Linwood Barclay

Final Assignment

One

‘Come on, let’s go into the woods and look around!’ said Charlie, swinging the baseball bat around, banging it on trees as he walked by them.

‘I don’t know,’ said his friend Martin. ‘I don’t like it in there. It always creeps me out! Let’s stay out here by the road.’

‘Just a little ways. Far enough in so we can see cars go by but they can’t see us.’

‘Well, okay,’ Martin said.

They walked more far into the woods. Then Charlie stopped and turned around to look at Martin right in the face and he said all angry-like, ‘So why did you go out with my girlfriend Katherine?’

‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘I know you and Katherine have had something going on. You went behind my back. I saw you guys making out!’

‘That’s bullshit, man. I would never do that. You’re my friend!’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t think so.’

He swung the bat and hit Martin right in the head. BANG!

‘Ow!’ Martin yelled. ‘That hurts!’

Charlie hit him again and Martin fell down on the ground. Charlie kept swinging the bat at Martin’s head, breaking open his skull and—

‘What do you think?’

I looked up from the laptop. ‘I’m sorry?’ I said.

‘What do you think?’ Greta Carson asked. ‘Don’t you think it’s well written?’

‘I’m not really a judge of literature,’ I said. ‘I don’t see any spelling mistakes, if that’s what you mean.’

Greta’s son Chandler said, ‘The computer finds those and fixes them.’

‘Please,’ Greta said, putting a hand on her son’s knee, as if that was where his mouth was and she was shutting him up. ‘Mr Weaver doesn’t care about those things. What matters is the story. Isn’t that right, Mr Weaver?’

I’d only been here ten minutes and already had a feeling I didn’t want this case, whatever this case turned out to be. Based on what she’d told me over the phone, I would have turned it down, but she’d gotten my name from an old friend of my wife’s, so at the very least I felt I had to come out here.

I folded down the lid of the laptop and looked at the pair of them. Ms Carson was in her late forties, stick-thin, her black hair molded tightly to her skull, pulled to the back of her head and spun around into something that looked like a small cinnamon bun. She wore a black silk blouse and expensive jeans, a small, tasteful strand of pearls at her neck.

Her sixteen-year-old son Chandler had a sense of style too. Huge white unlaced sneakers that made him look something like a Clydesdale, jeans and a pullover sweatshirt emblazoned with three letters — PFH, which stood for Promise Falls High, where Chandler attended the eleventh grade. His mother had told me before I got here that he was relatively new to the school. He’d spent the previous two years at Claxton Academy, which was private.

‘I think it’s a basic problem with the public school system,’ Greta Carson told me on the phone. ‘They’re not into thinking outside the box.’

Chandler’s short story, of one kid beating another kid to death with a baseball bat, was evidently innovative thinking.

Her call had led me here, to this classic Victorian three-story house in one of Promise Falls’ more upscale neighborhoods. I’d only been back in town a few months, having spent the last decade or more in Griffon, north of Buffalo, and had been reacquainting myself with the various parts of the town that I’d known better back in the days when I patrolled them in a black-and-white.

Sitting here, in the Carsons’ living room, I said, ‘Why don’t we start back at the beginning?’

‘You don’t want to read the whole story?’ Greta Carson asked.

‘Maybe later,’ I said. ‘I’m guessing what matters are is the issues surrounding it.’

‘It’s a freedom of speech issue, that’s what it is,’ she said.

‘Jeez, Mom, do we have to make such a big deal about this?’ Chandler said. ‘Can’t I just be suspended for a few days and we let it go at that?’

‘No!’ she said adamantly. ‘Just when Chandler’s showing signs of initiative, that’s when they come down on him like a ton of bricks.’

‘The beginning?’ I said, hoping at some point to get the woman on track.

She took a deep breath, a signal that her telling of this would be anything but a short story.

‘Chandler’s English teacher, Ms Hamlin, asked the class to write something creative, imaginative. So Chandler applied himself and wrote this story’ — she tapped the closed laptop — ‘and now he finds himself being treated like some sort of psychotic degenerate.’

‘I take it the suspension didn’t happen just like that?’ I said.

‘There was a meeting,’ she said. ‘I was called down there, yesterday.’ She made it sound as though she’d been summoned to a thrift shop to choose a new wardrobe. ‘There was Ms Hamlin, and the head of guidance, what was her name?’

‘Ms Brighton,’ her son said. ‘Lucy Brighton. She was the only one I felt was on my side.’

‘And the principal, Ms Caldwell, was there too. This is what happens when you have too many women in charge,’ Greta Carson said. ‘They think all literature should be Eat, Pray, Love — which, by the way, I liked very much, but not everyone wants to read that kind of thing.’

‘So what happened at the meeting?’

‘Ms Hamlin,’ Greta said, ‘had a case of the vapors, I gather, when she read the story. She took it straight to the principal. She never gave him a chance to read it out to the class, where his classmates would no doubt have found it to be a very engaging story. Ms Hamlin and the others wanted to know why Chandler would write something like that.’

I looked at the boy. ‘Why did you write something like that?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Why does anybody write anything?’

‘Exactly,’ his mother said. ‘How does one explain the creative process?’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Chandler said. ‘The idea just came into my head and I wrote it.’

‘What was their concern?’ I asked.

‘They thought that if I would write something like that,’ Chandler said, ‘I must be like sick in the head. That I’d go out and actually kill somebody.’

Greta Carson nodded furiously. ‘Exactly. They wanted him to go for counseling or psychiatric testing or something like that. Unbelievable! There are lots of people who write dark and creepy things! My God, if Edgar Allan Poe or H. P. Lovecraft or Stephen King had had the misfortune to go to Promise Falls High, they’d have never had a writing career, because some stupid teacher would have sent them off to be tested and put them on medication. It’s beyond ludicrous.’

‘Have you written a lot of stories like this?’ I asked Chandler.

Another shrug. ‘Not really. This was, you know, kind of a one-off.’

‘But you like to write?’

‘Once in a while.’

‘I think this may be a talent of Chandler’s that is just now rising to the surface,’ his mother said.

The phone rang.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Greta said, and reached for a cordless phone resting on a table next to the couch. ‘Hello? Oh, hi.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘No, we haven’t seen him at all. Okay. Well, I’m sure it’s nothing. Okay. Listen, I have Mr Weaver here right now, so why don’t I give you a call later?’

‘What was that?’ Chandler asked.

‘Nothing,’ his mother said. ‘Where were we?’

I asked Chandler, ‘What made you write this specific story?’

Again his mother jumped in. ‘Are you saying he was wrong to write it?’

I turned and looked at her as patiently as I could. ‘I’m just trying to get the big picture here.’ I looked back at Chandler. ‘So why did you write this?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I guess I wanted to bring my mark up in that class.’

‘You haven’t been doing that well?’

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Ms Hamlin doesn’t like me.’

‘A lot of the teachers have it in for him,’ his mother said quickly.

‘Why would that be?’

Now it was her turn to shrug. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘Have you been in trouble before this?’ I asked Chandler.

‘Um,’ he said.

‘Nothing serious,’ Greta Carson said.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

Chandler grimaced. ‘It really wasn’t that big a deal. Everything’s fine now. We get along and everything.’

I looked at the two of them, waited.

‘Okay, so what happened,’ Chandler said, ‘was me and my friend Mike, we kind of made fun of a guy.’

‘It was harmless,’ his mother said. ‘A prank.’

‘Mike Vaughn?’ I asked. It was my late wife Donna’s friend Suzanne Vaughn who had referred Greta Carson to me. I knew she had a son named Michael.

‘Yes, that’s right. Suzanne’s boy,’ Greta said. ‘We’ve been friends with Suzanne and Elliot for years, and Chandler and Michael have grown up together.’

‘So what was this prank that you and Mike cooked up?’ I asked Chandler.

‘So there’s this guy named Joel Blakelock, and he’s kind of, you know, everybody knows he’s kind of gay, which is fine, right? But there was this thing at school, and he was around back, by the parking lot, and he was sort of making out with some other guy, and me and Mike, well, Mike, he got out his phone and he took a picture of them. You couldn’t see the other guy, but you could tell that it was Joel, and we sort of put it out there.’

‘Out there?’ I said.

‘Like, we posted it. And then everyone else posted it. And Joel got really upset because he kind of thought it was an invasion of privacy and—’

‘They were right out in the open,’ Greta Carson said.

I gave her a look that said, Please.

‘Go on,’ I said to Chandler.

‘Yeah, like he got pretty upset about it, and somebody said he actually was going to kill himself over it but I don’t think that’s true, and Mike and me got in trouble and got suspended for a few days, but then things, like I said, settled down. I’m even sort of like friends with Joel now. Not in a gay way, of course.’ He flushed. ‘But like friends in other ways.’

‘This happened since you’ve been at Promise Falls High?’ I asked. Chandler nodded. ‘And why did you leave the private school?’

‘Oh, that,’ Chandler said.

‘The school failed to meet Chandler’s academic needs,’ his mother said. ‘So we moved him out.’

‘We?’

‘My husband Malcolm and I.’

‘Where is Mr Carson?’ I asked.

‘He’s at work.’

‘What’s he do?’

‘He’s a financial consultant,’ she said. ‘He used to teach business, but then he actually got into it. Those who can do, you know.’

‘Does he know you called me?’

She swallowed. ‘I’ll be bringing him up to speed soon enough. And I hardly need my husband’s permission to engage someone’s services. That’s a very sexist attitude.’

‘My apologies if that’s how it came across,’ I said. I needed to get things back on track. ‘What did you mean, the school did not meet Chandler’s academic needs?’

‘They weren’t challenging him enough, and as a result, his grades suffered.’

Back to Chandler. ‘You were failing and they dropped you?’

‘Kinda,’ he said.

‘That’s not how I would characterize it,’ his mother said. ‘So, regrettably, we had to move Chandler to the school in our neighborhood. I think that’s why the teachers are against him, that he came from a private school. There’s a kind of reverse snobbery going on, if you ask me.’

‘I see,’ I said. I put my hands on my knees, getting into position to stand and walk out of here. But I at least had to ask. ‘Just how were you thinking that I might be able to help?’

‘I want you to get those school officials to change their minds and end this suspension, drop their demands that Chandler see someone for this ridiculous psychiatric help, and apologize.’

I shook my head. ‘You’ve got the wrong guy. If anything, what you want is a lawyer. Not a private detective.’

‘No, you’re exactly what I need,’ Greta Carson said. ‘I want you do dig up some dirt on the school.’

Chandler’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling. He sagged back into the couch, looking as though he hoped the cushions might swallow him whole.

‘Excuse me?’ I said to his mother.

‘It’s a big school, lots of staff. I’m sure some of them have done something they wouldn’t want everyone else to know about. Start at the top, with the principal. Maybe she sleeps around. Or that guidance counselor. I hear she has a weird daughter, some kind of learning disability or something. Good heavens, don’t make me do the work for you. This is your area. This is what you get paid for, isn’t it? Dig around and see what you find.’

‘To what end?’

She laughed. ‘Seriously? Once you’ve got something on them, I’m sure they’ll be much more amenable to dropping this whole business with Chandler.’

‘You want to blackmail your son’s teachers so they leave him alone?’

‘I wouldn’t put it that way,’ she said. ‘I’d think of it as leverage.’

I stood.

‘It’s been a pleasure, Ms Carson.’ I smiled, nodded, then turned to Chandler. ‘Good luck with your writing career.’

As I moved toward the door, the woman trailed after me. ‘Aren’t you going to help us?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Although I think there’s no doubt you need help, Ms Carson.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Greta Carson asked.

I let myself out.

I popped in to say hello to Naman on the way up to my apartment. I was renting a place over his used bookstore, and he was my landlord. He was sitting behind the counter reading an old Bantam paperback edition of a Nero Wolfe novel by Rex Stout when I walked in.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘You are on a case?’ he asked, grinning. He read a lot of detective fiction and thought what I did for a living was exciting and glamorous. I wished.

‘Turned one down,’ I said.

‘A divorce case?’ he speculated. ‘You don’t do that kind of work because it’s too messy?’

‘Something like that,’ I said.

There was a door off the sidewalk, next to the entrance to his shop, that led up to my place. I trudged tiredly up the stairs, took off my jacket and threw it over the back of a chair, loosened my tie. I opened the fridge, surveyed the contents, and decided it would be tricky to whip up something interesting for dinner with only milk, olives, and strawberry jam.

My cell phone rang.

I found it in my discarded jacket, glanced at the call display.

VAUGHN.

That would be Suzanne Vaughn. I was betting Greta had phoned her to complain that the private investigator she’d recommended so highly had refused to take her case, and insulted her to boot.

I took the call.

‘Hello.’

‘Cal?’

‘Hi, Suzanne. Greta must have called you.’

‘What? No, she didn’t.’

‘Oh. I thought she might have.’

‘That’s not why I’m calling,’ she said. I noticed, now, an edge in her voice.

‘What’s wrong, Suzanne?’

‘It’s Michael. He hasn’t come home. We haven’t seen him since last night. Elliot and I are absolutely frantic.’

Two

I drove straight over to see Suzanne and Elliot Vaughn. They lived only a few blocks from the Carsons, but this was a different neighborhood. Not that the homes here weren’t nice, but they were more modest — a hundred thousand per house more modest. The Vaughns lived in a one-story house with clapboard siding. The lawn needed some attention, and from the street I could see part of an old rusted swing set in the backyard that didn’t look as though it had been used in years.

Suzanne and my wife Donna had gone through high school together and kept in touch during the years that we had lived in Griffon. Suzanne and Elliot had been among the few from Promise Falls who had come to Griffon for Donna’s funeral.

Suzanne, a short, tiny woman who had always reminded me of a sparrow, had been watching for me and had the door open before I reached it.

‘Cal, thanks for coming.’

‘Have you heard from him since you called me?’ I asked.

She shook her head furiously. ‘I keep trying his cell but he’s not answering.’ She turned her head and called into the house. ‘Elliot! Cal’s here.’

Elliot appeared from the kitchen as I entered the house. He offered a hand and I took it. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said. He was a small man, maybe five-two, and he hadn’t had any hair since he was in his early twenties. I’d often wondered if he’d married Suzanne because she was the only girl he could find who was smaller than him.

‘Have you called the police?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not so sure we need to bring them in.’

‘He stopped me,’ Suzanne said, almost accusingly. ‘I’ve been wanting to call them since three in the morning.’

‘He’s a teenage boy,’ Elliot said. ‘Teenage boys do stupid things. Maybe he’s with a girl, or had too much to drink and he’s sleeping it off somewhere.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ I said, ‘but still, it sounds like it’s been a while.’ I glanced at my watch. It was one in the afternoon. ‘You know for a fact he didn’t go to school today?’

‘We had a call,’ she said. ‘We thought maybe he had spent the night someplace and gone to school from there, but they called, said he hadn’t shown up. I’m sick to death.’

Elliot tried to comfort her by putting a hand on her arm, but she shook it off.

‘When did you last see him?’ I asked.

‘We all had dinner together,’ Suzanne said. ‘Then he said he had some homework to do, and later he went out.’

‘When?’

Elliot said, ‘I guess dinner was around seven, but he didn’t leave until around ten.’

‘Isn’t that kind of late to be heading out?’ I asked. ‘On a school night, anyway.’

‘That’s what I told him,’ Suzanne said. ‘But he said he wasn’t going out for long.’

‘Did he say where he was going?’

They both shook their heads. ‘Just out,’ Suzanne said. ‘That’s about the most you ever get out of him these days.’

‘Could he have been going to see Chandler?’ I asked.

‘I asked him that,’ Suzanne said. ‘He said Chandler was grounded while his parents sorted out what to do about that story he wrote. That’s why you went over there, right? Why Greta wanted to hire you? She said you were going to find something on the school staff that she could use.’

‘Greta’s crazy,’ Elliot said. ‘I mean, we’re friends and all with her and Malcolm, but she can be a complete lunatic sometimes. And Chandler can do no wrong in her book. She’s always made excuses for him.’

I didn’t disagree with any of that, but I steered us back to Mike. ‘So if he wasn’t going to see Chandler, then who was he going to see?’

They shook their heads again.

‘Does Mike drive?’

‘He’s got his license, but he didn’t take the car,’ Elliot said. ‘I think someone might have come by and given him a ride. Just after he went out the door, I thought I heard a car door slam. By the time I looked outside, there was no one there.’

‘When did you start phoning him?’

‘After midnight,’ Suzanne said. ‘I called him around twelve thirty and left a message, and then again at one, and every hour or so after that. I didn’t sleep a wink.’ She gave her husband a disapproving look, which he caught.

‘I guess I went back to sleep after she called the first time.’

‘I woke him up at three and said we should call the police, but he didn’t want to do that.’

‘You didn’t call Chandler?’

Suzanne looked regretful. ‘I didn’t have a number for Chandler’s cell phone. If I’d had that, I would have called or texted him. I didn’t want to call the house and wake his parents. I just kept hoping Mike would come home. I called Greta this morning to see if she’d seen him. She said they hadn’t.’

That was probably the call she’d taken while I was there.

‘Does Mike have a girlfriend?’ I asked.

‘Who can keep track?’ Elliot said, with what almost sounded like a touch of envy. ‘Every week it’s someone different. The last one I remember was Kate or Karen or something.’

‘So he’s popular,’ I said.

‘He’s a good-looking kid,’ his father said.

‘I can understand your reluctance to call in the police,’ I said to him, ‘but I think it’s time.’

‘I told you so,’ Suzanne said.

‘You can’t help us?’ Elliot asked.

I was thinking, but did not say, that if Mike had been in some kind of accident, the police might already know about it. But if he didn’t have sufficient ID on him, or if it was missing, they might be struggling with who he was.

‘I’m just one person, and I’m happy to help. But the police will put the word out to everyone they’ve got out there. They’ve got a much better chance of finding him than I do, and in a lot less time.’

Elliot nodded resignedly. ‘Okay, I’ll make the call.’

As he walked over to a landline phone on a narrow table that ran along the back of the sofa, Suzanne looked at me wearily.

‘The trouble that boys can get into,’ she said, and then looked at me apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. You know better than anyone.’

I’d lost my son Scott shortly before Donna had passed away.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Hello, police?’ Elliot said. ‘I want to report a missing person. Our son. We haven’t seen him since last night.’

I was still standing by the front door, and my eye caught some movement outside. I turned my head and looked through the glass to see a police car pulling up to the curb.

‘His name,’ said Elliot, ‘is Michael Vaughn. He has brown hair and he’s about five feet, six inches—’

‘Hang on,’ I said to Elliot as a uniformed cop got out of the car and started making his way toward the house.

Three

‘Oh dear,’ Suzanne said.

‘What is it?’ Elliot said, still holding the phone to his ear. When he saw the cop at the door, he placed the phone back into its cradle. ‘Shit,’ he said.

I was closest to the door, so I opened it. ‘Hey,’ I said.

‘Where’s Michael?’ Suzanne asked the police officer. ‘Do you have Michael?’

The cop was stone-faced. He was late twenties, and I did not recognize him. He would have joined the Promise Falls police some time after I’d left it and moved to Griffon.

‘Mr and Mrs Vaughn?’ he asked. He was glancing at all three of us. He wouldn’t have much trouble figuring out who Mrs Vaughn was, but with me standing there, Mr Vaughn was up for grabs.

‘Yes, yes,’ Suzanne said, then put a hand on Elliot’s arm. ‘This is my husband. What’s happened? Is this about Michael?’

‘I was just calling the police,’ Elliot said. ‘Our son—’

‘There’s been an incident,’ the officer said. ‘Michael Vaughn is your son?’

‘Oh God,’ Suzanne said.

‘What’s he done?’ Elliot asked. ‘Has he done something?’

He was obviously hoping so. Right now, the idea that his son had caused some trouble beat many of the possible other explanations for the police being here.

‘Not that we know of,’ said the cop, who was wearing a name tag that read Osterman. ‘This is a very difficult thing to have to tell you. Someone going for a jog in the woods near Clampett Park found a body a short while ago, and—’

Suzanne started to wilt. Elliot moved to catch her before she hit the floor. He guided her into a nearby living room chair.

Osterman waited until she was safely seated before he continued. ‘This jogger phoned the police and we went to the scene, and based on identification found on the body, well, we were led here.’

Between sobs Suzanne was saying, ‘No, please no, not my baby, not my baby.’

Elliot said, ‘Someone could have stolen his wallet. It might not be him.’

The cop nodded. ‘That’s true, but...’

He turned to me. ‘May I ask who you are, sir?’

‘Cal Weaver,’ I said. ‘Friend of the family. Also, a private investigator. The Vaughns called me because they’ve been worried about Michael. They haven’t seen him since last night.’

I pulled him aside, slightly out of earshot of Suzanne and Elliot. ‘Why’d you hesitate when he said the wallet might have been stolen?’

‘There was a student ID in it. The picture matches the deceased, at least as best we can tell.’

‘What happened to him?’

Osterman looked between the Vaughns and me. ‘Sir, I really should be dealing with—’

Elliot said, ‘Cal, would you go? Find out what’s happened. I’m going to have to stay here and take care of Suzanne.’

‘I’m afraid I have some questions that won’t wait,’ Osterman told them.

‘I’ll go,’ I told Elliot. ‘I’ll call when I know something.’

I left Osterman with them and headed for my car. He’d said the body had been found near Clampett Park, which was all I needed to know.

Half a block away from the park, I started seeing police cars. Marked, and unmarked. I pulled over to the shoulder and walked the rest of the way.

Three people — two men, one woman — in hazmat-type suits were about thirty feet into the woods just beyond the sidewalk, walking around, staring intently at the ground. They were covered head to toe in white, only their faces exposed.

I was walking past an unmarked car when I heard someone say, ‘Cal?’

I stopped, turned, and saw sitting behind the wheel, with the window down, Promise Falls police detective Barry Duckworth.

‘Barry,’ I said.

‘Hey, Cal,’ he said, getting out of the car and shaking my hand. ‘Good to see you.’

‘Good to see you too. How are you?’

‘Not bad, all things considered,’ Duckworth said. ‘It’s gonna be twenty years in another couple of weeks.’

‘Twenty years with the department?’

Duckworth nodded. ‘They’re still talking it over whether to make it a municipal holiday.’

‘At the very least.’

‘I was sorry to hear about what happened.’

I nodded. I never knew what to say, so it seemed easier to say nothing. Duckworth sensed my discomfort and moved on. ‘What brings you out here? I’m guessing you didn’t just chance by.’

‘I was at the Vaughns’ when one of your people showed up.’ I looked into the woods, where I presumed the body still was. ‘The officer said they’d taken an ID for Michael Vaughn off the body.’

Duckworth nodded slowly.

‘And that the photo on it looked a lot like the deceased.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What’s your connection to the Vaughns?’

‘We were friends back when Donna and I lived here. They called me a little while ago. They haven’t seen Mike since last night. Suzanne — that’s the wife — broke down, and her husband Elliot asked me to come out and see what was going on.’

Duckworth nodded again.

‘So what is going on?’ I asked.

‘We’re in the early stages of the investigation,’ he said.

‘Can I have a look?’

He shook his head. ‘Nope. Already been enough people wandering around in there messing up the scene. Maybe later, after we move the body.’

‘What happened to him? He climb up a tree and fall down and break his neck? Trip on a tree root and knock himself out?’

Duckworth said nothing.

‘Come on, Barry. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t eaten by a bear.’

‘Somebody had a go at the kid,’ he said.

‘It’s a homicide?’

‘I see you still have your keen investigative instincts.’

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘Look, Cal, leave me your card or something, and if there’s anything I can share with you later, I will. And listen, we should grab a drink some time. Maybe you’d like to come over, have dinner with me and Maureen.’

‘We’ll have to set something up,’ I said, even though I knew it would never happen.

‘She’d love to—’

‘Found something!’

It was the woman in the hazmat suit. She had something in her hands that she was holding up for all to see. She was grasping it gingerly, careful not to smear the surface of it in any way.

It was a baseball bat, and even from thirty feet away, I could see it was smeared covered with blood.

‘Well,’ said Duckworth. ‘Looks like we got ourselves a murder weapon.’

I must have done a poor job of hiding my shock at what I was seeing, because Duckworth asked, ‘Something on your mind, Cal?’

I said no. But I was thinking of that phrase, the one about life imitating art. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Four

I got back into my car and drove straight to the Carson house. The first time I’d come here, there’d been a silver BMW in the driveway, but now there was a blue Lincoln SUV parked alongside it.

Greta Carson looked taken aback when she opened the door and found me standing there.

‘Oh, you’re back,’ she said. ‘So you’ve decided to take the case after all.’

‘May I come in?’ I said.

She opened the door wider. ‘Let me guess. You already found something we can use against them. I hope it’s someone high up, like the principal. If you’ve got something on her, we can nip this thing right in the bud.’

‘Is Chandler here?’

‘He’s up in his room,’ she said. ‘But you should tell me first what you’ve found out.’

‘I need to speak to Chandler,’ I told her.

She sighed with disappointment. ‘Fine, then. My husband just popped in. He was in the garage, but I think he’s back in the house. You might as well meet him while you’re here. Malcolm!’

A door to the left of the stairs opened, and I caught a glimpse of oak paneling and bookshelves. A ground-floor study. A tall, thin man emerged. Nearly six feet, but he’d have been closer to six-two if it weren’t for the fact that he was slightly stoop-shouldered. He wore a dark suit, white shirt and blue and red striped tie.

‘Malcolm, this is Mr Weaver,’ she said.

‘You’re the one she called?’

I admitted it. ‘Yes.’

‘When I heard you’d turned Greta down, I thought you had some sense, but I guess I came to that conclusion a little too soon.’

‘I need to speak to Chandler,’ I said.

‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ Malcolm said. ‘I don’t quite know how we’re going to handle this yet, but it’s not going to be my wife’s way. Honestly, thinking she could blackmail the school by—’

‘It’s not blackmail,’ she said angrily. ‘It’s just fighting fire with fire. If they want to cast aspersions on his character, well, we can play that game too.’

‘I’ll go in there and talk to them myself,’ her husband said. ‘Give them a little lesson in freedom of expression. This is all a bunch of nonsense.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m supposed to be somewhere in half an hour.’

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘I have clients. I’m a financial adviser. I stopped by between appointments to pick up some files. It was nice to meet you, Mr Weaver, but I need to be shoving off shortly.’

‘I think maybe you should stick around,’ I said.

‘Why’s that?’

I saw that the laptop Chandler’s story had been on was still on the coffee table in the living room. ‘I’d like to read some more of your son’s story,’ I said, tipping my head in the direction of the computer.

‘Of course!’ Greta said, giving her husband a sharp, satisfied look, as if to tell him they were going to do this her way, no matter what he thought.

I dropped myself onto the couch and opened the laptop. When the screen came to life, the story was still on it. I started at the beginning, read it right through to the end. It was only about a thousand words, and I was reading quickly, so I was done in about three minutes. Twice I had to raise my hand when Malcolm Carson started to ask questions.

When I was finished, I said, ‘Okay.’

‘It’s better the second time you read it, don’t you think?’ Greta asked.

What struck me was not the story’s literary merit, but how close the names of the two characters in it — Charlie and Martin — were to Chandler and Michael.

‘Why’d you have to read it again?’ Malcolm asked. ‘The issue is not what’s in the story. The issue is that the school wants to control what its students think.’

‘Does Chandler have a girlfriend?’ I asked.

Malcolm looked as though I’d thrown cold water in his face. Maybe he wasn’t used to people answering his questions with more questions.

‘I’m not sure,’ Greta said. ‘There was a Karen a little while ago, but I think that ended.’

The girl being fought over in the short story was Katherine.

But the most troubling part of Chandler’s little assignment was that Charlie had killed Martin by whacking him in the head with a baseball bat.

In the woods.

‘Let’s get Chandler down here,’ I said. ‘Right now.’

Malcolm moved to the bottom of the stairs and called up: ‘Chandler!’

A muffled voice from behind a closed door shouted back: ‘What?’

‘Get down here!’

I heard a door open, then thumping on the stairs one might have associated with the approach of a stampeding rhino. When he hit the first floor and saw me sitting at the laptop, Chandler hit the brakes.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Mr Weaver is back to help us,’ Greta said.

I was not unaccustomed to misrepresenting myself in the pursuit of information, but I didn’t want to completely mislead the Carsons. I said, ‘I wouldn’t count on that. I’m just trying to sort out some things before I take my next step.’

Which might be turning Chandler over to the police for the murder of his friend Mike Vaughn.

‘Have a seat,’ I said to him.

He sat across the coffee table from me, squirmed for several seconds trying to get comfortable.

‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘When did you write this?’

‘I guess two, three days ago?’

‘Did you show it to anyone other than your teacher?’

Did I see something in his eyes? A brief look away? An attempt to avoid eye contact?

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘I just gave it to her.’

‘And then she showed it to the principal and another person?’

‘Ms Brighton,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’

‘Why this story?’

‘Huh?’

‘Of all the stories you might have thought up, why did you write this specific story?’

‘Mr Weaver,’ Greta said, ‘you’re getting to the very heart of the creative process. Why does an artist paint what he paints? How does a songwriter choose the notes he chooses?’

Malcolm rolled his eyes. ‘I hardly think Chandler’s working in the same stratosphere as Picasso or Gershwin.’

‘But it’s all the same thing,’ Greta said. ‘Isn’t that right, Chandler?’

He nodded happily, as though she had rescued him. ‘Yeah, it’s like that. It just came to me, and I wrote it down.’

‘Honestly,’ Greta said, ‘the worst thing you can ask a writer is where he gets his ideas.’

‘Still,’ I persisted, ‘the story must have come from somewhere. A situation, something you experienced, then reinterpreted.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Are Charlie and Martin based on anyone?’

‘Charlie and Martin?’

Was Chandler thick as a brick, or was he just very good at playing dumb?

‘The two boys in the story. Are they based on you and Mike? The names are somewhat the same.’

‘I don’t know. I guess maybe I named them that way sublimely.’

‘You mean subliminally?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘And the girl they’re fighting about is named Katherine. Would she be based on Karen?’

His eyes widened. ‘You know about Karen?’

‘Your mother said you were seeing a girl by that name.’

‘Yeah, well, for a while, sort of.’

‘Did you and Mike have a disagreement about her?’

‘Not lately.’

‘But at some point.’

His eyes seemed to be focused on the wall behind me, as though searching for a way out of this.

‘Yeah. A few weeks ago. He was... he and Karen were kind of making out at a party. I found them upstairs in a bedroom.’

‘What party was this? Whose house?’ Greta demanded.

I held up a hand. The problem of unsupervised parties was not on my list of priorities. ‘Go on.’

‘I was looking for Karen and going through the house, and I found them. Not actually doing it, but messing around. You know? I was pretty pissed with both of them, but especially him, cause he was supposed to be my friend. We kind of had it out at the party.’

‘Had it out?’

‘Kind of yelling at each other, shoving each other around.’

‘People saw this?’

He looked at me like I was a science teacher explaining the second law of thermonuclear dynamics. ‘Uh, yeah.’

‘Keep going.’

‘But we made up later. Him and Karen were a bit high, and they said they didn’t exactly know what they were doing.’

‘I can’t believe this sort of thing goes on,’ Greta said. ‘They were high?’

‘Mom, please.’

‘What about you? Were you high?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I mean, not very.’

Malcolm looked at his watch again. ‘Good God.’

‘So the part in your story about the two friends fighting over a girl named Katherine,’ I said, ‘parallels what actually happened between you and Michael over Karen.’

‘Parallels,’ Chandler repeated. ‘I guess.’

‘You own a baseball bat?’ I asked.

‘What?’ asked Greta. ‘Why are you asking that?’

Chandler shrugged. ‘I did. Me and some of my friends like to play. Sometimes we do it at the school.’

This struck me as almost quaint. I had been under the impression that today’s generation of teens had sworn off all physical activity except for texting.

‘What do you mean, you did?’

‘I lost it. I left it by the bleachers when I went inside to go to the bathroom, and when I came back, it was gone.’

‘No you didn’t,’ Malcolm said.

‘Huh?’

‘I’m sure I’ve seen your bat. Hang on.’ He left the room and returned about a minute later with a baseball bat in his hands.

‘It was in the garage,’ he told Chandler.

‘Oh, okay. Maybe Mike found it and left it there.’

‘Well, that’s good news,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid I have some bad.’

Five

‘What do you mean?’ Chandler asked.

I motioned to Greta and Malcolm, who had been standing this entire time, that maybe they should take a seat. They did, although Malcolm appeared reluctant.

‘What’s going on?’ they asked.

‘I think you can expect a visit from the police before long. They’re going to want to talk to Michael Vaughn’s friends.’

‘Why?’ Chandler asked.

‘He’s dead.’

The stunned silence was short-lived. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Malcolm Carson asked.

‘Do you have a lawyer?’ I asked him.

‘Why the hell would I need a lawyer?’

‘For Chandler. I think there’s a chance he might need one.’

‘Why?’ the teenager asked. ‘What happened to Mike? What’s going on? How can he be dead? I talked to him, like, yesterday.’

‘Mike was found in the woods near Clampett Park. It looks like he was beaten to death. With a baseball bat. It’s only a matter of time before the police go to the school and find out that Chandler’s story bears a stunning similarity to what happened. Characters with similar names and situations, and the murder you write about in here pretty much predicts what happened.’

‘This is totally fucked,’ Chandler said.

‘Unbelievable,’ Malcolm said. ‘The Vaughns... I can’t imagine what they’re going through. But surely the story, in and of itself, isn’t that damning?’

‘What if it is?’ Greta asked. Suddenly pointing to the computer, she said, ‘Delete it! Just in case. Get rid of it.’

‘Greta,’ her husband said, shaking his head. ‘That’s pointless.’

‘Then throw out the whole computer!’ she said.

Chandler gave me a look of hopelessness. ‘There are copies of it,’ he told his mother. ‘The principal has it, my teacher has it. They’ve emailed it to each other.’

Greta looked desperately at her husband. ‘Can we get them back?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘The horse is gone from the barn.’

‘What?’ she said.

‘Never mind.’ Malcolm looked at me. ‘Why did you wait so long to tell us this?’

I dodged by asking Chandler, ‘When was the last time you spoke to Mike?’

‘No, hold on,’ Malcolm said. ‘On whose behalf are you acting right now? Are you working for us? Are you working for the police?’

‘I’m trying to find out what happened,’ I said. ‘The Vaughns asked for my help in finding their son. While I was at their house, the police showed up.’

‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ Malcolm Carson said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t. I’m not officially working for anyone. But what I learn may end up helping both you and the Vaughns in what steps you take next. If Chandler had something to do with what happened to Mike, you’ll know enough to get on the phone to your lawyer.’

‘I didn’t do anything to Mike!’ Chandler said.

‘So tell me when you last communicated with him,’ I said.

‘I told you. Yesterday.’ His eyes were starting to brim with tears. ‘This is awful. I can’t believe it.’

‘When yesterday?’ I asked.

‘Maybe before dinner, something like that.’

‘What about later?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t meet up with him? Get together someplace?’

‘That’s not possible,’ Greta said.

‘Why not?’

‘Chandler was here,’ she said. ‘In the house. Malcolm and I told him he wasn’t going anywhere until we’d sorted out this issue with the school.’

‘And the first thing she thought of was to hire you,’ Malcolm said derisively. ‘Nothing against you, Mr Weaver. It’s just not the first thing I’d have thought of.’

‘Oh, and what would you have done?’ Greta asked, turning on him.

‘I’d’ve asked the same damn questions the school did. Why the hell is he writing something like that in the first—’

‘Enough,’ I said. ‘Let’s get back to Chandler’s whereabouts. So you can say absolutely that he was here from when you got home from the school yesterday right up to this moment?’

Everyone exchanged glances. ‘Pretty much,’ Malcolm said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘He was here, that’s all there is to it,’ Greta said.

I looked at Chandler, daring him to avert his eyes. ‘Did you leave the house at all last night, with or without your parents’ knowledge? Did you sneak out after they were asleep?’

His hesitation was all his parents needed to pounce.

‘What did you do?’ his father asked.

‘Where did you go?’ Greta asked. ‘Oh God, you left the house?’

‘Only for a little while,’ he said.

I was about to ask Chandler how and when he had slipped out unnoticed by his parents when the doorbell rang.

Six

Greta and Malcolm Carson exchanged looks of sheer panic. I think we all figured the police had arrived. The doorbell seemed to have paralyzed them, so I got up and answered it myself, expecting to come face to face with Barry Duckworth.

It was not Barry.

Standing on the front step was a woman, looking at me through wire-framed oval glasses. Good-looking, mid thirties, straight brown shoulder-length hair, almost as tall as me, and I’m just under six feet. She had an athletic bearing about her, and was dressed in black slacks and a blue sweater with an elaborate puffy collar, a long-strapped purse slung over one shoulder.

‘Mr Carson?’ she said.

‘No. My name’s Cal Weaver.’

‘Oh, well I’m here to see Chandler’s parents.’

‘Who should I say’s here?’

‘Lucy Brighton.’

I recognized the name. One of the school officials who’d been at the meeting to discuss Chandler’s story. The head of the guidance department.

She said, ‘I came by to—’

‘Oh great,’ said Greta, who’d been listening from the couch.

Lucy leaned her head in far enough to see into the living room.

‘Hello, Ms Carson,’ she said. ‘Hello, Chandler.’

‘Hi, Ms Brighton,’ he said.

‘What do you want?’ his mother asked. ‘Haven’t you caused us enough trouble already?’

‘I came by to see how Chandler was doing,’ Lucy said. Then, cautiously, ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard...’

I said, ‘About Mike Vaughn?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said. ‘The police came to the school a short while ago, asking questions.’ She touched the fingers of her right hand to her lips. ‘It’s such a horrible thing. Just horrible. I’m sorry, Chandler. I know he was a good friend to you.’

The teenager nodded.

Seeing as how a conversation seemed to be starting, it struck me as rude to keep the woman standing outside. I gestured for her to come in without waiting for Greta or Malcolm to offer an invitation. She moved forward two steps and I closed the door behind her.

Lucy rested her eyes on Malcolm, probably waiting for the man to introduce himself. I said, ‘This is Malcolm Carson, Chandler’s father.’

He stood.

Lucy offered a hand, and Malcolm reluctantly stepped forward and shook it. He’d stopped looking at his watch in the last few minutes. I guessed he’d come to accept that he was not going to make his appointment. Then Lucy turned toward me.

‘Are you a friend of the family?’

‘I know the Vaughns,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just met the Carsons.’

Greta, still on the couch, said, ‘Mr Weaver is advising us on... Chandler’s situation.’

‘Yes,’ Lucy said. ‘That’s why I’m here. Do you mind if I sit down?’

‘We were right in the middle of something,’ Greta said, then turned on Chandler. ‘Were you here last night or not?’

‘Like I said, I went out for a little while.’

‘I never heard you leave.’

‘I think you were asleep. I tried to be real quiet.’

‘When was this?’ Malcolm asked.

‘Like, around midnight? I just had to get out, get some air. I was stressed out. I went for a walk.’

‘Do you drive?’ I asked.

‘I don’t have my license yet,’ Chandler said.

‘Where did you go?’ Malcolm asked.

‘Around.’

‘Around where?’ his father persisted.

‘I walked down to the gas station, bought a Coke, and then walked some more.’

The station would probably have Chandler on security surveillance video. Telling the police he’d never left the house probably wasn’t going to fly. ‘Where else?’ I asked.

‘I went over to Michael’s house. I’d been trying to contact him. I’d sent him some texts, tried to phone him and stuff.’

‘Did he get back to you?’

Chandler shook his head. ‘I didn’t knock on his front door, but I looked to see if his bedroom light was on, or if maybe he was hanging around the house. His light was off and he was no place around there. Then I walked down by Clampett Park and worked my way back home. Just thinking, you know?’

I walked down by Clampett Park.

Lucy Brighton was still standing next to me. I asked her, ‘What did the police tell you about what happened?’

‘They didn’t tell me anything. They spoke to Ms Caldwell — that’s our principal — and she told me what they’d said.’

‘Which was?’

‘That Michael’s body had been found in the woods. That he’d been beaten.’ She hesitated. ‘Probably with a bat. I think it was that bit of information that prompted the principal to bring me in, to ask me what I thought.’

‘What you thought about what?’

Lucy looked from me to the parents. ‘About whether she should tell the police about Chandler’s story.’ She turned back to me. ‘Do you know about that?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What did you tell the principal?’

‘I told her I thought I should come out here and talk to Chandler and his parents first. And so here I am.’

‘Is there some reason why you or Ms Caldwell wouldn’t tell the police about it immediately?’

‘Yes,’ Lucy Brighton said, and asked for the second time, ‘May I sit down?’ There were nods. She took the spot I’d been in, and I stayed on my feet. She trained her eyes on Chandler.

‘I was on your side at that meeting,’ she told him. ‘I think students must be allowed to use their imaginations, to write from the heart, to explore ideas that others may find unpleasant, to push the boundaries. That’s what good writers do. I didn’t see what you’d written as evidence of some kind of mental disorder or anything like that.’

I felt we were all waiting for a but.

‘But,’ Lucy said, ‘I did see evidence of something else.’

She pulled her purse around in front of her, opened it, took out some papers. ‘These are a few of your reports from other classes, other subjects. Samples of your work.’

She held them on her lap, made no move to distribute them. She seemed to be holding onto them as though they were grenades that might go off seconds after they left her hands.

She looked at Chandler.

‘Is there anything you’d like to say about your story that you haven’t revealed to us so far?’

Chandler seemed to be squirming beneath his skin. He was a mouse backed into a corner, looking for a way out and not finding one.

‘Answer the lady’s question,’ Malcolm Carson said.

Chandler took a deep breath, let it out slowly. ‘Okay, so there is something I kind of didn’t tell you.’

We all waited.

‘I didn’t want to get in trouble,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t want to get anyone else in trouble.’

‘Go on,’ Lucy said.

‘I guess I sort of didn’t write it.’

Seven

‘You plagiarized it?’ Malcolm asked.

Chandler shook his head violently. ‘No! I didn’t do that. I would never do that.’ He paused. ‘But someone else wrote it for me.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Joel Blakelock,’ he said.

Lucy and the Carsons couldn’t have looked more surprised if the boy had told them Ernest Hemingway had come back from the dead to do his homework.

‘Chandler,’ Lucy said skeptically, ‘you can’t be serious.’

It took me a second to remember that Joel Blakelock was the kid Michael and Chandler had photographed making out with another boy, and then posted the photo on social media.

‘Honest,’ Chandler said. ‘He wrote it.’

‘Wait, I’m not getting this,’ Greta said. ‘You somehow got hold of a story Joel had written and passed it off as yours?’

‘The last part, yeah,’ he admitted. ‘But I didn’t steal it or anything. He offered to write it for me.’

We all exchanged looks at that point.

‘Why would he do that for you, after what you did to him?’ I asked.

‘It was a kind of peace offering,’ he said. ‘Like, I guess he knows I’m not the best student in the world.’

He waited a second, maybe hoping someone would offer to contradict him, but when no one did, he continued. ‘I’m not that good at getting assignments in, and I haven’t been doing that good well in Ms Hamlin’s class, so he offered to write a story for me that I could hand in. And in return, Michael and I would leave him alone and never make fun of him again or anything. I mean, we weren’t going to anyway, because we got in so much trouble, but if he wanted to write something for me, I wasn’t going to say no.’

‘Did you tell him what kind of story you wanted?’ Lucy asked.

Chandler shook his head. ‘I didn’t even look at it before I handed it in.’

That explained a lot.

I said, ‘Where would I find this Joel Blakelock?’

‘Hold on,’ Lucy said. ‘Who are you anyway?’

‘I’m a friend of the Vaughns,’ I said.

‘The way you’re asking questions, I wondered if you were from the police.’

‘I’m a licensed investigator,’ I said. ‘All I’m trying to do now is get to the bottom of this.’

‘Well you’re not talking to Joel without me there.’

The way she said it, the subject was not up for debate.

We decided to leave her car at the Carsons’ house and go to the Blakelocks’ in mine.

‘Joel’s a sensitive kid,’ Lucy Brighton said. ‘Someone like you throwing your weight around, badgering him, that’s not going to be good. Not for him, that’s for sure.’

‘I don’t badger,’ I said.

‘How about throw your weight around?’

‘Not that either.’

‘Well I’m going to make sure you don’t. Do you have any idea what Chandler and Mike put him through?’

‘I know what they did, but I can only imagine the impact it would have had on him. Was Mike a bad kid? Is Chandler?’

She glanced at me. ‘Bad? No. A lot of kids at that age do bad things, but I don’t think that makes them bad kids. They do things without thinking of the repercussions. They don’t consider how what they do will affect others. They haven’t developed a strong sense of empathy yet. They’ll go along with what the rest of the crowd is doing, even if it’s hateful, because they need so much to belong. I think we all did things as teens that we wish we could go back and undo. Cruel, thoughtless things.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but some kids are bad and stay that way.’

‘I know.’

‘Tell me about what they did to Joel.’

‘After they took that picture of him, they posted it in the usual places, and then others reposted it, and before you knew it, everyone in the school, and probably thousands beyond, had seen it. Joel was humiliated. People wrote things like “faggot” on his locker. His home got egged. He didn’t come to school for a week. His parents threatened to sue the boys, their parents, even the school. Chandler and Michael agreed to a full public apology. They were required to put it all in writing. There was a face-to-face sit-down. Joel’s parents agreed to drop their threats of a lawsuit. Things settled down after that, but that hardly made up for what Joel went through. At one point, I’m told, he was thinking of taking his own life, he was so humiliated. I’m sure he’s getting some kind of counseling.’

‘Do you think the boys were genuinely remorseful?’

‘I’d like to think so,’ Lucy said. ‘I don’t think they foresaw how quickly things would get out of hand.’

‘No wonder you looked stunned at the idea that Joel would write a story for Chandler,’ I said, heading toward the address we had for the Blakelock home.

‘Even if Joel were able to find it in his heart to forgive them for what they did, it’s quite a stretch to think he’d help either one of them do their homework.’

‘Unless Chandler isn’t telling it the way it happened,’ I said. ‘Maybe he threatened Joel, intimidated him into doing it.’

But even if that were true, it didn’t explain the story’s content, or how prescient it was.

‘Who was the other boy?’ I asked. ‘How did this affect him?’

‘He couldn’t be seen in the picture,’ Lucy said, ‘and Joel never revealed who it was.’

‘You think it was another student from your school?’

‘Most likely. You’d think by now that people would have moved past this.’ She shook her head. ‘But you’d be so wrong. The country’s still split on same-sex issues. There are still people who think it’s a sickness or a choice. Some people are just born the way they’re born.’

There was something in the way she said it that suggested this was personal.

‘Is there someone close to you who’s gay?’ I asked.

Lucy glanced my way. ‘No, actually. I mean, I have a cousin. She’s gay, but she’s cool with it and doesn’t care what anyone thinks. It’s just I was thinking that so many of us are born wired a certain way. It’s who we are, and there’s nothing we can do to change it. Sexual orientation is just one thing. My daughter...’

When she didn’t continue after a few seconds, I said, ‘What about your daughter?’

‘Crystal. Her name is Crystal. She’s eleven. And she has... sometimes I don’t know if it’s a learning disability, or a tremendous gift. But she’s not like the other kids. She’s withdrawn, very much in her own world. And she draws all the time. Like comic books, or graphic novels they call them. She’s always escaping into her imagination.’

‘She sounds interesting,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well, she is that,’ Lucy said, and tried to laugh. She pointed. ‘I think the Blakelocks live just up here.’

‘Okay.’

‘You’re not talking to Joel without one or both of his parents there.’

‘Okay.’

‘I won’t let you badger him.’

‘Okay.’

‘I just wanted to make that clear,’ Lucy said.

‘Message received.’

Eight

I stopped out front of the Blakelock house just as two people were heading up the driveway. A boy and a girl. The boy was about five foot six and maybe, soaking wet, a hundred pounds. He had black hair swept across his head that obscured his forehead and most of one eye, and wore a simple white T and a pair of black pants with sneakers.

The girl looked big next to him, although she was probably no more than five-nine, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds. Her blonde hair was streaked pink and fell to below her shoulders.

‘That’s Joel and his older sister,’ Lucy said. ‘I can’t remember her name.’

The pair stopped and turned when they heard the car stop, and the passenger door open.

‘Joel,’ said Lucy.

The boy’s expression was blank, as though he didn’t even see her. The girl edged in front of him, as though running interference.

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Ms Brighton, from school.’

‘I know who you are,’ he said.

‘And you’re Joel’s sister, right? What’s your name?’

‘Franny,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

I was slowly getting out the driver’s side. Franny fixed her eyes on me and said, ‘Who’s that guy?’

‘That’s Mr Weaver,’ Lucy said. ‘Joel, we need to speak to you for a minute. Are your parents home? Or at least one of them?’

‘What’s this about?’ Joel said, half behind his sister.

‘We’ve got a couple of questions.’

‘Is it about Michael Vaughn?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Did you want to know if I was happy about him being dead?’

‘So you know.’

He held up his phone, which up to now I had not realized was in his hand. ‘Everybody’s talking about it. Someone even asked if I did it.’

‘God,’ Franny said. ‘People are just sick.’

‘Is that what you wanted to know? If I did it?’

‘No, Joel,’ Lucy said. ‘But there is something we need to talk about.’

‘Who’s that guy?’

‘Mr Weaver.’

‘Yeah, you said that, but who is he?’

Coming around the front of the car, I said, ‘I’m a private investigator.’

‘No shit?’ said Franny.

‘No shit,’ I said.

Lucy briefly shot me a look. ‘Is your mother home, Joel?’

‘Probably,’ he said. He nodded toward the blue minivan next to him in the driveway. ‘Her car’s here.’

Franny and Joel continued on to the front door and we followed. Joel didn’t get out a key, went straight in, followed by his sister.

Lucy put out her arm to stop me. ‘We’ll wait here.’

Like I was going to go barge in like I was part of a SWAT team. ‘Sure.’

About twenty seconds later, a woman came to the door. Late forties, round, hair so short it could have been a man’s military cut.

‘Yes?’ she said, and then, when she focused on Lucy, ‘Oh, hi.’

‘Hello, Ms Blakelock. This is Cal Weaver, who’s assisting me this afternoon. I need to ask Joel some questions, and I’d prefer it if you were able to be there.’

‘What’s this about? Is he in some kind of trouble?’

‘May we?’ she said, asking to be invited inside.

We were led into the kitchen, where Joel was already seated and waiting, a can of Coke in front of him.

‘What’s this about?’ his mother asked.

Joel shrugged. ‘I dunno. But I bet somehow it’s about Mike Vaughn.’

‘What’s that horrible boy done now?’ Ms Blakelock asked, her voice turning venomous.

Lucy said, ‘He’s dead.’

She whirled around. ‘What?’

Joel waved his phone. ‘It’s all over the place.’

‘Oh my God,’ Joel’s mother said.

Lucy, maybe seeking to make this meeting less confrontational, addressed her by her first name. ‘Alice, let’s sit down.’

We all sat, except for Franny, who had reappeared and was leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, taking it all in. I wasn’t going to ask her to leave. It wasn’t up to me.

Lucy rested her arms on the table and laced her fingers together. ‘Joel, I have something very simple to ask you.’

But he was looking at me, then at his mother. ‘You know what this guy is, huh, Mom?’

Alice Blakelock fixed her eyes on me. ‘What?’

‘He’s a cop.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m private.’

‘So this must be about Mike, right?’

‘His family called me when he didn’t come home,’ I admitted. ‘I was at Michael’s house, hoping to get a lead on where he was, when the police showed up.’

‘I know it’s bad to speak ill of the dead, but he was an awful boy,’ Alice said bitterly. ‘Him and that Chandler. What a pair. Do you know what they did?’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘But right now, Ms Brighton and I are here about something very specific that may or may not be related to what happened to Mike.’

Franny shifted from one side of the doorway to the other, folded her arms across her chest.

‘The suspense is killing me,’ Joel said.

Lucy took a breath. I decided to let her take the lead. ‘Joel,’ she said gently, ‘Chandler handed in a short story this week to Ms Hamlin that got her very concerned.’

I watched Joel’s face to see how he’d react. I wasn’t expecting a grin.

‘Don’t you mean surprised?’ he said.

‘Why do you say that?’ Lucy asked.

‘Well, the fact that he handed in anything must have been kind of a shock.’ He looked at his mother and smiled, as though expecting some sign of approval for the comeback.

‘I take your point,’ Lucy said. ‘So you’re aware that Chandler doesn’t always hand in assignments?’

‘Oh, I think everyone’s aware,’ Joel said.

‘What surprised me,’ Lucy said, ‘was that you might show any willingness to help him.’

Instant bafflement. ‘Huh?’ he said.

‘Chandler says you wrote the story for him.’

His jaw dropped. But it was Alice who spoke first. ‘Are you kidding me? What a lying little son of a bitch.’

‘Wow,’ said Franny. ‘Like he didn’t cause enough trouble for Joel. What a fucking douche.’

Alice shot her daughter a look. ‘I won’t have that.’

‘Well that’s what he is,’ Joel’s sister said. ‘He’s like the world’s biggest liar.’

Finally Joel weighed in. ‘Why would he say something like that?’

I said, ‘We were given the impression that it was your way of mending fences. You offered to do an assignment for him, and in return, he and Mike would never bother or make fun of you again.’

‘That sounds like a protection racket,’ Alice said. ‘Like extortion.’

‘According to Chandler, it was Joel who made the offer,’ I said.

Joel shook his head angrily. ‘I wouldn’t sharpen a fucking pencil for either one of those assholes.’

Alice saw no reason to admonish her son for that.

Joel continued. ‘Not only did I not write a story for him, but I have never even spoken to the guy since he and Mike did what they did to me. I mean, we had to be in the same room together when they made their stupid apology, but even then I didn’t say anything to him.’

Lucy and I exchanged looks. ‘I guess we’re done here then,’ she said. She pushed back her chair, and I did the same. ‘Sorry to have troubled you,’ she said, her eyes sweeping the room to include not just Joel and his mother, but Franny too.

In the car, Lucy said to me, ‘What now?’

‘We go back and see if Chandler would like to amend his story,’ I said.

Nine

‘Oh, oh,’ Lucy said as we approached the Carson house.

There was an unmarked police car parked out front just like the one I’d found Barry Duckworth in earlier.

Greta opened the door for me when I rang the bell. ‘The police just got here,’ she said breathlessly. ‘A detective. He’s talking to Chandler now. Malcolm’s with them. I have to go back.’

We followed her. Duckworth was in the living room sitting across from Chandler and his father. When he saw Lucy and me, he smiled and stood.

‘Cal,’ he said. I introduced him to Lucy.

Malcolm said, ‘I’ve called my lawyer. They’re going to send someone over. I’ve told Chandler he doesn’t have to answer any questions.’

‘But I didn’t do anything,’ the boy protested. ‘So what’s the big deal?’

‘Tell me again about the story you wrote,’ Duckworth said.

So, the principal had talked.

‘I didn’t write it,’ he said. ‘Joel Blakelock wrote it. I’m not very good at writing stories so he gave me one to hand in, which was pretty nice of him considering.’

‘Considering what?’ Duckworth asked.

Evidently Barry wasn’t up to speed on everything.

‘I don’t see any point in getting into this,’ Malcolm said. ‘We’re not answering any more questions without a lawyer present. You’re trying to turn this into something it’s not. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

Duckworth sighed and got to his feet. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said, and made his way past Lucy and Greta and me. Greta closed the door behind him and turned the deadbolt, as though she thought Duckworth might be back with a battering ram.

‘This is terrible,’ she said.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ Malcolm said. ‘Other than that stupid story, they don’t have anything on Chandler. Absolutely nothing.’

‘We need to talk,’ I said.

Chandler and his parents turned their heads toward me.

‘We spoke to Joel,’ I said.

Chandler nodded with what looked like innocent confidence, as though waiting for his side of the story to be confirmed.

‘Chandler,’ Lucy said, ‘Joel says he did not write that story for you.’

‘What?’ he said. ‘But he did. I mean, you said yourself I’m not smart enough to have written it.’

Lucy frowned. ‘That’s not exactly what I said. What I did say was that your record for completing and handing in assignments gave me reason to doubt that you’d done that story on your own.’

Educational doublespeak. I thought Chandler’d nailed it when he said he just wasn’t smart enough.

‘Why would he lie?’ the boy asked.

I weighed in. ‘Not only did Joel say he hadn’t written that story for you, he said he hasn’t even spoken to you since you and Mike splashed his picture all over the Internet.’

Chandler nodded. ‘Yeah, well, that’s true.’

That stopped me for a second. ‘You haven’t spoken to him at all?’

He shook his head. ‘I mean, I get that. What Mike and I did, it was pretty shitty, and he’d probably feel funny talking to me directly, which was why I guess he used a whaddya call it, an intermediary.’

Lucy said, ‘He had someone else approach you with his offer of a story?’

Chandler’s head went up and down this time. ‘That’s right. It was Franny.’

‘His sister?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I could hardly believe it.’

Ten

‘Let’s go through this from the beginning,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ Chandler said. ‘So, like, a week ago, I’m in the cafeteria, and Franny Blakelock comes in and sits down across from me. And I’m like, oh boy, she’s going to dump a Coke on me or hit me or something, and I’m getting ready to defend myself, and she says, chill out, it’s okay.’

He ran his fingers through his hair, scratched his scalp. ‘So I’m like, okay, what’s up? And she says her brother Joel wants to put all that stuff we did to him into the past, what me and Mike did, and as a kind of show of good faith or whatever, he wants to do me a favor. I’m still thinking maybe it’s a trick, that I’m being set up for a joke, like maybe she’s going to give me something and when I go to put it in my locker, they’ve booby-trapped it, you know? Because Franny, she has kind of a rep.’

‘What kind of rep?’ I asked.

‘Like, kind of unhinged?’ Chandler said. ‘Like, she’s one of those people you never really know what they’re thinking. One time, she got reamed out by Mr Landers, in history, and four days later all his tires had been slashed, and everyone figured it was her, but she never said anything and there was no way to prove it, but sometimes she gets this look, like she knows something that you don’t? You get what I’m saying?’

Lucy said, ‘I remember the incident with Mr Landers.’

‘Yeah, so I don’t really want to get on her bad side, and if her brother wants to help me out, then who am I to say no? She says he likes to write stories anyway, and he can knock off one for me in like minutes, so do I want it or not, and I say sure. So she takes out her laptop, and I’ve got my own right there in front of me, and she emails me something, then she goes on my computer and copies and pastes and stuff and makes it look like I did it myself.’

It was starting to gel for me.

‘And she made me swear that I’d never tell anybody, and if I did, she’d deny it, and so would her brother, because everybody knew what me and Mike had done, and if I ever said anything against Franny or her brother, people would know we were just trying to get back at them.’

‘Jesus,’ Malcolm said. ‘You walked right into it.’

‘Walked into what?’ Chandler asked.

‘Looks like she set you up,’ I said.

Lucy put a hand on my arm. ‘What are you saying? How could Franny set him up for something she didn’t know was going to happen?’

I met her look and waited for her to figure it out.

‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘What are you thinking? That Franny killed Michael Vaughn?’

I offered half a shrug. ‘She gets Chandler — who, forgive me, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer — to hand in a story that essentially predicts his best friend’s murder. She, or someone helping her out, kills Michael, and Chandler takes the fall.’

‘Oh, this is... this is... unthinkable,’ Malcolm said.

‘It’s her way of getting even for what Chandler and Mike did to her brother,’ I said. ‘At the very least, it’s a working theory, and it makes more sense than anything else so far.’

Chandler’s mouth hung open. I didn’t know whether he was dumbstruck, or impressed.

I asked him, ‘Would Franny have known about your fight with Mike over that girl?’

He appeared to be thinking, which I suspected was not easy for him. ‘She was there. I’m pretty sure she was there.’

Lucy said, ‘It’s all set up in the story.’

‘But all Chandler has to say is what he just said now,’ Greta said. ‘That she wrote the story.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but there’s no proof. It’s her word against his. She could just say Chandler’s making this all up, as a way of getting back at Joel. Your son doesn’t have a whole lot of credibility. And it wasn’t until he started looking like a possible murder suspect that he came up with a new version of events, that he never wrote the story.’

‘I need a drink,’ Malcolm said.

He excused himself and went into his study. I decided to follow him. On one of the bookshelves behind his desk was a bottle of Scotch, as well as a couple of small tumblers.

‘You okay?’ I asked.

‘What a goddamn mess,’ he said. He poured Scotch into one of the glasses, then looked at me and raised the bottle. ‘I’ve got another glass here.’

‘No thanks,’ I said.

He downed his drink, poured himself another. ‘What a goddamn mess,’ he said again.

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘But if your son’s story holds up, then he should be in the clear.’

‘I thought... I was starting to think maybe he’d actually done it. I didn’t want to let my thoughts go there, but you have to consider everything.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘But even if he had done it, there wasn’t enough evidence, right? Would they have had enough to convict?’

‘I really don’t know,’ I said. ‘But right now, I think I need to go see Detective Duckworth. Tell him what I know. Let him take it from there.’

‘Sure, of course.’ He raised his glass. ‘Thank you for your help.’

Maybe things were going to work out okay for the Carsons, but it was hard to find much to be thankful for. One young man was dead, and a family that had already gone through hell was about to go through it again.

Eleven

Detective Barry Duckworth invited me for a coffee and a slice of pie at Kelly’s a couple of days later. He recommended the blueberry, but I opted for a slice of cherry, with some whipped cream on top. The moment the waitress set the plate in front of me, I could see Barry looking at it, probably wondering whether he should have ordered the cherry instead.

‘I wanted to show my appreciation with the Michael Vaughn case,’ he said.

‘So helping you solve a homicide gets me a piece of pie,’ I said. ‘If I solved the Lindbergh kidnapping, would that warrant a sandwich and fries?’

Duckworth thought about it. ‘Certainly a sandwich.’

I used the edge of my fork to cut into the pie, took a bite. ‘Jesus,’ I said.

‘I know. Maureen has me on a bit of a diet, but the way I see it, it only extends to a half-mile radius around the house. So, anyway, we charged Franny Blakelock.’

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘At first she denied everything. Said Chandler was lying to save his ass. Like her brother, she said she’d never even talked to the asshole who tormented Joel by splashing his picture all over the Net.’

‘But she decided to change her story at some point?’ I said.

He slid some pie into his mouth and nodded. ‘When we showed her the surveillance video from the school.’

‘Go on.’

‘Schools have cameras all over the place. Promise Falls High is no different. Couple of those cameras are right there in the cafeteria.’

I took another bite of my own pie. ‘Nice.’

‘Yeah. The footage or data or whatever it is gets saved for two weeks. Franny’s sit-down with Chandler matched when he said it happened. You could see her there with her laptop, then fiddling around with his. We kind of had her then. Finding traces of the Vaughn kid’s blood on her shoes and in her parents’ car sealed the deal. It went together more or less the way you figured.’

‘She was getting even with them for what they did to Joel?’

‘Yeah. Best as we can tell, Joel didn’t know a thing about it. She wrote the story herself, gave it to Chandler. The next step was to kill Mike.’

‘How’d she pull that off?’

‘She played him a bit like she did Chandler. Came on to him, said she’d been pretty upset with him over what he did to her brother, but she thought that deep down he was still an okay guy. Suggested they hook up. Made him promise not to tell anybody, though, because her brother and her parents would be furious if they found out. Be like fraternizing with the enemy. Mike went along with it. She picked him up in her mom’s car and they drove down to Clampett Park, led him into the woods with the promise of a good time. She’d hidden the bat behind a tree earlier. When Mike looked down to undo his pants, she grabbed the bat and hit him good.’

‘Franny’s quite something.’

‘Yeah. She wasn’t sure how the dominoes would fall. She didn’t expect the story she wrote for Chandler would see him sent to the office to have his head read. She just figured that after Mike’s body was found, Chandler’s teacher would see the similarities. But it all worked out just the same.’

‘Except for the getting caught part.’

‘We weren’t exactly dealing with a master criminal here. It would have been smarter if she’d given the story to Michael. Like he was predicting what might happen to himself, that maybe Chandler’d threatened him. Once he was dead, he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone that the story came from someone else.’

‘My head hurts,’ I said.

‘No kidding,’ Duckworth said.

‘How’s the family handling it?’

‘The Blakelocks? Not good. Joel had no love for Chandler or Mike, but he sure didn’t want his sister to do something like this. Parents have got themselves a good lawyer. I think they’re going for the sympathy angle, playing on what Mike did to Joel, that Franny was just trying to make things right. She may be whacko, but she loves her brother very much, feels very protective of him. Maybe that’ll sway a jury.’

‘Good luck with that,’ I said.

‘Who knows,’ he said. ‘How are the Vaughns?’

‘Beyond devastated,’ I said.

He shook his head sadly. ‘What goes around comes around. I’m not saying the kid deserved to be killed for cyber-bullying, but if he and Chandler hadn’t put that photo online, he’d be alive. Did we or did we not order coffees?’

‘We did.’

‘Where are they? You can’t have pie without coffee.’ Barry waved to get the waitress’s attention. She was already on the way over with two mugs.

‘Calm your ponies,’ she told him. ‘You think I don’t know how to look after you?’

‘You had me worried for a second.’

He took a sip, smiled. ‘Just a few more weeks till the long weekend in May,’ he said. ‘I think I might try to get away. You?’

I shook my head. ‘Nope.’

Duckworth went quiet for a moment. Finally he said, ‘This is going to make me sound like Columbo or something.’

‘What?’

‘There’s one thing that bothers me about all this.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Franny’s whole plan was to kill Michael and frame Chandler for it. It was pretty clumsily executed, but she did her best for a kid without a criminology degree. Her plan included stealing Chandler’s baseball bat when he left it by the school bleachers. She figured it would have his fingerprints all over it. So she wears some gloves, whacks Mike in the head with the bat, and supposedly the only prints we’re going to find are Chandler’s. Except we don’t find them.’

‘Franny stole Chandler’s bat,’ I said.

“Yeah. So I thought, maybe between the time she stole the bat and when she used it on Mike, she accidentally rubbed the prints off. Even then, you’d still expect to get a few partials, something. But with one small exception, there are no prints on the bat at all. The whole thing got wiped down. Even though you can still see blood on the bat, it’s all smeared. So if our little friend Franny wants to see Chandler nailed for this, why does she wipe his prints off?’

‘What’s the small exception?’ I asked.

Duckworth said, ‘There’s a partial print right on the very end of the bat. When it was wiped down, that got missed.’

‘Chandler’s.’

‘No. We took his fingerprints and there’s no match.’

‘Franny’s?’

He shook his head.

‘What about the deceased?’ I asked. I raised my arm in a mock-defensive gesture. ‘Maybe he was doing something like this and his hand touched the bat.’

‘Nope,’ Barry said. ‘Checked.’

‘And there’s no way it was the crime-scene techies?’

Duckworth closed his mouth on a forkful of blueberry pie. He took a moment to savor it before saying, ‘Not a chance.’

‘Where’s that leave you?’ I asked.

‘Puzzled,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a full confession from Franny, so I should be satisfied, but I’m not. Got any ideas?’

I did.

Twelve

It might have been the first time I’d seen Greta Carson smile. When she opened the door and saw me, her face nearly shattered from happiness.

‘Mr Weaver, oh, what a pleasure to see you,’ she said. ‘Please come in.’

Once I was inside, she said, ‘It occurred to me the other day that all the other times you were here I didn’t so much as offer you a cup of coffee. Can I get you something? If not coffee, some tea? I think I might even have a muffin or two.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘But thank you.’

‘Were you looking for Chandler? Because he’s not here. He’s in school!’ She said it as though it were some sort of miracle. ‘All the business about the story just went away, like it vanished into thin air. Given that he didn’t write it, they stopped thinking there was anything mentally wrong with him. Of course, they weren’t happy that he handed in work that was not his own, but they came to understand that he was manipulated by that awful girl.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Things turned out okay for Chandler.’

‘Are you sure you won’t have coffee? I was just going to pour myself some.’

‘You go ahead.’

She asked me to follow her into the kitchen, which was a sprawling room with lots of light and shiny aluminum appliances. She filled a cup, added some skim milk from the fridge, and said, ‘So what can I do for you? I know the way things unfolded we never made any formal arrangement to hire you, but Malcolm and I talked about it, and we think you should submit a bill. God knows what might have happened if you hadn’t been asking questions.’

‘Lucy Brighton helped a lot,’ I said.

‘Well if she wants to submit a bill too, she’s welcome.’

‘I don’t think, as a school board employee, they’d let her do that. But don’t worry about my bill. That’s not why I’m here.’

‘Oh, okay. So what’s up?’

‘I was really hoping to talk to your husband.’

‘Well, you’re in luck. He’s not home right now, but I’m expecting to see him any moment now. He’s working out of the house today, but he just went to the bank. If you want to—’

We heard the front door open.

Greta smiled. ‘Speak of the devil. Malcolm, we’re in the kitchen!’

Ten seconds later, he was there. He had a welcoming smile for me too, and a hand for me to shake.

I obliged.

‘Good to see you,’ he said. ‘I guess you’ve heard that they charged that girl.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘What a twisted little bitch she turned out to be,’ he said. Greta nodded her agreement.

‘Would you have a moment?’ I asked him. ‘Maybe we could talk in your study.’

‘Sure, of course.’ He looked awkwardly at his wife. ‘Just be a minute, love.’

Between the kitchen and his study I asked him, ‘Could you grab Chandler’s bat for a second?’

‘His bat?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The one you showed me the other morning.’

‘Why do you want to see it?’

‘It’ll be easier to explain once you get it. I’ll wait in the study for you.’

I didn’t bother to take a seat, and instead scanned the spines of the hundreds of books tucked into the shelves. There were plenty related to finance and economic theory, but also books about teaching the subject. And plenty of novels, too. The kind men read when they take their annual trip to the beach. Tom Clancy, Lee Child, David Baldacci.

He came back into the room holding the bat crosswise, one hand gripped down by the knob, the other supporting the barrel, the thickest part.

‘For the life of me I don’t know why you want to see this. It’s not like it was used in the commission of a crime.’ He laughed nervously.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It certainly wasn’t.’ I reached out for it. ‘May I?’

‘Sure,’ he said, handing it over.

I ran my hands along it, from one end to the other. It was perfectly smooth, even at the thick end, which usually takes a beating from being tapped on home plate while the player waits for the pitch.

‘If I didn’t know better,’ I said, ‘I’d say this has never been used.’

Malcolm took it back and made a show of studying it carefully. ‘Not very much, that’s true.’ He laughed. ‘I guess that means Chandler isn’t hitting the ball quite as often as he’d like to be.’

‘Franny told the police she stole Chandler’s bat,’ I said.

‘Hmm?’ Malcolm said, pretending not to take in the significance of what I was saying.

‘It was Chandler’s bat she took. From where your son said he’d lost it. She wanted it to have his fingerprints on it.’

Malcolm feigned puzzlement. ‘I’m not following.’

‘Did you come home the morning I met you because you’d just bought a new baseball bat and wanted to tuck it into the garage? So if and when someone asked for it, you’d be able to produce it?’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Patently ridiculous.’

‘I’ll bet you were smart enough to pay for it in cash. But how many places in Promise Falls sell baseball bats? Maybe half a dozen? You think if someone were to go to all those places with your picture, and ask if anyone remembered you buying a baseball bat in the last week, they’d get lucky?’

Malcolm hesitated.

‘Buying a bat is not a crime,’ he said.

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘But it raises an interesting question. You’d have had to buy that bat before news got out that Mike Vaughn had been killed. You bought it to help Chandler before you could have reasonably known he needed the help.’

‘You’ve totally lost me,’ he said, holding the bat with one hand, tapping it in the palm of his other.

‘That’s probably why you wiped his real bat down too. To help him. To make sure none of his fingerprints were on it. And you accomplished that. None of Chandler’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon. But what’s funny is, that’s the thing that incriminates you.’

‘You should leave,’ he said.

‘Franny wanted his fingerprints on that bat. So after she struck Mike, she would have just left the bat there. That’s where I have a hard time figuring out the rest of it. Let’s say it was you who wiped the bat clean. That means you were at the scene. But if you were at the scene, you’d have witnessed Franny hitting Mike. So why wipe down the bat?’

‘I did no such thing,’ he said.

I took a close look at some of the books, the ones related to teaching. ‘Before you got into offering financial advice, you taught, didn’t you?’

‘What? In a community college, yes. Why the hell are you asking that?’

‘A lot of educational institutions in this state, as part of the background checks on their instructors, insist on having them fingerprinted. Have you ever been fingerprinted, Malcolm?’

His eyes were wide. He muttered something.

‘What was that?’

Quietly he said, ‘Possibly.’

‘Because while they didn’t find Chandler’s prints on the bat, and none for Franny, since she was at least smart enough to wear gloves, they did find one partial print that got missed when it was wiped down. They’re searching databases now to see if it shows up anywhere. What do you think the odds are that it’s yours?’

Malcolm was starting to breathe heavily. There were droplets of sweat forming on his brow.

Greta appeared in the doorway. ‘Did you want a coffee, Mal—’

‘Get out!’ he shouted.

Stunned, she backed away. He strode over to the door and slammed it shut.

I said calmly, ‘The only way I can figure it is you came onto the scene after Franny left. But how? How did you find Mike? How did you find him, and the bat? You want to tell me that?’

‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t I just leave things as they were?’

‘What happened, Malcolm?’

‘I just wanted to protect my son. I just wanted to save him. I did what any father would have done.’

He’d walked over behind his desk. The bat in his hands was shaking. He gripped it more tightly to try to make it stop.

‘How did you know he was there?’ I asked again. ‘How did you find Mike after Franny killed him?’

Malcolm turned and looked out the window. ‘I heard him.’

It took a second for that to sink in. ‘Franny didn’t kill him,’ I said.

Malcolm shook his head slowly.

‘She thought she had, and then she ran,’ I said.

‘When Chandler slipped out of the house, I heard him go. Greta was asleep. I thought, what the hell is he up to now? He and Mike humiliated that boy, then he writes that damn story, and now he was sneaking out. I wanted to stop him from getting himself into anything else. So I... I followed him. But by the time I got outside, he was out of sight, so I wandered up and down the streets, and down near Clampett Park. He was walking back from there, heading toward the house. He was just walking, he wasn’t doing anything wrong that I could see, so I slipped into the woods and let him go past. And that was when I heard moaning, someone crying for help.’

I waited.

‘I went into the woods and I found Mike. I had my phone with me and was using it like a flashlight. I could see his head was bleeding, really bad. He’d been hit more than once. He was making these gurgling sounds, like maybe he was close to dying.’

‘But not dead,’ I said.

Malcolm turned away from the window, back to me.

‘He looked up at me, I think he could make out who I was, and he just said, “Why?” And I panicked. I’d read the story that got Chandler in trouble. I’d just seen him in the area. I figured there was something... something wrong in my son’s head, that maybe he wrote that piece to warn us what he was going to do. I... I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I thought Chandler’s life would be over. That when Mike told the police what he had done to him...’

‘So you picked up the bat and finished him off,’ I said. ‘So he wouldn’t be able to tell the police Chandler did it.’

Malcolm turned and looked at me. ‘I wanted to save my son.’

‘Chandler didn’t need saving. But there was still a chance to save Michael.’

‘How could I... I didn’t know that.’

‘So you finished what Franny had started, wiped down the bat, and got out of there. And the next day you bought another bat to bolster the argument that the murder weapon wasn’t Chandler’s.’

‘What would you have done?’ he asked. ‘What would you do to save your son?’

It was too late for that for me.

Suddenly he swung the bat up over his head, both hands on the grip, and brought it crashing down onto the top of his desk. It was like a thunderclap. He took another swing, this time side to side, clearing the desk of a lamp and a clock and several other items that went crashing to the floor.

Then he dropped the bat, and collapsed into his leather office chair.

The door opened and Greta stood there, dumbstruck.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘What in God’s name has happened?’

I found my way out, wondering whether Barry Duckworth was going to get tired of hearing from me.

Content

Linwood Barclay
Final Assignment

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve