All For One

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  All For One

  A Thriller

  Ryne Douglas Pearson

  Published By Schmuck & Underwood

  © 2010 Ryne Douglas Pearson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the author, except for brief passages used for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Visit the author’s website:

  http://www.rynedouglaspearson.com

  Follow the author on Twitter:

  twitter.com/rynedp

  Author’s Note

  This is a second novel that I wrote between others that were published in the nineties. Once again, it was ‘out of my genre’, and fell by the wayside as I wrote another novel with FBI agents and serial killers and shootouts for my publisher. As such, it has existed only on my hard drive.

  Until now.

  The landscape you will notice is mid-nineties, with an appalling lack of cell phones and filled with strange things called ‘calling cards’. I could have updated the text and excised the past, filling the holes with pop culture references that would resonate today. But I don’t want to. This story exists in that time. And so it will stay there.

  Ryne Douglas Pearson, September 2010

  Table Of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  Thirty Three

  Thirty Four

  Thirty Five

  Thirty Six

  Thirty Seven

  Thirty Eight

  Thirty Nine

  Forty

  Forty One

  Forty Two

  Forty Three

  Forty Four

  Forty Five

  Forty Six

  Forty Seven

  Forty Eight

  Forty Nine

  Fifty

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Prologue

  One Dead Bully

  One

  Joey Travers, president of Miss Austin’s sixth grade class at Windhaven Elementary School, stood from where he had knelt next to Guy Edmond. The blood-smeared bat was in his hands.

  Four sets of eyes followed his rise, all but Elena Markworth’s, her usually reluctant gaze fixed fully upon the crimson pool spreading on the asphalt beneath her tormentor’s creviced head.

  “If we stick to the story,” Joey began, fingers curling around the slick wood handle, tips pressing hard on the grain, “then no one will get into trouble. Everything will be all right. Just like it used to be.”

  The stares did not doubt him. They wanted to believe him.

  “You’re sure he didn’t see who it was?” Bryce Hool asked, his glasses sliding low on his nose. He pushed them up with a single finger.

  “I’m sure,” Joey confirmed, and held the bat out to the class treasurer. “Here.”

  “There’s blood on it,” Bryce protested.

  “Only at the top,” Joey assured him, and Bryce took the bat and squeezed his hands where Joey had.

  Michael Prentiss, the class sergeant at arms, watched Bryce turn toward him, bat held tip to the gray morning sky, in front as a knight might present his sword reverently to a king.

  “Take it,” Joey prompted.

  Michael did, grasping the Louisville Slugger as he did in little league, testing its heft, staring at the sweet spot stained the color of a cherry Slurpee. After a moment his eyes drifted down to the bully lying outside their classroom, and over the one visible hand which reached for the mouth unnaturally, as a baby might when trying to suck its fingers. He knew that hand, and the one he could not see, mostly as fists, and he remembered the black eye, and going to the principal’s office because he had fought back, and he thought how glad he was that Guy Edmond was not going to be able to use those fists this day, those sharp-knuckled pile drivers that belonged at Bidwell Junior High and not in Miss Austin’s class.

  Guy deserved a lot. A whole lot, Michael truly believed. But something made him wonder if he deserved what had just been dealt him. He thought on that and flexed his fingers on the bat, the backward ‘S’ shape of Guy Edmond’s still and frightful form holding him rapt, and for a reason he did not quite understand his lower lip grew prominent and began to quiver. An uncomfortable warmth drained over his eyes.

  “Here,” Michael said, shoving the bat at Paula Jean Allenton and turning away.

  “All right,” Paula Jean, PJ to all but her mother, took the bat lest it be dropped in Michael’s haste to be rid of it, and added her own fingerprints to the handle. She studied it up and down, holding it far from her body as the early fall breeze picked up her loose brown hair and swept it across her face. “What about higher?”

  “Higher where?” Joey asked as he tucked the loose tail of his shirt back into his pants.

  “On the bat. Should we touch it where it gets fatter?”

  Joey’s trim, gonna-be-a-lady-killer-someday face shook slightly. “Where you’ve got it is fine.”

  PJ, the class vice-president, nodded and put force into her grip, like she did when her younger brother got stupid and needed a pinch to remind him who was the boss of the bedroom they shared. Then, like Michael, she looked at Guy Edmond’s motionless, lanky body, but she did not recoil, and she did not let emotion overwhelm her. No, she thought instead of how much she would like to lift the bat high in the air and bring it down onto Guy’s back, again and again, beating him until she could hear bones snap, until she felt like she’d gotten some payback for all that he’d done to her and her friends. He’d almost ruined everything in Miss Austin’s class, the best class PJ had ever been in. The best class any of them had ever been in.

  But they weren’t going to let him ruin anything ever again.

  “Chocolate chip,” PJ muttered quietly as her stare simmered on Guy. “Lemon pecan. Peanut but—”

  “PJ?” Joey said.

  Her eyes snapped up, her quiet mantra interrupted. “Yeah?”

  “You’re okay, right?”

  “I’m okay,” PJ answered, silently glad that he had asked. That meant he probably cared. Maybe even liked her. Maybe.

  “Jeff, your turn,” Joey said.

  Only one hand came up, the other held immobile against Jeff Bernstein’s chest in a cast of plaster and a blue sling. “My left hand still won’t open.”

  “Just use your right,” Joey said, and looked up and down the walkway that ran between the bungalows and Windhaven’s ivy-covered back fence. There was still no one in sight, but that would change when the bell that ended recess rang. He looked at his watch, a birthday gift his dad had sent from Florida. They had ten minutes. “Hurry.”

  Jeff, the class secretary, used all the strength of his off hand to take the bat from PJ, his face twisting into a grimace, pale fingers wrapping the handle. “It’s heavy.�
�

  As the bat began to teeter in Jeff’s hand, Joey looked to Elena. “Take the bat.”

  The shy brown eyes did not move, but one of Elena’s hands came up and wiped a moist spot from her cheek. She pulled the hand away, moving it into her seemingly frozen field of vision. A bright red streak cut a diagonal swath across her small palm.

  “PJ, clean it off her,” Joey said, and his vice president spit on a piece of tissue retrieved from the pocket of her jeans and wiped Elena’s hands first, then her face.

  “How’s that?” PJ asked.

  “Good,” Joey said after a cursory look. “Dry her hands.”

  PJ held both of Elena’s hands palms up and thought briefly, then guided them to the sides of the green skirt the nearly catatonic girl wore and rubbed them against the material until they were dry.

  Minding the puddling blood, Joey moved to where Elena stood against the rough stucco wall of the bungalow. He was taller than her by at least four inches, and bent slightly forward to see past the hair framing her downcast face. “Elena?”

  Short, erratic puffs of air tossed her chest out and pulled it back in a sob-like rhythm. But there were no tears. Her face was dry, as dry as her expression, as barren as her gaze.

  “You’ve got to do this,” Joey said, trying to keep a calm voice. “You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to hold the bat.”

  A visible bulge rolled slowly down Elena’s throat.

  “Don’t let him mess everything up,” Joey urged her, gently, though the dwindling time might change that very soon.

  “He picked on you more than any of us,” Bryce added.

  The bat began to tilt precariously in Jeff’s hand. “Someone take it.”

  Joey reached past Elena for the bat, but two hands clamped around its base before his. Two small hands suddenly filled with strength. When Joey let his grip go slack he swore he heard Elena’s knuckles cracking as her fingers kneaded the handle.

  “Elena?” PJ said, watching the wide eyes come up from Guy and settle upon the glorified stick.

  The quietness that walled Elena Markworth in normal times was reluctant to give back what it had seized in this very unusual time, but slowly she looked away from the bat to PJ and said, “Please don’t tell my father...”

  With Michael still turned away, Joey exchanged worried glances with the others before gingerly taking the bat from Elena. Her expression melted as the cool wood left her hands, eyes going half closed, noncommittal mouth sagging at the corners, and breaths slowing. She turned her palms face up, examined them through glistening eyes, and pressed both against her face as real sobs racked her entire body. She took a half step toward PJ and collapsed into the bigger girl’s arms.

  “Joey, she’s not going to hold up,” Jeff commented direly.

  “Yes she is!” PJ snapped back. Her arms held Elena close, head tucked sideways into the crook of her neck.

  “He... He...”

  “It’s all right,” PJ said, comforting Elena as the others watched, rubbing circles on her back, wondering if she was doing this right. It was what her mother did for her little brother when he scraped his knee, or got stung by a bee, or whenever he found some reason to bawl his eyes out over some silly little thing. But this was no silly little thing.

  Elena’s eyes flicked open and stared through tears at the body. “He...he...he...”

  The sputter of words collapsed into sobs once again before the revelation was complete, but they all knew what had happened. Knew without a doubt.

  Now all they had to do was forget.

  “Elena,” Joey said. “You’re going to do this, right?”

  “Joey...” PJ challenged protectively.

  “We’re running out of time,” Joey said.

  Bryce looked at his watch. “Six minutes.”

  With a swipe of his sleeve across his upper lip, Michael faced the group once again. “We gotta hurry.”

  “Elena?” Joey said again.

  “She can do it,” PJ answered for her.

  A cheer rose from the ball field on the opposite side of the building. Someone had just scored in kickball.

  “Joey?” Jeff said, nearly pleading. He could almost feel the rapid fire clang of the bell threatening. They all could.

  “You’re going to stick to the story,” Joey told Elena, confidence and question both in the statement. He was surprised and relieved when her tear-stained face concurred with a nod against PJ’s chest. “I knew you would.”

  PJ’s hand moved to Elena’s head and stroked her shiny brown hair. “He’s not going to hurt you anymore.”

  “Or anyone,” Jeff added. Beneath the cast his skin tingled in a pesky itch, all courtesy of their very own bully.

  Or anyone, Joey thought to himself, agreeing as one who knew what sort of hurt Guy Edmond could dish out. Knowing as only he could know. As only he would know.

  ‘All for one.’ Miss Austin’s favorite saying rang suddenly in Joey’s head for the second time in twenty minutes, earlier as a spark and now as a gentle shove to remind him that most of what had to be done still lay ahead. ‘All for one.’

  He looked to Jeff, then Michael, then Bryce, then to PJ, who clutched Elena tight like a favorite doll in danger of being lost. “We can do this.”

  Jeff glanced at each of his friends. “He’s right. We can.”

  “We’re just kids,” Joey reminded them. “They can’t do the same things to us that they could do to a grown-up. They can’t make us say anything. We just stick to the story and forget about everything else.”

  An odd little smile curled onto Jeff’s face. Meanness spiced the expression as he nodded and parroted, “We’re just kids. Who doesn’t believe a kid?”

  “All right.” Joey looked at the bat in his hands. It was time. “Bryce? You know what to do?”

  The class treasurer nodded and nervously checked his watch. “I’ve gotta go now if I’m gonna beat the bell.”

  “Go do it,” Joey said, and let the bat fall from his hands as Bryce sprinted off toward the office. The fat end thunked off the asphalt, then the handle, the whole bat ‘walking’ toward the body, settling into a roll after a second and coming to rest against Guy Edmond’s back. A wet, gurgling hiss escaped his lips and was lost with the breeze rustling fast through the ivy.

  * * *

  Veta Nelson, Windhaven’s school secretary, stood board-straight at the reception counter in the main office, nimble fingers alphabetizing the morning’s absence slips the same as they had every day during first recess for almost nineteen years.

  But somewhere in the T’s her fingers froze and her eyes came up, looking over bifocals that might have seemed pleasantly grandmotherly if not for the unmistakable fact that Veta Nelson was none too pleased by what she was hearing echo in from the main hallway. Feet, little feet, tapping on old tile. Tapping far too fast. Far, far too fast. Running.

  Running her way. A grin simmered on Veta’s aged mouth as she came around the counter and stepped into the hallway just as the inexcusably fast clomping of loosely tied sneakers began to slow for a turn. She put her hand out, ready to grab a fistful of shirt as the offender tried to speed by toward the stairs, but the offender instead ran straight into her as he tried to steer into the office.

  “Wait one minute, young man,” Veta Nelson said, pulling the small head away from her midriff and holding it in both hands to clearly identify the... “Bryce? Bryce Hool?”

  “Gu... Gu...” A gasping stammer was all Bryce could manage, and it was uncomfortably real. He’d run faster than he could ever remember running. His side stung. His chest ached. And, worst of all, Mrs. Nelson had a funny look on her face, like she already didn’t believe him...and he hadn’t even told a lie. He wondered if he’d have to.

  Veta bent a bit to eye the unlikely scofflaw severely. This nice young man? Running away with first prize in spelling a bee, yes. But running in the halls? Disregarding school rule number 1? “Bryce Hool, just what do you—”

  “Guy�
�s hurt,” Bryce interrupted, forcing the words out between gulps of air. His glasses were askew from the collision.

  “What guy?”

  “Guy... Guy Edmond,” Bryce panted.

  “Hurt?” There was one and only one excuse for running in the halls, Veta knew. One had better be running for help. “Hurt how?”

  Bryce fixed his glasses, sucked a breath of air, and said, “He’s hurt bad. His head’s bleeding.” With that Veta straightened so that Bryce now saw her eyes through the half lenses that made them look small, like dollops of chocolate on vanilla cookies. “And he’s not moving, Mrs. Nelson.”

  “Where is he?” Veta asked sharply.

  “Outside our room. By the side fence.”

  Veta loosed her grip on Bryce and turned back toward the office. The first person she saw was that day’s parent volunteer. “Judy! Get the nurse! Now! Tell her to bring her bag!”

  Judy, her own child a kindergartner, hesitated momentarily then sprang from a desk covered with files and disappeared into an adjoining room. Less than a minute later a painfully thin woman followed her into the office and around the counter to where Veta stood with Bryce.

  “What’s the ruckus?” the school nurse, Nan Jakowitz, asked.

  “Follow him,” Veta said, pointing to Bryce. “One of his classmates is bleeding.”

  “I think he’s dead,” Bryce told her.

  “I’m sure he’s not dead,” the nurse assured him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Blood is scary. It always looks worse than it is. Now show me where he is.”

  “I’ll get their teacher. Go, go,” Veta urged both adult and child, returning to the office as they rushed off, fast feet again sounding in the hall. Through the office she moved quickly, into the teacher’s lounge, where she had seen Bryce and Guy’s teacher go when first recess began. But the room and its sagging chairs were now empty. She was about to turn and leave when the muffled hiss of water running drew her eyes to the ladies’ room door just to her left. “Mary? Are you in there?”

  “Yes. I’ll be out in a—”

  Veta stepped close and touched the cold wood of the door. “Mary, one of your children is hurt.” First silence, then a rush of air being drawn in. A steadying breath, Veta could tell without having to see. And then the privacy latch clicking an instant before the door jerked inward.