The Good Boy (19 page)

He pushes open the gate and checks the back windows. All the curtains are pulled. He thinks about McKenna in there, held up against one of the dirty walls, trying to hold on to her smile while some boys took her breath away. He realizes he has been holding his.

He moves carefully to the bottom of the steps, standing where he’d first entered the yard, to get a familiar gauge on the scene. Yellow evidence markers have been put in place of photo technicians and measuring tape. Marker 1 sits near the fence to his left and 2 straddles the top of the fence next to the gate behind marker 1. Marker 3 sits in the periphery, about five yards away, random. The rest of the markers are set back a good fifteen yards, clustered behind the fire pit.

Pete walks the perimeter and puts himself on top of marker 1, in Fowler’s shoes. From there, he aims his flashlight: the cluster on the opposite side of the fire pit must mark where the victim was when he was shot, though it seems an unlikely target; ash indicates the bonfire had been going and, judging by the way the tree branches overhead are burned and charred, the blaze must have been large enough to block Fowler’s line of sight.

Unless Linda Lee is right, and Fowler wasn’t aiming at Aaron Northcutt.

Pete shines his light over to marker 3; it must be where they found the revolver, though Fowler must’ve carried the weapon around, fired shots two and three, before he dropped it there. Behind him, on the fence, is the last marker, and Pete is surprised to find bloodstains there: not splattered but smeared. It doesn’t make sense, located above and behind where Fowler stood.

And then he takes a closer look, and sees the way it smears toward the gate.

Pete opens the gate and does a visual sweep at two, five, and ten yards before the yellow tape catches his eye across the street, stretched from a fire hydrant to a hedge line and back.

He skips over, finds marker 16 on the grass
,
and has no idea what it could be.

He searches the immediate area for other tape, or markers; there are none.

But what there is, once he gets over the hedges and comes back with the flashlight, is a tuft of dog fur caught in the evergreen.

Butch was here. They were here.

And Linda Lee remembers.

12

Joel thought about leaving Molly a note, but then he worried about the trail of evidence. Molly could get up on the wrong side of bed in the morning, turn informant. Or Joel’s mom could show up on Grandma Sandee’s doorstep, force her into a confession. This way, she’ll have nothing much to tell.

And anyway, if nobody knows where they’re headed, nobody can head them off.

Getting to the Metra tracks was a cinch and that’s because Joel knows the neighborhood. They haven’t been here that long, but when they moved in, everybody else in his family acted like they’d been sentenced and bussed, prisoners to the penitentiary. Joel didn’t like pretending he was locked up, so he went outside at every opportunity, and made it his job to learn the ins and outs.

Before long, he could navigate the best routes to hangouts, food places, and transportation stations. Hoping he’d spark some interest, he dutifully reported the discoveries to his parents, telling them everything they ever wanted to know about the locals and the local goings-on.

Thankfully, he kept the shortcuts, hideouts, and hidden entrances to himself. Like this one, at Bryn Mawr, where the barbed-wire-topped fence isn’t secured at all at the bottom.

Up on the tracks, Joel does a quick recon, checking the grounds below and the long stretch behind. The last late-night trains already ran by, and there won’t be another coming from either direction until quarter to six in the morning. That means all their obstacles, for now, are along the way.

“C’mon, Butchie,” he says, coaxing the dog past Balmoral Avenue, the street they won’t take that leads straight home.

Pretty soon they pass the Andersonville Gardens. This time of year, they’re lush enough to camouflage Metra’s whole operation: vines crawl the fence, leafy bushes thatch the landscape, young oak trees stand as tall as the train cars. If Joel’s parents are out looking, they might think to look in the gardens, but they won’t see past the green.

Joel wonders if they’re looking, or if they even know he’s gone.

At Foster Avenue, a storage building butts against the west side of the tracks. Joel had to put a bunch of his toys into storage when they moved; his mom said there wouldn’t be room for all of them in the new house. She also said he would probably forget the things he put away, and that it’d be fun, like “Christmas all over again,” when they reclaimed the boxes.

Joel wasn’t thrilled with the idea of another Christmas; he didn’t believe in Santa anymore, and he didn’t think he should have to play nice with his parents just to get his old stuff back. And anyway, he can still name every single thing he put away: every baseball card, every LEGO. It can’t be all that fun if you already know what’s in the box.

Up ahead past a bank of condos, an oversized train signal flashes red where the tracks open up for the Lawrence station. It’s the most exposed leg of the trip so far: the foliage falls away and there’s just a bare fence standing between them and an old weed-pricked parking lot. The lot sprawls to the back side of an abandoned apartment complex. Development has been stalled here for a while; even the more recently occupied bank on the next corner is closed, brown paper taped inside its windows.

Just before they reach the signal, Joel moves Butchie off to the rock ballast alongside the track. He gets his jacket from his bag and puts it on over Molly’s T-shirt; he’s got to be extra careful because the station has no cameras, the platform has no people, and the coast seems clear—and those are the perfect conditions for getting nicked.

As if Butchie mind-read the thought, he juts out from the bushes and, reaching the end of his leash, turns back, expectant; in the low light, his tapetum lucidum shines yellow-white, a spectral glow. He whines; he wants to go.

“You’re right, Bright Eyes,” Joel says. The sooner he gets the dog off the tracks, down to the street where it’d be normal to see him, the better.

Joel pulls on his hood—not much of a disguise, but better than nothing. From the signal to Lawrence Avenue, they travel the track low and dead center, one foot in front of the other. Or other three.

Just before the station Joel spots the Golden Nugget Pancake House’s twenty-four-hour-breakfast sign and his stomach chimes in. He hasn’t had anything since the soggy pasta dinner, and the idea of a buttery, syrup-drowned stack makes him want to jump the tracks and fill up. With two one-dollar bills and one two-dollar bill, though, pancakes aren’t a possibility.

Joel runs Butchie past the station platform; no one is there, but if somebody comes up the steps now, it won’t be to wait on a train. Joel skips two ties at a time and keeps at that clip until they’re well away from the station.

When they slow down, Butchie looks back like he wonders what they were running from.

Joel checks over his shoulder again, too: he has to think somebody is looking for them by now. Somebody besides Mizz Redbone’s boys.

At the next cross street, weakened and graying brush suffocates between the tracks and an endless strip of empty parking spots. They pass a dark office-supply outlet, a closed-up medical research lab, and a shuttered engraving service—all of which make Joel feel pretty confident about making it over the open plate girder bridge at Wilson Avenue—until Butchie puts on the brakes.

“What’re you doing?” Joel asks, leaning into the leash. When he looks back it’s pretty clear: the dog has dropped his butt, and he’s about to do his business.

“Seriously? Here?” They’re stopped right in the middle of the bridge, its metal-mounted billboards empty, framing the two at various street angles.

“Hurry up,” Joel says, but that’s not why the dog’s ears go up: he’s tuned to the street as a black vehicle appears from nowhere and tears around the corner at Wilson. Joel goes down flat, face to the ties, and tries to pull Butchie down with him.

“Platz!”
Joel commands as the car’s tires skid to a stop on the other side of the bridge. And then another car approaches, and another—both from the same nowhere, heavy on the gas pedals until they’re caught up to the first.

“Put your hands up!” a male voice orders from below. The cop cars’ blue lights turn now, catching the dog’s glowing eyes.
It’s over,
Joel thinks; they saw his bright eyes.

“Okay,” Joel says, to Butchie, mostly. Then he tries to do what he’s told, but being on his stomach, his arms only go so high.

“I said put your hands where I can see them!”

“Okay,” he says again, suddenly shaking. He pushes himself up and sits back on his heels. Butchie stays down, watching as Joel slowly starts to raise his arms, leash in hand.

Then someone else says, “I didn’t do nothing!”

And Joel goes down flat on the track.

“What you trying to get in there for?” one of the cops asks. “You don’t look like a doctor to me.”

“I wasn’t trying to get in nowhere.”

“I guess we must have you confused with the other bear-pawed junkie we got on camera setting his own hair on fire while he tries to short out the security keypad.”

“C’mon, man. I’m sick.”

“Dope sick,” one of the other cops says.

Radio static startles Butchie and his ears perk again; Joel holds his collar, hands still shaking.
“Bleib,”
he whispers.

“I need medical attention,” the man below says.

“That building is a pharmaceutical lab,” a cop says. “Not a hospital. That’s how you got
our
attention. Let’s go.”

“You have the right to remain silent…”

While the officer reads the Miranda rights, Joel closes his eyes and tries to calm down. To breathe. He mouths along:
If you cannot afford an attorney …

Over the radio, a dispatcher interrupts:
“Nineteen sixteen, nineteen one-six?”

“Sixteen, one in custody, we’re en route.”

Then comes the click of cuffs, the open and shut of car doors, and idling engines put into gear. As quickly as they came, the unmarked cars pull away, blue lights ticking and whirling. Joel thinks this must be what his dad meant when he explained about coincidence. Crime led the cops right here; the coincidence is that they were looking for someone else.

“Thank dog,” Joel says to Butchie, and keeps him there until the cops are long gone.

*   *   *

Back on the street, Joel’s nerves feel stretched and crunched, his perspective diffused. He has never been in this part of town, and he doesn’t feel safe. He knows they’ve got to get off the grid for the night and rest up.

On the next block, a high-rise condo building is no place to stop, the building’s well-lit lobbies, waiting cabs, and observant doormen all potential worm-cans.

A white three-story house with a double-steepled roof sits at the next corner, its first-floor windows fluorescent boxes, bright but hollow and tinged yellow, like a hospital’s. In front, steps lead up to a covered porch that sits over a door,
TWELVE STEP HOUSE
etched into its glass. While Butchie lifts his leg in the yard, Joel counts eleven steps. He counts three times.

“Hey,” a clear-voiced man says. “What’re you doing down there?”

Joel looks up and catches the orange flare of a cigarette hanging out from one of the house’s top-floor windows. He can’t see the man’s face, and he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be showing his, but it’s too late. Butchie pulls, itching to go, and Joel knows he’s right: he shouldn’t answer; they should disappear.

Still, he can’t help it. He wants to know. He says, “There are eleven steps.”

Hot ash from the cigarette falls fast and burns out, a shooting tobacco-star. The man says, “Eleven, yeah.”

“Why?”

The man blows a long of stream of smoke and then he says, “Because if you want to make things right, you have to take the first one on your own.”

“I hope that’s true.”

“It’s true,” the man says. “But it’s hard to do.” He flicks the butt into the yard; a twist of smoke rises from the grass. “Better get going.”

“Me too,” Joel says.

“I meant you.”

“My parents are waiting.” It isn’t a lie.

“I hope
that’s
true.”

Joel waves at the window and starts down the street, Butchie looking at him sideways.

“Yeah, Big Feet, I know.”

At the end of the block Joel avoids an empty, fenced-in church parking lot. Same with the alley: like all the others they’ve passed tonight, it’s more lit up than the street.

Up ahead, on the other side of the street, a For Sale sign stands crooked and worn, much like the old brick A-frame house behind it. The windows are a dark contrast to the front bricks, which look bleach-splashed; there, ivy was recently removed.

Joel crosses over and lets Butchie stop to sniff the sign and he wonders if anyone’s inside. When his dad put their old house up for sale, they still lived there, but that’s not always how it works. For example, the old lady who rents them the new house was long gone when they moved in. The next-door neighbors, for another example, moved out when the bank took their house, and it’s still empty.

Joel takes a listing flyer from the sign’s plastic box. Below the house photo and property highlights, the realtor has crossed out the price and magic-markered a new one—$350,000—more money than Joel can fathom, but not as much as the owners had apparently hoped for. The Magic Marker also notes,
MUST SELL! OWNERS RELOCATED!

At the bottom of the page, “Mitch” is the contact, no last name, his phone number’s 708 prefix putting him in the suburbs.

“Looks like home,” he says to Butchie.

Joel puts the flyer back in the box and leads the dog around the side of the house. He figures this must be a real nice part of town because landscaping protects the backyards instead of gates or fences.

They squeeze between a pair of bushes into the yard where a wood deck rises to meet an empty Jacuzzi and Joel rounds the not-hot tub to lift the cheap white PVC lattice that hides the heating system and the pool’s undersides. Then he follows the pool’s piping back to the garage, locates a faucet, and cranks the handle. The spout trickles. “Here, boy,” he says, showing Butchie where to drink. When the dog is through, Joel takes some for himself; the water is cold and reminds his stomach it’s as empty as the pool.