I did not let Kevin into the house that night. I stood in the hall with my hand on the deadbolt, and I said through the door, “Son, I am tired. Come back tomorrow.” There was a long silence. Then he laughed, a little too loudly. “Sure, Dad. Tomorrow.” His boots went down the steps. A car door slammed. Headlights swept across the ceiling and were gone. I stood in the dark for a long time with my forehead against the wood. I had never been afraid in my own house before. I was afraid of my own son.
At six the next morning I drove to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation office in Johnson City. I had slept three hours. The three flash drives were in my coat. I sat in the waiting room for forty minutes, watching a clock, until an agent named Rosalind Park came out, a small intense woman in a navy blazer, and led me to a room with a table and a box of tissues. I put the drive on the table. She plugged it in. She watched the screen for six minutes. Then she stood up very slowly and shut the door.
“Mr. Ward,” she said. “Who else has seen this?” “Nobody,” I said. “Only me.” “Does your son know you have it?” I told her about the body shop man, about the doorbell, about the smile. She nodded. “Then I need you to do something difficult,” she said. “Do not hide from him. I want you to be at home tonight, in your kitchen, with the door unlocked. I want you to let him in.” I stared at her. “Agent Park, I am seventy.” She said, “I know. We will be in your garage, in your attic, and in the van across the street.”
A father who wires a small camera behind a mirror may find it still watching long after he must look away.
It was the longest evening of my life. They wired the kitchen like a church organ, microphones in the light fixture and the clock, a camera in the smoke detector, a wire taped to my own chest under my flannel shirt. I did what an electrician does. I checked every connection twice. At eight the doorbell rang. I opened the door. Kevin stood on the porch with a six pack of beer and the same stupid grin. “Hey, Dad,” he said. “I figured we should talk.” And I said, “Come in, son. I have been waiting.”
We sat at the table where he had eaten cereal as a boy. I put a beer in front of him and a glass of milk in front of me. He talked about the weather, the Titans, the price of gas. I let him. Then I took the memory card from my pocket and put it on the table between us. “The man at the body shop gave me this,” I said. “It was in the camera behind the mirror. The one I put there on the birthday of your mother.” The grin froze on his face. He looked at the card for a very long time. “I did not know there was a camera,” he said, hoarsely.
“I know you did not,” I said. “That is why I am not angry. I am only tired.” He picked up the beer and drank half of it. His hand shook. “Dad,” he said, “you do not understand. I owed these guys in Cherokee forty thousand dollars. They said they would hurt me. They said they would hurt you and Mom. I only wanted to talk to her. I only wanted her to sign for the loan.” I said, “She did not sign.” He said, “She said no. She said never again.” His voice cracked. “And I got so scared, Dad. I followed her. I only meant to scare her.”
He told it all. The tap on the bumper. The second hit, harder. The curve at the state line, the rain, the guardrail. The footsteps down the ravine. The purse. I listened with my hands flat on the table, and I did not move, and I did not blink. When he finished, he put his head down on his arms like a boy in school and began to sob. Overhead, in the attic, I knew a woman was listening in the dark, and in the van across the street another agent was writing down the time. I reached across and put my hand on his hair. I said, “Kevin, it is over now.”
Agent Park came in through the front door, not the back. She did not draw her weapon. She stood in the kitchen with two agents behind her and said, “Kevin Ward, you are under arrest for the murder of Carol Ward.” Kevin looked up. He looked at the camera in the smoke detector. He looked at the wire on my chest. And then he looked at me, and what passed over his face was not rage but a terrible relief. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, Dad.” He stood up. He held out his hands. I walked him to the door myself.
Kevin pleaded guilty in December to second degree murder and was sentenced to twenty five years. The law of Tennessee forbids a murderer from inheriting from the victim, so the four hundred thousand dollars of the insurance came to me. I gave half of it to a scholarship at the college in Johnson City, for kindergarten teachers, in the name of Carol Ward, and the other half I put away for the day he walks out. I visit him on the first Saturday of every month, through glass. We talk about the weather. We talk about God. We do not talk about money.
I still have the little camera. It sits on the shelf in the den, beside the photograph of Carol in her blue dress at our fortieth anniversary. Sometimes in the evening I take it down and turn it over in my hand. It is the size of a matchbox. It weighs almost nothing. I installed it behind her mirror so she would feel safe on the road. She never knew it was there. And on the one night she needed a witness, it was the only one that stayed to the end.
