The Good Boy (18 page)

“Well, he looks up to you.”

“He’s shorter than me.” She finds her purse on the bed and roots through it and, for some reason, abruptly stops, zips it up and puts it behind her computer desk. It’s a telling move, though Pete isn’t sure what it tells.

He says, “Your mom thinks Joel ran away.”

“Of course she does.” McKenna ties up her hair, and suddenly she’s ready and she’s edging him out of the room. “She’s so fucking drama.”

Pete supposes he was looking for some kind of solidarity, but not this kind. He stops her at the door. “Don’t talk about your mother that way.”

“What way? It’s not my opinion, Dad. I
know
. I noticed. Sarah lives for what’s wrong.”

Pete will admit he’s felt the same way, but to hear McKenna say it out loud feels like betrayal. How has he let things fall this far? “You know, you’re pretty proud of yourself for a girl who does plenty wrong.”

“Yeah, well you’re the one who protects her from it.”

If he’d drawn a line, she just willingly jumped it.

“My mistake.” Pete crosses the room, goes for her bag.

“What are you doing?” she asks, trying to sneak in behind him. She lunges for the strap—“You can’t do that!”

He takes her by the arms; she squirms, weight back, trying to pull him down to the floor.

“You get off easy and you still want to point fingers?” he asks, lifting her back to her feet. “It doesn’t work that way.”

McKenna tries to wrestle away but she has no idea how. She’s out of breath in no time and gives up, falling forward on her knees. “I’m dizzy.”

“Stand up.”

She tries, but she’s off-balance, so he holds her steady.

“Look at me,” he says; when she does, he sees her otherwise blacked-out eyes are completely bloodshot, the capillaries broken—and in her left eye, a dark red hemorrhage on the sclera. “Wait a minute. Are you on something?”

“No.” Looking away now.

“What’s with your eyes?”

“I was crying.”

“Crying doesn’t do that.” He sits her down on the bed. “What are you hiding?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m sorry, am I the one sending mixed messages?” He picks up her bag. “What’s in here, McKenna?”

“Nothing.”

He shakes the purse and he hears what sounds distinctly like a pill bottle. “Nothing?” He unzips the top pouch and feels around inside, finding her earbuds’ cord, her foam phone case, a makeup compact and then, a bottle of pills.

He takes out the pills, an unmarked bottle, and holds them up to her face. “This doesn’t look like nothing to me.” He drops the bag, flips off the bottle cap, and shakes out a few capsules: they are green and white, large and lightweight. He doesn’t recognize them; they could be anything. Must be homemade. “Is this what you do when you go to parties? Pop a couple of these, get fucked up?”

She shakes her head, a firm no. “I didn’t get fucked up, I swear.”

“Then how do you explain your eyes?”

“What’s wrong with my eyes?” she asks, scared now. Pete digs back into her purse and tosses her the compact. Once she sees, her jaw drops and she asks, “What the hell?”

“Good question.”

He breaks open one of the capsules, releasing a fine-grain brown powder. It smells like dirt. “What are these?”

“They’re herbal supplements.”

“What, exactly, do you need supplemented?”

Her shoulders go up as she looks down. “They’re for weight loss.”

And now of course Pete feels like an asshole. He tosses the cracked-open capsule into the trash and puts the bottle back in her bag and zips her bag and sits down on the bed, leaving plenty of distance. He knows it’s going to sound lame but he says it anyway: “McKenna, you don’t need that stuff.”

“Oh please. What do you know?”

“I know that I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Those pills could have all kinds of side effects, or ingredients that don’t mix well with alcohol—”

“I told you, I wasn’t drinking. I don’t need the calories.”

“Smoking, then.”

“I didn’t smoke. Some of the kids were, though—maybe that’s why my eyes are so red.” She looks in the handheld mirror again, tugs at her eyelids, blinks a bunch.

“When did you start taking the pills?”

“Last week.”

“Did you read the label? Your eyes—the hemorrhage—it could have to do with a spike in your blood pressure. Drugs like those usually contain speed and blood thinners.”

“Not these. They’re herbal.”

“Fine—caffeine and Gingko—same difference. Maybe we should go to the hospital, get you checked out.”

McKenna clicks the compact shut. “No. I know what it’s from—why my eyes are this way.”

“I had a feeling,” which had to do with avoiding the hospital.

“At the party,” she says, “everybody was dancing, and some kids were playing this game called Burn Rush. It’s like musical chairs, except with a hat. Whoever winds up with the hat when the music stops has to burn rush. I got the hat.”

“What the hell is burn rush?”

“They put you against a wall and you breathe out and they press on your chest so you can’t inhale, and then you pass out.”

“Who are
they
?”

“My friends.”

Pete could kill these so-called friends. “Like Aaron?”

“You’re mad. I’m not telling you.”

“But what you
are
telling me is you don’t even need to get a few beers in you to do something totally fucking stupid—”

Pete’s phone rings, and he reaches around his pants pockets but it isn’t there anywhere, not in his shirt pockets, either. He thought he left it in his coat but it’s here somewhere, the ringer declaring so—which is a real convenient interruption for McKenna, because he wants to know about every last one of these friends, put them on a watch-list—and he’s about to say so, but then the situation doesn’t look at all convenient for McKenna, her face suddenly drained of fight. She raises a not-quite-pointed finger toward the door: the phone is in Sarah’s hand, who’s standing in the doorway, and for who knows how long.

She says, “You left this.” She has his cracked blue mug in her other hand.

Pete gets up and takes the phone. He doesn’t recognize the number, but given the circumstances—that sending the call to voice mail would mean inviting Sarah to join the current conversation and clue her in on their cover-up, sending them both straight into deep shit—answering is a better option.

“Murphy,” he says to the phone.

“Murphy, Craig McHugh. I’m at Three, and thought you’d want to know the case is near-wrapped already: Zachary Fowler confessed to the shooting.”

Pete won’t call the news good, but it’s the best he can hope for. “What’s the motive?”

“Fowler’s not saying. He lawyered up.”

“Some friend,” he says, looking at McKenna. She looks at her goofy socks. He asks, “What about the extra spent casings?”

“Fowler says he shot the last two in the air to break up the crowd.”

“You find anybody to corroborate?”

“No, but what the hell. We’ve got his confession. There’s just one snag.”

“Had to be one,” Pete says, guessing the snag is the reason for the call.

“We’ve got a witness who actually remembers something.”

“A different story?”

“Not exactly. She didn’t see the shooting. But she did see a dog.”

“What kind of dog?” Pete asks, feeling Sarah’s eyes on him; she must think it’s Butch.

“A big dog,” McHugh says. “It jumped the fence, she saw its teeth, and she got the hell out of there. But she thinks the shooting was an accident—that the dog was the target.”

“She’s the only one who saw the dog?”

“She’s the only one saying so. Hell, she’s the only one saying anything. I’m not sure how, ah, reliable she is, though—she blew a point-one-o and that was after she vomited. The problem is, she’s feeling real sympathetic now, and she’ll say anything she thinks will help. That’s why I’m calling. My guess is she’ll talk her way out of being a credible witness in no time, but if she’s a friend of your daughter’s, I thought you’d want to know she’s on deck.”

“You brought her in?”

“We did. The ASA put the brakes on—he wouldn’t approve the charge over the phone. He’s on his way over here to talk to Fowler, and the girl, and to jerk my chain, of course.”

“Who’s the girl?”

“Name’s Linda Lee.”

“Don’t know her. Who’s the ASA?”

“Jake Brogan.”

“Don’t know him either.” Thank God.

“He’s nobody’s puppet, but he’s nobody’s pal either. He’s been about fifty-fifty on felony review. I figure with Fowler’s confession, his priors, and the weapon, it’ll be a no-brainer, but I’ve got all my guys in a room right now squaring their stories so Brogan won’t pick us apart on procedure.”

“Good luck.”

“Yeah—it’s too bad we need it.”

“Thanks for calling.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” McHugh hangs up.

“Who was that?” Sarah asks, though Pete still has the phone to his ear; he doesn’t answer because the possibility that has been circling the back of his brain since McKenna called Joel a snoop is finally coming around in full.

Pete looks at his daughter, who’s now intently studying her fingernails. He should ask her about Linda Lee. About the big dog. But he knows. He already knows.

Joel had said,
McKenna likes trouble.
He wondered why nobody worried about her. But
he
was worried about her. He wouldn’t snitch because he was covering for her.

And whether McKenna knows it or not, Joel looks up to her, and out for her, and she is why he is gone.

Pete reaches for his coffee. He drinks half of it in one gulp. Then he tells Sarah, “That was a lead.”

*   *   *

Pete gets the squad and makes his way east out of the neighborhood. He crosses under the Ravenswood train tracks, past Joel’s favorite place for breakfast. It was a relief, the way the boy so easily took to the neighborhood; when they moved in, Joel’s discoveries were like jewels in a junk shop.
Look at that!
he’d say in full exclamation, pointing out something as typical as a tree.
That’s a climbing tree,
he’d tell Pete, as though it were indigenous to the new neighborhood.

Look at that train!
he’d announce as it ran on rugged tracks over the street;
That’s the Union Pacific North Line!
Pete didn’t remember Joel ever expressing interest in the trains that ran past their old house, on the northwest line. Or in the trees, the street signs, the block-long industrial buildings, the stacked-house duplexes. Some things were different, sure, but to Joel, everything here was fascinating—especially the Tempel Steel Company, whose industrial grounds sprawl across the street from the house.

At first, Pete felt like the neighbor was a hulking symbol of his failure, the factory line’s clatter and bloop a constant reminder that he’d disrupted Sarah and the kids’ lives. The company’s human-resources sign tacked to the back fence read the same each day, a reminder:
WE ARE NOT TAKING APPLICATIONS
. For Pete, there seemed no way out.

Then one day he caught Joel scoping the fence’s perimeter with his good Steiner binoculars. He asked Joel to explain, meaning he wanted to know why he snaked the nocs without asking, but instead Joel revealed that Tempel was not in fact a steel manufacturer but a fenced-off fortress where secret space-age weapons were invented, and really, there was no way
in
.

For years, Pete’s known that Joel sees things differently—a high-spirited version of the overlooked and ordinary.

And now? Jesus. Who knows what he’s seeing now.

Pete turns south on Ashland and drives down to Chase Park, where Joel plays softball this season. Pete hasn’t been able to catch too many games; he and Butch have worked a lot of overtime, and during summer he said yes to every show and street-fest security gig the Metro sponsored.

It’s been tough, too, watching Joel struggle. Coach Ryan is a hardass, and while Pete is glad he’s in it to win it, he doesn’t care for the guy’s blatant favoritism. Reminds him of the Job.

He rolls down his windows and starts a slow lap around the park: it’s past two
A.M.
and the field lights are out, which means there are plenty of obstructed-view spots for somebody and his dad’s dog to plunk down for the night. When he reaches the corner on Leland, though, he sees a squad car cruising the park’s rubber running track, and figures the copper has it covered. He flashes his lights and keeps on toward Uptown.

The park was probably too obvious anyway, even for Joel. He imagines Sarah and McKenna back at home: the list they’re compiling of all the other obvious possibilities.

“He doesn’t have any friends,” McKenna had said again when Pete asked them to start there—with his friends.

“Think,” Pete said. “School. Sports. The neighborhood. That neighborhood girl.” Sarah took the pen and pretty soon they were in competition over who could remember the name of every kid on the block, in his class, at the last game. Pete also gave them plenty of people to think about after that: not just the new teachers, coaches, classmates, and buddies, but all those from the old neighborhood, too.

Though the people they were adding were known acquaintances, Pete knew the task would be time-consuming—Joel too young to have his own list of contacts, and Sarah too scattered to keep all hers in one place. Before Pete left, she’d been searching for the phone book; clearly, he’d have plenty of time to investigate the unknowns.

Up ahead, the first unknown: Zack Fowler’s house.

Pete parks in front of a hydrant opposite the backyard fence, the only squad on the street. Since McHugh called from the station, Pete knew the detectives had combed the scene, collected evidence, corralled witnesses—or a witness, anyway—and cleared out.

He’s about to tell Butch to stay put, which would be routine if this were official—and also if Butch were with him. He gets out and pops the trunk; he’ll wear his flak, so at least he looks the part. He crosses the street toward the police tape strung from the side gate. The house lights are dark; Fowler’s parents have to be pacing the Twenty’s waiting room by now and if they aren’t, they’ll certainly avoid another uniform in their yard.