Page 58 of Nobody's Fool

I asked him that.

What did he say?

His reply: ‘Only can see it at my house. Can’t be in the office.’

Again I make a face. I look at Henry. Henry is frowning too, mimicking me. I look at him and say, “I know, right?”

That makes Henry laugh.

My phone pings. Arthur’s text says:Are you going to go?

I type back to Arthur:

Tell him I’ll be there six PM on the dot.

This is a lie. No reason to let him prepare.

I move fast. I hope Molly is awake. She isn’t. So I do it. Gently. Like Henry. She groans but gets it. I slip Henry onto her chest, shower, dress. Then I hop on the subway to the Staten Island ferry.

By eight a.m., I am on City Boulevard on Staten Island staring up at the house where the monster Tad Grayson had been raised. The house could politely be calledweathered, but it looks more like it’s shedding or even actively falling apart. The structure is oddly asymmetrical and looks as if it was drawn by a child in preschool. All the shades are pulled down except the upper right window, which has wood planks rather than glass. The neighborhood prides itself in small front yards so green they seem ready for a pro golf outing. Not the Graysons’. The weeds here are tall enough to go on the adult rides at Six Flags. I would say the concrete walk had a few cracks in it, but it would be more apropos to say the cracks had a few bits of concrete in them.

I step gingerly toward the door, trying to remember when I had my last tetanus shot. I look for a doorbell. No go. When I knock, careful not to scrape my knuckles or get a splinter, paint chips fly off. I wait. Nothing. I knock again and hear a voice I recognize as Tad Grayson’s say, “Just a minute.”

When he opens the door, I am again surprised, if not pleased, at how gaunt and awful Grayson looks. His breath is ragged as though he’d just finished a run. He wears rubber gloves and is holding a white plastic bag in his hand. I get a whiff of something that is both divinely human and makes me want to hurl.

“You wanted to show me something?” I ask.

“I thought you were coming at six p.m. on the dot.”

I say nothing.

“I should have known from the ‘on the dot,’” Tad Grayson sayswith a sigh. He steps back. “I’m in the middle of helping Mom get dressed. You’ll have to give us a moment.”

As if on cue, I hear an old woman croak: “Tad?”

“I’ll be right there, Mom.”

He gestures for me to enter. I debate the right move. I don’t like the idea of entering this decrepit dwelling. I could wait outside, where the air will be far fresher, but I had learned from my years as a police detective that when a suspect invites you into their living quarters, unless you suspect serious danger, you accept. A person’s home tells you about them. It is their setting, their choices, their mood. You never know what someone might leave out.

So I enter.

The small house’s tiny foyer bleeds into the living room. The sofa is open to a queen-size pull-out bed. I assume Tad slept here last night. The pull-out takes up all the space, so I just stand there—not that I’d want to go in and sit down on the threadbare furniture anyway. The television is an old-school box console with rabbit ears on the top. The bulbs in the room’s lamps are yellow, so that everything looks jaundiced. There are faded photographs in fingerprint-smeared frames. I study them. Most feature a family of four—mom, dad, two boys. One photo was taken in the front yard of this house when the grass looked more like the neighbors’, another in this very room with the same television. The father, I know, died years ago. I remember that Tad Grayson had a brother named Nathan. Nathan moved to Los Angeles sometime before the murder. I don’t remember him coming back to support his brother after the arrest. That left the mother, Patricia. I recognized her from the trial, though she looks even younger here.

I hear running water and flushing toilets. Two voices—I assume Tad’s and his mother’s—are muffled. His sounds caring, comforting, calming. Hers sounds distressed, confused, scared. I don’t like being here. It’s dark and gloomy, and the entire place reeks of disinfectantand death. It is a smell, oddly enough, that reminds me of Henry’s diapers and yet feels the direct opposite.

Life cycle via odors of human excrement.

I’m finding it hard to breathe.

The bedroom door off the back opens, and Tad Grayson shuffles out. His eyes are red now, I’m not sure from what. I also don’t care.

“She’s dying,” he says to me.

I don’t reply.

“I asked for temporary furlough, you know, a compassionate release. Just for a day or two. So I could say goodbye to her. You know what they told me?”

I don’t reply.