"Anyway," he said, now returning his gaze to me. "Let me know what you decide about Keith." He drew a card from his jacket pocket. "Meredith has my number at school," he said as he handed me the card, "but this is my private number. Call it anytime."
I thanked him, and after that Rodenberry walked across the room to join his wife beside a buffet table. Once there, he placed his arm on his wife's shoulder. She quickly stepped away, as if repulsed by his touch, so that Rodenberry's arm immediately fell free and dangled limply at his side.
"I think the Rodenberry's have problems," I said to Meredith.
She watched as Rodenberry poured himself a drink and stood alone beside the window, where Dr. Mays joined him a few minutes later.
"Dr. Mays didn't remember that Lenny Bruce remark," I said.
Meredith continued to stare straight ahead, which was odd for her, I realized, since her tendency was always to glance toward me when I spoke.
"The one about the plateglass window," I added.
Her eyes shot over to me. "What?"
"You didn't hear it from Dr. Mays," I repeated.
Meredith glanced back into the adjoining room. "Well, I heard it from somebody," she said absently.
"Maybe from Rodenberry," I suggested. "Dr. Mays says he's very funny."
"Yes, he is," Meredith said. Her eyes glittered briefly, then dimmed, as if a shadowy thought had skirted through her mind. "He'll be good with Keith" was all she said.
We left the party a couple of hours later, driving more or less silently back to our house. The light was on in Keith's room, but we didn't go up or call him or make any effort to find out if he was really there. Such surveillance would only have struck him as yet more proof that I thought him a criminal, and his mood had become far too volatile to incite any such added resentment.
And so we simply watched television for an hour, then went to bed. Meredith tried to read for a while, but before too long she slipped the book onto the floor beside the bed, then twisted away from me and promptly fell asleep.
But I couldn't sleep. I thought about Keith and Meredith, of course, but increasingly my thoughts returned me to my first family—Warren's story of the insurance man with the odd questions, the strange remark my father had made, his bitter assertion that I had no idea about my mother.
Could that be true? I wondered. Could it be true that I had never known my mother? Or my father? That Warren, for all our growing up together, remained essentially an enigma?
I got up, walked to the window, and peered out into the tangled, night-bound woods. In my mind, I saw the car that had brought Keith home that night, its phantom driver behind the wheel, a figure who suddenly seemed to me no less mysterious than my son, my wife, my father and mother and brother, mere shadows, dark and indefinable.
"Eric?"
It was Meredith's voice.
I turned toward the bed but couldn't see her there.
"Something wrong?"
"No, nothing," I told her, grateful that I hadn't turned on the light, since, had she seen me, she would have known it was a lie.
SIXTEEN
Leo Brock called me at the shop at eleven the next morning. "Quick question," he said. "Does Keith smoke?"
He heard my answer in the strain of a pause.
"Okay," he said, "What brand does he smoke?"
I saw the face of the pack as Keith snatched it from his shirt pocket. "Marlboro," I said.
Leo drew in a long breath. "And he told police that he never left the house, isn't that right?"
"Yes."
"For any reason."
"He said he never left the house," I told him. "What's happening, Leo?"
"My source tells me that the cops found four cigarette butts outside the Giordanos' house," Leo said. "Marlboro."
"Is that so bad?" I asked. "I mean, so what if Keith went out for a smoke?"
"They were at the side of the house," Leo added. "Just beneath Amy's bedroom window."
"Jesus," I breathed.
In my mind I saw Keith at the window, peering through the curtains of Amy's window, watching as she slept, her long dark hair splayed out across her pillow. Had he watched her undress, too? I wondered. And while doing that ... done what? Had he gone to the water tower in search of similar stimulation? Before that moment, I would probably have avoided such questions, but something in my mind had hardened, taken on the shape of a pick or a spade, prepared to dig.
"So they think he was watching her," I said.
"We can't be sure what they're thinking."
"Oh come on, Leo, why would his cigarettes be there, at her window?"
"Not his," Leo cautioned. "Just the brand he smokes."
"Don't talk to me like a lawyer, Leo," I said. "This is bad and you know it."
"It doesn't help things," Leo admitted.
"They're going to arrest him, aren't they?"
"Not yet," Leo said.
"Why not?" I asked. "We both know they think he did it."
"First of all, no one knows what was done," Leo reminded me. "Remember that, Eric. Whatever the police may be thinking, they don't know anything. And there's something else to keep in mind. Keith didn't have a car. So how could he have taken Amy from her house?"
I made no argument to this, but I felt the water around me rise slightly.
"Eric?"
"Yes."
"You have to have faith."
I said nothing.
"And I don't mean that in a religious way," Leo added. "You have to have faith in Keith."
"Of course," I said quietly.
There was a pause, then Leo said, "One final ... difficulty."
I didn't bother to ask what it was, but only because I knew Leo was about to tell me.
"Keith ordered a pizza for dinner that night," Leo said. "The pizza guy delivered it at just after eight. He said that when he arrived, he didn't see Amy, but Keith was there, and he was on the phone."
"The phone?"
"Did he call you that night?"
"Yes."
"When did he call?"
"Just before ten."
"Not before?"
"No."
"You're sure about that," Leo said. "You're sure that Keith only called you once that night."
"Only once," I said. "At around ten."
"And that's when he told you he'd be late and that he wouldn't need a ride, correct?"
"Yes."
"Because he had a ride?"
"No," I said. "He said that he could get a ride."
"But not that he had one?"
"No, not that he had one."
"Okay," Leo said.
"So who was he on the phone with?" I asked. "When the pizza guy was there."
"I'm sure the police have the number," Leo said. "So it won't be long before they tell us."
We talked a few minutes longer, Leo doing what he could to put the best light on things. Still, for all his effort, I could sense nothing but a spiraling down, a room closing in, slowly dwindling routes of escape.
"What happens," I asked finally, "if they never find Amy?"
"Well, it's awfully hard to convict when there's no body," Leo answered.
"I wasn't thinking of that," I told him. "I mean, Keith would have to live with it, wouldn't he? The suspicion that he killed her."
"Yes, he would," Leo answered. "And I admit, cases like that, without any definite resolution, they can be painfid to all concerned."
"Corrosive," I said softly, almost to myself.
"Corrosive, yes," Leo said. "It's hard, when you can't get to the bottom of something."
I had never known how true that was before that moment, how little whiffs of doubt could darken and grow menacing, urge you forward relentlessly, fix you in a need to find out what really happened. "Otherwise your whole life is an unsolved mystery," I said.