Quabbin - 17. Chapter 17

“You did that purposely, didn’t you?” Cameron asked Thursday morning.

“What?” I really wasn’t awake.

“Let me be there when Steve showed up.”

“Who?”

“Steve. Kevin’s partner. From Chicago.”

I laughed. “You’re kidding?” I looked him over, quickly. “Doesn’t seem like you’ve been in a fight.”

“Nah, we were just putting together some bookcases. Steve probably thinks I’m Kevin’s new straight friend.”

I laughed at that, a lot. The more I did, the more Cameron looked pissed.

“Well, you brought it up,” I said.

He threw a pencil at me.

“You’re not thinking about him seriously, are you?” I asked. Cameron shook his head, but didn’t seem convinced. “You are thinking about him…”

“No!” He got up and dumped his empty coffee cup in the trash. “I just don’t like being snuck up on. Kevin knew Steve was coming.”

Kevin was always a surprise. This was turning into a great morning.

“They’d fixed it up Tuesday,” Cameron went on. “But Kevin wanted someone to be there when Steve walked in. Not for protection -- I could understand that. He wanted to show Steve his new life.”

I wished I could’ve been hanging around, invisible. “Was Steve mad?” I asked.

“No.” That seemed to irritate Cameron even more. “He’s a nice enough guy -- at least he was for the five minutes I stuck around. I wasn’t gonna stay. They probably hit the floor before I started my car.”

Kevin had his patterns.

“Maybe he won’t stay either,” I said.

“I’m sure he won’t. One thing we all know about Kevin is he does what he wants.”

“I like that,” I admitted.

“So do I,” Cameron said, laughing. “Christ!”

And again, we decided not to talk about Kevin. Instead, we got lost in work, and, in the middle of that, I fell over something. I was recycling tapes from the monitor system when I had thought. Not having much more important to do, I followed it out.

Kevin had told me Kohler walked him back to his car Tuesday morning. There was no camera in the Founder’s House yard, I guess because no one worried about anything being stolen. But there were several cameras in the parking lot.

It took a while to sort through the tapes. It’s a maybe thirty-year old system they always talk about replacing. But since Waldron is pretty safe, as I told Kevin, Cameron just lets the big reels run -- he never actually needs to check them. After they’ve slowly run out, the reels are stored for a couple of weeks. Then they’re taped over.

I found the reel with the Post-It label for the week containing Monday night, and after stopping, starting, and fast forwarding through hours of what I didn’t want to see, I found what I did. The blurry, black-and-white parking lot is almost empty. It’s just beginning to get light. Kevin and Kohler suddenly appear at the edge of the monitor, then slowly move toward what becomes recognizable as Kevin’s car. He gets in while Kohler watches. Then Kevin drives off, and Kohler slowly walks out of the picture.

They don’t even shake hands. They never touch. After Kevin’s opened his car door, he turns back maybe to say something, but you can almost see Kohler step away. Almost, because I was squinting at little figures, shot from probably fifty-feet away, through a lens that possibly hadn’t been cleaned since it was put in. Still, I could tell that when Kevin did turn, it was probably to ask something like “Do you want a lift?” And after he’d driven away, Kohler wasn’t exactly walking steadily. In fact, he first starts walking towards the Mill, then stops, then he turns and starts back toward the Founder’s House. Then he stops again, turns again, takes a few uncertain steps, stops, waits, reverses direction, and walks a bit more definitely towards the Founder’s House.

“Wanna see something?” I called to Cameron. I was sitting on the floor of the closet off the outer office where the recorders were installed. He didn’t hear me, or didn’t want to, so I had to get up, go into his office, wait till he got off the phone, then explain what I’d found. That got him fast. He came and watched the tape with me, twice, then said, “Huh.”

“Think we should put it in our report to Grenon?” I joked.

“I never thought about the tapes,” he said. “In ten years, I’ve never had to run one back.”

“Why do you keep making ‘em then?”

He shrugged. “I think they get a break on the insurance.”

I took the reel off the machine. “What should I do with it?” Cameron just looked at me, stumped, in a way I’d rarely seen.

“It’s no good to anyone,” he said. “It can only cause trouble -- letting people find out something they might never have known.” He looked at the old cardboard box the reel came from. “Looks like it’ll be taped over soon enough. Let it.”

I thought about that for a moment. “But what if someone does find out? That’s not impossible, the way gossip goes around here. And Godinez was watching the monitors. He’s probably already seen this.”

“He didn’t say anything. And you can’t tell who those people are unless you know who you’re looking for. The front gate’s never locked. Could’ve been anyone -- parking their car, then going off somewhere.” He paused for a moment. “And I’ve always thought Pete sleeps for a while at night anyway. Hell, this must be five in the morning.”

“It’s starting to get light. Maybe a little later.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I couldn’t agree. “But what if someone finds out?” I repeated. “Then what if everyone thinks Kevin spent the night with Kohler -- I mean, that’s what any normal person would assume. This kind of proves they didn’t.”

Cameron took the tape from me and looked like he could figure something out just by holding it. “Unless Kohler remembered about the cameras,” he suggested. “And knew better than to let Kevin touch him.”

“You don’t think he would have?”

“I think Kevin’d do anything Kohler said. It seems he really liked Kohler.”

“Then Kohler could’ve told him about the cameras?”

“I don’t think he remembered himself…”

“But you just said…”

“I said ‘Unless!’” Hell, look at that tape -- does it seem Kohler’s thinking very clearly? Look what he does when Kevin leaves. He can’t even make up his where he’s going. He’s like a trapped wind-up toy.”

He looked again at the tape in his hand, then tossed it back on the pile that would start getting taped over in a couple weeks. “Put those all in order,” he said. “Let this go away by itself. Don’t do anything that would change that, or I’ll kick your butt.”

“OK.” I’d seen him quiet before, but never so intense. Still, he just walked casually back to his office and never double-checked what I did.

Which was just what he asked. First of all, I wasn’t about to lose my job. More important, I wasn’t about to lose Cameron as a friend. It was dumb that our both sleeping with Kevin meant less than the tape, and way far less than Kohler’s death, but there it was. Plus, I thought he’d done the right thing.

I was also beginning to think that Kevin wouldn’t tell anyone else about that night, especially not his possibly soon-to-be-permanently-ex-partner. It could hurt Kevin as much as anyone else. And Cameron wouldn’t tell anyone. And I wouldn’t. Of course, if there actually had been a report to Grenon, and if we’d honestly reported the tape, Bill might’ve been able to find some way to use it. But how? If he were the one responsible for letting Eileen find out about Drew, she’d probably be so pissed off she’d never let go of the Mill. Or she’d be so angry with Drew that she’d burn it down herself.

Nah, nothing happened that night. Eileen would instinctively know that. She wouldn’t even need to see a tape. I was less sure about Cameron keeping quiet about me and the hookers. If he got really drunk, like on some special occasion like my future wedding, he’d just let it all spill.