Winter and Night by S.J. Rozan Read Free Book Online

had looked away, but now she brought her eyes back to mine. "He thought you didn't want to be American, and that made him mad. You never understood. You never listened."
    I felt my jaw tighten. I turned to the desk, pulled a cigarette from my pocket. I almost lit it, but I didn't know which would be worse, if she asked me please to put it out, or if she just stood there and said nothing. I crammed it back in the pack and started going through the papers Gary had left behind: an algebra quiz, research notes on the Iroquois. I knew exactly where Helen was, standing behind me.
    "Bill—"
    "Do you know how to work this thing?" I switched on the computer on Gary's desk.
    First she was silent. Then she said, in a soft voice, "He has a password. I don't know it."
    With Helen quiet behind me, I tried a few obvious things: Gary's name, his birthday, his sister's names. None of them worked, but they hadn't been likely to. He probably used the title of a hit song by some rock group I'd never heard of, or maybe the name of an NFL receiver he was modeling his game after. I tried Jets, Dolphins, and Chiefs and then gave up.
    "I'll send someone out who's better at this than I am," I said. "Does he have e-mail?"
    "Not his own." Helen spoke now in a quiet monotone, the voice I imagined she'd used when she'd answered questions from the police. "We have a computer in the family room that's online. The kids can all use it whenever they want, but we have only one account. Scott thinks they're too young for us not to monitor what they're doing. Because of what you hear."
    "Did the police look at it?"
    "One of the detectives did. But he said he didn't find anything. Things the kids needed for school, and some sports sites."
    "NFL.com, that kind of thing?"
    "That's right."
    "The guy I send out here, can he look anyway?"
    "I… I'm nervous about you sending someone."
    "Why?"
    "Scott won't like it."
    "Scott's in New York."
    "He'll know."
    Meaning: The only things she'd ever successfully hidden from Scott were things he didn't give a damn about anyway.
    I said, "If it helps find Gary, what's the difference what he knows?"
    She didn't answer, and I took that to mean what I liked. I asked her for the name of the local cop in charge and left it at that, for now.
    Helen showed me the note Gary had left, but it didn't say anything other than what he'd told me: I have something important to do, I'll be back as soon as I can, don't worry. I stayed a little longer, looked through this and that, the pictures and papers, CDs and books and clothes that made up Gary's life, but I didn't turn up anything that would help me understand where he'd gone, what it was he had to do. I faced my sister, standing silent in the doorway.
    "Is it Scott?" I asked quietly.
    "What do you mean?"
    "Did Gary leave to get away from Scott?"
    She flushed. "Why would he?"
    "Because Scott's not a nice man."
    "You're wrong. He's not nice to you. He loves the kids. And me," she added. "He's very good to us."
    "Gary has a bruise on his jaw."
    "He does?" Her eyes grew anxious, worried about her baby; then she must have realized why I'd told her that. "You think Scott did that?" She drew herself up, her small chin thrust out, quick to rally to Scott's defense. Too quick, I thought; and this was not the first time I'd seen that posture, though the image that flashed in my mind was not of Helen.
    "Tell me he doesn't hit the kids." My words were calm but it was clearly a challenge.
    "No." Her voice matched my own. "When they were small he spanked them sometimes, we both did. We're strict with them. It's very important to Scott that they know right from wrong. But what you mean— no, he doesn't do that."
    We both knew what I meant. I looked at her, standing in her son's room, the sixth or eighth or tenth place he'd tried to make his own in his fifteen years. When we were young, Helen never lied to me. But it had been a long time since either of us was young.
    When I drove off, she stood at the