Favorite Sons (9 page)

I scanned the rest of the local section hoping to find reports of other crimes that would distract detectives from the investigation into Petey's death. A woman near Hopedale had been charged with domestic abuse after striking her husband in the side of the head with a cake mixer. Someone was shooting out car windows with a .22-caliber handgun near Richmond. There had been a series of burglaries in Knoxville. Nothing, I thought, interesting enough to keep them away from an unsolved homicide.

At nine forty-five I pulled the back door shut and headed down the alley, dribbling my basketball around the puddles left by the overnight rain. Each bounce echoed off the phalanx of garages that lined the alley, eaves to eaves. Basketball was my least favorite sport, but going to the basketball court alone was one of my favorite pastimes. No coaches, no opponents, no whistles, no clock. I could get lost in myself, mindlessly shooting or playing games against invisible opponents, which always fell victim to my last-second heroics.

As I emerged from the alley onto Kennedy Avenue, the Clemens twins, blonde pixies of about ten, were heading to the swimming pool on a bicycle—the sister in front standing up and pedaling and the second sitting on the seat, her legs splayed to keep her toes away from the turning spokes while holding on to her sister's shoulders. Two boys—one in a blue-trimmed uniform with block-lettered “Indians” across the chest, the other in red with “Cardinals” written in script—walked toward the Little League field, gloves in one hand, rubber cleats in the other. Two other girls had drawn a hopscotch grid on the sidewalk with yellow chalk and were yelling at a grinning little brother, who was taking delight in interrupting their game by tossing pebbles onto their grid. At the playground, the swings, merry-go-round, and monkey bars were all in use.

It dawned on me at that moment that not all of Crystalton was consumed by panic over the death of Petey Sanchez. In fact, my own mother's admonition and insistence on giving Deak a ride home the night Petey's body had been discovered was the only sense of
concern that I had witnessed. I had anticipated parents reacting with more alarm. When I was in the second grade, a man attempted to abduct a girl walking to school in Tiltonsville, the next town south of Crystalton. For weeks afterward, mothers, my own included, walked their kids to school. At the final bell, cars were lined up in front of the school and a conclave of unsmiling mothers waited near the front door. There was a sense that the randomness of the attempted abduction could strike their child, as well. But that wasn't the case with Petey's death. It seemed that people did not believe it was a random act of violence.

At noon on Friday I took a break from cleaning the garage and went to Connell's Market for a bottle of RC Cola. Jack Vukovich was standing near the front counter, a carton of Kool Filter Kings in his hand and a giant ring of keys hanging on his belt, talking demonstratively to Denny Morelli and Jewel Connell, pointing at them and himself with two fingers that were pinching a lit cigarette. Jack was Deak's ne'er-do-well uncle who drove around in a beat-up Valiant and worked as a janitor at the junior high. I tried to stay away from Jack. There was no topic on which he did not consider himself an expert, and he was happy to espouse opinions and offer advice ad nauseum. Of Jack, my mother was fond of saying, “He'll tell you everything you don't want to know about everything you don't want to hear about.” People in Crystalton would listen to him, nod as though they found him fascinating, then walk away rolling their eyes. That was only part of the reason I distanced myself from Jack. He also liked to lean in close when he talked and his breath usually smelled of cheap gin, and his right eye was permanently rolled into the lower outside corner of the socket, and I couldn't help but stare at the fraction of exposed pupil.

When I approached the counter they were talking about Petey. “I think it was just an accident,” Jewel said. “I think he fell or something.”

Denny moved aside so I could pay for my pop.

Jack shook his head. “It wasn't an accident.”

“You don't think?” Denny asked, always anxious for any snippet of gossip that he could repeat as gospel.

“I'll tell you what happened. That simple kid crossed the wrong person.” I looked up and Jack's good eye was honed in on me. It gave me chills. “That's all there was to this, I guarantee it. Petey Sanchez went up to the wrong person and started making bird sounds or got up in their grill, and that was all it took.” He winked at me with his one good eye. “What do you think, Mr. Van Buren?”

I shook my head. “I don't really have an opinion.”

“Really? Well, you'd be the only one in town.” He turned back to Jewel and Denny. “Someone didn't want to put up with any more of that kid's bullshit, and they popped him—simple as that.”

I thought my knees were going to buckle. Jack Vukovich was spouting off in his usual know-all blather and he didn't know how eerily on target he was. They were still speculating when I left. It seemed that most people in town shared Jack's opinion, believing that Petey was somehow responsible for his own murder.

I dribbled to where Second Street came to a dead end at the high school parking lot and cut behind the school to the courts that overlooked the sand quarry. The sky was clear and the smoke from the electric plant drifted to the east, dissipating before it reached the West Virginia hills. I set my water jug on one of the green wooden benches along the side of the court and began shooting. It was only fifteen minutes before I saw Deak walking up the gravel road between the courts and the quarry.

When he got to the court I asked, “How was church camp?”

“It was nice to get away from here for a few days.”

“I'll bet.”

“What are you doing down here? It's going to be eighty-some degrees this afternoon and you've got to catch a double-header. You ought to be saving your energy.”

“I just wanted to burn off a little steam.”

Deak nodded. “And you didn't want to be at your house when Petey's funeral procession went past.”

He had me. “That, too.”

He grabbed a rebound and hit me near the free throw line with a bounce pass. I took a dribble to the left and launched a fade-away jumper that skipped off the front of the rim. “So, what's happened since I left?”

I shook my head and shrugged. “Nothing, best I can tell. No one has asked me anything. I've read the stories in the papers and listened to some of the gossip at Connell's Market, but that's it. Everyone thinks Petey's lunatic behavior led to him getting killed, which it did. I went to the funeral home with Mom last night. Mrs. Sanchez gave us all the details on how they fixed the hole in Petey's head so they could show him in the casket, but she didn't say much about the investigation. If the detectives had told Mrs. Sanchez anything about a suspect, I guarantee she would have told my mom about it, but she didn't say anything.”

We replayed the events of Monday morning several times. Deak shook his head, and with each passing minute looked more like someone had gut punched him. He chewed at his lip and looked to be fighting off tears. After about thirty minutes of talking and feeding me bounce passes, Deak said, “I don't know how much longer I can keep this up, Hutch.”

“You'll be okay. We're through the worst of it.”

He grabbed a rebound. I held out a hand, waiting for the pass, but he held the ball, tucking it under his arm, wedging it between his elbow and waist. “I've been giving it a lot of thought, Hutch, and I really think we need to tell the sheriff what happened. I don't care if we tell him it was self-defense or an accident, but we have to tell him. The Sanchez family will never have peace until they know what happened. It's the right thing to do.”

“What makes you think that it's the right thing to do?”

“Come on, Hutch, don't play this game with me. It's just the right thing to do and you know it.”

“No, I don't, Deak. And if you rat out Adrian, we all go down. We all get our names in the paper and end up in juvenile court. Is that what you want?”

“I want to do what's right. You, Pepper, and I, we didn't do anything wrong.”

“And neither did Adrian. Why can't you get that through your head? Petey's the one who's at fault.” I waved my fingers at him and he bounce-passed me the ball. “I think you want to tell the cops so you can relieve your conscience, and you want me to back you up. Well, I'm not going to tell you that it's okay. And if you go to the
cops, you go alone. I'm certainly not going to stand behind you and applaud your bravery.”

“How can you talk like that? You don't know what that family is going through.”

“You're absolutely right. I don't. I know it's terrible because I went to the funeral home and saw it. But going to the police isn't going to make it any easier on them. I thought we talked about this?”

“Adrian needs to step up and take responsibility for his actions, and you need to quit protecting him.”

“You're starting to piss me off, Deak. What do you want Adrian to take responsibility for? He didn't go out looking for Petey. He didn't say, ‘Hey, let's go out and throw rocks at the retarded kid.' All we were doing was minding our own business and walking down off the hill. I know Petey had a lot of mental problems, and in some ways couldn't help himself, but Adrian didn't start it, and he wasn't out looking for trouble. None of us were. Adrian was protecting himself and us, and I don't think he deserves to get fried for that.” I walked over to the bench and got a drink. As I did, I saw the flashing red lights of the police motorcycle escorting the funeral procession up New Alexandria Pike. “Come on, let's go.”

We cut behind the high school and hadn't gotten as far as the parking lot when Denny Morelli again came pedaling up on his bike. “Did you hear the news?”

“News about what?” I asked.

“The sheriff has a suspect in Petey Sanchez's murder. It's someone in his own family.”

“Denny, where do you get this stuff?” Deak asked.

I said, “I know where he gets it. He spends too much time stocking shelves at Connell's Market and listening to Jewel and those other busybodies yak all day. You're starting to gossip like those old women, Denny.”

“No, seriously, they're . . .”

Deak cut Denny off. “That's a heck of a thing to say about someone, that they killed their own son or brother. You ought to be more careful about spreading nonsense like that around.”

“It's true, I tell ya! The sheriff is searching their house right now,” Denny said, pointing to the north end of town. “I saw 'em.
It's all over town. The sheriff showed up with a search warrant about the time they were getting ready to leave for the funeral. Earl Junior told the sheriff he wasn't getting in the house. He called 'em a bunch of cocksuckers and he got into a fight with one of the deputies. Earl Junior took a swing at one of 'em and three of the deputies whipped on him with their nightsticks. They threw him down on the porch and handcuffed him behind the back. They arrested him and he didn't get to go to the funeral. I saw them drive off with him in the back of a sheriff's car and he had blood running all down his face.”

We stopped in our path. Frozen pinpricks covered my body, and I felt Deak's eyes boring in on me.

“You saw Earl Junior in the back of the sheriff's car?” Deak asked.

“Yeah, he was crying and cussing and screaming and kicking the doors. Mrs. Sanchez and all the girls were crying. The sheriff was barking at the old man, telling him he better get his family under control. I saw it with my own eyes. It was a circus.”

“That's terrible,” Deak said.

“Irene Kopinksi, her husband's a dispatcher for the sheriff, and she stopped in the store yesterday afternoon and said that the detectives told her husband that none of them Sanchezes were upset about Petey getting killed except the mom. The dad hardly talked when the sheriff's detectives were up there, and one or two of the brothers said it was probably for the best because the parents couldn't control Petey anymore. That's why they're searching the house, I'll bet.”

“What are they looking for?” I asked.

“I don't know. Maybe the murder weapon?” Denny rode around in a semicircle and came up alongside of me. “Did you see they found Petey's bike up on the hill near Chestnut Ridge? It makes sense if you think about it.”

“Why does that make sense?” I asked.

“Because if someone in his family killed him, they might have taken the bike up on the hill to make it look like he'd been abducted or something.”

“Maybe he was abducted,” I said.

“I'll bet not. You know how much trouble Petey always caused. Maybe the dad got tired of it, or maybe the brothers were afraid he was going to hurt one of their kids. He tried to burn up their house twice. They might have killed him right there in the house and dragged him up on the hill to make it look like someone else murdered him. You never know.”

“That's the point, Denny. Nobody knows for sure, especially you, so you shouldn't be spreading around rumors,” Deak said. “No one in the Sanchez family killed Petey. I'm positive.”

I puckered up a bit, wondering how far Deak was going to take his admonition.

Denny started to pedal away on his bike, looking for others to inform of the breaking news. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “I'll betcha anything one of 'em gets charged with murder. You watch and see.”

When Denny was out of earshot Deak turned to me and asked, “Well, that's just great. Are you happy now?”

“What'd I do? I didn't send the sheriff up there. Besides, it's no big deal. They'll never charge anyone. There's no evidence.”

“No big deal? The Sanchezes lose a child, have no explanation for the loss, the sheriff does a search warrant on their house, so obviously they're suspects and will have to live with that stigma, and now one of their kids is in jail and missed his own brother's funeral. The whole family has been thrown into turmoil because of us.”