Guilty (3 page)

I was stupid for ever believing him.

Unless he wasn't lying. Unless he was telling the truth.

Is that possible?

Or am I being stupid again?

Five

FINN

I
was a kid when my mother died, but I remember it as if it were yesterday.

My dad took me to the club that night. He said he wanted to give my mom a break. They had been arguing a lot. My dad said it was because my mom was tired.

I used to like going to Dad's club. I still do. I like the noise and the action—the music, the musicians, the singers, all the people, the cocktail waitresses, the bartenders. Dad's club isn't one of those massive places with crazy lights and recorded music. He gets real bands in. Blues bands, rock bands, jazz bands, fusion, salsa, world—you name it.

At the end of the night, he always spends an hour in his office doing what he calls the receipts. That means checking how much money the club brought in that night.

His office is in the basement of the club. It's small and cramped and stuffy. It has one small window up high in the wall that he can open to get some fresh air. The window opens onto the alley, and even though it's small, it has bars over it so no one can break in. Sometimes when I was little, I'd sit on the couch in Dad's office and watch him work. But usually I'd play outside in the hall. The hall is long and wide with a smooth floor. It was perfect for riding my trike up and down. It was even better for my remote-control cars.

That night I had my remote-control cars with me. They didn't run very well on the carpets at home, and my mom wouldn't let me play with them on the hardwood floors in the rooms that had no carpets. She was afraid they would scratch the wood. But Dad let me play with them at the club. I had just figured out how to operate two cars at the same time. It wasn't easy, but I could do it. So I had car races. I raced the two cars up and down, up and down. Usually the race ended with one of the cars crashing. Or both of them.

I remember my dad closing the door to his office. He said he had to make an important phone call. It turned out he was calling Mom.

I don't know how long he was in there talking to her. I just know he was there. When he finally came out, he was smiling.

“Your mother says she's feeling a little better,” he said. “She had a quiet evening.”

He took me upstairs. The club's kitchen was closed, but my dad was hungry. He went into one of the big fridges and took out some ham. He found some bread and mustard. He made us each a ham sandwich with cheese and lettuce. He cut mine into four triangles. We sat on stools at one of the steel counters and ate. Then my dad found some chocolate cake. We each ate a big slice. Finally we headed home.

“Be quiet,” my dad said when he unlocked the front door. He frowned when we got inside, and he turned to punch in his code in the brand-new security system he'd had installed so that my mother would feel safe while he was at the club late. “Your mother is probably sleeping. Tiptoe up the stairs. I mean it, Finn. I'll be up in a minute.”

I did as my dad said. I tiptoed all the way up the stairs. I started to creep past my parents' room, careful not to wake Mom.

Started to.

Then I stopped.

And screamed.

But I didn't wake my mother. I could have screamed all night and never wakened her. She was lying on the floor. There was red stuff all around her head.

Blood.

I screamed and screamed and screamed. I screamed so much that my father had to hold me tightly to make me stop. I wouldn't let him let me go, not even when he had to go to the police station. I went with him. They got some woman to try to pry me off him. I screamed even louder. But I must have tired myself out, because the next thing I knew, I was sitting beside the woman out in a hallway, waiting for the police to finish talking to my dad.

And now here I am ten years later, sitting in what feels like the exact same place. Sitting and waiting for the cops to finish talking to my dad.

Six

LILA

I
don't trust newspapers. They don't always get a story right the first time. So I wait for the two detectives to call and tell me what really happened.

But they don't call.

That's when I decide to go to the police station to talk to them. The sergeant at the desk sends me upstairs, where he says the detectives are. But when I get up there, someone else tells me that they're busy. He says I can wait if I want and shows me where I can sit.

The waiting area is just a row of chairs out in the hall. One other person is sitting there. He looks about my age. His face is pale. He looks tired. But he notices me, even though I sit four chairs away from him. He sort of nods at me. I nod back. Then I look away. I don't feel like talking to anyone.

“Is everything okay?” the guy asks after a few minutes.

I turn my head to see who he's talking to. He's looking at me.

“Is everything okay?” he says again. “I mean, I hope you're not here for anything serious.”

“My father died,” I say.

That shuts him up. But not for long.

“I saw someone get killed,” he says. When I don't say anything, he says, “Are you sure you're okay?”

I want to tell him to leave me alone. Instead, I hear myself say, “How did it happen? The person you saw get killed.”

“People,” he says, correcting me. “It was people who got killed. Two of them. They were shot.”

I know right then that he doesn't know the people. Either that or they don't mean anything to him. He isn't all rattled by seeing them get shot. He doesn't look like he's in shock or that he's been crying. They're just two people.

“That must have been awful,” I say.

“My dad's pretty broken up,” the guy says. “His wife was one of the victims.”

His wife? That's a strange way to put it.

“She wasn't your mother?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“She was my stepmother. My mother died a long time ago.”

“I'm sorry.” I really am.

He looks into my eyes.

“The man who was shot—he killed my mom,” he says. “My real mom, I mean. Now he's dead. And you know what? I'm glad. And I'm glad I saw it happen.”

I don't know what to say. Some people appear in the doorway to the detectives' room. It's a man and the same two detectives who told me that my father is dead. I stare at the man. He looks at the guy sitting near me. The two detectives look at me. The woman detective is frowning.

“Thank you for coming in,” she says in a loud voice. “I'm sure you want to get your son back home.”

The man nods. He looks a lot more upset than his son. Other than that, he looks exactly like he did in the newspaper clippings I dug up in the library a few years ago. He's Robert Newsome. He is tall and tanned and well-dressed. He has thick black hair and dark-blue eyes. He looks like the tv version of a grieving husband. He nods to his son, who stands up immediately. They walk to the elevator together. The woman detective watches them step into the elevator before she comes over to me.

“What can I do for you, Lila?” she asks.

“You can tell me what they said,” I say. I mean Mr. Newsome and the witness, whom I now know is Mr. Newsome's son.

She shakes her head.

“I can't do that. We don't discuss ongoing investigations.”

“He was my father.”

“I know. And I'm sorry.”

“What about the first time?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“What about the first time, when my father went to prison? Can you tell me about that?”

“Didn't your father tell you?”

“I want to know what the police know.”

The woman detective glances over her shoulder at her partner. He shrugs, like he doesn't care anything about me or my father. Maybe he's thinking my father got what he deserved. Maybe he thinks I'm just like my father.

“Okay,” the woman detective says finally. “Come and sit down. Let me see what I can find out.”

She leads me to a small room with a table and two chairs in it and tells me to sit down. I'm guessing that the room is used for questioning people. A few minutes pass. She comes back with a can of pop for me and a file folder.

“I thought you might be thirsty,” she says. She sits down at the table and opens the file folder. “Okay, let's see what we have here.”

I open the can of pop because she's been nice enough to get it for me. I force myself to take some sips just to be polite. But mostly I listen to her lay out the facts of my father's arrest. I feel myself go numb all over. The case against him was solid. Really solid. And that makes me wonder: why, after all these years, did he go back to Mr. Newsome's house?

Seven

FINN

E
verything is a mess that whole day. My dad is completely shell-shocked. He talks to the police. He talks to a lawyer. He talks to Tracie's mom, who is her only living relative. Her mom is in a nursing home. She has Alzheimer's. But my dad calls her anyway. Then he starts in on the funeral arrangements.

“What kind of flowers do you think Tracie would like?” he asks me, as if she is going to be able to smell them and hold them.

“I don't know, Dad.”

“She hates lilies.” He's talking like she's still alive. “She likes blue. What kind of flowers are blue?” He looks at me again and waits for me to answer. I don't know anything about flowers.

“Why don't you ask the people at the funeral home?” I say.

He doesn't answer. Instead he says, “She needs clothes.”

“What are you talking about, Dad?”

“I have to pick out something nice for her to wear. But I don't know what.”

I get up. I take him by the arm. I say, “Give me the keys to the car, Dad.”

He looks at me like I'm talking to him in a language that he doesn't understand.

“We're going to a funeral home,” I say. “We'll talk to someone. They can help you make some decisions.” He looks so lost. I shove aside my feelings for Tracie and concentrate on my dad and
his
feelings.

“They should have told you, Dad,” I say. “They should have asked you to go there and say something.”

He looks more lost than ever.

“Who?” he says.

“The parole board. That's the way it's supposed to work, isn't it? You're supposed to get a say, aren't you?” It's the way it always seems to play out on tv. The family of some murder victim goes to the parole hearing and says their piece and, a lot of the time, parole is denied.

“They gave him parole eligibility after ten years,” my dad says wearily. “He served the ten.”

“You're still supposed to have a say. The least they could have done was warn you they were letting him out.”

“I suppose,” he says. “But what's done is done, Finn.”

“Yeah, but—”

My dad stifles a sob. I shut my mouth. What am I doing? He's already falling apart. Why am I swinging a hammer at him, shattering him into smaller and smaller pieces?

“Come on, Dad,” I say. I hold out my hand. It takes a moment, but he fishes out his key chain with the Swiss Army knife on it.

We go outside and get into my dad's car. I drive to a place on the main street near our house that I've passed a million times on my way to and from school but have never been inside.

We step into a big front hall. It's dead silent inside. After a few moments, a man appears.

“How may I help you?” He speaks in a hushed voice.

“We need to plan a funeral,” I say. “My dad needs some help.”

The man steps closer to my father.

“A loved one?” he asks.

“My wife.” My dad's voice cracks when he says the words.

“Please come this way,” the man says.

He leads us into a paneled office. My dad and I sit down. The man asks questions about “the deceased.” After my dad answers, the man starts to ask about the funeral and what my dad wants. He helps my dad put together an announcement for the newspaper. He says he will check with the police to find out when the body will be released, and then they can schedule the funeral. They talk for almost an hour. My dad seems to relax. The man says he can take care of all the details. He tells my dad not to worry.

I take my dad home and make him go upstairs to lie down. He was up all night, and here it is, almost night again.

I was up all night too. But I'm too geared up to sleep.

Instead, I slump in front of the tv and flip through channels. The whole time, my mind replays what happened in front of the garage the night before. The man. Tracie telling my dad to do something. My dad lunging at the man. The gun shots. Tracie falling. More gunshots. The man falling. My dad, standing there, a gun in his hand, looking dazed.

Maybe I didn't like Tracie much, but my dad did. And maybe I've been mad at him since he started seeing her and got even madder when he told me he wanted to marry her. But I'm not mad now. I'm old enough to know that my dad loved Tracie, maybe as much as he loved my mom. Maybe even more. I'm old enough, too, to realize how awful it must be for him, losing two wives. Losing? What am I saying? They weren't lost. They were murdered—by the same man. But why? Why did that man come back? What had he been planning to do? Did he come to our house to kill my dad? What would that have accomplished?

I'm still slouched on the couch the next morning when the phone rings. I don't bother reaching for it. Let it go to voice mail.

My dad comes downstairs about an hour later. His hair is all messed up, and his eyes are red. He doesn't look as if he's slept much.

“Shouldn't you be at school?” he says.

“I didn't feel like it.”

He nods. “It's Friday. When I was in school, nothing much ever got done on Friday.”