Page 73 of Maximum
“The Peterson family consisted of an elderly couple and their twenty-year old son, who was wheelchair bound because of multiple sclerosis. Jeremy started at the local school where he was noted as curious and intelligent, but again, quiet.”
“Was he a genius back then as well?” I asked.
“He skipped second grade, so definitely a bright kid, but then his home situation worsened when his foster brother died. Jeremy was only eight at the time and it must have been a period of grief in the Petersons’ home, and it got worse when less than a year later, the mother fell down the staircase at their home and broke her neck.”
“I’ll bet Conor pushed her!” Lumi exclaimed with her arms crossed. Shane was still sleeping and Lumi was currently sitting in Damian’s lap.
Atlas shifted his weight. “I wondered the same thing. It seemed as too much of a coincidence that first Conor’s mother, then foster brother, and later foster mother all died before he was nine. That’s why I went to speak to Mr. Peterson, but he denied Jeremy had anything to do with it. According to him, his wife had always been fond of the bottle, but after their son died, she fell into a deep depression and started getting drunk daily. The story Mr. Peterson told me was that it was late at night and she’d fallen asleep on the sofa again. He’d gone down to tell her to go to bed and as she staggered up the stairs, he cleaned out her ashtray and bottles so young Jeremy wouldn’t see it in the morning. Mr. Peterson was in the kitchen when he heard the bump and then he ran to find his wife had fallen down the stairs.”
“Did she die?” Liv asked.
“Yes.”
“What did Mr. Peterson remember about Conor?”
“When I asked him about Conor, he said that he never understood why the school called Conor quiet because at home he was argumentative and had a smart mouth that would get him in trouble. The age gap between Mr. Peterson and Conor was more like a grandfather and grandson. They didn’t have much in common except a love for books. With Mr. Peterson being a librarian, he took pride in supplying Conor with all the books the boy could devour. They also played chess together, but when it came to sharing his emotions, Conor, who was still called Jeremy at the time, was closed off. Mr. Peterson never pushed because he was old-school and not the type to discuss his own feelings either.”
I sat in a large leather chair with Fleur. “When did you meet with him?”
“About three years after Conor died.”
“Did Mr. Peterson know about the Red Manor?” For someone who hadn’t wanted to know anything I was suddenly eager to know everything.
“No. They lost contact after Conor was arrested for identity theft at the age of fifteen. It turned out that Conor had emptied Mr. Peterson’s accounts and left for Paris with a woman who was twenty-one at the time.”
Damian whistled low, but Atlas continued.
“According to Mr. Peterson, the woman was convinced that Conor was nineteen and since he was so well read and had skipped several classes at that point, it’s plausible that she was truly fooled by him.”
“He must have been charismatic and smart even at fifteen,” Jolene concluded.
Atlas changed to a picture of our father as a teenager. “Because of his young age, he got off easy, and maybe that’s one of the pivotal moments of his life where he decided that rules didn’t apply to him. Conor slipped off the radar of Mr. Peterson, but the social system encouraged Conor to stay in school, and with his gift for the academics he enrolled at university four months before he turned sixteen. His time at London Community College wasn’t without challenges because Conor got in conflicts with professors, and social services moved him from a temporary foster home to a group home for older teens. We know that when he was sixteen one of the social workers took a special interest in the troubled but brilliant teen and that she was later fired after it came out that she had an affair with him.
“How old was she?” Serena asked.
Atlas looked in his papers. “Almost thirty at the time.”
“Huh. Sounds like he was into older women—I mean not that thirty is old, but she was almost twice his age.”
“Or maybe he just liked to control the people who tried to control him,” Atlas suggested.
“Ye’re overthinkin’ it. Conor was horny and she was a woman who could give him what he wanted and fulfill a sexual fantasy. Every young lad dreams about havin’ sex with a sexy teacher.”
We all looked at Damian, who’d spoken, and he made awhat?face. “I’m just stating the facts.”
Atlas kept changing the photos, showing us the university that Conor had attended and the female social worker he’d been with. The woman wasn’t stunning, but she looked nice.
“Shortly before Conor turned eighteen, he was arrested for the second time. Again, it was identity theft and fraud, and again he managed to sweet-talk the judge and get off with the mildest sentence.”
“Did he go to jail?”
“He was under eighteen, so he got off with six months served in juvenile detention and six months of community service, but from that point on, Conor’s taste for money and power took over and he began mingling with the rich and famous people under the name Christopher Hazelton. Conor was charming and his antisocial personality made him fearless of rejection, which came across as confidence.”
“Can I just jump in for a second?” Jolene asked.
Atlas nodded. “Sure.”
“I just want to point out that Conor was followed by therapists from the time he was five and his mother was killed in the car crash. We know that a few of the counselors raised concerns about his lack of empathy, but my guess is that these well-meaning therapists educated him in a way that ultimately helped him to fool his victims. I’ve gone over his file and one of the therapists who initially raised her concerns later wrote that Conor showed major improvement and had opened up and cried in his session with her. Knowing what we know about him now, it’s very likely that he was practicing on her and wielding tears as a new tool to fool people.”
