Hiding Place (9781101606759) (32 page)

Rose didn’t answer him.

When Janet finished, Michael sat still and quiet. Rose scooted closer to him and placed her arm around his shoulders. He stiffened under her touch, and Rose looked like she had been slapped.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Michael said.

Janet knew what he meant.

“What do you mean, Michael?” Rose asked.

Michael didn’t answer her. He stared at Janet, his eyes boring into her.

“You need to tell her, Michael,” Janet said.

“Tell me what?”

“Michael?”

When he still didn’t say anything, Janet stepped in.

“Michael has been trying to figure some things out over the years, things about the day Justin died. He saw his father in the woods that day, right in the area where Justin’s body was found.”

Rose was already shaking her head.

“And,” Janet said, “we know that he might have wanted to come to our house that day to tell my dad. If he did that, he would have walked right through there.”

“Ray wouldn’t. He couldn’t.”

“Rose, did he leave the house that morning?” Janet asked. “Did he want to come over to talk to Dad?”

“It’s been so long—”

“Stop protecting him, Mom. Just stop it.” Michael’s voice was as flat and hard as a winter road.

Rose removed her arm from around Michael’s shoulders and placed her hands in her lap and knotted them together. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “He did leave the house that morning,” she said.

Michael made a low grunting noise. It sounded like a cross between pain and anger.

Rose said, “He told me about…” Her voice trailed off, but she pointed at Janet. “The things you just told me about. And he said he wanted to talk to Bill in person.” She looked at Michael. “We fought that morning when he told me. We never fought. Ever.”

“I know,” Michael said.

“That’s why we sent you to the park that day,” Rose said. “We fought about all of this, including Justin. Ray said he thought Justin might be his child. I guess that was the part I couldn’t bear to hear, that he might have had a child with another woman.” She
looked at Janet. “We tried to have another after Michael, but we couldn’t. I couldn’t, I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” Janet said.

“I begged him to stay,” Rose said. She smiled at Janet, but it carried no joy. “I guess you don’t understand that,” she said. “Girls from your generation, you’re more independent. Stronger. Look at you, raising a daughter all by yourself. And working at the same time.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Janet said.

“Well, Ray didn’t listen to me anyway. He said he needed to talk to Bill about it man-to-man. He wanted to clear the air that one time, get everything out in the open, and then never mention it again. That’s the way Ray is. He didn’t want to have a long talk about anything. He thought it could be cut and dried. He was done with me, and he could move on. The end. So he did leave to do that, to talk to your dad, to tell him in person.”

“Did he drive or walk?” Janet asked.

“He walked. He went right out the back door and over toward the park.”

“We have to call the police,” Michael said.

“But he came back, right?” Janet asked, ignoring Michael for the moment. “When did he come back?”

Rose paused and thought about her answer. “It wasn’t long. Twenty minutes maybe. He came back in the door and said that something was wrong in the park. He said the police were there, so he decided to come home. Then the phone rang.” Rose pointed at Janet. “Your mom was on the phone. I thought she was calling for…I don’t know, something else. But she was upset. She said Justin was missing, and she wanted to know if he was over at our house. Ray told her no, he wasn’t.” Rose looked down. “I may have said some awful things then. I said if she was a better
mother and wasn’t interfering in someone else’s marriage, maybe she could keep better watch on her kids. It was a terrible thought, but I didn’t know what had happened to Justin at that point. I wouldn’t have said or thought those things if I had known.”

Michael stood up. “We have to call the police.”

“And tell them what?” Janet asked. “That a man had an affair twenty-five years ago and probably fathered a child out of wedlock? What’s the crime?”

“He was there,” Michael said. “At the scene. He walked through there.”

“Again, not a crime.”

“But the police should talk to him about it.”

Michael paced around the small room. He walked to one end and then the other and back again. Janet saw the tension in his posture, the tendons in his neck stretched taut. Janet waited, hoping he’d settle down on his own. Together, they could decide what to do and what it all meant.

Then Rose said, “When your father came home that day, his pants were dirty.”

Michael stopped pacing and turned back to her.

“What?” he said.

“His pants were dirty. He said he fell on the path. He came in and threw the pants into the washing machine.”

Janet turned to Michael, but he was already moving. He was through the door before Janet even made it off the couch. She followed him outside. When she came out into the hot night air, she saw the car backing out into the street, then the taillights receding into the distance.

She had to follow him.

Janet called Detective Stynes from her car. She drove with one hand and held the phone with the other. When Stynes came on, she didn’t know exactly what to tell him, so she tried to make it as simple as possible.

“Detective, I need you to get to Ray Bower’s house.”

“Janet?”

“Ray Bower’s house. Can you get there?”

“I can. What’s wrong?”

“It’s too much to explain right now.”

“I’m on my way to the door and getting my keys. Can you at least give me a sense of what I’m walking into?”

She stumbled a few times trying to find the right words. Finally, she said, “It’s about Justin’s murder. I think Ray Bower killed him. And I think Michael is going over there to kill Ray.”

Janet parked in the driveway behind Michael’s car. She went straight into the house without bothering to knock. She hadn’t been in there for years, not since high school. The Bowers’ house had been so familiar to her as a child, almost a second home. Growing up, she attributed the tailing off of the friendship between the families to the sudden shock of Justin’s death, to
the slow descent of her mother into illness and death. But it was so much more—more than she ever could have imagined.

The living room sat empty. Janet knew the Bowers had a family room at the back of the house, which used to be filled with two large recliners and an overstuffed couch. They watched TV there. As Janet moved in that direction, she heard a rustling and something thumping against the floor.

“Michael?”

An angry voice came from the rear of the house, something like a shout.

Janet stopped, considered turning and waiting outside until the police showed up. But she knew the state of mind Michael was in when he’d left Rose’s house. She feared what he might do.

“Michael?” she said again, her voice a little louder.

The rustling again. Quick movements. Janet stepped to the doorway that led into the back room and came face-to-face with Michael.

He reached out with both hands and took hold of Janet’s shoulders, his grip so tight she yelped.

He didn’t let go. And she stared into his eyes. They were wide and full of tears, as much red as white in the sclera. He looked different. Crazed with some combination of grief and anger.

“Michael,” she said. “It’s me. It’s okay.”

“Janet.”

He said her name. It sounded like a plea.

“The police are coming. I called them.”

“Janet,” he said again.

“Michael, let go. You’re hurting me.”

Her knees started to buckle from the pressure he was exerting on her arms. She felt the pain shoot through her body.

He let go and stepped back.

“Just wait,” Janet said. “The police are on their way. They’ll take care of it.”

He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes turning more hurt than angry.

“They can’t help, Janet.”

He dashed away, toward the front of the house. Janet wanted to go after him, but she heard another voice from the back room. A moaning, keening sound.

Janet rubbed her arms as she went into the room.

Ray Bower lay in the middle of the floor. A glass tumbler, liquid spilling out of it and soaking into the carpet, sat on the floor next to him. Janet took two quick steps toward him.

One side of his face was bruised and bloodied, the eye swollen shut already.

“Oh, Jesus.”

Janet dropped to her knees next to him. She leaned in close, listening for breathing. It came, raspy and short.

She started to reach out, to provide a comforting touch on his arm. Then she remembered who this man was. And what he had done.

She recoiled, pulling her hand back. He had killed Justin. This was the man who had killed her brother and buried him in the woods.

Ray’s lips moved. They struggled to form words, twitching like swollen pieces of meat. Janet couldn’t make out what he said. She didn’t want to know. But she had to know.

She leaned forward, listening.

“Michael…”

“He’s gone,” Janet said. “And the police are coming. Did you hear me? The police are on their way here. Right now.”

“Michael…tell Michael I’m sorry.”

Janet heard the door open, Detective Stynes’s voice filling the house, calling her name.

Janet watched Ray as his head fell back against the carpet.

“Back here,” she called. “The damage is done.”

Stynes watched as the paramedics loaded Ray Bower into the ambulance and drove off, taking him to Dove Point Memorial Hospital. A good crowd of neighbors still stared, drawn by the flashing police lights and real-life drama. It beat sitting inside on a hot summer night and watching reruns of sitcoms that had originally aired in the winter.

Stynes went back inside the house and found Janet Manning on the living room couch. She sipped from a glass of water, her face wearing a distant, distracted look. Her eyes didn’t track him as he came in and sat next to her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She snapped out of it, turning her head to look at Stynes. “I’m fine,” she said. She looked down at the glass of water in her hand as though wondering how it had ended up there. “How’s Ray?”

“Pretty banged up. He has a concussion for sure. Some broken teeth. They’ll X-ray him at the hospital. He’ll be out of commission for a few days. But, all in all, I’d say he’s kind of lucky. It looks to me like his son wanted to kill him. And might have if you hadn’t walked in.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said. “I just showed up.”

“I had a teacher in high school who said ninety percent of life is just showing up.”

Janet didn’t smile. She stared at the glass.

“I have to ask you, Janet—you said something on the phone tonight about Ray Bower killing your brother. Do you want to tell me about that?”

Janet looked up. “I found some things out.”

“Did these things arise from the news I told you earlier?” Stynes asked.

“Yes,” Janet said. “I spoke to my father. He told me some stuff I hadn’t known.” She swallowed hard. Stynes could almost hear the gulp. “And then I talked to Rose Bower, and she provided some more details about the time when Justin died.” She stared at the glass again, as though trying to divine some secret meaning from the water. Then she looked back at Stynes. “It was Ray Bower. He killed Justin that day in the woods. It all goes back to him.”

It took a few days to make the arrangements for the reburial and the new service. Janet welcomed the distraction of planning and organizing, choosing flowers and passages from the Bible. She tried to think about what Justin would have wanted if he had lived to be an adult, and for the first time since that day in the park twenty-five years ago, she couldn’t give in to the fantasy that her brother might still be alive. She couldn’t summon an image of him as an adult, a living, breathing person who walked out of the park rather than meeting his death that day in the woods. She had lost something—she knew that for sure. She wasn’t certain yet if she had gained anything better to take its place.

They gathered at the graveside at nine o’clock, an attempt to beat the pounding heat. Janet stood next to Ashleigh beneath the thick canvas of the cemetery tent. The casket was small and covered with a spray of flowers. Janet had picked the casket out with Ashleigh’s help. They’d opted for something classy and understated.

Janet took a moment and looked around. Madeline was there, standing on Janet’s left along with a few others from the office, including the dean. Detective Stynes stood on the opposite side of the casket, his sunglasses clipped to the pocket of his sport coat. His face looked solemn and rigid. A few other friends stood around in a loose circle, including Ashleigh’s friend Kevin, who
seemed uncomfortable in his tie and button-down shirt. The police didn’t make news of the reburial public, hoping to keep the media and any other curiosity seekers away from the cemetery. Janet didn’t mind the tiny crowd. She felt that her family had been in the public eye enough over the past few days. She would be happy to have an intimate service.

But as she looked at the small gathering under the tent, she noticed who wasn’t there. Michael. She remembered the crazed look in his eye a few nights earlier at Ray Bower’s house, the violence he had committed against his own father. Would she ever see him again?

She had even called Rose’s house, taking a chance that Michael might still be around and willing to attend the service. But before Rose even spoke Janet knew the answer. Michael was gone.

“I know what he did to his dad,” Rose said. “He hasn’t come back here. I suspect…” Her voice trailed off. “Well, I guess I don’t know when I’ll hear from him again. That’s Michael.”

Janet reached up and wiped a droplet of sweat off the side of her face. A man from the funeral home, dressed in a dark suit despite the heat, whispered to Janet that it was probably time to start. She nodded.