Hit and Run

by Norah McClintock

  “You don’t care what really happened to Mom, that’s fine with me,” I said. It wasn’t fine, though. It made me want to keep wrenching Billy’s thumb until it snapped right off. “But I care. I care so much you’d practically have to kill me to make me stop. So butt out, Billy, okay?”

  Billy’s knees must have all of a sudden given way, because one minute he was standing and the next he plunked down into one of the kitchen chairs. I let go of him.

  “Just stay out of my way,” I said.

  “You don’t know where this is going, Mikey.”

  “Yeah? And you do?”

  He looked down at the floor, or maybe at the toes of his boots.

  “I saw the car,” he said.

  I heard him say the words. I saw his mouth move, so I knew for a fact that they came out of his mouth. But I still didn’t believe he had said it.

  “I didn’t know it was the one, though,” he said. He finally raised his head. He didn’t look good. His face was kind of crumpled, like it was caving in on itself. His eyes were red—probably from the beer, I told myself, but maybe not. He looked a few centuries older than he really was.

  “What do you mean, you saw it?” Was that really my voice? So quiet, so calm, like, hey, I had everything under control, no problem. It didn’t seem possible because inside I felt a white heat. It burned in my stomach, in my head, in my heart.

  “I swear I didn’t know it was the same car,” he said. “It wasn’t the color they said, not that it would have made any difference. They didn’t say anything about the color or the make until it was too late.”

  He knew something. My Uncle Billy knew something about the car that had killed his sister—my mother.

  “That guy pokes around anymore or gets guys from the auto squad to poke around anymore in that direction, he’s gonna find out stuff that’s going to put me in a spot, Mikey.”

  The words formed in my brain. I could see them. Taste them. But it took forever before I could bring myself to spit them out.

  “You were involved?”

  Say no. Come on, Billy. Convince me. Say you had nothing to do with it.

  Billy’s head sagged. He stared at the crumb-speckled tabletop. Slowly he shook his head.

  “Billy?”

  His head came up. His eyes were watery. Tears?

  “Did I have anything to do with what happened to Nancy? No,” he said. But I knew, I could feel it, there was something he wasn’t saying. Something big.

  “But?” I said it softly, like I cared that this was hard for him, when really I wanted to beat him over the head with the word.

  His shoulders sagged. He was smaller and older than I had ever seen him.

  “It’s not cheap living in this city,” he said. “Some people got more money than they know what to do with, and some are just scraping by.”

  I waited. The kitchen had grown very cold, the way the whole house had after Mom died.

  “It was no big deal,” he said. “It wasn’t like I was some kind of criminal mastermind or anything.”

  I started to get a bad feeling in my stomach. A sick feeling, like at Vin’s cousin’s party.

  “I just put in a few hours of overtime, that’s all. A few lousy hours. A little muscle, that’s all.”

  “What do you mean, overtime?”

  No answer.

  “Jeez, Billy!”

  “Sometimes, at night, someone would bring in a car and I’d work on it. You know.”

  I shook my head.

  “Strip it down,” he said.

  “You know, for parts.”

  “You mean, like a chop shop?”

  “Jeez, no, nothing like that. Sometimes, occasionally, if I was working late, I’d find a car out back, and if I put the time in and busted it down, I could make some good money. Strictly cash.”

  “You took apart stolen cars, is that what you’re telling me, Billy?”

  “Nobody ever said they were stolen,” he said. He was like a kid: I didn’t know they were your Lego blocks when I took them, I thought someone just left them lying there. “Mostly they were guys who just wanted a new car. They’d report their car stolen, then they’d arrange to deliver it to the garage and we’d take it apart for them. Help them make sure it would never be recovered. We’d split with them what we got for the parts. They’d collect from the insurance company and get a new car. Everyone was happy. No one got hurt.”

  “We?”

  “The guy I used to work for. He’s gone now. Out of the country.”

  I looked at my uncle and thought I had never seen a more pathetic human being in my life. I always knew Billy was no genius. If you’d pushed me, I would have said that he was flat-out lazy. Always looking for the easy way. Never putting himself out if there was someone else around to do the work. But this?

  “Billy, are you telling me that you took apart the car that—” My throat was so dry it choked me. I couldn’t make myself finish the sentence.

  “When the cops came out with the information, they said green,” Billy said. “They said the car that killed Nancy was a dark green Impala. And they never said anything about stolen—” He stopped and looked at me. I think he realized he’d said the wrong word. He’d just admitted that he knew that at least some of the cars he was taking apart, as he put it, were stolen. “All I know is, this car was waiting out back, it was black, not green, and I took it apart.” He kept his eyes on the floor. “The paint job was new. But I swear I didn’t even think until later …” His voice trailed off.

  “You know who probably left it there, don’t you?” I said. What I was thinking was, the guy who ran down my mother.

  “I didn’t see anyone,” Billy said. “I never saw anyone. I just did a job, that’s all.”

  “What about the robbery? Did you have anything to do with the robbery at Mr. Jhun’s restaurant?” Even if he said no, I wasn’t sure I was going to believe him. Mom had the second key. The place hadn’t been forcibly broken into. Whoever had killed Mr. Jhun had probably let himself in with a key. That’s what the police had said.

  Billy looked me square in the face. “No,” he said. “I don’t know anything about that. And I didn’t have anything to do with Nancy getting killed, I swear it to you, Mikey. But here’s the thing. If the cops start digging around or if you breathe a word of this to Riel, it’s all gonna fall on me. It’s not going to help them find out who killed Nancy. But it’s gonna mean serious time for me, Mikey. They’ll put me away for sure. And I didn’t do anything.”

  “Except destroy the evidence,” I said. “And make it impossible for them to find Mom’s killer.”

  “I swear I didn’t know,” he said. “Jeez, Mike, you think I’d do anything to help my sister’s killer get away with it?”

  Did he ever listen to himself? I wondered.

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing now?” I said.

  “I’m the same as you, Mike. I want whoever killed Nancy to pay. But I don’t know who did it. I don’t know anything. All I know is that if they link me to that car, and if they look into what I was doing a couple of years ago, I’m in the biggest trouble of my life. I’ll go to jail,” he said. More like he whined it. “Is that what you want?”

  I stared at my uncle, the man I had been living with, who had supposedly been looking after me for the past four years. Stared at him and, for the first time, saw a big cowardly kid.

  “How’s it gonna help?” Billy said. “It’s not going to change what happened to Nancy. You don’t want me to go to prison, do you, Mikey? If I do, what’ll happen to you? You want to be in foster care? Is that what you want?”

  I stared at him a moment longer, then I went upstairs to my room, closed the door, and sat on my bed. I stayed there, not moving, while my room—and my world—faded from light to gray to black.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Billy wasn’t home when I got up in the morning. I told myself I didn’t care. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to see him ever again.
>
  I got dressed, went downstairs, and stared into the empty fridge for a few minutes. For once, though, I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t anything, really. I don’t think I slept. I kept thinking: all this time, Billy knew something. Billy had done something, and he had kept his mouth shut about it. Suddenly I couldn’t stand to be in the house anymore. I couldn’t stand the idea that I’d be standing there and Billy would walk in and I’d have to look at him.

  I grabbed my backpack and headed for the door. My backpack. I looked at it. A sack of books and notes and school stuff that didn’t mean anything. I threw it down and left the house.

  I headed over to Jen’s house and hung around out of sight for a while, but I didn’t see her. After that I walked up to Cosburn and across until I passed Woodbine. You could get into the park system there, and then you could walk and walk, all the way up to Sunnybrook Hospital if you wanted to. That’s what I did. I walked and I thought.

  Around ten or so, I remembered about Mrs. Jhun’s funeral. I should have gone. She’d been a good friend of Mom’s. She’d been a friend of mine, too. But it was too late. I was too far from my neighborhood. By the time I got there, the whole thing would be over.

  I kept going. I walked so far north that I ran out of park, and still I kept walking.

  I thought about going to the cops and telling them what Billy had told me. But then what? Billy was probably right. If Billy told them what he had told me—a big IF—they’d arrest him. If I told them, Billy would probably chicken out and deny it. What would happen then? The cops wouldn’t just believe me, would they? They’d have to investigate. What could they possibly find out all these years later?

  There had to be something. That’s the thing that rooted itself in my mind. There had to be something because, otherwise, why would Billy be so worried? If there was no way the cops could find anything, why would Billy want me to get Riel to back off? Why would he even admit to me what he had done?

  My brain just about exploded.

  Billy was worried. He was worried because he thought the cops would uncover something if they dug deep enough. That’s why he wanted me to stop Riel. And if I didn’t stop Riel …

  I stood in the middle of nowhere, shaking when I thought about it.

  If Billy wanted me to stop Riel, then it could mean only one thing. Whatever Billy had done—or not done—he knew more than he had told me. He was hiding something. But what? Had he lied when he said he didn’t see who had dropped off the car at the garage? Was he afraid to tell because he was afraid of what that person might do to him—more afraid than of what the police might do? Maybe it was something different from what Billy had said. Maybe he’d got mixed up in a car-theft ring. Whatever it was, I was going to get it out of him. I turned around and started walking back.

  It was nearly suppertime by the time I got out of the park, and my appetite had returned. I dug in my pockets. At the first corner store I passed, I bought a meat patty and ate it in about two bites. I was hiking along Cosburn, heading home, wondering what was in the fridge, when a police cruiser slid by, going in the opposite direction. It passed me, then did a U-turn and pulled up beside me. One of the cops got out.

  “What’s your name, son?” he asked.

  “Why?” I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  He didn’t get mad, and there was something funny about the way he was looking at me.

  “What’s your name?” he said again.

  I told him.

  “You need to come with us, Mike,” he said. “You’re wanted at home.”

  What? Billy had called the cops on me?

  “What for?” I asked.

  “They’ll explain it to you there,” the cop said. He opened the back car door for me. “Come on, Mike.”

  I got in. The other cop, the one who wasn’t driving, radioed that they had me. Then nobody said anything. We just rolled along Cosburn, down to Danforth and then down my street.

  There was another police car outside my house, and a police truck. On the side it said Forensic Identification. I saw Riel standing on the street, talking to one of the uniformed officers. He turned when he saw the squad car and came over and opened the door for me. I forgot about being mad at him. Mostly I was glad to see him. “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “I went to the funeral this morning. You didn’t show up, so I came by to see if everything was okay. When I got here, they were here.” He nodded at the cops.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s your uncle,” he said.

  “What about Billy?” I asked. Then, because I couldn’t think of anything else that made sense, I said, “Did they arrest him?”

  Riel shook his head. He led me over to his car and opened the passenger side door.

  “Sit down, Mike,” he said.

  I sat, my legs sticking out the open door.

  Riel glanced back at the house. Then he said, “Billy’s dead.”

  I laughed. It was automatic, because the first thing that popped into my head was: this is a joke. Except that Riel didn’t even crack a smile.

  “I’m sorry, Mike,” he said.

  That’s when I knew he wasn’t kidding.

  “But … what happened?” I asked.

  Riel shook his head. “I don’t know yet. The Ident guys are inside. And there’s a couple of homicide detectives who are going to want to talk to you.”

  Homicide? “Someone killed Billy?”

  “Homicide gets called whenever there’s a suspicious death,” Riel said. “Sometimes it turns out it was an accident or the person died of natural causes. But they have to check it out.” He glanced over his shoulder. Two men in business suits were coming down the walk toward us. “They’re going to want to ask you some questions, Mike. Okay?”

  The two detectives introduced themselves. Detective Jones and Detective London.

  “What happened to Billy?” I asked them.

  “That’s what we’re looking into, Mike,” Detective Jones said. “We’re going to have to ask you a few questions, okay? You can have someone with you when we talk to you if you want. You want us to call someone?” It was only later that I realized that Detective Jones talked a lot like Riel—slowly, calmly, patiently.

  There was no one I could call. I turned to Riel.

  “You want me to stay, Mike?” he asked.

  Neither of the detectives looked too happy about that. But Detective Jones said, “Do you want John to stay with you, Mike?”

  I nodded. Then the questions started, a whole torrent of them, coming at me one right after the other. They kept asking and asking, and all I could think was, Billy is dead. Billy. Dead.

  “When was the last time you saw your uncle?”

  The last time? “Yesterday. After school.” When I was mad at him. When I thought I never wanted to speak to him again.

  “You didn’t see him this morning?”

  I wished I had. I thought of all the things I could have said. “He was gone when I got up.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  I nodded my head yes. Billy was usually sprawled in his bed when I got up in the morning. Usually I had to wake him up so that he got to work on time.

  “What about you, Mike? When did you leave the house today?”

  “About eight, I guess.”

  “Where did you go?”

  I told him everything I had done today. I didn’t tell him I had spent the whole day thinking about Billy.

  “You didn’t come back here at all?” Detective Jones said.

  I wished I had. I wished I had never left the house. Maybe if I had stayed home, maybe if I had talked to Billy, things would be different now.

  “What can you tell us about your uncle, Mike?” he asked.

  Right now, I could have told them a thousand things. Little things. Like how Billy thought hot dogs with ketchup and relish was a balanced meal—ketchup is made from tomatoes, relish from pickles, so there’s your vegetables right there.
Or how Billy had no clue how to do laundry—all of his white socks had turned gray because he washed them with his jeans and T-shirts. Or how Billy charmed girls by singing them the one song he had written—he just put in a different girl’s name each time.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Was anything bothering him? Did he seem preoccupied?”

  I glanced at Riel.

  “Mike?” Detective Jones said. “Was something bothering your uncle?”

  I shook my head. Is it a lie if you don’t come right out and say the words?

  “When you saw your uncle last night, how did he seem?”

  “He’d been drinking,” I said. An honest answer.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yeah. A little.”

  “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary about him?”

  Why was he asking that? Did the cops know something? Did they suspect something?

  “What do you mean?” I said again.

  “Maybe he was upset about something. Depressed. Anything like that?”

  I glanced at Riel again. This time the two detectives exchanged glances.

  “Look, Mike,” Detective Jones said, “we’re just trying to find out what happened to your uncle.”

  What had happened to him? I realized then that they hadn’t actually told me. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know, but I figured I owed it to Billy to ask.

  “How did he die?”

  Detective Jones glanced at Riel. So did I. Riel sighed. Then he shrugged, like he knew something bad was going to happen and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  “Looks like asphyxiation,” Detective Jones said.

  “You mean, like he was smothered?”

  There was a heartbeat of a moment before he answered.

  “He was hanged, Mike.”

  I think my brain stopped working right then. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what he had just told me. Hanged? Billy?