Echoes Page 7

  He shouted threats after the retreating animal, cursing the dog for its intrusion, though he didn’t attempt to pursue it. For all he knew, the damn thing could be rabid.

  When he’d expelled the bulk of his rage into the night, challenging the volume of the ocean surf as it rhythmically shushed him, Scotty took another step onto the porch. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then spun angrily as if to challenge the house to aggravate him further.

  What he saw there confused him. In fact he found it so perplexing his rage subsided. He’d expected the woodwork to be shredded, considering the intensity of the dog’s attack, but he found no gouges or chips on the semigloss. Scotty leaned in close and ran his fingers over the smooth surface. Not so much as a scratch. Son of a bitch, he thought as he straightened himself.

  He worked his way along the porch, checking the siding for further signs of attack, and found nothing. Returning his attention to the beach, he caught a brief scent. It was musky and dense, but gone the second he noted it, just like the odor he’d woken to.

  Feeling off balance and exposed, Scotty walked inside. He closed the door, locked it, poured himself a glass of vodka from the bottle he kept in his freezer, and then returned upstairs, where a very long night waited for him.

  • • •

  . . . it hurts, and I beg him to stop, but my pain only excites him, and he presses my face against the wall, and he drives deeper into me. He calls me “faggot” and “bitch” and his voice is the voice of my father. His breath hitches in his throat with an ugly chuckle. I had imagined seducing him, because my eyes had adored his strong chest and his masculine face. I wanted him to be mine. I thought I could take him or at least stain him in my father’s eyes. We would love, and Father would be left behind. His best friend gone. His youngest child away. But there is no love here. There is only piercing. Stabbing.

  Carl pinches my throat in the crook of his elbow. My head grows light, but it does nothing to assuage the pain. Outside the pool house, Bette frantically scratches at the door.

  He tells me this is what I wanted. He grunts it in my ear with his final thrusts.

  This was never what I wanted.

  • • •

  Scotty threw down the book and rubbed his eyes. He’d been searching the paperback for any indication that Walter, or a fictionalized version of him, appeared in its pages. It had been a mistake and fruitless. Though he couldn’t help picturing his deceased friend in the role of the abusive Carl, there was nothing in the description to connect the character to Judge Walter Griff.

  He stood from the chair and walked to his front door. For the third time since early that morning, he peered through the windows. He eyed the shoreline, looking for signs of the dog, fearing he would see the thing loping over the sand, its eyes locked on him like prey, its muzzle crumpled in a ravenous snarl.

  In the course of twelve hours, Ross Michaels’s story about his weekend with Walter had ascended to the mainstream media. Scotty’s name and e-mail address had reached reporters, bloggers, and random lunatics, all of whom demanded information about his friend, but he’d ignored the requests for quotes. Articles and accusations ran on every major news site. The owners of the bed and breakfast had come forward to confirm Michaels’s claim. They offered to provide a credit card receipt for verification. Already, the timbre of the messages coming in was changing. Men and women who had hours before sternly defended Walter Griff from such malicious defamation were suggesting they didn’t really know the man well, or noted how something had always seemed off about the judge.

  Though well-skilled in self-delusion, Scotty himself was losing the fight to keep his mentor’s reputation unspoiled.

  He remembered where he’d seen the name Hargett’s Bend before; he’d read it in the pages of Christopher Pelham’s novel. Adding fuel to his emotional chaos, the bed and breakfast Walter had allegedly visited was called the Pelham Plantation.

  The story grew too complex for his exhausted mind. He tried telling himself he didn’t know what Walter was doing at the establishment, though the flimsy material of the lie crumbled as he attempted to hold it. Of course, he knew. He didn’t want to imagine it, not in any concrete way, but he certainly knew. The evidence was there. But it was so appallingly reckless, unless Walter was hoping to be discovered.

  He called Reyna Baldwin, his assistant, and told her he wouldn’t be coming into the office. He could only imagine the battle plans being formed at the firm. Walter Griff’s name shared space on the letterhead with Scotty’s and five other mens’. Reyna informed him that Lucinda Folgers, the firm’s public relations counsel, had requested a meeting with all senior partners for ten a.m. to discuss media management. Scotty declined to attend. He wasn’t speaking to anyone about Walter.

  His daughter’s call came through as he listed the files he needed Reyna to messenger over. Miranda’s name on the phone’s screen infuriated him. His daughter’s timing had always been terrible, always the most needy when it was the most inconvenient. He ignored the intrusion and continued to direct his assistant in how to manage his day.

  “And do something else for me,” Scotty said. “I want you to look into a book called The Litter’s Runt by Christopher Pelham.”

  • • •

  I wait in the doctor’s office. Fever burns me. My body is weak and aches. I’ve been sick since the night Carl led me into the pool house.

  As I wait for my family’s physician to see me, I read a story about indoor scavenging. It’s what forensic scientists call the practice of animals feeding on the remains of their deceased masters. Though cats are not above such behavior, dogs are known to partake in this particular ritual more frequently. The article notes a man in Sweden who killed himself, blew out the back of his head with a .22 slug. His dog, a Labrador retriever, who by all accounts was a friendly, well-loved and cared for animal, was found by authorities entering the home, standing over his master’s body. The dog sat calmly and obeyed the commands of the strangers.

  He appeared completely docile, but at some point between the suicide and the arrival of the authorities, the animal had devoured the man’s cheeks and gnawed through his neck to the point of decapitation.

  The article goes on to describe the fear this practice instills in many pet owners, but I can think of nothing lovelier. Were I to die, I would offer my remains to Bette.

  If I were to now write my last will and testament, it would be as follows:

  “To the men who have touched me and tasted me, the men who lived honest lives and shared their desires with me, I leave my joy and gratitude. To the other men, those who hide their passions behind hard red walls, and exercise those passions with cruelty, I would leave only my contempt and loathing. My family gets nothing of me.

  But for my heart’s joy, Bette, my constant friend, I would leave all else. I humbly and gladly bequeath her my flesh and my spirit. . . .”

  • • •

  After twenty-four hours, the national news had moved deeper into the story of Judge Walter Griff. Two more young men had come forward, and a third man, now in his forties, revealed a long-term affair he’d had with Griff during the nineties. Though all the men had been of legal age, one just barely, the media kept calling them “boys,” kept digging into the old man’s corpse with their talons, looking to pluck more tasty filth from his history. Lifelong friends of Judge Griff refused to speak about his place in their lives, preferring to let his soiled memory fade while extricating themselves from that memory. The firm had taken its first hit, in the form of Snowburn Industries’ decision to end their business dealings, but Scotty knew it wouldn’t be the last, as all of the fine southern Christians who’d entrusted their legal matters to Griff’s legacy scrambled to distance themselves from a company built by that kind of man.

  He hid in the beach house, working for his remaining clients. Scotty had barely slept. The previous night, he had again woken from troubled sleep with the musky scent in his nose. It was the odor of a dog’s pelt, or s
o he’d come to believe.

  He hadn’t read anymore of Pelham’s book. It remained on the floor of his study, kicked to and fro as Scotty attempted to manage both personal and business correspondences. Reyna remained his lifeline to the office. She told him the other partners were furious with his absence. Scotty had no doubt they were, but none of them, not one, knew what he was going through.

  The greatest man he’d ever known wasn’t really the man he’d known. So many years of advice and wisdom. So much time spent together, and not once had Scotty understood the machinations of his mentor’s deceit. The fishing trips and the resort vacations and the late night hours spent over piles of paperwork and grease-stained pizza boxes had been a fiction. Scotty had fully invested himself in the man’s vision, in his old-school sagacity. And the stupid son of a bitch had dropped dead, leaving Scotty to deal with the creeping toxic fallout of the old man’s secrets.

  Scotty let his daughter’s call go to voicemail as he poured himself a vodka. The last thing he needed was to endure her demands, or worse, her self-pitying bullshit. He wasn’t falling for it again. He’d defended her and bailed her out and done his best for too long. Walter had always told him that if you didn’t let people help themselves, let them save themselves, they’d never be anything but a burden.

  They’d never be anything but runts, Scotty thought.

  From the porch, he watched a young family playing in the sand. The mother tossed her son a red ball. The father smiled as he spoke into his cell phone. Determined to get his father’s attention, the boy kicked the ball in his father’s direction, causing a faux look of surprise and determination to light on the man’s face as he scrambled to join the game.

  The scene irritated Scotty. He downed the rest of his drink in one shot and walked inside. He poured another drink and set his cell phone on the counter. Six messages from Miranda waited. He erased the first five and leaned against the counter before starting playback on the most recent.

  His daughter’s words emerged from the small speaker. The panic and tears in her voice unnerved him, and Scotty stood a little straighter.

  “You didn’t come. Why didn’t you come, Daddy? I needed to talk to you. I’m in trouble. So much trouble. I need money, but I wanted to tell you why I needed it, so you’d understand, but you never came, and you won’t answer your fucking phone.” Her voice broke, and she sobbed. “She’s going to kill me, Daddy. If I don’t pay her, she’s going to kill me. You have to help. You have to. If you don’t want to see me, just send the money to my account. Please.” The message went silent except for an occasional sob. Then Miranda’s voice returned, calmer and deeper. “I’m glad he’s dead.” The message ended there.

  Scotty roared at the device and slammed his hand against the counter, sending shocks of pain to his elbow. He filled his glass a third time and stood trembling in his kitchen. Every muscle in his body clenched and sparked ache. A specific, sharper pain rose between his eyes, and he bellowed another useless shout into the room.

  She blamed him. She’d always blamed him. The therapist he’d spent a fortune on had convinced Miranda that her acting out was the result of trying to get his attention. You were never home, she complained. You never cared. All the psychobabble justifications she parroted back to him had made Scotty feel like shit, but they were just excuses.

  “I was building a life for my fucking family,” he yelled. “And you wasted it. You smoked it and shot it and drank it away. I did not do this to you. You had everything. Every-goddamn-thing! And you nearly murdered an old woman for sixteen bucks and a fake diamond brooch.”

  His tirade ended, and Scotty searched the kitchen in a daze. He’d never felt such absolute hatred for another human being, and the power of the emotion unbalanced him. He gazed around the room, at the stainless steel sink, the glass kitchen cabinets, the aqua-colored dish towels, hanging from white plastic hooks he’d stuck to his refrigerator.

  As the throbbing of his pulse lessened in his ears, the sound of scrabbling claws on the bare wooden floors in the upstairs hallway emerged. The tremble in his hands intensified. Though it sounded like a dog racing from one end of the corridor to the other, Scotty told himself it was nothing. There was no way a dog or any other animal larger than a spider had gotten into his house. He was overwrought. Exhausted. Drunk.

  It was time to get out. He’d spent too much time alone, wallowing in crisis. He could call Desmond, or the Shermans, or the Cunninghams. He could call Rachel Smith from the firm and invite her to meet him at the Westin. She’d thrown herself at him during Walter’s funeral reception. She’d help him blow off some steam. She knew how the game worked. Maybe they’d have dinner first. A good dinner would help.

  Scotty gazed upward at the white ceiling while putting his drink on the counter. On the second floor of his house, the clicking of hard nails on polished wood returned.

  He began for the stairs when his phone rang. Snatching it up, he prepared himself for another tirade, only this time his daughter was going to hear it. As he jabbed the icon to accept the call, he realized the ring wasn’t the one he’d assigned to Miranda.

  “Hey, Scotty,” Reyna said. “Shit is spraying the walls over here. Langley and McDonald are walking. They’re demanding we reimburse their retainers.”

  “We don’t—”

  “I know,” Reyna said. “No refunds. They’ve been informed. Naturally, they threatened to sue.”

  “Yeah,” Scotty said, listening to the clicking sound overhead. “Naturally.”

  “Are you ever coming back into the office?”

  “Tomorrow,” Scotty replied. “I’ll be in tomorrow.”

  “So you’re doing better?”

  “Doing fine,” Scotty said. “Walter was a piece of shit. It’s time to flush and get off the throne. See if you can’t get me a meeting with the other partners in the morning, and make sure our PR counsel is there. I want the firm to issue a statement, distancing ourselves from Griff.”

  The clack of nails from above faded. The anticipation of the sound remained, though, creating a moment of unbearable tension during which Scotty held his breath, waiting for the next click of claw on wood.

  “The partners will be happy to hear it. The only reason they’ve delayed is to give you a chance to sign off on it.”

  “Consider it signed.”

  “As for that book,” Reyna said.

  “What about it?”

  “Well, I assume you already know that the author of the book, Christopher Pelham, grew up in the house Walter took his friend to before he died.”

  “I put that together,” Scotty said. “So when did Pelham turn it into a bed and breakfast?”

  “He didn’t,” Reyna said. “He’s been dead for about twenty years.”

  He wished the news carried more surprise for him. A small part of his mind, a part that resided in the shadow of fear, had already suspected this. His imminently rational mind had begun to consider irrational things.

  “So what happened to him?”

  “His father happened to him,” Reyna said. “Chris Pelham wrote this book, which is pretty much a thinly veiled memoir, in which he describes his childhood and teenage years, including his sexual activity while still a minor. He detailed multiple same-sex affairs, including one with a man who is clearly Curt Ramsey, his father’s business partner.”

  “The stories about his sex life were true?”

  “Probably,” Reyna said. “I found a student thesis online that compared the content of his diaries to the content of the novel, and apparently the names were changed, but just barely. Anyone who lived in Hargett’s Bend would have known whose dick that kid had sucked. The whole city went simple. Fights. Vandalism. A shitload of divorces. If Pelham had wanted to destroy the town, he couldn’t have done a better job if he’d sprayed it down in Exxon premium and sparked a Zippo.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Pretty much. Months before the book actually hit shelves, Pelham gave the thing to his
father as a Christmas present. Stupid-ass move. He’d probably intended to drop that bomb in daddy’s lap and then skip town the following morning. But that didn’t happen. His father read the book that night. Needless to say, the elder Pelham didn’t enjoy his son’s contribution to the literary canon.”

  “So he killed him?”

  “Sure. That’s as good a way to put it as any.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Scotty, Old Man Pelham tied his son up and threw him in the pool house. He also put the kid’s dog in there. No food. No water. Hands and feet tied so tightly they were black when the coroner found the kid.”

  “He just left his son and the dog in there to starve?”

  “Well,” Reyna said, “the son starved.”

  The dog’s growl crept down to him from the second floor. Scotty’s neck went cold and his skin puckered. “Hold on,” he instructed. He eased toward the stairs, and then changed his trajectory, rapidly moving to the kitchen and through the utility room to the garage. “Okay.”

  “They figure the kid lasted about four days,” Reyna went on. “On the fifth day, puppy ate supper.”

  “Are you serious?” Scotty said.

  “It’s documented. I mean, Pelham’s actual cause of death was listed as dehydration, but the part about being doggy treats is true. You can’t blame the dog. I’m surprised it waited that long. That night, Old Man Pelham went to the pool house, found the dog gnawing on his kid’s face, and shot it.”

  “Bette,” Scotty said.

  “What?”

  “The dog. Her name was Bette.” At least, that was her name in the book.

  “Okay,” Reyna said as if it were wholly useless information. “Anyway, Pelham shot the dog and then cut the ropes off his kid. He called the cops and tried to convince them that the dog had attacked his son, and he’d put the dog down.”