A Twist of Hate (23 page)

              His chest began to hurt, deep in the center. He tucked the piece of silk into the back pocket of his trousers and took a firm grip on the sledgehammer. He swung it with all his strength, and the table exploded, the shrapnel of shattered dinnerware, flattened cutlery, and splintered wood flying in every direction.

              He took out the wall Michael’s bullets had penetrated the night of the dress rehearsal. It collapsed as if it were made of popsicle sticks instead of shatterproof glass. The noise of the demolition brought Mr. Dougherty running into the backyard.

              Camden smashed the sledgehammer into the opposite wall, sending it in pieces to the earth with a few powerful, well-placed blows. Each swing of the hammer released a fraction of his inner turmoil. So much hurt, guilt and anger festered within him, he would have had to tear down all of White Fir Court before he would feel good enough to even cry.

              He battered the treehouse until the muscles of his back and shoulders burned. He swung the hammer until he couldn’t lift his arms. He destroyed the treehouse, bit by bit, until the roof, and what was left of the floor, was all that surrounded the trunk of the oak.

              Mr. Dougherty was waiting for him on the ground, his graying, honey-blonde hair flecked with wood dust. Camden let the sledgehammer fall into the rubble. His clothes were torn and filthy. He’d aggravated his wound, and blood seeped from his bandage to stain his T-shirt. The suffering he had tried to obliterate shone in his eyes.

              “She said she couldn’t beat him.” Camden laughed or sobbed. It was hard to tell which. “She was dying, Dad, right there in my arms. I couldn’t do anything to help her, but she wouldn’t let Michael hurt me.” He bowed his head. “I didn’t stay at Mr. Curran’s office today. I left a couple hours after I got there. I couldn’t face him. I sat in the hospital parking lot for hours. I can’t stop thinking about all the things I should have done to keep Michael away from her.”

              Mr. Dougherty took Camden by his shoulders and gave him a hard little shake. “Were you supposed to live your life according to what best suited Michael Littlefield?”

              “Brian thinks I’m just as much to blame as Michael.”

              “Have you considered the possibility that Brian was speaking out of hurt and anger rather than reason? Have you considered the possibility that Brian is just plain wrong?”

              “Siobhan probably doesn’t think he’s wrong.”

              He took his son’s face in his hands. “Don’t underestimate her,” he lovingly warned. As long as he lived, he would never forget the sight of Siobhan putting herself between Michael Littlefield’s gun and Camden. “You won’t know what she thinks until you talk to her. I’ve taken some time off from work. We can see Siobhan tomorrow morning. Or you can go with Mr. Cleese, it’s up to you. It doesn’t matter how you get there, son, but you have to go to her. I’m your father and it’s time I started acting like it. I won’t allow Michael Littlefield to come between you and Siobhan. Your happiness means too much to me.”

Chapter Twelve

“I was on location when it that happened. Prescott is the last place I would have expected something like that to happen. But people always say that, don’t they?”

—Logan Maddox,
The Now online entertainment magazine

              Camden sat on the floor in his room. Keepsakes of his life surrounded him in neat islands of
X-Men
comic books, baseball cards wrapped with red rubber bands, an AstroBeam laser toy, dog-eared
Encyclopedia Brown
paperbacks, photographs, yearbooks, and homework papers he’d saved for reasons long forgotten. The mementos of his first eighteen years fit with room to spare in a dusty Kitchen Aid mixer box he kept in the back of his closet.

              He found the large white envelope he’d been looking for, and took it to his desk. He turned the envelope upside down and a sheaf of black and white 5x7 glossies spilled onto his desk blotter. He picked up a photo Emy Okiwe had taken of the cast and crew following the dress rehearsal for
Charly
, the fall play. Siobhan was the second person from the left in the first row. Camden was the last person on the right, in the back row. Camden had been Mr. Cleese’s assistant director for the show. Siobhan had been costume mistress, working with junior Crystal Henry, her staff of one.

              Camden rifled through the photos until he found a more recent shot, one Emy had taken for the last play. Emy was a great photographer, a fact she had kept hidden until the beginning of the semester when she presented a slide show of her work in a morning assembly. The one thing she hadn’t been able to keep to herself was her relationship with Logan Maddox. That continued to be front page news in a part of the world that seemed hopelessly remote to Camden.

              He studied the photograph in his hand. He and Siobhan stood on either side of the glass case holding the fragile figurines of ‘Laura’s’ glass menagerie. The twinkling objects on the mirrored shelves seemed lit from within. Camden’s gaze met Siobhan’s above the sparkling miniatures of giraffes, mice, unicorns, and reindeer. The delicate figures cast fine webs of light beaded with bright blues, reds, and yellows.

              They had been putting the figures in position in the case on their first Saturday morning rehearsal. Their fingers seemed to touch, though Camden had been placing a tiger and Siobhan had been placing a bear. The dark background and bright foreground gave the photo a dreamy, ethereal quality.

              Camden remembered the intense shock of emotion he’d felt in that moment, when Siobhan met his gaze over the glass menagerie. As if by magic, Emy had captured on film the exact moment Siobhan Curran had captured his heart.

Camden ran out of his room and down the back stairs. He glanced at the clock in the kitchen. 9:45 am. If he hurried, he could get to Raines-Hartley in time to be with Siobhan as she gave her statement to prosecutors. He grabbed a set of car keys and raced through the back door. He jumped into his father’s Mercedes and peeled out of the driveway so fast, he left thick black tire marks on the ivory pavement.

***

              Camden tapped the steering wheel, impatiently waiting for a red light to turn green at a busy intersection. The car radio was tuned to KYNN-AM, the news station Mr. Dougherty listened to during his morning commute. Riley Witherspoon’s chat show was on, and his Tuesday morning guest drew Camden’s complete attention.

              Michael Littlefield had never been a passenger in Patrick Dougherty’s Mercedes, yet his voice now filled it.

              “Sure, I’m hurt.” Michael spoke with a pronounced lisp, the result of having bitten off part of his tongue. “You’d see it if the
(beep)
holes here had let you broadcast in person instead of by phone. Can you hear me okay?”

              “Loud and clear, Michael,” Riley Witherspoon answered cheerfully.

              “Camden Dougherty was my best friend. He totally attacked me, and nothing happened to him. I’m as much a
(beep)
ing victim here as anyone else.”

              “Many of our listeners would find that hard to believe in light of the allegations against you.” The honey-voiced Witherspoon made no attempt to hide his enthusiasm over getting the only on-air interview with alleged attempted murderer Michael Haydon Littlefield.

              “I made some mistakes,” Michael said lightly. “I’m not the monster that everybody thinks I am. I was out of control. I know that now, but I couldn’t help it at the time. It’s like, I couldn’t stop myself. My parents couldn’t stop me. My friends…well, I only had one real friend. He was too busy getting it on to see that I needed help.”

              The driver of a Ford Expedition behind Camden blared his horn when the Mercedes didn’t respond to the green light.

              “Are you implying that your friends knew what you planned to do that night?” Riley asked.

              Michael replied with an odd giggle that raised the hairs on Camden’s arms. “I was under a lot of pressure and I snapped. It could have happened to anybody. People are trying to turn it into a black and white thing but two white kids got hurt too. No one says anything about that. They only want to talk about the black girl who got shot. Black people shoot each other all the time! Why isn’t anyone talking about that?”

              “Michael, your logic seems scattered,” Witherspoon said. “I’m confused. Are you justifying your crime by—”

              “Look,” Michael snapped, “All I’m saying is that none of what happened is as simple as everyone thinks it is. I’m not a criminal! People who know me know that. If I was a criminal, would my pal Camden Dougherty have given me the lead in the school play? Would he have double dated with me and my girlfriend Chrissie Abernathy? If I was so bad, why did Cam have my back again and again?”

              The Expedition wildly swerved around the stationary Mercedes, honking, while Camden sat in frozen shock, staring at the radio.

***

              District attorney Elizabeth Potts and Det. Morton entered Siobhan’s room at exactly 10am. Brian came in three minutes later. “Brian, this isn’t a good time,” Siobhan told him. She had already banished her father and her grandmother from the room, hoping to spare them the account she would give the authorities.

              “Do you honestly want to be alone for this?” Brian asked her.

              She gave him her honest answer. “No.”

              “Then I’m staying.”

              “Begin whenever you’re ready, Miss Curran,” said Ms. Potts after explaining her role in Michael’s prosecution. She depressed the REC button on a microcassette recorder, which sat in the center of the swing table over Siobhan’s bed.

              Quietly, impassively, Siobhan gave her account of the events that led up to the shooting. She began with Michael’s attempted assault in August. She faltered when speaking of the moment Brian was shot. He placed a comforting hand on her shin.

              Det. Morton gave his head a little shake and muttered under his breath.

              “Is there something you’d like to say to me, detective?” Siobhan asked coolly. “You’ve been snorting and rolling your eyes since you got here.”

              “You said you didn’t know that you got shot.” Det. Morton hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his coat. “I was just wonderin’ how you remembered everything else so good.”

              Ms. Potts opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, Siobhan spoke over her. “Have you ever been shot, Det. Morton?” she asked.

              He answered with a nonchalant shake of his head.

              “Have you ever been abducted at gunpoint?”

              “No,” he chuckled.

              “Has anyone ever stared you straight in the eye and told you he was going to kill you?”

              Ms. Potts wondered how Morton would answer that one. There were at least ten badges at the police precinct who wanted to kill Morton, fifty who would pay to witness it.

              “No!” Morton said.

              “I’ve told you everything I can about what happened to me,” Siobhan said. “I have an excellent memory but I didn’t have to rely on it to know that I had been shot. My doctors, my nurses, my father, and my friends have all told you I was shot. Is it really important for me to know the precise moment the bullet entered my body?”

              “No,” Morton said uncomfortably.

              “Are you sure?” Siobhan lowered her blanket enough to reveal the drainage bag attached to her wound. “Would you like to see my wound for yourself?”

              “No,” Morton said.

              “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

              “Yes.” Morton brightened. “If you don’t remember when you were shot, how do we know that what you told us is what really happened? You and Littlefield were alone in that treehouse. He said you threw the first punch. Maybe you went for the gun, there was a struggle, and the weapon discharged. Maybe you took the bullet by accident after the two of you left school grounds.”

              “Where do you get off talking to her like that?” Brian looked as though he could easily tear Morton’s head from his shoulders with his one good arm. He stood protectively over Siobhan. “I was there! I saw what happened. She didn’t just leave school grounds with him, he
took
her with a gun to her back. He tried to kill her! I told you that when I gave my statement! So did everyone else who was backstage when Michael Littlefield came through with a gun! Why are you treating Siobhan like she’s the one who did something wrong?”

              Siobhan quieted him with a soft touch to his arm. “‘Calm down, kid, get a hold of yourself,’” she said, mimicking Morton’s drawling Missouri boot heel dialect. “‘Females like her shake their pretty little asses all over the place, tryin’ to drive us crazy. You don’t see the rest of us going off the deep end. Get a grip, kid, you’re only making it worse for yourself. You still have a chance to walk on this, a rich Prescott kid like you. But hittin’ a cop, that’ll get you in worse trouble than this.’

              “I heard you, Det. Morton,” Siobhan said. “That’s what you said Friday night. While I was on the ground, broken and bleeding, you were trying to help Michael Littlefield ‘beat this rap.’”

              Morton, his bald head gleaming red from chin to pate, glanced sheepishly at Ms. Potts.

              “You’re on your own, detective,” she said. Siobhan had repeated word for word what Det. Flynn reported hearing Morton say to Michael Littlefield as the kid resisted arrest.

              “I didn’t fight for that gun, Det. Morton,” Siobhan continued. “I’m quite certain you did not find my fingerprints on it. I won’t speak to you further about this. I’ll assume you have the decency to leave this room without being asked.”      

              Det. Morton tucked his hat in the crook of his arm and left.

              Siobhan addressed Ms. Potts. “I was telling you about Brian getting shot.”

              “Yes, you were.” Ms. Potts was impressed. She couldn’t wait to tell everyone at his precinct that Det. Avery “Motor Mouth” Morton had been kicked off the case by an 18-year-old girl.

***

              Siobhan had recalled her experience in excruciating detail. Brian wondered if he would ever be able to erase from his mind the nightmarish images her words had drawn. She stared at the window for a long time after Det. Flynn’s departure.

              “You’re doing it again.” Brian sat on the edge of her bed.

              “I heard about Michael’s performance on the radio this morning,” she said softly. “They treat him like he’s some kind of star. They call him by all three names, like they do with serial killers and assassins. He wants people to think that he’s just misunderstood.”

              “Michael is mean, hateful and just plain crazy.”

              “Why aren’t reporters calling him a thug?” Siobhan wondered aloud. “Why are they trying so hard to understand him? If I’d been the one holed up in someone’s yard after shooting people, no one would be trying to understand me. I wouldn’t have made it out of Camden’s yard alive.”

              “I know.”

              She changed the subject before talk of Michael lowered her into depression. “My dad says you’re being released tomorrow. I wish you’d never had to be here, but it was nice having you here every day. I’m glad you’re going home, Brian.”

              “I’ll be back tomorrow. And Thursday. And Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and every day until you get out of here.”

              “Thank you for coming this morning. It was harder than I thought it would be.”

              “I wouldn’t leave you to face that alone all over again.”