Chapter 21 #2
“What were you caught receiving, out of interest?”
“Chinese watches.”
“Were they any good?”
“Only if you think Rolex is spelled with two Ls.”
The smile Vose offered could most accurately have been described as rueful.
He might have been a loser, but he was a loser with no illusions about himself and few grudges against the system for repeatedly locking him up.
Someday, he was destined to overstep the mark in a three-strike state where he’d already offended twice.
He would then have failed himself, just as he’d failed his child.
He might not have been able to save his son even if he hadn’t been in jail so often, but at least he would have been able to give it a better shot; behind bars, he was no use to anyone.
This too I had to factor into what I was being told.
Aside from whether he was correct to be suspicious about the circumstances of Scott’s death, Ward Vose was a father belatedly trying to atone for his shortcomings.
If he couldn’t help his son while he was alive, he’d do it now that the boy was dead, if only to salve his conscience; and he wanted to make me a device of his will, which I was disinclined to be.
“I can see what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re thinking that I’m clutching at straws. I’m looking for a reason for what happened to Scott, one beyond a dumb accident, because that way I can become some kind of hero in my narrative. Right?”
“Close,” I said.
“And it’s true. I want his death not to be his fault or mine. I want to be able to point at someone and say ‘He did it,’ and I don’t want to be looking in a mirror when I do.”
I spread my hands. It was a gesture that was equal parts helplessness and an invitation to Vose to continue. Alcock was paying me for my time, and the smallest courtesy I could offer his client was to hear him out.
“This is what I believe,” said Vose. “Someone force-fed my son hard liquor, crippled him by breaking his leg, then drowned him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“How often did you speak to Scott?”
“Once a month.”
“Did he visit you?”
“Rarely. His mother and stepfather wouldn’t bring him up here, but they didn’t deny him permission to come. Alcock is an approved visitor, and he would bring Scott through when he came up from Kennebunk. Of course, once Scott got thrown in the Spero, the visits ceased.”
“How was your relationship with your son?”
“My mistakes meant we weren’t as close as we might have been, but we got along, and latterly much better than he did with his mom and his stepdaddy.
And I was the one who discouraged him from visiting me here.
He didn’t need to see me locked up, and prison is no place for a boy, not even if he can leave after an hour.
A phone call now and then was enough, or better than nothing, and preferable to forcing him to suffer the taint of this place. ”
Here was a flash of anger, the first since I’d arrived. Vose ran his hands through his hair.
“I wanted him to have a normal life,” he said. “Find a good job, meet a girl, get married, have kids who saw their daddy for dinner every evening. Scott had made a start on some of it. He was seeing a girl.”
“Where?”
“Up by the Spero. He’d sneak out to meet her.”
“What was her name?”
“He wouldn’t say. It was a new thing. He didn’t want to jinx it and I didn’t press him. You know how it is with kids. He did have a nickname for her. He called her Smiles.”
“So what happened with the girl?”
“She stopped seeing Scott. He was supposed to meet her, but she didn’t show. The call I had with him the day after was our last before he died.”
“Was Scott concerned about her?”
“He was unhappy. It was hard for the two of them. Scott’s phone had been taken from him for breaches of discipline, but he could only use it to call pre-agreed numbers anyway.”
“Was the girl’s one of them?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“He’d have been forced to explain how he met her,” said Vose, “or more to the point, how he expected to keep meeting her. The boys were permitted supervised visits to town, not that there’s a whole lot to do in Bingham.
A few times a month there might be an outing to Waterville, or even Bangor, but those trips were rewards for good behavior, and Scott rarely qualified.
I don’t know how he even took a leak without being watched, never mind get beyond the gates to hook up with some local girl.
If I had to guess, I’d say she managed to get a phone to him and paid the bill out of her own pocket. ”
“How did he meet the girl to begin with?”
“On one of the few trips to Bingham he was allowed.”
“And how did her parents feel about her seeing a kid from the Spero?”
“It didn’t arise because she didn’t tell them.”
Ward Vose had managed to dig quite a lot of information out of his son. But the story didn’t flow right for me, even if I couldn’t pinpoint the source of the disturbance.
“You got all that from him,” I said, “but no name beyond Smiles.”
Vose reached into a pocket and produced a newspaper clipping, which he unfolded on the table. It was an article from the Portland Press Herald, and I was familiar with the photograph that accompanied the piece. Most of Maine probably knew that face. The girl was Mallory Norton.
“What,” said Ward Vose, “if this was her?”