"You metaphysical devil."
Pearl's position as she slept had caused her mouth to fall open and her tongue to loll out the left side of it. I looked at her.
"Yeah," I said. "That's about where I am.
Chapter 12
IN THE MORNING it was still not raining, and still on the verge of it, when Pearl and I drove out to Dowling to visit Jared Clark's parents. They lived on some rolling green acreage, in a large, white house with a three-car garage.
It was cool with the foreboding rain. I left Pearl in the car with the windows partly open and walked to the front door and rang the bell. The woman who answered was only a few soft pounds short of heavy, with a kind of blank, blond prettiness that had probably gotten her cheerleading work in high school.
"Mrs. Clark?" I said.
"Yes."
"I'm Spenser."
"Oh, yes. Thank you. Please come in."
She was wearing a bright orange top and white pants and on her feet an attractive pair of flip-flops with orange straps to match her top, and in the center of each strap an ornamental plastic flower. I followed her into the enormous living room. It had the spontaneity of a furniture showroom, and gleamed with the spotless silence of for-company-only. Her husband was standing by the fireplace at the far end. He went perfectly with the room. He had on a pink polo shirt with a discreet alligator on the chest, pleated olive Dockers, and dark leather sandals. He was a nice-looking guy with sandy hair. His face had the same softness his wife's did. He walked to me and put out his hand.
"Ron Clark," he said.
We sat. I had the sense that my butt may have been the first one ever to press against the barrel-backed red armchair I was on.
I declined coffee, fearing I might spill some. Ron and his wife'sat together across from me on a couch. They decided against coffee, too.
"How can we help," Ron said.
Here it was. I didn't like it, but at least it was quick. We didn't have to waste time talking about how rainy the summer had been.
"Do you believe he's guilty?" I said.
Mrs. Clark began to cry. Her husband put his hand on her thigh and patted it.
"He's our only child," Ron said.
I waited. Mrs. Clark continued to cry quietly, her head down, staring at her husband's hand on her thigh.
"Since he was born," she said quietly, "he had this distance about him."
The crying seemed to be tears only. Her voice was clear. Her husband nodded.
"It was like he was always thinking about something else," she said.
"Maybe if we'd had other children," her husband said. "Maybe if he'd had a brother. . ."
"He was never really a bad boy," his mother said. "His grades were good. He was never in trouble. He was just never with us, exactly."
We sat silently in the lifeless, perfect room.
After a while I said, "Do you believe that he's guilty?"
Still crying, without looking up, Mrs. Clark nodded yes. I looked at Ron Clark.
"My God," Clark said, "he confessed."
"Why do you suppose he did it?" I said.
Mrs. Clark's head was still down. She continued to cry quietly.
"We've asked each other a thousand times," she said.
"Sometimes," Clark said, "sometimes I think that maybe he did it for no reason. He did it because he wanted to."
"What does he say?" I asked.
"He doesn't," Clark said. "He won't talk about it."
"Is he mad at you?" I said.
"He doesn't seem to be," Clark said. "You think, Dot?"
"He doesn't seem to feel very much of anything," she said softly.
"His grandmother thinks he's innocent," I said.
"My mother-in-law," Clark said, "has a lot of money. It makes her think anything she wants to believe is right."
"Mrs. Clark?" I said.
"Often wrong but never uncertain, my father used to say."
"Was she close to Jared?"
"She thought so," Ron said.
"Did Jared like her?" I said.
"Hard to tell with Jared," Dot said.
"She wouldn't even know," Ron said. "She's so damned self-absorbed. She thinks he's innocent because he's her grandchild, and her grandchild can't be guilty of anything."
Dot Clark looked up at me. Crying had not helped her makeup any.
"Ron is quite hard on my mother," she said. "I know she cares for Jared."
"Were he and Wendell Grant close?" I said.
"I guess so," she said. "I didn't really know a lot about Jared's friends."
I looked at Ron. He shrugged.
"If he did do the shooting," I said, "do you know where he might have gotten the guns?"
They both shook their heads. It was a question every cop they'd talked to had asked.
"Do you wish me to prove him innocent?" I said.
They stared at me. Then at each other.
"We do not wish to have our hopes raised," Ron said carefully. "We are struggling to accept what is."
"Do you have any idea?" Dot said. "How could you possibly? We've lived here in this town for almost twenty years. We moved here to be part of this. To be part of a small town, and have friends, and know everybody and have everybody know us and . . ." She was looking straight at me and rolling her hands as she spoke, as if she were mixing bread dough.
"They all know us now," Ron said.
Dot finished her sentence as if he hadn't spoken.
". . . feel, like, the rhythm of community life. To belong to something."
"And now?" I said.
Ron shook his head slowly.
"How could you possibly prove him innocent?" Dot said.
"I don't know," I said. "May I look at his room?"
Chapter 13
"MAY WE LEAVE YOU," Dot Said. "We don't really like to come in here."
"Sure," I said. "I'll just sort of look around and think a little."
"Ronny and I will be downstairs," she said, and went.
I sat on the edge of the kid's bed. The room was blue and as soulless as the living room. The walls were darker blue, the ceiling a lighter shade. The bed was perfectly made with a brand-new blue quilt, with matching designer pillows stacked against the headboard. There was a bureau against the far wall, and a closet. A television sat on top of the bureau. There were no pictures on the walls. I opened the drawer in the bedside table. It was empty and clean. The drapes on the big window beside the bed were a darker blue than the walls. I looked under the bed. Nothing. Not even dust. I felt around under the mattress. Nothing. I stood and went to the closet. It was empty. I opened the bureau drawers. They were empty and lined with clean white paper. I went back and sat down on the kid's bed again.
As soon as he was gone they had cleaned out his room. It was as if they had emptied the room of him. Tried to render it pre-Jared, as if they could return life to the time when they had moved here and it was mostly possibility. There was no vestige of him. There had been no pictures in the living room. None of the cheap garish cardboard-framed school photographs that every parent had of every kid. No team photographs. No musical instruments. No CDs. It was as if he'd never existed, as if he'd never lain on this bed in the darkness and thought about sex or eternity or the American League. As if there had been no imaginary passions, no fantasized moments of derring-do, no terrifying moments of imagination when life's limitations nearly overwhelmed him. No graphic sexual conquests of women older than himself.
The room was empty and neutral and impenetrable. The only story it told me was that it had no story to tell. I got up and very carefully smoothed out the quilt where I had sat. I looked out the window. From here, I could see my parked car. I couldn't see clearly from here, but Pearl might have been sitting in the driver's seat. It was darker now than it had been, and rain began to spat disinterestedly against the window. I wondered if Jared had had a dog. I looked at the neat, color-coordinated, blank room upstairs in the neat, color-coordinated, blank house.
No. He didn't have a dog.