In for a penny, he thought. “Ma’am, I’m the one who saved their lives.”
Her eyes closed and her face began a slow collapse. The shotgun didn’t move. Peter stepped sideways from the line of fire, then reached out and captured the barrel. She let him tug the gun from her hands. He watched the air go out of her.
She said, “I guess you better come inside.”
June glanced back at Peter. He broke open the 20-gauge and pulled out a shell. Number 4 buckshot. They’d have put a hole in him the size of his fist.
Lewis held out a hand for the shotgun. “You go with them. I’ll keep an eye out.”
—
Peter followed June and Sylvia Reed through the small cluttered living room to the kitchen. A windowed breakfast nook had a view of the garage and the overgrown back yard. The noise of jet engines rose again, and dishes clattered on open shelves as another big plane roared close overhead.
Peter and June sat at a small white table and Sylvia fussed over an antique coffee maker, its logo long since worn away by years of washing. While it hissed and roared, she rattled through chipped yellow cupboards, taking out mugs and spoons and paper napkins, then opened the fridge and stood there looking at its contents as if she couldn’t quite remember what she was doing there.
Peter knew the feeling after his own losses at war. You did familiar chores without thinking, your mind wandering in a vain attempt to seek understanding that it would never find.
Sylvia Reed was stocky and plain in a Costco fleece and jeans with a silver cross on a chain around her neck. Despite the gray hair, shewas younger than she looked, thirty-five at most. Her brother was only twenty-eight. Her eyes were the fractured red of someone who’d been up all night crying.
Finally she poured the coffee and sat, staring at the garage apartment out back, hands restless on her lap. “You want to know why my brother did what he did,” she said. “The detectives were here twice already, asking all sorts of questions. I wish I had answers, but I don’t.”
“Your brother,” June said. “Tell us about him.” She leaned slightly toward the other woman, her voice calm and quiet.
Sylvia Reed sighed. “If you met Geoff on the street, you’d think he was okay. But he wasn’t. Not for a long time.”
“I’m sorry,” June said. “That must have been hard. In what way was he not okay?”
“As a kid, he was really smart. Like off the charts. Taught himself to program when he was twelve. He never even went to college. He got a software job right out of high school. The hours were long, but he loved that job. And he made twice as much as I did.
“He was a sweet kid, but he was always volatile. He had these fits of anger where he’d break things, shout at people. Afterward he’d feel terrible, blame himself. He never really told me what happened, but one day there was an incident at work. He got fired. He couldn’t find another job. It was really hard on him. And he was really hard on himself.”
The roar built as another plane flew overhead. The whole house seemed to shake. She stopped talking until it subsided, then picked up as if nothing had happened.
“After that, things got worse. He had his own apartment in those days. I would go visit, and the place would be filthy. He’d stopped cleaning. I’d tidy up, do the dishes, run the laundry. I had to beg himto take a shower and brush his teeth, and most of the time he wouldn’t. He stopped talking to me. He spent all his time on his computer.”
“What about your parents,” June asked. “Did they help?”
Sylvia shook her head. “It’s just the two of us. Anyway, Geoff ran out of money and stopped paying rent on his place. When the deputies came to evict him, he physically attacked one of them. He actually bit the poor man. That’s why he ended up in the hospital. They said he’d had a psychotic break. The diagnosis was schizophrenia.”
Peter thought about Lewis and Dinah’s two boys, Charlie and Miles. Both were bright and curious and full of life. He couldn’t imagine the heartbreak of seeing someone you loved go through that change.
Sylvia pointed out the window at the garage apartment. “After his release, he moved in over there. The medication seemed to help. He was calmer, less reactive, although he didn’t like the pills. He said it was living in a fog bank. But I watched him swallow them twice a day, just to make sure he actually took them. He always did. A couple of years ago, he said he could handle it himself, so I stopped monitoring him. He’d already gotten that job at the Speed Mart. And he’d actually made a friend, one of his regular customers. They went camping together a few times.”
She sighed. “Now I wonder if Geoff had already decided to do something like this. He stopped letting me visit him in the room over the garage. He came here for dinner a few nights a week, that’s how I kept an eye on him. But I should have seen the signs.” She put her hand over her mouth. “Dear God, what if he’d succeeded? What if he’d killed you?”
She closed her eyes, collecting herself. “I’m sorry. It’s just a lot. He’s—was—my brother. I loved him.” She cleared her throat. “Now then, Ms. Cassidy, what else did you want to talk about?”
Peter had some questions, but June beat him to it. “Geoff’s camping buddy, the customer from work. Do you know his name?”
“The detectives asked that, too, the second time they came, after your friend died. Geoff called him Ollie.”
“Did you ever meet Ollie?” June glanced at Peter, knowing he was wondering if the friend was Enderby.
Sylvia shook her head. “He only came through town every month or so. Geoff said he was a traveling salesman. I don’t know what he sold or who he worked for.”
Peter said, “You said Geoff spent all his time on the computer. What kinds of things did he do?”
“I don’t really know. Geoff called it research. He had a lot of interests. The police took his laptop, you know. When they went through the apartment.”
