the Woods (2007) Read online

  "It's been twenty years, Wayne. I need to know what happened in those woods." "Why?" "Because my sister was there."

  "No, Cope, that's not what I meant." He leaned in a little. "Why now? As you pointed out, it's been twenty years. So why, old friend, do you need to know now?"

  "I'm not sure," I said.

  His eyes settled and met mine. I tried to stay steady. Role reversal: The psychotic was trying to read me for a lie.

  "The timing," he said, "is very interesting."

  "Whys that?"

  "Because you're not my only recent surprise visitor."

  I nodded slowly, trying not to seem too anxious. "Who else came?"

  "Why should I tell you?"

  "Why not?"

  Wayne Steubens sat back. "You're still a good-looking guy, Cope."

  "So are you," I said. "But I think us dating is out of the question."

  "I should be angry with you, really."

  "Oh?"

  "You spoiled that summer for me."

  Partitioning. I talked about that before. I know that my face showed nothing, but it was like razors were slicing through my gut. I was making small talk with a mass murderer. I looked at his hands. I imagined the blood. I imagined the blade up against the exposed throat. Those hands. Those seemingly innocuous hands that now sat folded on the steel tabletop. What had they done?

  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 be come walking hormonal erections. You cant 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 re quested 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 up set. "Touche," 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."

  I am.

  "Are you innocent, Wayne?"

  "Lets focus on one thing at a time, shall we? I am talking to you about that summer. I am talking to you about that camp. I didn't kill anyone there. I don't know what happened in those woods."

  I said nothing.

  "You are a prosecutor now, right?"

  I nodded.

  "People are digging into your past. I understand that. I wouldn't really pay too much attention. Except now you're here too. Which means something happened. Som
ething new. Something involving that night."

  "What's your point, Wayne?"

  "You always thought I killed them," he said. "But now, for the first time, you're not so sure, are you?"

  I said nothing.

  "Something has changed. I can see it in your face. For the first time you seriously wonder if I had something to do with that night. And if you have learned something new, you have an obligation to tell me about it."

  "I have no obligations, Wayne. You weren't tried for those murders.

  You were tried and convicted for murders in Indiana and Virginia."

  He spread his arms. "Then where's the harm in telling me what you learned?"

  I thought about that. He had a point. If I told him that Gil Perez was still alive, it would do nothing to overturn his convictions-because he wasn't convicted of killing Gil. But it would cast a long shadow. A serial killer case is a bit like the proverbial and literal house of corpses: If you learn that a victim wasn't murdered-at least, not then and not by your serial killer-then that house of corpses could easily implode.

  I chose discretion for now. Until we had a positive ID on Gil Perez, there was no reason to say anything anyway. I looked at him. Was he a lunatic? I thought so. But how the hell could I be sure? Either way I had learned all I could today. So I stood.

  "Good-bye, Wayne."

  "Good-bye, Cope."

  I started for the door.

  "Cope?"

  I turned.

  "You know I didn't kill them, don't you?"

  I did not reply.

  "And if I didn't kill them," he went on, "you have to wonder about everything that happened that night-not only to Margot, Doug, Gil and Camille. But what happened to me. And to you."

  Chapter 27

  "Ira, look at me a second."Lucy had waited until her father seemed his most lucid. She sat across from him in his room. Ira had broken out his old vinyl's today. There were covers with a long-haired James Taylor on Sweet Baby James and another of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road (with a barefoot and therefore "dead" Paul). Marvin Gaye wore a scarf for What's Going On and Jim Morrison moped sexuality on the cover of the original Doors album. ((T "v)'| Ira?

  He was smiling at an old picture from their camp days. The yellow VW Beetle had been decorated by the oldest-girl bunk. They put flowers and peace signs all over it. Ira was standing in the middle with his arms crossed. The girls surrounded the car. Everyone wore shorts and T-shirts and sun-kissed smiles. Lucy remembered that day. It had been a good one, one of those you stick in a box and put in a bottom drawer and take out and look at when you're feeling particularly blue.

  Ira?

  He turned toward her. "I'm listening."

  Barry McGuire's classic 1965 antiwar anthem, "Eve of Destruction," was playing. Troubling as this song was, it had always comforted Lucy. The song paints a devastatingly bleak picture of the world. He sings about the world exploding, about bodies in the Jordan River, about the fear of a nuclear button being pushed, about hate in Red China and Selma, Alabama (a forced rhyme, but it worked), about all the hypocrisy and hate in the world-and in the chorus he almost mockingly asks how the listener can be naive enough to think that we aren't on the eve of destruction.

  So why did it comfort her?

  Because it was true. The world was this terrible, awful place. The planet was on the brink back then. But it had survived-some might even say thrived. The world seems pretty horrible today too. You can't believe that we will get through it. McGuire's world had been just as scary. Maybe scarier. Go back twenty years earlier-World War II, Nazism. That must have made the sixties look like Disneyland. We got through that too. We always seem to be on the eve of destruction. And we always seem to get through it.

  Maybe we all survive the destruction we have wrought.

  She shook her head. How naive. How Pollyannaish. She should know better. Ira's beard was trimmed today. His hair was still unruly. The gray was taking on an almost blue tinge. His hands shook and Lucy wondered if maybe Parkinson's was on the horizon. His last years, she knew, would not be good. But then again, there really hadn't been many good ones in the past twenty.

  "What is it, honey?"

  His concern was so apparent. It had been one of Ira's great and honest charms ' he so genuinely cared about people. He was a terrific listener. He saw pain and wanted to find a way to ease it. Everyone felt that empathy with Ira-every camper, every parent, every friend. But when you were his only child, the person he loved above all else, it was like the warmest blanket on the coldest day.

  God, he'd been such a magnificent father. She missed that man so much. "In the logbook, it says that a man named Manolo Santiago visited you." She tilted her head. "Do you remember that, Ira?"

  His smile slid away.

  "Ira?"

  "Yeah," he said. "I remember."

  "What did he want?"

  "To talk."

  "To talk about what?"

  He wrapped his lips over his teeth, as if forcing them to stay closed.

  Ira?

  He shook his head.

  "Please tell me," she said.

  Ira's mouth opened but nothing came out. When he finally spoke his voice was a hush. "You know what he wanted to talk about."

  Lucy looked over her shoulder. They were alone in the room. "Eve of Destruction" was over. The Mamas and the Papas came on to tell them that all the leaves were brown.

  "The camp?" she said.

  He nodded.

  "What did he want to know?"

  He started to cry.

  Ira?

  "I didn't want to go back there," he said.

  "I know you didn't."

  "He kept asking me."

  "About what, Ira? What did he ask you about?"

  He put his face in his hands. "Please'a"

  "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'a 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'a" "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'a r "Its okay, Dad. Its-" "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, "Its 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 cant 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. "Its 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 any thing, 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 out side 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?"