Free The Hidden Man by David Ellis Page B

Griffin, but it was clear that there were several children in the family. A good-sized crucifix was prominently centered.
    Five minutes later, Mrs. Perlini was placing a cup of weak-smelling coffee in front of me. She sat in a rocking chair across from where I sat and held her cup of coffee in her lap. She didn’t seem in a hurry to take the lead, but as soon as I cleared my throat and started up, she chimed in.
    She asked me, “Do you think what he did was justified?”
    I assumed she was referring to what Sammy did, killing her son. “Do you want me to answer that?”
    “I suppose not.” She studied her coffee cup but didn’t drink it.
    “Do you ?” I asked.
    “Do I think it was justified?” She thought about that a moment. “I suppose from his perspective—” She struggled with her answer. “Your first instinct is to protect your children.”
    “Sure.”
    “But when your child’s sickness hurts other people—innocent children—well, it allows you to see more than one perspective.”
    I looked again at the gold crucifix on the wall. This woman must have spent a good deal of time conversing with the Almighty. You chalk it up to a sickness, I imagine, like she’d said. It’s not my fault. It’s nothing I did. My son was ill . But do you believe that? Is there a part of you that thinks back, that second-guesses, that wonders if you’d done something differently—
    “I have to prove that your son killed Audrey Cutler,” I said. “And I’m wondering if you can help me with that.”
    She closed her eyes and whispered something to herself. I had the sense she was praying. For some reason, I felt a rush of anger. I’d had a few go-rounds with the Almighty myself, but it hadn’t helped any. I tried cursing Him for what happened to Talia and Emily, but the conversation always ended with the blame stopping at my doorstep. I surely didn’t blame God for their deaths. But I didn’t find comfort, either, and I found myself back to my childhood bouts with religion and logic. Faith, by definition, is the absence of proof, and as a logician, a lawyer trained in linear thinking, I struggled to make sense of a line of logic that had no end.
    My family was dead, and there was nothing upstairs that could explain why. The truth was, I was afraid not to believe, afraid of being left off the guest list when my time came, but if push came to shove, if I really challenged myself with a focused question, I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know if I believed or not. Maybe that, itself, was an answer.
    “I just want the truth,” I said, interrupting her reflection. “Surely God wouldn’t want you to lie.”
    She opened her eyes. I didn’t like what I saw in them. She wasn’t angry so much as concerned. “I wasn’t asking for advice,” she told me. “I was asking for strength.”
    I decided to remain quiet. I didn’t want to insult her further and I didn’t want a sermon, either. I just wanted an answer.
    “He never told me he kidnapped that poor girl, if that’s what you’re asking, Mr. Kolarich. He told me the opposite, in fact. Now, I may be a lot of things, but I’m not ignorant. I know my son. I know he did things.” She drank from her cup and let the liquid play in her mouth. I suddenly felt very small.
    “He was always troubled,” she went on. “Always. He never bothered much with girls, but I just thought he was slow to develop that interest. Growing up, he was so introverted, so tortured, but I never knew him to act on any of the impulses that he obviously had. I never knew. Does that sound odd? A mother didn’t know her son had this horrible sickness.”
    She drank from the cup again and nodded to herself. “About a year before—before his first arrest—that was when I first discovered something about his—his preferences.” She shrugged. “I honestly had no idea before that time.”
    I knew, vaguely, that her son had a criminal record before Audrey was abducted, which was the reason