LITMIR.BIZ

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and say, Here are your boys — live for them: the drug addict who needs you to love him so he won’t destroy himself, the arrogant one who needs to know that he doesn’t have to be insensitive to be a man.

      Dan turned to the beginning of the diary and reread Craig Killingworth’s determined first entry. In a strong script he had written: Whatever happens I will never give up my fight. But he had. In the end, he hadn’t found the determination to live.

      Donny buzzed him in.

      Dan brandished the diary as he came through the door. “You’ve got to read this. It even describes his sudden impulse just before he drove off the road rather than undergo any more torture at the hands of that woman and her barbaric therapist who promised to help him change his orientation.”

      “Whoa!” Donny said, taken aback. “First ask how the boy is doing.”

      “Sorry. How are things with Lester? How are you two getting along?”

      “Fine. We’re getting along fine. Thank you.”

      Dan glanced around. Nothing had changed in the condo. For having a teenage terror under his roof, Donny seemed to have maintained remarkable control of his premises. For a moment Dan wondered if “fine” meant more than it said. Should he ask for reassurance that Lester hadn’t come onto him, as he had with Dan, and that Donny hadn’t succumbed to the boy’s charms, such as they were? Then he remembered who he was talking to: Donny the wise, Donny the compassionate. The look of disdain that would greet the question stopped him dead. He already knew the answer. Better yet, he knew himself. He would never have entrusted Lester to Donny if he’d had any doubts. A father’s work was never done, it seemed.

      “Great — I’m glad to hear. Where is he?”

      “In bed. It’s past eleven o’clock, and those are the rules. He goes to bed by ten thirty.” Dan gave Donny a bemused look. Donny nodded. “Which also means you will have to contain yourself and keep your voice down.”

      “Got it.”

      He followed Donny into the kitchen and placed the diary on the table beside a yawning pile of unopened mail. Dan glanced at it. Neglect of self was one of the prime signs of depression. Was he seeing the outward clues of self-destruction? But no — Donny was past that. He had a cause now. Dan stood looking down at the book, as though waiting for it to speak.

      “Go through it,” Dan said. “She drove him to suicide. Even after he and Magnus had planned their departure, he was still tormented by it. It’s sad, but he realized he couldn’t live without his kids, and the courts helped her take them from him.”

      Donny nodded slowly. “I’ll read it — but I don’t like the look on your face.”

      “What look?”

      “The one that threatens to take on the world to save someone who died twenty years ago.” Donny shook his head. “Life’s always going to be harder than you expect. I don’t know why you want to make it worse.”

      “Just call me Angela Davis.”

      Donny shot him a glance. “You’re going to have to work on the ’fro.”

      Dan pulled out the cassette and laid it beside the diary. “He even taped her phone conversations. He knew she was up to something. I had it transcribed and copied onto CD.”

      Donny took the tape to the stereo and popped it in. It crackled to life, the years and cheap celluloid having left their mark. The voices were scratchy here, muffled there, but by straining an ear you could make out the words. A twenty-year-old conversation brought to life, the layers of time peeled back to reveal dust, but no tears. Not for Craig Killingworth. They listened to Lucille coolly discussing her husband’s fragile mental state with her friend, a woman named Bernice, whose smoke-tinged voice contributed to the conversation hesitantly, not convinced she wanted to be part of it, but reluctant to pull away.

      Bernice suggested pressuring him to come back; Lucille declared she’d had enough of him and simply wanted him dead. The tape came to an end with the conclusion hanging in the air.

      “I think if a judge hears this he’ll have to conclude that Lucille Killingworth contributed to her husband’s suicide. If we can’t get her up on murder charges, then this will at least do something.”

      Donny gave Dan a sober look of appraisal. “Except that there’s still no body.”

      “I know that.”

      “No proof of death. On the other hand, if he really is dead, he might just as easily have been hit by a car while leaving town on his bike. Have you considered that? Or maybe he lives somewhere on Cape Breton Island raising goats. Who knows? Besides stirring up a great deal of trouble, what good do you really think this is going to do?”

      It was past two a.m. when he left Donny’s place, the downtown core illuminated by bleached rectangles of light where over-zealous office workers toiled late into the night. He thought again of the missing part of the police file that hadn’t made it into his hands. He was convinced it told Craig Killingworth’s side of the story: his battle to regain custody of his children, his tortured efforts to change his sexuality despite the fact that he’d already attempted suicide, and Lucille Killingworth’s threats to keep him from his sons and expose him to the world, adding cruelty on top of cruelty. He was sure now that Commissioner Burgess, or possibly someone under him, had repressed the report.

      He was sitting in a café in Bloomfield reading a blank menu. The front door opened. When he looked up, his mother stood next to him. She hadn’t changed a bit in all those years. He invited her to take a seat. She smiled and sat down, leaning in to speak in a low voice. “How are you doing with it?” she asked with a knowing look.

      “Not drinking? It’s a bitch, but I can make it.”

      She laughed — a raucous, throat-racking laugh. The kind of laugh you’d expect of the dead. So far, Dan told her, he’d had it relatively easy: no chills, no shakes, no scary bugs crawling over his skin at night. Only a slight hand wobble and a constant urge to do something — anything — to keep his mind off what he couldn’t have. Alcohol. The god-demon-lover-bitch.

      “I never did get the hang of it myself.” She held a hand in front of him. “How many fingers do you see, Danny?”

      Dan squinted. The fingers kept changing. “Four. No, five.”

      “Are you sure?”

      “No.”

      “Look again. How many fingers?”

      He looked and was surprised by what he saw. “Thirteen. At least.”

      Look ma, no hands.

      He was a zombie at work the next morning. But a dry zombie. Normally a slug of Scotch from the bottom drawer would have revved his motor for an hour. Without it he felt beat. But he was determined not to break his promise to Ked.

      He played his messages after lunch. Pete Saylor had called to say he’d learned what the missing Killingworth file contained. M.H. Not someone’s initials, but “Medical History.” Dan was elated — that meant it contained Craig Killingworth’s side of the story. So there was hope. Saylor had called a second time a few minutes later, his voice sounding more urgent, saying he needed to talk to Dan as soon as possible, but not to call him at work. He could be reached at home later that afternoon. He left his number. The message made Dan curious, but it would have to wait.

      Sally had left a new batch of files on his desk. The one on top was for another missing runaway — this one a nine-year-old girl. At three o’clock, he had a meeting with a client who wanted to update Dan on the status of her son, whom Dan had successfully tracked down a month earlier, only to have him vanish again. Still, it was good news, of a sort. He’d used his health card at a walk-in clinic in another city and been referred to a depression specialist. It seemed to be catching, Dan noted.

      The day spun itself out and Dan left early. He’d just taken off his jacket and hung it up in the hall closet when

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