The Woods (Page 63)

He put his face in his hands. “Please…”

“Please what?”

“I can’t go back there anymore. Do you understand? I can’t go back there.”

“It can’t hurt you anymore.”

He kept his face in his hands. His shoulders shook. “Those poor kids.”

“Ira?” He looked so damn terrified. She said, “Daddy?”

“I let everyone down.”

“No, you didn’t.”

His sobs were uncontrollable now. Lucy got on her knees in front of him. She felt the tears push against her eyes too. “Please, Dad, look at me.”

He wouldn’t. The nurse, Rebecca, stuck her head in the doorway.

“I’ll go get something,” the nurse said.

Lucy held a hand up. “No.”

Ira let out another cry.

“I think he needs something to calm him down.”

“Not yet,” Lucy said. “We’re just…please leave us alone.”

“I have a responsibility.”

“He’s fine. This is a private conversation. It’s getting emotional, that’s all.”

“I’ll get the doctor.”

Lucy was about to tell her not to, but she was gone.

“Ira, please listen to me.”

“No…”

“What did you say to him?”

“I could only protect so many. Do you understand?”

She didn’t. She put her hands on his cheeks and tried to lift his head. His scream almost knocked her backward. She let go. He backed up, knocking the chair to the ground. He huddled in the corner. “No…!”

“It’s okay, Dad. It’s—”

“No!”

Nurse Rebecca came back with two other women. One Lucy recognized as the doctor. The other, another nurse, Lucy figured, had a hypodermic needle.

Rebecca said, “It’s okay, Ira.”

They started to approach him. Lucy stepped in the way. “Get out,” she said.

The doctor—her name tag read Julie Contrucci—cleared her throat. “He’s very agitated.”

“So am I,” Lucy said.

“Excuse me?”

“You said he’s agitated. Big deal. Being agitated is a part of life. I feel agitated sometimes. You feel agitated sometimes, right? Why can’t he?”

“Because he’s not well.”

“He’s fine. I need him lucid for a few more minutes.”

Ira let out another sob.

“You call this lucid?”

“I need time with him.”

Dr. Contrucci folded her arms across her chest. “It’s not up to you.”

“I’m his daughter.”

“Your father is here voluntarily. He can come and go as he pleases. No court has ever declared him incompetent. It’s up to him.”

Contrucci looked to Ira. “Do you want a sedative, Mr. Silverstein?”

Ira’s eyes darted back and forth like the cornered animal he suddenly was.

“Mr. Silverstein?”

He stared at his daughter. He started crying again. “I didn’t say anything, Lucy. What could I tell him?”

He started sobbing again. The doctor looked at Lucy. Lucy looked at her father. “It’s okay, Ira.”

“I love you, Luce.”

“I love you too.”

The nurses went over. Ira stuck out his arm. Ira smiled dreamily when the needle went in. It reminded Lucy of her childhood. He had smoked grass in front of her without worry. She could remember him inhaling deeply, his smile like that, and now she wondered why he’d needed it. She remembered how it had picked up after the camp. During her childhood years the drugs were just a part of him—a part of the “movement.” But now she wondered. Like with her drinking. Was there some kind of addiction gene working? Or was Ira, like Lucy, using outside agents—drugs, booze—to escape, to numb, to not face the truth?

CHAPTER 28

“PLEASE TELL ME YOU’RE JOKING.”

FBI Special Agent Geoff Bedford and I were sitting at a regulation-size diner, the kind with the aluminum on the outside and signed photographs of local anchors on the inside. Bedford was trim and sported a handlebar mustache with waxed tips. I’m sure that I had seen one of those in real life before, but I couldn’t recall where. I kept expecting three other guys to join him for a little barbershop quartet work.

“I’m not,” I said.

The waitress came by. She didn’t call us hon. I hate that. Bedford had been reading the menu for food, but he just ordered coffee. I got the meaning and ordered the same. We handed her the menus. Bedford waited until she was gone.

“Steubens did it, no question. He killed all those people. There was never any doubt in the past. There is no doubt now. And I’m not just talking about reasonable doubt here. There is absolutely no doubt at all.”

“The first killings. The four in the woods.”

“What about them?”

“There was no evidence linking him to those,” I said.

“No physical evidence, no.”

“Four victims,” I said. “Two were young women. Margot Green and my sister?”

“That’s right.”

“But none of Steubens’s other victims were female.”

“Correct.”

“All were males between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. Don’t you find that odd?”

He looked at me as if I had suddenly grown a second head. “Look, Mr. Copeland, I agreed to see you because, one, you’re a county prosecutor, and two, your own sister died at the hands of this monster. But this line of questioning…”

“I just visited Wayne Steubens,” I said.

“I am aware of that. And let me tell you, he is one damn good psychopath and pathological liar.”

I thought about how Lucy had said the same thing. I also thought about how Wayne had said that he and Lucy had a little fling before I got to camp.

“I know that,” I said.

“I’m not sure you do. Let me explain something to you. Wayne Steubens has been a part of my life for nearly twenty years. Think about that. I’ve seen how convincing a liar he can be.”

I wasn’t sure what tack to take here, so I just started tramping around. “New evidence has come to light,” I said.

Bedford frowned. The tips of the mustache downturned with his lips. “What are you talking about?”

“You know who Gil Perez is?”

“Of course I do. I know everything and everyone involved in this case.”