It took them two days total to come for us. I’m surprised it took them that long. I figured that Haberman’d finally come to, but that wasn’t the case. Bones’d picked up a little knickknack when he’d gone into the kitchen to clean himself off, and he’d forgotten to wipe it down. It was a wedge of amber with a real wasp set inside. It was sitting on the windowsill above the sink, and I guess Bones wanted a closer look. I’d be madder about that, but they pulled a partial of mine off the door frame, from where Haberman tried to shut it on me. All of our prints were on file from “Missing Children: Don’t Be a Victim” Day back at Soudley Central. I think Mixer was just a case of guilt by association, at least until they found his boots.
They picked Bones up at the bus stop. He got a State Police cruiser all to himself. It was like he was waiting there for them to arrest him. He said he didn’t even see them until the cruiser pulled right up in front of him, and that’s sort of the way it was waiting for the bus. The cars just bled by out of focus.
It was Throckmorton who collected Mixer and me. Not at our stops but just after. He pulled the bus over. He lit it up with the flashers and pulled it right over. Mixer and I were talking about Tommy, of course, wondering if he’d be at school and kind of deciding how we’d handle it if he was. I heard the chatter pick up around us before I saw the pale blue light reflected on the ceiling. Then I felt the bus slow down and pull off to the side.
Mixer was turned around already so I just asked him, “Who?”
“Sheriff,” he said.
That seemed better than a Statie to me, I guess because I’d met Throckmorton before. The devil you know, right? What had he said to me then, “I’ll see you around”? I wondered if, after all those years on the job, he could see a kid and just tell.
The bus driver opened the door and Throckmorton and his deputy climbed on. It was always weird to see adults climbing onto school buses, like how the teachers were always last aboard for field trips. It was even weirder when they were wearing guns. For a second, I thought of hiding, ducking down, and maybe crawling between seats. I knew our schoolmates would give us up, though, not all of them but probably most. They’d rat us out and then wait around to have a gold star stuck to their foreheads.
The bus got quiet when Throckmorton’s eyes started scanning the seats. When he called out our names, it boomed inside the hollow space, Grand Canyon-style. It was probably the first time anyone had said Mixer’s real name that year. We put on some I-can’t-believe-this body language, but basically we just stood up and walked down the aisle. There wasn’t much else to do.
“Come on, boys,” Throckmorton said, extending his hand. Then he sort of cut ahead of the other guy so that he wouldn’t have to walk down the stairs with his back directly to us. That was what deputies were for, I figured.
We kept quiet in the back of the police car. There was a layer of that special glass or plastic or whatever it was between the front and back seats. I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to hear us if we kept it low, but they might’ve had some kind of device or something, maybe a recorder, and I didn’t feel much like talking anyway.
I just watched the town go by. How many times had I been driven down this same road, and why did it look different now? It was still early, but I’m sure a few people saw me back there when we blew through downtown. If even one person had, it’d be all over town by noon. My mom must’ve known already. They were probably already in my room, collecting my boots and stuff.
The flashers weren’t on anymore, but we were doing seventy, easy. They’d turned the lights off as soon as we were in the backseat. It seemed a little backward to me, but I guess they were in more of a hurry to grab us than to get us anywhere. We pulled out and passed the bus, which was still parked on the side of the road, with the tires on one side cutting tracks into someone’s lawn. Dozens of eyes looked down as we went by, with exactly half as many mouths flapping. They’d be talking about this at the Tits for years.
We rocketed by the sheriff’s office, so I knew we were headed for the State Police barracks over in Canterbridge. I sort of wondered how that worked, jurisdiction-wise. Bones was already there when they brought us down to the holding cells. There were four cells total, and we were the only guests. They allowed us each one phone call, just like on TV. I figured my mom already knew, so I asked if there was any way I could check my e-mail instead. There wasn’t, so I called my mom anyway. Four words for you: Not a good call. They put us each in our own cell, and the tall trooper I’d seen at the school stood straight across from us, arms folded. We could talk if we wanted, and he could listen.
“Do you guys know what this is about?” said Bones. He was talking to us, but it was for the trooper’s benefit.
“Give it a rest,” I said. What was the guy going to do, run out and tell them we were innocent? And Bones was a bad actor anyway.
I think he was doing something else there, too, trying to get us all together on something, even if it was just bad acting. He wanted us all together, because I think he knew this little group was about to come apart.
And he was right. The door at the far end opened and another trooper walked in. He stopped just a few steps in, just close enough to be heard.
“All right, Benton,” he said, guessing wrong and looking at Mixer. “You’re up first.”