A Simple Suburban Murder (25 page)

"My dad and me were in the garage. I told him I wouldn't go, that I wanted Phil. He knocked me down. We wrestled. He was too big. He threw me down. He tried to push me into the car. I got away. I screamed at him to stop. I grabbed the nearest thing, my baseball bat. I yelled for Phil. He'd gone out around eleven o'clock. I didn't know if he was home. When I yelled my dad got madder. He came at me like he was crazy. I dodged and ran outside. He came at me on the lawn. He was too big to run away from. I swung the bat with all my might. I hit him. He fell. He made a lot of noise. I kept hitting him over and over and screaming. I think my mom heard, but she never came. My dad was dead. As I stood over him Phil drove up.

"Phil said they'd never believe a little kid's story. And things would only be worse for me if anyone found out. We had to get him out of there. We put the body in the backseat of the car. Phil helped me straighten up the garage."

I remembered Phil's story about the rain that night. Any evidence in the grass would have been washed away.

"Why'd you pick my classroom to put him in?"

"We wanted to put him in his own classroom. Phil knew my dad was involved in lots of illegal stuff at work. He said everybody would figure it was something to do with that.

"Getting into school was pretty easy, but his body was heavy. It was around five o'clock, and the first janitors showed up just as we got in the door by your room. We couldn't carry him back out. They could see us. We decided to put him in the nearest room and get out while we could.

"Phil knew how to open all the doors in the school. He and his friends had broken in a couple times years ago. We put him in a desk far back so he couldn't be seen from the window. No one saw us leave. Phil drove my dad's car to a side street in Chicago. I followed him in his car. He let me drive it sometimes, so I knew how. We drove back in plenty of time. We went to school like regular." He paused. He walked over to the bed, smoothed the already perfect cover. He looked back over his shoulder at us.

"I think my mom guessed the truth," he said, "that's why she's been so bad lately."

He stopped smoothing the bed. His hands rested at his sides, his head drooped forward. I walked to him, put my hand on his shoulder. He didn't brush it away this time.

I let the silence build. I felt the anger that had built up inside him, and now the added sorrow of his brother's death. Tears started down his face. All his hatreds, loneliness, fears, and living nightmares broke out, and he wept.

I put my arms around him and held him tightly. He buried his tears in my shirtfront. None of us it seems has enough magic to protect the children.

— 10 —

I
sat on the couch in my living room gazing out the picture window at the sunset. Hours before Scott ordered me out of the kitchen. It was Thanksgiving. Cooking noises drifted sporadically to my ears. I smiled at the sunset. I felt peaceful and rested—the kind of moment you remember from childhood when you were completely safe, which you wish you could replicate as an adult and then keep forever. But it's only a memory and a fleeting pang of calm and regret.

Two weeks had passed since we solved the murder. We'd talked until dawn that next morning. Neither of us disagreed, but we had to be sure. We didn't turn Keith in. He wasn't a criminal. He'd acted in self-defense. He didn't need to be crushed by an unfeeling bureaucracy. What the juvenile justice system could do to a kid was worse than many crimes. What his family had done to him was enough horror for one lifetime. We'd visited him several times. Heather Delacroix promised she would remain close to the family situation as long as necessary.

From Frank we'd learned that Evans had been offered $10,000 for Keith for a weekend. He was to bring Keith to meet Edgar and the group that night for them to see the boy for final approval. Frank confirmed that Evans was desperate for money and greedy as hell.

We attended Phil's funeral. Scott and I talked for hours that night agonizing about whether or not we could have saved Phil if we'd acted differently. Finally Scott said that there's a lot of what ifs in this world. He gave examples. What if we'd tested positive for the AIDS antibodies? We didn't. We're among the lucky ones. What if you get hit by a car tomorrow? You can "what if" yourself forever. He told me to forget it and concentrate on the now.

I'm not the type for regrets, and Scott was right.

The cops acted like they had been acting. Robertson was an asshole and still wanted to arrest us for his own obscure reasons. Frank thanked us. He told me he'd keep in touch. Through him I found out about the North case. So far he had been questioned but not arrested. The cops shut down the porno operation, of course. They arrested three more people connected with it. They hadn't found out how Evans and North had originally connected. I'm not sure it mattered anymore. The dead girl was still unidentified. To me that was one of the saddest things about the whole case. Who were her mom and dad? Where were they? Were their hearts breaking somewhere, or did they even care? Frank said the possibilities of tracing her were small.

Getting a murder conviction in Phil's and her case might prove difficult. Expensive lawyers hired by North played the system. We closed down one lethal porno operation. Convictions and closing others was somebody else's business.

Meg had called early this morning. Rumors had run rampant around school for two weeks about major changes coming.

The local paper, which came out twice a week—Sundays and Thursdays—had the announcement this morning. I wanted to pick up a copy later. Meg told us that at last night's school board meeting Sylvester and Armstrong resigned. The paper didn't give the details she said, although it did say the board accepted the resignations with regrets. Criminal prosecution wasn't mentioned. I wasn't sure I cared about that now.

Of course reporters got hold of the story. Star player, hero catches crooks. It made the national news. The police helped a great deal to keep that kind of chaos to a minimum. The ball club's publicity spokesperson, Sylvia Finsterwald, did an excellent job. She was fifty-six years old, gray haired, and efficient as hell. I think she liked me. I hope she did. She kept the interviews and harassment to a mild uproar the first few days and to a bare minimum after that. Scott did most of the interviews. He does them all summer and half the winter anyway. He's good at it. Plus the sports writers love him because he gives interviews readily. He wanted me to get more publicity. I convinced him I really wasn't interested.

I got off the couch and walked to the window. It was my favorite time of the day. The last blues and grays hung suspended in the sky. Darkness gathered around the edges of all the bushes and trees that sloped to the distant fields. A star or two twinkled in a cloudless sky.

Scott walked up behind and put his arms around me. He rested his head on my shoulder. I felt his chest against my back.

"Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes," he whispered.

Years ago we decided Thanksgiving was our own. A kind of anniversary celebration for ourselves, I guess. He cooks the meal. I did the first year. We wound up at the only McDonalds in fifty miles open on Thanksgiving. Since then he cooks. He's not half bad.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Content," I said.

"You know"—he hesitated, then plunged on. "While I made dinner I—" He stopped.

I turned to look at him. His eyes reflected back the deep blue of the fading horizon. I wanted to lose myself in them forever.

Scott said, "I thought about all that's happened to us in these eight years and especially what we went through the past month."

He cleared his throat, but his eyes remained steadily looking into mine. "The most important thing in all that's happened was the—" He stopped again. When lie resumed his voice had reached its deepest thrum. "Remember that first night in the bar—the Womb? While you were in the washroom the bartender propositioned me. I turned him down. He asked me why not? I said it was because I love you.

"And you know, I realized I haven't said that to you in a long time." He gazed at me in the last lights of dusk. "So, Tom Mason, I love you. 1 love you very, very much."

He put his arms around me and held me tight. I melted into his warmth and strength. This was safest of all.