Twenty-Three   

Warren was waiting at Dooley’s locker after school. He looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear and then he said, “I haven’t had any luck with that thing.”

“You still have it?” Dooley said, surprised.

“Yeah,” Warren said, sounding even more surprised than Dooley. “Why? You want it back?”

“You were talking to Beth.”

Warren fixed on something behind Dooley and looked down at the ground. Dooley glanced over his shoulder. A couple of guys were coming toward them. Dooley opened his locker and jammed his homework books into his backpack. The two guys stared at him as they passed. Dooley stared right back, dead-eyed. The guys moved a little faster and disappeared around a corner.

“You were talking to Beth,” he said to Warren again after the guys were gone. “You know her?”

“Are you kidding?” Warren said.

“Why would I be kidding?”

“First of all,” Warren said, “do I look like the kind of guy who would know a girl who looks like that? Second, before Everley died, I never set eyes on her. She was like this big secret. The way Everley used to talk about her, I thought maybe she was like my sister, which is why I was so mad when I heard he’d given her a hard time.”

“What do you mean?” Dooley said, confused.

“Well, she doesn’t go to school here. The way I heard it, Everley told people she went to a special school.”

“She goes to a private school,” Dooley said. “It’s not that special.”

“It turns out it’s a private school,” Warren said. “But that was never what Everley said. He always said a special school. My sister goes to a special school. I thought he meant his sister did, too, you know, because she had special problems.”

Dooley remembered something Bracey had said about Beth at the party: She is definitely not as advertised.

“Why would he say something like that if it’s not true?” Dooley said.

“How would I know? I told you. The guy was a jerk. You’d have to be to lie about your sister like that.”

Dooley got the feeling that Warren never lied about his sister.

“So what were you talking to her about?” he said.

“I wanted to tell her I was sorry about Mark.”

Dooley gave him a look.

“Yeah, well, somebody loses somebody who’s close to them and a lot of times they want to talk about that person. But you know what usually happens? No one wants to say anything because they’re afraid it’s going to upset you. So everyone you know, even people you thought were your friends, they all pretend that the person never existed. They tell themselves they don’t want to upset you when the truth is they don’t want to upset themselves.”

Warren was talking so fast, so loud, and so angrily that little drops of spit flew from his lips. Dooley was surprised how spirited he could be, considering how used he was to being harassed and even beat up. He thought about what Warren had said about his mother, that she baked and decorated cakes to bring in extra money.

“Your father?” Dooley said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Dooley said.

Warren just shrugged. “I figured she might like to talk about her brother,” he said.

“Did you tell her about that flash drive?”

Warren shook his head.

“You going to tell the cops?” Dooley said.

“What for?”

“You heard what they’re saying about me. You know the cops questioned me, right?”

“Yeah. So? You ever hear what people say about me?”

Dooley had to admit that he didn’t. “I bet they don’t say the cops talked to you concerning a couple of deaths,” he said.

“Did you kill anyone?” Warren said.

“No.”

“Okay then,” Warren said. “But you still want to know what’s on Mark Everley’s flash drive, right?”

Dooley hesitated. Then, what the hell: “What I really want to know is if he took any pictures right before he died.”

Warren shook his head. “Even supposing he did,” he said. “There’s no guarantee he’d have backed them up onto the flash drive right away. They’d probably still be in the camera.”

Dooley hadn’t thought about that.

“But you never know,” Warren said. “Maybe he was one of those totally anal people who back everything up.”

Maybe? Dooley didn’t like maybes.

“His sister told me his favorite TV programs, his favorite bands, his favorite songs, his favorite things to eat, the pets he had when he was a kid, stuff like that.”

Dooley looked blankly at him. He didn’t get Warren. He hardly ever said what you expected him to say.

“Favorites and familiar things,” he said now. “You want a password you’re not going to accidentally forget, you go with personal favorites or things you’re not likely to forget, like Skip, the puppy you got for your fifth birthday.”

Oh.

“Are you working tonight or are you going to be at home?” he said. “In case I get anything.”

“I’m working until midnight,” Dooley said. “After that, I’ll be home.” He dug around in his backpack for a scrap of paper and scrawled out the store’s phone number and his uncle’s phone number for Warren. Also his pager number, telling Warren: “Just in case.”

Dooley saw that something was wrong as soon as he got home. His uncle was pacing up and down on the porch, but stopped and came down the front walk as soon as he saw Dooley. Dooley felt his insides go liquid. Now what?

“Is it Graff?” he said. “Is he looking for me again?”

“No,” his uncle said. “It’s Jeannie’s mother. She had a bad fall. She’s in the hospital.”

“Is she going to be okay?” Dooley said. He didn’t understand why his uncle was so agitated. Maybe he had met Jeannie’s mother. Maybe she was a terrific person, although by Dooley’s calculation, she had to be up there, definitely in her late sixties, probably a lot older.

“Jeannie doesn’t know,” his uncle said. “All she knows is, it was bad and her mother is unconscious in the hospital. She lives up in Timmins. She asked me if I could drive her up there. She’s pretty upset. I don’t see her making the drive alone.”

“Okay,” Dooley said slowly. The way his uncle was acting, this was some kind of problem, but Dooley didn’t see why.

“I’d like to take her,” his uncle said. “But—” Here it came. His uncle looked him in the eye.

“I’ll be fine,” Dooley said.

“Graff could come after you anytime. Maybe soon. Maybe not for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, depending on how he’s working the case. Hey, look on the bright side, maybe never.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Dooley said.

“You know about tunnel vision, right, Ryan?” his uncle said, more serious than Dooley had seen him in months.

“I have the lawyer’s phone number,” Dooley said, meaning Annette Girondin. “And you’re going to have your cell phone, right?” His uncle nodded. “I’ll be fine,” Dooley said. “If anything happens, I have the right to contact my lawyer and she can contact you.”

His uncle’s nod was almost imperceptible. Finally he said, “If they want to talk to you again or if, God forbid, they arrest you—”

Jesus, did his uncle really think there was a chance of that?

“—you don’t say a word, Ryan, you got me? You say you want to contact your lawyer and then you keep your mouth shut—and I mean glued shut—until you’ve not only talked to Annette but she’s right there beside you. You got that? Because if you decide to volunteer information, they can use it.”

“I know that,” Dooley said.

“Some people, they think they’re smarter than the cops. But you know what? Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, they’re wrong. Guys like Graff have questioned hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people. How many cops have you talked to, Ryan? More to the point, how many have you outsmarted?”

None, Dooley thought.

“When do you think you’ll be back?” Dooley said.

“It depends how Jeannie’s mom is. Maybe we’ll be gone the whole weekend. I’ll have to be back for Monday for sure, no matter what Jeannie does.”

“I’ll be fine,” Dooley said again, even though the idea of another encounter with Graff was making his stomach churn. “I’m working tonight and Sunday night. I have a ton of homework. You can call me or, if you want, I can check in with you regularly. You just tell me when.”

“Maybe I should stay here,” Dooley’s uncle said. Boy, it was spooking Dooley how his uncle still seemed so reluctant to go. “I think Jeannie would understand if I couldn’t make it.” It seemed to Dooley that his uncle was trying to convince himself of this. “After all, she knows what the situation is with you.”

Dooley was surprised to hear that. He knew his uncle well enough to know that he didn’t go around discussing his personal affairs with just anyone. If his uncle had discussed his situation with Jeannie, then Jeannie had to be more important to his uncle than Dooley had thought.

His uncle finally phoned Jeannie and told her he’d be by in thirty minutes to pick her up. Then he went upstairs to pack a bag. He pressed some twenties into Dooley’s hand “just in case” before he left.

Dooley got changed, grabbed a bite to eat, and went to work. He didn’t hear from Warren that night. He hadn’t expected to. But, boy, he got an earful from Kevin.

“The police were here,” he said. “They questioned me. About you and that bum who showed up here.”

To Kevin, this appeared to be a source of irritation. To Dooley, it was a source of relief.

“Did you describe the guy to them?” he said.

“I described how he smelled.”

“I mean, what he looked like. And that backpack he was carrying.”

“What backpack?” Kevin said.

Great.

“He had a backpack he’d found. He gave it to me. I brought it back into the store with me.”

Kevin stared at him. “You brought some piece of garbage some homeless guy found into my store?”

Terrific. Kevin hadn’t noticed that, either.

“What did you tell the cops?” Dooley said.

“That some bum showed up here and that you got rid of him. What else is there to tell?”

Just terrific.

He hadn’t expected Warren to appear at the door first thing the next morning, either, but that’s exactly what happened.

Dooley was sleeping on the couch. He was wearing the same clothes that he’d worn to work. He had come home, opened the fridge to get some milk for his cereal, and stood there for five full minutes, staring at the half dozen or so bottles of imported beer chilling on the second shelf. Then he’d opened the cupboard to get a box of cereal and had spent another five minutes staring at a bottle of scotch and another one of vodka. He tried to tell himself that no one would notice if he took one drink, especially if he poured an equal amount of water into the bottle to replace what he’d taken. But he didn’t think he could stand to disappoint his uncle, not now when all of a sudden he was running up legal bills and Dooley’s problems were making him think twice about doing the things he wanted to do, the things that he’d do automatically if Dooley didn’t happen to be living with him. So he poured himself some cereal, carried it into the living room, and dropped onto the couch in front of the TV to eat it.

It was nearly one in the morning by the time he finished eating, and he knew that he should go to bed. What he had told his uncle was true; he had a ton of homework. And he had to work again tonight. But he couldn’t make himself get up and go to his room. For one thing, he couldn’t remember the last time that he’d been able to just sit and channel-surf into the wee hours without someone (his uncle) appearing and ordering him to get to bed, usually grousing what was the matter with him, didn’t he know he had to get up in the morning to go to school, do chores, do homework, go to work, whatever.

But that wasn’t the main reason he stayed on the couch.

No, the main reason was the feeling in his gut, the one that made everything churn, even milk and cereal, the feeling that in the old days he would have warded off with booze or pills or weed or whatever was handy. It was the same feeling that used to creep over him when he was a kid and all alone in a dark room, listening for noises out in the hall (doors opening, footsteps approaching, hammering on the door) or in his mother’s room next to his. It was the feeling that came on him when he got called on in school and he didn’t know the answer and kids would look at him like he was stupid. It was the feeling that however bad things were now, they were about to get worse. When he felt like that, he usually reacted in one of two ways: he got blasted or he blasted someone (or something)—either one did the trick, which was to stop him for thinking too much about what was going to happen. To make the gut clenching disappear. To either dull pain or add a whole new dimension to it—it didn’t matter which.

But he couldn’t do that now. Not unless he wanted to end up back in the pit he’d been trying so hard to stay out of the past few months.

So there he was, staring at the TV but not really watching it, while Graff filled his mind. Geeze, the guy was scary. He had a stare that Dooley bet could penetrate a brick wall—or, at least, he bet Graff liked to think it could. And he had a cool certainty about him, like, of course, Dooley had killed Gillette and, what’s more, he had probably killed Everley, too, even though at first everyone was saying that one was an accident. Now all that remained was for Graff to nail down the details and see Dooley’s sorry ass in lockup. Dooley bet he’d push hard for an adult sentence, too. And then, he had no idea when, he must have fallen asleep. What woke him up was the doorbell.

He staggered to his feet and went into the front hall so that he could see through the glass in the door.

Warren was standing out on the porch, his hand out to ring the bell again.

Dooley opened the door.

“Hey,” Warren said, grinning at him until he saw the messed-up, only-half-awake look on Dooley’s face. “Hey,” he said, subdued now. “I must have pressed the bell ten times. I was beginning to think there was no one home.”

“Ten times?” Dooley said. Dooley only ever rang a doorbell twice, three times at the most. If no one answered by then, he assumed no one was home.

“Well, I wanted to make sure the bell wasn’t broken,” Warren said, and he grinned again, just a little, like he couldn’t help himself. That’s when Dooley noticed that he had an envelope in his hand. “Is it okay if I come in?” he said.

“Yeah, I guess,” Dooley said. He stepped aside to let Warren pass. It didn’t occur to him to ask until after he closed the door. “How do you know where I live?”

“You gave me your phone number,” Warren said, as if that explained anything.

Dooley decided to let it pass. He watched as Warren’s eyes swept the place, checking out the front hall, the living room, the dining room, the doorway to the kitchen, everything neat, the tile on the kitchen floor gleaming. He wondered what Warren had expected. For sure it wasn’t what he was looking at because his mouth hung open a little and there was a trace of awe in his voice when he said, “Nice place.”

“What’s up?” Dooley said.

Warren grinned again and tossed him the flash drive.

“You did it?” Dooley said.

Warren nodded. He handed Dooley the envelope.

“I got into the locked files,” he said. “Turns out the password is the name of the hamster he had in second grade. I printed out the pictures for you. Some go back a few months. Others are more recent. And I gotta tell you, some of them are totally weird.” He stood there in the front hall, rocking back and forth, heel to toe, heel to toe, while Dooley opened the envelope and pulled out some photographs. He flipped through them. Most, but not all, were photographs of a girl. There was even one of Everley with the girl, which, Dooley guessed, Everley must have taken with some kind of delay on his camera. “You know her?” Warren said.

“Yeah,” Dooley said. But by now he was looking at one of the non-girl photos. It looked like a skull of some kind. There were several more just like it, all kind of the same, but kind of different, too. Draped over one of them was a gold heart on a chain. “What are these?” he said to Warren.

“Some kind of animal, I think. Dogs maybe. Or cats.”

“Why would Everley take pictures of animal skulls?” Dooley said. More to the point: “Why did he lock them with a password?”

“’Cause he’s fucked up,” Warren said. “They’re kind of creepy, huh?”

“The guy wrote stories,” Dooley said. “Lots of them. They were kind of creepy, too. Lots of gore and violence, stuff like that.” Dooley squinted at another photo. “What are those? Newspapers?” There were a couple of them, each one neatly folded with something sitting next to it. Dooley looked closer. One was next to what looked like a ratty pair of old gloves; the other was next to a grimy looking hat.

“They’re from last year,” Warren said. “When I enlarged the pictures on-screen, I could read the dates. You can make them out on those with a magnifying glass. ”

Dooley shuffled to another photograph—it was a close-up of the skull with the heart and chain.

“Weird stuff to password-protect, huh?” Warren said.

“I hardly knew the guy,” Dooley said. It was possible that Everley did stuff like that all the time. There was no way of knowing.

Or maybe there was.

Dooley shuffled through the pictures again. He thought about telling Warren the cops’ latest theory on Mark Everley’s death. But if he did tell him and if the cops ever talked to Warren, maybe they’d try to scare him somehow, tell him that he was an accessory after the fact, something like that. Dooley could see Warren pissing his pants over that. Probably it was better not to tell Warren anything, and, if it came to it, let him tell the cops how Ryan Dooley had pulled a fast one on him.

“That day out in the schoolyard,” he said instead, “when Landers was giving you a hard time—what was that about?”

“The first rule of comedy,” Warren said.

“What?”

“The first rule of comedy—the biggest laughs come from someone else’s pain,” Warren said.

This was news to Dooley, and he didn’t see how it was relevant, but boy, if it were true, then all his life needed was a laugh track.

“I was sitting outside reading,” Warren said. “My backpack was on the ground and Landers and them walked by and Landers’ foot got caught in one of the straps and he tripped. His arms started flailing in the air, like he was looking for something to hang onto, and then, boom, he went down. It was like watching a guy slip on a banana peel. You see it—you know chances are excellent the guy’s going to fall, he might even hurt himself, but you can’t help it, it’s funny, so you laugh at the guy’s pain. The first rule of comedy.”

“I’m guessing Landers didn’t find it funny.” Landers seemed like the kind of guy who would only embrace the first rule of comedy if he was the guy watching and someone else was the guy slipping.

“I knew it was a mistake to laugh,” Warren said. “But I couldn’t help it. He’s a big guy—well, bigger than me—and big guys are just naturally funny when they fall. The harder they fall, right? He hit hard. I laughed. And the next thing I knew, he was on his feet again, like he’d bounced up, like he had springs on his feet or something. And he reached down and grabbed the collar of my shirt and yanked me to my feet and that’s when I knew I was fucked. It was like falling down a long flight of stairs. You know it’s going to hurt every bump of the way, but there’s no way you can stop it. The most you can hope for is that you’ll still be alive when you hit bottom.”

Dooley looked at Warren. He was slight and scrawny and, as far as Dooley could tell, had no physical confidence.

Half the time he seemed to be asking for it. But he had a wry way of looking at things, and he was smart.

“I should have stepped in,” Dooley said. “I could have made him stop.”

“Well, you slowed him down,” Warren said. He didn’t sound angry or resentful. “I should have thanked Everley’s sister. It was her showing up that did it. That’s why Rhodes came to my rescue.”

“To impress her, you mean?”

“Yeah,” Warren said.

It figured. Dooley wished he had thought of it first.

“He sure didn’t do it because he likes me,” Warren said. “He told Landers, look who’s here, and then he said, you can have your fun some other time. Landers didn’t want to let me go.”

Dooley remembered how angry Landers had been when Rhodes intervened.

“If she hadn’t walked by, I’d have probably ended up in the hospital,” Warren said.

Dooley didn’t know what to tell him: learn to control your laughter or learn to fight. One or the other was probably a good idea if Warren was going to survive high school.

“Hey, Warren, if there’s ever anything I can do—”

“Forget it,” Warren said. “You already did it.”