“There’s a little more about the article on page three, but that’s pretty much what I wanted to read to you guys,” Steve said. He looked up from the paper and saw Jason and me staring at each other. “What is it? You guys are white as sheets.”
Jason broke eye contact with me and turned to face Steve. Cory had gotten off the crate and had moved in closer to Jason.
“What is it, man?” Cory asked.
After a moment of trying to find his voice, Jason said, “The shoelace.” Now Steve and Cory exchanged a confused look. “Oh, my God, Ricky.”
“I know,” I said.
“What? What is it?” Cory demanded again.
Jason stood up, leaned against where the fat branch met the trunk and took a deep breath.
“The other morning, Monday I think, Ricky and I went up to the construction site, the one across Magnolia there.” He paused, trying to remember the exact name he had read on the sign that morning. “Magnolia Glen. That one over there.” He pointed north to where the unfinished town homes stood not more than three hundred yards away and we all turned to peer through the foliage at the skeletal structures being built. He went on to tell how we had gone there to collect bottles, moving from house to house, when I had discovered the package containing the lone shoelace.
When he was finished, Cory asked excitedly, “Do you still have it?”
I nodded. “It’s in my drawer at home.”
Now Steve stood, letting the paper fall from his lap onto the bed of dry leaves and dead bark. “Hey, you can’t be sure if the missing shoelace from the package you found was the one the killer used to strangle Amy,” he said, looking at my brother and me. Of course we knew it was. How could it not to be? We might not have wanted to believe it at that moment, but somewhere deep inside we knew the truth.
“No wonder mom told us not to talk to strangers this morning,” Jason said. “I wondered why she gave us that lecture. She and dad probably heard something too.” He then turned to our leader. “What do you think we should do, Steve?”
“I don’t know,” he told him. “Maybe we should take the package to the police. There might be a finger print on it or something. It could help with their investigation.”
The three then looked at me and Jason asked, “Do you still have the package it came in, Ricky?”
I shook my head. “I threw it on the ground after I took the shoestring out and put it in my pocket.”
“You moron,” Cory exclaimed.
“Shut up,” I shot back. “How was I supposed to know?”
Cory took a step toward me but Steve halted him with a hand to his chest. We stared at each other for what seemed like minutes, the silence broken only by the screech of a hawk in the hot sky.
After a moment, Steve said, “To tell you guys the truth, now that I think about it, I doubt there’s anything to do. Even if we took the shoelace down to the police, what could they do with it? The one you’ve got Ricky isn’t the murder weapon. Besides, they’d probably think we just read the article in the paper and went out and bought a shoelace with Sesame Street characters on it and were playing a joke or something.” He paused for a second, thinking. “I mean, we could tell them where you found it, but I’m sure most, if not all, of the trash inside those houses has been picked up by now.” He paced for a second and then turned back to us. “But you see now what I told you guys? This is a serial killer.”
Then the smartass of the group, Cory, said, “Yeah, you sure told us detective.”
Steve turned on him, got right in his face, and said, “You know what, Cory? You’re about this close to getting your ass kicked right now.” He held his fingers an inch apart to emphasize just how near Cory was to a whoopin’. “I mean you pull that crap with Mr. Gagner earlier. You always got something smart to say about everything. Not to mention you pick on Ricky all the time, which I can’t understand because you’re only twice his size. So, let me tell you something, smart guy. If you want to mouth off to someone do it to me, alright. Come on, say something, chicken shit.”
Cory wouldn’t match Steve’s gaze and had been looking at his feet ever since the bigger boy had gotten up in front of him. He took a step back and raised his arms in a shrug and said, “Hey, I was just kidding around, Steve. I didn’t know it was going to piss you off. It was just a joke. I’m sorry, okay.”
Steve stood his ground for a few seconds more and then backed off. He turned to us and said, “Anyway, let’s just hope they catch the killer before another kid gets it. At first, I thought it would be exciting to know we had a serial killer in town. Now it’s just plain scary.”
“Yeah,” Cory jumped in, “and at least you’ve got a souvenir, Ricky.”
Jason closed his eyes and shook his head at his best friend’s dry sense of humor. Just the thought of that shoelace in my drawer made me sick to my stomach.
“I’m throwing it away when I get home,” I said to no one and everyone.
“No,” Cory interjected. “Give it to me. I’ll keep it.” Steve looked over at Cory and Cory said, “What?” a little sheepishly.
We sat there, inside the shade of the pepper tree, not talking but casting glances in each other’s direction from time to time. The screech of the hawk came again and when I looked out into the field I saw it dive bomb down into the thick yellow grass. It flapped its wings twice and wrestled with something beneath. With a mighty thrust, it shot off the ground and pumped up into the sky carrying a long, wriggling garter snake in its talons.
Facing Jason, I asked a question not even the wisest of scholars could answer. “Why does God let stuff like that happen?”
“Stuff like what?” he asked back.
I stood up, brushed the dirt from the back of my shorts, picked up a bottle cap and flicked it out into the field. “Why does God let people kill little kids like that?”
He looked as if he wasn’t sure how to answer and all he could say was, “I don’t know.”
Steve came over and knelt down in front of me. He placed his hands on my shoulders and said in a solemn voice, “You want to know why God let’s little kids die like that, Ricky? I’ll tell you why. Because there is no God, that’s why.”
I didn’t know what to make of his statement, though, I’ll admit, it did frighten me a bit. I hadn’t ever really known where Steve’s religious beliefs lay, but for some reason I thought everyone believed in God. Steve, apparently, did not.
“Hey, Steve, don’t say that,” Jason told him.
“What, Jay?” Steve said back, standing up and facing my brother. “You think if there really was a God he’d let people go around murdering other people? You think he’d let people get into car wrecks or let people drown in floods?” He turned around to Cory and directed his blasphemous speech to him. “What about you, Dayborne? Do you think God would let a baby burn to death in a house fire or let a little girl get run over by a car? Would God let thousands of people die, like when we dropped that bomb on Hiroshima?” Continuing his rotation, he came back to me. “No, Ricky. You can bet your sweet ass that there is no God. Too many bad things happen in the world to make me believe in Him.”
We were all quiet again for a time and it was Jason who broke that silence first.
“Don’t listen to him, Ricky. I believe in God and so should you even if Steve doesn’t.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Steve snapped. “I’d like you to prove to me that God exists. Can you do that for me, Jason? Can you?”
Jason took a step toward our leader, and in the same tone, said, “Why don’t you prove to me that he doesn’t?”
They had a staring contest for a moment and then Steve moved in closer. He tore the bandana from his head and pulled his long hair back from his brow. Pointing to his hairline and the fat, ugly scar underneath, he shouted, “Why the hell do I have this, huh? Why the hell did I have to spend a week in the hospital after my father, my own father, nearly killed me?” Jason winced at the sight and Steve went on. He pulled his shirt off over his head and threw it on
the ground. On his left side, below his armpit, an angry purple bruise stood out like a flattened eggplant. “You see this?” He yelled. “Where is God when my brother beats the shit out of me, huh? Where was he the day I walked in on my sister being…” His shouts broke off and became whimpers, tears began to course down his face and his shoulders suddenly sagged. “…when my little sister was being…” And that’s as far as he could go. He yelled at the top of his lungs and punched the palm of his hand with his fist. Shaking his head and covering his eyes, he walked from under the cover of our tree and out into the field.
Jason looked at Cory and Cory looked at me and I back at Jason. I could only assume Jason was thinking the same thing I was. The day before, when we had gone over to Steve’s house to see if he wanted to go to the 7-Eleven with us, we had heard shouting through their closed door followed by a loud ‘smack’. The bruise on his side looked just about the right size to have come from a belt.
None of us said a word. We had never seen Steve cry before, though we thought nothing less of him for doing so. He had every right to let out that pent up anger he’d been carrying around with him for so long. Exactly what his father had done to him or what he was going to tell us about his sister, Jackie, we didn’t know. And at the time we weren’t sure we wanted to.
Finally, as Cory and I stared at each other in uncomfortable silence, Jason picked up Steve’s shirt and bandana and went out to comfort our friend.
Frisbee Page 33
