The Perfect Scream Read Online Free Page B

had bullied and terrified him in an alcoholic haze for most of his childhood. These days, James Stallings was a fixture in the Jacksonville homeless scene. Since going on the wagon he’d done all the things any twelve-step program could ask. And that included starting up and moderating a number of support groups for alcoholics and addicts.
    But in the past six months Stallings had reestablished contact with his father and found the old man was worth the effort. He had immediately dazzled Stallings’s children, who were thrilled to meet their long-lost grandpa. Without even trying, he’d helped Stallings with his own issues of anger and sorrow over his missing daughter. The biggest surprise by far was an off-the-cuff comment his father had made at lunch one Sunday afternoon in front of the entire family. This was about the time they realized he had a serious memory issue, which was diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease. Over pizza, his father commented that Jeanie had visited him twice. Under questioning, the old man came up with enough details to make it sound plausible, and the next week Maria had found Jeanie’s old diary in which she’d written that she knew her grandfather lived in downtown Jacksonville based on comments she’d overheard between her mom and dad.
    But James’s faulty memory kept him from providing any useful information. The old man had babbled something about her name being Jeanie and then later said she liked to be called Kelly . She’d told him not to tell anyone she had visited or she’d never come back. When the old man remembered brief snippets of the meeting, he knew the pain he had caused his son. It racked him so badly that Stallings hated to bring it up. But today, armed with a more recent photo of Jeanie, he hoped to pry more details from his father’s defective brain.
    Stallings chatted briefly with the priest who ran the community center where James Stallings volunteered. The short, pudgy priest never seemed to do anything but watch the various tables of adults talking about their problems on one side of the giant room and the boys playing basketball on the other. But he liked Stallings’s father and seemed to keep a pretty good eye on the old man.
    Stallings said, “Notice any changes in my dad?”
    “I’m sorry to say I do. If you listen to him he doesn’t call a lot of people by name. He uses names like Sport or Bud .” The priest took a second to clear his throat and wipe his eyes. “He doesn’t even call me Doug anymore, just Father.”
    “Thanks for letting him keep working with his groups. It means a lot to him.”
    “It means a lot to everyone in the groups too. I think they’d continue to meet only if to keep your father’s mind occupied. He really did a lot for them the last few years.”
    Stallings couldn’t answer because of a catch in his throat. Instead he saw the group start to disperse from around the table and walked toward his father, the photograph of Jeanie in his right hand. He felt his whole body tense as he got closer and tried to work out the small talk with his father before hitting him with hard questions.
    He stopped a few feet away from the table and waited until his father looked up and saw him. When James Stallings looked up and smiled, he had a strange expression on his face.
    Stallings was about to ask his father what was wrong when the old man said, “Hello there, young fella. What can I do for you?”
    He just stared at his father for a moment trying to think what to say and figure out if the old man was trying to be funny. He got his answer when his father said, “Don’t be shy. It’s tough to meet new people.”
    Right then Stallings realized he wouldn’t be asking any hard questions of his father tonight.
     
     
     
    Lynn concentrated on the accounting program Thomas Brothers Supply had apparently purchased before there were actual computers. Although it was frustratingly slow, she couldn’t say she did not understand the software