Finally at the sheriff’s office, Chad tried to park his big pickup neatly between the lines and failed, but for once he didn’t make a second attempt to get it right. He jumped out and got around to the passenger side of his truck in time to help Amy get down; Chad kept meaning to install a step for her and kept forgetting. The way he felt right now, he hated himself for that one small neglected act.
He held his wife’s hand as they started across the parking lot toward the double-wide trailer building occupied by the Maypop County Sheriff’s Office, but they didn’t get far.
A kid, looked like a teenager, jumped out of an old beater of a cruiser and sprinted to meet them, and Chad’s heart riffed like a crazed drummer inside his chest, but he couldn’t see the boy’s face; Justin—please, it had to be Justin—kept his head down, his eyes shielded by the bill of a baseball cap.
Quite spontaneously, because his legs no longer seemed willing to support him, Chad got down on his knees.
He saw Justin’s face.
Justin, yes! But—God, this wasn’t the Justin he remembered. Justin had the hollow, haunted look of a war survivor aged and hardened beyond his years, yet at the same time he looked paradoxically, childishly young and hurt and vulnerable.
“Justin!” A mother’s potent call. Amy ran to her lost child and wrapped him in her arms.
Justin said, “M-M-Mom,” and broke into tears.
An instant later Chad got there to bear-hug both of them. He felt his son sobbing uncontrollably. And his wife. And, unashamedly, himself.
• • •
Justin had told himself and told himself that he was not going to bawl like a baby. But the instant he had seen his parents, the most potent upheaval of emotion ever in his life had overpowered him to shoot him straight into their arms, then turn him inside out while they held him, they kept holding him, standing strong and holding him together when he felt like he was nothing, nothing at all except tears.
It wasn’t until Bernie Morales came and offered everyone a box of tissues that he noticed Mom and Dad were crying too. They didn’t act embarrassed, so why should he?
“I feel for you all in my heart.” Bernie stretched out his arms in a fatherly sort of way, herding them toward the Sheriff’s Office. “You come inside, we try to make this quick, get you out of here before the nosy people find out, yes?”
Oh, God, Justin realized, it wasn’t over yet. It was going to be days before it was really over, maybe weeks, maybe—never.
Bernie took them inside to a room with a table, where Justin slumped in a chair with his face hidden under the bill of his cap. “Sweetie, take off your hat,” said his mom, her voice so warm he realized she was kind of teasing.
“Sit up straight,” said his dad the same way.
Somehow, just by being annoying parents, they helped him lift his head and face Bernie, who was turning on a tape recorder. “Justin, we talk just about today, okay?”
Okay. Whatever.
Bernie Morales recorded the date and Justin’s name, then coached, “Start with what made you go into Liana Clymer’s house.”
“We heard her scream.”
Bernie pretty much led him through it. All that his questions required of Justin was quick, simple answers. Somebody brought in cans of soda pop as if this were just a little get-together. But toward the end, Justin felt something fearsome and akin to Stoat trying to turn him inside out again. “I had to kill him,” he blurted. “I didn’t want to. Am I going to jail?”
“No, no, not if this is true.” Bernie turned off the tape recorder and stood up. “Okay, I must go put this in writing for Justin to sign, and then we are done for today, okay?”
Once Bernie had left the room, Dad and Mom both got up, came over to Justin, and hugged him again. His voice thick with emotion, Dad said, “Son, you’re a hero.”
“I don’t feel like a hero. I feel bad.”
Dad asked simply and gently, “Why?”
Justin barely managed to choke out part of it. “B-be-because I killed Unc—I mean Stoat.”
“Unc?” Dad asked just as gently.
“Uncle Steve.”
“You called him Uncle Steve.”
“He told me to.”
Dad’s voice became only slightly harder. “So he made it like you were family.”
“Yes, and—and—he wasn’t bad to me sometimes, and—and I had to go and kill him!” Don’t goddamn cry, Justin ordered himself. He was nearly crying but not quite. Don’t.
There was a long moment of silence. Justin stiffened, expecting Dad to tell him Stoat deserved to be killed. But instead, Dad said, “Son, whatever you feel is how you feel. We all have a lot of sorting out to do.”