“Swear to god, you don’t shut up—”
“I care about you. I know some people, they can help us, help you.”
His head started shaking slowly, hypnotically, back and forth in his hands. “Not telling you again . . .”
“It doesn’t have to be like this. It can—”
He pivoted, came at her, looming there at the edge of the bed, breathing raggedly in and out and staring down like the backs of his eyes were on fire.
She lowered her head and readied herself. “I get it, Richie, I do. It’s okay.”
The blow didn’t come. Instead he turned away and when she looked up again she saw him standing there, stock-still, like he’d walked into some invisible hook and it was lodged in his chest, ready to hoist him up.
“The shit you make me do,” he said quietly. “The shit they make me do because of you. I’m fucking sick of it but that’s how it is and I’m not going to listen to you, I’m not going to have your craziness in my head, understand?”
Looking at his back, seeing the tension in his neck, the locked-up shoulders, she felt a strange calm silence inside her. Strange and yet familiar, like she’d misplaced it, forgotten about it, given it up for lost, but then suddenly, hey, there it was.
The sad unfriendly answer.
“That’s not good enough, Richie. I’m a skanky selfish bitch. I use everybody I can, every way I can think of. But you’re a coward. You killed your own friend because you were scared. Scared of your mother.”
He spun around, charged toward her, and pushed her down on the bed and climbed on top, pinning her with his knees, clutching her face in his hand.
She closed her eyes, swallowed hard, almost hoping he had the hate to finish it.
He didn’t. His body went lax and he began to shake. Opening her eyes she saw him cover his face to hide from her, then he dragged himself off, got up from the bed, only to drop straight to the floor with a whimpering keen, a boy’s sob, and turning this way, that way, like there was someplace to hide, someplace he could crawl to and disappear if only he could think of it, find it.
After a moment she got up and went to him, knelt, wrapped her arms around him gently, pressing against his back, resting her cheek on his shoulder.
“It’s my fault too,” she whispered. “You’re not alone, okay? Not alone. Let’s not live like this. We can go somewhere, not Chico, anywhere. We don’t have to be who they say we have to be.”
77
Pillow-head hair sticking up like tussocks—his father’s bones, his mother’s soft eyes—the boy shambled to the table and sat.
“So nice you could join us.” Skellenger glanced at his watch. “I’m due in.”
Ethan looked up, a quick helpless glance, not at his father.
Skellenger had been scavenging his brain, trying to think of how to go about this. They needed options, needed not to get cornered, forced into playing defense. There were ways to go on the attack, if he could just get Rosellen on board. If the kid was up to it.
He remembered Nina Garza arriving at the hospital in Santa Cruz, Daddeo telling her what Jacqi had told them—the brother, Richie, basically pimping out his kid sister to his clica’s knockarounds. If hate had a face, Nina Garza slapped it on before heading into that room to put the kid right.
Now it’s my turn, he thought, to put my kid right. Hoping hate had nothing to do with it. Knowing better.
“Been sitting here trying to imagine how many ways people are gonna think about this,” he said, “talk about it. You don’t owe anybody an explanation, not yet, but that creates a vacuum. And people, they can’t help themselves.” He lifted one hand, gestured: yack yack.
He glanced across the table at Rosellen, checking in on how this was landing. She looked puzzled but not upset, not yet. Above the table, the gilded chandelier with its dusty glass pendants hovered and glowed like a miniature spacecraft from Home Depot.
“I mean, I look at these”—he slid the folder closer, flipped it open, pretended to look inside—“and I think, Internet’s crawling with images like this. You wanted to sketch one out for practice, be easy enough. Find it in a heartbeat. And there’s plenty of places to get pictures of your classmates. Maybe you have some on your phone. Or somebody you know does. You stick a face you know on a body you’ve never seen in your life.”
“Jordie?” Rosellen folded her arms across her plump chest, head tilted a little. “That’s not, I think, quite what happened. At least—”
“Just bear with me a minute.” Skellenger checked the boy’s expression—that dazed, vaguely put-upon look, badge of youth. “I’m not talking about what happened so much as all the ways people might view this thing. The situation. How they might react.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Because one of the biggest problems in something like this—something that upsets people, something that gets them talking—is they make up their minds quick. Doesn’t matter what the truth is, they make up their own truth and just run with it. That’s what makes this so difficult. So complex. But I think that also provides opportunities.” He spread his hands. “There are options we may not be seeing.”
She nodded like she was thinking that through, like it made sense. “Jordie,” she said, her voice delicate, testing eggshells, “I think we should be talking about what steps the school will probably take. This isn’t Stallworth, it’s St. Cat’s.”
“I get that. I’m not disputing that. I’m saying we shouldn’t overreact just yet. Don’t prejudge the situation. It depends on a lot of factors. It’s not set in stone.”
“Maybe so, but however we look at it, Ethan’s in a spot. I’m not just worried about how the school will react. I’m concerned what some of the kids might do.”
“I’m right here.” The boy reached under his armpit, scratched, glanced at both of them, looked down again. “You don’t need to talk about me like I’m not in the room.”
“I’m sorry, hon. You’re right. Look, why don’t we let you—”
“I was trying to make a point about taking a broader perspective—”
“Jordie, no offense, but I feel like we’re wandering off topic—”
“They’re not mine.”
All eyes turned toward the boy.
“What do you mean,” Rosellen said, “they’re not—”
“Just what I said, they’re not mine, I didn’t draw them.”
Rosellen sat back, tightened the cross of her arms. “Ethan, that’s not what—”
“I don’t know who they belong to. There was a sketch pad, the kids in class were passing it around, it was pretty, you know, weird. When it got to me I did what everybody else did, I checked out the drawings, thought like, you know, Jesus, then I flipped to a blank page and started drawing one of my own. Just a joke. Then Mr. Stalter, I dunno, noticed or something and he came down the aisle. Said, ‘Give me that.’”
The delivery was soft, a drone. Skellenger felt uneasy and yet relieved and vaguely proud. The kid understood. Don’t admit to anything they can’t prove.
Rosellen sat there stunned. “Ethan, don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You told me earlier—”
“Well, I’m telling you this now.”
“There’s no crime in getting your facts a little cockeyed.” Skellenger waved his hand back and forth. “These kinds of things are upsetting. They’re confusing.”
“You’re making things worse, Jordie.”
“Rose, let the boy speak for himself.”
“And when his teacher says it didn’t happen like that, what then?”
“Will that happen, Ethan? Will this Mr. Walker—”
“Stalter.”
“Will he have a different version of events?”
The boy swallowed. Like a jawbreaker squeezing down his throat. “How am I supposed t
o know what he’ll say?”
“Give it a shot: What do you think he’s going to say?”
That look again, like he’d taken a slap. “He had no right to look in my backpack.”
Rosellen uncrossed her arms and folded her hands, tapping her thumbs against her lips, pensive, helpless, and it aged her, the last few years doubling up around her mouth and eyes. “Ethan, listen to me. The situation won’t get easier if you change your story.”
Skellenger said, “That’s not necessarily—”
“Jesus, Jordie, please.”
“Stories change for a thousand reasons.” Memory makes liars of us all. “Even under oath.”
She pushed her hands up into her hair. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Look, let Ethan finish. There was this sketch pad, the kids were passing it around, everybody’s giggling and pointing and all, Oh My God, then it gets to you.”
“Jordie, for chrissake, please.”
“You started drawing something yourself—which, by the way, was stupid—you noticed Mr. What’s His Name—”
“Stalter.”
“He was paying attention, getting interested. You stuffed it in your knapsack.”
“I won’t sit here and let you teach him how to lie.”
“I’m not lying.”
“He came up—maybe then, maybe later, whenever—and demanded to see what was inside your backpack. He took it from you, rummaged around inside. You didn’t give your consent. That a fair summation of what happened?”
The boy stared at a pocket of air six inches from his eyes. His right hand rose as if of its own accord, reaching up to scratch again, this time his shoulder. “I guess.”
“Okay. Great.” Skellenger sat back. “It’s a story I can live with. A story you can live with. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s even a story your mother—give her some time—can live with. Who knows if Mr. Stalter can live with it, but let’s put that aside for the moment. And if the kids who were sitting around you in class don’t back you up, then yeah, we may have a problem. If it gets that far. Hard to tell right now. Then again, if those pictures are drawings of real kids, kids you know, kids who sat there naked in front of you and they have their own stories to tell, well, yeah, things get complicated. They get messy. Because everybody else is gonna find a story he can live with, or she can live with, and there’ll be a big nasty fight over which one wins. Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that. Let’s hope those kids, assuming just for the sake of argument they even exist, let’s hope they don’t want this out in the open any more than you do. Let’s hope their parents feel the same way, which is kind of a stretch, but hey. Regardless, for now, we’ve got our story. That’s half the battle. Now here comes the other half. Tell your mother and me what actually happened.”
78
Richie came out of his mother’s house like a thief, hefting an old pink patent leather suitcase, the thing heavy from the look of the young man’s walk, tacking to the opposite side, using his hip and thigh to manage the weight.
Tierney got out from behind the wheel of the Honda, closed the door quietly, and headed up the drive as the kid popped the trunk of his immaculate vintage Impala and threw the bag inside.
“Somebody going somewhere?”
Richie froze, clutching the bag by the handle, the other hand gripping the rim of the trunk.
“Remember me? Yesterday, the Wall of Weirdness, we talked a little while.”
Not turning, just an over-the-shoulder glance. “Yeah.” The word muffled by his shoulder. “I remember.”
“What’s in the bag, Richie? Who’s going away?”
The same dark shagginess as before, the lost haunted lonesome look.
“Sister inside the house? I need to talk with her.”
“You really don’t get that no one wants you around.”
“Really? Your sister almost gets killed in the middle of the night, nasty head wound. Who’s she call for help—you? Or some guy she doesn’t want around.”
Richie finally let go of the bag and quietly shut the trunk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I got a description of the car, Richie, this car, I know it was you. You came to my house and snatched your sister.”
“She walked on her own two legs, nobody—”
“You stuff her in the trunk like Cope did?”
That got him to turn around. His face seemed even more haunted than the rest of him, if that was possible, the eyes heavy-lidded and red, like he’d just had a beast of a workout, or wept.
“She’s my sister, I came by—”
“Not you. You wouldn’t know where to find me. You needed help for that.” He dug the tracking device out of his pocket, held it up like a badge, then tossed it—gently, so the kid could catch it. “Don’t leave that part out.”
Richie stood there for a second, studying the Ranger like it had him in a spell. “Look.” His voice quiet, almost intimate. He swallowed. “Things have changed.”
“Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.”
“Shut up for a second. I need you to hear this.” He pitched the tracker across the yard, then shoved his hands in his pockets. “I need you to listen to me. It’s gonna be okay, understand?”
His voice, like the words were torture.
“What’s going to be okay?”
“What you’re worried about.”
Tierney studied his face, looking for something to trust. “No offense. But I need to hear that from Jacqi.”
“If you’d just leave things alone, everything—”
“Leave them alone. That’s priceless. You mean how they’ve been the past ten years?”
Like somebody turned a screw—Richie clenched, his eyes tightened.
“Either I talk to her or I call 911 and you can explain it all to the police. And by ‘all,’ I mean all—following me here?”
A tremor fluttered in his neck. Down the street, a UPS truck rumbled to a stop. “Just what is it you think you know?”
“I don’t have time for this, Richie.”
“What’d she say?”
“I want to talk to her. Bring her out, or this whole thing blows up. You know what I mean.”
The kid lowered his eyes and nodded, like he’d been turning something over in his mind, this way, that way, hoping this, fearing that. Finally, now, it made sense.
“Know what?” He nudged some hair behind his ear. “Congratulations. You just fucked her last good chance. All because you don’t know when to let it go. You don’t know how to shut up. Remember that.”
79
“We were over at Jen McPartland’s house,” Ethan said, “down in her basement, and you know, stoned.”
His eyes darted up then away as he shrugged, dragged his hand through his hair, each movement disconnected from the next. Skellenger had to remind himself the kid was fifteen. The jitters made him seem younger. Maybe it was an act.
Meanwhile, across the table, Rosellen sat there in maternal agony.
“I’m showing Sophie Bensing my sketchbook. There was just, you know, art class stuff in it, faces and hands, still lifes—”
“None of this,” Skellenger said, gesturing to the folder on the tabletop.
“No. But Chris Kelechava, he’s like got a case of cancer for Sophie.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s, you know, into her.”
“Ah.”
“And she’s talking to me not him and he’s getting steamed or jealous or whatever and he sits down and says, like, ‘Hey, check this.’ And he takes off his shirt. Sitting there, like: Come on, artisto. Draw me.”
Skellenger said, “The parents were where?”
“I dunno.” Ethan scratched his ribs. “Not home.”
Rosellen, gently: “What day was this, Ethan?”
“Wednesday.”
“This week.” Her voice wistful. “Two days ago.”
Ethan nodded.
“Okay,” Skellenger said. “So this kid—”
“Chris,” Ethan said. “Kelechava.”
“He takes off his shirt.”
“And Sophie’s kinda like, whoa, you know, put off, but also sorta into it, maybe a little scared not to be. And Jen says: ‘Yeah, Ethan. Do it. Draw him.’”
“Jen McPartland,” Skellenger said. “She and this Kelechava kid, they kicked it off. They goaded you on.”
“I dunno about goaded.”
“They encouraged you.”
“Yeah. Whatever. I’m kinda boxed in at that point, or else things get tense. I’m not sure how to put it—I just got this feeling I could change the mood, chill Chris out, if I just, you know, made him look good. He plays lacrosse and he’s kinda, you know—”
“A dick,” Skellenger said.
“Vain,” Rosellen offered.
“I figured, let him be the hotshot, we can all relax. So I tell him how to stand to show off his chest, his arms. He’s, like, into it. Seriously. Stands real still like that’s, you know, hard. When I’m done, I pass it around, everybody’s like, wow, that’s cool. That’s good. And he turns to Sophie, all smug now, and says, ‘Your turn.’”
“He told her to take off her shirt.”
“Not like, told her, but yeah. She knew what he meant. And she and Jen look at each other all like, you know, it’s a dare or something and Sophie blushes up big-time, I mean all the way down to her neck, like she’s got an allergy or something. Maybe Jen figures she’ll let her off the hook, I dunno, but she’s the one takes her shirt off.”
“Jen.”
“Yeah.”
“Just her shirt?”
“She keeps her bra on at first but Chris is like, come on, don’t be that way, we’re all friends.”
“He said that? We’re all ‘friends’?”
“Something like that. Yeah. Pretty sure.”
“That’s important,” Skellenger said.
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