Chapter 21

The third event that improved Seth's outlook on life was a trip he made out of town. He told Sarah that he needed the car for the day, but not why, and he drove downstate. He had sweet-talked the address of Jerome's parents from a sympathetic woman in the guidance office, and he was going to pay them a visit.

He waited until the evening and knocked on the door. It was opened by a tired looking woman,. "Are you Mrs. Dowell?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered. "Who are you?"

"I was a friend of Jerome's from school," Seth said.

"Oh," she replied with a little catch in her voice. "Is there something that I can do for you?"

"Well, I wanted to give my condolences to you and Mr. Dowell, and I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes."

"Sure, come in," she invited. She showed him to the living room and gestured to the couch. "Have a seat and I'll go get Zeke. Can I get you a drink?"

"No, thank you," he said.

She left the room and was back a minute later with a man, presumably Zeke. He looked like life had not treated him too well, or perhaps he didn't treat himself well throughout his life.

"What do you want?" he asked brusquely.

"As I told your wife, first and foremost I wanted to give you my condolences. I had become very close to Jerome over the last month of his life, and I know that it must be a great loss to lose someone as special as Jerome."

"Are you queer?" Zeke sneered.

"No, sir. I was his friend and I knew he was depressed," Seth continued. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Jerome seemed happier over the few months before his death, and I was shocked when he took his own life. I was wondering if you knew of anything that could have happened that could have pushed him over the edge like that?"

Mrs. Dowell looked sadly at her husband, but his response was far from polite.

"Jerome always was a troubled boy. He never knew how good he had it, and he couldn't mind his elders. I don't know why he did what he did, but it didn't surprise me in the least."

"Do you know what might have happened, Mrs. Dowell?" Seth asked.

"I just answered your question!" Zeke interrupted before his wife could say anything. "Was there anything else that you wanted?"

"No. Thank you very much, and once again, I'm sorry about your son."

Mrs. Dowell nodded, a tear in her eye, but her husband merely grunted and showed Seth to the door.

Seth went out to his car and drove it just around the corner. He parked the car, lowered his seat and tried to sleep. Jerome's father had the look of a man who didn't go a day without alcohol. Seth's visit had probably disturbed him enough that he would turn to drink, or at least Seth hoped so.

Seth pondered his plan. He would first discover if Jerome's father was as controlling and manipulative as he suspected, a suspicion bolstered by actually meeting him. If his fears were true, he would influence him into doing something fatal. Seth had never even considered killing someone before — he'd never even had so much as a fist-fight in his life -- but his blood boiled when he thought of Jerome, and he knew that he was quite prepared to do it now. The world would be a better place without Zeke Dowell.

Seth fell asleep, though he was so agitated it took him longer than he had anticipated. He found Jerome's mother first. He started probing her conscious mind, and he discovered that Mr. Dowell was getting ready to go out drinking. She was scared, because that nice young man who had been friends with Jerome had upset him, and when he got upset he drank heavily, and when he drank heavily he became abusive. Then Seth dove deeper.

Seth discovered that Zeke Dowell was an abusive man all around. There were many fantasies of killing him in Mrs. Dowell's mind. He discovered that Jerome was an only child, but that his mother had been pregnant again. A fight with her husband had caused her to lose the baby, and in the process the ability to have children. Mrs. Dowell had doted on Jerome, but he was never good enough for his father.

A few minutes in her head cemented the image that Seth had of Zeke Dowell.

Seth broke off and quickly found Mr. Dowell's mind, just before he left his home. He hoped that he wasn't going far enough to take him out of Seth's range. As Zeke drove to the bar, Seth examined his mind. His surface thoughts were roiling anger at the insolent prick who had come asking questions about that no-good dead son of his. But upon a deeper search of Zeke's memories, Seth was horrified.

Seth spent a long time in Zeke's mind; he got lucky and Zeke stopped at a bar well within range, a place where he was clearly a regular. If Zeke had been a bad father, Zeke's father was a monster. He had abused Zeke horribly, physically, emotionally, and in some ways, sexually, instilling in him a sense of might makes right and the strong belief that a woman's place was under a man's thumb. It was no surprise that Zeke had turned out the way that he did. However under all of that was still a scared child, terribly disgusted by what he had become.

Though he would never admit it, least of all to himself, Zeke blamed himself for his son's death. If Seth did nothing, Zeke would soon do it to himself, not by committing suicide overtly, but by the reckless behavior that he was finding himself practicing more and more.