The Graduation (17 page)

“No.”

“What exactly were you thinking when you were scared?”

“What?”

“People don’t just feel scared when they’re scared. They have scary thoughts. What were you thinking?”

Nick had to stretch his memory. “I was thinking of Tommy. He was a friend of mine. He died in a gang fight.” Nick glanced at The Rock. “Stanley killed him.”

The Rock scowled. “That bastard.”

“Who’s Stanley?” Sara asked, for all the good it did. They ignored her again. Something in Nick’s remark had made Michael pause once more.

“Were you with Tommy when he died?” he asked.

Nick fidgeted. It must have been a painful memory. “He died in my arms.”

“How did Stanley kill Tommy?”

Nick took a breath. “He got him in the heart with a switchblade.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “I had to ask.”

“It’s OK,” Nick said. “Should I go on?”

“Please.”

“Should I tell…” Nick glanced down at Maria.

“It’ll be OK,” Michael said. “Honestly, Nick, you can trust me on this.”

“I trust you,” Nick said, uneasy. “Like I said, I left the room and went into the hall. I got all the way back to the top of the stairs. Then the gun went off. I—I froze, for a second, and then ran down the stairs.”

“
Down
the stairs?” Sara asked.

“Yes, he
instinctively
ran
down
the stairs,” Michael said. “This is very important. He wasn’t the only one who ran down the stairs. Kats did the same.”

“How come we didn’t run into Kats then?” Sara asked. She was intrigued with the way things were unfolding, Jessica could tell. Bubba, also, seemed very interested in what Michael was up to.

“Before starting down,” Michael said, “Kats checked out the backyard from his vantage point on the second-story porch. The only one he saw was Polly, running toward the back door. Go on, Nick.”

“I bumped into Maria on the landing. I knocked her down. I had to help her up. Then we went back up the stairs. All of you know the rest.”

“Not quite,” Michael said. “When the four of us—Jessie, Sara, Polly, and me—came up the stairs, we heard you and Maria talking around the turn in the hall. That’s why we went straight to the last bedroom. But you also went straight to that room. Why?”

“I’m not sure I understand your question,” Nick said.

“You had five doors between you and the last bedroom, four rooms. How come you didn’t stop to check any of those rooms?”

Nick was perplexed. “I don’t know.”

“How come you ran down the stairs?” Sara asked.

“I don’t know,” Nick said.

“Do you know, Mike?” Bubba asked.

“You’d better,” Clair said, nervously rubbing tier hands together. “The suspense is killing me.”

“I do know,” Michael said, stopping beside Polly. “The shot we heard that night did not come from the bedroom. It did not kill Alice. It came from outside, from a spot in the backyard on the east side of the house directly beneath the bedroom window.”

No one spoke for a long time. Yet it was interesting, Jessica noted, that everyone in the room appeared to believe Michael. He sounded so sure of himself. Even Bubba, who spoke first, had no doubt in his voice when he made his one word request.

“Explain,” Bubba said.

“Nick and Kats were upstairs,” Michael said. “They were the only ones upstairs who were—fully functional. They were the only two people in the house familiar with guns. And when the gun went off, they
instinctively
thought the shot came from
beneath
them. Think about it for a minute. Then think about how the group of us downstairs would have heard a sound originating from the side of the house. The sliding-glass back door was shut. The game room and the aunt’s bedroom windows were all shut. But the east-facing windows in the upstairs bedroom were open. The bulk of the sound from a shot fired beneath that bedroom would have reached our ears via the second-story hallway. It was no wonder Sara and Jessie and me—and even Maria—thought the shot came from upstairs.”

“Interesting,” Bubba said, thoughtful.

“There’s more,” Michael said, getting excited, pulling a folded square of white paper from his back pocket. “Alice was supposedly killed by a twenty-two shell. Now I’m not a gun expert, but a twenty-two is a pretty small bullet. The shot we heard was loud.”

“Fire any gun in a quiet house and it will sound loud,” Nick said.

“Yeah, that’s what the police told us,” Michael said, unconvinced, stepping toward Nick and unfolding his paper. “Look at this.”

Nick studied Michael’s secret evidence without fully unwrapping it. “Where did you get these?” he asked Michael.

“What is it?” Sara demanded.

“Shotgun pellets,” Nick said.

“Fascinating,” Bubba said.

“I removed them from a torn wooden shingle,” Michael said. “A shingle located at the edge of the overhang of the roof directly outside the bedroom where Alice died.”

“How was the shingle torn?” Bubba immediately asked.

“It was splintered upward,” Michael said.

“But she had the gun in her mouth,” Jessica said, her voice shaky. Suddenly she wished he would stop. Alice was dead. Nothing was going to bring her back. The feeling belonged to a coward, and that was exactly how she felt—as if she wanted to run away and bury her head in the sand. Yet that was only half of it. As Bubba had said, it was
fascinating
. “We all saw it,” she insisted.

The reminder of how they had found Alice appeared to dampen Michael’s enthusiasm. He leaned against the tall metal cabinet off to Polly’s left, and Jessica could not remember when he had ever looked so frail. She wished to God they had a doctor aboard who could examine his wound. He was white as a sheet.

“That’s true,” he said. “But the question is, how did the gun get in her mouth? Let’s look at Nick’s account just before we heard the shot. He went into the bedroom. It was dark. It was quiet. He couldn’t see or hear anything. Yet he was scared. Now why was he scared? He’s no chicken. It wasn’t the dark that was bothering him. It was something else. There was something in that room that made him think of a stabbing years ago. What was it?”

“He smelled something,” Bubba said suddenly.

“Exactly,” Michael said. “Nothing was coming to him from his eyes or his ears. But his nose—the dark doesn’t affect your nose. He thought of Tommy dying in his arms from a knife wound to the heart because he smelled blood.”

“And that’s why he ran to the last bedroom instead of checking the others,” Bubba said, nodding to himself, enjoying the intellectual puzzle.

“Does everybody understand?” Michael asked.

“No,” the others said.

“It is clear,” Michael said. “
Alice was lying dead in the room before Nick even got to it.
”

More silence followed, longer and deeper than the previous spell. And again it seemed that everyone believed Michael. Jessica sure did, and yet she did not know what it meant, other than that everything they had believed about that night had been built on a faulty foundation.

Michael glanced down at Polly, and she stared back at him, or so Jessica thought at first. But Polly’s eyes were focused slightly to the side, behind Michael, on the cabinet. Her red lips trembled. She must have had lipstick on—Jessica had never seen them quite so red. Polly was suddenly the center of attention.

“You fired the shotgun,” Michael said.

“Yes,” Polly replied softly.

“Then you threw the shotgun into your garden and ran into the house.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Clark told me to.”

Jessica jumped from her position in the corner. “Did he shoot Alice?”

Polly nodded.

“Oh, God,” Clair said.

“No,” Michael said.

“But, Mike, maybe she saw him do it,” Nick said.

“No,” Michael repeated, still watching Polly. Now she was looking at him, and she may have been looking to him for help.

“I didn’t,” she whispered.

“How did Clark get the gun in Alice’s mouth?” Michael asked. Polly only shook her head. He came and knelt beside her. He wasn’t there to help her. His tone hardened. “Where did he go after he pulled the trigger?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did he get her fingers on the trigger of the gun?”

“I don’t remember,” she said, begging to be believed.

“Where did he go after he did all these things?” Michael demanded, grabbing her arm. “How come
none
of us saw him?”

“Michael!” Jessica cried. “She didn’t shoot Alice!”

Polly had closed her eyes. She was not crying, but Jessica could hear her breathing, shallow and rapid. It was the damn room. No one could breathe in here. It was almost as if they were back in the bedroom with the body. Michael let go of Polly’s arm and sat back. His next words went off like a silent bomb.

“Alice was dead before anyone shot her,” he said.

Polly pressed her wrist to her mouth. Jessica could have sworn she was sucking on it; a child in desperate need of a bottle. They were all going nuts. Jessica looked again to the locked door with longing. If only there was a window they could open that wouldn’t let the ocean in. Michael had finally lost them all with his last remark.

“Did she have a heart attack or something?” Nick asked.

“No,” Michael said.

“A stroke?” Sara asked.

“I read the coroner’s report,” Michael said, his eyes never leaving Polly’s. “I talked to the coroner. That night someone broke Alice’s nose. They broke it bad. She brain damage the bullet didn’t cause.”

“You’d have to hit someone just right to kill them that way,” Nick said doubtfully.

“How about it, Polly?” Michael asked. “Did Clark do it?” When she didn’t respond, he reached over and grabbed her hand away from her mouth, yanking up on the sleeve of her jacket. Jessica felt dizzy.

Polly’s wrist was all red. She had been sucking on her own blood.

“Did Clark do this?” Michael yelled.

She nodded wearily. “He does whatever he wants.”

Michael threw her arm down. “Liar.”

“He’s not here, is he?” Clair asked anxiously.

“He is,” Polly said.

“Really?” Michael asked. “Let me see him.”

“I can’t,” Polly whispered.

“Let me see him,” Michael insisted.

“Let me see if I can find him,” Polly said, giving up, trying to get up.

The madness was still a few heartbeats in the future, but even before it arrived, Jessica felt the brush of the razor’s edge. It was not the same blade that had cut Polly’s wrist. It was a sharp point in time. As Polly stood and walked toward the metal cabinet Michael had been leaning against, Jessica felt the weight of the entire year behind her, focusing down upon this one moment. That was why the air in the room felt so heavy, she realized, so hard to breathe. Polly started to turn the handle on the cabinet.

“What is that?” Clair suddenly cried.

“What?” Michael asked, jumping to his feet.

“People are shouting,” Nick said, frowning. “Something’s happening.”

Michael strode toward the door. He was halfway there when the red light above the door suddenly began to blink off and on and a screaming alarm pierced the air.

“The ship’s sinking!” Sara cried.

With the exception of Maria, Polly, and Bubba, they all converged on the door. Nick took hold of the wheel and turned it counterclockwise. It didn’t open. He spun it the other way.

“It’s stuck,” he said, pounding the metal with his fist.

“Oh, God,” Sara said.

“Let me try it,” Russ said, shoving Nick aside.

“No, I’ll do it,” Michael said, pressing Russ out of his way. He pulled up on a metal lever beneath the wheel and spun the wheel counterclockwise again. The siren continued to wail. The door cracked open. In a tangled knot, the group pressed forward.

“Stop,” someone ordered at their backs. Jessica turned to see who it was. She didn’t recognize the voice. She did not know why; it was only Polly, good old Polly, closing the door on the cabinet with her right hand, holding a double-barreled shotgun in her left. She had her finger on the trigger. They were her target.

“Polly!” Jessica cried. “Put that down.”

Bubba, standing quietly off to Polly’s right, made a sudden lunge for the shotgun. He didn’t make it. Even though she was bleeding from her wrist under her jacket, and floating above space mountain between her ears, Polly was still mighty quick. Bubba caught the tip of the barrels on the bulge of his gut. He froze in midstride and slowly raised his hands, giving Polly his warmest smile.

“Never mind,” he said.

Polly’s face was dark. She herded everyone into the corner of the room opposite the door with a few silent gestures of her gun. Then she reclosed the door with her shoulder and locked it. Trapped in her wheelchair a few feet away, Maria watched calmly, unmoving. Polly slumped against the door, clasping the shotgun with both hands as if it might suddenly vanish into thin air.

“We have to stay,” she said finally, her voice barely audible over the panicked shouts from the decks above. Jessica could hear people running, screaming. She would scream next. She smelled smoke. Michael took a step forward.

“Why?” he asked.

“Clark,” Polly said. “He’ll kill them all if you don’t stay.”

“But we have to get out of here!” Clair pleaded. “The ship’s on fire!”

“No,” Bubba said, reaching a hand out to comfort Clair. Then he hesitated, glancing at Polly. He let his arm drop to his side. He had not finished what he was going to say.

“What is it?” Michael asked Bubba.

“Nothing,” he replied.

Michael turned his attention back to Polly, took another step forward. “Where’s Clark?” he asked.

“Near,” Polly said.

Another step. He was practically daring her to shoot. “Tell him I want to talk to him.”

“He won’t talk,” Polly whispered, perspiration pouring over her face. “Stay.”

Michael circled to the left, putting the cabinet at his back and drawing the barrel of the gun away from the others. Jessica could not bear to watch.

He’ll sacrifice himself to get us out of here.

Jessica stepped out from the group. The Rock tried to grab her hand, but she shook him off. Michael didn’t notice; he was too preoccupied.