Following Christopher Creed

  I shuddered, but he only cackled. He enjoyed my reaction.

  "So, you ... know where he is?" I suggested, my heart revving up like I was on the treadmill at the gym.

  He was still resting his head on the back of the chair, staring straight up at the ceiling. "I can't tell you exactly where he is, but I can tell you somewhere he's coming to."

  "Which is?"

  "Close to here. My mom doesn't know. He's totally, beyond reasonable sanity, scared of my mom. It's ridiculous. But you can't tell anyone what I tell you, because if he gets any idea that she may be onto him, I'll bet he won't show."

  "Uh ... we can relate to that," RayAnn said on my behalf.

  I stared, a thousand questions banging through my head, starting with When can I see those e-mails? and ending with In what other ways has he contacted you?" The whole thing rattled my brain like that earthquake was still going on.

  I settled on "Uh, when is he coming?"

  "He might already be here. I've been kind of out of the loop," he said.

  "So, he wouldn't be at your house," RayAnn guessed.

  "No way. If this makes sense ... he would be at the place you were at with Mary Ellen and Kobe tonight. The Lightning Field."

  I exchanged glances with RayAnn and saw her bang her palm on her forehead, probably wondering if Chris Creed could have something to do with the light she saw out by the trees earlier, the one she said looked like lightning coming out of the ground. Could it have been a person striking a match? A flashlight beam?

  Despite all this wonderful "great story" luck—or maybe because of it—my journalistic alarm was going off badly. Things were utterly wrong with this story. Justin just got out of rehab. He could be half off his gourd. It occurred to me that he might be one of those people who think UFOs are going to land next week. His friends thought he had been reading quantum thought, but maybe he was totally bats. And he had taken a seat in our sleeping quarters that he obviously was not getting up from quickly.

  "Look, here's the rules," he said. "We all need rules, as they say in rehab. I have a few. I will talk about my brother all you want, as long as you want. But two things: First, I signed myself out of rehab because of Darla Richardson. I can't miss that funeral. God, Bo is gonna be a basket case. But I don't want to talk about Darla. It's too sad. I'm very at-risk right now. They couldn't stop me from signing myself out of rehab, but I was given the whole speech ... I'm vulnerable, susceptible to relapsing, I ought to let the dead bury their own dead, whatever. I can't get myself all bummed."

  "Yeah, we understand," I said. As far as I could see, we had no reason to even bring up Darla. "What's the second thing?"

  He slithered out of the chair and lay on the floor, grinning at the ceiling. "Ahhhh. Give me four hours of uninterrupted sleep. And don't tell anybody I'm here. Like, nobody."

  I found RayAnn's eyes, which were popping out of her head as she stared from him to me. I was pretty much convinced at that point that he had come to us for a place to lie low, not realizing how the media not only asks all the ques tions but watches your every move. I didn't feel victorious, like I had a real catch, though I would have if it were anybody else. But very few people in this world, I decided, would have the nerve to pull a stunt like this.

  "Do you want a pillow?" I asked, and RayAnn moved with hesitation in her tread to get him the extra off the closet shelf.

  His eyes rolled like he was already fighting sleep, and he said, "I've been on a bus since eleven-thirty last night. Then I had to walk seven miles from the bus stop. You guys are, um, swell. But I'm not done with the rules yet."

  "I thought you said two," I said, and he ignored me, shoving the pillow RayAnn handed him under his head and closing his eyes.

  "And when I wake up, you have to buy me breakfast. Wawa's good. Bagel sandwich and a Pepsi."

  He must have opened one eye long enough to see RayAnn and me exchanging looks over what Claudia would say about this. He was grinning again, while reaching into his pockets. "Please don't tell me you're as broke as I am."

  "No, it's an ethics question," I said, catching both his pockets turned inside out. He left them that way. "Our editor doesn't approve of us giving things to interviewees or buying them things in order to get them to talk to us."

  "Hmm. Don't TV shows pay people to come on some times? Don't they give those people, like, forty thousand bucks sometimes?"

  "If they're trashy," I said. "We're for real. Sorry."

  "Just don't make me leave," he said with some fake whining thrown in, followed by some chuckles. "If I have to sleep in a tree, a squirrel might climb up my ass and make me rabid. Some people around here think I am rabid. I got enough problems without an up-my-ass squirrel thrown in. Challenges. Not problems. None of these guys I been reading lets you use the word problems."

  His eyes looked so swollen with tiredness that the grin didn't fit. It was as if his body was exhausted but his brain wouldn't cool down.

  "Some of your friends tonight mentioned your reading preferences," I said. "They mentioned positive thinking and quantum thought. They say it makes you happy."

  "Don't get me started on quantum thought right now. If I start talking about where science meets the spiritual side, I'll be blathering and way manic in around ten minutes. And I'm actually feeling tired. You don't want to see me way manic."

  "Manic," I repeated, remembering Elaine accusing Justin of actually being manic-depressive. "Are you bipolar?"

  "Among other things." He grinned, rolling his tired eyes. "I've had it on and off, probably for a couple years, but I had to get away from home to get a diagnosis. Everyone's mom wants to believe her kid 'just doesn't know how to behave,' right?"

  "Well, not everyone's mom, but yours seems to fit the part."

  "You don't know the half of it. Let's just say I'm from a really messed-up family, okay? Let's start with my dad's side. My dad has finally allowed himself to be diagnosed with mild autism. That's because he's finally got tenure and the faculty will be forced to give him perks instead of a pink slip. Dad doesn't care for affection, but somehow managed to produce three sons and marry two women. Weird? It gets better. My mom is bipolar, in denial, and tries to self-medicate with alcohol. Some say Chris is mildly autistic. I'm bipolar, and my brother Matt? We don't know about him yet. He's a straight-A student and a superjock who lives with my dad and his new wife. He's the one people say is perfectly normal. But this one time when I barged into his room last year? I caught him with a Barbie doll hanging up naked to the bedpost, from a shoelace tied around her neck. He was whipping it with the other shoelace."

  I cringed, horrified, though somehow he was making me laugh. I'd never tried laughing at my family problems. I don't have much sense of humor, I guessed. But my reaction propped his eyelids open a little. He pointed at me.

  "I cracked you up, see? Well, if you don't laugh you'll cry. Yah, I'm bipolar with a drug history. A very recent drug history, actually. I never even touched a beer before this December. I always thought I didn't want to end up like Mom. I ended up being exactly like Mom."

  Sounded like a rehab realization. I almost admired how he seemed able to look stark reality in the face and not get all upset about it.

  "I'm the most normal one in my family, if there is such a thing as normal," he continued with a strikingly easy smile. "I've got a bipolar mom who drinks, an autistic dad who's gotten laid at least three times that we know of, though it's likely my stepmother is something that people call a 'eunuch.' That's biblical for 'no interest in romance whatsoever.'"

  RayAnn found that one amusing enough to crack up. He was making it sound funny and fed off our interest.

  "They're a perfect match! I've got an older brother who is famous for being a nothing, a vapor, another brother who will probably run for governor someday and get arrested for pounding off under his desk while surfing eBay for 'naked Gymnastics Barbies, slightly used.' It's a real treat, being a Creed."

  "Um ... no family is perfect," I s
aid stoically, but my heart went out more than I would have liked it to. To keep it professional I said softly, "Justin, I should probably remind you that we are journalists. Anything you say..."

  "...can and will be used against me? Damn. I am stupid, aren't I?" He threw his forearm over his face, still laughing a little. His eyes looked weary above his ever-running mouth, and it took all my self-discipline not to add, You can talk off the record.

  "Why don't you just crash now," I suggested instead.

  "I'd love to. Can't say how that will work out ... I only just got on my medication last week, and it takes three weeks to be fully functional. Hence they would say you're actually looking at a manic episode." He pulled his arm back and watched my eyes to see if I was impressed. "What do you think? Would I be voted most likely to talk somebody's ear off?"

  At four in the morning? Yes.

  "That's my manic MO. I talk too much, think too hard. I don't think I'm, like, Jesus Christ going to feed the multitudes and raise the dead. Though one manic chick in rehab thought she was the reincarnated Indira Gandhi for about three days..."

  His eyes rolled, and I figured he was out of juice. But he went on. "Tomorrow I'll tell you about quantum thought. Counselors at school told me I should be a teacher. They say the craziest students make the best teachers. You gotta believe in some weird shit to keep a student's attention ... I believe in quantum thought. I believe in weird energy. I believe you can bring yourself great things in the Lightning Field. And ... I don't believe in ghosts..."

  And he was sleep-breathing deeply that fast. I even suspected he'd knocked off before that last sentence.

  RayAnn backed onto the bed, trying not to creak the mattress. I sensed she was slightly more unnerved than I was.

  "Mind if I leave the light on?" she whispered.

  I pulled off my glasses, slowly, saying, "Why would I mind?"

  She let out a tired chuckle. "I love you, Mike."

  I just sat at the edge of the bed, staring down at this kid. I didn't answer.

  TEN

  I LET JUSTIN SLEEP UNTIL EIGHT THIRTY. But when neither, RayAnn's nor my shower noises had roused him, I kicked him lightly in the shoulder a couple times until he opened his eyes.

  "RayAnn and I have to be at police headquarters in a while," I said.

  He sat up, surveying the room sleepily. Finally he said, "Oh my God. I was having a nightmare that my brother was lost in the Lightning Field. He was swinging a lantern and calling my name."

  RayAnn had been brushing her hair upside down, but she flipped it over with a Bride of Frankenstein hairdo. We exchanged glances. She hadn't mentioned to him that she'd seen a light out there.

  "You want to go down to the Lightning Field?" I asked. "We've got an hour or so."

  "No," he finally said, standing up. "It's where I did most of my partying. I should prob'ly be a good boy and eat and drink. Take care of myself for the days ahead..."

  We hit the Wawa. He put a dent in our dining expenses, insisting on cigarettes, too, in spite of his blather about taking care of himself.

  "Turn right onto Route 9 and take the first left," he said. "You wanna see where Torey Adams lived?"

  There was no shoulder on this narrow spit of road, so we had to pull over into some trees to look through the break in the woods.

  "There," he said, pointing between us with the cigarette in his fingers, stinking us out. It was easy to ignore the smell, what with the overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. The Adams house was old, with major chimneys coming up on both ends, but there was nothing showoffish about it. It looked like some Civil War farmhouse that had been well taken care of. It was set back far off the road and had a huge lawn that obviously turned as green as Ireland in the summers.

  "It's funny"' I said. "You see music stars on TV or at a concert, and you don't think about the house they were raised in. Most of the time it's something normal like this. I guess..." It was actually a lot more stunning than some of the row homes and shacks I'd seen in musicians' bios.

  "They're probably in there, since it's Saturday." Justin swallowed, then took a drag. He held his cigarette smoke in as if it were joint smoke. "Mrs. Adams refuses to avoid my mom, being all Miss I'm Fair and Just, even though the gossip around here went crazy that Torey was involved when my brother went missing. She knows my mom didn't start any of that. She might actually call Mom if she saw me. Let's take off."

  In Torey's web tale, his mother never held much against Mrs. Creed, though the rest of the town seemed to feel she drove her son out of the house, out of town. I couldn't tell if Mrs. Adams simply didn't believe that, or if she was just good enough not to throw more dirt onto the gossip mound. She was a great mom, the type any kid would want to have.

  "You have their phone number?" RayAnn asked as I gave her the sign to take off. Jason stuck his head out the window and let go of a huge blast of smoke.

  "I got Torey's cell number, that's all," he said, and my eyes almost bugged out of my head. "But it's in my cell. My cell's been dead for about ten days."

  I rolled my eyes. Leave it to a kid to take off and forget his charger. "You have Torey Adams's cell number?" I repeated in awe.

  "I haven't used it in about a year. We used to talk every once in a while, though I've never been as friendly with him as I've been with Bo. For one thing, Adams never came back to Steepleton after Chris disappeared and all that gossip came down on his head. He's basically been polite whenever I've called him. Honest. Big heart. But I can sense he doesn't really like hearing from me anymore. I'm part of his past. Bo stayed around for a couple years, working at Sunny Sunoco. We got thick before he left."

  "You have his cell number, too?" I asked. Inexperience. I should have asked him this ten minutes after he was awake.

  "Of course."

  "What about Ali McDermott?"

  "Yeah. If it's still her cell number. She was my babe, my secret 'older woman crush' for a lot of years. She used to call me a couple times a month from Boston, but that was a couple years back. I don't know what's up. She's a senior, supposedly, and that's all I know, 'cuz I haven't heard from her. I got my own problems, so I haven't called."

  A gold mine, I thought, but nodded in sympathy.

  "My charger works on Mary Ellen's phone, too. But you can't drop me off there right now. Her dad doesn't go to work until eleven. You want to see where Alex Arrington lived?"

  Alex had been Torey's best friend until Bo and Ali became his better friends. Torey had dropped Alex to latch on to friends with some depth. Alex held the distinction of being the first to accuse Torey of participating in Chris Creed's murder.

  "Absolutely."

  "Then step on the break. Fast."

  RayAnn did, and we all flew forward and snapped back. Justin cracked up.

  "I almost set your bloody car on fire." He flicked his butt out the window. "The big modern house on your right. Dr. Arrington, illustrious head shrink, and his wife still live there."

  "Where's Alex now?" I asked.

  "Senior at Middlebury. Most expensive school in the country. Some guys have all the luck. He just whizzed through the LSAT and will probably waltz on over to Harvard Law."

  "Yeah," I agreed dreamily, the now famed Creed letter on the front page of Adams's website dancing through my head. I wish I had been born somebody else ... Torey Adams, Alex Arrington ...

  "Don't take it too hard," Justin chuckled sleepily, probably sensing the angst in my tone. "Arrington is a buttwipe. Nothing's ever happened to him, and nothing ever will. His Facebook survey probably would say, 'I was forced to grow up after Sally Jane Shimmer-Hair broke up with me.'"

  I cracked up. Probably accurate.

  The house was huge, probably eighty percent glass, looking over the marshes, but it didn't have the character of the Adams's house.

  "He still play music?" I asked.

  "Not that I know of. Not that he was ever any good in the first place. Adams was desperate for backup in high school."

 
RayAnn pulled ahead but slowed down again as we arrived at what looked like a wooden bulkhead with only marshes and little salt rivers flowing out to the bay, a blue line running parallel to the horizon. I took out my recorder.

  "You heard Adams play music?"

  "Sure. He used to take his guitar down to the ball field all the time. I hung out with my friends at the playground next to it. That guitar was like his third arm. He could do the runs from some Eric Clapton tune while having an intense conversation about something else. Some guy would be talking to him, half listening, and all of a sudden he'd be going, 'Oh my God. He's playing "Layla" while giving me a lowdown of the last Steelers game.'"

  "So, your mom never thought Torey helped kill your brother, as the gossip went?"

  "No, my mother never thought that." He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. I sensed impatience. "She thought Bo may have killed my brother, like, by accidentally getting too violent with him. Bo sent my brother to the hospital one time about a year before he disappeared ... playing too rough with him, punishing him for being weird. She thought maybe some boons, maybe Bo himself, lured him into the woods to mess with him, swung a pointy stick, and accidentally impaled him with it, something like that. Then they buried him in the Pine Barrens so they wouldn't go to jail. I never felt like my brother was dead, so I surely never blamed Bo or Ali for anything. Those two were ... sincerely real." He grinned, and finally his hand dropped from the bridge of his nose.

  He continued with chuckles, "As for Adams, it was one of the few times my mom actually enjoyed keeping her big mouth shut. She was really enjoying how all this gossip was coming down on his head after he befriended the 'wrong people.' She had started calling Ali a 'fast filly' the summer before. You should have heard her smirking around the house. You don't see my mom smirking. That's beneath her. You hear her smirking, all, 'Mmm, mmm. Maybe he'll stick to the right people now.'"