WHACK!
The door to the yearbook office, heavy and wooden and stained with decades of student fingerprints, slammed shut.
I’d thought I was alone. I was sitting at Mr. DeWaart’s long desk, trying to calm my jitters. Even though the yearbook was finished, the desk was still piled so high with papers, a sneeze would bury anyone within five feet of it. At that point I found it the most comforting, private place in the school.
Until I looked up and saw Ariana.
She was staring at me with a mixture of annoyance, suspicion, and rage.
In a moment, my mind flashed with a ridiculous idea. She and Smut had killed Rick.
“So …” My voice was like sandpaper. I had to swallow before going on. “Three more days till the shipment, huh? Do you think Mr. Brophy will come through — ”
“You know something,” Ariana interrupted.
I stared at her, slack-jawed.
“Come on, David, you can’t lie to me. You really had no idea Rick was missing until this morning?”
“No! I found out from you, remember?” I lied beautifully. If we were in a movie, I’d have won an Academy Award.
“Then why was your first question ‘How long was he missing?’? And why did you turn the color of plaster when I mentioned the clothes he was wearing?”
“Did I? Clothes? I don’t remember that. …”
Whoops, forget it. My Oscar was flying out the window.
“Talk, David. And talk fast. First period begins in five minutes, and you never know who’s going to pop in here for a morning chat.”
I took a deep breath. I had to tell someone.
“Okay,” I said. “But I think you should sit down.”
Ariana’s eyes didn’t waver from me as I slowly told her everything. (Well, everything except the part about the Chevy with the steamy windows.)
By the time I finished, she was grimacing as if she’d just bit into a hunk of moldy bread. “This isn’t like some late April Fool’s thing, is it?”
“I wish, Ariana.”
She let out a breath and buried her face in her hands. “If you’re telling the truth, David, you’re a coward. If you’re not, you’re a nut case. I’m not sure which one I believe.”
“I’m not a nut case.”
“And I’m not a coward,” she replied, looking up. “If you don’t go straight to the police, I will.”
Her eyes were firm and frosty. “Don’t,” I said softly. “I’ll go.”
Ariana stood up and headed for the door. “Good luck, David.”
After a moment I went into the hallway. The police had left Mr. Dutton’s office, but they were gathered by their cars outside. I recognized Chief Hayes, a tall, gray-haired black man solemnly barking orders to a younger cop.
“Chief Hayes!” I called, stepping out the door.
“ ’S’my name,” he mumbled over his shoulder.
“I — I can show you where Rick Arnold is.”
He turned to face me, with what might have been a tic of interest in his stony expression. “Get in my car.”
I obeyed. He did some last-minute ordering around, then climbed into the driver’s seat. “What’s your name, kid,” he said, starting up, “and where are we going?”
“David Kallas,” I replied. “And … the Ramble, near Cass and River View.”
Chief Hayes’s face remained unmoved. But his hand yanked the automatic shift straight past Drive and all the way to L2. Murmuring a curse, he flicked it back up again. “You … saw the missing person in the Ramble, son?”
“Yes.”
“Am I correct in assuming, since you say this person is still there, that he is not presently alive?”
I felt absurdly guilty. I think if he’d asked me to confess to the murder, I’d have done it. “Yes.”
The car screeched away from the curb as he said something under his breath. I believe it was “Lord, have mercy.”
I was seized with violent chills as Chief Hayes parked by the Ramble. He noticed right away.
“You don’t have to come with me, you know,” he said. “As long as you give me the location of the body.”
“Okay,” I replied, but I was shaking so badly, it came out more like Kuh. “T-to the left of — of the car p-path.”
“Near the big drainpipe?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Stay here. Take deep breaths and put your head between your knees. If you feel sick, for God’s sake, get out of the car.”
Chief Hayes wasn’t going to win points for sensitivity.
I watched him plod into the woods. I figured he must have been about sixty, but he was still a bull of a man. He had a slight limp, which somehow made him look tough and heroic.
Chief Hayes was gone about a half-hour, I think. When he came back, he looked as if he’d aged ten years. His taut, wary features had gone droopy like a basset hound’s, and his eyes were glassy.
Neither of us said a word as he plopped into the front seat. He stared at a spot just above the steering wheel.
“I — I didn’t do it,” I said weakly.
Chief Hayes nodded. “I know.” He took his radio mike from its holder and put it slowly to his mouth. “Sergeant Kinsman, do you read me?”
“Yeah, Chief,” a voice crackled back.
“We have located a male corpse matching the description of the Arnold boy.”
As he gave the details in a dull monotone, he rubbed the back of his left hand against his eyes. I noticed a wet sheen along his thumb when he pulled his hand away.
If I didn’t think such a thing was impossible, I’d be convinced Chief Hayes was crying. He slammed the mike down after he was done and muttered something about hay fever.
Another cop car arrived in minutes. Chief Hayes went out for a conference, then came back in and started the car.
He pulled away from the curb jerkily and nearly rammed into a road construction site barrier. Then he ran a stop sign on Cass, only to slam on the brakes and curse. I’d have offered to drive, but I was afraid he’d throw me in jail for asking. Instead, I settled back and was thankful we weren’t in a high-speed chase.
Eventually we arrived at the police headquarters, a squat, yellow-brick building in the same Late Eyesore style as the rest of downtown Wetherby. Chief Hayes led me inside. His office was at the end of a dim, tiled hall. Inside, a rotating fan swept past file folders stacked on a row of metal cabinets. Jutting triangular corners of paper razzed us like small white tongues in the breeze. Chief Hayes sat behind a wooden desk covered with papers and an old computer. I sank into the torn green cushion of a chair opposite him. I noticed a chunk of wood was missing from the lip of his desk on my side, about the size and shape of a bite mark. I couldn’t imagine what jail must be like if this was the police chief’s office.
Chief Hayes lit up a cigarette and pulled a clean ashtray out of a drawer. Then he asked a few basic who, what, when, where, why questions. But he didn’t ask me about the sunken face or the hollowed-out body. I figured he mustn’t have noticed. After a few days in the warmish weather, surrounded by animals, the body must have been in an advanced stage of … well, not whole enough to seem unusual.
I counted the butts that piled up in his ashtray and lost track at seven. The fan was useless against the thick smoke. My eyes stung, and I began coughing.
“Sorry, bud.” Chief Hayes stood up, stubbing out his cigarette, and started opening windows. “I don’t normally smoke — quit four years ago.”
“It’s okay,” I rasped.
“In case you’re wondering,” he added, sitting back down, “I don’t normally run stop signs, either.”
Or cry, I wanted to say.
“Over forty years in the force,” he said, “and it’s still hard to see something like that.”
I nodded.
He fiddled with his pen, deep in thought, then pointed to an old framed photo on the wall. “Go over and take a good look at that.”
I did. It was a group portrait of a Wetherby High School basketball team, the paper yellowed with age and drooping. In the center stood a young, much rounder Chief Hayes. Next to him was the only smiling person on the team, a skinny black kid who towered over all the rest. His arm was resting comfortably on Chief Hayes’s shoulder.
“Notice how many boys of color on that team?” he asked.
“Two,” I said.
“Me and Reggie Borden. I wasn’t much of a player, but Reggie was six five, a hundred thirty, and had a mean jump shot. Also a mouth like an outboard motor, and a mind like a trap. Funny, too. He used to say that jokes were his ammunition. Couldn’t decide whether to be a philosopher, professor, or doctor. Or all. Around here, in the forties and fifties, black people didn’t think in those terms. Even though some of our families had been here for generations.”
“The Underground Railroad,” I said.
Chief Hayes smiled. “You’ve been doing your Jonas Lyte homework. Well, Reggie was headed for college, and kids were jealous of him — white and black. Our school had what we called ‘secret societies’ back then — high-toned frats, really. A couple were racist gangs, and they really hated Reggie. Me, I was a terrible student, and I didn’t feel worthy of him — like maybe he was my buddy only because of my skin color. I found out I was wrong.…” His voice drifted off.
I couldn’t believe Chief Hayes was telling me all this. A minute ago I’d have been grateful for a brief exchange about the weather. “What happened to him?” I asked.
Chief Hayes rose and stared out the window. “One day Reggie didn’t show up at school. His parents didn’t know where he was. After a week, the police — all white, of course — conducted a search, when they could be drawn away from their busy schedule of parking tickets. After another week, they concluded he’d run away from home. End of case. Well, some people figured Reggie was kidnapped by one of those racist groups. A lawyer tried to bring a suit, but it was dropped for lack of evidence. I was angry. I decided then and there I would be a cop someday. And that was when I realized how Reggie had influenced me. Before I met him, my idea of the future was tomorrow morning. He’d have been proud.…”
Chief Hayes had to clear his throat before going on. “Anyway, three other students were reported missing right afterward — and they were all white. The weird thing is, those kids were found.”
“Alive?”
“Dead. Their bodies were disintegrating by the drainpipe in the Ramble.”
I felt a shiver. A question popped to mind. “Chief Hayes, when did this all happen?”
Chief Hayes turned from the window and looked me in the eye for the first time. “Spring of 1950, David. Right after the earthquake.”