Fool Me Once

“Theo went along with it. Like he got it. He was getting hazed. This was part of it. He was that cool a kid. I remember that he was smiling, you know, like this was all good. And then we get down to that room and we throw him in the chair. Joe started tying him up. We helped out. We’re all laughing, and Theo is pretending to call for help, that kind of thing. I remember I left this one knot loose. Joe came by and tightened it. Then, when Theo was all tied down, Joe took out a funnel. You know the kind. For drinking? He stuck it into Theo’s mouth, and I remember Theo’s eyes changed then. Like, I don’t know, like maybe he was starting to get it. Two other guys were there. Larry Raia and Neil Kornfeld. We were all laughing, and Andrew started to pour beer down the funnel. Guys were chanting, ‘Chug chug.’ And then, the rest is like a dream. A nightmare. Like I still can’t believe it all happened, but at some point, Joe replaced the beer with grain alcohol. I remember Andrew saying, ‘Wait, Joe, stop…’”

His voice faded away.

“What happened?” Maya asked, but it seemed obvious now.

“Suddenly Theo’s leg started thrashing, like he was having a seizure or something.”

Christopher Swain started to cry. Maya wanted to reach out her hand and put it on his shoulder. At the same time, she also wanted to punch him in the face. So instead she just sat there and waited.

“I’ve never told that story before yesterday. Not to anyone. But after your email… my doctor, she knows some of it now. That’s why she thought it would be good to talk to you. But that night, I mean, that’s when I went off the rails. I was so scared. I knew that if I said something, Joe would kill me. Not just back then. Now. Even now. I still feel…”

Maya tried to keep him talking. “So you, what, stuck the body in the basement?”

“Joe did.”

“But you were there, right?”

Swain nodded.

“So I doubt Joe lifted him alone, did he?”

He shook his head.

“Who helped Joe?”

“Andrew.” He looked up. “Joe made Andrew help him.”

“Is that what made Andrew crack?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Andrew would have cracked anyway. Andrew, me… we were never the same after that.”

Javier Mora had been right. It wasn’t grief. It was guilt.

“So then what happened?”

“What could I do?”

There were plenty of things he could have done, but Maya wasn’t there to prosecute or to give him absolution. She wanted information. That was all.

“I had to keep the secret, didn’t I? So I smothered it away. I tried to go on with my regular life, but nothing was the same. My grades tumbled. I couldn’t concentrate. That’s when I started drinking. Yes, I know it sounds like a convenient excuse-”

“Christopher?”

“What?”

“You all ended up on that yacht six weeks later.”

He closed his eyes.

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened, Maya? Come on. You know now. So you tell me. You put it together.”

Maya leaned forward. “So you’re all on that boat heading for Bermuda. You all start drinking. Probably you especially. It’s the first time all of you have been together since Theo’s death. Andrew is there. He’s been in therapy, but it hasn’t done him any good. The guilt is destroying him. So he makes a decision. I don’t know exactly how it worked, Christopher, so maybe you can tell me. Did Andrew threaten you guys?”

“Not threaten,” Christopher said. “Not really. He just… He started pleading with us. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t eat. God, he looked horrible. He just said that we had to come forward because he didn’t know how long he could keep this bottled up inside. I was so drunk I could barely understand what he was saying.”

“And then?”

“And then Andrew went outside to the upper deck. To get away from us. A few minutes later, Joe followed him.” Swain shrugged. “The end.”

“You never told anyone?”

“Never.”

“The other two guys, Larry Raia and Neil Kornfeld…”

“Neil was going to Yale. He ended up changing his mind and headed to Stanford. Larry went to school overseas, I think. Paris maybe. We finished up our senior year in a daze and never saw each other again.”

“And you’ve kept this secret for all these years.”

Swain nodded.

“So why now?” Maya asked. “Why are you willing to tell the truth now?”

“You know why.”

“No, I’m not sure I do.”

“Because Joe is dead,” he said. “Because I finally feel safe.”

Chapter 31

Christopher Swain’s words echoed in her ears as she walked back to the guest lot.

“Because Joe is dead…”

In the end, it all came back to that nanny cam, didn’t it?

Time to get analytical here. There were three possibilities that explained what she had seen on that nanny cam:

One, the most likely, was that someone had set it up using some kind of Photoshop program. The technology existed. She had only seen the video for a brief time. It could be done easily enough.