Sticks and Stones

by Michael Hiebert

  So we pushed our bikes down the rest of the path, which, in places, became really tight. I had my bike right of me; Dewey had his on his left. Problem with that was, most of the right edge of the path was overgrown with thistle, briar, blackberry bushes, and prickly shrubs. My bike pretty much saved me from getting caught up in them, but, as Dewey pushed his bike behind me, the vines and branches I passed got pushed forward until my bike cleared them, then they would snap back right into Dewey. Thorny branches kept lashing him like whips. They got caught on his shirt and tore at his skin. I had to stop and help him free himself from them three times. The third one really had him hooked up.

  “Stop thrashing,” I said. “You’re still hooked on the bush.” I came back and gently tugged the thorn from his sleeve. “There. Now, just be more careful.”

  When we finally spilled out of the path, Dewey’s right side looked like it had fallen into a bathtub full of mean alley cats.

  I laughed.

  “Why are you laughin’, Abe? It hurts like crazy. Look how much I’m bleedin’.” He rubbed his hand over all the flesh wounds in his arm, smearing the blood so his skin became pink. “They really sting.”

  I shook my head. “You’ll be fine. Just let ’em be.”

  The sun once again shone down on us, and I had to squint to look around us. The air was so humid, and even though we were at the edge of the swamp’s green, brackish water, it felt heavy and close. I could taste a rotten dampness in my mouth. Its surface, covered with duckweed, lily pads, reeds, and bulrushes, lay perfectly still. A quietness wrapped around everything like a blanket, and it gave me the willies.

  Even though I knew there weren’t no gators, there could still be water snakes. A poisonous snake could kill you just as easy as a gator, and some of them might even be able to slither up onto the marshland.

  I didn’t tell Dewey about the water snakes.

  Again I examined the bushes on the left side of the path we just came through, and again something about it seemed weirdly familiar. Dewey apparently didn’t have the same feeling.

  “Why’re you staring at the woods for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Somethin’ weird ’bout ’em.” Some of them were broken, but it wasn’t those ones that tweaked my brain, it was the way the other bushes and small trees were sort of bent away from each other.

  About ten feet away, police tape began at the trunk of a cypress and continued on, outlining a fairly big and almost square area. The tree I recognized from the photo was on the far side of the tape, but its trunk was so wide and the carving so big I had no problem making it out from where we were.

  “Wow,” Dewey said. “There really is a happy face tree!”

  I ignored him. This was like the third time he’d seen it. Besides, I was much too interested in investigating this real, actual crime scene than worrying about some dumb tree. A white marker lay on the moor near on center of the area outlined in tape, at the foot of a cypress.

  “What’s that?” Dewey asked, pointing to it.

  “I reckon that’s where they found her body.”

  “Creepy,” Dewey said.

  I had to agree on that point, although I didn’t say so.

  After taking the bungee off my carrier, I hefted my duffel bag and let my bike fall to the soft ground, where it rattled on top of Dewey’s. I started carefully walking around the outside of the taped area, looking all around me for any clues. Dewey followed me, his gaze split between staring at the trees and warily checking the swamp’s ominously placid surface.

  My insides swarmed with excitement. I had only ever been to one crime scene before (well, actually two, if you count my mother taking me and Carry with her to Miss Sylvie’s last year, but we had to stay in the car, so I don’t count that one), and that one had changed my life. I never told Dewey about it, not the details, anyway. I didn’t think I ever would. The experience just felt very personal to me.

  I had hoped this scene would do the same, although I was starting to feel like we might have wasted our time.

  The same thought apparently popped into Dewey’s mind. “I don’t get it, Abe,” he said. “What’s the point in us comin’ all this way if we ain’t gonna go inside the actual crime scene?”

  “You’re thinkin’ it all wrong,” I replied. “There won’t be any clues left inside that tape. The police spent hours going over everythin’ to make sure they found everything. What we’re hopin’ for is that they didn’t make the crime-scene boundary big enough.”

  Dewey frowned. “Sounds pretty lame,” he said. “Police aren’t dumb. They ain’t gonna accidentally tape up a spot that’s too small.”

  “According to the book I just finished, it happens all the time.”

  “Wow,” Dewey said. “The police must be dumber than I thought.”

  We had almost walked all the way around the scene when Dewey piped up again. “Abe, what are we doin’ here?”

  I shook my head. “We’ve been through this, Dewey. We’re lookin’ for stuff the police might have missed.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “I don’t know. I won’t know until I see it.” We came to the edge of the forest and had to turn around and trace the same route back. Again, I went slowly, this time with Dewey in front. I scanned the ground and the trees and everything else around me as we went. The humidity from the swamp started making me feel a little sick, but I didn’t want to leave until we found something.

  “I think I am remembering bein’ here before now,” Dewey said. “Only, we never came down that path. We were on the other side of the swamp, weren’t we?”

  “Yep,” I said. I knew eventually it would come to him.

  “Wasn’t that the day we got lost?”

  “Yep.”

  “Certainly easier now with a path.”

  “Yep.”

  “That was the day my arms got so bloody from all the thorny vines and brambles, right?”

  I let out a breath. “Yep,” I said, watching a drop of blood run down his arm onto the back of his hand.

  “How come we didn’t take that path back instead of just pushing our way blindly through the woods? Would’ve been much easier.”

  I thought about this. We were coming back around the crime scene, and I tried to find the path in the trees and bushes, but I couldn’t. Not until we were looking directly at it. “My guess is, we missed it,” I said. “It’s not easy to see unless you’re looking directly at it.”

  Dewey laughed. “The paths we make are even harder to see. When we just push through and avoid all the big tree trunks, everything springs right back to how it was before we walked through it.”

  Something like a spotlight turned on in my head. Dewey just brought to mind what I was reminded of when I saw them bushes that ran along the path.

  “No, Dewey, you’re wrong,” I said excitedly, increasing my pace. “The bushes don’t snap right back. They kind of do, but never exactly the same as they were before we bent and broke them. Usually, they look like a bear or something forced his way through when we’re done.”

  “What’re you so happy ’bout?” he asked as I passed him in my race to get back to the edge of the path.

  “Look.” I pointed to the bent and flattened undergrowth and the busted branches of some low and spindly trees. The briar and the blackberries subtly curved backward from each other where you could tell they at one time interlaced. “Someone’s recently made a path like we always do. Right through here.”

  “You mean the Stickman?”

  I nodded enthusiastically. “I reckon he never left that wheelbarrow behind when the path narrowed, he just pushed it straight through all the brambles and thistles, making his own path. He probably didn’t want to carry a dead body all the way to the swamp.”

  “How come your ma never noticed this?”

  That thought had already occurred to me, although my mother seemed to do very little at this site, going by the reports. Pretty much everything was covered by Officer
Chris. Still, why hadn’t he noticed that someone had forged through the woods beside the narrow path? And, just like what usually happens when I ask my brain a question, it came back with an answer.

  “I reckon the police didn’t see this path for two reasons, Dewey. The first bein’ they didn’t need to. They just assumed because there was a trail, the Stickman used it. They probably didn’t care enough ’bout how he got to the crime scene, just that he had. Everything they needed to investigate happened on the edge of the swamp.”

  “That makes sense, I s’pose. What’s the second reason?”

  “Second reason, Dewey, is that they ain’t thirteen years old. They wouldn’t even think of trudging through a bunch of tangled-up briar and bushes and thistles and thorns when a perfectly good path is available.”

  “So why would the Stickman?”

  I let that thought settle in my head until I realized my brain wasn’t going to answer that one. “I don’t know. Maybe he had to use the wheelbarrow. Maybe he couldn’t carry the body for some reason. But look, you can tell where he came right through. It’s obvious now that I know what I’m looking for. See the way everything’s pushed back and forth just a little bit?”

  “Just like when we do it,” Dewey said.

  “Yep. For sure!”

  I began walking around the perimeter with the Polaroid camera.

  “What’re you doin’ now?”

  “Documentin’ stuff. Seein’ if there’s anythin’ else my mom’s team could’ve missed.” I glanced around the area. Then I remembered something from Understanding Forensics: Crime scenes are three-dimensional, you can’t forget to look up and down.

  I looked up and saw two crows dive-bombing a hawk. That was interestin’ and all, but not really what I was lookin’ for. Then, when I looked down, I found something. “Dewey!”

  “What?”

  “Look at these stones. They almost form a path right to near where the marker for the body is. I reckon the killer used these so he wouldn’t leave tracks in the muck.”

  “Now, how do you know that?”

  “Because, look at that one.” I pointed to the second one in. “It’s got part of a footprint on it.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘shoe print’?” Dewey asked.

  “Whatever,” I said and snapped a photo of it. I took photos of other things, too, but nothin’ that excited me as much as that shoe print and findin’ the killer’s real path. I went and looked at where he really parked that wheelbarrow one last time.

  Dewey followed me, coming in close, stepping over some of the bramble and a tangle of strangler fig. He was looking at the blackberry bushes that I figured looked like they were torn apart from embracing each other.

  “Man,” he said. “This stuff would’ve really cut up his arms.”

  “Yeah, but he’s probably not a baby like you. Thorns don’t really cut that deep. Only takes a day or two before the marks on your body disappear forever.”

  Dewey stared intently at one of the blackberry bushes. I had no idea what was so captivating about it.

  “What’re you doin’?” I asked.

  “Abe,” he said, his voice slow, with a hint of astonishment to it.

  “What?” I answered impatiently.

  “Look.”

  I stepped into the bush a ways and came up beside him, nearly tripping myself into a prickle bush from my shoe getting caught in a web of scrub and vines. As it was, one of the thorny blackberry branches got me pretty good. Now my arm had little rivulets of blood rolling down it, too. “What?” I asked, hearing frustration and anger in my voice.

  “Look,” he said again.

  His eyes were as big as donuts. I followed his gaze to where he carefully held out a blackberry branch with two fingers, each positioned on either side of a particularly sharp-looking thorn. Farther down the vine, a sprout of leaves shot off. It was these leaves that had his attention, and now I saw why.

  One of them, a rather big one, looked like it had received a big drop of poster paint.

  The splotch was bigger than a quarter, and it was red.

  “Do you know what we just found?” he asked.

  “I’m not a hundred percent positive, Dewey, but I think I do, yes.”

  “It’s blood,” he said.

  “Yep,” I agreed. “Sure looks that way.”

  His eyes slowly left the leaf and rose to meet mine. “It’s from the Stickman,” he said. “We found some of the Stickman’s blood!”

  I took a deep breath. It certainly looked that way, I had to admit. Now a new thought formed in my head. And that was, how the hell was I going to explain this to my mother?

  And once again, this was a question my brain decided to just pass on answering.

  CHAPTER 40

  Carry and Jonathon sat on the edge of Carry’s bed in her bedroom, something Carry’s mother only recently allowed. They still had to keep the door partway open. Carry had no idea what was going through her mother’s head. If she was going to have sex, she certainly wouldn’t do it in her bedroom, especially when everyone else was home. But since her mother had been so good about welcoming Jonathon into the family, Carry decided not to confront her on the issue. She was learning to pick her battles.

  Hung around the room, three posters featured pictures of the bands INXS, Guns N’ Roses, and Def Leppard. Carry didn’t really listen to any of their music anymore—TV was much more important to her now than music—but she had nothing to put up in their place.

  Her curtains were pink, matching the comforter on her bed. She had one tall chest of drawers in a corner of the room and a dresser with a half-moon mirror sitting against a wall. Her white closet doors were completely shut. The floor in here was hardwood, the same as it was in Abe’s bedroom and the hall. A pile of clothes loomed on the floor, beside an empty laundry basket she had stolen from her mother’s room.

  “Running away from home?” Jonathon asked, looking at the clothes.

  “No, that’s just what I wear on a regular basis. It’s easier to sift through the pile than to try and pull anything out of my dresser. The only thing not in the pile is underwear and socks.”

  The light coming in from her window sparkled off the purple gemstone of her promise ring. Constantly, she found her eyes drawn to it. Her mother had had an entirely different opinion when Carry had shown it to her. Carry could tell right away it bothered her. The only thing she said, though, was, “Isn’t it a bit early? Aren’t you a little young for lifetime promises?”

  Jonathon looked at the pile of clothes. “I don’t think this has anythin’ to do with convenience,” he said. “I think you have hoarder tendencies.”

  She looked at the rest of her room. Other than a stack of books on top of her dresser, it was pretty near spotless. She decided not to argue the point, though.

  “Okay,” he said, pulling up his legs and crossing them. “So show me.”

  “Show you what?”

  “Your poetry. You said you would.”

  “I think my words were ‘I’ll think ’bout it’,” she said.

  “Well, think about it right now, really fast, and then show me your poems.”

  “Are you sure you want to read them? They really suck, actually.”

  “I’m sure they don’t, and yes, I’m sure I do.”

  Carry got down on her knees and pulled a box from beneath her bed. It was slightly larger than a shoe box and covered with polka dots of all different sizes and colors. She put it down on the bed between her and Jonathon. “This contains all my poetry and my journal . . .” she said, hesitantly.

  “You keep a journal?”

  “I used to. Until I met you.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “Because I became too wrapped up in us. I didn’t need to write ’bout the things we did or document ’em. I have them all in my memories.”

  “Are they good memories?”

  “Do you have to ask?”

  Jonathon shook his head. “I was just kiddin’.
Okay, read me one of your poems.”

  Carry felt her face flush. “I’m not goin’ to read them to you. It’s bad enough I’m goin’ to show ’em to you.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll read them. Give me one.”

  “Hang on,” Carry said, going through the pages one at a time. “Let me find one that’s not completely abysmal.” She stopped about ten pages in. “Okay, this one’s not too terrible. Here.” She handed a piece of paper to Jonathon.

  “ ‘Post War’,” he read aloud after clearing his throat.

  “Don’t read it,” Carry said.

  “What do you mean? Of course I’m goin’ to read it.”

  “I mean out loud. Just read it in your head.”

  “No, good poetry is meant to be read out loud.”

  “I keep telling you, this isn’t good poetry.”

  “Doesn’t matter, I’m reading it out loud anyway.” He read:

  POST WAR

  I hate waking up alone

  With the blankets on my side all thrown this way and that

  As though they spent the night on a ship

  And weathered a thunderstorm

  My pillows, one barely on the bed

  The other fallen to the floor like a bomb

  Then looking over at your side where everything’s still perfect

  Pristine and untouched

  And you

  All gone

  “I told you they were depressing,” Carry said.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jonathon said.

  Carry felt heat rise to her face. “No, it’s lame. I’m a lame poet.”

  “Let’s see some more.”

  “No, one is all you get.”

  “Please,” Jonathon begged. “Just one more.”

  Carry huffed. “Okay, one more and that’s it. I do have to say, though, they sound better with you reading them than they do in my head.” She went through the pages in the box again. “Okay, here’s another depressin’ one. I reckon you’ll be all depressed out by the time you finish it. And this is the last one you’re readin’. Understand?”

  “Understood.” Jonathon took the paper and began to read. “ ‘Dead Ends.’ Well,” he said, “at least the title isn’t too depressing.” He laughed.