by Lamar Giles
“We should think of a contingency plan. In case the flash drive is gone,” I said, already knowing it was.
That went on for a while, us saying the same things in different ways, never budging or offering improvements on anybody else’s idea. I liked it that way. Being unproductive gave me more time to think.
There had to be something that linked all the death and chaos and made sense of it. The why?
Money? Fear of imprisonment?
We were on our sixth my-idea-is-better-than-yours match when a thunderous door slam shook us all. “Dustin! Are you in here!?”
The mayor was home.
Dustin put on a brave face. Literally. His expression became a mix of terror and wrath. He touched his cheeks and forehead to compose himself. “Be cool, be cool,” he said, mostly to himself.
Reya whispered to me, “What do we do?”
Dustin answered, “Stay here, be quiet, and let me handle him. He likes to pop in, but never stays for long, not this early in the day. Be cool.”
I grabbed his arm as he was leaving. “Are you sure? We’ll come with. Strength in numbers.”
“No. Absolutely not. You’ll just make it worse.”
I let him go. It was his dad, he was better equipped. “You scream if anything goes down.”
He nodded, disappeared into the hall.
Reya stood in the center of the room, afraid to move, like one step in any direction might trigger another bomb. “Nick, we can’t stay here and do nothing.”
We could. That’s what Dustin told us to do, but I didn’t think it was smart. “We can’t trust the local cops,” I said, reluctantly admitting we were in over our heads, “but maybe the state police are an option.”
I crossed to Dustin’s desk, hesitated a moment as a memory of Carrey sitting in the chair came back to me. Pushing the thought aside, I sat, catching angry, unintelligible notes of Dustin and the mayor’s conversation.
Reya’s paralysis broke. She moved closer to the door. “It’s getting intense down there.”
Flipping up the screen on Dustin’s laptop, I saw a new email notification flash in the lower right-hand corner. A message from FuegoGirl@prworld. com with a subject line reading: IGNORE THIS . . .
I did. I opened the browser and searched for Virginia State Police. The website came up quickly. I clicked on it and was overwhelmed by the poor web design. Info, photos, and links bordered more stuff, like properties in a square around the Monopoly board. I could not find a phone number.
As I scanned, IGNORE THIS . . . popped in the corner three—four—more times. Dustin’s “conversation” with his dad grew in volume.
“Hurry, Nick,” Reya said, her phone drawn, ready to dial.
In the time she urged me along, two more messages from FuegoGirl appeared. In spite of the circumstances and the Virginia State Police’s frustrating website, my natural sarcasm broke through, and I thought, FireGirl should change her name to SPAMGirl.
I froze.
Fuego was one of the few Spanish words (besides profanity) that I knew. It meant fire. That was important. Not the word itself, but that it was Spanish. Why was it important? The notice flashed two more times. IGNORE THIS . . . , daring me to do the exact opposite.
I opened Dustin’s in-box.
Dozens, possibly hundreds, of emails, all from FuegoGirl, all with the same taunting subject.
I opened one at random . . . nearly fell off the chair.
The message from the subject continued. IGNORE THIS SINCE YOU’RE SO GOOD AT IGNORING ME . . .
An embedded picture filled the rest of the window. A picture of a newborn boy in a snug blue knit cap and a mummy-tight blanket. There was no signature identifying FuegoGirl or name for the child. Neither was necessary. I recognized Ricardo Elijah Rios instantly.
Dustin would, too.
They had the same eyes.
CHAPTER 44
I STARED AT THE EXTREME CLOSE-UP of the baby, my vision blurring because I couldn’t blink. Pilar’s newborn son was Dustin’s newborn son. The resemblance was undeniable—I’d seen the kid’s green eyes myself at the hospital. I was so focused on sneaking to Dustin’s room, I didn’t pick up on the shared trait.
Two nagging thoughts, sitting at the edge of my consciousness like massive, immovable stones, suddenly slammed together, fused into something new and grotesque.
Family concerns.
Seat belts.
Me and Reya thought Miguel was the family Eli spoke of in his video—a theory Dustin happily encouraged—but what if it was his favorite cousin Pilar, whose back he always had? What if the purpose of Eli calling Dustin to the J-Room was to discuss the newest branch on the Rios/Burke family tree? How would a conversation like that go? It might get ugly, depending.
Thinking of Dustin that way—the possibilities that I still couldn’t wrap my head around completely—jarred something from earlier, something I maybe forced myself not to remember because of the implications.
Dustin said the seat belt saved his life the night of the accident, and that Carrey and Lorenz didn’t like to wear them. Thing was, neither did Dustin. I’d seen him driving his Xterra on two occasions before today. At the park, the day after I found Eli. And at school the day the mayor dropped me off. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt either time.
Why start on some random late-night drive? It’d been a fortunate coincidence, considering what happened. Only, I don’t believe in coincidences.
I blinked, restarted time. “Reya, you need to see this.”
She turned to me, but a mighty crash of splintering wood and shattering glass sounded in the depths of the house, drawing her attention back to the doorway.
Dustin, “Dad, No! Get back! Get back!”
“You,” said the mayor, grunting, in a struggle, “stop that this ins—”
The abrupt silence set off alarms in my head. Dustin’s screams drowned them. “Oh, God. Help me, guys. Please!”
I said, “Reya, don’t.”
She was already gone, sprinting to the aid of the boy I suspected of killing her brother, and then some.
Her talents were wasted on the cheerleading squad. Reya should’ve run track. I couldn’t catch her on the stairs, or in the corridor leading to the mayor’s office.
“Reya!” I hissed, already knowing it was hopeless. She turned in to the room where Dustin continued his crying lure. I paused outside the doorway. If my suspicions about him were even close to right, turning this corner was a stupid, potentially deadly, decision.
What else was I going to do? Reya was in there. I stepped in, told myself, Think of it as our second date.
She stood beyond the threshold staring at the carpet—and the corpse—before her, her hand pressed to her mouth. Mayor Burke lay prone, a halo of blood pooling from an ugly dent in the side of his skull. A foot away, his boxing trophy. The heavy, metal glove stained with blood, a few black and gray hairs plastered to it.
Dustin sat on the floor by the gun cabinet with his head low, making weepy sounds with no tears. The cabinet itself was smashed, bowed in like somehow had been hurled at it. A couple of the rifles had fallen free, scattered among the debris like NRA pick-up sticks.
I grabbed Reya’s hand, squeezed it. Hard. She looked at me, and I cut my eyes toward the door, tugging her arm at the same time. Let’s go. Now. She shook her head, missing my meaning.
Dustin spoke up. “He lost it, attacked me.”
Reya pulled free of my grasp, went to him. “Nick, help me get him up.”
Dustin caught my eye in a moment of hesitation. I thought I saw him twitch, but he resumed his dry crying, while Reya gripped one of his arms. “Nick,” she said again.
He didn’t know I knew about the baby, or suspected anything about Eli or the accident. This might be okay if I played it off. It had to be.
I joined Reya and helped that bastard to his feet.
Dustin lurched, his legs unsteady. Supposedly. He brushed glass shards and splinters from this clothing an
d smeared blood from a few scrapes along his unbroken arm.
“What happened?” I asked, needing to hear him talk, explain. See if he still sounded like the guy I’d believed was becoming a friend. Or did he sound like the new guy? The murderer.
“He just snapped, I had to.” Dustin widened his eyes to sell the shock and remorse, still no tears. “He was screaming about Reya’s uncle, and her car blowing up. It was crazy. I think he had some sort of mental break and was, like, confessing to everything we talked about.”
The mayor gave up Miguel and the car bomb. How convenient. The only thing missing was a shiny bow.
Dustin kept going. “Then he had this look, like he didn’t recognize his own son. He goes, ‘Now I have to shut you up, too, just like that reporter kid.’”
“He admitted it?” Reya, horror transforming to contempt, stared at the bleeding body like she wanted to kick it.
Dustin nodded, sticking to the ridiculous story.
Knowing what I knew, and seeing through his overacting, a part of me still wanted to believe him. His was the easiest, least frightening version of everything that had gone wrong since I arrived in Stepton. I would believe it. He’d think so, anyway. Until I could get Reya out of there.
“Should we call someone?” I left the decision with Dustin, wanting him to feel in control, playing us. It was safer that way.
“I guess. I’m not sure who to—”
The mayor moaned.
No, not now.
Mayor Burke turned his head against the carpet, smearing his cheek in his own blood. Struggling, he forced an arm and a knee under himself, pressing his body off the floor. He almost made it to a crawling position before collapsing, and moaning again. “Dus-tin. Help me, son.”
Dustin’s Shock Face disappeared, overcome by a coldness that narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips into a pencil line, the look of someone with an unpleasant chore ahead of them.
“We gotta call an ambulance,” Reya said, pulling her cell from her back pocket. “He’s going to answer for what he did to my brother.”
Dustin stepped away, glass crunching under his sneakers by the gun cabinet. He picked up a semiautomatic Remington rifle and aimed at Reya. “Don’t dial.”
“What?” She stared down the barrel like someone who didn’t get the joke, her hand hovering over the keypad. I could only watch, too much distance between me and him to risk a move.
Me and Reya weren’t his primary concern. He kept the gun on her, but in an awkward one-hand grasp that had the buttstock protruding past his elbow. That kind of grip wouldn’t do for aiming, but he didn’t need good aim in a room this size. Still, I kept his improper handling in mind.
“Dus-tin,” Mayor Burke said again, pleading for his son’s help.
Dustin crouched by his father, stroked the man’s back with his cast arm. “It’s okay, Dad.”
He picked up the bloodied boxing trophy, raised it high, upended it so the glove pointed down. I took one step and the rifle barrel swung my way, freezing me. “Don’t, Nick.”
“Why?” I said, perplexed and scared of what was coming.
Calm, with that single bloodstained eye on me, he said, “Didn’t I tell you the other night? At the party?”
I shook my head, not recalling a conversation about his hidden homicidal tendencies. He reminded me.
“I do”—he dropped the glove on his father’s head, a squelching crunch, silencing him permanently—“what I can.”
CHAPTER 45
REYA, WHIMPERING, LOOKED AWAY AS DUSTIN dropped the glove on his father’s misshapen skull again. I didn’t. I watched him kill his dad the same way I watched Kreso Maric put a bullet in a kid’s skull, knowing the world was a different, darker place now.
Only question: Would me and Reya be in it for long?
Dustin let the trophy fall from his fingertips, stood, and angled himself so he had line of sight on both of us, easy targets. “Throw your cells into the corner. Now.”
We both complied, tossing our phones, the plastic casings smacking the wall then thudding on the carpet. There was no play other than to follow his instructions and hope for an outcome we could live with. Literally.
Reya spoke first, her voice broken by sobs. “I don’t understand, Dustin. What are you doing?”
He faced her, but his rifle swept between us like a turret, forcing us into alternating cringes each time we stared down the barrel. He sighed, said, “I’m improvising.”
Not unlike my improv routine with Zach at the municipal campus. Maybe what worked once would work again. I said, “If you’re going to do this, you might want to—”
“Shut up before I shoot your girlfriend in the stomach,” he said, emotionless. “I’m trying to think.”
My mouth snapped shut. He wasn’t some idiot bully. I didn’t know what he was. Seconds ticked by and the rifle swung from me to Reya, Reya to me. .
Sweat drizzled down my back and arms; my hands and legs shook. At any second, he could pull the trigger. End our lives when he decided. Or could he?
Unlike at the municipal campus, some Bricks wisdom came to me. Maybe it was because of the gun. Firearms always reminded me of my godfather.
Your generation, Tony, they’re punks. Don’t fight with their hands like we used to. In my day, you didn’t have to worry about no gun until you were in the game. Now, kindergarteners are bringin’ them to school. . . .
The lecture was a long one—Bricks loved trumpeting the virtues of his generation over all those that came after—but two bits held weight.
Facing a Firearm Tip #1: A kid pulls on you, you gotta make a decision. The smart move is do what he says. Hand over your wallet, kiss his shoes, whatever. It’s better to be humiliated than dead. Most guys want something other than your life. But the other guys, the ones who like to see the light in your eyes go dim, you give them everything except what they want. You get me?
When the gun swung back to me, I said, “It’s probably not loaded.”
Dustin tilted his head, an educated man up for a debate. “Oh, really?”
“Nick?” Reya said, terror evident.
I ignored her. “You pulled it right from the gun cabinet. Who stores their guns loaded?”
“A reasonable deduction.” He aimed the gun at the wall to my left, fired a round that seemed as loud as a grenade. Reya screamed. I barely heard her because my ears were ringing and I was concentrating really hard on not crapping in my pants.
“Dad kept all the guns loaded,” Dustin said. “He had to dealing with a nut like Reya’s uncle.”
He was talking. Not shooting. Talking was good. Let’s focus on that. “Did Miguel really cause your car accident to get back at your dad or did you make that up?”
Grinning now, he said, “Some things I made up, some things I didn’t. Like those ‘inspired by true events’ stories. Now, the accident was . . . not. It was intentional. Worked better than I ever imagined, really.”
“You caused that car wreck?” Reya blurted. “Lorenz and Carrey were your friends. Since elementary school.”
He turned the gun on her again. “They were nosy. Lorenz was, anyway. Though, if I’m being honest, I have to take some of the blame.”
“Some?” I said, drawing the gun back to me.
“I wanted a souvenir of my first time, like when I was ten and I lost my virginity to my nanny. I kept a lock of her hair.”
I couldn’t count how many ways that statement was screwed up, but he’d lost me. “You killed your best friends because they found a lock of hair?”
He shook his head. “My bad. I need to work on my syntax.” He swung the gun to Reya. “Your brother told me that once when he proofed one of my lit papers.”
“Dustin?” I said.
He aimed at me. “When I said souvenir, I meant the laptop I took from Eli the night I cut his wrists and watched his blood pump like a red water fountain.”
Reya sucked in a sharp, whistling breath.
“Lorenz found it in my
closet after you two left. I played it off like it wasn’t really Eli’s, but some of his blood had splashed on it. I could tell him and Carrey didn’t buy my story. I had to do something. If the crash hadn’t killed them, it would’ve given me time to get rid of that computer, then blame anything they said on head trauma. Fortunately, things went my way.”
“Te mataré,” she spat.
“That sounded like a threat,” Dustin said, aiming at her, a game now. “I mean, I really don’t know what you said, but it sounded threatening. Love the accent.” Back to me. “She talk like that when you’re banging her, Nick?”
“Did Pilar talk like that when you banged her?”
Dustin shuddered, like I’d splashed him with cold water.
“You and Pilar?” Reya said, catching on.
Whatever fun Dustin was having playing eenie-meenie-miney-moe with the gun seemed to fade. “Eli couldn’t have told you that,” he said. “I would’ve been able to tell that day in the park. That’s the only reason I bothered to talk to a nobody like you, to see if that asshole had blabbed.”
“If you knew he didn’t tell me, why take it this far? You didn’t have to tell me anything about your dad. You led us to him.” My eyes bounced around the room, looking for some kind of advantage.
“I don’t expect either of you to understand this, but killing Eli, it—it created a kind of freedom. Dad didn’t see it that way. Once you found the body, he sent some guys to dirty up the scene before anyone could collect any real evidence. Then he grounded me. He tried to take away my freedom. After that, it made sense to frame him.”
Of course it did. In Dustin’s warped mind. “This was never about Whispertown?”
“Pay attention, Nick. Some things are true, some are made up. Whispertown is very real, and that’s part of what Eli wanted to talk to me about. He knew my dad was falsifying records; he also knew that Pilar claimed I knocked her up. I didn’t want that slutbag ruining my life, and Dad didn’t want to share a grandkid with the local Thug God. Dad approached Miguel with a deal, the cops ignore some of Miguel’s ‘victimless operations’—which helps Dad’s little experiment anyway—and Miguel handles whatever whore child his daughter squeezed into the world, leaving us out of it.
