Warren nodded heavily. "Okay."
"The police checked on when the pictures were downloaded," I said though I had no real proof of this. To this bluff, I added another. "You can do that, you know. You can find out." I watched Warren for any sign that he might come clean. "The exact dates. Literally, to the minute."
Warren shifted uneasily in his chair, but otherwise gave no hint that he could see where I was going with all this, how relentlessly I was closing in.
"They were all downloaded a year ago, Warren," I said. I could not be sure of this, but in my dark world, a lie designed to expose other, darker lies seemed like a ray of light. "Last September." I looked at him pointedly. "You remember where you were last September?"
Warren nodded.
"You were staying in Keith's room," I told him. "You were using Keith's computer. No one else was using it."
Warren lowered the beer to his lap, cradling it between his large flabby thighs. "Yeah," he said softly.
I leaned back in the chair and waited.
"Yeah, okay," Warren said.
Again, I waited, but Warren simply took another sip of beer, then glanced over at me silently.
"Warren," I said pointedly. "Those pictures are yours."
One fat leg began to rock tensely.
"Little girls," I said. "Naked little girls."
The steady rock grew more intense and agitated.
"And then I learned that some people at the school have complained about you," I said. "In the past, I mean. Complained about you watching the kids. Somebody reported that on the police hotline."
"I just look out my window, that's all," he said. The leg rocked violently for a few more seconds then stopped abruptly. "I wouldn't hurt a little girl." He looked lost, but more than that, inwardly disheveled, a crumpled soul, but for all I knew this was no more than a ruse.
"Then why do you watch them, Warren?" I demanded. "And why did you download those pictures?"
Warren shrugged. "They were pretty, the pictures."
A wave of exasperation swept over me. "They were little girls, for Christ's sake!" I cried. "Eight years old. And they were naked!"
"They didn't have to be naked," Warren said weakly, his voice little more than a whine.
"What are you talking about?" I barked. "They were naked, Warren."
"But they didn't have to be, that's what I'm saying." He looked at me like a small child desperately trying to explain himself. "I mean, I don't ... need them to be naked."
"Need?" I glared at him. "What exactly do you need, Warren?"
"I just like to ... look at them," he whimpered.
"Little girls?" I fired at him. "You need to look at little girls?" I bolted forward, my eyes like lasers. "Warren, did you know those pictures were on Keith's computer?"
He shook his head violently. "I didn't. I swear I didn't. I tried to—"
"Erase them, yes, I know." I interrupted. "The cops know it, too."
"I can't help it, Eric."
"Can't help what?"
"You know, looking ... at..." He shook his head. "It's sick. I know it's sick, but I can't help it." He began to cry. "They're just so ... adorable."
Adorable.
The word leaped in me like a flame. "Adorable," I repeated, all but shaking with the vision my mind instantly created, Warren coming out of Jenny's room that final morning, his face wreathed in what I had taken for exhaustion, but now saw as a scalding shame. "You always said that about"—I saw my sister as she lay in her bed later that same afternoon, her eyes darting about frantically. She'd seemed desperate to tell me something, her lips fluttering in my ear, until suddenly they'd stopped and I'd glanced back toward the door and seen Warren standing there, head bowed, his hands deep in his pockets—"about Jenny."
He saw it in my eyes, the searing accusation that had suddenly seized me.
"Eric," he whispered. He seemed to come out of his stupor, all the day's accumulated drink abruptly draining from him. It was as if he'd been dipped in icy water, then jerked out of it to face a reality colder still. "You think...?"
I wanted to howl no! no!, deny in the most passionate and conclusive terms that I had the slightest suspicion that he had ever harmed Jenny, that even his most desperate urge would have stopped at her bed, her helplessness, that as she lay dying, pale and wracked with suffering, he could not possibly have found her ... adorable.
But the words wouldn't come, and so I only faced him silently.
He stared at me a moment in frozen disbelief. Then he shook his head wearily and pointed to the door. "I'm done with you, Eric," he said. His wet eyes went dry as a desert waste. "I'm done with everything." He pointed to the door. "Go," he said, "just go."
I knew nothing else to do. And so I rose, walked silently out of the room and back to my car. As I pulled out, I saw the light flash upstairs in Warren's bachelor lair and imagined him there alone, sunk in this new despair, wifeless, childless, motherless, fatherless, and now without a brother, too.
I drove back home in a kind of daze, Meredith, Warren, Keith—all of them swirling around in my head like bits of paper in foaming water. I tried to position myself somehow, get a grip on what I knew and didn't know, the dreadful suspicions I could neither avoid nor address, since they were made of smoke and fog.
I pulled in the driveway a few minutes later, got out of the car, swept past the branches of the Japanese maple and headed on down the walkway to the front door.
Through the window, I saw Meredith clutching the phone. She seemed very nearly frantic, her eyes wide in an unmistakable look of alarm. I thought of the other time I'd come upon her abruptly, the way she'd blurted, "Talk to you later," and quickly snapped her cell phone shut and sunk it deep into the pocket of her robe. I had caught her again, I supposed, and, with that thought, fully expected her to hang up immediately when she heard me open the door.
But when I opened the door, she rushed over to me, the phone trembling in her hand. "It's—Warren," she said. "He's drunk and"—she thrust the phone toward me almost violently—"Here," she blurted. "He's yours."
I took the phone. "Warren?"
There was no answer, but I could hear him breathing rapidly, like someone who'd just completed a long exhausting run.
"Warren?" I said again.
Silence.
"Warren," I snapped. "Either talk to me or get the fuck off the phone."
The silence continued briefly, then I heard him draw in a long slow breath.
"Bro," he said softly, "your troubles are over."
Then I heard the blast.
TWENTY-FOUR
The ambulance and police had already arrived by the time I got to Wirren's house. The whole neighborhood strobed with flashing lights, and a yellow tape had been stretched across the driveway and along the borders of the yard.
I had called 911 immediately, though even at that moment, I wasn't sure exactly what Warren had done. He'd been drunk, after all, and on such occasions in the past, he'd not been above making some melodramatic gesture in order to win me back. Once, as a boy, he'd taken a plunge off a high embankment after I'd yelled at him. He'd pulled similar stunts after my father had laced into him for one reason or another. It was a pitiful attempt to regain whatever he thought he'd lost in our affection, and it had never worked. Warren had never been one to learn from experience, however, and even as I watched the flashing lights that surrounded his house, I half expected to see him stagger out into the yard, arms spread in greeting, all bleary good cheer. Hey, Bro.
But as I closed in on the house, I knew that this time, it was different. The front door was wide open, and Peak stood, backlit by the light of the foyer, scribbling in a small notebook.