Page 127 of Nowhere Good

The guard opened the door and let him in. He stepped into a cell of a room, divided by plexiglass. A private space for a chat.

Ron Dyer already sat on the other side with one leg crossed over the other. A gray jumpsuit looked good on him, and his long white hair had been turned into a buzzcut. He smiled like a kid on Christmas as Seth approached the chair.

“That’s a nice scar on your head there, Police Boy,” he said, his voice muted by the divider. “Somethin’ to remember me by?”

“Don’t worry, Ron, I’ll never forget you. Of all the murderers I’ve helped lock up, you’re my favorite.”

“Shucks, I’m touched.”

Seth sat and unbuckled the clasps on his briefcase. “I can’t say the same for Claire, though. Or Clementine. Or Sullivan, for that matter. At this rate, he might never even know he had a grandfather.” He removed an old leather photobook and peeled back the laminate pages, gaining the attention of Ron’s curious eyes, and began flipping through the pages. “Your daughters let me take this. I noticed something interesting. So many pairs of striking, light blue eyes. Almost white sometimes. Very characteristic of the Dyers.” He closed the book. “But then you had two girls with Celine, and they both had her green eyes. Then Clementine had Sullivan with Marty, and his eyes are as brown as they come.”

“Ah.” Ron nodded in understanding. “Symbolic.”

“I didn’t wanna say it.”

Ron laughed once, shaking his head. “You love this. You must feel like a god, having taken me down. Let’s ignore the part where I could’ve killed you with my bare hands if a woman hadn’t been there to pick up a gun.”

Seth shrugged. “You’re a big guy, Ron. I hope it’s been keeping you safe in here. You’ll need it. People won’t be nice to you just because you’re an old man.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it off. What are you really doin’ here, Detective? Not that I mind the break from starin’ at bars. Even if it is to look at your punk-ass face.”

“Same thing I always want.” He plucked his notebook from his briefcase, along with a pen. “Answers.”

“And what do I get in return?”

“My undivided attention for one last time.”

Ron considered it. He smiled and folded his arms over his belly. “Go on, then. Ask away.”

Seth put the pen to paper. “You waived your right to a trial. Why? I thought for sure you’d draw out your family’s torment in court.”

“Eh, I’m tired, Winslow. And that night—boy, that was the most alive I’d felt in years. After a high like that, the comedown can be months. Months. Frankly, court sounded boring.”

“I see. And what about the cage? Did you build all that yourself?”

“Nope. My grandfather was high on paranoia after two world wars. Built a secret bomb shelter, emphasis on secret. It was my daddy who repurposed it when I was a boy. There were some changes happenin’ in the world, and he didn’t want my mother gettin’ any ideas, like thinkin’ about leavin’ ’im. He came up with creative ways to keep ’er in line.”

“He suffered from a different kind of paranoia, you might say. How often did he put you in that cage?”

“Never. We resolved all our problems with our fists. He’d get me to help put my mother down there, though. She was a hard woman. Stoic. Not a cryin’ mess like my girls turned out to be. You’re wrong about me if you think I’ve got somethin’ against women—some of ’em are stronger than others. It’s weakness I don’t like. And Celine, she was weak. I shouldn’t have bred with ’er.”

Self-proclaimed not a sexist. Duly noted. “Speaking of Celine, how’d you meet her? There’s very little information about who she is or where she came from.”

“That’d be my daddy’s handiwork. Celine worked at a roadside diner he frequented. She was a fresh adult who’d been raised by the system, only eighteen years old, and I was a man in my early thirties who hadn’t found a good woman yet. My mother had just died of some type of cancer. Celine was young and beautiful and we didn’t know how to cook anythin’ but chili, so my daddy offered ’er an honest wage to work on the farm an’ make meals for us. Then we fell in love. My daddy lived long enough to see us get married, but never got to meet Clementine.”

“I see. And when was the first time you put Celine in the cage?”

“Never did. Unless you count me relocatin’ her remains from the hunting cabin.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Seth said, although he didn’t get the sense Ron was lying this time.

“It was my biggest mistake, not conditioning Celine that way. I had my own ideas of how to keep ’er in line.”

“Which were…?”

“Every now an’ then, you’ve gotta remind ’em they’re small. I wouldn’t lay a hand on Celine, but I’d remind ’er how easy it’d be to do so. Somethin’ you might wanna keep in mind with my Claire—she’s a runner. You’ve got another thing comin’ if you think she’ll never run from you too.”

He wasn’t worried about it. “So you intimidated Celine until she tried to run from you for good.”