Killing Season

by Faye Kellerman

  He heard the principal’s voice.

  “What the hell is going on?” The man sounded angry. “Are you both out of your freakin’ minds?” Weekly helped Ben up. He was still having fits of coughing. JD’s entire face was a bloody mess.

  The principal said, “I can’t believe what I’m seeing! My valedictorian and salutatorian acting like kindergarten thugs!”

  “Which one’s which?” JD asked.

  “Shut the hell up, JD. With a single phone call, I can not only take away your football scholarship, I can revoke your admission to Duke.”

  “Noooo . . .” Ben choked out. “Don’t do that.” He broke into another fit of coughing. “We’re cool.”

  JD had turned ashen. He said, “Yeah . . . we’re . . . totally cool.” Blood was dripping from his nose and onto the ground. He and Ben looked at each other and fist-bumped. Then Ben went back to coughing.

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see this. Both of you . . . get the hell out of here!” The principal stalked away.

  The boys stared at each other as they nursed their wounds. Ro was passing out Kleenex from a box. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Nothing.” JD turned to Ro and grabbed a wad of tissues. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” She was incredulous. “I’ve lived in New York my entire life. I’ve been to the city innumerable times. I’ve never come close to seeing as many fistfights as I’ve seen here in ten months. What is wrong with you guys? Didn’t your mothers ever teach you to use your words?”

  JD was still mopping up his bloody nose. “Wanna grab some dinner?”

  “Not the way you look, bud,” Ro told him. “Right now, I want to go home.”

  “Fine, I’ll take you home.”

  “You know, JD, right now, I don’t want to be in the same car as you.”

  He turned to her with fierce eyes. “You’re my date, you kiss him in front of everyone, and you’re pissed at me?”

  “I’m not pissed at you, JD. I just don’t want your blood and snot on my new sweater.”

  “Fine. Do whatever the hell you want.” JD looked at his posse. “Meet up at Kiki’s?”

  Weekly said, “I’m there.”

  Mark Salinez said, “Fine with me.”

  JD glared at Ben. Then he sighed. “You’re invited.”

  “I’m going home.”

  JD said, “I said you’re invited!”

  “I’ve got to take my sister and her group home from the dance, JD,” Ben said.

  “I’ve got the perfect solution,” Ro said. “Give me your car keys, Vicks. I’ll take them home.”

  “I thought you wanted to leave,” JD said.

  “I changed my mind. I mean, why go home and be cozy and comfy when you can stay at the dance with no date, listening to Onionfeather massacre Roy Orbison.” She turned to Ben. “You can pick up your car at my house. I’ll leave the keys in the glove compartment.”

  “I don’t want to put you out,” Ben said.

  “A little late for that, don’t you think? So unless you want me to walk, give me your damn car keys.” Reluctantly Ben handed them to her. She said, “And don’t ring the doorbell to thank me because I don’t want to talk to you.”

  Ben and JD exchanged glances. It could have been unspent adrenaline. It could have been something else. But they suddenly started laughing. Small chuckles at first, until they doubled over into big guffaws.

  Ro said, “I swear you two are enough to make a girl join a convent.”

  JD was still laughing. “You’d make a very cute nun.”

  Ben tried to stifle the laughter but it didn’t work. “Yeah, you’ve always looked terrific in black.”

  Ro gave them incredulous looks. “Okay, boys, just go back to your bromance and don’t mind me. I’ll just hate you both.” She marched away.

  They both started laughing again. It hurt Ben’s throat, it hurt his head, it hurt to smile. But it also felt good. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

  Chapter 20

  The ride in the car was silent. When JD pulled up at the coffee shop, he said, “You okay?”

  “Fine.” A pause. “Nice set of wheels, JD. When did you get this?”

  “A year ago.”

  “Okay. I guess I’ve been a little out of touch.”

  “Y’think?” JD paused. “Sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. You just caught me off guard.”

  “Yeah, right.” He snickered. “Otherwise you woulda busted my ass.”

  “I didn’t say I could bust your ass. But there was a time I could give you a run for your money.” He rolled his shoulders. “I’m just a little out of shape.”

  “Like three years out of shape.”

  “You weren’t talking this way when you were hanging out the window of the Peterson law office.”

  “That was five years ago, Vicks. And the only reason you got that far was because you punched me in the stomach when I had the flu.”

  “Give me a break. You had a stuffy nose. And the only reason I punched you in the stomach was that you tried to choke me. Which means nothing has changed!” Ben got out of the car but waited for JD. They walked into Kiki’s together.

  A sixty-year-old crane-built waitress with a gray bouffant hairdo stared at the boys. “Vicks?”

  “You still here, Heidi?”

  “Where else should I be?” She looked him up and down. “I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays. When did you grow up?”

  “Hi, Heidi,” JD said.

  “What the hell happened to you?” She looked at Ben again. “What happened to your lip?”

  “It wasn’t pretty,” Weekly said.

  “I finally decided to put some character in that pretty-boy face,” Ben told her.

  “JD almost strangled him,” Weekly told her.

  “That is utter horseshit,” Ben said. “Can we sit down before JD bleeds out?” He followed the guys to their usual booth.

  JD said, “You want to talk about bleeding, remember when I bashed your head open with a pool cue?”

  “Yes I do. I recall that was after I took out your knees with a baseball bat.”

  The boys sat down. Weekly said, “Yeah, when was that? Like sixth grade. What was that all about?”

  Ben and JD exchanged glances. JD said, “Don’t remember.” When Ben smiled, JD said, “What? I really don’t remember.”

  “It had to do with pictures of Shannon Stork with her top au naturel that you showed me.”

  “Yeah, yeah!” JD clapped. “That’s right! You told her about the pictures after you promised me you wouldn’t.”

  Ben said, “I did it because you showed her a picture of a one-inch dick and told her it was mine.”

  “She told you that?”

  “How else would I know? I was really insulted. Like what was that? Like a lemur’s?”

  “Some kind of monkey.”

  Ben sat back and grinned. “You know I had to show her that it wasn’t true. She was real impressed.”

  “Yeah right.” JD said. “What? You didn’t. You did? You did?”

  Ben burst into laughter. “No I didn’t. Man, she was pissed at me. But she was way more pissed at you.”

  “She got over it.”

  “I never saw the pictures,” Weekly said.

  “That’s because he never showed them to you,” Ben told him. “Shannon made him delete them off his phone. He told her he was using Snapchat but he wasn’t. He actually downloaded them to his computer.” He turned to JD. “Where are those pictures?”

  “Somewhere in electronic space,” JD said.

  “Never seen the pictures,” Weekly said. “Just the real boobs.”

  “Nice boobs,” JD said.

  Ben said, “Shut up, JD, that’s his girlfriend.”

  “I don’t mind,” Weekly said. “They are nice boobs.”

  “Nothing better than a good set of knockers.” JD grinned knowingly at Ben.

  Ben wagged a finger. “Don’t you dar
e go there.”

  “What? Ro?” Weekly perked up. “You got pictures on your phone?”

  “No.” JD was still smiling. “No, really. I don’t have pictures.”

  “C’mon, you must have something on your phone.”

  Weekly turned to Ben, who said, “Don’t look at me.”

  Salinez downed his glass of water. “Yeah, you two used to get into it all the time.”

  “Not all the time,” Ben said. “Just when he was being obnoxious.”

  “Which was all the time,” Salinez said.

  JD said, “That’s because you were throwing things in my face, which was all the time.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like snowboarding,” JD said.

  “It was the only sport I could beat you at.”

  “That’s only because you practiced and I didn’t.”

  “That could be, but I was still better than you.”

  “Probably not now.”

  “For sure I could whup your ass,” Ben said. “I’ll go to the backcountry with you tomorrow and prove it.”

  “Except all the snow has melted.”

  “Not everywhere.”

  “Next year,” Weekly said.

  “I won’t be here next year.” JD looked at Ben. “You shouldn’t be here either.”

  Heidi came over with four hamburgers, fries, and Cokes before Ben could protest. The boys dug in and ate in silence. It was amazing how quickly Ben had slipped into old habits.

  Weekly farted out loud. The other boys groaned.

  Weekly said, “Hey, remember the time when we were like ten and JD made that toilet-paper bonfire on Halloween?”

  “How could I forget?” Ben said. “It burned up two sumacs in my front yard.”

  “Boy, was your mom pissed,” Salinez said. “She was screaming at us.”

  “I’ve never seen your mom so angry,” Weekly said.

  Salinez said, “Wasn’t Peewee Thomas with us?”

  JD said, “Yeah, you’re right. He pissed his pants he was so scared.”

  “Yeah!” Weekly said. “He said it was sweat. After that, we started calling him Peewee Weewee.”

  “Whatever happened to Peewee?”

  “We drove him off to Texas,” Salinez said.

  “We drove a lot of people off,” Weekly said.

  Salinez said, “Man, your mom was mad, Vicks.”

  “What’d she do?” JD asked. “Like ground you for a year?”

  “Almost.” He pushed his plate away and grew serious. “Ellen was always a good defense lawyer. Got my sentence reduced with time served.”

  The table grew quiet.

  Weekly said, “Did I ever tell you I had a crush on your sister?”

  “I had a crush on your sister,” JD said. “Did I ever tell you that Shanks brought me into the station house and questioned me?”

  “He did that to me too,” Weekly said.

  “Times three,” Salinez said.

  “I was really offended.” JD was quiet for a second. “I really liked Ellen. She was one of the few older girls that talked to us. It was pretty amazing because we were so obnoxious.”

  “Yeah,” Weekly said. “Every time we came in.”

  All four of them said in unison, “Hello, boys.”

  Ben had known about the interviews because he had read them in his sister’s homicide folder. Over time, it had become strange, in his head hearing their voices as younger boys, frozen in time—a tunnel into what he once was.

  “You shouldn’t have taken it personally,” Ben said. “Shanks questioned everyone who knew her, including me. He was grasping at straws.” A pause. “He still is.”

  JD said, “Whatever happened to that older kid . . . Timmy Sanchez.”

  “He’s at Missoula.”

  “You kept in contact with him?”

  “More like I kept track of him.”

  “You still suspect him?”

  “Nah, he didn’t have anything to do with it. All that heat made his life miserable for a couple of years. So the family took off.” Ben looked at his watch.

  JD said, “You want to go?”

  “I’m tired.” He blew out air. “Got a headache from having some guy’s fist in my mouth.”

  “Tell me about it. I think you broke my nose.”

  The bill came to sixty-two fifty. They each chipped in twenty bucks and told Heidi to keep the change.

  That left Ben with twelve cents before he got his allowance for the week on Monday morning. His car was just about dry, so it looked like he wasn’t going anywhere tomorrow. Lucky for him, at home the coffee was free and so was the Wi-Fi.

  The ride to Ro’s house was silent. A block away, JD pulled the car over and shut off the motor. He sat back and stared out the windshield as he talked. “You know, three years ago, I had a best friend and tonight I remembered why. What the hell happened to you, Vicks? And don’t get all pissy on me. You know how I mean it.”

  “I hear you.”

  JD lit a joint, inhaled deeply, and then offered up a hit. Ben started to shake his head, but then thought better of it. He took a long drag. “I dunno. Maybe it was Ellen. Maybe it was just two dudes going their separate ways.”

  “That’s horseshit.” JD wiped his nose, which was still leaking blood. “Look. I don’t pretend to know what you went through. What you’re still going through. But you didn’t have to blow me off.”

  “I didn’t blow you off.”

  “You blew everyone off, Vicks. You became your own clique of one except for maybe that Doogan guy you became so chummy with.”

  “Bryan?” Ben said. “We were looking for his sister’s body, JD. It wasn’t exactly good times.”

  “And I don’t have a pair of eyes? I came to every single search for Ellen. I came to look for her, sure, but I also came to support you.”

  “I knew you were there.”

  “Right.”

  “You know, James David, whenever I did call, you were busy with some sport.”

  “That’s horseshit too. I always called you back immediately. Then you’d call me back but not quite as quick. Then I’d call you, and back and forth, always missing each other’s calls until you stopped calling altogether.”

  It was true. Ben shrugged. “I was preoccupied.”

  “And not with good stuff. You shoulda tried out for the team. You could have made it.”

  Ben turned to JD. “My sister was murdered and you’re wondering why I didn’t want to play football? Are we really having this conversation?”

  “It would have been healthy—”

  “Oh, fuck that! You didn’t give a damn about my health. You were just pissed you lost your sidekick and it took you a while to regroup!”

  Silence. Then JD blew out air. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget it. It’s ancient history.”

  “Yes, it is.” Ben shook his head.

  “You want another hit?”

  “Sure.” He inhaled and handed the joint back.

  JD said, “Don’t get pissed at me, because I’m telling you this as a friend . . . or an ex-friend . . . or whatever . . . Vicks, you’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Aw, c’mon! Not you too.”

  “Ben, New Mexico isn’t going anywhere. Go back east to MIT or Harvard or Princeton. Isn’t Ro’s father an alum from Princeton?” Another toke. “Go activate your brain, Vicks. At the very least, follow Ro. I know she loves you. Always has. Man, that girl went after you like a drug dog sniffing pot. Lord only knows why.”

  Ben said, “She lost a sister.”

  “Huh?” JD whipped his head around. “What?”

  “Ro lost her older sister to cancer around three years ago. You’re not supposed to know.”

  “Ah . . .” JD took another toke and gave the joint to Ben. “Now it all makes sense.”

  Ben gave him back the joint. “No more. I’m already floating.”

  “That’s the point.” JD took another toke. “So that’s the bond? Dead sibl
ings?”

  “That’s the bond and you don’t want any part of that.” Ben checked his watch. “I really need to get back. I can walk from here.”

  “You’re still pissed at me for Ro,” JD said.

  “Of course I’m pissed at you.”

  “’S’right. I’ve been pissed at you for years.”

  Ben turned to him. “JD, you and I have been competing since we were two. Banging her while we were dating was just one more matchup, so don’t blame me for your poor behavior. That’s plain cowardly.”

  Silence. JD’s jaw was working overtime.

  Finally, he said, “It was a rotten thing to do. Sorry.”

  “’S’right.” A shrug. “It’s better this way. She was a distraction from my research when we were together. I mean, she helped me, for sure . . .” He thought about her gift. “She really put herself out there. But it’s time for me to go it alone.”

  “Have you ever thought of asking me for help?”

  “And when would you fit it in, James David? Between your baseball games and your two-hour-a-day workout schedule? Or maybe you could squeeze it in when you’re not memorizing the playbook for Duke for next fall? Or how about you do it when you’re not running track or running the school or screwing all those girlfriends of yours.”

  JD extinguished the joint with his fingertips. He threw up his hands. “I tried.”

  “I’ve changed. We both have changed. Something that monumental makes you change. But that doesn’t mean I don’t remember what things were like, that I don’t mourn my past.”

  No one spoke.

  “Whatever,” JD said. “Are we cool?”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “For the record, I’m not fucking around on her anymore.”

  “Good for you.”

  “She likes you better than me.”

  “I know,” Ben said. “But you’re better for her than me.”

  “I know.” JD looked down. “God, was she really cherry?”

  “That’s what she told me.” There was a small smile on his lips. “Maybe it was her period.”

  JD didn’t speak. Then he started laughing. “You dog!”

  Ben laughed as well. “Gotcha, motherfucker.”

  “Fuck you!” JD punched his arm. “Okay. If you’re cool, I’m cool.”

  “I’m cool.” Ben went silent, considering how much to say and how to say it. “Just . . . keep an eye out for her, okay? Keep her safe.”