Safe

by Mark Zubro

  “Who are they talking to?” Bert looked worried.

  I said, “Frank Boyer told me you guys were drag racing that night out near where they found Kyle’s body.”

  “My dad won’t let the cops bother me,” Bert said.

  The school intercom came to life. The voice read off a bunch of kids’ names, telling them to come to the office. Bert was on the list and so was Jack.

  Bert turned bright red. He lost all his cool and screamed, “You snitched on me! Trying to cover your own ass.”

  “I had to tell the cops the truth,” I said.

  “They can’t prove anything,” Bert muttered. “I have witnesses for where I was. Drag racing had nothing to do with murder.” He wagged a finger in my face. “If something comes of this, you’ll be sorry, Roger, really sorry.”

  I stared him down. He gathered up his books then yanked the door open hard enough that it flew out of his hand and slammed against a filing cabinet. He ignored it and us and left.

  “Was Bert really out there?” Ian asked.

  I nodded.

  “Wow,” Ian said. “He could be a killer. This is great gossip. What else do you know?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Ian persisted in asking questions about the murder and when I wouldn’t answer, he started asking about the fight, what it had been like, how it had felt.

  I told him I needed to talk to Darlene. We walked out of the office and into the sunshine. We sat at a table under a canopy in the middle of the school quadrangle. It was pleasant enough to sit outside and eat, if you were in the sun and wore a light jacket or sweater.

  I told her everything.

  She congratulated me on my courage for coming out to my parents. “It sounds like they’re taking it reasonably okay.”

  “I’m not sure, but they’ve had less than twenty-four hours to get used to the news. We’ll see what happens. My mom said they wanted to talk to me tonight.”

  Darlene said she had to run some errands for the paper and left.

  Steve came out of the office and walked over to where I was sitting. He said, “I’m glad you’re doing something for Kyle.”

  He only caught my eyes for a few seconds.

  I said, “I’m just trying to do what’s right.”

  He blurted out. “I listen to all you say. You’re not mean like Bert and Ian.”

  “I don’t ever want to be like the rest of them.”

  He turned to go, half turned back, reached out a hand, and whispered, “Thank you for being kind.” For the briefest instant his hand touched my shoulder. He hurried off.

  I watched him walk away. He had a puppy dog look that was kind of endearing. I wanted to hold him in my arms and protect him. I wasn’t sure where that feeling came from. I sort of suspected he was gay, but he’d never said anything. He wasn’t hot in an athletic, muscle guy, sports hero way, but slender almost to the point of emaciation. He had narrow hips covered in faded jeans that hugged his butt. His shoulders stretched his T-shirt taut. Was he hinting maybe he was gay? I’d never thought of him as a guy I’d date. I’d never really taken much notice of him at all. I didn’t know anything about his life outside the newspaper. I’d never thought to ask. I felt stupid for my obliviousness. I wondered what he’d say if I suggested we get a cup of coffee together after working on the paper some night after school.

  Five minutes before the end of lunch, Jack came over. We often didn’t see each other until the afternoon. Most days he got to school about five seconds before the first period bell rang.

  Right now, he looked pale and shaken. “Can I talk to you, Roger?” he asked.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Jack muttered. He glared around at the kids at the other lunch tables, stared at the sky, and scratched at a zit on his chin.

  “You okay from the fight?”

  “Oh, yeah, not a problem.”

  Jack doesn’t worry much. When his dad hassles him, he simply avoids him as much as possible. Like I explained, once frazzled, he can be dangerous, but it takes a lot to get him upset.

  He didn’t seem ready to talk, so I said, “I came out to my parents last night.”

  His wandering attention returned to me. “Huh?”

  I repeated what I’d said.

  “You sure that was a good thing to do?” he asked.

  “It was something I had to do.”

  He nodded then fidgeted with his crumpled up lunch bag.

  I asked, “Are you okay with my being gay?”

  He shrugged. “I guess, yeah. I mostly don’t think about it.” He leaned toward me. “Is it true that the cops are around asking all the kids where they were on Sunday night?”

  “They can’t ask the whole school. That’s thousands of kids. I don’t think they’ve got enough people to do that. Is there a problem?”

  He stood up abruptly. “I gotta get to class.”

  “Your name was on the list they read. Where did you go that night?”

  We had driven over to the basketball tournament in separate cars because he told me he was going to leave in the middle of the game. He was planning to go to some kid’s house in San Bernardino to party and watch a football game. Usually, I’d have gone with, but I had to stay at the game and interview some of the players after it was over, and by the time I got done, it was late, and I’d never been to the house where the party was. I wasn’t about to hunt through the streets of San Bernardino for a party that could have been a dud.

  “I went to that party,” Jack said.

  “Did you go out to the orange groves?”

  He glanced around. The bell rang for us to get to class.

  I stood up and put my hand on his arm. “You were out there.”

  “Yeah, I was out there, but I didn’t see anything. My dad’s going to kill me for being out there. A couple of the kids who saw me were called. If I have to talk to the police, and my dad finds out, I’m in trouble.”

  Jack seemed more scared than I had never seen him before in his life. “If my dad tries to hit me, I’ll kill him.”

  I gazed at him carefully. “Is he worth it? Your whole life gone for him?”

  “I hate him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Without another word, he hurried away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Thursday 3:05 P.M.

  After school I was supposed to go to the police station to look at pictures to see if I recognized any of the guys from the night before. Since Jack and I were pretty banged up and sore, we’d agreed to skip our workout.

  Just before I left, I decided to stop in the school newspaper office for a moment. As I got near, Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Trumble walked out the door and came in my direction. Trumble kept himself a step behind the administrator. The moderator of the paper kept wringing his hands together and saying, “It won’t be a problem, Mr. Ashcroft.”

  In the office I asked Darlene what wouldn’t be a problem.

  She said, “We aren’t printing anything about the cops questioning kids, and we aren’t running anything about Kyle, not even an obit. Your article is history. That’s what Ashcroft was here to decree.”

  Bert burst into the room. “You!” He pointed at me. “How dare you?”

  “How dare I what?” I asked.

  “I’m a suspect in a murder case because of you,” Bert said.

  “What happened?” Darlene asked.

  “The cops want to know who was out in the orange groves the night Kyle was killed.” He pointed at me again. “I can’t deny it because of you.” He lurched around the tiny room, trying to pace and let off steam.

  Darlene walked right up to him, forcing him to stop moving. Her nose was two inches from his face. “Did you kill him?”

  “No!”

  Darlene backed away from him a couple steps.

  Bert started stomping around again. “Don’t be stupid. I barely knew the kid. If anything, I was indifferent to him. I didn’t care if he existed.”
Bert stopped his angry pacing in front of me. “But I found out an interesting bit of news.” His tone and facial expression indicated something nasty was coming. “Guess who sat next to me in the line of kids waiting to be interrogated?”

  I shrugged.

  “Jack McVeen.”

  Jack wouldn’t confide in this creep. What could this asshole know?

  “Jack’s not too happy with you. You’ve stirred up all this trouble about Kyle. Seems Jack’s pretty worried about his dad finding out about his drinking.”

  I asked, “Who told the police Jack was out in the orange groves drinking?”

  Bert sneered. “Well, we kind of came to the conclusion it was you who blabbed to the cops. I told him you ratted on me. I won’t have a lot of problems with my dad. He understands me, or he’s rich enough that if he has to, he can hire a team of lawyers or whatever to protect me, but old Jack is worried about his dad, and he and I think you told on him.”

  “I didn’t tell on Jack.”

  “Well, Jack was pretty mad,” Bert said. “He called you a number of names, most of which were on the order of ‘faggot’ and ‘queer’. He seemed to think they were pretty appropriate, and I’ve wondered why you were so worried about Kyle’s death, and now I think I know why. You must be gay too.”

  A quick denial came to my lips, but I wouldn’t lie to this creep. At the same time I didn’t want to tell him the truth and my hesitation cost me.

  “Got no response? Didn’t think you would because you are gay. I can’t wait to spread the news. You’ll be sorry you ratted on me.”

  Darlene tried to reason with him, but Bert laughed at her. He left looking like a herald of doom who just got permission to announce the Apocalypse.

  I sat on the corner of the nearest desk. Darlene and I stared at each other for a few moments. Finally, I said to her, “Life just got a whole lot more complicated.”

  Darlene patted my arm. “Jack would never say those things.”

  “I think Bert just made most of it up.”

  “But Bert’s not stupid.”

  “He probably put together some accurate guesses, and wild speculation and happened to hit on the truth. I never said he was stupid, just a jerk.”

  I texted Jack. He got back to me right away. The message said, Bert’s a jerk and a liar.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Thursday 3:00 P.M.

  They were pretty nice to me at the police station. I looked at books with what must have been hundreds of pictures. I didn’t recognize anyone. After I was through, I drove over to the Riverside Tribune to talk to Singleton.

  “Your parents know you’re here?” he asked before I could say anything.

  “No.”

  “Then I can’t talk to you. I could get my ass fired.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because the legal department of this paper thinks your parents might sue. They might not win, but they could think that I was endangering a minor.”

  “That’s crazy. I need to talk to you.”

  “Kid, are you nuts?”

  “I thought you were brave, and fearless, and daring. Bill Singleton, the investigative reporter who stood up to the Governor of California, corrupt judges, dirty cops and everybody else in this state.”

  He grabbed his sport jacket. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We walked in silence to the nearest coffee shop on Main Street. Singleton flung himself into a booth at the very back. I sat down across from him. He ordered coffee. I had a soft drink.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “My face is banged up as you can see. Ankle hurts a little, but I’m all right.”

  He stirred sugar into his coffee. “Roger, I was all those noble things twenty or thirty years ago, but it’s just a job now. Crusades are not for old men.” He plopped his spoon down on the table and sighed. “Why’d you need to see me?”

  “I want to know how the cops found out which kids were out in the groves that night.”

  “Why?”

  I explained about Bert and Jack.

  “This much I know,” he said. “The cops checked their records. They’d busted a group of kids for dope the other night. They found them on some dirt road out in the county around where Van Buren and Trautwein meet. The cops went back and asked that crowd if they’d seen anybody. Cops offered them a deal if they’d tell. Turned into a domino effect. Those kids gave a couple names to get off lightly. Each set of kids gave more names. Your friend must have been in one of the bunches of names.”

  I let that news sink in then said, “I think Kyle was murdered.”

  “Going to be tough to prove.” Singleton took a large gulp of coffee, put the mug on the table, and began to rotate it slowly between his hands.

  I asked, “What did you learn from Frank’s girlfriend last night?”

  “Wendy told me, amid a number of inappropriate sexual suggestions, that Boyer lived with her sometimes, but he wasn’t around, and she didn’t know when he’d be back. She thought he might have gone to Arizona. She claimed not to know who the other guys were. She might have been telling the truth.”

  Singleton did the rotate-the-mug-with-his-hands thing again, then continued, “I discovered some information you should have. I’m sorry I didn’t find it out sooner, but my contacts with the police, as you know from Tuesday, aren’t what they used to be.” He sighed once more and gazed into his coffee cup for a few seconds.

  “What did you find out?”

  “A huge part of the reason the police gave no credence to the idea that Kyle was murdered, was because the rope he used came from the storage shed next to the mobile home he lived in. The step stool he stood on in his last moments came from the neighbor’s storage space. He set out that night to commit suicide. I’m sorry. The suspicions of an old man have caused a lot of people grief.” He looked at my banged up face. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What about his bike? How could he have carried the step stool on that? And why wasn’t the bike found near the body?”

  Singleton shrugged. “He could have carried the rope coiled around his neck. Maybe he balanced the stool on the handlebars. It wasn’t that big, didn’t have to be. Only had to be tall enough so his feet wouldn’t touch the ground when he kicked it away.” He paused and thought a moment. “I don’t know why the bike wouldn’t be near the body.”

  “Why throw his bike in the canal?” I asked. “That doesn’t make sense. Why not ride it all the way to where he committed suicide?”

  “Could be any number of reasons. Maybe he didn’t even ride his bike that night. Maybe it had been in the canal for weeks. Maybe he was close enough. He probably had the tree picked out, everything planned. Wasn’t the tree they found him hanging from the closest to where they found his bike? Maybe carrying the step stool on the bike got too cumbersome, and he decided to walk the rest of the way.”

  “Why throw the bike into the canal?” I reiterated. “Why not just leave it on the way? Or take the bike until he got in between the trees where it would be too difficult with the ground being all sandy and rutted?”

  “I don’t know,” Singleton said, “but the preponderance of evidence is against you. He was on his way to kill himself.”

  “What about the footprints and markings you found in the orange groves? And the stuffed animal? He wouldn’t have left it out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Who knows what any one person is thinking when they are on their way to kill themselves? It’s possible to raise objections, but each one has a reasonable explanation, and I’ve already caused too much grief over this as it is.”

  “If the police thought it was suicide, why did they question the teachers?”

  “Routine,” Singleton answered, “they didn’t ask any of the students back then, did they?”

  “If they did, the rumor would have been all over the school, but it wouldn’t have done any good to talk to any of the kids. Nobody knew Kyle. Nobody really cared if he lived or died, and that’s no
t right.”

  “That’s sad,” Singleton agreed, “but there isn’t anything you can do about it. Kyle wanted to end it all.”

  “Then why did they question the kids today?” I asked.

  “Because contrary to what you see on television, cop work is actually pretty boring. You follow up leads. We gave them a lead. The two detectives I introduced you to are not incompetent. Short tempered maybe, mean some might say. Others would call that realistic in the face of the crap they have to put up with. The attack on you and the other stuff might have had a relation to the crime. They don’t believe in coincidences. Maybe they found out something today from the kids at school. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t questioned you again. You’re a logical suspect.”

  “Huh?”

  “Too interested. It’s like Jessica Fletcher.”

  “The old woman detective on reruns?”

  “Yeah, her. In reality, she’d have been high on the suspect list every time. The cops get suspicious about the ones that are too interested, and I’m the one that brought you to them. I screwed up.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  He looked me square in the eyes and said, “I know. You’re a good guy.”

  We both sipped from our drinks.

  “It’s not right,” I said. “Somebody should care that he died.”

  “If you really care,” Singleton said, “you could go to the funeral home for the wake. You’d probably be safe there.”

  I thought for a minute. “I’ll have to stop in before I go home. I doubt if my parents would give me permission.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Thursday 4:30 P.M.

  The newspaper said the funeral home was in Rubidoux. I followed University Avenue northwest past Mount Rubidoux. Once the road crosses the Santa Ana River, it turns into Mission Boulevard. The funeral home was on Mission just past the local Burrito Palace Drive In.

  The parking lot had a scattering of cars. It was a little before six. The paper had said visitation was until nine.