Claire was crushed. She'd held out hope that she'd be able to confront the man who took Amy away from her. Lewis caught her disappointment but continued on, staring straight into the camera.
“Dad used to travel a lot. Phoenix, Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans. I used to ask him what those places were like. His answer was always the same. âSomeday we'll go there,' he'd say. âBut if I tell you about it now, it'll spoil the surprise of seeing it for the first time.' I never questioned him. After all, he was my dad. He knew everything. He always seemed to be a happy guy, and he and my mom got along great.
“But when I was eight, everything changed. It was summer and there was a thunderstorm that day. I came home from camp, and my mother was worried out of her mind. When I asked her what was wrong, she said it was nothing. âIt's got to be something because you look so sad,' I remember saying to her. I was just trying to make her feel better, but instead she burst into tears and ran up to her room. I started to cry, too, thinking I had said something terribly wrong. I waited downstairs for my father to come home. I wanted to tell him what happened. My dad always had a way of soothing my mom when she was upset. I just wanted her to feel better.
“So I turned on the TV and lay down on the couch. Dad always got home around seven. When it was eight o'clock, I called his office. Nobody answered. I went upstairs and knocked on my parents' bedroom door. Mom wouldn't open it, and when I tried the knob, I found it was locked.
“I went back downstairs and got on the couch. Next thing I knew, it was morning and Mom was waking me up for camp, something Dad always did.
“When I asked her where Dad was, she said he had to leave for work early. But she was still upset, so I knew he never came home.
“Mom went upstairs and I went into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialed Dad's office. His secretary answered and said he wasn't coming back to work there.
“I remember hanging up and wondering what had happened. I thought about it all day at camp. But when I got home, there Dad was, smiling that same old smile. I asked him where he was last night. âOut with the guys, celebrating,' he said. Mom walked into the room just then, and she was smiling too. âYour father's taking some time off,' she said cheerily. âHe's going to be spending a lot more time with us now.' I thought it was great. After all, he was my dad. Why wouldn't I want to hang out with him?
“A week later, I was asleep and had a dream that my parents were fighting. At least I thought it was a dream. Until I got up and realized they were yelling at each other. âWe can't afford to live here on just what I make,' I heard her say. âCan't you ask them for your job back?' My father said he'd never go back there, not for a million dollars. Not after what they did to him.
“So he found another job, working part-time for the water company. I still to this day don't know what he did for them, except that it had something to do with monitoring pollutants. He started going away again, saying other cities wanted him to make sure their water was safe. And he always seemed pretty sad.
“Then, on my tenth birthday, he came home and was very excited. He said PhotoChem had just called, and they needed someone to run a new polymer science division they were starting up, and it was an offer he couldn't refuse.
“He was thrilled. Mom was thrilled. He hadn't been this happy in years. And then he dropped the bomb. We'd have to move to Canada. Mom didn't care. But I had a lot of friends here. I didn't want to leave. But I didn't want to be Dad's buzz kill.
“He left for Canada the next week. He came back almost every weekend. Mom and I waited until the end of the school year and moved with him to a place called Pickering. It was nice there and didn't snow as much. And Toronto was right nearby. Dad worked there, and it was a great place to go. We were there three years, and it was the best three years of our lives.
“And then one night, it all changed forever. I still remember the bang on the door. Police in bulletproof vests with automatic weapons screamed at Dad to show his hands or they'd blow his brains out. I was thirteen then and I was terrified. I ran out of the house just in time to see Dad in handcuffs being put into a police car. He kept yelling that everything would be all right. As the car pulled away, he had his hand over his heart, looking at me. I could see him mouth the words âI love you.'
“I didn't know it would be the last time I'd ever see him.
“An officer said Mom and I had to go to the police station, too, but we'd be taken in separate cars and not allowed to see each other. When we got there, a very nice female detective came into the room and talked to me. She wouldn't tell me why Dad was in so much trouble. But she asked me all kinds of questions about where he'd been, the places he traveled to. I told them whatever I could remember. I had no idea what was going on. But of all the things my father told me over the years, the one I always remembered was that your word was your bond so you should always tell the truth. So that's what I did.
“And then I asked her to do the same thing, to tell me the truth. She told me my father was in a lot of trouble, that he'd been arrested for kidnapping and murdering a nine-year-old girl from the town next to ours. She didn't tell me that he'd also raped her. I only found out later when I read it in the newspaper. I told the detective, âMy father would never hurt anyone. You've made an awful mistake.' I'll never forget this. The detective looked at me sadly and said that if Dad were innocent, he'd have the chance to prove it in court. That's when the door opened and a man I'd never seen before, a lawyer whose name I don't remember, came in and told the detective that I had nothing more to say. And he took me out of there.
“The lawyer was going to drive my mother and me home. But we never made it. When we turned onto our street, there were TV cameras and reporters in front of our house. Someone had spray-painted the word
killer
under the living room picture window. Mom told me to put my head down and ordered the lawyer to keep on driving. We got away from there and never went back.
“We stayed in a cheap motel that night so nobody would know where we were. The next day, the lawyer came back and got Mom. All she wanted to do was see my father. They left me in the room, by myself, all day. When my mother got back, she had her car and a couple of suitcases full of our clothes. I found out later that the lawyer and his staff had gone back to our house and packed the stuff up for us.
“I asked her if she'd seen Dad. âYes,' she said, âI saw him. He's going to prison for the rest of his lifeâ' ”
Lewis caught himself, his eyes wet. Claire felt terrible for him.
“It's okay to cry,” she said, handing him a tissue.
“What kind of doctor are you?” he asked her as he wiped his eyes.
“A psychiatrist.”
“I've seen my share of those,” said Lewis, a sad smile crossing his lips, trying to make light of it.
“Where did you and your mother go?” Hart asked.
“We drove through Quebec, then into Maine. We found an apartment in Bangor, and Mom got a job working for a CPA.”
“And why did your dad call himself Winslow?” Claire asked.
“He lived on Winslow Street as a kid, up in Watertown,” Lewis answered. “I only knew about the one girl in Canada he hurt. I never knew there was another oneâor maybe others.”
“When did you come back here to Rochester?” Nick asked.
“After college,” Lewis replied, now composed. “Bangor never felt like home. I got an entry-level job at the film lab and worked my way up. Like father, like son. Dad loved taking pictures and taught me how when I was a kid.” Lewis closed his eyes, the past washing over him. When he opened them, he looked at Claire. “We both love photography. That was our connection. I hope it's the only one,” he said with an uncomfortable laugh.
Claire heard the fear in Lewis's voice that she'd heard from her other patients whose parents had committed heinous crimesâthe fear that they, too, might carry genes that would make them do terrible things.
“You never married,” Claire observed, noting the absence of a ring on Lewis's finger.
Lewis smiled sadly. “I'm only thirty,” he said, looking down. “There's plenty of time.”
Claire's eyes caught his. “When was the last time you went out on a date?”
Nick and Hart exchanged glances. “Excuse me,” Nick protested, “but maybe you ought to give the guy a breakâ”
“No, it's okay,” Lewis interjected. “I want to answer that.”
He turned to Claire. “Do you have any idea what it's like to know that your father violated and murdered a little girl? Can you even imagine what that kind of shame feels like?”
“Have you ever touched a little girl?” Claire asked him pointedly.
“Of course not!” Lewis shot back angrily.
“Do you ever have urges to?” Claire asked, leaning toward him.
Hart shut off the videotape. “Doctor, with all due respect, I think you're crossing the line here with Mr. Lewis, who has cracked your caseâour caseâwide open and bears absolutely no responsibility for his father's deranged actions. “
“That's exactly my point,” Claire said, turning to Lewis. “You are not your father. You'll never be like him. You don't have to be afraid that you are. You can live your life without worrying that you're going to hurt someone. And Detective Hart is right. The sins of the father don't automatically pass down to the son. Whatever guilt you're carrying, you need to let go of for your own sake.”
Lewis softened. “Thank you,” he said, “but I can't. Not as long as you're telling me that you saw my father kidnap your friend. When was that?”
“In July of 1989,” answered Claire, “probably on that same stormy day he didn't come home.”
“Do you have any evidence proving my father kidnapped and murdered this little girl Amy?” Lewis asked Hart.
“Only what Dr. Waters told us when she was a kid,” Hart replied. “The color and make of the car are the same as the one your father drove, and she's now identified him from your photograph, which matches the description she gave to the police.”
“Not to mention the name he usedâWinslow,” Nick added. “It's not a coincidence.”
Lewis looked down. Made his decision.
“Then let's ask him,” he said.
Claire looked at him incredulously. “Ask him? But you said he died of a heart attack.”
“I had to be sure,” Lewis said. Then, for the first time, he leaned toward Claire. “Do you want closure, Doctor?”
“Yes. For me and for Amy's parents.”
“My father is in prison in Ontario. If you want, I'll get you in to see him.”
It took Claire only a second to answer.
“Please,” she said.
C
HAPTER
23
K
ingston Penitentiary rises like a monolithic stone fortress on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, as if guarding the city whose name it bears. In fact, it's known as Canada's Alcatraz, the country's toughest maximum-security prison, housing its most dangerous convicts, nearly half of whom are serving out life sentences. As Claire approached the dual Doric columns at the doors to the visitor's entrance, she glanced at the guard towers on either corner of the stone wall enclosing the prison.
At least the bastard is where he belongs,
she thought.
The bastard, of course, was Peter Lewis, the man who called himself “Mr. Winslow” when he kidnapped Amy instead of her more than two decades earlier.
Claire glanced to her right at the bastard's son, Doug Lewis, grateful he volunteered to take her to the father he hadn't seen for nearly twenty years. They had traveled together to Kingston from Rochester, a three-and-a-half-hour drive. As their journey began, Doug shut down any attempts Claire made at small talk, and she understood why, perhaps better than anyone. He had successfully buried his past and was now being forced (or forcing himself) to confront it once more. It was an unspoken bond between them. Carrying the burden of his father's horrible crimes was a hell like the one she had experienced.
As she and Doug crossed King Street, the two-lane thoroughfare fronting the prison entrance, a sense of foreboding washed over her. She wished Nick had come with them. But she knew there was a purpose to his absence.
The purpose was expediency. A request from the Rochester Police to interview Peter Lewis in a Canadian prison would have to be channeled through the U.S. Department of State, a process fraught with the real possibility of ending in failure if the Canadians refused to cooperate or if Lewis lawyered up.
But how could Lewis refuseâor the Canadian authorities refuse himâthe chance to see his only child after so many years? Especially when that child was a citizen of Canada as well as of the United States?
So Claire and Nick made a decision: This would be a stealth mission. After secret meetings involving the police chief and district attorney, Detective Hart took a few personal days off from work so he wouldn't be officially on duty should some part of the plan go south. He and Nick would drive up to Kingston in Hart's beat-up old Subaru Outback so they wouldn't be pegged as cops. Claire and Doug would drive up separately in Doug's Ford SUV, all to avoid the red flags that three men and a woman in the same car crossing the international border might raise. Nick and Hart would check into a hotel on the waterfront in downtown Kingston, where Claire and Doug would meet them immediately after their encounter with Lewis for a full debriefing.
As she and Doug proceeded through the prison's metal detectors and underwent pat-downs for contraband, Claire was relieved she hadn't tried to smuggle in her miniature flash recorder, because it undoubtedly would have been discovered and resulted in their expulsion from the facility.
Though Lewis was assigned to the segregation unit, whose inmates lived in solitary confinement and were allowed out of their cells only one hour a day for exercise, his good behavior had convinced a review board that his first visitors in twenty years need not be cloistered with him in closed, closely guarded quarters. And so Claire and Doug were escorted into the visiting room, a large space with several dozen metal tables at which inmates sat with their various family members. Prison guards peppered the room's perimeter, waiting to pounce on any convict who tried to stick his hand up a girlfriend's shirt or down her pants or, as had happened, attempted to have sex in front of the other visitors.
Claire and Doug were brought to a table near one of the room's walls and sat beside each other, two guards in close proximity. Claire was strangely calm now. She looked over at Doug, who was doing a poor job of hiding the fact that he was a nervous wreck.
“You sure you're ready for this?” she asked him, touching his shoulder.
“No,” Doug answered, “but I'll be okay.”
“Thank you,” Claire said, brushing the hair from his forehead with her fingers. The physical contact was part of the plan to convince Lewis that they were engaged, but she could tell her touch calmed him down.
When was the last time anyone touched you?
He was about to say something when a door opened at the far end of the room, and two prison guards escorted in a thin, gray-haired man. Claire felt a wave of nausea, for though “Mr. Winslow” had aged, she recognized him instantly. He was shackled at the feet and cuffed at the waist, the two restraints attached by chains that allowed him to merely shuffle across the brown linoleum-tiled floor. He saw his son and a smile broke on one side of his face, lasting only as long as it took him to realize his boy was sitting with a woman.
A woman who now grabbed his son's hand, their fingers intertwined. Like lovers.
Claire and Doug rose as Lewis found his way to the opposite side of the table. A guard pulled out a chair for him.
“Douglas,” Lewis said, almost emotionless, as he sat down.
“Peter,” Doug returned, never letting go of Claire's hand.
“You used to call me Dad,” said Lewis.
“You haven't been my father in a long time,” Doug replied flatly.
An uneasy silence followed. Then Lewis looked at Claire. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?” he asked, turning back to Doug.
“This is Claire,” Doug said. “Claire, this is Peter.”
“My pleasure,” Lewis said, sticking out a shackled hand as far as he could.
“The pleasure is mine,” Claire said, only now unclasping her left hand from Doug's and grasping Lewis's outstretched hand with both of hers. The sensation sent a chill up her spine, which she somehow managed to hide.
But what she made no effort to hide was the diamond ring she wore on her left hand. Which Lewis saw immediately, causing him to pull back.
“That's the ring I gave your mother,” he said to Doug, never taking his eyes off Claire.
“Yes,” his son said plainly, putting his arm around Claire's waist. “Claire's my fiancée. We're getting married.”
Lewis showed no emotion. He just sat there, staring at the two of them. “I guess I should know something about you,” Lewis said, turning to Claire. “Are you from Pickering as well?”
“No, I'm American,” Claire answered as respectfully as she could muster. “I grew up in Rochester.”
“What a coincidence,” Lewis said, squinting his eyes as if remembering his days there long ago. “I'm sure Douglas told you we lived in Rochester before we moved to Canada.”
“Claire and I met in Rochester,” said Doug. “I moved back there after college.”
Once again, the corner of Lewis's mouth tilted upward in that sadistic half smile. “Oh,” he said. “And I thought you didn't come to visit me all these years because you hated me.”
“I don't hate you anymore,” Doug said. “Hating you took too much energy. It almost destroyed me.” He looked lovingly at Claire. “Once I stopped hating you, I got my life back.”
“You mean, it was easier just to cut me out of your life. To pretend I never existed,” Lewis sneered.
“That's right,” Doug replied, ignoring his father's emotion. “And it's all because of Claire.”
Lewis turned to Claire. He stared into her eyes. “So this is your doing.”
Claire feigned embarrassment. “All I said was that once he let go of the past, he'd be free to move on with his future.
Our
future.”
“And I suppose part of that process was to come here and throw it in my face,” Lewis shot back.
“No, sir,” Claire replied deferentially. “Doug agreed to come up here because I wanted to see you.”
At least that's not a lie,
she thought. Though she had no compunction about lying to this monster.
Whether it was the feigned respect or Claire's response, something about Claire seemed to disarm Lewis. “I'm surprised Douglas even admitted he had a father,” he said.
“He didn't at first,” Claire replied, once again clasping Doug's hand. “He told me you died of a heart attack years ago.”
“But you didn't believe him.”
“She asked to see your grave,” Doug said. “Obviously I couldn't show it to her. I didn't want to have a relationship built on lies. Like the lies you told me when I was a kid.”
“And what lies were those?” asked Lewis, leaning forward.
“You know, all those âbusiness trips' you said you went on. How you didn't want to tell me about the places you'd been to so I'd be surprised when you finally took me to see them.”
Lewis smiled. “Obviously I never got to take you because Iâ”
“Cut the crap,
Dad
,” Doug said, spitting out the words loud enough for the guards to take notice. “You couldn't tell me about those places because you never saw any of them.”
Something about this struck a note in Lewis, as if he actually felt guilty. “I never once lied to you or your mother about where I'd beenâ”
“But you sure as hell lied about what you were doing,” Doug said.
“And what do you think I was doing?”
“Raping and murdering little girls.”
If this fazed Lewis, he didn't show it. “What makes you think that?” he asked.
“Because Claire says a
pedophile
like you would never be satisfied with just one.”
“I am not a pedophile. And Claire is hardly an expert on these things.”
Doug grinned. “As a matter of fact,” he said with great satisfaction, “she is. Claire is a forensic psychiatrist.”
For the first time, Lewis eyed Claire with contempt. “Now I get it. You wanted to meet me because I'm some sort of science experiment. Something you can pick apart and then write a paper about.”
“No. I've wanted to meet you for years.”
Lewis caught his breath. “You're not engaged to my son, are you.”
Claire leaned forward, inches away from his gray skin and yellowed teeth. “No. I just met your son yesterday,
Mr. Winslow
.”
Lewis looked into her eyes and he knew.
“My God,” he whispered. “Claire ...”
He turned back to his son. “She's trying to manipulate you, Douglas. Shrinks bend and twist the truth. That's why I'm in hereâ”
“You're here because you murdered an innocent child,” Doug replied, raising his voice.
“I'm a sick man!” Lewis exclaimed. “I should be in an institution. I hurt only one little girl! I swear on my life I couldn't help it!”
“You're a lying bastard,” Doug said, tears welling in his eyes.
“No, son, no. I don't know what made me do it. Something bad inside me, like an urge that wouldn't let me go. I'm sick, but that shrink convinced the judge I wasn't mentally ill. That's why I'm going to spend the rest of my life in this hellhole.”
“You're pathetic. You actually want me to feel sorry for you,” Doug said as he stood up. “You disgust me.”
Lewis looked at Claire with malignant contempt. “She used you, Douglas. She used you to get to me. You know it's true.”
Doug left the room, never turning to look back at his father.
Claire stared at Lewis, who only smirked. Finally, Claire let out the words she'd dreamed of saying all these years. “Where is she? Where's Amy?”
“I don't know who you're talking about, Claire,” he said in a friendly tone. “Claire. Claire.” Her name rolled off his tongue as if he could taste it. “What a pretty name for a pretty little girl.”
Claire didn't flinch. She continued to look straight into his eyes. “I have a deal to offer you.”
“I'm in here for life, darlin'. What kind of deal could you possibly offer me?”
“One that comes straight from the Monroe County district attorney. I've positively identified you as the man who kidnapped and probably murdered Amy Danforth. As I'm sure you know, there is no statute of limitations on either of those crimes. The DA has the option of indicting you and filing for extradition, which he will do if you don't cooperate.”
Lewis let out a chuckle and shook his head.
“Is there something funny about what I just said?” Claire demanded.
He moistened his lips before he spoke. “When I was arrested, and that shrink said I was fit to stand trial, my first thought was to spare my family the shame of having a husband, a father, on trial for such a horrible crime. So I made my own deal. I told the authorities I would plead guilty and agree to life in prison without parole if they would agree to seal the records, make no public comment, and never extradite me to the United States.”