Page 70 of Heartbreak Bay

“No. We keep them locked and secure.”

“In gun safes.”

“Yes.”

“And do these safes have codes?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Does Connor know any of those codes?”

“No.” I say it firmly, and I don’t expand on that; embroidering is where people get into trouble. Fact is, I don’t know that for certain. Connor’s a smart kid; I have every reason to think that if he wanted into the gun safe, he’d find a way. But this? This is bullshit. Connor is not out to kill us. I’m not about to entertain the idea that he is.

“How often do you change them?”

“Every couple of months.”

He’s frustrated, I can tell; he’s not getting the long-winded responses he’d like, where he can drive a wedge into a crack. He changes tack. “So, Connor has a history of violent outbursts—”

“Connor hadonepost-traumatic stress incident that he’s gotten counseling to deal with.” I stop there. I badly want to shout,Do you know what this kid has survived? Do you?But it won’t do any good. He doesn’t want to know.

“He was also involved with a cult—”

“He wasn’tinvolved. He was kidnapped. Along with me.” That’s it. I’m done being cooperative. “Look, I’ve answered your questions. That’s enough. I will take you in, we’ll open the gun safes, I’ll inventory everything against our records, andwe are done.”

“Sir,” the detective says. “We’re done when I say we’re done. And Connor needs to come to the station to answer some questions.”

“Not without his parents he’s not.”

“You’re welcome to attend the questioning.” He says that like it’s a favor. It’s not. It’s the law that he can’t question the kid without us present. “You know, you’re not doing the boy any favors being uncooperative.”

“I’ve been nothing but cooperative. Now let’s go look at the safes and move it along. It’s been a long damn day.”

Gwen casts me a look as we pass; I give her a nod and a smile, trying to let her know it’s all okay. She doesn’t look okay, though. She looks like she is one thin nerve away from hijacking that police cruiser and driving her son away. That’s the thing Gwen fights every day: the urgeto run, the urge to protect her kids even when doing it isn’t productive or smart. She doesn’t think I see it, but I do.

I mouth,I love you, and lead the cop inside.

We hit the safes, and I show him the paperwork that has all our registered firearms. He checks them off, one by one. While he’s doing that as slowly as possible, he says, “So, does the kid know how to shoot?”

“I assume you already know the answer to that.”

“We’re aware of the flyers at the gun range. Your son was observed shooting there. We heard there were ... complaints.”

“Not about him. He’s not a criminal,” I say. “Connor’s a good kid who’s been dealt a bad hand.”

“Hell of a bad hand, if your dad’s a serial killer.”

I straighten up after opening the last safe and meet his blank brown eyes. Hold the stare. Then I say, “I’m his dad.”

“No offense.” The man shrugs and checks the last gun off the list. “Okay. All accounted for, like you said. Do we have your permission to search Connor’s room?”

“Get a warrant.” The one thing that could save or damn him is the laptop that they’re certainly going to need a warrant to grab anyway. I’m risking them taking all our electronics, just to be pissy about it, but I’m not about to let them poke around unsupervised in my son’s room. “I’d like to go back to my wife now.” I realize, with a weird jolt, that I just called her my wife. I haven’t done that before; we’re common-law married, but somehow I’ve just never defined it that way.

It feels good to say it. And strange. But good.

He just grunts and leads me back out of the house. I make straight for Gwen, and she looks visibly relieved to see me. The detective who’s been quizzing her has finished, and mine joins him; they’ll be sharing info, and I feel like we need to do that too. So I draw her away from Lanny, who’s still talking to a uniformed officer, and say, “The guns are all accounted for. I don’t say that to mean I think Connor was planning anything; it’s just less proof they have.”

She just nods. She seems so tense, so pale, and I want to make things better for her. But maybe there isn’t any way to do that, not right now.

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