Following Christopher Creed

  "Torey, can you get rid of these people? I need to talk to Justin in private."

  He stared at Justin for a moment, then looked questioningly at me. He brought his car keys out like a good assistant, but turned to Mary Ellen. "Come on. Quit crying. Lemme take you home, okay?"

  "Aw, me, too?" Steve begged. "It's going to rain on my head, man. I'll leave my bike in the bush."

  I figured he just wanted to be in a car with Mr. Fame, and Torey was doing his best to set boundaries as they started off. "...guys doing back here? We never partied back here ... clean up your act ... stop crying, okay?...and stop touching me!" I got a blast of him pulling his shoulder away from Steve's paw. I wondered if, somehow, he didn't have a worse deal than I did.

  Having gotten to town by myself with a completed story for Claudia, I was in a mindset of thinking ahead like I'd never been before. While waiting for Justin to calm down 382 a little, I called Yellow Cab just in case. I didn't want to be stuck out here in a blinding rain storm where lightning liked to strike. They said they could be here in fifteen minutes when I gave them the road and the landmarks. If we didn't need them, they'd have a hard time finding me to give me hell.

  Justin had slithered down and was sitting on the ground in front of the lightning tree. I lowered my aching legs beside him, but the trunk was not very fat. So, we were facing off in sort of different directions. I watched Torey lead Steve and Mary Ellen off, looking back at me every ten seconds with concern.

  "Sorry I didn't come back last night," Justin started, refusing to look at me. At first. Finally he turned, sitting Indian-style and facing me. His eyes passed over me six times while he said, "Whatever, I'm not myself right now and all I can say is I'm acting like a scumbag loser."

  I didn't deny it. "What happened?"

  "Last night somebody gave me a vial of coke and some Seconal, which I didn't want, but I didn't give back, either. I just couldn't let go of them. I was manic those times I thought I'd reached my brother, the time I saw him at that cemetery, in that barracks-looking place. I can see that now. Manic has great energy, man! I suppose you think that sounds crazy, but it's true! I was adding coke to the thing. It was just in case I wanted to be even more manic, but after I took my mom's car back, I did a couple lines, and then I couldn't sleep, so I went over to Mary Ellen's and crashed out under her bed, and here I am. I have some coke left. Take it from me. Here. Hurry up before I change my mind."

  I found the vial he was holding out, his hand trembling slightly. I flipped the black cap off and turned it over on the ground, but when I found his face again, capsules were going into his mouth.

  "Jeezus, Justin. You're gonna ... stop your heart," I said, with no actual clue what I was talking about, but it sounded right.

  "No, now I won't. I'll be good in about fifteen minutes. Slow train coming..."

  I handed him my water bottle out of my backpack for lack of something better to do and fingered my cell phone, knowing I could punch 9-1-1 without even looking.

  "Just ... give me a few minutes. Slow, slow train. Then I got something I need to tell you."

  I reached out and put a hand in his hair, going, "Take it easy. Whoa ... whoa..."

  I had touched so few people over the past few years, outside of RayAnn. Affection in my life had been something one-sided, from one person only. It had been selfish and indulgent on my mother's part, and it brought me a dim view of touching for comfort.

  The idea rode me that I could let RayAnn walk away from me, but I could make room in my heart for someone with a drug problem. A couple times she had been really blunt with me: I can understand about your mom, but don't you miss Charlie and Merilee? I'd never answered her. I had made my choices, and there was nothing I could do about it. Now, suddenly, there was.

  I rubbed Justin's hair and his back, which brought his head down into my lap, and he was crying at the ground. The clouds hid the sun almost entirely by the time he found his voice, but somehow the world felt dry as a bone. Dry and silent.

  "Remember the night I hit my mom?" he asked.

  I nodded. "You said you were trying to go out and she didn't want you to."

  "I used to sneak out my bedroom window a lot. She'd catch me the next day, ground me for life and whatnot. But I never actually tried to push her aside so I could walk out the front door before. She's just so ... unseeing. Any normal mom would have seen I was unglued about something and would have let me go, and maybe I could have explained later."

  I started to put it together that he hadn't been lining up a drug deal that night. I guessed as much aloud.

  "Hell, no!" He raised his head finally. "At that point in my life I had smoked one joint. It was the night Danny Burden called me. The night Darla died."

  I wondered if he should wait until he was calmer to talk about this. But I kept a hand on his shoulder, which seemed to be calming him more quickly than the drugs.

  "He said Darla had shot herself in this outbuilding on the back of his property and he didn't know what to do. He could hardly talk. Nothing was coming out except these ... terrible wails most of the time."

  "So, you hit your mom to get to him."

  "I totally nailed her. When she was too bloody to hold me down anymore, I took off on my bike. The only thing I had said to Danny—the only thing that made sense—was 'Don't touch anything. Nothing. Don't go back in that building until I get there and we can figure something out.'"

  "Why did Danny call you?" I asked. It seemed to me he'd have had better friends out in the Pine Barrens.

  "Because I was the one he talked to about Darla. Because I took Bo so seriously and he knew I was trying to look out for her when they started going out. Every time Danny had a problem with her, which was often, he called me. We spent a lot of time together over at his house, riding his dirt bike around Conovertown. There was so much that I couldn't even tell Bo. For one, Danny'd caught her cheating. Sometimes he wasn't even sure the baby was his."

  More intrigue. The girl sure could stir up trouble. "So, what happened that night?"

  "She shot herself at around five thirty. Danny's parents and Wiley were at church. I got there around six. Danny had done like I said. He hadn't gone in the outbuilding, and it was a good thing. We had time to think. He told me he had yelled at her pretty loudly, and the neighbors probably heard it. She'd been threatening suicide for the umpteenth time and he said, 'Go ahead!' and a bunch of stuff at the top of his lungs or something. Mr. Burden had kept his gun in the cabinet above the refrigerator for years. Danny had shown it to her once—he'd held it quite a few times too ... guy thing. He didn't want to hurt anyone ... But his fingerprints were all over it. And somehow, after she shot herself, he had the good sense to think it could easily look like he did it. That's what he said to me over the phone."

  I looked up at the sky, the clouds. He jumped tracks. "You know what dry rain is?"

  "Yeah," I said, catching lightning trees in small frames. "It's when there's thunder and lightning but no rain."

  "Feels like that right now." He put a hand up as if to feel the air. "It's dry. Nothing's left the sky. Nothing's on its way down. Where was I..."

  "Darla and the gun," I said, to bring him back around.

  He buried his head in his arms. "So, we went in there. I mean, we didn't even go in. We just opened the door. Danny had a flashlight. He shone it. She was lying behind the bike, but the way she fell, she was still sitting up. Her eyes were open. She shot herself in the right temple, but the hole in the left side of her head was huge, if you get my drift. It was totally ... black. Her eyes were open. She'd been bleeding out her one eyeball, out her nose and mouth ... These white globs were stuck to the wall. I'd swear it was her brains."

  He choked and sobbed until I felt sure he would puke, and I was about to follow suit. I put an arm around him again, and he was shaking all over, though I think he would have been anyway, without the outside help.

  "Dude, I never saw so much mess."

  "Jeezus, Justin."


  "Yeah. Danny was trying to rush up to her this time, and I grabbed him by the back of the shirt. I talked him into—t his is the tough part—i nto simply going into the house and letting somebody else find her!" He banged the top of his head with one shaking fist. "We weren't thinking clearly. All we thought was that it could have easily looked like a murder, and I was thinking of Bo and how easy it is to blame kids out there for bad stuff. But I always loved those crime scene shows where the detectives figure out what's going on by one carpet thread. Danny hadn't been in there in months. He kept his dirt bike in the front garage. His family had an alibi—being at church. I had to find out if I'd given my own mom brain damage or something, so I left him."

  "Always juggling," I muttered, but he didn't catch my drift.

  "I never thought—neither of us thought—how clearly impossible it is to stay in a house when you know your girlfriend's corpse is at the back of your property."

  "But ... you went home?"

  "I had to! I'd plastered my own mother! The cops were there. Said Mom was at the hospital, had a broken nose, and had charged me with assault. She had me arrested and told the cops to let me sit in jail overnight."

  I remembered Taylor talking about that at the crime scene, saying Justin had reported it as the most relaxing night of his life or some such thing. Thin veneers can cover a mountain of problems around here when nobody's looking at the details.

  "The cops had my cell phone, but it was turned off. And because they had no idea what had come down, they didn't turn it on, like, to see who might call me. They thought they were just doing a parent a favor or something."

  "So, did you hear from Danny?"

  "He had called that night, but when he couldn't get me, he sent an e-mail. Stupid, wow. I love that guy, but he was not the deep thinker of the hour. I got it first thing when I got out. It just said he was running ... he couldn't stay in the house knowing what was in the outbuilding. He left a note for his mom that just said, 'Going to Vegas. Love you.' I was all wrenched up about that, because if he ran it would look totally like he had done it. But he could never afford a cell phone, what with paying for Wiley's therapy. I had no way to find him, couldn't think of how to help him, unless I destroyed the evidence. And there was something bigger. Dude, you can't just leave a dead body. It just ... isn't supposed to be done. You're supposed to bury the dead. Every human heart knows that."

  "Yeah," I muttered in a praying way. "Justin ... Did you bury her?"

  "After I got out that morning, and nothing came up on the news or the Internet, like, nothing, I went back. I didn't know what I was going to do. I knew Mr. Burden had a shovel in there. I could ...bury her, clean the place, anything to help out Danny. I figured I could get to a pay phone and make an anonymous call. I could have done that without going back. I don't know exactly why I went back. Except maybe I thought I owed myself a second punch in the gut because I'd left her there the first time. I just never thought a whole day would go by without someone finding her body. We had left the door open, thinking somebody else would find her. But then you have to think, do you want to put somebody else through that sight?"

  "So, what happened when you went back?"

  "I had a flashlight. I tried to prepare myself to see it all again. But first, the shed door was closed this time. I opened 390 it ... she wasn't in there. It was like the whole thing had never happened. For a moment, I thought I was insane. That night in the jail was the first time I stayed up all night with no desire to sleep whatsoever."

  Onslaught of his illness?

  "I still wasn't tired. But I wondered ... was I sleep deprived? Had I imagined the whole thing? But I had that e-mail from Danny, which kept me from running straight to the nuthouse fast. I decided Danny must have done something, buried her in the Barrens, cleaned up the evidence in a state of panic before he ran. And yet I knew he wasn't up for something like that."

  "No," I agreed, completely stumped.

  "But I never knew for sure it wasn't Danny who buried her until Bo came last night. He told me about that suicide note and Danny being dead. And what am I supposed to say to him? I left your sister dead in the garage? I couldn't say that to him."

  I agreed. That wasn't for Bo to hear.

  "You gotta think of who is alive! Right?"

  I didn't know what to tell him, but he seemed a little calmer having told this horribly confounding tale. I couldn't see exactly what he was guilty of. He hadn't aided and abetted a criminal. Danny hadn't done anything either. He was still shaking, but not so violently.

  "So. Who buried Darla?" I asked.

  He wiped tears from his eyes. "Maybe it was the woods themselves."

  I could almost believe it, sitting out here under this dark gray sky.

  "Strange tale," he went on. "And maybe that's the end of it. Except it's really not. Because I never shut my eyes at night when I don't see her one opened eye, all glaring, as we walk away. Because we left her..."

  "Justin, she was dead. She wasn't looking at you," I said in horror.

  "I know that much," he said. "Mike, I don't do spooks. At least, not for long. I just do guilt and depression and ... now I do drugs. Ha..."

  He needed to go back to rehab. Tonight. Before I could start in on that thought, he took up a different avenue. I was thinking the kid had no tears left, but his voice was in need of oil again.

  "And it was just the nicest, kindest, sweetest thought ... that I could bring my brother back! You know? Maybe, just maybe, this world wasn't such an awful place, if he could show up ... if there was something in the lightning trees, or something in me, or something in quantum thought that could deliver me that one little smidgeon of a miracle. Are you going to tell me there's no such thing? That all miracles are manic nonsense? What the fuck kind of a thought is that!"

  He was rambling, agitated, not really expecting any answers.

  His voice revved up again. "That night Chris threatened to leave, the night he read Mom the e-mail he eventually sent to Principal Ames ... I don't know what was wrong with me. I wasn't thinking, Wow, he could be actually leaving, isn't that terrible? All I could think was that he'd finally gotten his weenie act together and stood up to Mom. It was a picnic. It was comedy hour! I went to sleep that night laughing into my pillow. And then, when it happened, I kept thinking he would show up. A year went by, and I started getting all, Jeezus, Chris, keep it up, why don't you? You're really milking this thing! And then I got pissed, and then I got old enough, and used to Mom enough, where I could start to understand his side of it. I never actually thought of him as dead ... until I saw Darla."

  "Oh my God," I groaned for him. It made sense—why he'd become so obsessed with wanting to know now, needing to know now.

  "Because I don't do spooks, Mike! I'm not Kobe Lydee, who loves to be morbid! For me, the alternative to my brother being alive is only one thing. He ... blew his brains out and was eaten by dead squirrels and moles and hedgehogs, a huge gaping hole in the side of his head."

  "Buddy, he's not Darla," I said, but he was on a roll.

  "He's in the ground. He's bones and hair. He's part of the roots of some tree out here, feeding those leafy buds at the tops of the trees with the carbon monoxide leaks from his intestines. Or he's at the bottom of some overpass in Wyoming, where he got his geeky self off at the wrong stop and tried to backtrack on foot. And he's now part of some sludge canal on the side of the road where a speeding semi hit him and never stepped on the break to realize."

  "Justin, don't."

  "And maybe, if somebody looked hard enough through the muck, they would see something shiny, his class ring, wrapped around one remaining finger bone."

  "Justin—"

  "And some ten-year-old would pocket that ring, not knowing what the finger bone was. And he'd be on his way. And that's the closest my brother would ever come to being discovered—t hat his class ring is floating around inside some plastic container of robotic Legos. And his hairs would float up and feed the
butterflies. That's why I never went to a psychic, Mike. All this shit about the dead speaking? I can't bear it. My dad's a scientist, and I was raised with that stuff. That's why quantum thought is the first thing that ever appealed to me. It's about energy. It's about energy becoming mass—"

  He stood and looked over at that break between the trees, probably one last hope that the lights seen were his brother. I already knew better. My skin was crawling with invisible worms and bugs and cesspool mire. I yanked him back down, going against my gut instincts, but what choices did I have?

  "Justin!"

  I hoped to get him to look me in the eye, stop with the eye-darting routine.

  "Look at me!"

  He was slowing down, but he was sniffing and hiccupping his defeat again. But he looked. I took off my glasses.

  They say the eyes are the mirror to the soul. Adams had spoken that truth last night, and it was something I always believed. Eyes are what make people understand that actors and actresses in the weirdest of costumes are really who they are. If someone has gained seventy pounds eating hospital food and finding companionship in dorm food ... if somebody has grown four inches ... if someone has gone from longish blond hair to a dark buzzcut, his eyes will still be his.

  If somebody's voice has changed from "I DID-n't DO anY-thing. It's no-O-t my fau-AU-lt" into a calm, normal man's voice, Justin Creed might need some help with that.

  I said very slowly, "I would venture to say ... your brother mixes lies with truth sometimes to protect his identity. I would venture to say ... he is alive and he still loves you."

  But Justin had not learned the value of seeing the details. We'd had a dad who never said much of anything, and a mom who was so domineering and loud that you couldn't trust a single thing she told you. We had a grandfather who gummed the neck of an ol' sweat sock bottle nightly and an Aunt Dee Dee who—yeah—was pretty much of a commando herself, but she was more generous with her money and more trusting of children she didn't give birth to. There was nobody in the mix to watch, to listen to, or to trust.