not to disturb anything unnecessarily."
"So I just let you in, is that it?"
"Yes."
I stepped back, swung the door open, and let them pass into the living room where Meredith stood, her body completely rigid, eyes not so much hostile as wary.
"Keith isn't home," she said. "We haven't told him about this."
"We won't be long," Peak said with a weak smile.
"Where do you want to start?" I asked.
"Keith's room," Peak said.
I nodded toward the stairs. "Second door on your left."
Meredith and I walked into the kitchen while Peak and Kraus searched Keith's room. Meredith made a pot of coffee, and we sat at the table and drank it silently. For that brief interval, we merely waited, held in suspension, staring at each other briefly, then drawing our gazes away. We might have been figures in a pantomime of a couple who'd been together too long, knew each other too well, and so had fallen into a final muteness.
Over the next few minutes, other officers arrived, all of them in uniform.
From our place in the kitchen, we watched as they poked about the yard, as well as the conservation forest that stretched for several acres behind our house. Two hours passed before Peak and Kraus came back down the stairs. Two young uniformed officers trailed behind them, carrying sealed bags stenciled in black letters: EVIDENCE.
I had no idea what the bags contained until Peak handed me a slip of paper on the way out. "That's the inventory of what we took from Keith's room," he said. "And of course we'll bring back anything that has no evidentiary value."
Evidentiary value, I thought. Evidence against Keith.
I glanced up the stairs and saw a uniformed officer coming down, carrying my son's computer.
"The computer in Keith's room," Peak said. "Is that the only one in the house?"
"No," I said.
"I'm afraid we'll have to look at them all," Peak said.
"There's one down the hall, in my office," Meredith said. "And I have a computer at college. Do you want to seize that, too?"
"Nothing is being seized, Mrs. Moore," Peak answered mildly. "But to answer your question, no, we have no need to take your computer." He paused, then added significantly, "At least, for now."
The police left a few minutes later, just as Keith was coming down the drive on his bike. He pulled over to the side, got off the bike, and watched the cars go by.
"What did the cops want this time?" he asked as he came into the house.
"They searched your room," I told him. "They took a few things." I handed him the inventory.
He scanned the list with surprising lack of interest until suddenly his eyes widened. "My computer?" he cried. "They have no right—"
"Yes, they do," I interrupted. "They can take anything they want."
He looked at the inventory again, but now with a sense of helplessness. "My computer," he muttered. He slapped the paper against the side of his leg. "Shit."
Meredith had been standing silently a few feet away, observing Keith no less intently than I was. Now, she stepped forward. "Keith, it's going to be okay." Her tone of sympathy surprised me, as if she somehow understood his fear, knew what it was like to be threatened with exposure. "It really is."
Now it seemed up to me to state the hard facts of the case. "Keith?" I asked, "is there anything on that computer? Anything ... bad?"
He looked at me sourly. "No."
"Have you been in touch with Amy?"
"In touch?"
"E-mail."
"No," Keith said.
"Because if you have, they'll find that out," I warned.
He laughed almost derisively. "They would already know that, Dad," he scoffed. "They took the computer from Mr. Giordano's house, remember?"
I realized that Keith could only have known that the police had taken a computer from Amy's house if he'd actually been following news reports of the investigation. That the police had taken the Giordanos' computer had been mentioned on the evening news the night of her disappearance, and appeared only once in print, a brief notation in the local paper. From the beginning, he'd feigned indifference, even boredom, with the police. But clearly he had been keeping an eye on what they were doing.
"I asked you a question," I said sharply.
"That's all you ever do," Keith shot back. "Ask me questions." His eyes glittered angrily. "Why don't you just get to the one question you really want to ask. Go ahead, Dad. Ask me."
My lips jerked into an angry frown. "Don't start that, Keith."
"Ask the question," Keith repeated insistently, offering it as a challenge. "We all know what it is." He laughed bitterly. "All right, I'll ask it." He cocked his head to the right, and switched to a low, exaggeratedly masculine, voice. "So, Keith, did you kidnap Amy Giordano?"
"Stop it," I said.
He continued in the same mock fatherly tone. "Did you take her someplace and fuck her?"
"That's enough," I said. "Go to your room."
He didn't move, save for his fingers, which instantly crushed the inventory "No, Dad, not until I ask the last question."
"Keith..."
He cocked his head back and pretended to suck on an imaginary pipe. "So, my boy, did you kill Amy Giordano?"
"Shut up!" I shouted.
He stared at me brokenly, his tone now soft, almost mournful. "You believed it from the very first, Dad." With that, he turned away and walked slowly up the stairs.
I looked at Meredith, noticed that her eyes were glistening. "Is he right, Eric?" she asked. "Did you believe it from the beginning?"
"No, I didn't," I told her. "Why would I?"
She turned my question over in her mind, working it silently until she found the answer. "Maybe because you don't like him," she whispered. "Oh, I know you love him. But maybe you don't like him. It's what people do in families, isn't it? They love people they don't like."
I heard footsteps on the stairs, then the front door closed loudly.