Fear the Darkness: A Thriller (31 page)

“Jacquie doesn’t know anything, does she? You know something about the night her son died and you didn’t tell her. That’s pretty disgusting.” I looked over at the fireplace and saw Joe’s shrine. I went to the mantel and with my index finger moved the little ceramic fruit bowl to the edge and a little further. “Talk to me,” I said.

“You won’t,” Timothy said.

I moved my finger a millimeter and the fruit bowl crashed to the flagstone floor, where it broke into an ungluable number of pieces. Timothy jumped off the couch and came for me but had no real concept of what going for someone would accomplish. I swept his leg out and he went down on his ass.

It subdued him a little. “I haven’t done anything illegal.” He didn’t bother to get up off the floor, just spoke from where he was sitting. He put his face into his hands and rubbed hard before looking up at me. “There’s no more truth than that. What else do you want from me? I’ve got nothing else to give.”

I moved on to a shell gecko while he heaved himself to his feet, blustery but afraid to approach me again. “Where did Joe collect these shells?” I asked. “Not around here, I guess.”

“Vacation in Bali,” Timothy said with a quaver in his voice, seeing as how I wasn’t impressed by the bluster.

I stroked the shell gecko. “One of these things broken looks like a dusting accident. Two and it makes you look bad.”

Timothy started to cry and dropped back to the floor, kneeling by my feet.

“Please stop,” Timothy whined. “Can’t we just get control and talk like civilized people?”

“All right, let’s talk. Why didn’t you tell me the hospital gave you the results of my blood test? And that it looked like I had an antidepressant overdose?”

“What does that have to do with Joe’s death?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out. I start nosing around, you prescribe antidepressants. I mysteriously overdose on them. I get tested and the hospital sends you a report. Why didn’t you tell me about an antidepressant overdose?”

“What overdose? I didn’t get any message,” he said.

“Bullshit. Your own lab called me. All they said was that my cholesterol was up.” I started to finger the shell gecko again.

“We didn’t run a drug test. That’s a different lab!” Timothy dropped to the couch and buried his face in his hands again. It looked like dejection, but he was actually thinking.

“Besides, we took your blood before I ever prescribed antidepressants,” he said, still thinking. “My usual assistant is on vacation, I’ve got someone filling in. Do you want me to call her right now? I could call her right now.”

I could kind of tell that my accusation of intentional overdose wasn’t as great a threat to him as whether his malpractice insurance was paid up, and it defused my suspicion. “Let’s get back to Joey,” I said.

Tim took a deep breath. He needed it. “I was glad he wasn’t in my life anymore. I hated the little weasel.”

“So far you’re not the only one. You had trouble accepting his sexual orientation?”

“Oh, bullshit. It wasn’t always that way. At first I loved the kid. I thought we’d be a family and he’d be the son I’d never had because I loved Jacquie so much. I still do. But over a couple of years Jacquie got jealous that he might like me more than her. After that it got weird, it always seemed like it was the Joe and Jacquie show, and no room for me. I took them everywhere, I tried to be a good father. But I could tell that he saw how things were and he had the upper hand. It got worse and worse. Did you find out he dyed his hair to match his mother’s because he didn’t want people to mistake him for my son? Did the medical examiner tell you that?”

I shook my head no. “Jacquie told me.”

“She thought that was so cute. Oh, he knew exactly how to play Jacquie. I saw through it, but if I didn’t give him his way he’d do something to get back. They used to watch
CSI
together, sitting on our bed, and telling me to go away because I wouldn’t like the show. One night I told them to watch it in the entertainment room so I could go to bed. Next morning I went into the garage and saw my Lexus had been keyed, all along the driver’s side. I came back into the house, accused Joe. Jacquie got on his side. Joe got into my face and I pushed him against the wall. I didn’t hurt him, just pushed him. But he called the cops on me.

“The cops came and arrested me, said they had to, for child abuse, and I spent a night in jail before they let me out. Oh, you should have seen it, I got the full treatment. Fingerprints, mug shot, orange jumpsuit, baloney sandwich, and a cot in a room with thirty men who screamed at each other all night. In Tucson money works for some things but not assaulting a child. Jacquie didn’t do a thing. She didn’t even come pick me up. I took a taxi home. But you have to understand, I still didn’t do anything to hurt Joe. That night I went out with my associate, and he dropped me off.”

“Lari Paunchese?”

“That’s right. I found Joe’s body in the pool. I pulled him out and tried to resuscitate him, but he’d been gone a while. I looked all over the place for a suicide note, but I couldn’t find one. I was afraid Jacquie would blame me for his death, and I was right, wasn’t I? She’s telling you Joe killed himself because of me. Or worse. Which is it?”

“And you called Paunchese back to the house. He was happy to help you out.”

“I said I didn’t want an autopsy, that it was unnecessary because it was clearly an accident and I didn’t want to put Jacquie through more pain. I meant it. Oh God, we’re prominent members of this community. I thought it would keep everything low-key. And then, probably because I was arrested for assaulting him, they suspected me of drowning him. Oh God, it’s all such a complicated mess. Oh God.”

“No it’s not, Timothy. It’s death. There’s nothing more simple than death. The real question is whether you had the balls or whatever it would take to kill your stepson and try to kill me so I wouldn’t find out.”

He was crying now, and denying knowing anything at all.

“Timothy, look at me.”

He looked at me.

“I know you got the report. You got the tox report from the medical examiner and you didn’t bother sharing it with Jacquie. I have to ask why. Why would you not tell Jacquie you got the report and that Joe had alcohol in his system? Why wouldn’t you want her to know that? Because you gave it to him?”

He took a deep breath, looked away, and when his eyes came back to my face they were washed of hope.

“I’ll tell you why. Because she already knew. Jacquie was the one who got him started drinking. A couple beers when he turned thirteen, and then whenever they watched movies together. She thought he was so cute when he was a little drunk. The kid is dead.”

“I have to tell you I already told her this.”

“About the tox report? Oh shit, what did she say?”

“She doesn’t know you got the report. But she called Mallory and accused her of getting Joe drunk when he was there reading to Owen.”

Timothy shook his head in disbelief even though he had to know it was the truth and now there was no stopping it. “Denial, right? She was turning her son into an alcoholic and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them. She used alcohol to bind him to her. When I spoke up they banded together closer and I felt even more on the outside. But even then, I loved Jacquie enough to keep from her that she was at least partly responsible for Joe’s death. The kid was already dead and nothing was going to bring him back. There was no good reason for her to know he’d been drinking. I wanted to protect her from blaming herself. I never thought she would blame his death on me.

“You’re right, it
is
simple.” He held up his thumb. “See, I loved Jacquie.” He held out his index finger so it looked like a gun. “She loves Joe.” He held the finger to his head in the classic pantomime of a shot to the temple. “Even dead, the little mother fucker wins.”

Why did he love her? Maybe the better question was, who did he used to love? The her before Joey died? Before her first husband left her? Maybe that’s the woman Tim could see, someone vibrant and full of life. Somebody who would go to a party dressed like Harpo Marx. Someone who was a good mother—until she became only a mother and when the motherhood was taken away had nothing left to live for.

I said, “This is what you didn’t want me to find out.”

“That’s right. But I wouldn’t hurt you. I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

I thought about my appointment with him, and the ease with which he jumped to the possibility of depression, and from there to Parkinson’s. Doctors always think of depression, especially in women. “What made you think of Parkinson’s?” I asked.

“Mallory—when she called to make the appointment and they asked her what it was for, she said she didn’t know what was wrong, but something about you walking strangely, and your handwriting being off when you signed the check at a restaurant. She didn’t know what she was seeing, but those are both signs. Then I saw the way your hand jumped, and I put it together.”

There was one other thing to check. I walked into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. There were three bottles of Sam Adams spring ale chilling on the shelf in the door. I remembered visiting Jacquie around midmorning and smelling the beer on her. I quickly went through the cabinets and found the one with bottles of Tanqueray, Johnnie Walker Red Label, Jose Cuervo, Grey Goose. They were all at least three-quarters gone. Then I believed Tim. He had the sound of truth in him this time.

When I turned back to the couch where Tim sat, his head was hanging over clasped hands, and he talked more to himself than to me now. “She was always so funny, so much fun. I could never match her, what she wanted. So she was molding Joe to be that.”

I looked at the ceramic fruit busted on the tile in front of the fireplace. Tim had lied by not coming clean with me right at the start, and I wasn’t sorry for what I had done, but I still gestured at the mess. “Can I help you clean up?”

“No,” he said.

“What will you tell Jacquie about the broken ceramic?”

He gave a humorless snort. “I’ll make up something. We both know I’m good at that, right?”

I stared at him and he shouted at me. “Just get out of here. Don’t ever come back. Leave us in peace.”

“Do you keep a gun in the house?” I asked.

“No.”

“Good.”

Forty–eight

I sat down at the table where I had left Gemma-Kate. She was still reading
Forensic Toxicology. Neuroscience of Handwriting
draped over another chair, and
Pathology of Drug Abuse
served as a paperweight for some printer paper. She didn’t look up when she said, “Carlo left with Elias to get the car. I promised I wouldn’t do anything bad until you got home.”

“I still don’t know if Timothy Neilsen is telling the whole truth. He’s trying to protect himself and his marriage,” I said.

“I read up more on antidepressant overdoses.”

I said, “I wonder what Sam Humphries will say if I ask him about Neilsen getting arrested for child abuse. Nobody mentioned that until now, not even Jacquie. Maybe she was hoping I’d discover it on my own.”

Gemma-Kate said, “This stuff is so interesting. I’ve been reading about Caravaggio. Ever hear of him?”

I decided to pay attention to her since she wasn’t paying attention to me. “No.”

“Renaissance. Master of chiaroscuro but I guess also something of a dick. It says someone tried to poison him with mercury but they got the dose wrong and it ended up curing his syphilis instead. Good example of why they say the dose makes the poison.”

“Could we get back to me for just a second? Can’t you look up antidotes?”

“I tried, nothing. It just has to work itself out. How bad are you feeling?”

I took a moment to assess my state. I thought I heard the male Pug snocking by the refrigerator, but it couldn’t be because he was still at the vet’s and the female was sleeping on my lap at the dining room table. I didn’t mention that I heard it. “It comes and goes. I’m not feeling like I want to kill you right now.”

Gemma-Kate went on. “It says here if you take a solution of activated charcoal it can help keep poisons from being metabolized. I read another thing about a professor who drank activated charcoal followed by a dose of strychnine in front of his class to show how it works. It only works if you drink it in solution immediately before or immediately after ingesting the poison. But forget that for a second. It might be useful if you can focus on this instead.”

She pulled the papers out from under the book and displayed a kind of flow chart that she had hand-drawn and -lettered. Her lettering was unnaturally neat. She took a moment to gather her thoughts and words, then lectured me like I was a rookie.

“I remember when Dad was studying to become a detective he would tell me what he was learning. I couldn’t forget the three words, motive, means, opportunity. I was thinking what if we were right, that someone is trying to hurt you, or at least slow you down, and they were using drugs as the means. There’s no way to know the motive at this point so I figured I’d concentrate on opportunity next. I’ve tried mapping your activities since the time you first started to feel sick. The funny thing is, in order to get enough of the drug into you, I couldn’t think of anyone except me or Uncle Carlo who could do it. Here’s what I came up with.” She held the paper so I could see it. The lines and words seem to float and make sudden little lurches across the page, but I was able to follow pretty well as she took me over my recent life. There were gaps, and she had a pen ready to fill them in.

“See, here’s where I arrive. You’re feeling perfectly fine then, we have dinner with Carlo and your friend Mallory. Same over the next several days. You go to that fund-raiser—”

“That’s the day you poisoned my dog,” I added. I was interested to see where she was going, but wary just the same.

“—I asked Carlo, and at the fund-raiser you were with your priest from the church and his wife, and the doctor and his wife.”

“Right, the Manwarings and Neilsens.”

“We should probably differentiate between husband and wife in case you saw either of them apart from the other.”