The Woods

I kept my breath steady.

“How did I do that?” I asked.

“She would have been mine.”

“Who would have been yours?”

“Lucy. She was bound to hook up with somebody that summer. If you weren’t there, I had more than an inside track, if you know what I mean.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, but I waded in. “I thought you were interested in Margot Green.”

He smiled. “She had some bod, huh?”

“Indeed.”

“Such a major tease. You remember that time when we were on the basketball court?”

I did remember. Instantly. Funny how that worked. Margot was the camp va-va-voom, and man, did she know it. She always wore these excruciating halter tops whose sole purpose was to be more obscene than actual nudity. On that day, some girl had gotten hurt on the volleyball court. I don’t remember the girl’s name. I think she ended up with a broken leg, but who remembers anymore? What we all remember—the image I was sharing with this sicko—was a panicked Margot Green sprinting past the basketball court in that damn halter top, everything jiggling, screaming for help, and all of us, maybe thirty, forty boys on the basketball court, just stopping and staring slack jawed.

Men are pigs, yes. But so are adolescents. It is an odd world. Nature demands that males between the ages of, say, fourteen and seventeen become walking hormonal erections. You can’t help it. Yet, according to society, you are too young to do anything about it other than suffer. And that suffering increased tenfold around a Margot Green.

God has some sense of humor, don’t you think?

“I remember,” I said.

“Such a tease,” Wayne said. “You do know that she dumped Gil?”

“Margot?”

“Yep. Right before the murder.” He arched an eyebrow. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t move, let him talk, hoped he’d say more. He did.

“I had her, you know. Margot. But she wasn’t as good as Lucy.” He put his hand to his mouth as though he had said too much. Quite a performance. I stayed very still.

“You do know that we had a fling before you arrived that summer, right? Lucy and me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You look a little green, Cope. You aren’t jealous, are you?”

“It was twenty years ago.”

“It was, yes. And to be honest, I only got to second base. Bet you got farther, Cope. Bet you popped that cherry, didn’t you?”

He was trying to get a rise out of me. I wouldn’t play that game.

“A gentleman never kisses and tells,” I said.

“Right, sure. And don’t get me wrong. You two were something. A blind man could see it. You and Lucy were the real deal. It was very special, wasn’t it?”

He smiled at me and blinked rapidly.

“It was,” I said, “a long time ago.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you? We get older, sure, but in most ways, we still feel exactly the same as we did back then. Don’t you think?”

“Not really, Wayne.”

“Well, life does march on, I guess. They give us Internet access, you know. No porno sites or anything like that, and they check all our communications. But I did a Web search on you. I know you’re a widower with a six-year-old girl. I couldn’t find her name online though. What is it?”

Couldn’t help it this time—the effect was visceral. Hearing this psycho mention my daughter was worse than having her photograph in my office. I bit back and got to the point.

“What happened in those woods, Wayne?”

“People died.”

“Don’t play games with me.”

“Only one of us is playing games, Cope. If you want the truth, let’s start with you. Why are you here now? Today. Because the timing is not coincidental. We both know that.”

I looked behind me. I knew that we were being watched. I had requested no eavesdropping. I signaled for someone to come in. A guard opened the door.

“Sir?” he said to me.

“Has Mr. Steubens had any visitors over the past, say, two weeks?”

“Yes, sir. One.”

“Who?”

“I can get that name for you, if you’d like.”

“Please do.”

The guard left. I looked back at Wayne. Wayne did not appear upset. “Touché,” he said. “But there’s no need. I will tell you. A man named Curt Smith.”

“I don’t know that name.”

“Ah, but he knows you. You see, he works for a company called MVD.”

“A private detective?”

“Yes.”

“And he came because he wanted”—I saw it now, those damn sons of bitches—“he wanted dirt on me.”

Wayne Steubens touched his nose and then pointed at me.

“What did he offer you?” I asked.

“His boss used to be a big fed. He said that he could get me better treatment.”

“Did you tell him anything?”

“No. For two reasons. One, his offer was total nonsense. An ex-fed can’t do anything for me.”

“And two?”

Wayne Steubens leaned forward. He made sure I was looking him square in the eye. “I want you to listen to me, Cope. I want you to listen to me very carefully.”

I held his gaze.

“I have done a lot of bad things in my life. I won’t go into details. There is no need. I have made mistakes. I have spent the past eighteen years in this hellhole paying for them. I don’t belong here. I really don’t. I won’t talk about Indiana or Virginia or any of that. The people who died there—I didn’t know them. They were strangers.”

He stopped, closed his eyes, rubbed his face. He had a wide face. The complexion was shiny, waxy even. He opened his eyes again, made sure that I was still looking at him. I was. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to.

“But—and here’s your number-two reason, Cope—I have no idea what happened in those woods twenty years ago. Because I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened to my friends—not strangers, Cope, friends—Margot Green or Doug Billingham or Gil Perez or your sister.”

Silence.

“Did you kill those boys in Indiana and Virginia?” I asked.

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

“There was a lot of evidence.”

“Yes, there was.”

“But you’re still proclaiming your innocence.”