Malcolm bowed his head. But still didn’t speak.
‘And this is how it worked out for you,’ said Ren. ‘You end up on a freezing mountainside on a January night and you realized that your only son, who you’d laid down your life for, within eight months of him getting out of treatment had abducted two eleven-year-old girls, held them for three weeks in the building you had great plans for, abused them and impregnated one of them … And Jean Transom thought it was you. There she was – a strong, bright FBI agent who rarely put a foot wrong, but got tangled in a case so close to her broken heart that she thought it was you.’
‘Shut up, shut up.’ Jason squeezed his eyes shut briefly, then they were wild and traveling the room, searching for escape.
‘There is no exit for you,’ said Ren.
‘I didn’t …’ said Jason. ‘Those girls … they wanted a ride …’
Sweet Jesus. ‘And you just gave them a ride.’ She nodded.
‘Exactly.’ Hope sparked in his eyes.
‘For three weeks, y’all just drove around in your car,’ said Ren, still nodding.
His eyes flashed with anger. ‘It’s not as if they were behaving like eleven-year-olds anyway …’
Ren guessed this was just the beginning of Jason Wardwell’s blame plan. DARVO – the sex offender’s instant response to accusation – Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.
Ren fell silent. The stench of poor, dead Salem hung in the air with the smell of whatever food had turned black at the bottom of the hot pan. Jason Wardwell’s forehead was slick.
Paul Louderback, where are you?
‘I had no idea,’ said Malcolm, turning to Jason. ‘I watched those girls’ parents just like every other person in the country. And the screwed-up thing was, I thought I was like them. I thought about how I nearly lost you. I could understand their pain because I thought I nearly lost you. I hoped they were as lucky as I would be, that their little girls would get to come back, that they would get a second chance. I looked at you,’ he stabbed a finger at Jason, ‘and I thought it was all a success story.’ He shook his head. ‘And you were the one. You were responsible for this agony I was tuning into every day, hoping that, on one of those days, it would be gone, their daughters would be back. And then one day, they did. And we were all told that they were unharmed. And I cried and cried for them and for you, and I thought God is good, God has answered all our prayers.’
‘What a fool you were,’ said Jason, his tone a rotten collision of rejection and disgust.
‘You are a vile, thankless man,’ said Ren.
Jason Wardwell’s relationship with his father had stalled, aged sixteen, on the day his father made the decision to cover his son’s child porn habit. Jason Wardwell lived in a Peter Pan town where people got to play in the snow, say ‘dude’ and ‘super’ for as long as they wanted to, because it made them feel good and why shouldn’t they? But that didn’t cover Jason Wardwell. This paunchy, graying middle-aged man was trying to stay as close as he could to his target market.
‘This lady is right.’ Malcolm Wardwell was finally having his epiphany, a man too simple and hopeful to have ever pieced together the psychology of his son. ‘You are a nasty piece of shit!’ was the best he could do. He raised his hands. ‘And I love you.’
Broken-down emotions, the plain language of a small-town man who saw no nuances. He looked at ‘Jason’s problem’ and his thought process ran through truth/lie, reveal/hide, break/fix, sick/well. Malcolm Wardwell grew up in a time when parents warned their children in riddles: ‘Don’t cross the fields with whoever,’ ‘Don’t take a cookie from the man in the white house.’
Ren shook her head. You poor, sad, old man. Jason Wardwell’s face was almost unbearable to look at, yet drawing her like a magnet to understand what sickness lay behind it.
‘I thought you were better,’ said Malcolm. ‘Until you wanted that job right by the day-care center.’
Jason laughed. ‘You thought for twenty-six years I was dead from the waist down?’
You are a sick, sick man.
‘What have you done?’ said Malcolm to his son.
‘What have you done?’ said Jason.
Ren still marveled at the shifting of blame; it was the man at a table on the street corner, playing the shell game, moving the cups to hide the quarter. The quarter will always be there … just under whichever cup suits him. And the audience never wins.
‘I … I didn’t do anything …’ said Malcolm, answering the pathetic question. He turned to Ren. ‘Is he right? Is it my fault he did these things?’
‘I don’t know where to start,’ said Ren. ‘But it won’t be here.’
Fear could come with hope. Fear could be resigned. And fear could be dead if there was no worse consequence to face. Pull back from the screen where all the action is held and it is surrounded by black. Jason Wardwell had reached the edge of the game. Nowhere to go. His eyes were bright with a hopeless fear – a glassy shine that said anything could happen.
Jason Wardwell wiped his hand across his brow. He blew sweat from his top lip. Ren’s face was burning, her eyes dry. She could hear Malcolm Wardwell struggle for breath.
‘At least turn off the stove,’ said Ren. ‘Please.’
Jason glanced over at it. He looked at his father. ‘Go ahead,’ said Malcolm.
Jason walked over to the stove, his eyes on Ren. As soon as he turned his body away from her a fraction, she dropped down and pulled the Glock 27 from her ankle holster and aimed it at Jason.
‘Drop your weapon,’ said Ren.
She watched his gaze flick back toward his father.
‘Put your fucking gun down,’ she said.
His eyes flicked again to his father, but he put his gun down.
‘Kick it over to me,’ said Ren.
He did. She bent down and took it. When she stood up, Malcolm Wardwell stood to her left with a gun pointed at her.
‘That is my gun,’ said Ren. ‘And I’m afraid I wasn’t kind enough to load it for you before I got here.’
Malcolm pulled the trigger anyway.
‘Clllllick,’ said Ren. She jerked her head at Jason. ‘Get over there with your father.’
Jason did as she said. ‘You’re not going to kill both of us,’ he said.
‘Probably not,’ said Ren. ‘But I could get you both in the balls.’
Malcolm Wardwell stood, defeated; tired and old and mistaken. He had spent his life covering for a son who he didn’t even realize had been showing up at parks and playgrounds and swimming pools, driving around to scout for girls to make his fantasies real.
Malcolm Wardwell had stood, confronted, on Quandary Peak – Jean Transom telling him the last thing he wanted to hear – that his devotion to his son had not mattered. That he had released a disturbed and violent child abuser into society, that from the age of seventeen, Jason Wardwell had been acting out what he had previously only ever seen in magazines and on video.
‘You hated that Jean Transom had been so damaged by your son,’ said Ren. ‘But you