Fall Guy

when we got to my house and sat down to eat, Maggie barely touched her food before putting down her fork and pushing the plate away. I took her upstairs to my bedroom and went to run a hot bath for her. But when I went back to tell her the bath was ready, I could hear her even breathing as I approached the open door. She'd taken off her shoes, her knee-highs and her slacks and was lying on her side, on top of the covers, fast asleep. I looked at her legs, the skin tight and shiny, even though the scars were nearly as old as she was. Then I turned what was left of the light blanket back onto her, shut off the light and closed the door behind me.

CHAPTER 23
    Sitting outside in the garden, Dashiell rooting around in the ivy, I couldn't get the vision of those terrible scars out of my mind. According to the story Maggie had told me, and story is without a doubt the operative word, Freddy Baker had been the poor little kid whose legs were burned. But that couldn't have been the story they all told their parents, the cover story, not with Maggie's legs burned so badly.
    In that story, the one invented to deflect parental rage, Freddy Baker couldn't have been the victim. He had to have been the culprit, the kid with the matches. Freddy Baker, a kid who didn't exist, had been invented to take the fall. A brilliant ploy, I had to admit. Since there was no Freddy Baker, he could never be found to confirm or deny, not even when the irate father looking for him was a cop, ready, I'd bet, to break both his legs for the harm he'd caused to his only daughter.
    Not only that, instead of getting punished, the perpetrators became the heroes. With Freddy as the bad guy, they were the good guys. They drove him off and saved Maggie from even worse harm.
    I wondered if they had omitted the last name, saying it was a kid named Freddy from Nyack, that that was all they knew. Or was Freddy Baker a name they only used among themselves, telling their parents that they didn't even know the first name of the kid who'd been so malicious, or so careless, whichever way they'd played it? Whatever the specific details of the original story were, clearly Freddy Baker was their code name for the bushy-haired stranger.
    But why was Maggie still lying about the incident now, thirty years later, and to someone not a member of her family, someone whose opinions shouldn't even matter? Or was the question not why, but who? Whom was she covering for this time? Was it Tim again? Had it been his bright idea to capture Maggie, tie her to the tree and set the leaves on fire? She would have jumped at the chance to play with the boys. She would have agreed to anything. Anything, of course, short of the fire. Is that why she still told the story, to mask her own complicity, to hide her brother's guilt?
    Something was nagging at me. Suppose it was Tim who had set the fire, even accidentally, carelessly tossing a cigarette too near the dried leaves. And a year later, it was Tim who had pushed Joey off the rocky cliff. That might explain why he had devoted himself to locking up the bad guys at work but trying to save them from themselves, one at a time, on his own. He spends his life trying to make up for his own mistakes by trying to set other people right. And then, at a low point in his life, overwhelmed by grief and disappointment, he kills himself. Given his family history, the recent circumstances and his easy access to a means, this shouldn't be difficult to buy.
    The police bought it, didn't they? His own partner bought it.
    And then, unrelated to the suicide, Parker, suddenly without someone to supply him with a home, food, money and even a little unwanted advice now and then, kills his aunt so that he can live at her apartment, if only until the next rent bill comes due.
    And Dennis? He parks his Lexus across the street from his late brother's apartment and then what? A mugging gone wrong? Fine. Then why not take the car?
    But the car was still there. I had the feeling that when the cops had shown up, a sea of blue around the faded Dumpster, Dennis's wallet was still in his back pant pocket, his watch still on his wrist.
    I could stretch my imagination around the first two deaths, but not around the third. Things just didn't fit together properly. Something was still very wrong.
    Not a mugging. Something else.
    I could hear the cell phone ringing where I'd left it on the kitchen counter after feeding Dash. I could have sent him for it but I didn't. I waited.