“You mean, the dead guy?” Dooley said.
Rhodes recoiled a little when Dooley said that, as if he didn’t want to think about Everley that way. But he nodded. “I’m having a get-together for him. Well, in his memory.” He tapped the business card. “Those are my coordinates. You’re invited.”
Dooley glanced at the address on the card as he chewed another mouthful of fried rice. He looked across the table at Rhodes.
“You’re inviting me to your house?”
“Everyone who knew Mark is going to be there. Beth is going to be there. Mostly I’m doing it for her. You know Beth, right?” Dooley nodded. “Mark was a photography freak. Beth wants to set up a scholarship in his name for a kid to get into a photography program at university. She wants to call it the Mark Everley Memorial Scholarship. So I’m having a sort of fundraiser—I supply the food and drink and everyone who comes makes a donation to the scholarship. Beth is having a hard time dealing with Mark’s death. I thought maybe this would help her, you know?”
Dooley had been wishing he could do something to help her—besides hypnosis—and here Rhodes had come up with the perfect thing. He obviously knew more about what girls liked than Dooley did. For sure he knew more about what Beth would like. Dooley glanced at the card again. Rhodes was asking him to make a donation to a scholarship in the name of a guy who, from what Dooley knew, was a class-A jerk. Dooley thought about how hard he worked for his spending money and the allowance a guy like Rhodes probably got from his parents.
“I didn’t really know the guy,” Dooley said.
“I know. But you were the last person to see him alive,” Rhodes said. “And I know it would mean a lot to Beth if you were there.”
It would? Dooley was so surprised that it was a few seconds before he wondered how Rhodes would know a thing like that. Had Beth said something to him?
“You should come,” Rhodes said. “You’re new at school. It wouldn’t hurt for you to meet a few people.” He scanned the quiet and nearly deserted restaurant. “And don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be a big donation. Whatever you feel like giving is fine. It all adds up. That’s the main thing.” He smiled pleasantly at Dooley again. Dooley glanced down at the card again. “I hope you can make it,” Rhodes said as he started to slide out of the booth.
“Hey,” Dooley said.
Rhodes looked at him.
“You were the guy’s friend, right?” Dooley said.
“I was one of them, yeah.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “You were there. What do you think?”
“The cops say he was drinking. You have any idea where he’d do that?”
“Where?” Rhodes looked surprised by the question. Dooley was kind of surprised, too. It had just popped out. He hadn’t planned to ask Rhodes anything—well, he hadn’t planned to until Rhodes told him what he was doing for Beth. “What do you mean, where?”
“He wasn’t at home. He wasn’t with any of his friends—at least, that’s what the cops say.”
Rhodes looked intrigued now. “How do you know what the cops say?”
Dooley didn’t want to get into his home situation, so he said, “It was on the news,” and left it at that. “So if he wasn’t at home and he wasn’t with any of his friends and he’d been drinking, where do you think he’d do that?”
“Why does it matter?” Rhodes said.
“It doesn’t,” Dooley said. “I’m invited to a party to raise money in the memory of a guy I don’t even know. I guess I’m just curious about him.”
“Mark liked to party,” Rhodes said. “Sometimes maybe a little too much.”
“Where did he like to party?”
“Here and there,” Rhodes said. “Everywhere. Maybe up on the bridge.”
“Where did he get his booze?”
“Bought it, probably,” Rhodes said. “Why?”
Everley wasn’t even eighteen when he died. That meant he’d have needed fake ID if he was going to buy alcohol. Dooley wondered if the cops had found any in Everley’s wallet. Or maybe it was in the missing backpack. Maybe the bottle was in there, too; they hadn’t found one on the bridge or near the body. But where was the backpack?
“You didn’t see him that day?”
“No,” Rhodes said. He sounded sorry about that, like, maybe if he had, things would have turned out differently.
“Friday,” he said. “You should come.”
Thirteen
That afternoon, Dooley unfolded the slip of paper Beth had given him and looked at it instead of at the blackboard where his history teacher was chalking a time line. Beth had printed her name and her phone number in black felt pen. Her letters and numbers were nice and tight and easy to read. He thought about calling her. But what would he say? Hi, listen, I know you really want me to get hypnotized, but I’ve decided not to… Any chance you’d want to go to a movie with me?
Whoa, where did that last part come from? Boy, one more reason to stay away from a hypnotist.
How about: I’ve gone over it and over it and I am one hundred percent positive that there was no one up there on the bridge with your brother. He was drunk. The cops think he was fooling around and he fell. They’re pretty thorough. If there was one thing Dooley knew for a fact, it was that cops could be thorough. You have to face the facts. You have to accept it. You can get angry about it—that’s normal. You can put your fist through a wall over it—people have been known to do that. But no matter what you do, you can’t make it go away. It is what it is and sooner or later you’ll have to face it and accept it.
Right. Like she was going to want to hear that from an almost complete stranger. And that was the thing, too, wasn’t it? He was a stranger, but he didn’t want to be. He didn’t want her to be mad at him, either. He wanted to make her happy—as much as he could under the circumstances.
He looked at her phone number again. If he wasn’t going to do the hypnosis, then maybe he could do something else. Maybe he could find Everley’s backpack. There were only three possibilities that Dooley could think of on that one. One, Everley had left it on the bridge when he went over and someone had found it and taken it before the cops got a chance to get up there and look around. Two, he was wearing his backpack when he went over and someone had got to him before Dooley and had taken it. Or, three, he’d left it wherever he’d been drinking.
Dooley tried to imagine what kind of people would take a backpack from a guy who was lying motionless on the ground a couple of dozen meters below them or, for that matter, from a guy who was lying motionless on the ground right at their feet? The only answer he could come up with: people who needed or wanted that backpack bad enough and were pragmatic about the situation (the dead guy didn’t need it anymore). If Dooley had to guess, he’d say it was one of the crazy people down in the ravine or one of the homeless ones. So that was one place to start.
The other possibility: Everley had left the pack where he’d been drinking. According to Rhodes, that could be just about anywhere. Still, someone must know where he liked to hang out. It was possible Beth knew, but he sure didn’t want to ask her. He already had the feeling that there were things about her brother that she didn’t know. She probably had a picture of him in her mind that Dooley couldn’t begin to imagine. He didn’t want to start asking her questions that might upset her. He didn’t want to do anything that might upset her.
So who else would know where he might have been? Dooley half wished he’d been paying more attention to what was going on at school, but he hadn’t. He’d kept his head down, kept to himself, hadn’t wanted to get involved in high school bullshit. The deal was do the work, graduate, and then get the hell out and get on with life, not that Dooley had a clue what that was going to be. The only thing he knew for sure: Gillette and Landers were friends with Everley, and Gillette was acting kind of antsy about him. Geeze, what had that conversation been all about anyway? Why had Gillette come up to him
like that and asked him those questions? It made Dooley wonder. What had Gillette been up to the night Everley died? Did he know something? If he did, Dooley was willing to bet that he hadn’t told the cops (who couldn’t possibly be so stupid that they hadn’t figured out who Everley hung around with). And if he hadn’t said anything to the cops, what were the chances that Gillette would say anything to Dooley if Dooley asked? Mind you, Dooley had a little leverage.
Rhodes had known Everley, too, or maybe he was just trying to catch Beth if he hadn’t already. But he’d already told Dooley that he didn’t know where Everley was that night.
Landers and Everley seemed to be tight, but if Landers knew what his buddy had been up to the night he died, he obviously wasn’t saying anything or the cops wouldn’t know as little as his uncle had said they did. Not that it mattered. Dooley couldn’t imagine that Landers would talk to him under any circumstances.
So who did that leave? Who else knew Mark Everley? Who else might have an idea where he was that night? If there was anyone, they obviously hadn’t told the cops. Why not? Or maybe it would turn out that Mark Everley was a lot like Dooley. Maybe it would turn out that he liked to drink alone. Wouldn’t that be something? But if there was one thing Dooley knew, it was that you could tell yourself that no one knew what you were doing. You could even make yourself believe it. But that didn’t make it true. Someone always knew. Someone always found out. Who would know about Everley? Why hadn’t that person—or those people—told the cops? Or maybe they had. Maybe they’d said, Mark’s one of those guys who like to sneak off somewhere and have a private party. His uncle had said the cops didn’t know where Everley was between the time he left his house and the time he left the bridge. But they did have some idea what he’d been doing.
Dooley rounded a corner on his way out of school that afternoon and saw two guys leaning hard on a locker door, straining to close it. They were having trouble with it, and no wonder. There was a kid inside and they were trying to close the door on him. Jesus, some people.
The two guys cooled it for a moment when they realized someone was coming. When they saw it was Dooley, they looked uncertain. Sometimes Dooley wished he were invisible. He hated when people looked at him like that, like he was a hungry tiger that had escaped from the zoo and was prowling the school looking for something—someone—to eat. Dooley’s intention: just walk on by. But he made a mistake. He looked and saw that the kid who was mostly jammed in the locker was the same scrawny kid he’d seen out in the schoolyard, the one that didn’t know how to fight, the one Landers had been taking on while Gillette stood by and watched. By now, the two guys who were trying to shut the locker door on the kid had gained confidence from Dooley’s initial indifference. They both leaned hard on the door and finally got it closed. One of them started to loop the lock through the door while the other one grinned over his shoulder at Dooley. Dooley reached out and plucked the lock from the guy who was holding it. The guy looked so surprised that he came away from the locker door. The second guy, the one who had grinned at Dooley, puffed himself up so he’d look tough. He said, “Hey, that’s my lock.”
Dooley looked at him and said, “It’s my lock now. You got a problem with that?”
The first guy whispered something to the second guy. The second guy’s tough look slipped.
“No,” he said. “You want it so bad, it’s yours.”
“Good,” Dooley said. “Beat it.”
They beat it. If Dooley’d been wondering what kind of reputation he had around school (and, truly, he hadn’t wanted to think about it), he had his answer.
He opened the locker door. The kid was wedged in tight. It took him a few moments to work himself free. When he did, he said, “Great. Next time they see me, they’ll kick the shit out of me for sure.”
“You’re welcome,” Dooley said. He handed the kid the lock.
The kid closed and secured the locker. He started down the hall away from Dooley.
“Hey,” Dooley said.
The kid turned. He looked pissed off and not even remotely intimidated.
“How come they were doing that?” Dooley said.
“They’re Neanderthals,” the kid said.
“What about the other day, out back?”
“More Neanderthals,” the kid said. “They’re thick on the ground around here. You hadn’t noticed?”
He said it matter-of-factly. Dooley didn’t get it.
“It doesn’t bother you?” he said.
“No,” the kid said, the tone of his voice telling Dooley that he really meant yes. “No, I love being stuffed into my locker where, if I’m lucky, the janitor might eventually find me and I can get home before my mom freaks and calls the cops. I love being shoved around by guys who only feel good about themselves if they’re giving guys like me a hard time. I love walking down the hall and wondering who’s going to trip me or slam me into a wall or grab my books and dump them in the garbage.”
Geeze, what a loser. He had a kind of whiny voice that could get on your nerves real fast. Dooley bet kids made fun of it behind his back. Maybe to his face, too.
“You ever thought of transferring schools?” Dooley said.
“I did. Last year. Those two guys? They transferred, too, for other reasons. As soon as they saw I was here, they started in again.” The kid scowled at Dooley. “What’s it to you, anyway?”
“You shouldn’t take shit from people,” Dooley said.
“Right,” the kid said. “I should maybe go to the office and complain about them and have Rektor say something to them so that then they’ll get really motivated to beat the crap out of me. Or maybe I should fight back, you know, me against the two of them—and let them beat the crap out of me. Or, hey, here’s a good idea: maybe I should get myself a baseball bat and let them take it off me so they can use it to beat the crap out of me.”
Dooley shook his head. Yeah, it was everywhere.
“Whatever,” he said. He was going to move on, but here he was having an actual conversation with someone who probably paid a lot of attention to what went on around him. “You know that kid that died? Everley?”
The kid looked warily at Dooley like he was trying to scope out where the question had come from and why Dooley was asking. Then he must have decided, what the hell, because he put on attitude and said, “You mean, was he a friend of mine? Are you kidding? The guy was an asshole.”
Which Dooley already knew.
“Who’d he hang with?”
The kid frowned. “Why?”
Boy, he was full of surprises. He had victim practically tattooed on his forehead, but here he was talking to Dooley, of all people, like it was no big deal.
“Just curious.”
“He hung around with Rhodes and Landers and Bracey, that bunch.”
Bracey. The name was a new one to Dooley. But if this kid knew those three names, then the cops must know them, too. The cops must have checked with them.
“You said Everley was an asshole. Did he give you a hard time, too?”
“All those guys give me a hard time,” the kid said. He sounded resigned. “But Everley? He’s real scum. He harassed my sister. He made her cry.”
“Harassed her?”
“Made fun of her. In a store. She’s got Down’s, okay?” The kid was angry now, like he was daring Dooley to make a crack about it. “What kind of guy makes fun of a kid with Down’s? You know what kind? The ignorant kind. The guy was a major asshole. I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
“I’m Dooley,” Dooley said.
“I know,” the kid said. Dooley waited. “Warren,” the kid said. “I’m Warren.” His eyes skipped beyond Dooley’s shoulder. Dooley turned and saw Gillette and Landers standing half a dozen paces away, maybe close enough to be listening although he was pretty sure that if they’d been there for more than a few seconds, the kid, Warren, would have noticed sooner.
“I’m walking out now,” Dooley said to Warren in a low voice. “You want to walk wi
th me?”
Warren didn’t answer, but he stuck beside Dooley as they passed Gillette and Landers and went down the stairs.
After they parted company, Dooley found a phone, made a call, and then headed for the ravine.
Dooley’s uncle was getting ready to dish out supper—chicken in mushroom sauce, rice, and green beans—when Dooley got home. He said, “I thought I was going to have to send out a search party.”
“I left you a message,” Dooley said. “I said I’d be home by six. I took a walk, that’s all.” He added, “You could have paged me.”
“I was just about to,” his uncle said. Dooley could tell he was steamed. He handed Dooley a couple of plates of food to put on the table.
“You know the deal. You’re supposed to come right home after school.”
“It was just a walk,” Dooley said. “You been in a high school lately? Some days, you need to unwind. Walking’s about all I have left.”
They sat down. His uncle took a bite of chicken and said, “Dr. Kingston called me at the store today.”
Dooley swallowed hard.
“You have any idea why he called, Ryan?”
The question told Dooley his uncle was pissed off. Whenever his uncle was angry with Dooley for something, he asked questions he already knew the answers to, and he got even angrier if Dooley didn’t answer them.
“He wanted to tell you about my progress, I guess.”
“He cancelled what he called your last appointment. He said he had to fit in a new patient. What it came down to, Ryan, is he fired you. He says he told you last Friday that he feels he’s made all the progress he’s going to make with you, given your demeanor.” His uncle set his fork down on the side of his plate and looked across the table at Dooley. “He’s supposed to be good. That’s why I sent you to him. But, when I pushed him—and I did push him, Ryan—he finally told me that you weren’t cooperative and that you failed to do the work you were assigned between sessions.” Yeah, he was pissed off all right. “You know you’re supposed to be in therapy, right, Ryan?”
Dooley Takes the Fall Page 8