Authors: Mark Richard Zubro
An Echo of Death (10 page)
“So are we,” I said.
Proctor raised an eyebrow, but he said, “I wanted to catch you here. Dad has a whole mess of guards. âWay before Ross Perot brought his paranoia thing to national attention, Dad was heavily invested in protection. Of course, my dad's not as rich as Ross.”
Bill Proctor led us to a side door, down a hall, and up a staircase. This hall matched the others for simple elegance. Proctor addressed comments to Scott as he led us. “My brother told me you were his best friend on the team. That you were the only one who stood by him when he got suspended the first time. He also said you were a fag.” At my frown Proctor said. “Sorry. That's what he called you. That's kind of what you said a few minutes ago. Are you guys really gay? I didn't believe him when he told me Scott Carpenter was gay. Hard to believe a professional baseball player bends over. Kinda unbelievable.”
Scott stopped in the middle of the hall. You couldn't hear a sound in the entire house. Scott and I looked at each other, then back at Proctor.
Scott said, “Sometimes I bend over, sometimes Tom
does. If we're really in the mood, we both do at the same time. It's magic.”
does. If we're really in the mood, we both do at the same time. It's magic.”
“Oh!” Proctor said.
I let silence build for a minute, then said, “You wanted our help?”
“Yeah, right.” He cleared his throat, then continued down the hall to the last door on the right.
“This is the room Glen grew up in as a kid,” Proctor said as he opened the door.
Glen's room had a king-sized bed with a quilted flannel bedspread, made of warm autumn colors. He had a dresser and a chest of drawers of solid oak. The carpet was deep plush gold. The white walls over the bed were filled with pictures of all the big-name athletes of the past fifty years. One other wall was filled with a fantastic array of posters of unicorns. On top of the dresser were a wide variety of bongs and water pipes. An open door off to the left showed a bathroom with a sunken tub. In a sitting area opposite this door were a brown leather couch and two matching chairs. A large picture window had let Glen look out on the world. Outside I could see the wisps of fog had changed into a thickening mist. Visibility was maybe a hundred feet. I could make out thirty or forty feet of relatively calm lake. The waves barely brushed the shore. Hardly a ripple disturbed the cold gray surface. I could see the dim outline of a pier with one boat anchored at each side and one at the far end.
“I didn't mean to insult you guys back there,” Proctor said.
“What did you want?” I asked.
“I need to talk. Something screwy is going on. My father told me that you were coming and that it was about Glen, but he wouldn't say what. I'm worried about him.”
Obviously his dad hadn't told him about what we'd reported to the police. His manner certainly didn't seem to include sorrow or suffering. He was more like a kid who
had been playing a prank and was worried about how much trouble he might be in.
had been playing a prank and was worried about how much trouble he might be in.
He'd changed into blue jeans and running shoes. He wore a white fisherman's sweater partially covered with a blue denim jacket.
He leaned back in the chair. “I don't trust my dad or the servants. I've got no one else to turn to. I need your help.”
First the one brother and then the other. Who knew how alike they might be? No matter how pretty he was, I wasn't prepared to trust him very far or help very much until it was proven to me that we could trust him.
I said, “You better not be trying to jerk us around.”
Scott said, “That's awful harsh, Tom.”
“I don't know who I trust at the moment,” I said to him. Then I turned to Proctor. “I'm not sure what your game is, but we've been chased and shot at, and I'm not willing to take any chances at the moment.”
“Is this necessary, Tom?” Scott asked.
“Yes,” I said. I was fully prepared to list the problems his sympathy had gotten us into. At this point, all precautions were to be taken.
“Look,” Proctor said, “I really think Glen's in trouble, and I don't know what to do.”
He looked and sounded sincere. His brother was dead, and he had sounded as if he genuinely cared about him.
“I don't know what to do to get you to trust me,” he said. “My dad said you had news about my brother. What's happened?”
“I'm sorry,” I said. “We've got bad news.” Suddenly I felt ashamed and awkward. Here I had been bullying some probably-innocent kid, to whom we were about to give perfectly awful news.
“I'm sorry,” I repeated as if my sorrow could take some of the sting away. “We found your brother last night at Scott's. He'd been shot through ⦔ I paused, cleared my throat, shook my head. “He was dead.”
“No,” Proctor said.
“I'm sorry,” I said and felt silly for saying it for the third time, but I don't know anyone who has the perfect words for horrific moments like this.
Tears came to his eyes. “I really loved him. I've looked up to him ever since I can remember.” He turned away from us. Tears flowed down his face. “I can't believe it.”
His shoulders began to shake. Scott reached out, and the kid sagged into his arms.
I felt awful for him. I know I'd be devastated if I found out one of my brothers or my sister was dead.
Scott held Proctor, patting the blond hair, rubbing his hand in a circle on the back of his jacket.
I wondered whether his dick was getting hard and felt like a crude creep for thinking such a thought.
Proctor's crying turned to sniffles and muted gulps for air. “This is awful,” he said. “What happened?”
I told him about his brother and gave him a brief synopsis of our adventures.
As I spoke about Glen, tears made occasional forays down Bill's cheeks. He didn't seem to have a hankie, but wiped his jacket sleeve across his nose and snuffled deeply.
After I finished, Proctor stared out at the silent vapors gathering outside. Periodically he snorted the snot in his nose and tamped at the occasional tear that still escaped.
“I'm sorry about your brother,” I said.
I got a brief nod in response. We sat in silence for some minutes until Proctor asked, “You know what I remember most about him?”
I shook my head.
“He was only a year older than me, so we did a lot of things together, but the best was Christmas. We'd hunt through the house room by room searching for the presents. We'd always find some, but then, Christmas morning, he'd come into my room and wake me up, and we'd be the first ones to the Christmas tree, like all kids, but it was
always just the two of us with the enormous Christmas tree, lights still off, faint gray light coming through the windows, us still in our pajamas, and we'd search for the presents with each others' names on them, and we'd make piles around us, and forts, and shoot silent guns, because we didn't want anyone to hear us, and then we'd combine our packages into one big fort and nestle inside and tell secrets and guess what was inside the packages, what we'd asked for and hoped for, and when your dad is as rich as ours, more often than not, our wildest dreams came true.”
always just the two of us with the enormous Christmas tree, lights still off, faint gray light coming through the windows, us still in our pajamas, and we'd search for the presents with each others' names on them, and we'd make piles around us, and forts, and shoot silent guns, because we didn't want anyone to hear us, and then we'd combine our packages into one big fort and nestle inside and tell secrets and guess what was inside the packages, what we'd asked for and hoped for, and when your dad is as rich as ours, more often than not, our wildest dreams came true.”
He dried a few more tears with his jacket. “He was the best brother,” Proctor said. “I hated it every year when he went away to school.
“You attended school here?” I asked.
“I went to the public schools on the North Shore. There aren't many better private schools, and I wanted to be with kids I knew. My parents didn't have a lot of choice with Glen. A lot of schools kicked him out. Even Dad with all his money couldn't keep him in. Glen had some brave teachers in kindergarten and first grade. They forced my parents to come in for conferences. Glen was impossible. He was always good to me, but we lost several servants because they wouldn't put up with the way he treated them even when he was five or six, but Dad's money always prevailed. It always has.”
My dislike for Glen Proctor and his privilege burst out in almost-unwonted sarcasm. “Poor little rich boy,” I said.
“Tom!” Scott said.
“It's all right,” Proctor said. “I was lucky to have a rich dad. I don't hate him for that. Glen loved him. When we were kids, they always hung around together. Glen was oldest, and I guess that was special to my father.”
He stopped talking and I let the silence continue. Finally he asked me, “What did my dad say when you told him?”
“I don't think he believed us.”
“Typical. He thinks his money will buy anything. There
aren't enough men and horses in his kingdom to put back his son's life.”
aren't enough men and horses in his kingdom to put back his son's life.”
“Why wouldn't he believe us?” I asked.
“I stopped trying to understand my dad years ago. I live in a separate world. I'll see him occasionally at breakfast like today, but that's about it.”
“What kind of trouble do you think Glen might have been in? We've been trying to figure out who might have killed him and who would be after us. You know anything about what he's been up to lately?”
“I don't know about recent danger. When we were kids, he was always the one of us who tried the most daring or new or unusual thing. He'd jump first, climb first, dive off first. He got me my first beer, my first hit of dope, showed me how to beat off, got me my first condom.”
“What kind of trouble did he get into in school?” I asked.
“I remember he got suspended one time in first grade for telling the teacher, the principal, and the social worker to fuck off.”
“Not a usual first-grader's response to stimuli,” I said.
“No,” Proctor admitted. “Let me think what other stuff he used to do.” He strode to the window and wiped the sleeve of his jacket on the window as if to clear away the mist gathering outside. He spoke without turning around. “One time he threw a condom at the second-grade teacher. It was her first job out of college, and she couldn't cope with him. I heard she ran down the hall shrieking, although that could just have been Glen exaggerating. I know she didn't teach the next year in that school.
“I remember he used to steal a lot of stuff. One time I asked him why, since we had so much at home. He said he liked to. It was fun to see all the grown-ups and the kids go nuts trying to find things, or make things right, or fix things.”
“This happen when he went away to school?” I asked.
Bill turned back to us and sat back down. “I'm not sure. I think he found other things to get in trouble about.”
“Drugs?” I said.
Proctor nodded. “And alcohol. I used to watch him sneak drinks before, during, and after family holiday parties. He must have been five or six the first time I saw him do it. Once in a while he'd offer me some, but I hated the taste. He started on drugs in fifth or sixth grade when he was away at school. He came back one summer and introduced me to pot. I smoked a few times with him and his buddies each summer, but I didn't see him as much as he got older, because he was into baseball so much. I had lots of other sports, crafts, classes, and special trips. Thinking back on it, my parents probably planned it so I'd have less contact with him. I seemed to be in a lot more activities than most of my friends every summer.”
“He ever do harder drugs?” I asked.
“Cocaine and marijuana, mostly,” Proctor said. “He never did anything else in front of me. Claimed he wasn't an addict, before and after he went away for rehab. The family kept it real quiet, and with Dad's money, that means total silence. Nobody knew Glen went away after sophomore and junior years in high school to some clinic. I think the baseball people would have hesitated if they'd known about his problem.”
“Would have avoided him completely,” Scott said.
“What I remember most was the fun times. The wild things he did.” Proctor nearly smiled.
“Like what?” I asked.
Bill was silent for a minute. Then smiled. “One time we were at some friends' house in Wisconsin. Glen didn't have his driver's license yet, so he must have been about fifteen. The kids we were staying with weren't old enough to drive, either, but we took the car one afternoon. We drove to some railroad tracks, and the other kids suggested we let half the air out of the tires and drive along the tracks. Glen did. I remember the wild sensation of flying down the tracks barely feeling the bump of the ties. It was a convertible,
and Glen had real long hair at the time. His hair flew in the wind as he laughed and sang.”
and Glen had real long hair at the time. His hair flew in the wind as he laughed and sang.”
“No train came?” Scott said.
“No, Glen's luck always seemed to run that way, even with some of the dumbest stuff he did. He finally graduated high school from an exclusive place somewhere in Vermont. I think my dad had to promise them a huge endowment for them to let him be in the ceremony and graduate on time. For a celebration we had half the kids on the North Shore at this big bonfire on the beach. It was great. Glen was drunk and nobody else was feeling a lot of pain, when Glen took a lighter out and casually set his chest hair on fire.”
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