The Guilty One (11 page)

“Don't,” she said, bitter and knee-jerk.

“For Christ's sake, Mar, it's time to get over that. What am I supposed to say—okay, our
lawyer's
bill. I paid our
lawyer's
last bill and that was the end of the BancWest money.”

“
Your
lawyer,” she said, an automatic snipe, her trigger so fine-tuned after all of it. Besides, she wasn't the only one who had set up limits, names and words she couldn't bear to think, much less say. Like how they just called it “the BancWest account,” for instance. For seventeen years it had been “Calla's college account.”

“What matters is, it's gone.”

“How can it be gone?”

There had been over $130,000 in it, enough for Calla to go anywhere, to go to Berkeley twice. They had hoped she might use the extra for grad school. Or, someday, a house. They had been proud of starting early, of building it over time, the way you were supposed to.

Once, they had been the couple that did everything the way you were supposed to. At least, Maris had been. All the while, Jeff had been someone else.

“I'm not going to explain this to you now,” Jeff said tightly. That smugness, that arrogance. “It's not rocket science; Kurtzman's bills are in a folder in the filing cabinet.”

“Well, then, sell some Vanguard. Or the Kauffman.”

“Maris, are you even paying attention here? We haven't had those since 2010. Remember?”

Did she? That had been a tough year. Jeff's second layoff, the one that lasted nearly eleven months, had given them a big enough scare for Maris to take the branch manager job when they offered it to her, for the benefits. She knew they'd dipped into savings, but Jeff had always taken care of that kind of thing. Maris had been a teacher—Jeff had the MBA.

“Well, what are you telling me? We have no savings?” Her voice sounded prissy to her.

“Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. I've been trying to tell you that for months. I tried to tell you last Tuesday, you might remember.”

Tuesday, when he'd wanted to have dinner, a gesture so flat and wrong she hadn't even returned his call. What could they have to talk about?

“You didn't—”

“Christ, Mar, I told you we can't afford two households right now. I've been trying for months to tell you we have to think about selling, not starting up some whole new life and leaving the house standing empty.”

“But you've been saying we should sell the house for years. Before everything. And you were the one who moved out first!”

“You. Don't. Have. A.
Job
.” The impatience in Jeff's voice set Maris's teeth on edge. “There's no way I can meet with Realtors and have showings and all of that right now. I'm working sixty hours a week, I'm—”

“And yet you somehow still find time to golf,” Maris said coldly. Of all the things he'd taken on Monday, the golf clubs rankled most, for some reason.

“Maris!” he shouted, and Maris jumped, knocking the table and almost tipping over her coffee. Jeff never shouted, never raised his voice. “We are
out
of fucking
money
! I need you to put that money back or the mortgage isn't going to clear. The savings are
gone
. The BancWest is
gone
. We need to sell the house and we need to sell it now.” She could hear him, breathing hard, over the phone. She was too shocked to respond.

When he spoke again, his voice was calmer. Steely. “I don't make enough to meet our monthly expenses, not until I get a bonus in the fall anyway, and that's not guaranteed. You need to go back to work. We might need to borrow off the 401k until the house sells. I think if we pay it back this calendar year we won't take a tax hit. I'll look into it.”

“Jeff . . .”

“I'm not kidding, Mar, it's time for you to snap out of your little fantasy world where everyone just waits for you to
feel
like facing reality, and pull your own weight like the rest of us.”

“Oh, like
you
faced reality? Like you finally decided to take away the only thing we had left?”

“
We
didn't have anything,” he said, deadly quiet. “There hasn't been a we in forever.”

“I'll never forgive you.” Something she had thought a thousand times, but never said aloud; she wished her voice didn't wobble.

“You know what, I don't even care anymore. Bottom line, you need to get a job. And figure out a way to unload the house. But before you do either of those things, you need to put the money back.”

“You, you—
fuck
yourself.” The words had a taste to them, bitter like a crushed pill.

“Nice, Maris.” Now he just sounded weary. “But just so you know I'm serious, I emptied the checking account. And I'm not sending you a dime until you start acting like an adult here. If we need to meet with a mediator, a Realtor, whatever, we have to do it—we have to get all of this done. I mean, you don't like it, I guess you could sue me for support, but the thing is, you're the one who already broke the law.”

So he did know about the password thing. Maris squeezed her eyes shut.

“Jeff.” A whisper. “How can you be like this? How can you act like it never happened?”

The phone beeped twice. He'd hung up on her. Somehow, that was more shocking than everything else. Maris had never hung up on anyone in her entire life. You just didn't do that. Didn't squander people that way.

But she wasn't innocent, either. She wasn't sure how, but if she'd done her job, none of this would have happened. If she'd been a good enough mother. A good enough wife. If she'd been able to hold on to the only things that mattered.

She sank to the table, cradling her head in her arms. Around her, she could hear voices and the sounds of commerce, of people shopping for their ordinary lives in this most ordinary of stores, stopping, perhaps, for a Starbucks as a reward, a treat before heading back out into the hard work of living. All of it ordinary, generic, unremarkable. Maris once had so much more than that.

THE DRIVE TO
Panamint was just shy of two hours in no traffic, endless droning miles through the Central Valley, nondescript fields of strawberries and corn and tomatoes broken up by the occasional orchard. Ron passed small towns populated with abandoned shacks and edged with rinds of fast-food joints, considered stopping for a coffee, a sandwich, but the thought of it was too depressing. The only other time he'd come, six weeks ago when Karl was first transferred, he and Deb had stopped at an Arby's. She'd gone to the bathroom, and while Ron waited for her, sipping at his sweating root beer in its clammy plastic cup, he'd had to endure watching the sun-burnished farmhands in their greasy caps, their sagging jeans, waiting patiently in line to order—and know that every one of them had more honor than his son. Karl—given every opportunity—had thrown it all away, while every one of these indistinguishable, hardscrabble men had suffered greater hardships and somehow found a way to make a life.

When he was within thirty miles of the prison, Ron narrowly missed being sideswiped by a truck loaded with tomatoes. The momentary adrenaline rush turned the tide of his thoughts, and afterward he sank into a resigned melancholy. What was the point of being angry at Karl? He was too young to understand that he had robbed his parents of their serenity, that they would never be whole again. Ron slowed, watching the truck jounce ahead, putting distance between them.

During the trial, Ron had read an article about the breakup violence phenomenon among young adults. He couldn't talk about it with Deb, who would brook no suggestion of Karl's guilt, but the article stayed with him: it suggested that an adolescent's still-developing frontal lobe would not have been equipped to overpower the impulse that led him—perhaps even without being aware of his own actions—to commit violence.

And if that was true, maybe he could find a way to forgive his son for taking Calla's life.

But how was he supposed to forgive him for dumping her body after? For denying it ever happened?

MARIS HAD CALLED
the morning after Jade Rowland's graduation party, frantic with worry, to say that Calla had never made it home. Ron listened to Deb's half of the conversation, increasingly aware that something was very wrong. Later that day, a Sunday, Jeff had come by. Karl had seemed shaken. The three of them had stood in the living room, Jeff struggling to maintain his composure. They'd all shaken hands. By then Ron was privately wondering if Calla had gotten caught up in the new hybrid drug thing; there had been a piece on KTVU about kids in Berkeley living under overpasses begging for money to stay high. The shit they were using was so much worse, so much scarier nowadays; even Ron's brief flirtation with LSD seemed tame by comparison. He'd watched Jeff drive away with pity as well as a strong sense of gratitude that Karl, as far as he knew, didn't even use weed.

And he was pretty sure he'd know. Karl wasn't the kind of kid to leave them guessing as to where he was or what he was doing. Since breaking up with Calla, he'd been staying closer to home, it was true, but even when he was out it was usually with guys from soccer or kids he'd known since middle school. Families the Isherwoods knew well enough not to worry about.

Monday morning he'd managed to forget about the whole thing while he sat in on a series of calls in advance of what was going to be a better-than-expected quarterly earnings report. When he felt his phone vibrate, he checked it discreetly under the table. Seeing that it was Deb, he stepped out of the room. Deb rarely called him at work, and his hand was gripping the phone tightly, anticipating the worst, when he said hello.

“They found her,” she said, her voice wobbling. “Can you please come home?”

Her body had been found at Byron Ranch.

Deb met him at the door and hugged him tightly. “Jemma called, she's staying with Maris until her sister gets there. Jeff's with them.”

“Did you talk to either of them?”

“No, no. Jemma says Maris is hysterical.”

Maris,
Ron thought, hit with an onslaught of memories. When it was just Jeff, that was one thing. But now he couldn't keep it abstract any longer. He gave himself directions with one part of his mind even as he tried to process what Deb was saying with another.
Move your hands over her back, the way she likes. Brush the hair back where it's stuck to her skin with her tears. Don't let her see your eyes.

He knew he couldn't trust himself right now. Deb knew him too well. She'd always been able to tell when he was lying, when he was trying to keep a secret from her, even if it was only a surprise party. And right now, if she looked at him, she would see.

“What are we going to tell Karl?” Deb said, her voice muffled from her face being pressed against his shirt. She was holding him so tightly he could feel her nails digging into the skin of his back. When he got home he'd found her sitting on the edge of the wing chair in the living room, the one no one ever sat in because it was so uncomfortable, her hands gripping each other tightly. She had one sneaker on. Eventually she'd told him that she got the call while she was dressing for yoga; the other shoe was still on the floor of their bedroom. She didn't remember coming down the stairs.

What were they going to tell Karl, indeed?

“They have people—people trained for things like this,” he managed. “By the end of the day they'll have counselors lined up. They probably won't make an announcement at school until tomorrow if they can keep it out of the news—”

“It's too late for that!” Deb pulled back and looked at him. Ron automatically froze, trying to keep his expression neutral. “The news is already reporting they found a body. A girl. You know how they are; they'll come out and say who it is the minute they get confirmation. Besides, it's probably all over the school already. Think about how many people the Vacantis called last night, looking for her!”

“No, no, you're right, that's not what I meant. I just meant, after we talk to him, tomorrow, if he needs some help, to process things, they'll have professionals available.”

He didn't really know if this was true, except that he'd seen it on the news. Sandy Hook, Newtown, there were always “counselors on hand.”

“But, Ron. Karl and she were so close. It's not like it's just some kid at school. He's going to take this hard.”

Look at her, Ron thought. It hasn't even occurred to her, not for a fraction of a second. That people might suspect Karl would have done something.

He hated himself for thinking it. Of course he knew his son wasn't capable of something like this—of taking a
life
, my God, Calla's life. But there would be questions and there would be suspicions, and the natural place, at least one of the first places they were going to look would be, hey, was there anyone in Calla's life that she was having problems with? People who didn't like her, people she'd argued with?

Jeff, sitting at the Isherwoods' kitchen table the day before, looking into Karl's face so earnestly, desperate for answers, for clues, for anything that could help him find his daughter. And what had brought Jeff here, of all the homes in all of Linden Creek?

The thrum of fear twisted tighter. He gently disentangled Deb from his arms. “All right,” he said, “all right, let's think this through. Should we go pick him up?”

“From school?”

Ron went to the cabinet next to the sink and got a glass. Filled it from the tap and drank, focusing on keeping his hand steady. Buying a few seconds to think. “I don't know, maybe. Do you think that's what other parents are doing?”

“Well—they're not in elementary school,” Deb said, hugging herself. “I mean, I would guess the thing they want most in a tragedy like this is each other.
Oh
. God.”