No Mercy. John Burley

Schroeder said. His voice was calm and empathic. Ben stood in silence, studying a thin strip of grout between the floor’s tiles as if it were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen in his entire life.

      Tanner looked up at the detective. ‘I just didn’t want it to be him. I thought … you know … I thought maybe I’d come here and it wouldn’t be him. I wanted it to be someone else’s son. Not Kevin. Not my boy. That’s what I was hoping for. I wanted it to be someone else’s goddamn son. Can you … can you believe that?’

      ‘Yes, I can,’ he answered.

      Phil Tanner stood next to the table, head low, as if waiting for someone to tell him what to do next. He stood like that for a minute or two, and none of them spoke. Then, suddenly, he looked up as another realization occurred to him. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. His eyes revealed a sickening dread. ‘What will I say to his mother? She doesn’t know. How am I going to tell my wife that our boy is dead?’

      The intrusive ringing of the phone at the front desk had finally stopped, and the CO was quiet and still, at least for the time being. The only sound in the room was the shushing cadence of breath that slid slowly in and out of each chest but one.

      There was nothing else.

       Chapter 11

      ‘You’re not going out tonight, Thomas. End of discussion.’ Ben was tired of arguing, and he was through being reasonable.

      ‘Fine, Dad!’ his son yelled back, throwing up his hands in frustration. ‘Whatever you say!’ He stormed out of the kitchen and up the stairs toward his bedroom. Six seconds later came the sound, and the subsequent reverberation, of Thomas’s bedroom door being slammed shut hard enough to make the pictures in the downstairs hallway rattle.

      Joel sat quietly at the kitchen table, pushing string beans around the perimeter of his plate with his fork. He’d wisely decided to stay out of the fray. His father looked down at the remaining vegetables. ‘You planning on eating those?’

      ‘No,’ Joel replied honestly.

      Ben continued to look at him, eyebrows raised. Joel stared back, mentally preparing himself for the stand-off. Nobody told the Punisher – his favorite comic book hero – to eat his vegetables, he thought crossly. You’d get so far as ‘Pardon me, sir, but are you planning on eating—’ Then, blam! You’d be staring down the barrel of a .45 long-slide.

      ‘I guess you’re prepared to sleep in the kitchen tonight then?’ Ben asked. ‘You want your pillow?’

      Joel sighed, rolling his eyes. Alex looked up at him from where he lay on the floor next to Joel’s chair. Two abandoned string beans also lay on the floor next to the dog, Joel’s failed attempt to feed the beans to his canine companion. Apparently, Alex didn’t care much for string beans, either.

      ‘Dad, I’m full. This is my second helping.’

      ‘That’s your first helping,’ his father responded. ‘And don’t think I didn’t notice those two beans on the floor next to Alex, too.’

      ‘I dropped them. Honest. It was an accident.’ He looked over at his mother for support.

      Ben shook his head. ‘Give me at least some credit, son.’

      ‘How about if I eat three beans?’ Joel suggested.

      ‘How about if you eat all of them?’ his father responded.

      ‘Okay, I’ll eat half,’ Joel agreed, and shoveled the appropriate number of beans into his mouth, chewed them up, and swallowed them in one giant gulp followed by a milk chaser. ‘Now, may I be excused?’

      ‘Yes, you may,’ Susan said. ‘The rest of those beans will be waiting for you at breakfast.’

      ‘Thanks, Mom.’ He jumped out of his chair and darted from the room. Alexander the Great immediately got up and followed him, the boy’s 180-pound shadow. Joel’s parents watched him go. For a moment they sat in silence at the table, enjoying the sudden tranquillity that their son’s departure had left in its wake.

      ‘I’m going to go talk to Thomas,’ Ben announced.

      Susan placed a hand on his sleeve. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

      ‘He needs to check his attitude,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not going to have him yelling at his parents and slamming the bedroom door just because he can’t go out with his friends.’

      ‘Let him be,’ Susan advised him. ‘He’s sixteen. You remember what that was like? He’s got so many emotions churning around inside him that he can barely see straight.’

      ‘I still don’t like the yelling. We’ve never tolerated that before. I don’t see any reason to change course now.’

      ‘That’s true. But he’s right, Ben. What are we doing telling him he can’t go out with his friends on a Saturday night?’

      ‘We’re trying to keep him safe, that’s what we’re doing. A young boy Thomas’s age was just murdered in our own neighborhood. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask him not to go out at night for a while.’

      ‘That was eight weeks ago, and it happened in broad daylight,’ Susan reminded him. ‘Should we be keeping him home during the day, as well?’

      ‘It’s a parent’s responsibility to act in their child’s best interest. The first priority is keeping our boys safe.’

      ‘But we can’t always do that,’ she pointed out.

      ‘We can try,’ he told her. He stood up, filled a kettle with water and placed it on the range to boil. ‘Maybe we should think about getting out of town for a while.’

      ‘We have responsibilities – obligations, Ben.’

      ‘A few weeks is all I’m suggesting.’