Blood Trail

by Nancy Springer

  I shook my head. Didn’t want to go to bed till I was sure I’d be out like a light, not lying there with Aaron on my mind and wondering if maybe I was next. Anyway, being falling-down tired kind of helped. I couldn’t think much or feel much.

  Mom stared at me. “What are you doing, then?”

  “You’re not going to believe this.” Because it was, like, optional.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to school.”

  The high school lobby was crowded and freaky quiet. Mostly kids my age, seniors, and they should have been yelling and tossing Super Balls around and girls should have been prancing and squealing and giggling and guys should have been grinning and punching each other in the shoulder, but they all stood talking softly like old people in church. When I walked in, they even stopped talking. Everybody looked at me. Then a girl named Morgan kind of choked out, “Booger, hi,” and ran to me and hugged me, and all my friends crowded around. Two other girls hugged me. My feelings came back to life, and I hurt bad.

  “Hey, Boog.” A couple of the guys reached over to whack my back. I couldn’t say anything.

  “My mom says you’re in the morning paper, man,” one of the guys said. I looked at him, and he explained. “Last known person to see him alive.”

  “Great,” I said, “just wonderful,” and I turned away. Wandered to the middle of the lobby and stood there with freaky, quiet talk all around me.

  “… couldn’t sleep. Like, whoever did it, he’s out there somewhere.”

  “… my stepfather went out and bought a gun …”

  “Who would want to kill Aaron? I mean …”

  “… if there was somebody in there and he walked in on them … but why …”

  “… got to be a psycho who came in from the interstate or something.”

  “… blood all over the place. They say his head was almost cut off.”

  “… thinks Nathan did it.”

  I went cold. And I guess I wasn’t the only one, because there was this frozen silence. Then Morgan added, “I didn’t say he did it! I just said my mom thinks he did.”

  Some guy growled, “Your mom’s a stupid bitch, then.”

  “Thank you. I’ll tell her you said so.”

  A bunch of kids started talking at once, mostly saying Nathan couldn’t have done it. Like, it had to be a stranger, not somebody we knew. But one of the guys on the debate team was loudest. “Anyone who thinks Nathan did it ought to be hung by the ears!”

  Morgan said, “Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. What if Nathan, like, lost it—”

  Like listening to a stranger I heard myself say, “For God’s sake, Morgan, Aaron was strong as a Mack truck, and Nathan was smaller. Is, I mean. He weighs less. Why would Aaron let him—”

  “I don’t know!” Morgan glared back at me like she was about to cry. “I don’t know what happened, I’m just saying—”

  “Why don’t you just shut up?” I turned away.

  “Hey, Jeremy,” some girl called, “we’re going to get some flowers. Want to come?”

  It wasn’t like I’d walked all the way to school to talk to some shrink. I did it because I wanted to be with my friends and the other kids. So sure, no problem, I went along with a bunch of girls to the farm market and helped pay for about six kinds of flowers and then we all went to Aaron’s place. I sat in the middle of the backseat feeling really weird as we drove into my development. The girls were busy making the flowers into a bouquet for each of us. Fine, good, whatever. Girls were good at this kind of thing, and I was not. I wasn’t worth a damn at anything. I could have saved Aaron, and I should have, and now he was dead and I didn’t know what to do.

  “There,” somebody said in a whisper, and we pulled up near Aaron’s house.

  It was like a snowplow had gone along the road and left a big drift in front of the Gingrich place, except it wasn’t snow; it was flowers. All along the street and the edge of the lawn under the yellow police tape, bunches of flowers four feet deep, mostly white. Even before I got out of the car, I could smell them like some woman had put on too much perfume. After I laid my bouquet down, I stood there looking at all of them. All those flowers, and notes people had left to tell the Gingrich family they were praying for them, and a cake in the shape of a football, and some real footballs lying in the flowers like oversize brown Easter eggs. And some white wooden crosses, even though Aaron never gave a doo-dah-day about religion. And big posters that said AARON, WE’LL MISS YOU, AARON, WE LOVE YOU.

  It was all so useless. So stupid. Like me.

  “We ought to take a photo for the yearbook,” one of the girls said.

  Like that would do any good? I walked away from them, and now I didn’t even feel like going back to the school. I was about to walk home when I heard the house door open. I looked up and the detective who had taken me home last night was coming out, lugging a big white plastic bag. He called, “Jeremy, wait,” and walked down the driveway to talk with me.

  “How you doing?” he asked.

  “Okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “No.”

  He smiled a little. “You going to get some counseling?”

  “No.” What was the use? I changed the subject. “What’s that?” I asked, looking at the bag.

  “Carpet sample for the lab. Listen, Jeremy, I was just talking to your mom,” he said. “We want you to come in for a polygraph reading.”

  “Huh? Polygraph?”

  “Some people call it a lie detector, but it’s not really. It’s—”

  “I didn’t lie to you!” I burst out. I really hadn’t lied, just left one thing out.

  He looked at me kind of funny. “It’s a routine informational reading, not anything official. Not admissible in court, like a statement. It’s just to help us sort things out. Everyone concerned with this case is taking a polygraph test.”

  “My sister?” I asked.

  “Yes, and the other girls as well.”

  “Nathan?”

  “I can’t divulge that.”

  I walked home and let myself in the back door. The house was quiet. A note on the kitchen table said Mom and the brat were sleeping. I didn’t want to sleep yet. Went to the bathroom and washed my face with cold water and glanced at the mirror over the sink. Funny, the way my mind was swimming, I expected to see me with gray hair like the coroner’s. But I looked just the same as before.

  chapter five

  I thought of calling off work that night, but then what would I do? Sit around the house and pick my nose? So I drank coffee to force my eyes open and then I went. I guess Mom figured I was okay to drive, because she let me take the car, but maybe her judgment wasn’t so great that day. When I punched in, Rose took one look at me and said, “You’re on counter. I don’t want you driving deliveries.” Rose is tough and nice. Owns the place, Rose’s Italian Café and Take-Out. Three square tables and a bench, red and green tile on the walls, pictures pasted together out of colored macaroni.

  A sign over the door says, BEST FOOD IN PINTO RIVER. Actually, it’s the only food in Pinto River. Besides Rose’s café, there’s the GGG, Gingrich’s Grocery and General Store, which is where you can usually find Mr. Gingrich, though I guess not today. And there’s the church, Pinto River Presbyterian, and a gas station, and a video rental place, and a woman who does haircuts in her kitchen, and that’s about it, except some old houses with plaster deer in front, and the school complex, and my development. The nearest real town, with a Cinemax and a WalMart, is twenty miles away.

  Usually when I work at Rose’s I do delivery, and I get good tips that way. I hate counter because hardly anybody tips and some people are really rude.

  That night, every single person who came in wanted to talk about Aaron. The murder, I mean. They’d make comments to me, like, “He was your friend, wasn’t he, Jeremy?” and my gut would twist itself into a granny knot and all I could do was nod and say, “You want cheese on that?”

  It wasn’t
any better when they didn’t know me and just talked among themselves. “I heard they finished the autopsy,” one old guy said to his wife, girlfriend, whatever, while they were sitting on the bench waiting for their stromboli. “I heard they counted seventy-three slices and stab wounds.”

  “How many?” Her voice went shrill.

  “Seventy-three.”

  “How can they count that many in just his neck?”

  “I don’t know. They say his head was just about cut off. They say whoever it was kept stabbing him after he was dead. They hacked right through his spine, just left a thread of skin at the back of his neck.”

  I ducked down behind the counter, pretending I was looking for something, so they wouldn’t see my face. I felt like I was going to puke.

  It didn’t help that some guy called across the room to them, “There were lots of cuts in his hands and arms, I heard. Like he flung up his hands trying to defend himself.”

  The woman said, “I heard it was awful. All that blood. They wouldn’t let his parents look at him. I heard even the cops couldn’t stand to look at him. One cop threw up.”

  I ran for the john. After I came out, Rose asked me, “You sick?”

  “Not anymore.”

  She came over and kind of smoothed my forehead with her big beefy hand. Her hand felt hot like a toaster, I was so sweaty cold. She said, “You need to go home?”

  I shook my head.

  “You want to go home?”

  I shook my head again.

  “You’d rather be here?”

  I nodded. Anything was better than hanging around the house.

  “Okay, then get back to work.”

  The guy across the room was saying, “I guess they’re going to have a closed casket funeral service, huh? Can’t have a viewing if he’s carved up like that.”

  “I dunno,” the shrill woman said. “Them undertakers can do wonders with wax. Give them photos, they can make it look just like him.”

  “Not after the coroners get done with him. They do an autopsy, they gotta take out his heart, liver, brain, everything.”

  I ran for the john again.

  By the end of the night I got done heaving, but people never got done talking. The worst was when two old women came in for subs. “Veggie on wheat, no mayonnaise,” one of them said to me, and then she said to her friend, “The way I figure, he was probably mixed up in drugs. These kids out at the high school, they’re all high on drugs all the time.”

  I was a high school kid, and I wasn’t high on drugs. I was waiting on her. I asked her, “American cheese or provolone?”

  “American,” she told me, and she told her friend, “They do drugs and then they kill things with knives. Satanic rites.”

  Her friend said, “But wouldn’t you think the parents would’ve noticed something?”

  “But all these broken homes, and then the parents both work, that’s the thing. Money, money, money, and the kids raise themselves.”

  The second woman nodded hard. “They all smoke dope these days, all the time. They’re not interested in improving themselves. No work ethic—”

  “And what can I get for you, ma’am?” I asked her.

  “Seafood salad on white with oil and vinegar, lots of lettuce and tomato, no mayo, no cheese. And put a little salt on it. And just a dash of that there Old Bay seasoning.” She went on talking with the first one. “What I mean, it’s a shame he died, but I bet that boy’s room is full of drugs. No work and all play, parties and drugs, the way they act, they deserve to get killed.”

  I was so tired I didn’t even know how I felt anymore, but I guess some sort of noise choked itself out of my throat. Both women stared at me, and one of them said, “What’s the matter with you, young man?”

  I whispered, “Is that for here or to go?”

  I don’t really believe in ghosts or angels or the afterlife or any of that, but when I finally lay down in my bed, I would have sworn I heard Aaron calling me. Like he was right outside the front door, and he was yelling, “Jeremy! BOOGER! Let me in!” He was real upset, I could tell by his voice, but I was so tired I couldn’t move. I hurt all over with wanting to help him, but at the same time I was scared of him because he was dead, which made him, like, a different person. Like I didn’t know him anymore. Like he had to be full of hate, like he might hurt me. Yet he was still Aaron, my buddy, and I wanted to go to him, and at the same time I wanted to run away, and I wanted to cry, and I couldn’t do any of it. All I could do was lie there like lead while he yelled, “Booger! You were supposed to call me, man! Why didn’t you call when I told you to?” Way pissed off. But really, I think it was me pissed off at me. I mean, I know it was all in my head. Maybe I was so worn out I was hallucinating. Maybe I was already asleep, dreaming.

  But at the time it seemed so damn real I wanted to pee my pants. Now I know why people think there are ghosts.

  Next day around noon I woke up and couldn’t remember for a minute why I felt so awful. Then it hit me all over again. Aaron. Dead.

  I just lay there. Couldn’t face the day. After a while the pain eased up, I started to drift, and I daydreamed Aaron was still alive, he was okay, I had saved him. I had phoned at just the right minute to distract the murderer so Aaron could run out the door. Or, no, I had followed Aaron home because I knew something was going to happen, I heard him yell and I ran into his house like rushing a quarterback and there was this huge guy in a black ski mask lunging at Aaron with the knife and I kicked the knife out of his hand and he hollered and turned on me and Aaron got away and I tackled the murderer and he went down and I kicked him and kicked him—

  There I lay in bed, punching the pillow and kicking the mattress. I could daydream all I liked, but Aaron was still dead.

  It took me an hour to get myself together and pointed in a direction and moving. Finally I got up, showered, found something to wear, and sat down in the kitchen to eat a leftover sub Rose had sent home with me. Mom was at work, I guess. She had left a big Hallmark sympathy card on the table with a note for me to sign it so she could send it to the Gingriches. She and Jamy had already signed it, and Mom had written a little note saying how sorry she was. The card said about the same, except it rhymed.

  I wanted to write something, and I tried to think what. I mean, the Gingriches were like a second family to me, especially when Mom and Dad broke up. I remembered sleeping over there for two or three days at a time, and Mrs. Gingrich would make homemade macaroni and cheese and not ask too many questions. Mr. Gingrich helped Mom with my shoes and stuff for football, got them wholesale. He and Mrs. Gingrich both saw us through a hard time. But now that Aaron was dead, I couldn’t think of what to say to either of them. Or Aardy. Or Nathan.

  I signed my name, but I didn’t write any note.

  I tried to eat the rest of the sub, but I couldn’t. I threw it in the garbage, then headed out to go take my polygraph test.

  chapter six

  I’d never been in the police station before, and when I got to the front door, I felt freaked, like I was a criminal or something. I had to force myself to haul on the handle and keep going. But once I got inside, it wasn’t like a TV jail or anything, more like a doctor’s office, with a waiting room and a receptionist at a desk behind a sliding-glass window. Not that I like doctor’s offices too much, either, but the receptionist didn’t keep me waiting. She called the detective, and then she led me into the back, which was just a bunch of grubby offices that smelled like cigarette smoke, and a dark little locker room with the door hanging open, and a room with shelves and coatracks and six old typewriters. The receptionist pointed me into the detective’s office.

  The detective wasn’t scary, either, just a skinny little guy with bright eyes, interested in everything, including me. He sat me down in a chair with ripped plastic upholstery, gave me a pen and a clipboard, and helped me fill out medical history forms and consent forms and stuff. We talked for more than an hour. He wanted to make sure I understood about the po
lygraph, that I had to answer all the questions either yes or no, that he’d run the same test three times to make sure, that none of this was evidence. I wanted to ask him, what was it, then? But we got to talking about football, and somehow we ended up talking about Aaron and Nathan and me. I told him about one time when we were little kids, we played mailman and switched around all the mail in all the mailboxes in the neighborhood. He laughed so hard, he got me laughing. I wouldn’t have believed I could still laugh. I liked him. I asked, “Are you really a cop?”

  “Sure. I’m a detective.”

  “You like it?”

  “Yeah, it’s really interesting. I get to meet a lot of people this way, and most of them are great folks who just have to come in here because something bad happened. Like you.”

  I wondered whether he knew my father. A lot of the cops do, because Dad works courthouse security. But just as I thought of asking, the detective said, “C’mon, I’ll show you the polygraph.”

  He led me out of his office to another room—a bare little brown room with no window, and a bench screwed to one wall with a big steel pipe mounted above it, like, for handcuffs, and a big steel ring in the floor. I took one look at that place and I froze.

  The detective gave me a smile. “We do it in here because it’s quiet. No distractions, no interruptions.”

  He closed the door behind us, and yeah, it sure was quiet.

  “Here it is,” he said, and I got myself turned around to look. Against the wall opposite the handcuff bar and stuff was a plain table with a big black machine on it.

  The detective beckoned. “C’mere, I’ll show you how it works. All it does is measure your physiological response …” He showed me the ink bottles—red, blue, and black—and the needles and the graph paper the machine kept inching out. He sat me down in a folding chair and hooked me up: a black tube thing around my chest to measure my breathing, a cuff like the one they use in a doctor’s office on my arm to measure my blood pressure and my pulse, and little tubes on two of my fingers to measure my skin reflex. At that point I said, “Huh?”