Dead Silence

by Norah McClintock

  “I didn’t see that part,” Kim said. “Someone told me after.”

  “You should have done something,” I said. “Someone should have done something.”

  “Mike—” Rebecca said.

  But I wasn’t listening anymore. I was walking away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Riel was home when I got back from school.

  “Dave is on his way over,” he said. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Dave Jones?”

  “Yeah. He caught the case.”

  He meant Sal’s case. Dave Jones was a homicide detective.

  “Why does he want to talk to me?” I said. “I wasn’t there.”

  “You were Sal’s best friend. Maybe there’s something you can tell him.”

  “Yeah, there’s something I can tell him,” I said. “It was probably Teddy or one of his friends who did it. He should talk to Teddy.”

  “I know this is hard, Mike. But do me a favor. Don’t jump to conclusions. Talk to Dave. Answer his questions. Let him do his job.”

  Dave Jones showed up at the house fifteen minutes later. Besides being a Homicide detective, he was a friend of Riel’s. I knew him, but I didn’t know him that well, even though he had been best man at Riel’s wedding. He and Riel worked out at the same gym, and they sometimes went to ball games together. He came by the house every now and then, but not as often as he used to before Riel got married and before he went back to being a cop.

  Riel showed him into the kitchen and offered him a cup of coffee, which he accepted. While he was still in the room, Dave told me all the regular stuff that cops have to tell kids: that he wanted to ask me some questions but that I didn’t have to answer them if I didn’t want to, that I could have Riel stay while we talked—it was my right. I told him I didn’t need Riel there. I didn’t want to see the disapproving look on Riel’s face again when I told Dave what I had heard. Riel excused himself and went into the other room.

  “I’m sorry about Sal,” Dave said. “John tells me the two of you were really close.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.

  Dave pulled a pen and a notebook from his jacket pocket.

  “When was the last time you spoke to Sal?” he said.

  “What?” What did that have to do with anything? “It was Teddy,” I said. “Have you talked to him?”

  “Teddy?”

  “Teddy Carlin.”

  “Are you telling me that Teddy Carlin killed Sal?”

  “Teddy or one of his loser friends. Or maybe a bunch of them. I wouldn’t put it past those guys to swarm Sal. They’re like that. They’ve done it to other kids.” I was thinking about Staci when I said that. “They all hang out down at that construction site where the racetrack used to be.” There were No Trespassing signs posted everywhere down there, but they didn’t keep Teddy out. He and his friends liked to fool around in the half-built houses at night when no one could see them. “I also heard—”

  Dave interrupted me.

  “Mike, why would Teddy want to hurt Sal?”

  I noticed he said hurt instead of kill.

  “Because of Staci.” I told him Staci’s full name, but he didn’t write it down, so I guessed he already knew about her. Maybe he had talked to her. “He already shoved Sal around once because of her.”

  “You witnessed this, Mike?”

  “I sure did.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about that?”

  “Staci used to go out with Teddy. But they broke up at the end of the summer. Teddy’s been giving her a hard time ever since. So have the kids he hangs out with.”

  That’s the thing that had made me think that Staci didn’t deserve the treatment she was getting. It would have been one thing if Teddy was giving her a hard time. After all, she had dumped him. But it wasn’t just Teddy. All the kids who hung out with him were in on it, and they could be pretty mean. I found that out at the beginning of last week. I’d gone over to Gerrard Square at lunchtime. I was by myself. Sal had gone to the library to do his homework because he was supposed to be at work that night until midnight. Rebecca was at band practice. I went to the Zellers there to pick up some school stuff. On my way back, I saw a bunch of kids giving someone a hard time. The kids turned out to be all girls. The person they were giving a hard time was Staci.

  When guys give other guys a hard time, they usually get physical, and it can be scary if you’re the target. People think girls are different, but these ones sure weren’t. They were all around Staci. The one who seemed to be leading it all was Sara D. According to Rebecca (Rebecca hears all the gossip that goes around school), Sara D. wanted to go with Teddy, but so far Teddy hadn’t asked her out. Maybe that’s why she was giving Staci such a hard time that day. Maybe she thought she could score points with Teddy.

  I saw Staci in the middle of all those girls. Her face was red. I think she was crying. She tried to push past them, but Sara D. pushed her back. A couple of other girls shoved her too. I saw them. I admit it. But a lot of other people saw them, too. There were kids from my school walking by—on both sides of the street. I felt sorry for Staci. But, like I said, I didn’t know her, and the girls who were giving her a hard time were all girls that she used to hang out with when she was with Teddy, so I told myself it was none of my business. Later, I mentioned what had happened to Sal. I said, “Those girls were giving her a really hard time. You wouldn’t believe it. Someone should have said something.” Sal just gave me a funny look. I didn’t figure that out until a couple of days later. That was the day I wanted to tell Dave about now—not the day when I should have done something but didn’t.

  “It happened on Monday,” I said.

  “You mean, just this past Monday?”

  I nodded. “I went up to my locker after school. Sal’s locker is down the hall from mine.” Because he asked me, I told him which floor and which hallway our lockers were on. I told him our locker numbers, too. Maybe he wanted to check if anyone else had seen what I was going to describe. “When I got there, Teddy was shoving Sal around.”

  “What do you mean, shoving him around?”

  “He was at Sal’s locker. He was standing right up close to Sal, and he was jabbing him in the shoulder like this while he talked to him.” I showed Dave what I meant. “Other people saw it, too,” I said. Most of them were Teddy’s friends, except for me—and Alex, who had showed up about the same time I did, but from a different direction.

  “What were they talking about?” Dave said.

  “Teddy was telling Sal to stay away from Staci. He told Sal that if he didn’t stay away from her, he’d be sorry.”

  “Why was he telling him that? I thought you said Teddy and Staci broke up.”

  “Staci was the one who broke up with Teddy. I guess Teddy didn’t like getting dumped. He’s always giving her a hard time about it. I heard the same thing happened today.”

  “You heard?”

  I told him what Kim had said and, because he asked, I gave him Kim’s last name. I was pretty sure he was going to want to talk to her.

  “Did anything else happen at Sal’s locker on Monday?” Dave said.

  “Anything else?”

  “Did Teddy hit Sal? Did he say anything else? Did Sal say anything? Did they get into a real fight?”

  “No,” I said. “Teddy jabbed Sal and told him if he didn’t leave Staci alone, he’d be sorry.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then Sal walked away.”

  Dave didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t you get it?” I said. “Teddy didn’t want Sal anywhere near Staci. So when Sal went to help Staci, Teddy got mad. Sal was afraid of him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I told him what had happened the day before, when Sal and I had come out of school at lunchtime and Sal had seen Teddy and his face had turned white.

  “It was Teddy who did it,” I said. “It has to be.”

  “Did anyone els
e see what you just described, Mike?”

  I gave him the names of everyone I could remember.

  “But they’re all tight with Teddy. They might not tell you anything,” I said. “You should try Alex.”

  “What’s Alex’s last name?”

  “Farmington,” I said. “I don’t know if he saw the whole thing. But he saw at least part of it. He might have heard something, too.”

  I wasn’t sure if Dave would think Alex was a reliable witness. But he was in school, so he wasn’t stupid. If he saw or heard anything, he would probably remember it.

  “Might have?” Dave said.

  “Well, I didn’t talk to him about it. I just noticed he was there.”

  Dave wrote down Alex’s name. Then he said, “What about you, Mike?”

  “What about me?”

  “John tells me that you’ve known Sal for a long time.”

  “Since elementary school. We used to hang out together all the time, me and Sal and Vin.”

  “Vin?”

  “Vincent Taglia,” I said. I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. It was either from what happened to Robbie Ducharme or what happened at the convenience store. Maybe it was both.

  “You say you used to hang out together. You don’t anymore?”

  “Not the three of us,” I said. Vin got in some trouble last fall, and he was in detention for a while. Neither Sal or I saw him for months. Then, after he got out, he got in trouble again. I hadn’t seen him since last spring. Neither had Sal. Sal didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. “Sal and I see each other all the time. Vin goes to a different school. And, anyway, since what happened at the convenience store”—a man and a woman had been shot—“Sal said he was through with Vin.”

  Dave made a note of that. I wondered if he was going to want to talk to Vin now. “When was the last time you spoke to Sal?”

  “Last night. He phoned me.”

  “Any special reason?”

  Why was he asking that?

  “No,” I said. I tried to sit still and not squirm. What Sal had said or what I had said, which wasn’t much, wasn’t going to help the cops find out who had stabbed Sal. It had nothing to do with that. “We just talked about stuff.”

  Dave looked at me across the table. “What kind of stuff?”

  “School stuff. Nothing important.” At least, nothing that was important to anyone but me.

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Yesterday at school.”

  “You didn’t see him today?”

  “No.”

  “I understand that you and Sal usually had lunch together.”

  “We did if he wasn’t tutoring.”

  “Was he tutoring today?”

  “No.”

  “But you didn’t have lunch with him today?”

  “No.”

  “Any particular reason why not?”

  Cops. They reminded me of that song on Sesame Street—one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong. They were always looking for what was different, always had an eye out for the broken pattern.

  “I had to come home to get something,” I said. Then, because he was being such a cop now and because cops liked to check every single detail, I added, “A textbook. History.”

  “Was there any trouble between you and Sal?” he said.

  “What?” I couldn’t believe he was asking me that. “He’s my friend!”

  “Do you remember what time it was when you got home at lunchtime today, Mike?”

  “I don’t know. Ten after twelve, maybe quarter after. Why are you—?”

  “Anyone see you come into the house?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. There were people on the street, but—”

  “You remember anyone in particular?”

  “No. Just people. Some parents walking little kids.”

  “What time did you leave the house to go back to school?”

  I was getting tense now. “Maybe twenty minutes after that. I had a sandwich first.”

  “Anybody see you leave the house?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did you do after you left the house?”

  “I went back to school.”

  “Did you make any stops on the way?”

  “No.”

  “Did you run into anyone you know on the way? Anyone who can say where you were at the time Sal died?”

  “No,” I said again. I was mad now. “You’re acting like you think I did it.”

  “I’m just asking questions, Mike. It’s my job.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  He looked at me.

  “Did Sal ever say anything to you about any problems he might have been having with anyone? Was anyone giving him a hard time?”

  “Besides Teddy, you mean?”

  “Yes. Besides Teddy.”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever tell you that anyone had threatened him, anything like that?”

  “No. Just Teddy.”

  Then he dropped a bomb on me.

  “Mike, did you ever see Sal with a weapon of any kind?” he said.

  “What?”

  He repeated the question, as if it were no big deal, as if it were the kind of question that people asked each other all the time, the way they ask, How are you?

  “What kind of weapon?”

  “Any kind of weapon.” In other words, he wasn’t going to tell me.

  “No,” I said.

  “Did he ever mention anything to you about owning a weapon?”

  “No,” I said again. “Sal’s not that kind of person. Why?”

  He didn’t answer that question either. Cops never tell you anything. Riel says it’s because they don’t want to influence the people they’re interviewing in any way and, also, they don’t want regular people to find out exactly what they know and what they don’t know until they have their case together.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me about Sal?” he said, still in that neutral tone.

  I shook my head. He closed his notebook.

  “Okay, Mike,” he said. “I’ll let you know if I need to talk to you again.”

  After he left, Riel came into the kitchen. He must have seen how I was feeling, because he said, “He’s a good cop, Mike. He knows what he’s doing.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The morning after Sal died, I got out of bed, as usual. I got dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen, as usual. And, as usual, Riel had already been up for ages. He was sitting at the kitchen table, working on a mug of black coffee, and he had the newspaper open in front of him. Something that wasn’t usual: I felt like punching my fist through a wall. Because it wasn’t right that I was doing the all the regular things as if nothing had happened, when something had happened. Someone had killed Sal. And now Riel was sitting there with his coffee and reading about it in the newspaper. The article wasn’t long. It didn’t say much except who Sal was and where he went to school and where he was killed. And that he’d been found lying in that alley by a hairdresser who had stepped out back to have a smoke.

  “Are you okay, Mike?” Riel said.

  What kind of question was that?

  “You look like you didn’t get much sleep,” he said.

  He had that right.

  Something else that wasn’t usual:

  “Are you hungry?” Riel said, getting up from the table and going to the cupboard. “You want something to eat? How about some cornflakes?”

  Other than the first couple of days I had lived with him, Riel never got my breakfast for me. If I wanted juice or milk, I knew where to find it. Same with cereal and toast.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “You have to eat, Mike.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Riel hesitated, one hand on the fridge door, trying to decide how much to push. Finally he sat down at the table again.

  “You’re not worki
ng today, are you?”

  I had a part-time job stocking shelves at a grocery store, not the small store where I used to work, but a big supermarket that was open 24/7.

  “No,” I said.

  “When I get home, we should go and see Sal’s parents. Okay?”

  Sal’s parents. Boy, I wasn’t looking forward to that. Sal was an only child. I couldn’t begin to imagine how his mother and father were feeling right now.

  Riel glanced at his watch. “Look, I’m sorry. If I could stay, I would. But I have to get to work.” He gulped down the last of his coffee and stood up. “Get yourself something to eat, Mike. It’ll make you feel better. And go to school, okay? They’ll probably have some grief counselors there. If you want to, you can talk to someone.”

  Talk to a stranger? About Sal? What was I supposed to say about Sal to someone who didn’t even know him?

  I went to school. Rebecca was waiting for me at my locker. She hugged me. “Did they find out who did it yet?” she said.

  “They don’t even know why it happened.”

  “I heard the cops talked to Teddy.”

  Well, finally. “Did they arrest him?”

  “I don’t think so. I saw him this morning when I got to school.”

  What was going on? Why was Teddy still walking around? Why didn’t they have him locked up somewhere? Why hadn’t they—

  The bell rang.

  “Mike?” Rebecca said gently. The look on her face told me she was going to say something that she didn’t want to. I felt myself tense up. “Don’t get mad,” she said. “But I was wondering about my history book.”

  Right.

  I opened my locker and took out her book. I felt like ripping it into a million pieces. Stupid book! I handed it to her without a word. But I didn’t look at her because I had spotted Teddy at the end of the hall. Seeing him there was bad enough. What made it worse was that he was talking to Miranda. She was supposed to be a friend of Sal’s. What was she doing with Teddy? Didn’t she realize what he had done? Wait a minute—maybe she did. Maybe that’s what she was talking about, because Teddy started to shake his head, like he was denying something. Miranda kept talking to him, and Teddy kept shaking his head. If I’d been Miranda, I would have walked away by now. I wouldn’t have wasted my breath on him.