Seventeen   

If Gillette was at school on Monday, he was keeping a low profile because Dooley didn’t see him. Same thing on Tuesday.

On Wednesday when Dooley was leaving school, he ran into Rhodes. Bracey was with him. So was Landers. Landers scowled at him. Dooley wished he could at least remember Megan coming onto him. It would make that scowl worthwhile. But he couldn’t.

“Have you seen Gillette?” Dooley said.

“No,” Rhodes said. He seemed surprised. “I was going to ask you the same question.”

“Me? Why?”

“He’s missing.”

“Missing? You mean, he’s skipping class?”

Rhodes shook his head. “His mother called me.”

“You know his mother?”

“Sure,” Rhodes said, surprised again, as if he was wondering if there was some reason he shouldn’t know her. “She’s nice. She works hard, you know, with four kids and she’s all on her own. You don’t know her?”

Dooley shook his head.

“Well, she said she hasn’t seen Eddy since he left home to come to my party. She sounded really worried. You don’t know where he is?” Rhodes said.

“Why would I know that?”

Rhodes blinked behind the lenses of his glasses. “Eddy said you and he used to be tight,” he said. “He said you’d had some kind of falling out. You two really got into it at the party.” Rhodes had mentioned that once before. The first time he’d said it, Dooley couldn’t remember what had happened. He still couldn’t. “I saw you talking to him after that. I thought maybe you had buried your differences.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Dooley said.

Dooley stopped short at lunchtime on Thursday when he saw his uncle’s car was parked in front of the school. His uncle got out and waited for Dooley to approach.

“What’s wrong?” Dooley said. It had to be something. Why else would his uncle be there?

“The police want to see you.”

“What about? The smash-and-grab? Did they get any prints?”

“No,” his uncle said. “All they have is that your wallet was at the scene. It’s not enough to charge you. The shape you were in, you could easily have dropped it. But I don’t think that’s what they want to talk to you about. It was a different guy who called.” Dooley’s uncle was an in-charge, on-top-of-everything kind of guy, but he looked worried. That shook Dooley.

“Did you ask him what it was about?”

“I did.”

“And? What did he say?”

“He said it was about a police matter,” his uncle said. “Do you have any idea how many times I said that when I was a police officer?” He shook his head. “I gotta tell you, it has a whole different effect when someone says it to you instead of the other way around.”

The cop who wanted to see Dooley, a detective named Joyeaux, thanked Dooley for coming in. He said that he wanted to ask Dooley a few questions and that Dooley wasn’t a suspect, they were just contacting people they thought might be able to help them out.

“Help you out with what?” Dooley’s uncle said, clearly impatient that the detective wasn’t getting right to the point.

“When was the last time you saw Edward Gillette?” Joyeaux asked Dooley.

“Who the hell is Edward Gillette?” Dooley’s uncle said.

“A guy I know,” Dooley told his uncle. To the detective he said, “I saw him at a party on Friday night. I heard he was missing. Did something happen to him?”

“Is that what this is about?” Dooley’s uncle said. “Some kid who’s missing?”

“Edward Gillette hasn’t been seen since last Friday night,” Joyeaux said. “Did you talk to him at the party, Ryan?”

Dooley was willing to bet that the detective already knew the answer to that. Gillette’s mother must have reported him missing. She’d also called Rhodes’s house, so unless the cops were brain-dead, they had already talked to Rhodes and had got a rundown of who was at the party and who had talked to Gillette.

“I remember seeing him,” Dooley said. “But I don’t remember talking to him.” He glanced at his uncle. His uncle didn’t say anything. “I was high,” Dooley said, looking at Joyeaux, avoiding his uncle now. “I had a few drinks. Some other stuff too.”

“What other stuff?” Joyeaux said.

“Rohypnol,” his uncle said, his tone dry. “Ryan ingested some Rohypnol that night. He thinks someone slipped it into his drink.”

Joyeaux looked surprised and suspicious both at the same time. He hadn’t known about the roofies, which made sense to Dooley. Whoever had spiked his drink sure wasn’t going to tell the cops about it, assuming the cops had talked to that person. Dooley couldn’t tell if Joyeaux believed him or not.

“What if I told you there were people at the party who saw you talking to Edward Gillette?” Joyeaux said.

There wasn’t much Dooley could say. “If that’s what people saw, then I guess that’s what must have happened.” He wished things had happened differently, but apparently they hadn’t.

“What if I said there were people who saw you and Edward Gillette in what appeared to be some kind of altercation?”

Dooley shrugged. He already knew what had happened; Rhodes had told him. He’d probably told the police, too. Probably so had anyone else who had been at the party, had seen Dooley and Gillette, and had been questioned by the police.

“Where are you going with this?” Dooley’s uncle said. “Are you trying to suggest that Ryan did something to this kid?” He sounded annoyed, but when he glanced at Dooley, Dooley saw that he looked worried.

“Edward Gillette left home late Friday afternoon. He was last seen at a party on Friday night. Ryan was at that party.”

“So were a lot of other kids,” Dooley’s uncle said.

Joyeaux nodded. His tone was conciliatory when he said, “We’re just trying to get a picture of who Edward talked to, what went on at the party, who he left with, and where he might have gone. His mother is worried about him. She says this isn’t normal behavior for Edward.”

Dooley had a hard time believing that. It was possible Gillette had changed. It was possible that he was trying, just like Dooley was. But Dooley had a hard time believing that, too. He glanced at his uncle. He bet his uncle was thinking what he would do if Dooley had left home on a Friday and still hadn’t showed up by the following Wednesday.

Joyeaux turned to Dooley. “When did you leave the party, Ryan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you talk to anyone before you left the party? Did you say goodnight to anyone or maybe arrange to meet anyone—” Dooley knew he meant Gillette. “—somewhere after the party?”

“I don’t remember.”

“The police questioned you that night, didn’t they, Ryan?”

“They questioned him the next day,” Dooley’s uncle said.

“In conjunction with a smash-and-grab at an electronics store,” Joyeaux said, not taking his eyes off Dooley.

“He wasn’t charged,” Dooley’s uncle said. Dooley could tell he was annoyed.

Joyeaux turned to him. “It would be a lot better if you let Ryan answer the questions,” Joyeaux said.

Dooley’s uncle scowled at Joyeaux but didn’t say anything.

Joyeaux turned back to Dooley.

“The police questioned you in conjunction with a smash-and-grab, is that right, Ryan?”

“Yes,” Dooley said.

“Did you and Edward do that together?”

“You said you wanted to talk to him about this kid’s whereabouts,” Dooley’s uncle said. “You didn’t say you wanted to talk to him about the electronics store.”

“I’m just trying to get a picture of what happened the night Edward was last seen,” Joyeaux said. “It might give us some idea of what happened to him.” He was smooth-talking Dooley’s uncle, but Dooley’s uncle wasn’t buying it. Joyeaux turned to Dooley.

“Do you know where Edward Gillette is?” he said.

“No,” Dooley said.

“Did you do anything to Edward Gillette?”

“No!”

“That’s it,” Dooley’s uncle said. He stood up abruptly, glowering at Joyeaux before turning to Dooley. “Let’s go.”

On the way home in the car, Dooley’s uncle said, “This Edward Gillette—who is he, exactly?”

“Someone I used to know.”

His uncle gave him a sharp look. “You mean, someone you know.”

“I mean, someone I knew from before,” Dooley said. “We used to hang out together.”

“Define hang out.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I know what you mean,” his uncle said. “You want to put my mind at ease?”

“I can’t,” Dooley said. “You’re right.”

“And now you’re hanging out with him again? What the hell’s the matter with you, Ryan?”

“I’m not hanging out with him. It turns out he goes to my school.” It was kind of funny if you looked at it in the right light: two guys who had made a career out of avoiding school as much as they could get away with, and here they were, both in the same school, both, as far as Dooley could figure, attending or else.

“It didn’t occur to you to mention that to me?” Dooley’s uncle said.

“I didn’t think it was important. He’s not in my life anymore.”

“He was in it Friday night.”

“Turns out he was a friend of the dead kid, Mark Everley. The party was a sort of memorial for Everley—his sister wants to start a scholarship in his name. I guess that’s why Gillette was there.”

“Tell me again why you didn’t ask me if you could go to the party.”

“Come on,” Dooley said.

“Tell me, Ryan.”

Jesus. He was serious. Fine.

“Because I didn’t think you’d let me go.”

“Now you see why?”

Yeah, now Dooley saw why.

Jeannie was in the kitchen in silver slippers that looked like sandals and that had skinny little straps on them and a red silk robe with a big dragon on the back. She was humming while she made Sunday morning breakfast—sausages and French toast. Dooley’s uncle was at the kitchen table in relax-fit jeans and a gray T-shirt. He was drinking coffee. Every so often he glanced over at Jeannie. Dooley was at the table, too, flipping through the newspaper from the day before and smelling the sausages. He was working on a second cup of coffee and thinking about French toast swimming in maple syrup—the real stuff that his uncle insisted on, he had a friend in Quebec who shipped him up a dozen cans every year—when the doorbell rang.

“Get that, will you, Ryan?” his uncle said.

Dooley got it.

It was the homicide detective from the ravine, Detective Graff.

“Hello, Ryan,” Graff said. “You home alone?”

“My uncle’s here.”

“Let’s go talk to him,” Graff said, stepping into the front hall and forcing Dooley to back up. Graff was a little shorter than Dooley, but he had a swagger that made him seem taller. Dooley believed it was their guns that gave cops that confidence. That and the fact that everyone knew how much grief you could earn by messing with a cop. Graff followed Dooley through to the kitchen.

Dooley’s uncle looked up, surprised.

“He’s a cop,” Dooley said.

“I know,” Dooley’s uncle said, standing up. “Graff, right?”

“That’s right,” Graff said.

“What’s this about?” Dooley’s uncle said.

“I’d like Ryan to come in,” Graff said. “I’d like to talk to him.”

“About?”

“About Edward Gillette.”

“He already talked to someone about that.”

“There’s been a new development.”

Dooley and his uncle waited. Dooley didn’t know about his uncle, but he had a bad feeling. After all, Graff was a homicide cop.

“They found Edward Gillette,” Graff said. “He’s dead.”

“Dead how?” Dooley’s uncle said.

“Massive trauma to the head,” Graff said. “A guy out walking his dog found him in a ravine a ten-minute walk from this house. He was in a ditch, covered with scrub and leaves.”