Gun Games

by Faye Kellerman

  “Dear God!” A heavy sigh. “I wish I could help you, Detective. But I haven’t seen Dylan in years. When his stepfather adopted him, Dylan cut all of us out of the picture at the insistence of his mother.”

  “How did your son feel about that?”

  “It’s complicated,” the doctor replied.

  Marge said, “When we came and visited you the first time, did you have suspicions that Dylan stole the gun.”

  “No. I didn’t suspect anything!” Olivia was adamant. “Once everything came out, I put two and two together. It made me absolutely sick!”

  “Dylan had access to your gun?”

  “I suppose he must have.” A heavy sigh. “My son isn’t really Dylan’s father. I found that out later on. At the time of his divorce from Cresta—Dylan’s mother—Maurice thought it would be good for Dylan to spend some time at the office. He thought that being near me would be palliative for Dylan’s fragile nerves. We were always close, and when the divorce was announced, Dylan seemed so vulnerable.”

  “You think he was faking it?”

  “No, I don’t think he was faking it at all. Dylan was a quiet child, with his mother always screaming at one thing or another, so who could get a word in edgewise.”

  “What do you mean that your son wasn’t Dylan’s father?”

  “Cresta had a fidelity problem.”

  “Who is the biological father?” Oliver asked.

  “According to the law, it’s Maurice because he was married to Cresta at the time of the conception. According to the paternity test, it was Cresta’s plastic surgeon.”

  “How’d your son find this out?” Oliver asked.

  “Maurice became suspicious of the paternity after he found out about Cresta’s numerous affairs. It came to a head when Cresta became pregnant with Roy’s child, who is now six.” A heavy sigh. “The deal was that Roy would adopt Dylan, and Maurice would keep quiet about not being Dylan’s biological father. Roy also offered to take over child support. At first, Maurice declined. Dylan was his de facto son whether or not there was a biological connection. But Cresta made a continuing relationship so difficult. After a year or so, Dylan didn’t show any interest in Maurice, especially after my son remarried. It was one of those situations that just evolved. When Roy offered again to adopt the boy—something that both Dylan and Maurice’s new wife clearly wanted—Maurice caved in.”

  “How’d you feel about it?” Marge asked.

  “Devastated. He was my first grandchild.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “My little boy was sweet and funny and so very smart! I thought he would surely become a doctor. If there were warning signs, I didn’t see it. No cruelty to animals, no fires . . . he did wet his bed until he was six but that’s not unusual for boys. He just seemed like a wonderful, exceptionally bright boy.”

  “He still is very bright,” Marge said. He’d probably do great in prison, she thought. If they ever found him.

  Oliver said, “Do you have any idea where he might be hiding?”

  Her eyes watered again. “The truth is I don’t know where he is. As I told you, I haven’t talked to him in years. But the other truth is that even if I did know where he was, I don’t know if I’d tell you.”

  Marge assessed the doctor and decided that she believed the woman, that she truly didn’t know where Dylan was. What Marge felt was beyond pity. Olivia Garden was suffering something that Marge couldn’t even imagine.

  “Thank you for talking to us.” Oliver handed her his card. “If he does call you . . . you know the drill.”

  “I know the drill.”

  But neither Marge nor Oliver expected to hear from her again. Marge could have added something very coplike—that it was the doctor’s duty to tell them if she found out information. After all, Dylan had caused the death of a young boy with a gun that he had stolen from her desk. But what purpose would reiteration have served?

  So Marge said nothing.

  There was pouring salt on the wound. And then there was just plain cruelty.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Gabe had parked two blocks away from the all-girls’ school in a neighborhood of small ranch houses and manicured lawns. Even though it was eight in the morning, there were people on the streets: a few elderly bundled-up women wearing head coverings dragging steel shopping carts, young mothers with pink noses pushing baby strollers, black teens shooting hoops on an asphalt lot that might have been a park in its younger years. He had brought along a stack of books and his iPod to entertain himself while he waited.

  The whole thing could turn out to be an exercise in futility because he never heard back from Ariella. She was the supposed messenger between Yasmine and him—the reason why he was caged in his car for who knows how long on a brittle, overcast January day.

  He hadn’t heard a peep from Yasmine in the last eight months. As far as he could discern, she had walked off the face of the earth. There was no phone number, no computer address to receive e-mails, and her Facebook had been shut down. So Gabe had used the old-fashioned method to contact her. He wrote letters, all of them going unanswered. Ariella was his last-ditch effort to make contact.

  I don’t see her anymore, Gabe, she had told him. Her parents moved and she lives in the city. She goes to another school and we lost contact.

  Please, please try for me, he had begged her. Just tell her I’ll be outside her school for the entire day. He gave her the address of where he would park and the description and license plate of his car—his second-most-prized possession, the Steinway being numero uno.

  I don’t know if I can get hold of her, Ariella had said.

  Just try. With resignation, he said, Just tell her I’ll be here. If she comes, she comes. If not . . . well, then I’ll know.

  The entire morning dragged. By midafternoon, he got a sinking feeling. By four, he almost decided to get out and go look for her. But that would defeat the purpose.

  If she comes, she comes. If not . . . well, then he’ll know.

  By five o’clock his stomach hurt. He hadn’t eaten all day except for an apple. No big deal really. Fasting wasn’t anything new to him. He had dropped twenty pounds in the last eight months.

  How’s she doing? he had asked Ariella.

  I told you, we lost contact. A pause over the phone. Not great.

  Join the club, he thought to himself.

  It was almost dark. He could feel a bottomless pit of sadness gather inside his chest. He’d give it another half hour. By then . . . well, then he’d definitely know.

  He leaned back in the seat of his Beemer, his iPod fixed to Brahms, and closed his eyes. It seemed like only a few minutes had passed, but he must have fallen asleep because the knock woke him up. He saw her through the window and his heart started thumping. He opened the lock and she slid inside the passenger seat, closing the door as she sat down.

  “I only have about ten minutes.” She didn’t look at him when she spoke, her eyes on her lap. Her hair had been pulled back in a ponytail, exposing a severe jawline. She was painfully thin even though she was wearing an oversized sweatshirt and a long plaid uniform skirt.

  “Thanks for coming.” No answer. “How are you?”

  A shrug.

  “How’s school?”

  “S’right.” Another shrug. “It’s okay. No boys.”

  “You don’t like boys?”

  “I hate boys.”

  Gabe rubbed his eyes under his glasses and stuck his hair behind his ears. He had grown it out until it brushed his shoulder blades. It had become his trademark at school. “I hope you don’t hate all boys. I hope you don’t hate this boy. Because this boy still loves you very much.”

  No response. Not even a tear.

  He sighed. “Yasmine, just look at me and tell me that it’s over. Say that to me. Say, ‘Gabe, it’s over.’ If it’s over, it’s over. I’ll be heartbroken, but at least then I can attempt to move on.” A pause. “Anything’s better than being in limbo.”

  She glanced
at his face. “You look like a ghost.”

  He clenched his fists, and then folded his arms across his chest. “Thank you very much, Yasmine; it’s good to see you, too.”

  Silence. Then she whispered, “I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t answer.

  She swallowed hard. “It is good to see you.”

  Gabe softened. “I do look like a ghost.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Actually yes, I do. My nickname at school is the Wraith. I’m six one and down to one thirty. To call me skin and bones would be a compliment.”

  “You look great.”

  “I look terrible. It’s what happens when you’re penned up in a practice room for six hours a day after a full day of school. Instead of all that pure California sunshine, you get rain and snow in New York. So you wind up with a pasty complexion, zits on your forehead, and bags under your eyes. And that’s on a good day.”

  “Gabe, please. I’m sorry.”

  “No apology necessary. It’s true. You should see me in school, floating down the hallway with my greasy hair fluttering behind, my eyes looking very intense and focused . . . like a phantom on drugs. I really do think that most of my classmates expect me to start actively hallucinating by the year’s end.”

  “Please stop.” Her eyes got wet. “I’m really sorry.”

  “I think I’m regarded like this modern-day Glenn Gould. I’m not within miles of being as good as Glenn Gould, of course. But my mates in piano think I’m good—a little out there in the quirk department but not without the talent to back it up. And that’s not too bad actually. To be considered talented at Juilliard. It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

  She glanced at him and looked back down at his lap. “I’m sure you’re still the best.”

  “It’s like this . . .” Gabe uncrossed and crossed his arms again. “All your life you’ve been told that you’re a genius, that you’re the best. And then when you’re five and you start competing, you realize . . . hey, you really are the best. And then you’re ten, and you’re still the best, but there are a few others who aren’t far behind. And by the time you’re sixteen, all the other mediocre competition has dropped out—the ones that were good but not good enough . . . and the ones that were good enough but only played because their parents cracked the whip to their back.” He looked at her. “You can’t be forced into this. You’ve got to want it.”

  She nodded with her eyes on her lap.

  “And then you get to Juilliard,” Gabe told her. “And you suddenly realize that all your classmates want it, too. So you just have to want it more. And hence the six-hour-a-day practicing . . . which is okay, really, because I want to make sure that I’m bone weary. That way, when I drop into bed at night, I fall asleep instantly and I don’t have any time to think.”

  Yasmine wouldn’t look at him.

  “It’s not too good to think, you know?”

  She didn’t say anything. She checked her watch—her old gold Movado—and Gabe caught it. “If you have to go, Yasmine, then go. I don’t want you to get into trouble. And I certainly don’t want you to be here if you don’t want to be here.”

  But she didn’t go. Instead, she spoke. Her voice was a monotone. “After you left for Nevada, my mother and I talked a lot. She said you were a remarkable boy, that you were handsome and smart and gifted and talented. That you would probably go very, very far. And that she could understand why I fell in love with you. And she also said that she could understand why you liked me. Because when I came along, you were very lonely. And I was cute and nice and I had a passion for music like you did. So she could understand what happened.”

  At last, a tear fell from her eye.

  “But then she told me that now you’re in college. And that you’re not so lonely anymore. And that you’re meeting other kids who are like you . . . who like music the way you do And since you’re so handsome and smart and talented, many, many girls are going to like you. And you’re going to like them back. And it’s not your fault. You’re a teenaged boy. And that’s what teenaged boys do. They like girls.”

  She wiped her eyes.

  “She also said that teenaged boys are way too young to love girls. That they think they love girls, but what they really love is sex with girls. And it’s not your fault if you have sex with girls. Because that’s what teenaged boys want to do. They have sex with girls. And when I argued with her . . . and when I told her that you really did love me . . . she told me that if you really did love me, you would have contacted me by now.

  “So she told me to forget about you, that I should throw everything away that reminds me of you. And to help me along, she took my phone. So I no longer had our texts or all the pictures of you that I took on my phone’s camera. And also she took away my computer and erased all my old e-mails, so I didn’t have any of the e-mails we sent each other. And then she canceled my Facebook account so I couldn’t even go online and look at your pictures or see your posts. Nothing personal should remain between us. She wanted everything that reminded me of you gone . . . destroyed.”

  A new batch of tears.

  “But I still had my watch—my beautiful silver watch with the blue face that I loved so much. So every night I used to hold my watch in my hand and cry myself to sleep, thinking about how much I loved you. But then one day when I was gone, she went inside my room and took away my watch. So now I don’t have anything.”

  Her crying became audible.

  “So now when I cry myself to sleep, not only is my heart empty, my hands are empty, too. I have nothing to hold on to. And all I think about . . . before I fall into a wretched sleep is you . . . having . . . sex with other girls.”

  Yasmine clamped her hands over her face and sobbed.

  Gabe reached over and pulled her fingers off her face. “Look at me.”

  She wouldn’t.

  He said, “Yasmine, I am not having sex with other girls . . . or with other boys for that matter.” His humor fell flat. “It’s all I can do to get out of bed in the morning.”

  “You’re lying!” she sobbed.

  “No, I’m not lying!” He tried to get her to look at him, but she refused. “I’ve never, ever lied to you. Take that back!” Nothing. “I’m serious. Take it back.”

  She continued to sob.

  “I’m not this callow person,” Gabe told her. “The whole thing was very traumatic. I still have terrible nightmares. From what you just said, it sounds like you’re just as plagued as I am.”

  She was still crying. “It’s . . . horrible . . . just . . . horrible!” She wiped her eyes. “I take it back . . . the lying part.”

  Gabe cracked a smile and shook his head. “Are you seeing someone to help you?”

  “I tried for a while.” She wiped her wet eyes and runny nose on her sweatshirt. “I stopped. I didn’t like it.”

  “God, I couldn’t live without my therapist,” Gabe said. “You’re stronger than I am.”

  “I didn’t get shot.”

  “I didn’t get kidnapped.”

  Silence.

  Gabe said, “Yasmine, I don’t want you to be mad at your mother, okay. I’m just telling you this so you’ll know the truth. I wrote you at least six letters. Actually, I probably wrote you like fifty, but I tore most of them up. Your mom must have gotten to the mail before you did.”

  She still wouldn’t look at him, but her face suddenly darkened with anger.

  “Don’t be mad at her,” Gabe told her. “She’s just being a mom. I know you can’t ask her because then you’ll have to explain your being here. But I swear to God that it’s the truth. I mean, the last time I saw you was right after the surgery and I was loopy from all the drugs. I don’t even remember what we talked about except that I said lewd things that made you blush.”

  She didn’t say anything, but at least she wasn’t crying anymore.

  “I was zonked.” He shrugged. “Sorry if I embarrassed you.”
>
  “I think that was the worst day of my life.” She glanced at him—a start. “Do you ever get scared?”

  “Like nervous? All the time.”

  “No, I mean scared . . . really scared about . . . you know. That he’s coming back.”

  “You mean Dylan?”

  She shuddered when he mentioned his name. “Yeah. Doesn’t he scare you?”

  “No, he doesn’t scare me. Anger me, yes, but there’s no fear.” He paused, trying to organize his thoughts. “I lived with my father for around four months before I moved to New York. Actually three months because I was touring in July. Anyway, my dad is a total lunatic. Mostly I stayed out of his way and everything went okay.” He bit his lip. “My dad did three major-league things for me while I was with him. He got me a piano . . . he got me a car after I got my license . . . and he told me that he had my back. I worry about lots of things, but Dylan Lashay isn’t one of them. My dad’s watching, Yasmine. I guarantee you he knows exactly where Lashay is at all times.”

  “He told you that?”

  “He doesn’t have to. I just know my dad. Don’t worry about Dylan Lashay. I promise you that he’s out of the picture.”

  “So if you don’t worry about Dylan, what are your nightmares then?”

  “My nightmare isn’t about me getting hurt, it’s about me not getting to you until it’s too late.” He looked at her, but her eyes wouldn’t meet his. “What are your nightmares about?”

  “That you don’t get to me until it’s too late.”

  He said, “Looks like we’re occupying the same mind at night.”

  She gave a hint of a smile but still wouldn’t look up.

  Gabe said, “Sometimes it’s so vivid, I wake up in a cold sweat. The relief I feel because it’s only being a dream is overwhelming. God, I’m a mess.”

  Finally Yasmine garnered enough courage to look at him. In a tiny voice, she said, “Well, you’re the best-looking mess I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”

  “Thanks for saying that.” Gabe felt his throat swell up. “You know, Yasmine, we’re not always going to be this young.” He swallowed hard. “If you promise me . . . that when you’re eighteen . . . you’ll come to me—you’ll come to New York and we can be together and we can give each other a real chance—then I swear I will wait for you. And you know what? It won’t even be hard. Just like Jacob worked for Rachel, the years will seem like days because the reward at the end is so perfect.”