Blood Trail

by Nancy Springer

  “No. That can’t be.” Mr. Gingrich’s voice. I looked, and saw him patting Aardy’s shoulders as she hugged the rough cloth of his apron, but he barely seemed to know what he was doing. “Nathan—” Mr. Gingrich reached toward Nathan, who was standing a few feet away from him inside the front door. But Nathan didn’t look like he’d heard.

  The trooper edged over to stand between Mr. Gingrich and the door. “If you’ll wait in the cruiser—”

  Mr. Gingrich shook his head. “There’s some kind of mistake.” Pulling away from Aardy, he tried to head into the house. “Let me see him. Let me see.”

  I heard Aardy sobbing. I couldn’t look at her.

  “We advise against it, sir. We will ask you to identify his clothing—”

  “Let me see my son!”

  Someone pulled at my elbow. I turned. It was Mom. She didn’t say anything, just motioned with her head for me to follow her, and I did. I couldn’t handle watching Mr. Gingrich anymore.

  A couple of cops were stretching yellow plastic ribbon between the crowd and the house, edging people back, back. Mom led me out of there. At the edge of the crowd, Jamy stood hugging herself and shaking. Her voice shook, too, as she said, “Mom, Aardy’s crying.”

  “I know.”

  “I saw one of the cops puking into a paper bag.”

  “Hush.”

  “I heard—”

  “Jamy, hush. Good grief …” Mom stared past me. I turned and saw a TV news van pulling in at the Gingriches’ place.

  Mom said, “Come on before it gets even worse.” She herded both of us back toward the car.

  But when we got there, she didn’t get in. She made Jamy get in, but she stopped me, and her eyes had that look like when my dad left.

  Very softly she asked, “Jeremy, how did you know?”

  I didn’t feel like I knew anything, and all of a sudden I wanted to cry. I could barely talk. “Mom, not now.”

  “Yes, now!” Then her tone changed. “Honey, tell me. Please. You know we have to call the police. Are you going to need a lawyer?”

  I shook my head. Damn, I wasn’t going to cry. I made my voice hard. “Just call them. Never mind. I’ll tell them myself. I’m going back.” I turned away.

  “Jeremy, no!”

  I gave her a look over my shoulder. “Mom, I’ve got to be there.”

  We stared at each other.

  “Just take Jamy home,” I said.

  “Don’t talk to the police yet. Don’t talk to anybody,” she ordered. “Jeremy, promise.”

  “Okay.”

  She got into the car and took Jamy home and left me.

  Running back to Aaron’s house, I saw that Mrs. Gingrich was there, looking as white as her nurse uniform, standing with Mr. Gingrich, both of them looking lost even though they were right in front of their own house. Aaron’s parents. I felt my insides go all clotted in my chest. I ran up to the yellow police tape, jumped it like a hurdle, and trotted up the yard.

  Mr. Gingrich looked at me and said, “Son, how you doing?” like he barely knew what he was saying, like he might offer me a Popsicle or something, the way he always did when I went into his store. But Mrs. Gingrich choked out, “Oh, Jeremy,” and kind of toppled toward me. The look on her face—I’d never seen her look like that, not even the time Aaron and I were poking around in the woodpile and Aaron got bit by a timber rattler. Then, when the doctors said he was going to be okay, she had cried and kidded around. Trust Aaron to find a rattlesnake in the backyard.

  But now it was no joke and she wasn’t crying. I think it was so bad, she couldn’t cry.

  I put my arms around her and said, “I’m sorry,” which sounds really stupid but I didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t make a sound or say a word, just held on to me like she was drowning, with her head on my shoulder. She nodded to show she’d heard me. I felt the movement against my collarbone. Maybe she couldn’t talk.

  Aardy and a couple of cops came out of the garage; they’d been talking with her in there, maybe? Somebody had given her a fistful of white Kleenex. Then a state cop came out of the house with his hand on the back of Nathan’s neck, kind of guiding him along the sidewalk. Nathan’s face looked flat white like a paper mask, and the stains on his shirt were red turning into purple and brown. He didn’t look at me. I caught a glimpse of him, then turned my head away like I hadn’t seen him.

  The state trooper said to the Gingriches, “Come with me, folks,” and Mrs. Gingrich let go of me. Herding Nathan and his parents toward the driveway, the cop jerked his head at me and gave me a look that told me to get lost. He motioned the Gingriches into his cruiser.

  I went back to my place in the crowd and watched him drive the Gingriches away.

  I stood in front of Aaron’s house for hours. Afterward, Mom said she never should have let me stay, but I’m glad she did. It would have been even worse otherwise, imagining things. This way, I saw.

  I saw the detectives drive up and walk in with their big black equipment cases. And the photographer. And the coroner. The plainclothes cops wore suit jackets, and the coroner wore a dress like she was going to church. And a droopy hat over her gray poodle curls. And thick nylons. Like, industrial-strength stockings. I guess they had to be thick for kneeling beside bodies.

  I saw the sun shine lower and lower over the mountains. Shining, warm, when it should have gone cold and black. When it should have rained blood or something. I saw the coroner come out of the house again with her dress rumpled and her nylons wrinkled and her face sagging in deep lines. I saw the sky turn rosy colors and the sun go cherry red, sinking. I saw the photographer leave. It got so everything seemed like a creepy dream. I couldn’t think who I was anymore or what I was doing there.

  Finally, after dark, I saw the medics take Aaron out.

  His body, I mean. They rolled it out on a gurney and loaded it onto the ambulance. They had it covered with a sheet, of course. But even though it had been hours, blood stained the cloth, looking black in the streetlamp light.

  The ambulance rolled away, slow, no siren, no lights. Silent as a ghost.

  The people who were left in the crowd turned away and went home, just as quiet. I stayed.

  A couple of the uniformed township police stood at the bottom of the driveway talking to each other in hushed voices. I walked over to them, and they both swung their heads toward me and stared, as blank as the night.

  I told them, “I’ve got to talk to somebody.”

  chapter three

  One of the detectives took me home in his unmarked car with a laptop computer built into the console. He ran me on the computer and told me I didn’t have any criminal history or any outstanding warrants. He was half joking, trying to lighten things up, but I couldn’t smile. Maybe the look on my face was the same as the look on my mom’s face when we walked in. I don’t know. Probably, because Mom’s face matched all the others I’d been seeing, stretched and pale like a drumhead.

  The detective introduced himself and told Mom, “I want to take his statement in your presence, because he’s a minor.”

  She looked at me. I told her, “It’s okay.” It wasn’t okay, really. I felt like a murderer who couldn’t wait to confess. I felt as bad as if I’d killed Aaron myself.

  “I want you to talk with a lawyer first,” Mom said.

  “Mom, I already told him everything. He just needs to write it down.”

  The truth was, I’d told him everything except who Aaron had said he was afraid of. I wasn’t going to snitch on Nathan, because he couldn’t have done it. I mean, I’d known him as long as I’d known Aaron. When we were kids, we all played snow forts together, hunted fossils together in the abandoned strip mines, went camping and told ghost stories together. I remembered the time Nathan put a dead toad in my sleeping bag. I remembered getting in trouble with him and Aaron just about every Halloween for soaping windows and stuff. Okay, Nathan hadn’t been hanging with us for the last couple of ye
ars, but all the same, I knew Nathan couldn’t have done it. I just knew, like knowing which way is up.

  The detective sat me at the kitchen table and got out a little tape recorder. Mom sat beside me with her lips pressed together, and I told it all again: Aaron had said he was scared and then wouldn’t tell me why; he’d asked me to call and somebody had picked up and then the answering machine and then Nathan had said Aaron wasn’t home. After a while Mom gave a sigh like she felt better and offered the detective a cup of coffee. He said no thanks, but was my sister around to verify what she knew?

  The brat was up in her room, probably yakking with her preppy friends. Mom called her and she barefooted downstairs with her own precious cordless phone still in her hand. She looked like she’d been crying, yet enjoying the excitement. When she met the detective, she got big-eyed. He took her into the living room to talk with her. Mom went along.

  I sat at the kitchen table trying not to look at the windows. Too dark. I’d never minded nighttime before, but that night I didn’t like the darkness outside pressing the glass like it wanted in. I wanted to go somewhere but I didn’t know where, or what to do, so I just sat there.

  I could hear every word they said in the other room. “So your brother seemed upset?” the detective asked after the brat told him what time I’d come home, judging by what was on TV at the time, and what time she thought it was when I tried to phone Aaron.

  “He acted majorly freaked.”

  “In what way—”

  But the brat interrupted, all fluttery. “Is it true that somebody stabbed Aaron in the face?”

  “I can’t say, miss. I need the names—”

  “They say it’s a serial murderer. A psycho killer.”

  “Who says?”

  “My friends.”

  “Do they know something I don’t?” I could hear a teacher tone in his voice.

  “No, I guess not, but—”

  “Just rumors, miss. We don’t know—”

  “But is it true there was blood all over everything?”

  I clenched my fists. Mom said, “Jamy, stop it.”

  The phone rang, and I got up and answered it.

  “Jeremy!” It was a neighbor lady. “Mrs. Ledbetter says there’s a police officer at your house asking questions. Is that true?”

  I should have asked her what she needed a cop for, but I didn’t know what to say. I felt so sick I mumbled, “ ’Scuse me,” and hung up. Right away the phone rang again. It was like I had sunstroke or something, I felt so bad. I braced my hands on top of the table, stood there half bent over, and let the damn phone ring. Mom came out, looked at me, and took the phone off the hook without answering it. I heard the front door close as the detective left.

  Jamy came in and said, “There’s people in the front yard, and the TV van just pulled up.”

  “Good Lord,” Mom said.

  “What’s the matter with Butthead?”

  “Jamy, go to your room,” Mom said, real sharp.

  “Good grief, all I did was ask—”

  “Go.”

  Starting to feel a little better, I eased into a chair.

  “Something to eat?” Mom asked. “Pizza?”

  Jamy called down the stairs, “Mom, is the phone off the hook?”

  “Yes, and now it’s unplugged.” She reached over and yanked the jack out of the wall. “Go to bed!”

  “No!” Jamy yelled with panic in her voice. There was a silence while her fear hung in the air. Then she called more softly, “Can I sleep with you tonight?”

  Somebody knocked at the door. Mom told Jamy, “Yes, I guess so,” as she crossed the living room to look through the peephole. She turned away. “Don’t answer. It’s just reporters.” She called up the stairs to Jamy, “Honey, I don’t think anybody around here’s going to get much sleep tonight.”

  “Can I come down?”

  “Yes, if you leave your brother alone.” Knock, knock, knock at the door. Ignoring it, Mom came back to me. “Something to eat, Jeremy?”

  My gut felt as hollow as my sister’s head, yet I couldn’t have swallowed a bite if you paid me. “Can’t,” I said.

  Her voice got softer. “You want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head and stood up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out for a walk.” Damn the stupid darkness.

  “No.”

  I needed to get out of there so bad that for a minute I really hated her. My whole body clenched like a fist. “Mom, I—”

  “Honey, I know, but you can’t go out. We don’t know what’s out there.”

  “Except reporters,” Jamy said.

  She was supposed to leave me alone. I wanted to hit her. I wanted to hit something, kill something, kill whoever had killed Aaron, and the worst of it was, like Mom said, he was out there somewhere, and I didn’t know where, and yeah, I was scared. I mean, I was Aaron’s best friend—would I be next?

  I was Aaron’s best friend—shouldn’t I do something?

  Like what?

  Damn it all to hell, I didn’t know, and I needed to walk, run, shout, scream, throw something, smash something, bash something right that minute. I turned and lunged down the basement steps, slamming the door behind me.

  I didn’t even turn on a light at first, just blundered around down there, panting and hitting and flinging things. I threw a fit like a brat kid. I punched holes in cardboard boxes, heaved piles of newspapers into the air, swore until my voice started to break, and then I shut up because I was not going to cry, damn it I was not going to cry. I just fought with the dark.

  After a while I wore myself out and just lay in a pile of newspaper, breathing hard and staring into nothing but blackness.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened and light shot down. “Jeremy?”

  “Let me alone, Mom.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Compared to what?”

  I guess she could tell I was alive. The door closed.

  Later I got up, flicked on a light, and looked at the mess I’d made. Jeez.

  It was late but I knew I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think what else to do so I started to clean up.

  After a while the door at the top of the stairs opened and Mom came down, still dressed. She didn’t say a word, just started helping me.

  “I’ll get it,” I said.

  “I know,” she said, but she kept picking up newspapers. She stacked them and tied them up as carefully as if she were wrapping Christmas presents, taking her time. And then, I couldn’t believe this, here came Jamy in sweats and slippers, and she started picking up, too, quiet, like Mom.

  After we got the mess cleared away, I got out the shop vac and Mom got a broom and Jamy got a dust cloth. All that night we hardly said a word, and we cleaned that basement till you could have held a reception there.

  chapter four

  What with no sleep, in the morning I was kind of floating, spaced out and limp enough so I could eat, even though I still didn’t really feel hungry. I was working my way through a bowl of Frosted Flakes at the kitchen table, with Mom sipping coffee across from me, when the brat headed for the living room and I heard the TV click on. The morning news anchor was saying, “… and a murder stuns Pinto River.”

  I yelled, “Jamy, turn it off!”

  “No way.”

  “Listen, frog face—”

  “Booger, deal with it.” But her voice was quiet, and I shut up, because Booger was what Aaron called me. I mean, other people did, too, but he was the one who started it. Fourth grade. He caught me picking my nose, a big green one, and he grabbed my wrist and flicked my hand and the booger flew up and hung on the ceiling over my desk. I was never so embarrassed in my life, and I just about hated him. I mean, in a movie they couldn’t have done it better. Everybody who was in that class still remembered.

  Except Aaron. He was dead.

  Oh, my God. What was I going to do without him? I mean, I’m nothing. Two ears, two eyes, n
ose in the middle of my face. Average looks, average grades, I’m so average it hurts. I’m Jeremy Nobody. But just because Aaron was my friend, that made me somebody.

  “… Pinto River’s first murder since 1976,” the announcer was saying.

  “Good grief,” Mom said, “that was before you were born. Man shot his girlfriend.” She wasn’t really talking to me, just remembering. “Turned himself in,” she said, and she went to watch the news with Jamy. I stayed where I was, trying to finish my cereal, listening.

  “… youthful victim. Aaron Gingrich, seventeen, a popular student and starting halfback on Pinto River Area High School’s championship-winning football team, was found dead in his home yesterday …”

  Maybe Dad would give me a call, I thought. He knew Aaron was my best friend. And even if he didn’t watch the news he would have heard all about the murder at his hangout, the Tipple Tavern, since the cops all hung there too. Or he’d hear about it at the courthouse where he worked. I hoped he’d call.

  “There’s Jeremy,” Jamy said. “Hey, Jeremy,” she called, “you’re on TV.”

  “Shut up!” I guess they were showing the house and the crowd, and I never wanted less to see myself on TV.

  The news kept blabbing. Cause of death was “multiple stab wounds to the neck.” Around that point I gave up on my cereal and tried not to listen anymore, but I still heard. They said that Cecily had found Aaron’s body. She’d been at a friend’s house—“That’s us!” Jamy squealed like it made her famous—and, upon returning home, had found her brother lying dead approximately ten feet inside the front door, in the living room. They said Nathan, who had been upstairs sleeping, had come down when he heard his sister screaming, then phoned 911. They said both Cecily and Nathan were in shock and under a doctor’s care. The family was in seclusion with relatives. Nothing appeared to be missing from the Gingrich home, and there was no sign of forced entry.

  Pinto River had beefed up police patrols, and the school system, due to begin classes next week, was opening its doors early to students in need of help dealing with the tragedy. Trained counselors would be on hand.…

  When they started talking about the weather, hot with thunderstorms, Mom came back into the kitchen and poured herself more coffee. “I’m taking off work,” she said, which was something; Mom never took off work. The quarry just about can’t run without her. But she said, “I’m worthless today. I’m going to bed. So is Jamy. Jeremy, are you going to try to get some sleep?”