The Body of Christopher Creed (11 page)

He's not
your
baby. He's not
your
Christopher. He's a human being.
My head banged, though I was shaking so bad my mouth wouldn't move. I wanted to reach through the phone and kill her for making me piss myself. I was—total truth—feeling warm piss run down my leg, and it was making me crazy. It came clear to me what she could do to Chris if she could make me piss my goddamn pants.

"Shut up!" I heard myself snarl through my terror. My brain jumped to that Hitchcock movie and the rest of the phone conversation with the murderer. "Bring money! Bring lots of it!"

I slammed down the phone and ran like I've never run before. In football or anything. But you can't run from your own stupidity, and as I flew into the woods, I wanted to scream at my own dumbness. I could feel all those eyes on me still, and it was like they were laughing. I tried not to think about that, to think about what went wrong with that conversation. Something was definitely not adding up, something she had said, I just couldn't think of it right then. I couldn't think of anything except ten thousand laughing eyes, and it struck me like a freight train how unfunny all this was.

"
Bring money"? Torey, you didn't even give an amount. She will know you're some total moron who doesn't know shit.
I took this dark trail I knew would come out behind the Wawa. I took it in less than a minute, though it was at least a quarter mile, and when the Wawa came into view I stood there huffing and shaking from head to toe. I felt cold and realized I had pissed clear through my jeans, and you could see it plain as day. "
Bring money." Jesus.

I turned back into the darkness to walk the rest of the way home. There was nowhere else to go with wet jeans.
This is a bad dream. I didn't just make that call. She did not threaten my life. I did not piss myself.

It was on that short walk that I realized everything that could happen. Mrs. Creed, with all her guts, would probably call the police, anyway. Or Bo would get seen by one of the little kids. Bo wasn't good with planning and might go stupidly back over to Ali's and not run off. He'd be easy to catch there. I had forgotten to wipe my fingerprints off the receiver at the ball field. That last one totally petrified me.

I walked into my house and went straight up to my room. I could feel this thing unwinding as I pulled off my jeans and threw them in the back of my closet. It was almost like I had already been caught. And even if we never got caught, I didn't see how I could walk into school and rattle on with my friends about the boons smelling bad or Creed's body being in somebody's swimming pool, like life was some goddamn joke and we had nothing to worry about. I had become a little like Ali, with the unperfect life. I had just done some sort of serious crime. I had done something the cops could be very pissed about. And here I was, the type who could never even lie without looking guilty as all hell.

I sat in
the police station with my mom on one side of me and Ali on the other. I remember being glad that my dad had been working that night. You don't know how your parents are going to react to trouble if you've never been in any. My mom was totally blank as those cops took me away in the cop car. They had told me I could come down in her car, that they just wanted to question me. But I muttered, "I don't mind," because somehow the cop car seemed a better deal than having my guilt seated next to my mom in a closed-in car. I wished she would have gone ballistic, though my mom had never gone ballistic that I could remember. But I hadn't ever done anything like this before, either.

There were two other rooms in the police station, and I could hear hollering coming out of both of them.

In one Bo was saying, "You're wrong! I don't have
to
answer your stupid questions, and I don't have to talk to you about anything! I want a lawyer!"

Chief Bowen's voice came back at him. "I guess you've been in here often enough to know the law, Richardson. To get a lawyer at this point in the game, you have
to
pay for one. Don't forget who you are. A bigmouth with a record, with one foot in Egg Harbor and another foot on a banana peel—"

"Aw, kiss my ass."

"Don't you"—a thunder of chairs clattering made the building shake almost, and Chief Bowen's voice cut in at the end of it—"
ever
talk to me like that!"

Two younger officers charged out of the other room, which Mrs. Creed was in, and shot past us into the room where Bo and Chief Bowen were. Ali shot out of her seat, and I grabbed her by the back of the jeans and jerked her down beside me again. She had been crying and now added to the mess with louder sobs. I couldn't take her sobs. I shot up out of my chair toward the room with Bo, and my mother jerked me back down like I had done with Ali.

"Mom! They're beating him up!" I cried.

"No they're not. Stay calm, both of you." I looked at her sitting there tensely as the yelling and furniture clanging continued.

And from the other room, Mrs. Creed's voice blasted, "He either murdered my son or he's holding my son! If you let him go tonight, I will sue you for—"

"You're a liar!" Bo's voice thundered, and my mom reached over me and grabbed Ali, who was screeching with her head in her lap.

"How can you say they're not beating him?" I pleaded with her.

"They're yelling, mostly. They yanked him out of the chair and the chair fell over, then he kicked the chair, and then one of the other officers tripped over the chair."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"These noises are my life." She stared at the door, too calm.

"How can you let them talk to him like that?" I demanded. "They're the police! They're trashing him—"

"Torey." She cut me off and did not look thrilled. "I don't have time right now to give you a lesson in juvenile delinquency. Nobody is beating him, all right? There's just a language that these kids understand, and if you don't use it, you might as well speak French to them. They're just doing what cops do."

"Mom, just do what lawyers do. Please, do something for him," I mumbled, and I could feel myself starting to bawl.

"Would you care to tell me what happened tonight?" she snapped.

"We're ... in some trouble," I stammered.

"I wasn't born yesterday," she muttered, her jaw barely moving, like she was trying not to be overheard. "This looks like some chapter from my office files. Only problem is, my son is in it. What is going on?"

"Mom..." I heard Bo scream out the word
liar
again as the cops hollered for him to shut up. "Mom, please trust me. You gotta help that kid in there. He's innocent."

"Innocent of what?" Her mouth didn't move again, but the tone of her voice was totally pissed.

"Mrs. Creed wants the cops to pin Chris on him. He didn't do anything. Okay? You have to believe me and help him. He's a boon, so they're being mean to him—"

She jumped a little in her chair, to let me know I had said enough.

"Do you know anything about that kid in there, Torey?" she muttered again. "I don't care if he's from Guadalajara. They're not picking on him because of where he's from but because he's got a record as long as your arm. I have personally seen that kid in court five or six times, did you know that?"

"For what?" I asked, feeling my stomach sink through the floor.

"You name it. Breaking and entering, mostly—"

"Mom. He's stupid about it. He's not cut out to be a thief. That's why he keeps getting caught—"

She jumped around again, then cleared her throat, smiling at Chief Bowen's deputy, who went back to Mrs. Creed's little room, shouting, "Mrs. Creed, Chief Bowen says you have to calm down!"

"You are being very stupid right now, young man," my mom said. "I might be a lawyer.
First,
I'm your mother. As your mother I'm telling you: This is not the type of person to whom we expect you to endear yourself, considering we are paying five thousand dollars a year in property taxes to send you to Steepleton High School."

My brain leaped to Ali's house and Bo stomping up those stairs like it was nothing. I thought of him standing on the curb with me, talking about his sister Darla and Ali....He had to have so much courage just to live his life. He saved Ali. I didn't really care about the rest.

I shut my eyes tight as Chief Bowen kept nabbing at Bo. "Look, forget Egg Harbor, forget the juvenile delinquent slumber party up there. You want to go to
Jamesburg,
Richardson? You got one foot in real jail, mister. You have pushed us and pushed us for years—"

"I'm not arrested," Richardson spouted back. "You can't send me to Jamesburg. And besides, I'm telling you, I did not break into that woman's house! I don't know what happened to her dorky kid, but I'll bet you she does!"

"Richardson, when you go to the chair, I'm pulling the switch!" Mrs. Creed's voice dive-bombed the place from across the hall. I almost pissed myself again at the sound of her voice. I shut my eyes and thought,
God, do something here. Because I can't cope with this all by myself.
Ali was wailing, Mrs. Creed was screeching, and my mom was talking about her taxes.

Mom stood up. She looked too calm and too slow in this storm. She turned and looked me dead in the eye and said, "You need to do two things: Stay calm, and keep her calm."

She did not look thrilled, and she said it like it was a military order. I reached down and bodily picked Ali up from her heap on the floor, dumping her back in the chair and keeping both arms around her so she wouldn't slither down again. I kept muttering "shhhh" to Ali as my mom walked toward the door to the room where Bo and Chief Bowen were. The door was open about halfway.

"Guys," she said in a calm voice that stopped Chief Bowen, "are you going to charge this boy with something or not?"

"What're you doing here, Susan?" Chief Bowen asked. He sounded annoyed. "Oh, that's right. We've got your son out there. Mrs. Hoffsteader saw him out her bay window, standing in front of the McDermotts', having a cigarette with this outstanding citizen here."

I wasn't smoking!
climbed halfway up my throat, but in a haze I realized that being accused of smoking was a fart in a windstorm. My brain flashed back to that flickering curtain at the house next door to the Creeds'. It hadn't even registered that somebody was watching us.
Stupid.
I hoped I could straighten it out later.

"Are they being charged or not?" My mother's voice was edgy.

"What's your game, Susan?" Chief Bowen asked. "Are you representing one or both or neither of these young men? I think it's against the law to represent your own son; I'll have to check that one out."

"I'm not representing anyone," she said as casually as she could. "I just want to know how I can help get a move on here. It's late. These kids have school tomorrow."

I heard Chief Bowen sigh loudly. "Bring your son in here, Susan. And the McDermott girl. I wouldn't want your son to miss his bedtime. Tiny, take Mr. Richardson out, and please keep him away from Sylvia."

Tiny was, like, a 250-pound officer. We passed him and Bo in the doorway, and it was a squeeze. Bo just stared at the floor with those insane-looking black eyes, but I could see fear in them. He was coming across like machine-gun fire to Chief Bowen, but I knew he was just as scared as I was, or more scared. I noticed he still didn't have his shoes on. He must have been caught right there in the street. I could feel my mom's fingers pushing me in the back. I had won something with her, I just wasn't sure how much.

Like my mom had predicted, there was a chair turned over. I turned it upright and sat in it. Ali edged into the chair beside me, and my mom sat beside Chief Bowen, on the other side of the table. He looked from me to Ali, back to me again.

"That kid out there is not the type of person your parents would want you associating with," he said.

It was my turn to go crazy. I slumped back in the chair, then leaned forward again, pushing Ali, who was hollering that they didn't know the first thing about him.

"You know, everybody has their own little version of reality going here!" I yelled. "And it has nothing do to with what's true or not true—"

"Torey!" my mother hollered, staring at the table. "Remain calm."

I dropped back in the chair and began rubbing Ali's back, not caring that I was sniffing.

"This is an insanity-fest," I muttered. "This is crazy. And it's not all Bo."

"You see this?" Chief Bowen picked up a huge file that was sitting in front of him. "It's twenty pages long, and it's Richardson's file. He's a thief. And a liar. And an upstart. It's obvious from this file that he's not particularly good at thieving. Lying? I would say he's an ace. Now, there was a very unusual phone call made to the Creeds tonight. If you kids know something about that—and something about the disappearance of Chris Creed—and you are protecting Mr. Richardson—"

"Bo doesn't know anything!" Ali whined. "None of us does!"

"Well, somebody made that phone call to the Creeds tonight, and I'm praying that it wasn't either of you," he said, eyeing Ali, then me. His voice got sort of friendly.

"Whoever made that phone call is in serious trouble. Somebody either knows where Chris Creed is or they've committed a harassment crime that takes the grossest form of mental cruelty. The Creeds have lost a child. Their pain and suffering are not to be understood by you. But that doesn't mean a judge wouldn't understand it. If the caller was perceived as a 'spoiled little rich kid,' that family could pay quite a bit. Don't count on having any money to go to college with. And that just covers the penalty for harassment. The caller asked for money. That's extortion. Extortion is a very serious crime, far more serious than harassment. Extortion has sent a number of kids to Jamesburg. Skip Egg Harbor; do not pass Go."

I got this hope that he was exaggerating the truth to scare us. I shot a glance at my mom. She just sat frozen in the chair like she was determined not to show any emotion. I couldn't read anything from her at all.
Extortion. Jail. No college.
I couldn't even get my brain to consider the words that were banging through my head.