Barclay, Linwood Novel 08 - Never saw it coming

Marcia, rattled, sat in the passenger seat, squeezing her hands together. Dwayne hit the wipers to keep the windshield cleared of snow.
    “Why’s he sleeping?” Marcia kept asking. “What does that mean?”
    “I don’t know,” Keisha said quietly from the backseat. “But I think we should hurry.”
    “Can’t you go any faster?” Marcia said.
    “The roads are slippery!” Dwayne said.
    “It’s four-wheel drive, for Christ’s sake!”
    The former offices of Scar Free were on the second floor of a four-story office building. The three of them ran into the lobby, and after waiting ten seconds for the elevator to show up, Marcia lost patience. She took off down a nearby hall, pushed open a door marked “Stairs” and scurried up the single flight.
    As they exited onto the second floor, they faced a door to an accounting firm. “This way,” Marcia said, turning left, running to the end of the hall and stopping at a frosted-glass door with “Scar Free Clinic” painted on it in black letters. Someone had Magic Markered “CLOSED” on a sheet of paper and taped it to the glass.
    “I have no key, I have no key,” Marcia said. “How am I supposed to get in?”
    Dwayne tried the door, in the unlikely event it was unlocked. No luck. He puffed up his chest and said to the women, “Stand back.”
    Keisha said, “I could be wrong. He may not even be in there.”
    But Dwayne wasn’t hearing her. He reared back, brought up his leg, and kicked in the glass with his heel. It crashed to the floor with the sound of a hundred cymbals. Seconds later, the accounting office door whipped open and a short, heavyset man in a white shirt and skinny black tie looked on with alarm.
    “What the hell is—Marcia?”
    “It’s okay, Frank,” she said.
    She reached in through the broken door to turn the deadbolt. The door swept back some broken glass as she swung it into the room. Their shoes crunched on the shards as they entered.
    “Justin?” Marcia called out.
    There was no answer.
    The place was as Keisha had so briefly described it. Empty. Shelves cleared, filing cabinets half open, nothing inside them. No generic landscape pictures or diplomas or anything else on the walls.
    But on the floor, several discarded fast-food containers. A pizza box, a Big Mac container still smeared with special sauce. Several empty beer cans.
    “Someone’s been here,” Dwayne said. “Someone’s been
living
here.”
    There was a spacious foyer, then a short corridor that serviced four examining rooms. Marcia was moving that way, opening one door, then another, Dwayne and Keisha running to keep up with her.
    When she opened the last door, she screamed. “Oh God!”
    A second later, Keisha and Dwayne found her on her knees next to Justin, who was lying on the floor, dressed in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, feet bare. His shoes and socks were scattered alongside him, and a winter coat was rolled up and tucked under his head as a pillow.
    The young man’s eyes were closed.
    An orangey opaque pill container lay on its side a foot away from his head. Dwayne bent over at the waist, one leg raised behind him, and snatched it off the floor.
    “Marcia,” he said. “Aren’t these the sleeping pills you were on a year ago?”
    “Justin!” she said. “Wake up!”
    “It’s full of pills,” he said. “It doesn’t look like he’s taken any.”
    Justin stirred. “What, what’s going on?”
    Marcia pulled him into her arms. “Are you okay? Are you all right?”
    Groggily, he said, “I’m okay. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.”
    Now Dwayne had seen something else on the floor. A sheet of paper, with something scribbled on it. He grabbed it, saw what was written on it, handed it to Keisha without saying a word.
    It read: “I know I’ve been a huge pain, Mom. Maybe your life will be better now.”
    “My word,” Keisha whispered. Dwayne shook his head, looked at the pill container in his hand.
    “God, if we’d been a few minutes later . . .” he whispered back.
    “Justin, listen to me,” Marcia said. “Have you taken anything? Have you taken any pills?”
    “No, no, I just . . . I just had some beers, that’s all. I was going to take them later, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know what I was going to do. I’m sorry if I scared you.”
    Marcia clung to him and began to sob as he patted her head. Before Dwayne knelt down next to his wife and wrapped his arms around her and his stepson, he said to