Sketchy Behavior

by Erynn Mangum

  He looked at the clock on the oven and sighed. “It’s late for lunch. I’m so sorry about all this, Kate.”

  Another shrug. “I’m the one who had to make the pot roast reference at the press conference.”

  “If it’s any consolation, it was a really funny reference,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

  I spread a thin layer of mustard on the bread and stacked on the turkey, lettuce, and cheese. “I thought so too.”

  “We will find him, you know,” he said in a quiet voice. “And everything will go back to normal for you.”

  Funny how it had only been two weeks and I could barely remember what normal looked like for me.

  Justin rang my doorbell at seven o’clock the next morning. I hadn’t slept more than about two hours Sunday night thanks to more nightmares, so I was up, showered, and reading The Grapes of Wrath, since we had to have it finished by the end of the school year.

  Which was in almost six months. Better to get a head start on it now.

  I was so bored I was scaring myself.

  DJ opened the door and escorted Justin into the family room. “Morning, Kate,” Justin said, looking all awake and refreshed after what could only have been a great night’s sleep.

  He looked around my living room. I was slumped on the sofa, eyes bleary. DJ had black circles so thick under his eyes that he looked like he could have been playing on a football team. Detective Masterson was rubbing a three-day-old beard, and Mom and Dad were silently eating breakfast, staring at the table.

  “Lively bunch today,” Justin said to me.

  I rubbed my eyes. “It was a long day yesterday.”

  He nodded. “I heard about that. Someone left a package on your doorstep? What was it? Was it a bomb or something?”

  “No. It was a pot roast.”

  He was quiet for a minute, staring at me. Finally he cleared his throat. “Maybe I’m missing something, but I actually like pot roast, and I’m not sure why someone leaving one of those would cause so much sleepiness today.” His eyes widened. “Unless the pot roast was drugged or something.”

  I think that Justin has watched too many crime shows on TV.

  Either that or read too many Hardy Boys books as a kid.

  “We didn’t eat it,” I said. “I made a comment about how I hope John X is enjoying his prison pot roast at the press conference, and then one showed up on my doorstep.”

  DJ started clearing his throat, and I guessed I’d talked too much. “But anyway,” I said offhandedly, like it was no big deal and we were just all completely zombied-out for no reason at all. I grabbed my stack of papers for him. “Here’s my homework. Thanks again for doing this, Justin.”

  He tucked the papers into his backpack. “Sure, no problem. You positive you don’t want to come to school today? I came here a few minutes early to try and talk you into it.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I’m putting myself under house arrest until this guy is caught and happily eating his share of the prison pot roast.”

  Justin quirked his head. “Do they even serve pot roast in prison? I mean, I’m no expert, but I’ve seen a few of those documentary things they show on TV about life in the slammer, and I’ve never seen anyone eating a pot roast.” He shrugged. “But then again, I don’t think I’ve ever really seen anyone eating. I think that show likes to only show the fight scenes.”

  Must have been the same documentary I’d watched before. We both just looked over at Detective Masterson, who was skimming the paper through red-rimmed, sleep-deprived eyes.

  He looked up at us after a few seconds. “What?” he asked.

  “Do they serve pot roast in prison?” I asked. I’d asked DJ before and he hadn’t been sure.

  Detective Masterson shrugged. “You’d need to contact a warden with that question. But I can tell you that one of the times I was there they were serving meat loaf.” He rolled a shoulder. “I guess that’s almost like pot roast.”

  Except it’s much grosser.

  My mother hated meat loaf with a passion. I could only think of one time that we’d had meat loaf in this house, and it was when my grandfather died and some people from my dad’s work brought dinner for us.

  Mom said it was like the bologna of dinner meats. She said that someone out there must have not wanted to go grocery shopping that day so she just threw everything she had into a bowl, mixed it all together, and baked it, and unfortunately invented meat loaf.

  Mom could barely even stand to say the words. She called it “that horrendous meat product.”

  My dad, on the other hand, loved meat loaf. He said that my grandmother used to make it all the time for them for dinner when he was growing up. “It’s an amazing meal,” he told me one time after one of Mom’s tirades on it. “Cheesy, melty, juicy …” Then he’d just sighed and poked at the plain chicken breast on his plate.

  Justin shrugged. “Well, anyway. I know there aren’t kitchens in the jail cells, though, so how did John X get the pot roast over to you?”

  At the conclusion of yesterday’s cop invasion, they’d decided that there were two possible candidates for the cook who created the pot roast. One was the mysterious, hooded parade shooter, and the other was someone who had watched the press conference and thought it would be a way to end up on the news.

  I thought the second choice was just horrible. “Someone would do that?” I had asked.

  All of the police people just looked at each other and then shook their heads. “Every day,” someone said. “Fame is a powerful motivator, Kate.”

  Which was partially why they had concealed what the package was from the media. No use in giving the cook — if that really was his motive — a sense of satisfaction.

  “They aren’t sure yet,” I answered him. “And by the way, you can’t mention that it was a pot roast to anyone else, okay?” Not like I had to worry too much about that. He didn’t talk to anyone at school.

  He nodded. “I won’t. That’s pretty weird though.” He zipped his backpack shut and squinted at the clock over our mantel. “Guess I need to get going. Have a good day, Kate.”

  “Thanks again, Justin.”

  “I’ll be back around two thirty or so.”

  He left.

  Sometimes it still weirded me out how much we talked now.

  Mom came into the living room as Justin left. She looked exhausted, and she was massaging the sides of her forehead. “Got your homework taken care of?”

  I nodded. “Sure you can’t stay home today, Mom?” Surely she needed a break.

  She shook her head. “I wish I could, Kate. I know I’m completely booked back-to-back this morning. I’m going to check my schedule though. If I don’t have very many appointments this afternoon I might have Madge move them all to next week instead and just come home early.” She disappeared into her room to finish getting ready.

  She and Dad both left at the same time. “Be careful,” Dad said.

  “Pay attention,” Mom said.

  “Don’t answer the door,” Dad said.

  “But please answer the phone,” Mom said.

  “Stay inside and lock the doors,” Dad said.

  “Bye guys,” I said.

  They both left. I sat back down on the couch and pulled over The Grapes of Wrath again, but I didn’t feel like reading anymore. All the words were starting to blur in front of me.

  So I leaned my head back against the cushion, pulled my feet up next to me, and turned on the TV.

  Almost eight o’clock on a weekday morning. I flipped through the channels and settled on an old I Love Lucy rerun. Lucy was yet again trying to get Ricky to let her into show business, and I half wondered what my life would be like if I married a Cuban bongo player.

  Probably louder. Definitely louder than my life was right now. Detective Masterson was still quietly flipping through the paper, and I think DJ had decided he was going to try and get in a power nap because he just wasn’t feeling very alert. Lolly was lounging on the floor,
licking a rawhide bone. She never chewed them, she just licked them.

  The show ended and another episode started. I curled up tighter and moved my head to the armrest.

  My eyelids felt heavy. And my eyes felt completely dry, like I might need to invest in a humidifier soon.

  I blinked to moisten them, but then just kept my eyes closed because it felt good.

  The doorbell was ringing. The doorbell was ringing, and no one was going to answer it. So I walked over and opened the door.

  John X stood there holding a fork in one hand and a spoon in the other. “I thought I’d join you for some meat loaf,” he said in a deep, bass voice. A man in a hooded sweatshirt came up behind him, also holding utensils.

  “I don’t have any meat loaf,” I told him.

  “It’s okay. We’ll make some. I have a great recipe from my great-grandmother,” John X said, walking into my house and into the kitchen, where a few bowls were already laid out on the counter.

  “Let’s see,” he said, setting his fork and spoon down and rubbing his chin. “We need meat and a loaf of bread.”

  The man in the hooded sweatshirt got the bread for John X from the pantry. He didn’t say anything. I looked at him and he smiled politely, but he still didn’t say anything.

  John X was looking at me. “Where’s the meat?”

  I opened the freezer and there was only frozen rawhide bones in there. “We don’t have any,” I said. “My mom hasn’t been grocery shopping in a while.”

  John X looked around the kitchen for a few minutes. “Well, then. Do you have a dog?”

  I nodded.

  “I guess we found our meat then. Go ahead and call the dog in here.” John X rolled up his sleeves and motioned to the hooded man. “We’ll need your help too. Sometimes dogs can get a bit hard to skin.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to use Lolly.”

  “You just said you don’t have any other meat,” John X in a duh tone of voice. “We have to use the dog.”

  “No, we don’t. We can go to the store.”

  The hooded man started to look impatient.

  “Look, just call the dog in here,” John X snapped. “Call the dog or we’ll use you instead.”

  I started crying. “Why can’t we just go out to eat?” I asked. “Why do we have to eat Lolly or me?”

  “That’s it,” John X said, grabbing my arm. “Get a knife,” he instructed the hooded man. “We’ll use her leg. She’s got more meat there than anywhere else.”

  I started screaming and tried to run, but John X had a firm grip on my arms.

  “Kate,” he said sharply over my screams. “Kate!”

  I screamed all the louder.

  “Kate!”

  Suddenly, I was being jerked up and shaken. I blinked awake. Detective Masterson was gripping me by both arms, shaking me and yelling, “Kate! Kate!”

  The room started to settle into place. The Price Is Right was on the TV. Lolly was licking my toes.

  Detective Masterson looked scared. He set me down on the couch and exhaled, rubbing his hands together.

  I was shaking uncontrollably and tears were pouring down my face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, sitting down beside me and rubbing my shoulders.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You started screaming. You were sleeping, and you just started screaming.” He shook his head. “Then you wouldn’t snap out of it.” He looked over at me. “Are you okay?”

  I sniffed and tried to stop the torrent of tears. “He wanted to make meat loaf using me,” I hiccupped.

  “John X?” Detective Masterson asked quietly.

  I nodded, lifting a shaking hand to wipe my cheeks. Lolly was now laying on my feet.

  Detective Masterson sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Well, that wouldn’t have been too tasty,” he said, smiling shortly. “You’re kind of skin and bones, Kate.”

  “He was going to use my leg.”

  “That makes more sense.” He smiled again at me and took a deep breath. “Sheesh, kid. You scared the daylights out of me.”

  I looked around. “Where’s DJ?”

  The detective brushed a hand nonchalantly. “That guy could sleep through a root canal. I’m worried about you. Kate, I don’t think you should take the sketch artist job.”

  I got the tears to stop and rubbed my cheeks. “Why?”

  “Look at you. You can’t sleep, you hardly eat anything anymore. You won’t go to school.” He shrugged. “You are extremely talented, and we’ll be losing a huge asset to the team, but you can’t handle this.”

  Now I just sounded weak. There were hundreds of people out there who made their living doing far more dangerous things than criminal sketches. You never heard of any of them having nervous breakdowns.

  I’d never had a nervous breakdown, but I wondered if the not sleeping and hardly being able to eat was part of one.

  Mom would probably know the answer to that.

  Not that I would ask her.

  That would be about as bright as giving Allison Northing a megaphone for Christmas. No good could come from it. Sort of like when Grandma Carter got my dad the Complete Guide to Engineer Jokes, Riddles, and Slap-Knees for his birthday about five years ago. He still drags that thing out every so often.

  Mom and I still don’t find any of the jokes very slap-kneeish. And what’s with that word anyway? I wasn’t aware that you could just randomly turn verbs into nouns.

  “I’ll keep thinking on it,” I said to Detective Masterson. “Maybe I won’t take the job, maybe I will. We’ll just have to see.”

  He gave me a long look before nodding. “Okay.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE WEEK WENT BY VERY SLOWLY. JUSTIN CAME EVERY morning at seven to pick up my homework and every afternoon before three to deliver it. Most of the days he didn’t stay and chat.

  There had been no new leads on the parade shooter. The cops still had a couple of guys watching the grocery store in Ballwin, but no one resembling the man at the parade had been there in the last two weeks.

  Detective Masterson and DJ tried to be encouraging, but I could tell that they were starting to get sick of this.

  Mom and Dad went to work exhausted and came home even more exhausted.

  And I tried every method possible to get myself to go to sleep at night. I had Detective Masterson pick up some lavender-scented lotion at the store and tried using it before I went to bed to get me to be more tired. I tried taking that cough medicine that knocks you out, even though I wasn’t coughing.

  None of those seemed to work. I tossed and turned from the moment I got into bed Thursday night. I looked at the clock at one point and it was three fifteen in the morning.

  I’d probably slept a whole two hours.

  Finally, I gave up. I turned on my bedside lamp and dragged my sketchpad over. I’d been working on one sketch all week, and I was nearly done.

  The red-haired man with a buzz cut smiled back at me from the pad, and I started working on his chin.

  It was DJ.

  I don’t think he knew that I was sketching him. Next up was Detective Masterson and then probably my parents.

  I had nothing better to do.

  At three forty-five, I finished DJ’s chin and pushed the pad back a few inches to get a better look at it. It looked just like him, and I was rather proud of my efforts.

  I yawned and tried to decide if I could fall asleep now. Sometimes just getting a little bit of energy out seemed to help.

  I tried shutting my eyes, but sleep didn’t come. My brain was still working overtime. I wondered if John X’s friend had somehow gotten the tip that so many people had seen him at the grocery store in Ballwin, and he’d moved on to a super Walmart or something.

  Some of those had self-checkouts. You could go in, get your groceries, pay for them, and leave without anyone so much as even noticing you.

  We had gotten some reports back on the pot roast. There was absolutely nothi
ng wrong with it. It apparently had been cooked to perfection, according to some of the people down at the lab. And the note that came with it?

  Zero fingerprints, zero DNA.

  Not that it was a shock, but it was a little sad. I was hoping that whoever had cooked the pot roast had lost a hair in there or something.

  Maybe our hooded sweatshirt friend also wore hairnets occasionally.

  I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep. I started drawing another head and shoulders shot.

  Detective Masterson really did look an awful lot like Orlando Bloom. Same nose, same jawline. The only thing that was different was his hair and the slightly tougher quality in his bone structure.

  I worked on the sketch until six thirty and then took a quick shower. I blow-dried my hair, added some cover-up over the increasingly dark circles under my eyes, and pulled on a pair of worn jeans and a blue T-shirt.

  Justin was almost annoyingly punctual. I was just walking into the living room when he rang the doorbell. DJ answered it, yawning. “Hey,” he said, letting Justin in.

  “Morning, guys,” Justin said. He joined DJ in yawning. “Thankfully it’s Friday, right?”

  I nodded, but really, my weekends weren’t that much different than my weekdays now. Everything just kind of blended together. I handed him my stack of homework. “Thanks again, Justin.” We were starting to sound like a broken record. He came in, said good morning, I said thank you, he said no problem, and then he left.

  “No problem,” he said, shoving my homework into his backpack.

  Then it was his cue to leave. Instead, he sat down on the sofa.

  DJ and I exchanged looks, because this was not according to schedule. Then DJ cleared his throat and left the room.

  Justin looked at me. “So, have they found that guy from the parade yet?”

  No offense to Justin, but you’d think this would have been fairly obvious.

  “Um. No. Not yet,” I said. I was still standing by the recliner, just looking at him, waiting for him to leave before I started my new morning routine. Happy Days, a show I’d never seen before but was apparently about life in the 50s but was made in the 70s, came on at seven. Then I watched Friends, watched a guy named Bobby Flay do cooking competitions, and napped during I Love Lucy.