by John C. Ford
“Because you didn’t want anyone knowing about you and Mitch?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Abby said. It made sense—she had probably played it with the sheriff just liked she’d played it with me in the Hideaway. If she had, he wouldn’t have been too worried about her knowing anything.
So who was following her—and why?
“Why are they after you? What do they want?”
She was going to crack, I could feel it. She was going to tell us everything.
But then something rustled against the floor, and we all held our breath as Wade flopped over on his back and reached to his forehead. A welt had blossomed above his temple. He was deep in his own world, unaware of us, but it shattered the confessional mood to pieces.
“Get the hell out of here,” Abby said. “I need to take care of this.”
I wondered if she meant taking him to the hospital or smothering him with a pillow, but we couldn’t stick around to see.
“Let’s go,” Mike said, and I didn’t resist.
We were halfway up the stairs when Abby called to me.
“Hey, kid. What’s your name?”
“Christopher Newell,” I said, and she disappeared right back into the basement.
I trudged out of the house with Mike, heavy-legged and spent from adrenaline. By the time we got outside, I was consumed by the pain at the back of my head and the swelling of my tongue. I couldn’t process what had happened yet. Getting abducted, seeing Mike with the gun—it was too much to absorb just then.
I could only think little thoughts, and one of them kept returning to me as we stumbled out to the car: Why did Abby Shales ask my name?
It would only take two days for me to find out.
16
Mike had parked the Porsche a few houses short of the Shaleses’ place. He drove us away through a mist that speckled the windshield. It cast paint-splatter shadows on Mike’s face as I slumped into the leather seat and watched the sad homes in the Shaleses’ neighborhood pass by. They had tool sheds overflowing with scrap metal and hollowed-out cars sitting pointlessly on front lawns. Tire swings hung from a few trees, but that was about it in the way of fun.
We came to a road with a vaguely familiar name, and Mike turned left, shrugging. It didn’t matter—the thrill of surviving the episode in the basement was too much to care about getting a little lost.
Mike reached across me and slid the gun inside the glove compartment.
“So, umm, where did you get a gun, anyway?”
“My dad bought it for protection. Then, of course, my mom didn’t like it in the house.” They were always fighting. He used a hand to clear fog from the windshield. “She said it was freaking her out and put it in the glove box to return, but that was, like, a month ago. I don’t even know how to use it. Guess it worked anyway.”
“Yeah, thank God for that. So what happened in the parking lot?”
Mike smirked. “I was halfway passed out, but then I saw that guy peeling away with you in his passenger seat. I followed him all the way out here. Yeah, we came this way,” he said, and took a sharp left turn onto Mercury Drive.
We weren’t that far from the North Campus, much closer to home than I’d thought.
“Well, you did a stellar job,” I said.
“I saw that guy tying you up through the basement window. Then he sat there and had a beer in the kitchen before he went back down. I had to wait for him so I could punch through the screen door and get inside.”
“You punched through their screen door?”
“Well, on the fourth try.” Mike held out his fist proudly—his knuckles had raspberry tears from the metal screen. “Not bad, eh?”
“One for the books,” I said, remembering that we had to go back to Dana’s to pick up the Escort. We crossed back over the city line (WELCOME TO PETOSKEY: WHERE NATURE SMILES FOR SEVEN MILES), but I still didn’t want the ride to end.
“So you’re done with all this now, right?” Mike said.
He said it normal, like it wasn’t the most outrageous thing I’d heard all summer. “Done with this? Mike, something big is going on. She knows something—didn’t you see? She was about to tell us.”
He burned through a yellow light. “Dude, five minutes ago you were tied up in a basement with a madman and a crowbar. What’s next?”
“Since when are you the careful one? You were telling me I was nuts to think the guy was murdered. Now I’m finally getting somewhere.”
“Yeah, well—”
“They shot him in the chest five times. Nobody cares but me and Tina.”
“Okay, okay. You’re a man on a mission. Chill.” In the uneasy silence, Mike made a fist and admired his wounds. “You should know, though, I’m only human. I can only save your ass so many times.”
“Got it, Rambo,” I said.
The mayor’s neighborhood was funeral quiet, the houses ghostly boxes in the moonlight. I played at my swollen tongue as we pulled up to the Escort. We’d been going hard all night, and when the car came to a stop it felt like getting off a roller coaster.
“So really, thanks for saving my life,” I said. “Seriously.”
He barely opened his eyes. “No drippy shit, dude.”
“Righto. I may send a fruit basket, though. Would you mind that?”
“Just make it tasteful,” Mike said, and a laugh that had been bottled up inside me escaped from my chest.
“You gonna get home okay?” I said.
“I sobered up the second I saw that guy hit you.”
“You didn’t even move.”
“See you tomorrow,” Mike said, like it had been a normal day.
Tina’s cell phone number was on her business card, propped up against my clock radio, which read 2:30 a.m. She picked up after five rings and murmured something unintelligible.
The report from the bathroom mirror had not been encouraging. My scrape with the Hideaway’s parking lot made the right side of my face puffy and allergic-looking. At least you couldn’t see my tongue.
“Hey, it’s Christopher.”
“Yeah. And?”
“Yeah, sorry to call late, I just needed to talk to you about what happened tonight. You awake yet?”
A complicated rustling came through the line. “Sort of. Shoot.”
I told her about getting abducted by Wade Shales and getting saved by Mike, and I threw in Abby’s description of the scene at the Lighthouse Motel. I was a little geared up about the whole thing, and I realized I’d been going on for five minutes without a word from Tina.
“You still there?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, alert. “My God, I’m so glad you’re okay. You really think Abby knew something else?”
“Definitely. But we had to get out of there.”
“Right, of course. But we’ll have to go back to her for more.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “Should we—?”
“You did awesome,” Tina cut in, “but . . . let’s talk about it more tomorrow.” I sensed the slightest impatience in her voice. “You sure you’re okay, Chris?”
“Yeah.” I hopped into the safety of my bed. “I’m glad Mike was there. But maybe we should think about—”
“Do not tell me you’re pussing out.”
“I’m not pussing out.”
“Swear.”
“I swear.” Still, Mike’s warnings echoed in my head. “But you know, maybe there’s some kind of state police or something we should get involved.”
“No way. This story is my break. Who knows who’ll get their hands on it if we tell the police? Now, listen, can we meet up tomorrow? This isn’t really a great time.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Where are you?”
I heard more rustling in the background, as Tina’s voice became a whisper. “Lawrence’s bathroom,” she said. “Score!”
“Your girlfriend writes boring stuff.” Daniel was munching on granola, reading an article by Tina about a ninety-year-old ba
njo player. He might have had a point.
“She’s not his girlfriend,” my mom said with a certain vigor as she spun about the kitchen. They were leaving the next day, and she now seemed obsessed with making sure all knobs, dials, and locks in the entire house were in proper position before her departure.
My face had looked slightly better that morning, but I didn’t want to take the chance of my mom seeing the damage from the night before. I bid them adieu and headed for the morgue.
Not that I really needed to. I’d already put in enough hours that week, but somehow the morgue was feeling more like a place I wanted to be. That might sound gruesome, I realize, but it was the thing that connected me to Mitch.
Maybe Mike thought it was weird that I cared about finding his killer so much, and yeah, maybe hundreds of people get murdered every day and I hadn’t taken up their cause or anything. But there are hundreds of homeless dogs, too, and it’s different when you go to the shelter and a lonely beagle laps at your hand. Not that either of us was a dog—the point is, we’d picked each other somehow, and we’d done it at the morgue. I saw him there on that table, and I knew things about him that nobody else did, or cared about.
I was thinking these thoughts when I pranced into the office, wondering what new nooks and crannies I could search for clues. It was a Wednesday morning, when Dr. Mobley had his pediatric hours on the second floor. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that he would be there until I saw him sitting on the sofa, weeping quietly.
His fingers glistened with tears as he pulled them from his face. He stared absently at me with red-rimmed eyes. Something about the whole scene scared the crap out of me.
“Are you okay, sir? I mean, Doctor?”
I don’t think he even heard me.
He just said, “My wife died last night.”
His voice stayed neutral, like he was giving me a half-interested opinion on the color of my shirt. He must have been up all night and cried himself empty.
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Mobley. Should I . . . would you like to be alone? Or if there’s anything I can do—”
“She bought us this couch,” he said, picking up like I hadn’t spoken a word.
He spread his hands across the tattered, mangy fabric. It might have been blue years ago, but the color had leached out and left only the rumpled gray disaster that Dr. Mobley sat on.
“After I graduated from medical school—we’d been married six months. Our first proper piece of furniture.” The couch was beaten by age like so many things in the office, but he ran his fingers deep into the cushions, clutching at memories.
He’d been a boogeyman to me all summer, and there he was, a frail and brittle old guy, wrecked by grief over his wife. It was so sad I wanted to puke.
The phone rang then and Dr. Mobley tried feebly to push himself up. It would take him an hour to get around to the desk. In that moment, I would have run a marathon if Dr. Mobley had asked me to—getting the phone was the least I could do.
“Medical examiner’s office,” I said.
“Is this . . . Christopher?”
“Uh, yeah.” I recognized his voice right away, and it made me more uneasy than Dr. Mobley’s news.
“Tim Spencer here.” He sounded unduly flustered by the fact that he was speaking to me. Maybe he didn’t know I was working in the morgue, but that seemed improbable. “Actually, I may have to—no, well, forget that for now. Is the doctor there?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, trying to keep the wariness out of my voice.
Dr. Mobley leaned against the desk, breathing with exertion. I handed him the phone as he made his way around.
“Yes?” Dr. Mobley said. “Yes, thanks for calling back. We need to talk. But hold on, hold on.” The doctor settled behind the desk. A measure of life had returned to his eyes, now gazing at me firmly. It was pretty clear what he wanted.
“I’ll just . . . leave you then,” I said. I was probably supposed to add something about his wife being in my prayers or whatever the right catchphrase is, but it was all too much.
On my way out, Dr. Mobley spoke darkly across the line. “No, just a second . . . Yes, okay, now he’s go—”
The door clicked shut and the rest of the conversation was lost to me.
I can’t even say how much it disturbed me. I’d convinced myself that the sheriff was behind the whole thing. I’d been ignoring the signals pointing to Tim, hoping that he hadn’t really eaten lunch with Dr. Mobley that day. But now I knew it wasn’t a coincidence.
It wasn’t like Dr. Mobley needed to talk to the police very much. He’d only done two other autopsies all summer, and neither had involved any foul play. The place wasn’t exactly teeming with matters of forensic importance.
It was bad enough that Tim and Mobley were talking, but on top of it, Tim had been so awkward. Obviously, neither of them wanted me hearing the first word of their conversation. Yeah—Tim Spencer was knee-deep in this mess.
At home, my dad was reading an old leather book (as usual) in the kitchen, his feet splayed out in front of him and his head lost in some ancient world of Roman heroes. A tempting glass of lemonade dripped onto the table. I got one of my own and sat down with him, pressing the cool glass to my forehead. It didn’t do much for my worries about Tim, but it took my temperature down a little.
The thrumming of the dryer pulsed through the kitchen as my mom bustled in from the laundry room. “I found those clothes of yours,” she said, holding up the shirt I’d worn the night before. I’d tossed it in with the laundry when I got home—not noticing, until just now, the prominent tear across the shoulder. Thanks, Snaggletooth.
The slack my mom had cut me the day before was long gone. She was in a state. “Christopher, it’s so dirty. And look at this.” She pushed her hand through the hole, amazed at the destruction I had wrought. “What did you do last night? Gwen said you deserted Julia at the party.”
“I wasn’t really with her in the first place, Mom.”
“Where’d you go?” my dad said idly, turning a page.
The dryer stopped and left us in silence. “I left with Mike. The party was kind of lame.”
My mom held my shirt out again, like it was a sick baby. “And your clothes?”
“Oh, well, this guy sort of tried to beat us up.”
“Oh, Christopher, you got into a fight?”
“Not really. It was just this weird guy. It’s no big deal.”
My mom peered at me, closer and closer, and then came around for a look at my cheek. Maybe it hadn’t cleared up as well as I thought.
“Oh, dear,” she said, and I almost expected her to reach for the Scotch. She stood there, arms crossed, eyebrows raised to my dad, when I got a reprieve from the doorbell. Just in time.
I was just getting back to the lemonade—placing more and more faith in its calming powers—when my mom returned from the door. Flushed face, bulging eyes. Something wasn’t good.
My dad put his book down for the second time in two minutes. “Dear, what is it?”
“Well,” my mom said, in a funny-you-should-ask kind of way. “Timothy Spencer is on our porch. On official business, he tells me. And he would very much like to talk to Christopher.”
17
He was hunkered on our front steps, one foot up on the porch and his hat over his knee. In the driveway, the sun glared off his patrol car’s windshield, obscuring a form in the passenger’s seat. I hesitated at the screen door—I couldn’t fathom what this was going to be about.
Tim gave me a subdued nod. “Heya.”
“Hi, Tim.”
He played with his hat, waiting for me to join him on the porch. Slowly, I walked the plank out to him; that’s what it felt like anyway. “So, Christopher. I’m here about Abigail Shales.”
He said it in that flat cop voice. Icy and removed, portending doom. He wasn’t fondly remembering the times we threw the football around in his backyard, that was for sure.
Abby? How does he know about her?
I shut the front door behind me, buying time, hoping that our conversation wouldn’t carry into the kitchen. “Yeah? Abigail Shales?”
“Look, don’t be scared,” Tim said, but I was not in a frame of mind to be assuaged. My mind did corkscrews, trying to connect Tim with Abby.
Is he the one driving the silver car? The one following her . . . the one who followed me, too? It was the only thing that really made sense.
“All I want is a little information, okay? Just tell me first: Were you at Abigail Shales’s home last night with Mike?”
He knows. He knows we were there.
This interview felt like sinking in quicksand—or what sinking into quicksand looks like on cartoons and old Tarzan movies. Uncomfortable, at any rate. Sinews popped on Tim’s forearm as his fingers played across the top of his hat. Whatever this visit was about, it couldn’t be good that he knew about us being at Abby’s house. Maybe he’d been staking it out or something—maybe he saw the whole thing. It was becoming impossible to believe that Tim didn’t know every last thing about Mitch Blaylock’s murder.
“Uh, what does it matter?”
“Don’t worry, okay? This’ll be over in a minute.” A hint of annoyance—maybe more than a hint—threaded through his words. “I just need to ask you a couple questions about last night. So you were there, right?”
A trickle of sweat ran a slimy path down my ribs. There’s no denying it. You haven’t done anything wrong—just tell the truth and keep yourself out of trouble.
Then the door of the patrol car opened and a pair of legs swung to the pavement. Sheriff Harmon got out and rested his elbow on the roof, staring me down from the driveway.
“Christopher?” Tim insisted.
You can’t lie to a police officer. You’ll get caught in the lie and get arrested, because obviously he knows you were there.
“No.”
Tim stopped fiddling with his hat. “No what?”
“No, I wasn’t at Abigail Shales’s house last night. Who is she, anyway?”
I thought I might black out from the nerves. Somewhere in Indiana, my galloping pulse was setting off a seismograph.
