Shades of Simon Gray (8 page)

Later, when Liz came through the back door, she found her mother sitting at the kitchen table, typing away on her laptop. Most likely, Liz decided, she was working on her latest romance novel for her mass-market publisher. Although her mother had a large office on the second floor, she claimed she did her best work at the kitchen table where fifteen years before, when Liz was only a toddler, she had written her first book on a yellow legal pad.

A nicotine patch was stuck to her mother’s upper arm, and a pack of Wrigley’s spearmint gum was only inches
from her hand, just in case. Her mother had been trying to quit smoking for almost a year, had succeeded for months at a time, then fallen back into the old habit. This was her third try and Liz was hoping like crazy she would make it this time.

Right now Liz was fully prepared for a scene. She was, after all, late, had missed dinner, hadn’t called. She was without question expecting her mother to fly into a rage. What she did not expect were her mother’s arms around her, her hands stroking her hair and her voice whispering how sorry she was about Simon, and how awful about the accident. Liz was not prepared for this unexpected kindness. And just when she thought she had cried away every last ounce of water in her entire body, the tears began all over again.

Chimes echoed from somewhere deep inside a cave, becoming more and more persistent until, finally, Courtney opened her eyes. She was on the couch in the family room. She was wearing a pair of cutoffs and a T-shirt, which she’d had to dig out of the trunk of summer clothes in the attic, because it still felt like August outside.

The chiming, she now realized, was the doorbell. The early-afternoon sun coming through the windows was so bright Courtney squinted and staggered, still half asleep, toward the front hall.

Through the peephole in the door, she could see two people standing on the stoop, a man and a woman. Jehovah’s Witnesses, she thought, and was about to return to
the couch when she was startled by a loud knock and someone saying in a firm voice, “Police. Open up.”

Suddenly she was in some old
NYPD Blue
rerun. This was a dream. It had to be. Neither the man nor the woman was wearing a uniform. Courtney’s heart was racing so fast she couldn’t think straight. Someone had told the police she smoked pot. Maybe someone from school. Maybe Simon. No, not Simon. “I need to see some identification,” she shouted at them through the door, hoping her shaky voice didn’t give her away.

Both officers flipped open black wallet-size folders and flashed IDs and a badge a few feet from the peephole.

“I’m Lieutenant Debra Santino,” the woman said. “And this is Sergeant Jerry Fowler.”

Satisfied, Courtney eased the door open a few inches and looked up at them with one eye. “What do you want?” she asked.

Debra Santino had short brown hair and a light dusting of freckles on her cheeks. She looked friendly enough, like somebody’s mom, dressed in gray slacks and an ice blue blouse. Sergeant Fowler was more intimidating. A dark shadow of stubble covered the lower part of his face. His eyebrows were thick, almost meeting above his crooked nose, and he had a deep cleft in his chin. He wore a navy blue suit and a tie, even though rivulets of sweat were running down the sides of his face.

“I can’t let anyone in the house,” Courtney said. She wondered if she should mention she was home alone, that her father was at the hospital where her brother was fighting for his life. Her father had been there since the day
before, only coming home long enough to drop her off early that morning in time for school. Almost thirty hours sitting in a waiting room at the hospital, and he actually expected her to go to school. If she hadn’t been so upset about Simon, she would have danced the whole way from the car to the door, right in front of her obviously delusional father.

Lieutenant Santino was looking at her with large dark eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But we have a search warrant.”

Her partner pulled a folded document from his inside coat pocket and presented it to Courtney, who stared down at it but didn’t open the door an inch farther. Her stomach felt like a blender full of ice cream on high speed. She was afraid she might be sick. They were going to search the house. And when they did, they would find the pint-size Ziploc bag containing almost an ounce of marijuana in the toe of her left black boot in her bedroom closet.

“Is your father home?” Officer Santino asked.

Courtney shook her head. “He’s at the hospital.”

“What is your name?” the woman asked.

“Courtney.”

“Well, Courtney, I’m afraid we can’t wait for your father to come home. But you can call him and tell him we’re here, if that would make you more comfortable.”

Courtney stared down at her socks, light gray with tiny navy blue flowers printed on them. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“That’s confidential,” Officer Santino said. “But I can assure you it’s police business.”

Reluctantly, because she didn’t seem to have a choice, Courtney stepped back and opened the door.

“Which room is Simon Gray’s?” Sergeant Fowler asked.

The question caught Courtney by surprise. It hadn’t once occurred to her that the police might be here because of Simon. They had come for
her
, hadn’t they? “Upstairs, the second door on the right.” She tried not to sound too relieved.

Sergeant Fowler headed up the stairs alone.

Courtney decided the woman was staying below to keep an eye on her. Maybe they considered her a suspect, too. “You said I could call my dad.”

“Sure, go ahead.” Lieutenant Santino smiled at Courtney, but Courtney didn’t feel the least bit reassured. She headed straight for the phone in the kitchen and dialed a number, praying her father had his cell phone turned on. When she heard him bark “Hello” at the other end, she was actually relieved. Relief was not a feeling she associated with her father’s voice.

“Dad, the police are here. They have a search warrant and want to see Simon’s room.”

“I’ll be right home,” he said.

Courtney still had the phone pressed to her ear when a loud humming sound signaled she had been disconnected.

Lieutenant Santino was peering out the front window in the living room, obviously interested in something outside. Courtney didn’t stop to find out what; she headed right upstairs.

Sergeant Fowler was carefully removing the cables from Simon’s computer. Courtney stood in the doorway of her brother’s bedroom, watching him. The officer didn’t glance up when she appeared, didn’t say a word, as if walking off with someone’s personal property was something he did every day. And maybe, Courtney thought, he did.

Simon’s room was exactly as he had left it two days before. Nothing had changed, only the occupant was missing.

The room was almost Spartan. The bed was neatly made. No rugs on the floor, no curtains on the windows. The bookshelf was empty. Except for the computer, there was nothing on his desk. Unlike her own walls, papered to within an inch of their lives with posters of rock groups and rap stars, Simon’s walls were bare.

Once, when she had asked him why his room was so empty, he had cocked his head to one side, looked at her in that puzzled way he had when he was trying to understand something, and said, “Why do people always feel they have to fill up every ounce of empty space with junk? I like my room this way. It’s got all sorts of possibilities.”

When Courtney told him she thought his room was totally impersonal, he’d laughed and said, “But it’s
very
personal. It keeps them guessing.” Courtney had had no idea what he was talking about, or what he meant by “them.” But now, as she watched this stranger disconnecting the cables on Simon’s PC, she thought how Simon hadn’t left this man—or anyone else, for that matter—a single clue about who he was, what he liked, or what he thought. He
even refused to wear anything with a designer’s name on it. You couldn’t pay him to wear brand-name clothes.

Sergeant Fowler lifted the computer from the top of Simon’s desk, leaving behind the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and headed back downstairs.

Lieutenant Santino was waiting by the front door. She opened it to let the sergeant through just as Simon’s father came running across the lawn from the driveway. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted. The sergeant never missed a beat; he tipped his chin in the lieutenant’s direction and kept on walking. Russell Gray stood with his mouth hanging open, watching him.

He turned to the lieutenant and Courtney, looked from one to the other, and apparently decided it was less of a risk to yell at his daughter. “Well, don’t just stand there,” he said, “call …” His voice trailed off.

“Dad,” Courtney moaned, mortified to the brink of tears for both of them.

“I know, I know.” His pale hand flopped back and forth. His sweaty face had turned a bright pink. He shook his head, looking embarrassed. “I haven’t slept in almost two days,” he told the lieutenant. “My son’s in the hospital.”

Lieutenant Santino nodded and said she knew about Simon, was sorry to hear about the accident. Courtney was surprised by the genuine look of sympathy on her face.

“I know this isn’t a good time for us to be here, Mr. Gray,” Lieutenant Santino said, “but we don’t have a
choice. I’ll need you to come inside while I ask you a few questions.”

“About what?” Russell Gray didn’t budge an inch from his spot on the bottom step of the front porch. “What is this all about, anyway? What right have you to come barging into my house at a time like this?”

“Your son,” Lieutenant Santino said, calmly, “could be in a great deal of trouble.”

Courtney watched her father’s face with interest. Surely the lieutenant was mistaken. Didn’t she realize she was talking about Simon the Good? Saint Simon. The Simon who had never been in trouble. The Simon who was their father’s pride and joy. The future CEO of a large software corporation. The son who was going to justify their father’s existence and maybe make them all rich to boot. She was not at all surprised to see every last ounce of color drain right out of her father’s face. With the dark smudges beneath his eyes and two days’ worth of stubble on his pale face, he looked like a corpse. A sad, pathetic corpse. Courtney turned away. She couldn’t bear to look at him.

That was when she noticed the black Mustang parked about halfway up the block on the other side of the street. It looked like Danny Giannetti’s car, but it wasn’t Danny in the front seat. A man, or maybe a boy, wearing dark sunglasses, sat behind the wheel. The back of his head was pressed against the headrest and his arms were folded as if he were napping. But Courtney wasn’t so sure he was really asleep. His head was tilted in such a way that for all
she knew he could be looking straight at them, watching their every move.

Later that afternoon, after school, Danny was mowing the lawn when Charlie Atwater pulled into the driveway in Danny’s Mustang. The only thing Danny had to mow were wild shoots of onion grass. It was too early in the season to be mowing the lawn and he knew it. But it was something to do, something that allowed him to be outside, where he could keep an eye out for Charlie.

Charlie unfolded his long, gangly body from Danny’s car and tossed a cigarette stub on the lawn. Ordinarily the thought of smoke stinking up the interior of his Mustang would have sent Danny into a rage, but he had bigger problems right now. He could tell by the look on Charlie’s face that the news wasn’t good.

“Not here,” he said, before Charlie even opened his mouth.

Charlie shrugged and jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. His short hair was bleached almost white and stood out at odd angles on top of his head. He was a classmate of Danny’s, although he rarely bothered to show up for school. Most of the time he hung out down in Phillipsburg or across the river in Easton. Some of the kids thought he was into dealing drugs. But Danny figured if that were true, Charlie wouldn’t waste his time doing surveillance work for the measly fifty dollars the three of them had scraped together. He would have brushed
Danny off like a mosquito. Instead, he seemed to jump at the idea when Danny approached him.