When I reached Bentley’s suite of rooms, I knew exactly where to look for him. On a cushion on a window seat in a far alcove.
The irony of his living situation wasn’t lost on either of us, given the contrast between his size and the size of his living quarters. His bedroom was double the size of most living rooms. One door led to a bathroom, with tub, steam shower and separate shower, that was bigger than most bedrooms. On the far side of the bedroom, a wide opening led to a den area with a couch and a monstrous wide-screen television. Beyond that, a room for his computers and then a small library with the window alcove that overlooked the grounds.
My own living quarters mirrored his, but where he’d made a library, I had chosen to set up a small workout area with weights and treadmills. Don’t think for a moment that we had these luxuries because Winchester wanted us to enjoy life. Not a chance. He wanted to be able to parade guests through the mansion and show them that he was the type of man who spared nothing for his family.
“Hey,” Bentley said.
“Hey,” I said. No point in any encouraging words, like, Yeah, Dad must be in a bad mood—he didn’t really mean what he said. First, it would have been laughable to call Winchester by any other name than Winchester. He wasn’t a dad. He was a biological father. Second, Bentley and I both knew that Winchester always meant what he said when he threw out barbed words. And third, we’d been through that conversation endlessly during our younger years, with Bentley crying and me raging, until we’d finally accepted that it wouldn’t change, and then we’d come to a more important understanding: we weren’t going to blame ourselves for Winchester’s treating us the way he did. And, no surprise, that made us tight as brothers.
“Tell me about your hands,” Bentley said. He was looking out the window at the rich greens of the trees and lawn against the backdrop of the mountains. Billion-dollar view. Still didn’t make up for a biological father who scorned us as failures.
“Thought you’d notice,” I said. “It was a pair of curling irons.”
Bentley swung his legs toward me, and his feet hung over the edge of the window seat.
There had been a time when his feet wouldn’t even reach the edge. Then Winchester had arranged for Bentley to have an artificial growth spurt compliments of Frankenstein surgery. It didn’t matter to Winchester that following the surgery Bentley would be in agony for months. What did matter to Winchester was an attempt for Bentley to look normal. As I mentioned, Winchester was supposed to spawn manly football-hero type boys, not boys with Laron-type dwarfism.
“Curling irons?” Bentley said. Around me, he was different than he was around other people. He could be gentle and vulnerable.
“Curling irons.” In a flat voice, I recounted it for him, including my suspicions about Jo and Raven.
“Bro,” he said, “I tend to trust them.”
He caught my look. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not because they are hot, and believe me, I’m aware they’re hot. And it’s not because they’re cool around me.”
Which meant they didn’t pity him. Nor did they pretend he was built normally. It was impossible not to notice his size.
“I think they share some kind of honor code,” Bentley said. “Them against the world. Lie to authorities, but not to those the authorities are trying to crush.”
“If not them,” I said, “who? Schmedley has reported nothing back to me.”
Schmedley wasn’t the guy’s real name—we called him that because he dressed sloppy and had a sloppy haircut and sloppy gut. It was Vince Crowther. He was a former Vancouver cop, now set up as a private investigator. He’d worked for the family of a kid we knew at school. And after receiving the email with the accusation against Winchester, I’d been happy to hire him to look into it, trusting him because of his reputation and not his looks.
“But,” Bentley said, “what if all the poking around Schmedley has done actually knocked something loose?”
I snorted. “Like, Winchester is suddenly scared and did that to me himself?”
For a second I considered it. But Winchester wouldn’t do his own dirty work.
“Not his style,” Bentley confirmed, as if he was reading my mind. “Would he send someone after you?”
“Look,” I said. “That person would have to know how to find me. Remember, at the gym I have my secret identity.”
I paced a few steps and came back. “It might prove, though, that there is some truth to what’s in the email. I think you’ve been right all along. The key is Dr. Evans, the chief of staff. He’s the one who has handled discipline hearings at the hospital for years. We’re going to have to go down that road.”
“Jo and Raven on board?”
“Do they have a choice? Remember, we helped them when they needed it.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Jo and Raven will be there to help me.”
My job was Evans and I needed them for that. I didn’t think it was a good plan, but it was the best that Bentley and I had been able to come up with.
Bentley’s job was computer stuff. “Any success on your end?” I asked. He lifted his right fist, like it was a salute. On his wrist was a tattoo. It was the shape of an elongated eight, on its side. The symbol for infinity.
I smiled. “All those possibilities.”
That’s one of the things I loved about Bentley. He believed that life was filled with endless possibilities. And opportunities. My love for him was reflected in that same tattoo on my right shoulder blade.
“Nothing yet on the hospital computers,” he said, then dropped his wrist. “I got in again and roamed around, but zilch to point us to anything Winchester’s done wrong.”
“No worries,” I said. “That’s why we hired the detective.”
Bentley and I had agreed I should do it as the inner-city boxer kid, my identity away from the mansion. Better protection for us. So I had worn grungy clothes when I’d visited the detective. I’d paid him in crumpled bills. I’d told him my name was Jace Sanders, the name I used at the gym as a boxer. No way did Bentley and I want Schmedley knowing we were hiring him to investigate our own father, a high-society darling of the local media.
“What about the email that started all this?” I asked Bentley. “Any luck there?”
“Yeah,” he said, voice flat. “Success.”
Something about Bentley’s tone of voice sounded like alarm bells.
“Jace,” he said. “I was able to trace the email to the ip address. It came from the computer in her office.”
“Her?”
“Mother. Margaret Croft.”