“No. I’m fine.”

“You want to go for a walk?”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“You up for a movie? I grabbed a video on my way over.”

“Yeah… sure.”

“Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“It doesn’t really matter. Whatever you picked up is fine.” She rose from the couch and found the movie. A comedy, it succeeded in making Sarah laugh a couple of times, and she glanced over at Miles to see his reaction. There wasn’t one. After an hour, Miles excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he didn’t come back in a few minutes, Sarah went to make sure he was okay.

She found him in the bedroom, the manila folder open beside him.

“I just have to check something,” he said. “It’ll only take a minute.”

“Okay,” she answered.

He didn’t come back.

Long before it was over, Sarah stopped the movie and ejected it, then found her jacket. She peeked in on him once more-not knowing that Jonah had done the same thing-then slipped quietly from the house. Miles didn’t realize she’d left until Jonah

Charlie was in the office until almost midnight. Like Miles, he was looking over the case file and wondering what he was going to do.

It had taken quite a bit of cajoling to cool Harvey down, especially after he threw in the incident in Miles’s car as well. Not surprisingly, Thurman Jones remained fairly quiet throughout it all. Charlie guessed that he thought it would be better if Harvey did the talking for him. He did, however, flash the tiniest of smiles when Harvey said that he was seriously considering bringing Miles up on charges.

That was when Charlie told them why Otis had been arrested in the first place. Seemed that Miles hadn’t bothered to tell Otis what the charge was. They were going to have a serious heart-to-heart the following day-if Charlie didn’t wring his neck first.

But in the presence of Harvey and Thurman, Charlie acted as if he’d known all along.

“No reason to start flinging accusations when I wasn’t sure they were even warranted.”

As expected, both Harvey and Thurman had problems with that. They had further problems with Sims’s story, until Charlie told them he’d met with Earl Getlin. “And he confirmed the whole thing” was how he phrased it. He wasn’t about to tell Thurman about his doubts, nor was he willing to share them with Harvey just yet. As soon as he’d finished, Harvey gave him a look that meant they should meet later to talk in private. Charlie, knowing he needed more time to digest things, pretended not to notice.

They did spend a great deal of time talking about Miles after Charlie finished. Charlie had no doubts that Miles had done exactly what was described, and though he was…upset, to put it mildly, he’d known Miles long enough to know that it wasn’t out of character in a situation like this. But Charlie hid his anger, even as he kept his defense of Miles to a minimum.

In the end, Harvey recommended that Miles be placed on suspension for the time being, while they sorted everything out.

Thurman Jones asked that Otis either be released or charged right away, without further delays.

Charlie told them that Miles was already gone for the day, but that he would make a decision on both counts first thing in the morning. Somehow, he hoped things would be clearer by then.

But they wouldn’t be, as he discovered when he finally headed home. Before he left the office, he got in touch with Harris at his house, asking how it went.

Turned out he hadn’t been able to find Sims all day.

“How hard did you look?” Charlie snapped.

“I looked everywhere,” Harris answered groggily. “His house, his mom’s place, his hangouts. I went to every bar and liquor store in the county. He’s gone.”

Brenda, wearing a bathrobe over her pajamas, was waiting up for him when he got home. He recounted most of what had happened, and she asked what would happen if Otis was actually brought to trial.

“It’ll be the typical defense,” Charlie responded wearily. “Jones will argue that Otis wasn’t even there that night and find others who will verify it. Then he’ll argue that even if Otis was there, he didn’t say what’s attributed to him. And even if he did say it, he’ll say it was taken out of context.”

“Will that work?”

Charlie sipped his coffee, knowing he still had more work to do. “No one can ever predict what a jury will do. You know that.”

Brenda put her hand on Charlie’s arm. “But what do you think?” she asked.

“Honestly.”

“Honestly?”

She nodded, thinking he looked a dozen years older than when he’d left for work that morning.

“Unless we find something else, Otis is gonna walk.”

“Even if he did it?”

“Yeah,” he said, no energy in his voice, “even if he did it.”

“Would Miles accept that?”

Charlie closed his eyes. “No. Not a chance.”

“What would he do?”

He finished the cup of coffee and reached for the file. “I have no idea.”

Chapter 25

I began stalking them regularly, carefully, so that no one would know what I was up to.

I would wait for Jonah at school, I would visit Missy’s grave, I went to their house at night. My lies were convincing; no one suspected a thing. I knew it was wrong, but it didn’t seem as if I could control my actions anymore. As with any compulsion, I couldn’t stop. When I did these things, I wondered about my state of mind. Was I a masochist, who wanted to relieve the agony I’d inflicted? Or was I a sadist, someone who secretly enjoyed their torment and wanted to witness it firsthand? Was I both? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I didn’t seem to have a choice.

I could not escape the image I’d seen the first night, when Miles walked past his son without speaking to him, as if oblivious to his presence. After all that had happened, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Yes, I knew that Missy had been taken from their lives… but didn’t people grow closer after a traumatic event? Didn’t they look to each other for support? Especially family? This was what I had wanted to believe. This was how I had made it through the first six weeks. It became my mantra. They would survive. They would heal. They would turn to each other and become even closer. It was the singsong chant of a tortured fool, but it had become real in my mind.

But that night, they had not been doing okay. Not that night. I am not naive enough now, nor was I naive enough then, to believe that a single snapshot of a family at home reveals the truth. I told myself after that night that I was mistaken in what I saw, or even if I was correct, that it didn’t mean anything. Nothing can be read into isolated instances. By the time I got to my car, I almost believed it.

But I had to make certain.

There is a path one takes when moving toward destruction. Like someone who has one drink on a Friday night, and two the next, only to gradually and completely lose control, I found myself proceeding more boldly. Two days after my nighttime visit, I needed to know about Jonah. I can still remember the train of thought I used to justify my action. It went like this: I’ll watch for Jonah today, and if he’s smiling, then I’ll know I was wrong. So I went to the school. I sat in the parking lot, a stranger sitting behind the wheel in a place I had no right to be, staring out the windshield. The first time I went, I barely caught a glimpse of him, so I returned the following day.

A few days later, I went again.

And again.

It got to the point where I recognized his teacher, his class, and I was soon able to pick him out immediately, just as he left the building. And I watched. Sometimes he would smile, sometimes he wouldn’t, and for the rest of the afternoon, I would wonder what it meant. Either way, I was never satisfied. And night would come. Like an itch I couldn’t reach, the compulsion to spy nagged at me, growing stronger as the hours rolled on. I would lie down, eyes wide open, then get out of bed. I’d pace back and forth. I’d sit, then lie down again. And even though I knew it was wrong, I’d make the decision to go. I’d talk to myself, whispering the reasons I should ignore the feeling inside me, even as I reached for the car keys. I would drive the darkened stretch, urging myself to turn around and head back home, even as I parked the car. And I would make my way through the bushes surrounding their house, one step after the next, not understanding what had driven me there.