“Trash, probably,” said Jeff.
“But how come the gulls are so excited?” I wondered.
“Cause they love garbage,” Jeff answered.
“Yeah, but, wait a second…” I looked again. “What the—”
I couldn’t have seen what I thought I’d seen. But there it was again. I began running toward the water.
Fourteen
I don’t know how long I stood there staring, with the water sloshing over the tops of my sneakers. Overhead the gulls screamed, outraged at my intrusion. Jeff pulled up next to me, panting hard.
“Oh, God. No way. Oh, God,” he said. “It’s that kid, isn’t it?”
I was sure Jeff was right. There were shreds of a green T-shirt and what looked like faded khaki shorts. Strands of light brown hair waved about like seaweed in the shallow water.
I continued to stare, frozen in horrified fascination, vaguely aware of Jeff breathing heavily beside me, and of my own blood pounding in my head. Then, in a voice edged with panic, Jeff whispered, “Daggett, let’s get out of here.”
Our eyes met. Jeff’s were wide, and his face looked gray beneath the brown of his skin. Without another word, we turned away from the body in the water and bolted for our bikes.
We pedaled up the road, ditched our bikes in the town parking lot, and ran straight into the police station. Jeff’s Uncle Cully was the sergeant at the desk. He smiled when he saw us and was about to say something, then looked closer at our faces and began to frown. “You boys look pretty shook up,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
I wanted to answer him, but something about the kindness and concern in his voice and the normal, safe, everyday surroundings of the room made the horror of what I’d seen seem even worse. I tried to talk, but instead began to cry—big, gulping sobs.
Any other time, I’d have been embarrassed, but I was too distraught to care. Besides, Jeff was crying, too. Cully, his face creased with worry, handed us tissues. Then he led us to an office in the back of the station and sat us down.
Jeff and I looked at each other. He said, “You tell, Ben. You saw it first.”
“There’s a body,” I said. “A person. I mean, it was a person. Now it’s—it’s—” I remembered the waving strands of sandy brown hair, and the room began to spin.
Cully waited until I collected myself. “Where, Ben?”
“In the water. Almost up on the beach at Devil’s Bridge.”
“Did you move it or touch it?” Cully asked.
“No way,” said Jeff, looking horrified.
“Good,” said Cully. “Could you tell anything about the person? For instance, whether it was male or female?”
“It’s that kid,” I said. “The one who disappeared.” But suddenly I wasn’t sure. The body had been so weird and swollen, and the gulls had already been picking at it. I shuddered. It could have been anybody wearing shorts and a T-shirt, maybe even a girl with short brown hair. “I mean, we thought it was, anyway,” I said uncertainly.
Jeff said, “Is it, Uncle Cully?”
“I don’t know yet, Jeff,” Cully answered. He stood up. “We’ll have more questions for you boys, but right now I’m going to go talk to the chief. Will you be all right here for a minute?”
Jeff and I nodded.
“I’ll call over to Town Hall and tell your mother you’re here,” Cully said to me as he left the room.
In what seemed like just a few seconds, Mom came flying into the police station from her office next door. “Ben!” she gasped, sitting down beside me and holding my face between her hands. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I said. I twisted my head and broke free. “I’m fine now. Really.”
“Thank goodness.” Turning to Jeff, she asked, “How about you?”
“I’m okay, Mrs. Daggett.”
“You poor boys,” Mom said. “What a terrible thing for you to see.” Her voice drifted off as Cully and Chief Widdiss walked into the room.
The chief acknowledged us each in turn. “Hello, Kate. Ben, Jeff.” His face, which usually reflected his cheerful good nature, was serious. “The sergeant is going to meet the state police down at the beach to recover the body. You say it’s right in near shore at Devil’s Bridge?”
Jeff and I nodded.
“The tide’s coming in, Cully, and with this wind direction, you shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“Right, Chief.”
“There’s birds,” I said, and my voice came out all croaky. I cleared my throat and added, “Gulls.”
Cully grimaced, and I felt sorry for him, having to go down there. I was really glad the chief hadn’t asked Jeff and me to go back. I thought about the search party that had found my father washed up on Cuttyhunk Island after the hurricane, and how awful it had been when Mom and I were told that Pop was truly dead.
I sneaked a look at Mom’s face, and knew she was remembering the same thing. Somebody, somewhere was waiting for word about this person, and Mom and I knew what it was like to get that kind of news. I thought about Cameron Maddox’s parents. Maybe they were rude, the way Pete and Barry had said they were, but if this turned out to be their son, I felt really, really sorry for them.
“Uncle Cully?” said Jeff. “Could you get my plane and stuff while you’re down there? After we found the—the body, we just ran.”
“Sure, Jeff,” said Cully. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”
Cully and Chief Widdiss excused themselves for a minute and left the room. Mom looked at me with a little line of worry between her eyebrows. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay, Ben? Chief Widdiss would understand if you’re not up to answering his questions right now.”
“No, I’m okay, Mom. Honest,” I said.
She leaned over to give me a hug, and when she pulled away, I saw tears in her eyes. I didn’t know if they were for me, or Pop, or the poor dead person, or his family, and figured they were probably for us all. I hoped she’d go before I started crying again, and she did, giving my hand a little squeeze on the way out and saying, “I’ll head home, then, and start dinner.”
When she was gone, Jeff and I looked at each other. I wondered if I looked as spooked as he did. “Ben,” he whispered. “It’s him, right? The Maddox kid?”
“It has to be, don’t you think?”
Jeff whispered again, urgently, “Will they be able to tell what happened to him?”
I stared dumbly at him. Wasn’t it obvious? “He drowned.”
Jeff swallowed, looked nervously back over his shoulder, and said, “What if he didn’t?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What if Donny—” Jeff stopped, his eyes wide and scared looking.
Then I understood. Jeff was afraid that Donny had harmed more than Cameron Maddox’s car.
“Will they be able to tell?” Jeff looked at me anxiously.
“Jeff!” I said. “Donny didn’t—he wouldn’t. You don’t really think he killed the kid, do you?” The idea was preposterous.
“No.” He hesitated. “I mean—No. But, Ben, he was mad at him and he did mess with the car, and if we tell, they’re going to suspect him of messing with Maddox, too.”
“But, wait. Maddox probably drowned, like I said. There’s no reason for anybody to suspect Donny of murder.”
“All I’m saying is, we’ve got to keep our mouths shut about the car. Act like we don’t know anything.”
We were quiet for a minute. The muffled voices of Cully and the chief grew louder as they approached.
“Just because Donny sank the car—” I began.
“Shhhhh!” Jeff just about jumped out of his seat. He looked at me, panic stricken. “Don’t tell!”
Before I had a chance to answer, Chief Widdiss came back into the room. “Are you boys feeling better?”
Jeff and I both lied, “Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’m sorry you had to be the ones to find the body,” the chief went on. “It’s not a pleasant experience, I know.”
T
hat’s for sure, I thought.
“I need to ask you just a few questions, and then you can go on home. You were walking from the Philbin Beach parking lot up toward Devil’s Bridge, is that right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And you came upon the body?”
“Well, we saw the birds first.” I explained everything that had happened, ending with how we ran back to our bikes and came straight to the police station.
“Was anyone else at the beach? Did other people come over to see what you had found?”
“I didn’t see anybody else.” I looked at Jeff. “Did you?”
“I think there were some people farther up the beach sunbathing,” Jeff said. “But nobody came over.”
“And you didn’t touch the body?”
“No.”
“So, as far as you know, no one touched the body and no one else saw it except the two of you?”
We nodded.
“Good. Now, boys, I don’t know if the body you found is Cameron Maddox’s or not, but I’m betting it is. We’ll know for sure pretty soon.” The chief leaned across his desk and looked at us intently. “We’ve been hearing a lot of stories about this Maddox kid, about what he was doing here and what might have happened to him. We’re trying to get to the bottom of it, and I wonder if you boys might have heard anything that could be helpful to us.”
The silence stretched on and on. Afraid to look at Jeff, I kept my eyes straight ahead, which unfortunately meant I was gazing right into Chief Widdiss’s face. His eyes moved back and forth from Jeff to me. The frown line in his forehead deepened as the silence grew.
Say something, Jeff, I urged. But Jeff didn’t say a word. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“After he disappeared, I heard down at the dock that he might have been selling drugs,” I said.
The chief’s expression remained calm and interested. He didn’t say anything.
After a while, Jeff spoke. “I heard his parents are pretty mad. They think somebody from here did something to him.”
“Why would they think that?” the chief asked, almost as if he were talking to himself.
Jeff shrugged.
The chief turned to me. “Any ideas, Ben?”
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. I could feel my face flaming bright red. Never before had I wanted so badly to disappear.
Chief Widdiss looked at Jeff then and said, “You didn’t hear anything else from any of the older kids?”
“No,” said Jeff, looking at his hands, which were squirming in his lap. His lie was just as obvious as my own.
There was another long silence. Chief Widdiss sighed and said, “If this body you found turns out to be Cameron Maddox’s, and if it turns out that he did, in fact, meet with some sort of foul play, it will be a very serious matter. Do you realize that? We could be talking about a murder.”
Jeff and I both nodded.
“If you know something that might help us in our investigation of such a serious matter, you must not withhold that information, do you understand?”
I swallowed hard and nodded again.
The chief sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his stomach. “I’ve known you two since you were knee-high,” he said. “I know you’re good boys. And sometimes good boys get themselves in a fix. They know something, or maybe just suspect something, about someone else, and they don’t want to say anything about it. They want to protect a friend, or they don’t want to ‘rat’ on him. Maybe they’re even afraid of what will happen if they do.”
The chief paused and looked from Jeff to me. “I want you to know that you don’t need to be afraid. If you give me information, no one will know you were the ones to give it. You don’t have to worry about falsely accusing someone, either. If something you heard turns out to be just a rumor, we’ll find that out. You can’t hurt anyone by telling what you know. But you can hurt yourselves, and maybe some innocent people, by keeping silent.”
But keeping silent was what we did. I didn’t know what I would have done if Jeff hadn’t been there. I’d probably have told. I wanted to tell. It was scary to sit in the police station across from Chief Widdiss and not tell. Besides, I’d always liked the chief, and I wanted him to like me.
But Jeff and I were in this together. When Jeff didn’t speak up, I felt as though I couldn’t, either.
The chief must have seen in my face something of the struggle that was going on in my mind. He leaned forward again and said, “You can go now, boys. You know where I am if you decide you have something to tell me.”
Jeff and I got up in a hurry. As we were walking out the door, the chief added quietly, “And I think you do.”
Fifteen
Jeff and I walked glumly out of the police station. I could feel the warmth of the asphalt parking lot through the soles of my sneakers, which were still wet from being in the ocean. The heat felt good. I’d been shivering in the chief’s air-conditioned office, partly because it was cold but mostly because I was nervous and scared.
I kicked at a loose stone and said, “He knows we know something.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know what we know.”
“I was kind of waiting for you to talk first,” I ventured.
“I couldn’t. I was totally freaking out!”
“Me, too! Jeff, we could get into real trouble for this! You can’t lie to the police in a murder investigation!” I could hear something close to panic in my voice, but I didn’t care if Jeff knew how scared I was.
“We didn’t really lie.”
“Oh, come off it, Jeff. Acting like we don’t know anything when we do is the same as lying!”
“But, like you said, the kid probably drowned. So it’s not a murder investigation. I don’t even know why I said that about Donny doing something to Maddox. I was just—I don’t know, everything was happening so fast.”
I could feel myself beginning to settle down, now that we were out from under Chief Widdiss’s probing gaze. Jeff, too, was losing his edgy look.
“Okay,” he said, “so we are trying to protect somebody. But only because telling about the car could make them suspect that Donny did something worse.”
“Right,” I said. Out in the warm July sunshine, the idea that Donny had done anything to Cameron Maddox, let alone murder him, was just plain silly. “They’ll do a whatchamacallit—an autopsy—and find out Maddox drowned, and it’ll all be over.”
“So there’s no need to rat on Donny in the meantime,” Jeff said.
“Right.”
We didn’t say anything for a while. Suddenly I felt very, very tired. “Well, I guess that’s it for now. I’m going home,” I said.
Mom and I were pretty quiet during dinner that night. Before she left work, word came in that Cameron Maddox’s parents had definitely identified the body as their son’s.
I swallowed and asked, “Do they know how he died?”
“The medical examiner is coming over from Bourne tomorrow morning. I suspect they’ll find he drowned, but I suppose they’ll be checking for evidence of drugs or alcohol, or anything that would explain why.”
We spent the next couple of hours sitting together in the living room, staring at the television, but I don’t think either one of us could have said what it was we watched. I went up to bed around eleven, but it was a long time before I fell asleep. My mind was zooming around like a remote-control airplane with a lunatic at the controls. I kept telling myself that what Jeff and I had done wasn’t so bad.
But I couldn’t hear Pop’s voice agreeing with me.
Sixteen
I continued to feel restless all the next morning, and I wished I had a charter with Chick to keep my mind occupied. Jeff was mowing lawns, so I just hung around the house. After lunch, Mom called to see how I was doing, and I asked her if Cameron Maddox’s autopsy results were in.
“Yes,” she said. “They found both alcohol and drugs in his system.”
“So it was an accident,
” I said with relief. “He drowned.”
“Well, he drowned, yes. But Chief Widdiss still hasn’t ruled out the possibility that it wasn’t entirely accidental.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, trying to sound calm.
“I understand there’s a wound on his head that looks suspicious.”
“Couldn’t he have hit it on a rock or something?”
“Apparently it doesn’t look like that. Cameron Maddox was mixed up with selling drugs, Ben. When you get involved with that kind of thing, you put yourself in danger.”
“So they think one of his customers killed him?”
“Ben, all I know is that his death is still under investigation.”
When we hung up, I felt more agitated than ever. By a quarter to four, I was so happy to have something to do that I sped to the beach parking lot to meet Donny. He was waiting in the Tomahawk, and I could tell as soon as I slid into the seat next to him that something was wrong.
Donny, usually so cool and smooth, looked rattled. There was no lazy smile, no joking around. “What happened yesterday when you went to the cops?” he asked abruptly.
“Huh?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“What did you tell the cops?” he asked impatiently.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Nothing about you, anyway. We found that kid—”
Donny interrupted me. “I know. I heard. But you didn’t say anything about me? My name didn’t even come up?”
“No,” I said. “Honest.”
He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “Why are the cops coming around asking me questions, then?” he asked. But he seemed to be asking himself, not me, so I didn’t say anything. “Manning didn’t talk, either, right?”
“No way,” I said. “We were together the whole time. They wanted to know about finding the body, and what we knew about Cameron Maddox. Nothing about you.” There was a pause, and I said, “What are they asking you about, anyway? The car?”
“No,” Donny said, looking distracted, not really paying attention to me. “I don’t think they know about that.”
“What, then?” Normally, I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to pump Donny so hard for information, but he wasn’t acting normal, and I was curious. “The stuff you stole?”
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