Silent Fall

breeze."
    "God." He breathed out. He rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands.
    She didn’t say anything, giving him a moment to regroup. Finally he lifted his head and gazed back at her. "I fell on the pier near our beach house. She put a Band-Aid on my knee. I can’t believe I remember that now." He took a breath. "Why would you see that? It doesn’t have anything to do with Erica or her killer."
    "It has to do with you. Maybe I saw it because we were just in your father’s house. Perhaps I was picking up on the vibes there, the lingering ties to your mother, your desire to find out what happened to her."
    "My mother hasn’t been in that house in twenty-three years."
    "But she lived there once, and she’s tied to you and to your father. She’s also tied to this house. Her photo is upstairs."
    "How is your vision supposed to help me?" he challenged. "And you know, it’s not like you couldn’t have made it up. Every kid skins his knee. Every mother puts on Band-Aids."
    She didn’t waver in the face of his accusation. He was rattled by his memory, and he’d rather attack her than face what her vision might mean to him. "You remember the incident I described," she said quietly. "And you know somewhere in that thick, stubborn brain of yours that I didn’t make it up. We are way past that."
    He looked away from her gaze, staring down at his sandwich. After a moment he said, "Even if it was true, so what? Even if she was kind to me back then, even if she cared for a minute, it means nothing to me now. So why should I care about that one moment in time?"
    "There had to be other moments, Dylan."
    "A few," he conceded. "I got sick after we came back from the beach. I remember being in the hospital for a long time. But eventually I got better, and the next thing I knew she was gone."
    "You were in the hospital?" Catherine queried. "You never mentioned that before."
    "It’s not important. I survived."
    "What was wrong with you?"
    "I don’t remember, some kind of virus or infection. It never came back. I still don’t see how your vision is supposed to help me."
    "I didn’t say it would help you. I just wanted to be up front about it." She knew that Dylan wanted a specific reason for why she’d gotten that brief glimpse into his childhood, but she couldn’t give him that. She didn’t know herself. "For some reason it’s important that you remember her."
    "I don’t want to remember her," he said, jerking to his feet. "Don’t you get it, Catherine? I’ve spent most of my life trying to forget her. The last thing I want to do is bring her back." He strode toward the door.
    "Where are you going? Don’t you want to eat?"
    "I’m not hungry anymore. I’m going to check my e-mail and review the Metro Club video on my computer." He paused in the doorway. "The past isn’t what’s important, Catherine. It’s the present and the future -- the future I do not want to spend in jail. Why don’t you concentrate on that for a while and stop trying to piece together my broken family?"
    She didn’t bother to argue, even though she knew that he was dead wrong. He wouldn’t be able to figure out his present or his future until he’d come to terms with his past.
    * * *
    Dylan took the materials he’d gathered at his office into his grandmother’s den and set up shop. As his computer started, he paced around the room, restless and angry. He was tired of being the last person to know anything. Even Catherine, with her damn cryptic visions, was a step ahead of him. He needed to find a way to get out in front, to turn the tables. But how could he do that when he had no idea who was pulling the strings in this puppet show?
    Was it his father? Was it Ravino? Was it Blake Howard?
    He sat down in the desk chair and loaded the video. He played it over and over, scanning every blurry face in the background in search of clues. When he got to the man with his hand on Erica’s waist, the ring on the man’s finger tugged at his brain. He knew he’d seen that ring before. It was probably Blake’s. He wore one of those Ivy League school rings on his left hand, a sign of his importance.
    Taking out a piece of paper, he jotted down some names, leaving space under each one. He put Ravino at the top, then his father, then Blake. Who else? He tapped his pencil on the desktop. Then he wrote down