Voices Carry (32 page)

“Who’d have outgrown. . . ?” John asked.

“Well, it’s not the worst of what he is, I suppose,” she muttered as if she hadn’t heard.

Genna lifted a garment and held it up. It was a woman’s dress, circa maybe 1950, its skirt cut like a wide circle of lavender cotton. “Was this one of Mrs. Homer’s dresses?”

“Guess it wasn’t his color,” Lilly Evans snorted softly.

“Did Michael’s mother know that he wore her clothes?” John asked.

“Know it? If you ask me, she encouraged it. Used to dress him up like a girl when he was little, so I’ve heard.” The woman shook her head.

“When he was here back in the spring,” John asked thoughtfully, “was he wearing his mother’s clothes?”

“If he was, he was doing it behind closed doors. Mostly he wore jeans then, but with that beard, I
guess a dress would have been out of place,” Miss Evans said dryly.

“Michael has a beard?” Genna asked.

“He did, yes. Not much of one, mind you. But it was a beard, all the same. Odd, too, because he was always so clean-shaven. Guess that’s something he picked up while he was. . . away.”

The agents scanned the room, looking, but not touching, lest they sully any fingerprints that may be lifted later. For now, it was enough to inspect the contents of the room, all of which appeared to have belonged to Mrs. Homer.

“Genna.” John touched her arm.

“What?” She drew her gaze from the dresser, where a black-and-white photograph of a woman had held her attention. There was something about the woman that was vaguely familiar, but Genna couldn’t put her finger on it.

“I said, I think we’ve seen enough here,” John repeated.

“Oh. Yes.” She nodded, then turned to follow John from the room. At the doorway, she stopped and asked of Miss Evans, “The woman in the photograph there on the dresser, is that Mrs. Homer?”

“Yes.” The woman nodded as she closed the door behind her.

Once downstairs, the agents stopped to say their good-byes to Mr. Homer, but found him sound asleep.
Just as well,
Genna thought as they walked to the front door. She wasn’t sure how he’d feel about his housekeeper sharing family secrets.

“Thank you again, Miss Evans. You’ve been very helpful,” John said courteously as they reached the front door.

“Please give me or Agent Mancini a call if you hear from Michael.” Genna stepped outside into a muggy evening.

“He’s done something again, hasn’t he?” Lilly Evans jaw set tightly.

“We don’t know for certain,” John said. “But we really would like an opportunity to speak with him.”

Miss Evans shook her head slightly, as if in bewilderment, as she closed the front door.

“Oh, Miss Evans,” Genna asked. “Did Mrs. Homer have a third child? A daughter?”

Lilly Evans stared blankly as if not understanding the question.

“Did Michael and Clarence Homer have a sister?” Genna rephrased the question.

“Not as far as I know,” the housekeeper shook her head.

“There was no sister named Anna? Are you certain.”

“Yes, I’m certain. Anna Homer wasn’t their sister,” Miss Evans explained patiently. “Anna Homer was their mother.”

“How much weirder do you suppose this is going to get?” John asked Genna after they had gotten back into the rental car. “Not only is Michael a pedophile, but he likes to wear his mother’s clothes. And sleep in his mother’s bed. Who knew?”

Genna held her head in her hands and began to weep.

John gently rubbed the back of her neck with a strong hand, and simply let her cry.

“The son of a bitch didn’t know me,” she muttered. “He didn’t even know me.”

“Did you really think he would, after all these years?”

“He didn’t even flinch when I said my name. Not a twitch.” She raised her head. “His brother ruined my life, ruined my sister’s life, ruined the lives of a lot of young women—and may, for that matter, be coming back around to make sure they have no lives at all—and he didn’t even recognize my name.”

John pulled her to him and cradled her in his arms, feeling the storm rise within her.

“Maybe he chose to ignore it,” John said softly. “Maybe he knew who you were but didn’t know what to say. What would you have wanted him to say to you?”

Genna wept softly in his arms but offered no reply.

“Or maybe he’s just an old man who doesn’t remember what happened all those years ago,” John soothed her, stroked her hair and her back and her shoulders, and simply let her cry.

When the worst of it had passed, she sat up and said, “If you ever tell anyone about this—that I fell apart like this—I’ll deny it.”

He dabbed at her wet face with his handkerchief.

“Understood,” he nodded.

“We can go now,” she gestured to the key that he’d slipped into the ignition but had not turned.

John handed her the white cloth and waited while she finished mopping up her face.

“What?” She peered at him over the top of the handkerchief when she realized that the car was not moving.

“Do you want to go back in and speak with him privately?” he asked.

“And say what? ‘By the way, Mr. Homer, since you don’t appear to have recalled on your own, I thought that perhaps I should remind you that my father used to preach in your church. Until, that is, your brother attempted to rape me—as he had a goodly number of my camp-mates, including my sister—and I blew the whistle on him. After which he was tried and convicted on a number of offenses and sentenced to twenty years and my father was removed as pastor of your church. Now, how is it, Mr. Homer, that you don’t even recognize my name?’” Her anger had grown with each word she uttered, so that by the time she had finished her soliloquy, her hands were fisted and her eyes wide with fury. “Is that what you had in mind, John?”

“That would probably do it,” he nodded calmly.

“And what would that accomplish?” she demanded tersely.

“Well, it seems that after all these years, after all that’s happened, you have the right to know if that man in there knew what he was doing when he put his brother in charge of a hundred or so little girls.” With the fingers of one hand, John pushed the hair back from her face gently. “That’s what you need to know, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much sums it up.”

“Now’s your chance.” John gestured toward the house. “It may not come again.”

Genna looked beyond John to the front door where the outside light had just come on for the evening. Given Mr. Homer’s age and health, this could be her last opportunity to ask questions that had festered for years.

“You’ll wait here for me?”

“You have to ask that?” John stroked the side of her face, and she knew that he would wait all night for her if necessary.

Genna reached up to touch his face, drew it close to her own. “Thank you,” she said simply, then kissed the side of his mouth, as if to draw strength from him.

“Go on, now, before Miss Lilly tucks him in for the night.”

“I doubt I’ll be long.” Genna opened the door and stood on the sidewalk for a long moment, gathering her courage, before slamming the car door and walking purposefully up to the front door.

Miss Evans opened it on the first ring.

“Did you forget something?” the housekeeper asked.

“Actually, yes, I did.” Genna smiled and stepped past the woman before she could react. “I just need to ask Mr. Homer one more thing. I won’t be a moment. . .”

Genna’s heels tapped lightly on the hardwood floor as she found her way back to Mr. Homer’s sanctuary.

“I thought you might be back,” he said without looking at the door. “I thought there might be something else you might want to say.”

“Did you know about Michael?” Genna asked from the doorway. “Did you know what he was?”

“You’re asking me if I knew what an abomination my brother was? If I knowingly sent you and your sister and all those other girls into the hands of a monster?” he said pointedly. “No. No, I did not.”

“You never suspected—”

“I knew there was something. . . different. . .
about my brother. I can’t deny that. Knew that, for all his intelligence, he couldn’t hold a job. That he’d never had friends or played the way other kids did. That even as an adult, he’d never been able to tolerate anyone, except Mother, of course. And occasionally, me. But never, not for a moment, could I have suspected what he was.”

“Was the camp your idea?”

“No. It was Michael’s. Why not a church camp, he’d suggested, where children could be guided by the Good Shepherd. Where they would learn the way.” Clarence Homer’s eyes glistened with tears. “It was the first time that he’d shown any interest in much of anything. I thought maybe he’d finally had a calling. . .”

“Did you know before. . . before that summer?”

“No. My God, no.”

“When did you learn?”

“When a reporter from the local television rang my doorbell. That’s how I found out,” he said bitterly. “From a reporter who stuck a microphone in my face and asked me how I felt about my brother being arrested on multiple counts of child rape.”

The clock ticked loudly from the mantel, doling out every painful second that passed.

Finally, he said, “I am very sorry for what happened to you and to the others. I’ve prayed for you—for all of you—every day that’s passed. And every day I ask forgiveness for the unspeakable horror that was inflicted on you.”

“And for Michael?”

“God forgive me, I’ve stopped praying for his soul long ago.” The man seemed to diminish in size even as she watched. After another long minute, he asked, “Is your father still preaching?”

“He and my mother died several months ago.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked sincere. “Reverend Snow knew his fire and brimstone.”

“That he did.”

“And your sister?”

“She’s still recovering.”

“And you?”

Genna shrugged.

“Are you really with the FBI? Or are those fake badges, procured to gain admittance to my home?” he asked.

“They’re real enough.”

He nodded faintly. “Seems you did all right for yourself, in spite of it all.”

“Appearances aren’t everything, Mr. Homer.” She took a few steps toward the door, then turned to ask, “Why didn’t you acknowledge that you knew who I was, when I was here before?”

“And what do you suppose I might have said?”

“Just what you’ve said now. That you hadn’t known what your brother was. That you were sorry.”

“Under the circumstances, it doesn’t seem like much, does it?”

She shook her head, no.

“Sometimes words aren’t worth a damn, Miss Snow. I figured this might be one of them.”

The silence spread to every corner of the room. Genna broke it by saying, “The words that would help most right now are the ones that could help us to find him. Mr. Homer, can you think of anyplace where we might look for Michael? Did he give you any indication of where he might be going, or what his plans were?”

The old man shook his head.

“No. But one morning, I did hear him talking on the telephone, something about picking up a car, I think.”

“A car? He bought a car?” He had her total attention. “Was it from a dealer? Or a private party?”

“I think it might have been a dealer. I saw him through the door,” Mr. Homer pointed toward the hallway, “with the telephone book spread open across the desk. Looked like it was opened to the back, where the yellow pages are.”

“That’s terrific, Mr. Homer. That’s the first bit of information we’ve been able to get. Thank you.”

“Thank you.” He raised a weary hand as if to wave. “It took courage for you to come to see me today.”

“And courage for you to let me.” Anxious now to share her bit of news with John, Genna paused in the doorway, then walked back across the carpet to where the old man sat, hunched in his wheelchair. When she extended her right hand to him, he looked up at her before taking it.

“All my life, I tried to do right,” he told her. “To use the resources the Lord so generously blessed this family with, to do His work. If I could reach into the past and change just one thing about my life, it would be my brother.”

“That Michael had not been what he was?”

“That Michael had never been born at all.”

If John had had any doubts as to the wisdom of Genna going back to speak with Clarence Homer—alone—those doubts were swept aside when the front door opened and Genna marched down the walk, her old energy clearly evident in her step.

“Thank you,” he whispered softly to the heavens, grateful that whatever had transpired had apparently lightened, not added to, the burden she carried in her soul.

As she drew closer to the car, he leaned over to open the door for her. “I take it that your chat went well.”

“Better than well,” she told him as she climbed into the car.

“Then he knew you.”

“He knew me,” her face softened. “It was as you said. He just didn’t know what to say to me. Frankly, I think he was embarrassed by the fact that I showed up here, that after all that happened, he had to face me.”

“What did he say?”

“Just that he had always known that his brother was different, but he didn’t realize just how different. That he hadn’t been aware of what Michael had been
doing at camp.” She leaned back against the cloth seat of the rental car. “And that he was sorry for everything that had happened.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Yes. I do,” she nodded. “I don’t know what he’d have to gain by lying to me now, and there seemed to be a real anguish inside of him. But more important to our case—he remembered something that could prove to be the first break we’ve gotten since this mess began.” She snapped on her seat belt and looked up at him triumphantly. “He believes that Michael may have bought a car before he left town. He heard him talking on the phone, and on the day he left, Michael left on foot.”

“Did he tell you where he might have purchased it?”

“No, but since there are only. . .” Genna pulled a stash of yellow paper from the outside pocket of her handbag, “let’s see. . . seven car dealers within walking distance of the Homer house, I’d say we have a damned good chance of finding the salesman. I made a quick stop at the desk in Mr. Homer’s hallway. His yellow pages are a bit lighter, but under the circumstances, I don’t think he’ll mind. Now, there’s a GM dealer up on Melrose Avenue. The school we went to was on Melrose, and if memory serves, I think that would be about four blocks from here. That’s as good a place as any to start.”