by Tim Kehoe
“Hey, I’m here. Where’s your buddy? Is he still picking his teeth out of the pool?”
“Where are your buddies?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, we found your buddies last night at the bowling alley. Maybe they are still there picking their teeth out of the gutter.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
* * *
I tried to shove the guy backward, but he didn’t move very far. I could hear several of his buddies getting up from their table now.
“You better hope my friends are all right,” I said, leaning down toward his face.
“Or what?”
Several of the other football players were standing behind him now. Arms crossed. All for one and one for all, I thought.
I reached down and put one of my tater tots into my mouth. I was starving, but I was also trying to show the pack of idiots that I wouldn’t scare easily. Never show them any fear, my dad had said.
“I think we all need to talk, don’t you?” I asked, poking him in his thick chest. “I think we should get together after school and settle this thing.”
“Fin!” Bailey sounded scared. “Don’t be crazy. Plus, you’re supposed to be at my place after school.”
Great, I thought. Now they’ll know exactly where to find me.
“Yeah, with two fresh pineapples,” I added. “I’ll be there. Why don’t you boys meet me over at the Piggly Wiggly after school. I’ve got to get some pineapples. We can settle this thing and then I’m going to Bailey’s.”
“You’re a dead man, dude,” one of the football players said.
“We’ll see.” I grabbed another tot and walked out of the cafeteria.
I was seriously angry about my phone. I had to go buy another phone, and I was pretty sure I had taken the last of the cheap ones at the Pig. I would be forced to buy the gold standard in mobile phones. It was sure to wipe me out.
I walked down the hall toward my next class. I had three more hours of sitting in classes that meant nothing to me. Forget it, I thought. I’d already gotten what I needed. I’d be at Bailey’s house in a couple of hours. After Susan left, I’d show her the chapters from my dad’s new book and ask her what she knew. Ask her if she would tell her story to Emma and the world. Before it was too late. Before the killers moved on.
I ripped Bailey’s map out of my notebook and threw the rest in the trash. I walked quickly toward the main entrance. It was early October, but it suddenly felt like June. Like the last day of school.
I stopped walking about ten feet from the front door. Nonnemacher had taken my phone. My brand-new phone. I didn’t need to buy a new one. I knew exactly where I could find a perfectly good phone. And it was my last day at Galena High. I had nothing to lose.
Nonnemacher was in the middle of some sort of rant in Spanish as I pushed open his classroom door. He stopped immediately.
“¿Lo que en el mundo se cree que está haciendo, señor Jennings?”
“I’ve got no idea what you just said.” I walked straight to his desk and opened the middle drawer. Nothing. There were pens and papers, but no phone.
Nonnemacher switched to English.
“What in god’s name do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“Taking my phone back,” I said, as I pulled open another drawer. Bingo. I grabbed my piece of crap pay-as-you-go.
“I distinctly remember saying that you would get it back at the end of the school year.”
I turned and looked at him. His face was red. His eyes looked like they were rattling in their sockets.
“It is the end of the school year for me. Adiós.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
* * *
I walked down the hall and out the front door. I didn’t bother to look back. I knew Nonnemacher wouldn’t follow me.
I set out for the Piggly Wiggly. I needed to get the pineapples and then start walking south to The Territories. There was clearly no way I was waiting around for the football team to beat my head in. I couldn’t fight an entire team. No, I’d get the pineapples and get a head start to Bailey’s.
There were only two cars in the parking lot when I reached the Pig. Neither of them were Douglas’s. Unless he hadn’t found his car yet and had rented a new one. This was a bad idea. What if Douglas told the store manager to be on the lookout for me? What if Douglas was around somewhere, staking the place out? I slowed down as I walked toward the automatic door. This couldn’t be a good idea. I looked around. No cops. No sign of Douglas. And no WANTED pictures of me taped to the windows. I was going to get the pineapples and get the heck out.
The Pig had a mountain of fresh pineapples. I grabbed two and headed to the checkout. There was a woman standing at the same cash register Trish had been at the night before. The same one I had hidden under. I was definitely pushing my luck. But I paid for the pineapples and got out of the store, no problem.
I crossed the highway and walked about a mile down a dirt road. I wondered if this stupid Podunk town had a bus. But I guessed with only eight hundred residents and miles of farm fields, it wouldn’t have made sense. I would have to walk all the way to The Territories. I decided to take back roads. I wasn’t taking any chances with Douglas. My phone said it was three hours to The Territories on foot. I needed to be at Bailey’s in two and a half. And I certainly needed to get there before the football team figured out I wasn’t going to show up at the Pig and they came looking for me. Maybe I could run and even stop by Mike’s before Bailey’s. I needed to know he was okay.
Despite my best efforts, it took me more than two hours to reach The Territories. But the freaking Territories were huge, and Bailey’s map wasn’t exactly drawn to scale, so it took me another hour to find Bailey’s house.
I shoved Bailey’s map into my pocket as I rang the doorbell. I waited a few minutes, but no one answered. I tried again. I was almost an hour late. Were they already done? Had the idiot football guys come out looking for me and caused trouble?
I looked in the front window. It looked dark inside. I pulled the map out and looked at the address again. This was definitely the right house. I sat down on the front step to wait.
I thought about my new phone in a million pieces on the lunchroom floor. I wondered if Emma had left a message on that phone. I pulled my old phone from my pocket and called Emma. She didn’t answer. I hung up as a car pulled into the driveway. Bailey and Susan got out. Bailey was holding two pineapples.
“There you are,” Bailey said. She had changed clothes since school. She was wearing faded jeans and a tight sweater.
“Hey, sorry I’m late.” I held up my two pineapples. “I guess we can make twice as much now.”
“I got worried when you didn’t show,” Bailey said. “I thought something might have gone wrong at the Pig.”
“What could have gone wrong?” I asked with a smile.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the entire football team using you as a tackling dummy.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
* * *
Bailey twisted the handle and pushed the door open.
“You don’t lock your doors?” I asked.
“This is Galena. Nothing happens in Galena. It’s, like, the safest place on the planet,” she said.
“If you say so.”
Bailey paused for a moment and then said, “Whoa, what’s that smell?”
Oh, no. Betty’s amulet. All the sweat from running out here must have aggravated the peppers.
“I don’t smell anything,” I said. And I wasn’t lying. I must have grown used to the stench. All I could smell was Bailey. And she smelled fantastic.
Susan was standing five feet behind us.
“No, I smell it too. It smells like bad chimichanga.”
“Bad chimichanga?” I repeated.
“Yeah. Once my uncle made my cousins and I some pork chimichangas and he wanted them to be authentic Mexican chimichangas, so he soaked them in jalapeño oil overnight. Then he burned t
hem. It smells like that.”
“Jalapeño oil?” I asked.
“Authentic burned jalapeño oil,” Susan replied.
“Whatever,” Bailey said as she walked into her house.
“Susan and I already started. The pork chops are cooked, we just need to add the pineapple.”
Bailey’s living room was a maze of boxes. Some opened. Some taped shut.
“I see you guys still haven’t fully unpacked.” Which seemed strange. Bailey’s family would have been relocated here months ago. That’s a long time to live out of boxes.
“Guess again, Finny. We’re heading the other direction.”
“What? Moving?”
“Bingo,” Bailey said as she cut the top off one of the pineapples. “And my dad has been working so much, he told me to throw all this stuff into boxes. Nice, huh?”
“But didn’t you just get here?” I asked.
“Yeah, but my—” Bailey paused. “How did you know we just moved here?”
Shoot. Way to go, Furious.
“I, ah, I asked Mike about you.” That was worse. Now I looked pathetic. First the notebook, and now this pathetic schoolboy thing.
“Oh, really?” She smiled.
“When are you moving?” Susan asked as she stepped into the kitchen to help Bailey cut up the pineapple.
“When aren’t we moving? Who knows? Soon, I guess. We’re always moving.”
I laughed. “I know a little about that.”
“Really? Tell us a little about yourself, Finny. Who is Finbar Jennings and what is he all about?” Bailey said as she took a bite of pineapple.
He’s a kid I went to school with in Ireland, I thought. And I actually don’t know much about him.
“Oh, you know. Same old story. I’ve moved around the world with my mom. A different town and country every few months. New adventures. New friends. New languages. Nothing too exciting.” I smiled.
“Right,” Bailey said as she bent over to get a cutting board for Susan. “Us too.”
I glanced into a couple of the open boxes in front of me. One was full of stuffed animals. I grabbed a monkey.
“Still sleeping with stuffed animals, I see.” I held the monkey up by one arm.
“Hey! That’s Mr. Ooh Ooh. Be careful with him! Ooh Ooh and I have been through a lot together,” Bailey said.
“He’s cute,” Susan added.
“Thank you.”
I put Mr. Ooh Ooh down and played with a couple of the stuffed animals. Anything to keep my distance from Bailey and Susan. I didn’t want them to smell the ghost pepper amulet. I realized my eyes and nose were running now.
I saw a photo album in another open box and thumbed through it. There were pictures of a little girl at Disney. The little girl sitting on a pony. The girl in the desert. At the beach. And then a more recent picture of Bailey with a guy, presumably her dad. My brain tingled. Somewhere deep down I had a faint feeling I had seen him before.
“Who’s this?” I asked, holding up the photo.
“Oh, that’s me and my dad in Millennium Park.”
I set the photo album down and picked up another one. I opened it up, and on the first page was a picture of an older woman next to an obituary. The obituary said the woman had been survived in death by sixteen grandchildren. Bailey must have been one of the sixteen grandchildren.
“Bailey?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a lot of cousins?” I asked.
“We’re Catholic and Italian,” she said. “What do you think?”
“Yup,” I replied. “Lots of cousins. I’m guessing fifteen, give or take.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never really counted.”
I continued to flip through the book. Every page had a photo on the left and then either an obituary or some newspaper clipping detailing some horrible death on the right. Maybe it was an Italian thing? Heck, my mom always saved those little bookmarks they passed out at funerals.
I kept flipping through Bailey’s morbid family tree. And most of the members shared a family resemblance. An old Italian man, a young Italian man, older woman, younger woman, and then . . . and then I felt all the blood rush from my head. There, on the left side of the page, was a picture of my mother. And on the right . . . an article detailing the shooting outside the DeSoto House Hotel.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
* * *
I stared at the page. I hadn’t seen her face in months.
“What are you looking at now?” Bailey asked.
I didn’t answer. I read the first few lines of the article. The newspaper clipping gave an account of my mother being gunned down. My knees were shaking as I flipped to the next page. There was another photo and another obituary for a man I didn’t recognize. The obituary said he had died in a fire. I flipped to the next. There was a picture of an older woman. Maybe late forties or early fifties. But the right side of the page was empty. No newspaper clipping. No obituary. I flipped to the next.
“Oh my god!”
“What? What is it, Finny? Did you find one of my old report cards?” Bailey asked.
It was Trish. She was a little younger in the photo, but it was Trish. The woman and Trish had no obituaries. No proof of death. Because they’re still alive, I thought. It was just like in my dad’s book. This must have been the Sicilian’s book of proof.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, holding up the book.
“I don’t recognize that one. It must be my dad’s.”
Her dad? How did he—
Bailey’s dad had to be Anton. It was the only thing that made sense. Bailey said they had moved from city to city, just like my mom and me. They hadn’t been in Galena too long and now they were moving. Right before my dad’s book came out, naming him as the killer. And how else would he have this book? Bailey’s dad was working late all right: He was killing Trish and the other woman before they left Galena. He was finishing up the Sicilian’s work.
I tucked the photo album into the back of my pants. I tried to talk, but my voice cracked.
“Bailey—” I stopped, cleared my throat, and tried again. “Bailey, what does your dad do?”
“I don’t really know,” she answered. “He’s, like, some sort of accountant or something. He’s a contractor for the government or army or something.”
“That’s weird,” I mumbled.
“Why is that weird?” Bailey asked.
“ ’Cause that’s what my mom did too.”
I started toward the door. Bailey’s family wasn’t in the witness protection program. Her dad was killing the people in the witness protection program.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to check on Mike. Do you know where he lives?” I asked.
“Yeah, he and Trish live down the street by the golf course. But don’t you want to finish cooking?”
I didn’t answer Bailey. I just started running down the driveway.
How had I screwed up so badly?
I turned the corner and could see the golf course. Mike’s house was just over the hill. I ran for twenty minutes and then slowed to a walk and tried to catch my breath. The amulet was now blistering my chest.
I walked down the middle of the road for three or four minutes until I saw the gate to Mike’s house. I figured I would show Mike and Trish the photo album and tell them they were in danger, if I wasn’t too late.
I was about to walk down their driveway when I noticed a dark-blue sedan parked several hundred feet past the drive. The sedan kind of looked like—
I started to run, but it was too late. Douglas was already out of the car and running after me. I turned to run faster, but my legs were numb and my knees were buckling from running all afternoon. I heard Douglas yell my name as I crossed the street and headed for the golf course. There was no way I could outrun him this time. I made it about ten more feet before Douglas jumped on my back and I dropped the photo album as we collapsed to the ground.
He flipped me ov
er and grabbed my arms. He was strong. And angry. His eyes were crazed. He looked like he wanted to kill me. He placed his knee over my right bicep and applied a ton of pressure. It hurt like crazy. It felt like he was pushing my muscle clean off the bone. I tried to free my arm, but it was pointless. With both of his hands free, he made a move toward my left arm. I pulled it in close to my chest. Then, without thinking, I thrust my palm up and out as hard as I could. The base of my palm smashed into Douglas’s nose. I could feel the cartilage give as my hand pushed his nose up and into his skull.
Douglas grabbed his face with both hands.
“God, what are you doing, Furious? Are you crazy?” Douglas yelled through his cupped hands.
Blood was gushing from his nose. I tried to pull my right hand free but couldn’t. Douglas’s body was up off my chest and now he was kneeling on my right bicep with all of his weight. Crushing it.
“Get off me!” I pulled back my left hand and hit him as hard as I could in the chest. Nothing. I wiped Douglas’s blood from my face and hit him again. But this time I aimed for the groin. I used every ounce of energy I had left. I punched as hard as I could. I tried to punch through him. It worked. Douglas shifted his weight as he moved his concern from his face to his crotch. I pushed him to the side and got to my feet. I was about five feet away when he tackled me again.
“You’re not getting away this time,” he said as he jerked my right arm out from under me. He placed his knee in the small of my back and yanked my left arm out from under me too.
“You busted my nose!” He sounded shocked.
I could hear the clank of metal as he slapped the handcuffs on me. This was it. I was going to die.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
* * *
I stayed facedown for what felt like forever before Douglas picked me up off the ground. He looked bad.
“Walk,” he grunted as he reached down and picked up the photo album.