Death of a Prince | ✓

EP 18: THE HAUNTING OF THOMAS CALEB WEIR

EPISODE EIGHTEEN

'the haunting of thomas caleb weir'

      

    

"THOMAS WEIR?" I repeated, hollow and shock.

"Thomas Caleb Weir," Quinn corrected. "Before all the glamour and lies, all the smirks and the vivacious, plumped remarks. He was an ordinary man, a boy no less. He was from America. A state called Colorado if I can recall. Now, finding his old, actual self was a bitch. But it's a definitive line though."

"It doesn't... it doesn't look like him at all," I said, turning to Leon for confirmation but he was staring, mouth slightly agape, eyes pained. "Leon. Leon."

Leon swallowed, blinking. "It doesn't look like him."

"Right?" Quinn pulled out pictures of Dominic Prince to how Leon knew him. Shoulders back, arrogant smile, that puffed up, egoistic look in his eyes. She mirrored the pictures back to back with one weeks before his death to the blurry, dim photograph of Dominic smoking. Staring, no haunting the camera with an indecipherable look in his eyes that chilled my core.

I've seen that look before.

Mum had the exact same one in the days I visited her at the asylum.

The memory was a bile in my throat.

"Scary, huh? But here's the thing." Quinn buried the photographs in series of words and news printings. "Thomas Caleb Weir from Colorado, America is the fourth son of a really normal, suburban family in a really normal, suburban town. He had decent grades, he played footy - soccer for our friends in the West - and he was buck tooth, scrawny, and a normal little shit."

Quinn pulled more photographs, this time of younger Thomas. Normal photographs. One of a scrawny kid in footy uniform. Another of a baby, blond and blue-eyed, mouth agape in a frozen wail. Another of a family of seven. Two blond parents and liter of blond children - two young girls surrounded by five older brothers. I couldn't even find Dominic - Thomas, at first. He blended well into the normality of the pictures.

"How'd you find this?" Leon breathed, his eyes touching every photograph, every detail, drinking in every sight of familiar and unfamiliar blond. "He never looked like this. There's - it's something it different. It doesn't look like him."

"We figured that one out, mate," James said, standing up, face severe. "We thought so too, looking at photos. It doesn't feel like him, right?"

"Because he looked happy here," I answered, my mind reeling back in all the times I saw Dominic's face and compared him to this boy. Not the one in the balcony, that one... That one looked like ghosts had found possession of his soul and emptied everything out.

James' grim face was a yes. "He was smiling, sure. But in these photographs, this was a carefree boy who knew no problems, no secrets."

Leon stared at James, jaw clenched. He was blinking back tears, overwhelmed. I moved towards him and took his hand in my own. He was shaking so I squeezed as hard as I could so he would look at me.

His eyes were glittering and it hurt me. It squeezed at my chest, but I kept my expression firm. He couldn't fall now. We were so close to the truth. He was so close.

So he gasped an inhale, nodding. I brushed at his eyes just to keep them dry. "Carry on." When no one moved, sympathetic, his voice hardened. "We don't have time. We have to interview the doctor and get back to the party altogether, how, I don't even know, but we need to get a move on."