The long way home h-2

by Andrew Klavan

  "I hear voices," Josh said. "Must be aliens." I couldn't see his microphone either, but it must've been there because his voice came back over the two-way's speaker, loud enough for all of us to hear.

  "Give me that," I said to Miler. I took the two-way from him. I knelt down in front of the laptop so I could see Josh more clearly. I spoke into the phone. "Josh, what do you think you're doing? Where are you going?"

  I could see Josh on the monitor, steering the car with one hand and touching his headset with the other. I could see him glance over at the seat, blinking through his big glasses, when he talked back to me. I guess that's where the webcam was. "I'm driving to Wyatt High School," he said.

  I felt a twinge inside me. Wyatt High School-that was where Alex used to go. "Why are you going there?"

  "Because you can't, my friend. If you go to Wyatt High School and start asking all kinds of questions, you'll get arrested. So I'm going instead. I figured I'd start with the two kids who witnessed Alex's murder. Bobby Hernandez and Steve Hassel. They were in middle school then, but they moved up this year. I'll talk to them; you watch me on the webcam, and that way, you can tell me what questions you want to ask. Then I'll ask and you'll be able to hear the answers. I'll even be able to clip the webcam to my shirt or something so you'll be able to see who I'm talking to. Good plan, right?"

  "Amazing," I said into the phone. "Only listen. There's a new plan. In this plan, you turn your car around and drive home and then go to school."

  "I went to school already. I don't have another class till two. I'm a senior, remember?"

  "All right, then don't go to school. Stay home and watch cartoons on television. Just don't go around asking questions about Alex's murder."

  "Why not?"

  My voice rose. "Because it's dangerous, Josh, that's why. I told you guys: this isn't a game. It's not a television show. There are real people really trying to hurt me. Really bad. And they'll hurt you too."

  "Well, what's your plan?" said Josh.

  "Well…"

  "Weren't you going to go around asking people questions?"

  "Yeah, but…"

  "And where were you going to start?"

  I had to admit it. "I was gonna start at Wyatt too, but…"

  "So it's the same thing," said Josh. "Only I'm going to do it for you so you don't get caught."

  "But…" I began-then nothing. I knelt there like an idiot, trying to think of an argument. Finally I said, "It's too dangerous, Josh."

  "It's a lot less dangerous for me than it is for you," Josh answered right away. "In fact, it's not really that dangerous for me at all. If someone stops me or asks me what I'm doing, I'll just tell them I'm writing an article about Alex's murder for the school paper. You know, a kind of retrospective."

  "But…" I said again. This was so frustrating. Josh was making really good arguments and I had no answer for them-but I still didn't want him out there taking the risks that were meant for me. I turned to Rick, then Miler, looking to them to help me out here.

  "We had the same problem," Miler told me. "Josh's plan is incredibly stupid-but it's actually the least incredibly stupid plan any of us could think of."

  I looked to Beth now, hoping she'd suggest something. Sitting on the picnic blanket, she only lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

  "This is exactly what I didn't want to happen," I said.

  "Yeah, life can be like that sometimes," said Josh through the two-way.

  "Josh…" I said through gritted teeth. I think if Beth hadn't been there, I'd have said a lot more.

  "Look," said Rick. "You have to give the man credit where it's due. It really is safer for him to ask questions than it would be for you. And with all this spy stuff, at least we'll be able to keep tabs on him."

  I covered the two-way with my hand so Josh couldn't hear me. "Why didn't you go?" I asked Rick. "You're twice his size."

  "Yeah, but Josh actually is the editor of the school paper, so we thought his alibi would pan out. Also, it's his spy stuff."

  I sighed. I uncovered the two-way. "All right," I said. "We'll try it this one time. But if you get killed, Josh, I'm gonna personally kick your butt into the middle of next Tuesday."

  I could see him on the monitor, turning the steering wheel again. I could see the scenery change through the driver's window as he went around a corner.

  "I'm not gonna get killed," he said. "I'll just go to the high school, chat with Hernandez and Hassel, and leave."

  "No," I said. "Not them."

  "Come on, Charlie," said Josh. "I'm telling you. It'll be safe."

  "Yeah, all right, all right, but still-not Hernandez and Hassel. They're just witnesses. They don't really know anything; they just saw stuff. And they already told what they saw to the police. Plus, they testified and talked to the media too. We're not gonna find out anything from them we can't find out by reading the newspapers."

  Rick made a face at Miler. Miler made a face at Rick.

  Coming over the two-way, Josh said, "I didn't think of that. That's pretty smart. All right. Who should I talk to then?"

  I'd already thought of that-I'd thought of it a few days ago when I was planning to come here.

  "The night Alex died, he was hanging out with two friends at the Eastfield Mall. I know because they came up to me and gave me a hard time about talking to Beth. They acted like they were going to start a fight with me, and they only stopped when Alex called them off."

  "Right. You said all that at your trial," said Josh. "And those two guys testified too."

  "I know. I have a newspaper story with their names in it. The thing is, they were Alex's friends. They knew what he was into, who he was talking to. They knew what he was planning to do that night."

  Rick spoke up, sitting cross-legged next to me. "Wouldn't the police have talked to them, too, same as the witnesses?"

  "Yeah," I told him. "But maybe they didn't ask them the right questions or maybe they didn't follow up on the ones they did ask. See, once they found the knife and the DN A and everything, they were sure I was the one who did it. Maybe they figured there wasn't any need to find out anything else after that. It's possible they got sidetracked, that's all."

  Once again, Rick and Miler exchanged a look. Miler shrugged. Then Rick shrugged. "I guess it's possible," he said.

  Josh's voice came over the two-way. "Well, I guess we're going to find out. Here we are."

  We all turned back to the laptop again. On the monitor, Josh was spinning the steering wheel to guide the Camry into a parking space. Through his window, I could see parts of the high school going by in the background.

  "All right," said Josh. "I guess this is it."

  He sounded excited, as if this was an adventure. That worried me. He should've sounded scared, as if this was dangerous. Because it was dangerous. I mean, I was scared, and I wasn't even there.

  "You got the names of those kids?" he said.

  Beth handed me my little sheaf of news stories. I paged through them until I found the names.

  "Paul Hunt and Frederick Brown."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Hunt Wyatt High School is a pretty rough place. It's in a rundown section of town-the section Alex had to move to after his dad left. A lot of the kids who go to Wyatt have really hard lives: no fathers, not enough money, sometimes violent homes and stuff like that. They have a big problem at the school with booze and drugs. They also have a big problem with gangs-a lot of the kids belong to them. A couple of times, the police have had to rush to the school to break up fights on the field out back. These weren't just schoolyard punch-outs either, they were full-scale melees with knives and baseball bats and so on.

  The idea of skinny, pale-faced, geeky Josh with his big glasses and his goofy smile wandering around asking these kids questions didn't make me feel any better about the situation. But there he was.

  Josh spent some time fumbling around in the car getting his spy gear all hooked up. He was wearing slacks and a checked button-down
shirt with a tan windbreaker over it: sort of the official geek uniform. He hooked his webcam up to the collar of his windbreaker. We couldn't see it, but he told us it was made to look like some kind of medallion so it wouldn't be so noticeable. He hooked his microphone up to his shirt collar near his mouth, under the windbreaker so no one could see it. Then he pulled a watch cap down over his head. It was a little warm to be wearing a watch cap, but it hid the earpiece. Finally, he strapped a laptop case over his shoulder. He had to carry it with him so the webcam and mike would work.

  Now he stepped out of the car.

  In the empty parlor of the Ghost Mansion, with the cool air blowing in from the graveyard through the broken window, Beth and Rick and Miler and I crowded around our own laptop, watching the monitor intently. We couldn't see Josh, but we could see whatever was in front of him. At first, as he climbed out of his mom's Camry, the scenery swung around wildly in this kind of sickening way. We caught tilted, pixilated glimpses of the parking lot and the school's grassy backfield and the school building itself-which was one of those old-fashioned brick buildings with the clock tower and the white cupola up top.

  Then Josh started walking and the picture steadied. It still kind of bumped around with his footsteps, but at least it didn't swing back and forth anymore.

  Josh narrated into the microphone under his breath. "Here I go, moving across the field…"

  "We can see that, Josh," said Miler. "You're wearing a camera on your shirt."

  Josh ignored him. "I'm looking around now to find someone I can talk to…"

  "Dork," muttered Miler with a sigh.

  As Josh turned to look this way and that, we got a pretty fair view of the field. We could see that even now, about an hour before lunchtime, there were a lot of kids out there. I guess they were mostly seniors who didn't have many classes to go to. Some of them were playing basketball on the paved court to one side of the field. Some of them were kicking a soccer ball around in the grass. A lot of them were just standing in clusters, talking and sneaking cigarettes and looking shiftily this way and that as if they wanted to make sure there were no teachers nearby. I knew they weren't allowed to wear gang colors at school, but I'm pretty sure some of these kids were gangsters all the same.

  "Okay," whispered Josh into his microphone. "There's someone…"

  On the monitor now, we saw a small cluster of kids coming closer and closer as Josh approached them. They were standing right at the edge of the field, near one corner of the parking lot. There were four of them, four guys standing together. They didn't exactly look like Mr. Friendly and his Happyface Pals. They were big, dressed in denim, one dude with cut-off sleeves so you could see his enormous arm muscles. Two of them were smoking cigarettes. None of them were smiling. Over the two-way, we could hear them talking in low voices, almost grunts. They would nod and frown and steal a look around and talk some more, as if they were sharing secrets.

  Beth, Rick, Miler, and I all looked at one another. We were all thinking the same thing: this was not a good idea.

  "Josh," I said into the two-way. "I don't think you should…"

  "Hi, guys!" Josh greeted these thugs in his squeaky, goofy voice. "I was wondering if you could help me out!"

  The guy with the big muscular arms looked at Josh. It was the way you might look at a spider when you were thinking, Look at that disgusting little thing. I'm gonna step on it. He didn't say anything. So Josh just plunged right on.

  "I'm looking for a couple of guys I need to talk to for an article for my school paper. Their names are Paul Hunt and Frederick Brown. Any idea where I might find them?"

  Beth and the guys and I stared at the laptop monitor. I think all four of us were holding our breath.

  The guy with the big arms ran his eyes up and down Josh as if wondering just what kind of spider he might be. But the next minute, he kind of gestured with his head, giving it a little move that pointed across the field. The way he did it-it was like he thought Josh ought to be crushed to a green pulp, but he just couldn't be bothered to take the trouble.

  Josh turned and followed the gesture. As he did, his camera swung around, and for a second I had a look in the direction the big-armed guy was pointing. Right away, I spotted one of the thugs who had approached me that night with Alex in the Eastfield Mall.

  "Josh, there he is!" I said into the two-way.

  "Where?" said Josh.

  "What?" said the guy with the muscular arms.

  "Oh," said Josh. "Uh, nothing."

  "Just thank the nice man and move away, Josh," I said. "I'll guide you to the guy."

  "Right," said Josh. And then to Mr. Big Arms, he said, "Hey, thanks a lot, dude."

  Big Arms made another gesture with his chin, which I guess meant either You're welcome or Get away from me, spider, before I change my mind and kill you. But whatever it meant, Josh gave him a jolly, finger-waggling wave and moved off across the field.

  "He is so gonna die," said Rick.

  "Ssh," said Beth, afraid Josh might hear him.

  "I'm just saying," said Rick.

  Josh's breathless whisper came over the two-way. "Okay. I'm on the move again. Where is this guy?"

  I peered into the monitor, searching. "Turn more to the left," I said. "Wait, turn back a little. There he is. You're heading right for him."

  He was standing across the field. I didn't know if he was Hunt or Brown, since they hadn't introduced themselves when they were trying to bully me in the mall parking lot. At the time, I just thought of him as Crewcut Guy because he'd had his blond hair cut to a nub on his head. He was built like a low brick wall, short and thick and powerful. He was wearing a black jacket and black jeans.

  Everyone else in the field was gathered in clusters with friends, but Crewcut Guy was alone. He was leaning against a diamond-link fence at the edge of the field. He had his thumbs hooked in his pockets and one of his legs bent back so his foot rested against the fence. His eyes were narrowed and his gaze moved slowly around the field, taking everything in. He reminded me of a gunfighter in an old cowboy movie, waiting for the shooting to start.

  The picture of him on the laptop monitor bounced up and down as Josh approached him.

  "If he didn't walk like such a geek, we could see something," muttered Rick.

  "I'm starting to get motion sickness," said Miler.

  "You guys are so mean," said Beth. "I thought Josh was your friend."

  "We let him live, don't we?" said Rick and Miler at the same time.

  Then we all fell silent again, so that the only noise in the empty parlor was Josh's panting breaths coming through the two-way speaker and the sound of his laptop slapping against his side.

  Crewcut Guy got larger and larger on the monitor as Josh drew near.

  "That him?" Josh muttered.

  "Yeah," I told him. "Be careful, Josh. He's not as nice as he looks."

  "He doesn't look very nice."

  "Right."

  "Oh. I get it. Yikes."

  Now Crewcut Guy nearly filled the screen. He turned and looked directly at us through his squinty eyes as he noticed Josh coming toward him.

  "Hi!" We heard Josh's voice cracking over the two-way speaker. "You wouldn't happen to be Paul Hunt or Frederick Brown, would you?"

  "Hunt," he grunted. "What're you looking for?"

  "Well, I'm doing a story for my school newspaper…"

  The look on Hunt's face changed. He looked around, as if he thought someone was pulling a not-very-funny practical joke on him, as if he expected to find a group of his friends watching from a distance and laughing at him. The narrowed stare returned to Josh, coming straight at us on the laptop screen. "Say what?"

  "I'm doing a story…"

  "You up for something or not?"

  "Yeah," said Josh. "I'm up to talk to you for a couple of minutes for my school newspaper."

  Next to me, Rick rolled his eyes. Miler put his head in his hands.

  "Josh, you idiot, he means drugs," I said into
the two-way.

  "Drugs?" said Josh.

  "What do you need?" said Hunt.

  "No, I didn't mean you," said Josh.

  "Say what?" said Hunt. "Hey, what is this?"

  "I'm doing a story for my school newspaper. It's about the murder of Alex Hauser."

  Now, once again, Hunt's expression changed. When Josh mentioned Alex's name, he seemed to grow both wary and interested.

  "What're you talking about? What kind of a story?"

  "A retrospective," said Josh.

  Hunt said, "Oh. Yeah," and he nodded. But even on the laptop monitor, I could see that he didn't know what the word retrospective meant.

  "We're just gonna talk about, you know, like, where the case stands now and so on."

  Hunt gave an elaborate shrug-like someone pretending he wasn't interested when he really was. He brought out a cigarette and shot the filter between his lips. "What's to talk about? They got the guy, right? He and Alex fought over some piece they both wanted."

  "Oh, nice," said Beth. "I'm a 'piece' now."

  I held my finger to my lips.

  "Ask him if he believes they got the right guy," I said into the two-way.

  "Do you believe they got the right guy?" said Josh.

  Hunt clicked open a big metal lighter and torched his cigarette. He shrugged again. "Sure. Why not? I met him. He was a real…" Well, I won't write what he called me. It's not the sort of thing I'm planning to put on my resume- if I live to have a resume.

  All this time, I was watching Hunt's face. I could tell a lot about him just by looking at him. He had this kind of swaggering, belligerent attitude as if he was a big shot, really tough and important. But when you watched his eyes, they looked nervous, as if down deep he really felt small and insecure and afraid. I think those things go together a lot, you know? Swaggering around and secretly feeling scared. I think people act big when they feel small.

  Anyway, it gave me an idea. I murmured into the two-way. "Josh, I think we gotta flatter this guy. Act like we think he's important. He's insecure-he'll fall for that. Tell him the reason you want to interview him is because you think he has real inside knowledge of the case. Use the word interview. Like it's some big deal. He'll like that."