Page 21 of The Instruments of Darkness

“There’s a table and some chairs in the yard,” he said. “We can speak there, if the temperature doesn’t bother you.”

“It doesn’t bother me at all.”

Clark removed a green canvas jacket from the hall stand and stepped outside, pulling the door closed behind him. I followed him to where a white metal table and matching chairs stood on a patch of lawn. He brushed a few dead leaves from one of the chairs and folded himself into it, his knees ending up at an acute angle. He buried his hands deep in the pockets of his jacket.

“I’d offer you coffee,” he said, “but—”

He gestured in the direction of the house. Through the kitchen window, I could see his sister-in-law removing breakfast dishes from the table and placing them noisily in a dishwasher. Her rage was obvious.

“Donna and my brother don’t have any children of their own, so she doted on Henry.”

“Who owns the tricycle?”

“Donna’s sister’s kid. Donna takes care of her a couple days a week, while her mom is at work.”

Which answered that question, but I thought I might check the alibis for the brother and sister-in-law on the night of Henry’s disappearance, just to be sure.

“This is a difficult time,” I said, “and I’m sorry for what you’re going through.”

“Thank you. I know it’s your job, and Colleen is entitled to a defense, whatever she may have done.”

There was no hint of reservation in his voice. Either Stephen knew more about his wife than I did, or he didn’t know her at all.

“She’s also entitled to the presumption of innocence.”

“So they say, but you didn’t find a blanket stained with your missing son’s blood in the trunk of your wife’s car. You didn’t hear her talk about how sorry she was that she’d ever had a child, or how she sometimes wanted to smother him just to stop him from crying. I accept that my wife was depressed. She may even have been mentally disturbed. But that doesn’t excuse her from murdering our boy and hiding his remains.”

“You have no doubts about her guilt?”

“None.” He relented slightly. “Look, I know how that sounds, and I appreciate that, under the circumstances, a lot remains unknown, including Henry’s whereabouts. But I’ve been living with my wife’s strangeness since before Henry was born, because I don’t think she even wanted a child, not really. Her health has never been great, and she’s always had issues with body image. She didn’t enjoy pregnancy and struggled with motherhood. In the event of a divorce, I’m not sure she would’ve sought custody of Henry. I believe our marriage was already dying, but this, unsurprisingly, has killed it.”

He huddled deeper into his jacket, pupate in his misery.

“Was Colleen ever violent toward Henry?” I asked.

“I never saw her strike him, but then, I was at work a lot of the time. He did have bruises, though, which had begun to worry me. I mentioned them to the police.”

Ouch, I thought. I had an image of Stephen Clark on the stand. The prosecution wouldn’t even have to coach him for long. He was already a gift to them.

“I think Colleen may simply have snapped,” he continued. “Perhaps if I’d been more available to her and Henry, it wouldn’t have happened.”

His voice almost broke. He took a breath before resuming.

“That’s what I come back to,” he said, “over and over. I wasn’t there, and I should have been.”

“Does your job require you to travel a great deal?”

“I chose to travel more than was strictly necessary.”

“Why?”

“Because, like I said, my home life was unhappy—both before and after Henry was born.”

“Did you consider couples therapy?”

“Colleen suggested it, but I thought the trouble would pass, or I hoped it would.”

“That sounds like you’re contradicting yourself,” I said, as mildly as I could, “given what you said earlier about a divorce.”