He started to nod, but the blade stopped him in the middle of trying.
“Good,” I said, as if he’d agreed to be my friend. “That’s real good. Who knows? Maybe, someday, you’ll need a friend like me.”
He didn’t make a sound, but I could feel his tightened muscles loosen a bit.
“Good,” I said again. “Now I have to put a bandage around your eyes. It won’t hurt, but I can’t let you see my face. You understand that, don’t you?”
I slowly slid the knife off his throat. He didn’t move. I had the precut slab of heavy gauze duct-taped around his eyes and the knife back in place before he could think about moving, even if he hadn’t been too frozen to try.
“See how easy this works?” I whispered. “Now I can stop holding on to you, and we can have a conversation. All right?”
I slipped around from underneath him, and pulled him into a sitting position. Gently. Like a friend would.
“You have to answer me, so I know this is okay,” I said.
His voice was a whisper almost as serrated as the Tanto’s edge. Fear does that. “I … I wasn’t doing—”
“That doesn’t matter. You understand? It doesn’t matter. It’s not my business what you do. Once you answer my questions, I’ll just go away. Fair enough?”
“Okay,” he whispered. I couldn’t sense whether he was just cooperating out of terror, or if he realized he’d never really had a choice.
“You’ve got a lot of DVDs,” I whispered. “I don’t want any of them. I don’t even want to see them. If I did, I would have just gone to where you live and taken them. What I need from you is your skills.”
“My … skills?”
“Who knows better than you what goes on down there? You see everything, but nobody ever sees you. A true master of your craft.”
I could feel him tremble. I didn’t have to be a psychologist to know what that meant.
“Every night, kids park down there. What I want to know—all I want to know—is if you ever saw this kind of scene. Listen close: a particular car pulls in; then, soon as all the other cars see that one, they pull right out.”
“Not a car,” he whispered. “A truck. A purple-and-white truck. The school colors.”
“I knew that wouldn’t get past you,” I praised him. Felt the trembling again. “How was it purple and white? The cab and bed in different colors?”
“No, no. It’s stripes. Thick stripes, all over. Wavy ones, like on a flag in the wind.”
“You’re doing real good. Now, after that truck comes in, after all the other cars pull out, do other cars pull in?”
“Just one car. But it’s always full of boys. No more than five, never less than three.”
“Is it the same car all the time?”
“No. Sometimes they—”
“You don’t film that part, do you? But you have to stay in place to keep from getting spotted. So you hear what happens, yes?”
“Yes. They pull the girl into …”
When he finally came around, he’d have to convince himself the man he never saw was gone before he’d dare to rip the bandage off his eyes. His camera would be right next to him, but his heart would be hammering so hard he wouldn’t notice for a few seconds. And he wouldn’t notice the chloroform burns on his nostrils until he got to wherever he lived and looked in a mirror.
Or maybe he didn’t like mirrors much.
I guessed he’d probably stay away for a while. But not for that long—there’s things inside of some people much stronger than any fear.
It would be nice to fool myself and think the rouge-ou-noir choice I’d let my stack ride on had come up. Yes, I had some intel, but it was all negative—I couldn’t see Mighty Mary waiting for a train to arrive. But that “school colors” thing, that could be worth something.
“That’s our school,” Dolly said when I got back. “I mean, the school the kids go to.”
“High school?”
“Sure.”
“Can you find out who drives a truck painted in those colors?”
“Probably more than one.”
“In thick stripes? Wavy ones, like the bars on a flag?”
“Oh. That I could probably find out in a few minutes.”
“Not tonight, tomorrow. And, Dolly …”
“What, Dell?”
“Back your way into it. Let them tell you. Get the conversation around to weird paint jobs you’ve seen around and—”
“Ah, baby. You think I’d—what?—call one of the girls up and ask who owns that truck?”
“I was just—”
“Go get some sleep, honey.”
“I’ve already got some info for you,” he announced, the thinnest vein of pride in his voice, as if he was trying on a new suit to see if it really fit.
I made one of those universally understood gestures. Or universally misunderstood. People see what they expect to see.
“The gun was a—” He paused to check his notes, making sure. “—a Charter Arms Pathfinder.”
“They’d have to tell you more than that.”
“I’m coming to it, okay?” He sounded peeved that I hadn’t fully appreciated all his hard work. “A Charter Arms Pathfinder, model 72224. I did some research on it”—meaning he’d spent a couple of minutes with a search engine—“and you’ll never believe what I came up with. That pistol was only a .22!”
“Let me see what you printed out.”
He was still a little sulky, but he handed over the single page from the website. It had what I needed: MaryLou’s weapon had been a snub-nose revolver, full grip, six shots.
With that one page, I knew why MaryLou had gotten so close to the first kid, why only that one shot had been fatal, and how she missed completely with the last three. “This is real good,” I told Swift. “I don’t know how this legal stuff works. Do they have to give you the rest, or do you have to get it on your own?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
“Did the pistol have a serial number? It would have, unless it was removed.”
“You can’t just peel off a—”
“I know. But it can be filed off, if it’s not too deeply etched in. And there’s acids you can use even if that’s the case.”
I could see he wanted to know how I knew any of this, but he restrained himself. If you ask a man a question like that, it’s the same as telling him you don’t know the answer yourself.
“What would the serial number tell us?”
“When the gun was manufactured, if it was a legal buy, if it was a registered weapon, if it was bought new. And when it was bought.”
“So, if MaryLou bought it herself—”
“Yeah. Who buys a gun without ammo? She didn’t reload. She didn’t even bring any more bullets with her. A .22 is an assassin’s weapon—you have to be a real marksman to make a sure kill. Part of the advantage is that a .22’s quiet, but no revolver, especially a snub-nose, is that quiet, and a hallway would be a damned echo chamber.
“MaryLou wouldn’t know about any of that. She was real close at first, but after she fired that one shot, she just was jerking the trigger blind. But let’s get that serial number anyway—who knows, it might be helpful.”
“Sure.”
“That reminds me: if you get a message that the NRA called, ignore it. If they manage to get you on the phone, just hang up.”
“No comment,” he repeated, like he was proud he’d learned a lesson.
“That’s not what we want. ‘No comment,’ that’s a statement. You’re not making any statements, not to anybody.”
He nodded as if we had come to an agreement. Better for his ego than just following orders. But before I could answer the questions I expected, he hit me with one I hadn’t.
“Okay, I get it about ‘no comment.’ But how do you feel about interviews?”
“Are you serious?”
“Not of you. Not MaryLou, either—I understand we can’t expose her to the medi
a.”
Now it’s “we,” huh? I thought. “So who, then?” I asked him.
“Me.”
“Ah.”
“Look, the media shouldn’t get all its information from the DA’s Office. Granted, the DA we have, all he’s going to do is read some lame press statement. But it might not be a bad idea to kind of hint that … I don’t know, maybe something like ‘There’s two sides to every story. And I caution people against a rush to judgment’?”
“No.”
“No to the interviews, or no to my idea of what to tell them?”
“If you’re willing to do a couple of things before you say anything, it might be a good idea to drop a hint that we’ve got a sleeve ace.”
“A what?”
“Some really heavy stuff that would change everyone’s mind about what happened … if we decide to go that route.”
“Do we have anything like that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what is it? I mean—”
“You don’t need to know that now. You might not even want to know. All you have to do is believe it.”
“You said if I was willing to do ‘a couple of things.’ That’s only one.”
“Yeah. One, don’t do any interviews unless you can keep it down to that one answer we just talked about. The sleeve ace. And only if you’re sure you can sell that answer. If you don’t believe what I just told you, it’s no-go.”
“I do believe it. What’s the other thing?”
“Get a haircut,” I told him. “And dress serious, like you’re going to a funeral. You need to look like an undertaker. One who’s getting ready to bury the prosecution.”
“Around here—”
“Around here, they don’t have school shootings. And they don’t have school shootings by star athletes anywhere. I’m not arguing about this. This case needs a serious man, on serious business. Serious business he can handle. I think you’re the right man for that, but you have to make sure they all get the same message. And that means not dressing like you do now. When the people used to seeing you start to see the change, they’ll start to feel it, too.”
He stood up and extended his hand, like we were sealing a deal. I guess we were.
“Tommy Lyons” was Dolly’s greeting when I walked in.
“Who?”
“The boy who drives that purple-and-white-striped truck. And he’s not one of the boys MaryLou shot.”
“What else do you know about him?”
“He’s a three-letter man. Football, basketball, and baseball. All-State quarterback. He only hangs with the fraternity boys. Has all the girls he wants, but he’s only interested if you’re willing to be nice to his pals, too.”
“Any of your girls …?”
“No!”
“Well, they must know somehow.”
“Everybody knows. It’s no secret.”
“MaryLou know him?”
“I’m sure. Knows of him, anyway. But he wouldn’t go near her.”
“Because …?”
“One, she might just punch his lights out. Two, she’s gay.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Dell.”
“Other people know that, too?”
“Sure. She doesn’t hide it.”
Not from the guards, either, I thought. And I flashed on that tunnel between the jail and the courtroom again. But all I said was “Does she have a girlfriend? I mean, did she have a girlfriend who was …?”
“No. Nothing like that. Don’t waste your time. Being gay, that’s just what MaryLou is—it’s not like she went to the prom with a girl, or anything like that.”
“Damn!”
“What, honey?”
“That’s something I could use. Something I should have thought of. Who did MaryLou go to the senior prom with?”
“I can find out.”
“Would you, baby? I’m going to sleep for a while.”
“Sleep? It’s only—”
“I have work to do tonight.”
Dolly nodded her understanding.
Before I dropped onto the cot I keep in the basement, I took Dolly’s map and crossed off the Lovers’ Lane spot.
I wasn’t going back. The video ninja had told me all I needed, and I hadn’t asked him any personal questions. I wanted him to believe I’d been watching him for a long time, so I knew everything about him.
It was just getting dark when I came back upstairs. There was something I needed to know. But before I could even ask, Dolly blurted out: “Bluto. Bluto Wayne.”
“Who’s that?”
“That’s who took MaryLou to the senior prom, Dell. Bluto Wayne.”
“Bluto?”
“His real name is Franklin, but everyone—everyone with a nasty mouth, I mean—calls him Bluto. He’s one of those slow kids. Strong as an ox, not real bright. They moved him here from Brontville. That’s not even a town, just a … place, I guess you’d call it.”
“Go slower, honey.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath, let it out. “Football is a big deal in this state. Not so much high school, but college, that’s major. Both our state universities always have national rankings.”
I fought off the urge to ask her how she knew this stuff.
“Anyway, they don’t have a football team in Brontville. They don’t even have a school. But, somehow, the coaches found out about this boy. Bluto. Franklin, I mean. He’s monster-sized, Dell. Just looking at him, I guarantee you he’s at least six six. And probably way over three hundred pounds. But he’s not fat.”
“Okay.”
“No, wait! There’s a lot more. They paid his family to move inside the town lines here, and they taught him how to play.”
“They?”
“The school. Well, not the school itself. The ‘boosters’ is what they’re called.”
“And they paid his family how? With a job or …”
“His people don’t work. None of the people in Brontville work. At least, not at regular jobs—they wouldn’t know what a W-2 looks like. It’s only forty-some miles away, but it’s another world. All of it’s on one side of a hill. None of the roads are paved, and there’s no mail delivery.
“There’s all kinds of rumors about Brontville, everything from the people who live there all being from the same family—like, incest for generations—to them being cannibals. One of the girls told me that, a long time ago, it used to be the thing to do on Halloween, go quad-running through those back roads. But some of the kids never came back, and nobody knows what happened.”
“Ghost stories.”
“Sure. Brontville doesn’t even have a police department. The County Sheriff is supposed to cover that area, but no one ever heard of anyone getting arrested. I mean, from Brontville, sure. But never in there.”
“Doesn’t mean much, what people didn’t hear.”
“I know. But it is true that Franklin’s family got a nice little house—one of those manufactured homes, so they could get it up and running quick, since they already had the land to put it on. And it is true that his father is on the city payroll. As a grounds-keeper or something like that, so there’s no set hours.”
“I thought you said MaryLou didn’t hang out with the jocks.”
“She didn’t. Neither did Franklin. I don’t think any of them would try and stop him if he wanted to, but he didn’t feel … comfortable with people like them. Actually, he didn’t feel comfortable, period. He just went to practices and played in games. But, outside of that, he didn’t do much of anything. Not in school, anyway.”
“He was in remedial classes?”
“I don’t think the high school even has those, but I can find out. The impression I got was that Franklin wasn’t going to get that kind of help, even if he needed it. Football isn’t like other sports. If you’re good enough in sports like baseball or basketball, you can turn professional right on your eighteenth birthday. Football, the best you could hope for would be a college scholarship.
That wasn’t in the cards for Franklin. Not that they couldn’t find one to take him; he just wouldn’t go. And now that he’s already graduated—he was a senior, like MaryLou, but that was only so he could play football for all four years—nobody’s interested in him, not for anything.”
“His family still have the house?”
“That’s a good question. Should I find out?”
“Yeah. Please.”
She sat there, like a beautiful bird on a tree branch. Not impatient, but ready to move if she had to.
“Those friends of yours. The ones who we buy the flowers from?”
“Yes …?”
“I need a car, Dolly. It can’t be ours. And if I’m stopped driving it, it has to have real papers. Not only that, whoever actually owns it has to tell the cops I’m driving it with their permission. Borrowed it for a few days, or something like that.”
“What makes you think they’d—?”
“It feels to me like you’re real friends. And there’s two of them, so maybe we’ve got twice the chance of getting lucky. I know they’ve got some kind of panel truck, but that wouldn’t work—their store name is painted all over it.”
“I’ll ask, Dell. When would you want it?”
I touched one of the red dots on Dolly’s map. A little strip of closed-down stores, right off the highway. When I’d asked her why she’d marked that spot, she told me it was a supermarket, but not one you could see. Behind the closed-down stores, you could buy dope—meth and pills, mostly—and other stuff: unregistered guns, bootleg CDs … just about anything a burglar could snatch.
Then I put my finger on another red dot, much bigger than all the others. Raised my eyebrows.
“That used to be a fast-food place, but it went out of business. Now it’s a day-care center. Fixed up very nicely, and I haven’t heard a wrong word about the people who run it.
“But after dark, the parking lot behind it is a different kind of hangout spot than the others. It’s run by kids—young men, really—who some of the girls think are so cool that they’re willing to pay an admission charge.
“Those … the people I’m talking about, they almost live out there. At night, I mean. I don’t know what makes them so special, but they have their own thing going. Whatever that is, they don’t mix with anyone else. Not the way skinheads don’t mix with skateboarders, it’s much more than that—nobody in their right mind would just go over to them and ask them to join.”
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