Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls

by Mary Downing Hahn

  First he asks me if I like pizza. Really. That's what he asks. "Yes," I say kind of uncertainly, maybe it's a trick question.

  "Is your nickname Buddy?" I answer yes, still suspicious.

  "Did you just graduate from Eastern?" I say yes again, but I tense up, wondering when he's going to ask if I did it.

  "Did you ever cheat on a test?" My heart speeds up because cheating might be a killer's trait. But I tell the truth, I say yes even though I want to lie and say I'd never do that. The lines on the chart shoot way up and way down. Does that mean the machine thinks I'm lying?

  "Do you know Cheryl Miller?"

  "Yes." The lines jiggle up and down even more than before, a bad sign for sure.

  Then it comes. "Did you shoot Cheryl Miller and Barbara Josephine Boyd?" He speaks in the soft, sort of hypnotic voice he's used from the start.

  It takes me a second to realize Barbara Josephine Boyd is Bobbi Jo. I'm really shaken up, so I take a deep breath and almost say yes because all my other answers have been yes. "No!" I say it louder than I mean to, and the needles jump and twitch and scribble wild crazy lines. Guilty lines, dark and jagged.

  The man sighs and says, "Please don't lie, son. The machine knows you're not telling the truth."

  I try to breathe normally, I try to relax. "I'm not lying. I didn't shoot them, I didn't." No matter how hard I try to control my voice, it rises. The needles go haywire, jumping and jiggling sharp peaks and valleys all over the roll of paper.

  The man looks at me sadly as if I've let him down really bad. He shakes his head. He presses a buzzer. The cops come in.

  The big mean one grabs me, twists my arm way up behind my back, manhandles me out of the room and down some steps, and locks me up. "Think about it for a while, you little son of a bitch," he says. "When I come back, you better be ready to confess. We know you did it."

  "And here's the thing, Harold," the other one says. "We've got ways to make you talk." He pounds a fist into the palm of his other hand. No Mr. Nice Guy now.

  They leave me in the cell. I hear them laughing as they go upstairs. "Sorry little piece of shit," one says.

  And it's true. I am, that's all I am now. It's like I've lost myself somewhere. Nothing seems real. Not even me.

  Hours pass. No food, nothing to drink. No cigarette. They come back and take me to the interrogation room. They ask the same questions over and over again. I give them the same answers. Sometimes they confuse me and I don't say what I mean to say.

  They give me the lie detector test again. Same questions. Same crazy zigzag marks on the paper.

  Then I'm in the cell and it's dark out. I lose track of time. I think I've been here a week, but when they finally let me go, it's only been forty-eight hours. They tell me my gun was in my closet just like I said. They say it wasn't the gun the killer used. They say I passed the lie detector test after all. I can go home. They act like it was just a game. No hard feelings, nobody hurt. Just a few questions, a little roughing up, nothing to worry about.

  When my mother and father come for me, they act like they don't know me anymore. They're uncomfortable. They don't complain about the way the cops treated me, they don't seem to notice the bruises on my face.

  Maybe they think I did it. I tell them I didn't, I tell them I didn't even know what happened until the cops told me.

  They don't want to talk about it. My mother says maybe I should spend a few weeks at her brother's farm in West Virginia, a place I hate but which now seems better than Elmgrove.

  Reporters surround my dad's car. They point cameras, blind me with flashbulbs, holler questions. And all the time I'm sitting in the back seat, trying to understand that Cheryl is dead. I will never see her again, never hear her voice, never kiss her.

  The cops, my parents, my former friends, they all think I killed her. Me. Buddy Novak, the kid who's always blamed for everything. Cheating on tests, writing cuss words on buildings, loitering, causing trouble, being a bad influence, skipping school, speeding, drinking beer behind the gym. And now this. This. The one thing I haven't done. Would never do.

  My arm hurts from being twisted, my face is bruised, my belly aches. I slide down in the seat and hope no one will see me.

  Running Home

  Friday, June 15

  Nora

  ELLIE finally slows down. She collapses under a tree in someone's yard. It's like she's been shot too. I drop down beside her. We start crying again. Huge, gulping, suffocating sobs. Sobs torn from our hearts, from our guts. Sobs that hurt.

  Then Ellie is on her feet again. "Come on," she says. Her nose and upper lip are covered with snot, her eyes are swollen.

  "Where are we going?" I ask.

  "Your house." Ellie wipes her nose on the back of her hand. "I don't know where else to go. Mom's at work. And Mrs. Boyd—how can I face her? Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God." She hides her face in her hands. Tears seep through her fingers, run down her face, and drip on her blouse. She sits down again and so do I. Grass scratches the backs of my bare legs. I don't think I can run anymore. Or walk. Or even stand up. My bones have dissolved.

  How could this happen? Something this bad? This horrible? This unreal? You read about murder in the paper, you hear about it on TV, a man killed in a robbery, a woman strangled by her husband. Someone stabbed, someone beaten, someone shot. Murder happens far away, in cities or desolate places. It happens to strangers and you say how sad, how awful, and then a commercial comes on and that's that, you forget. You watch I Love Lucy and laugh, you watch Gunsmoke and Matt Dillon catches the killer before the show is over. You go up to bed before the news comes on to remind you of the woman's body found in an alley. You fall asleep in your safe little house, and you know all your friends are sleeping in their safe little houses and you'll see them at school tomorrow. And you forget the woman in the alley who will never sleep in her safe little house again.

  But not this. You won't forget this. It will be a part of you forever. This day ... this day will never end.

  I glance at Ellie. She's soaked with sweat, and tears are running down her face again. Cars, trucks, buses whiz past. I hear a blast of music from a convertible. A girl rides by on a bike, stares at us, glances back every now and then.

  Finally I ask Ellie why she was so mad at Buddy.

  She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. "Don't you know?"

  "Know what?" Fear nibbles at me.

  "He killed them," she says in a dull, heavy voice.

  "Buddy?" I shake my head. "He couldn't have. Not Buddy. It was someone else, a stranger, a crazy man."

  "You saw him on the bridge," she says. "He must have done it just before we came along."

  "No, not someone we know, Ellie." It makes it so much worse. Horrible, even. "Not someone we go to school with."

  "He did it. I know he did."

  "How do you know?"

  Ellie thumps her chest. "Here, I know it here." She scrubs her eyes with the back of her fist. "Let's go. He won't find us at your house."

  My legs go weak again. This is not something I'd thought of. "You think he's looking for us?"

  "We saw him on the bridge. We saw the fight they got into, we heard him say he'd kill her."

  "But he wouldn't kill us."

  "We're witnesses, Nora."

  I find myself thinking about mysteries—books, movies. What were the three things? Motive, means, and opportunity, yeah, that's it. Buddy had a motive, he had an opportunity, but did he have the means? "Does he have a gun?" I ask Ellie.

  "Cheryl told me he has a rifle. They used to go down in the woods and shoot tin cans for target practice. She saw him kill a squirrel once. After that she wouldn't go shooting with him. She can't stand seeing an animal hurt."

  "He could have shot us this morning," I whisper.

  "There were some tenth-graders coming along behind us," she says. "They probably saved our lives."

  "But suppose," I say, "suppose we hadn't overslept and we'd all walked to school together
like we planned. We'd all be dead. All four of us."

  "Oh, God," Ellie whispers. "Oh, God."

  I try not to think of Ellie and me dying in the park with Cheryl and Bobbi Jo. No one should be dead. Not them, not us.

  By now we're crossing the trolley tracks, only two blocks from my house. I glance behind me, almost expecting to see Buddy's old black Ford coming after us. My street is empty except for my brother's friend Jeff, riding his bike in slow, lazy loops.

  The sun beats on our heads and shoulders, and the sidewalk scorches our bare soles. It's hard to think straight. Nothing feels real. I'm lost in a nightmare. I'll never be safe again. Death is everywhere—behind every tree, around every corner. How have I escaped him for so long?

  The car isn't in the driveway. Just when I really, really need her, Mom has gone someplace. How can she not be here?

  Ellie follows me to the kitchen. I open the refrigerator and find a pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid. I get the ice tray and pry out enough cubes for two glasses. Then, despite the heat up there, we climb the stairs to my room.

  While my old table fan whirs and creaks, we gulp down Kool-Aid and then suck on the ice cubes.

  "Should we call the police and tell them about Buddy?" Ellie asks.

  "I don't know." The idea of talking to a policeman scares me.

  Ellie bites her fingernail. It's the first time I've ever seen her do that. "They were only ten minutes ahead of us," she says. "Ten minutes. And we didn't hear a thing. Or see a thing. How can that be?"

  "No," I say. "We heard those bangs—remember? We thought it was a car backfiring."

  She pauses, thinks, gnaws harder on her fingernail. "You think it was the gun?" she whispers.

  I notice how tightly I'm holding my glass. My whole body is tense, both inside and out. I try to relax but I can't. It's like gym when the PE teachers make us lie on the floor in our ugly blue gym suits and tell us to relax inch by inch from the toes up. As soon as I'd move from my toes to my ankles, my toes would tense up again. I never made it past my hips.

  "What should we do?" Ellie asks.

  Usually I'm the one who asks that question. "I don't know."

  Just then I hear the back door open and close. For a moment I freeze, terrified Buddy has tracked us down.

  Mom calls, "Nora, are you up there?" Without waiting for an answer she runs up the stairs.

  She stares at us, one hand pressed to her heart. "Oh, thank God, thank God." She gathers me in her arms as if I'm five years old and hugs me so tightly I think my ribs might break.

  "Two girls were murdered in the park this morning, I just heard it on the radio. They didn't release their names. I was so scared." Mom hugs Ellie, too. "I'm so relieved, so relieved." She's almost in tears herself.

  "We were there, Mom, we were there just after it happened." I'm sobbing hysterically, clinging to her, soaking her blouse with tears and snot. "We saw the police cars and the ambulances. It was horrible."

  With one arm around me and the other around Ellie, Mom tries to comfort us. "They've taken a boy in for questioning," she tells us, "but they haven't identified him."

  "It's Buddy," Ellie says. "He did it, I know he did."

  Mom looks puzzled so we try to explain, stumbling over words, interrupting each other, correcting each other. "Well," she says, "if you're right, I hope they keep him in jail, where he can't hurt anyone else."

  The phone begins to ring and Mom hurries off to answer it. "Ellie," she calls, "it's your mother."

  I run downstairs with Ellie. I can tell from what she tells her mother that Mrs. O'Brien heard the same news story and is just as scared as Mom was.

  "We're all right, Mom," Ellie insists. "We're all right. No, I'm not crying, I'm okay, just scared, that's all, and—and—and..." Ellie does cry then. "Why did it happen, Mommy? Why did they have to die?"

  Mom holds me tight. "Poor babies," she whispers. "Poor, poor babies."

  Does she mean Ellie and me? Or Bobbi Jo and Cheryl? Or all four of us?

  Mrs. O'Brien comes for Ellie. Ellie and I hug each other. How can I bear to let her go? "See you tomorrow" is meaningless. It's tempting fate to say it.

  "Mommy, I'm so scared," Ellie sobs. "I saw him on the bridge. He was there, so close to where, to where ... where they were. He must have done it just before we got there. He could have killed us but he didn't have the gun, he must have hidden it in the bushes, he might come after us and shoot us later."

  "Buddy's still at the police station," Mrs. O'Brien tells Ellie. "I hear they plan to keep him as long as they can. They're looking for the murder weapon. As soon as they find it..."

  She strokes Ellie's hair. "Nothing will happen to you, sweetie. Your dad and I won't let you come to any harm."

  I don't believe her. Mrs. Boyd couldn't keep Bobbi Jo safe. Mrs. Miller couldn't keep Cheryl safe. Danger is here, there, everywhere. Death strikes without warning on warm summer mornings as well as in the dark of night.

  Finally Mrs. O'Brien and my mother pry Ellie and me apart. I go to the car with her. "Be careful," I beg her. "If you see him, run."

  I stand in the street and wave until she's out of sight, then I go inside, climb the stairs to my room, sit on my bed, and stare out my window at the house next door. My head is a jumble of unfinished thoughts, unanswered questions, bits and pieces of songs, images of last night—Cheryl and Ralph dancing, Bobbi Jo and Ellie and me in the creek, the stones falling in the water, the Shadow's laugh ... and Charlie. Charlie and me.

  Later the Same Day

  Friday, June 15

  Nora

  BILLY'S voice wakes me from a nap. I'm hot, grumpy. Dizzy from the heat. For a moment I don't remember what happened. Then it hits me like a punch in the stomach and I see the park and the kids running toward Ellie and me, crying, shouting.

  "Hey, Mom," Billy is shouting downstairs. "Did you hear about those girls getting killed in the park? I wonder if Nora knows them. One of them went to Eastern. I bet she—"

  Mom says something in a low voice. Billy bellows, "Really? She was there?"

  Mom says more. "But I want to talk to her," Billy says.

  "Not now, I said!" This time Mom speaks loudly enough for me to hear every word. "Let her rest. If she feels like talking to you later, she will. Otherwise, leave her alone. She's very upset."

  I lie back on the bed and close my eyes. Thank you, Mom.

  My thoughts drift back to the party. I see Cheryl with Ralph, her blond hair catching the last of the summer sunlight. I hear Buddy say he could kill her. I see the hatred in his eyes, I hear him say, "If you died tomorrow, I wouldn't shed one tear." I smell rubber burning as he speeds out of the parking lot. I see him on the bridge, cigarette dangling from his lower lip. I see his knee next to mine in his car, I see him at the top of the hill on Eastern Avenue. I think of the picnic we were supposed to have, the hot dogs and soda and potato chips, all of us there, planning our summer.

  I glance at the Baby Ben clock on my nightstand. Five thirty. This time yesterday, none of this had happened. While we were making our plans, Death was making his plans.

  I roll over and shut my eyes. I'm so tired. The soles of my feet hurt, my throat is raw from crying, my eyes burn. Later I'll take a bath, wash my hair, put some lotion on my feet, but not now, not yet. I just want to sleep.

  I sink like a stone to the bottom of my mind, to a place so dark, there are no memories. No dreams. Nothing.

  Hours later, I wake up. It's dark. Mom is leaning over me. "Are you hungry? I saved some dinner for you."

  I shake my head. I'm not hungry. I don't want anything to eat. "How long have I been asleep?"

  "It's almost ten."

  When I sit up, my head feels light. My feet hurt. My legs are weak. I'm sick, I think, too sick to get out of bed, too sick to do anything for myself. "Can I have something to drink?"

  Mom hands me a glass of iced tea. "I thought you'd want this."

  I take it gratefully and drink it all.

  "Would
you like to talk about it?" Mom asks. She looks worried.

  "Why did it happen?" I ask. "Why?"

  Mom sighs and sits on the bed beside me. Gently she runs one finger up and down the inside of my arm, something she did to help me sleep when I was little. It comforts me.

  "They were just kids," I say. "They didn't do anything. Why did they have to die?"

  "I'm sure God has a reason." Mom's voice is low. She doesn't believe what she's saying. I can hear the lie.

  I'm tempted to say she's not fooling me. I know a lie when I hear one. But what's the point? She's just saying what people always say. Maybe she really believes it. Maybe she just wants to believe it. God has a plan. There's a reason for everything. Maybe that comforts her. Why doesn't it comfort me?

  I sit up straighter, look her in the eye. "Why does God let horrible things happen to people?"

  She tucks a frizzle of hair behind my ear, but before she can say anything I let more words tumble out of my mouth. It's as if everything I've never said out loud has broken loose. "If He's so powerful, why does He let wars happen and earthquakes and floods and fires and car crashes and plane crashes and cancer—"

  "Hush." Mom strokes my arm again. "I know how upset and sad you are, but don't let it affect your faith. Maybe you should talk to a priest. Someone with more knowledge than I have."

  I nod. Yes, maybe I should do that, maybe I will. Priests must know the answers to questions like mine. That's why they're priests.

  "It's on the ten o'clock news," Billy shouts from downstairs. "They're talking to people in the neighborhood."

  Mom stands up. "Do you want to see what they have to say?"

  I shake my head and turn my back. I don't want to see any pictures or hear any newsmen talking about Cheryl and Bobbi Jo.