All for One (44 page)

He didn’t see her, and PJ made no attempt to change that. She simply stood there, scared, and watched Joey slam his fists into the ground, again and again.

*  *  *

Mid-morning on a very somber Monday, Mary gave the class a worksheet on the nations of South America and asked the council to come to her desk. Where there should have been five, there were three. That was partly the reason for this conference.

“This is a difficult day to have to do this,” she began. Joey, PJ, and Jeff agreed with somber, inquisitive eyes. “With the conference at Camp One Wing starting this Friday, the class needs to have four officers on the council in attendance. Without four officers, our class won’t be able to attend.”

Joey straightened a bit, understanding.

“I don’t feel it is right to replace Michael as sergeant at arms. Despite what...happened...he is innocent until proven guilty.”

“He wouldn’t do it,” Joey said, speaking authoritatively, unlike he ever had when addressing Miss Austin before.

PJ nudged him with an elbow.

“Joey, I know Michael would not do that,” Mary assured him. “I know that.”

“I’m sorry,” Joey said.

“He’s just tired,” PJ said in her friend’s defense.

“I understand.” Mary took a pencil in hand and rolled it continuously as she spoke. “What I am suggesting is that we need to have a replacement for the position of treasurer.” It would not have sounded right to suggest a ‘replacement’ for Bryce. “In situations where an officer’s position must be filled prior to an election, it is acceptable for the council to select a replacement.”

“You mean, we choose?” Joey asked.

“Yes. I do have something to suggest, though. Someone to consider for the position.”

“Who?” Jeff asked.

“Elena Markworth,” Mary answered. The idea had come to her that morning. Out of the blue, as if a little voice had planted the seed in her brain. But there had been no little voice. No big, angry voice. No quickspeaking voice. There hadn’t been any voices in days. “Elena is very good with math, which is important for a treasurer. She’s very trustworthy. I believe she would be a good choice.”

PJ glanced back at Elena, her pencil attacking the worksheet.

“I’d need to talk to Elena’s parents first,” Mary informed them. “If you’d like me to, I will.”

PJ and Joey looked to each other, both shrugging facially.

“It’s okay with me,” Jeff said. Actually it was more than okay. It was great. But excitement seemed grossly out of place right then, like clapping at a funeral.

“Me, too,” PJ concurred.

“Joey?” Jeff checked.

“Sure,” the class president approved.

Mary nodded. “All right. I’ll talk to her parents this evening, and if everything is all right with them then you can inform Elena when class starts tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Joey said.

“All right. You have worksheets to do.”

Joey and PJ and Jeff waded back to their desks, quite sad still on the outside but relief coming now inside. Bryce was gone, but Elena might now be a lot closer than she had been. It wasn’t worth what had happened to Bryce. At least Joey and PJ didn’t think so.

Jeff was another story.

*  *  *

Half of Dooley’s butt was on the table, one leg dangling, the other on the floor. “Mike, what happened with the bat?”

Michael’s attorney held his hand up, preventing any answer.

Dooley shot a sneer at the lawyer. “You’ve done that little hand thing like a hundred times now. Are there any questions you
will
let him answer?”

“His name,” the attorney replied.

Michael rolled his eyes up at Dooley. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Michael...” The attorney leaned close and whispered something to his young client, then returned his attention to Dooley. “He’s done answering questions.”

“Wait a minute,” Dooley said with irritation. He bent over and stuck his face close to Michael’s. “What’s your name.”

“Michael Prentiss,” he said, nearly spitting, on the verge of tears.

Dooley stood now and smiled at the lawyer. “There. I didn’t want to leave empty handed.”

He grabbed his coat from a hook on the door and went into the hall. Joel was coming his way.

“He’s going home,” Joel said.

“What?” Dooley hissed.

Joel showed Dooley the court order. “Into the custody of his parents until physical evidence beyond the fingerprints is developed.”

“That’s bullshit,” Dooley complained.

“He was Bryce’s friend, he snuck in there before. There are reasons for his prints to be there.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I’m not the one his lawyer had to convince,” Joel responded.

Dooley stalked back and forth. “The fucking snow you had— when was it? —two weeks ago Friday would have iced any prints off the outer sill. Those had to be made
after
then.”

“The prints from the outer sill were inconclusive,” Joel reminded Dooley. “Too much distortion from the moisture.”

“So what? Are you saying we’ve got nothing?”

Joel shook his head and moved the paper behind the court order to the front. “The coroner’s report on the instrument of murder. He was strangled with a wire that had a twisted outer wrap.”

“A twisted outer what?”

“Wrap. Like a cable.” Joel’s brow raised suggestively. “Like a throttle cable from a car. Or a clutch cable.”

Dooley’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know, Joel?”

“I know that I have people going out to Jet Motors right now. Maybe it’ll be a short stint of freedom for him...”

Dooley stabbed a finger at Joel’s nose. “Make it that way.”

“You really want this,” Joel observed.

“The doggy wants his biscuit,” Dooley confirmed.

Joel had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

Forty

It was cool and crisp, and the wind gusted in spurts so unpredictable that Elena twice had to hold the front of her skirt down, but they had nonetheless opted to eat lunch together where they could talk privately. The new class council together for the first time.

They chose a bench by the number 4 backstop, a wiry sort of half clamshell that was still twisted askew at the top from the time the old tree next to it shed a large limb in a wind storm. That damaged tree still stood, defiant less its biggest member.

“I was surprised you guys wanted me for treasurer,” Elena said, a quiet confidence in her voice. She took a dainty bite from her sandwich, something with lots of green, healthy stuff hanging over the crust.

“It’s a great idea,” PJ said. The red had gone from her eyes, and she had actually been able to get through a couple twenty minute stretches of class work that morning without being depressed by melancholic recollections of Bryce.

“You can be with us now,” Joey added with enthusiasm.

“I never told,” Elena told them, looking one at a time to Joey, PJ, and Jeff. “I promise I never did.”

“We believe you,” Joey said, then looked to Jeff and asked, “Don’t we?”

“Yeah, we believe you.” Jeff palmed a bunch of M&Ms and dropped them rapid-fire into his mouth. He chewed and said, “They’re burying Bryce right now.”

“Why wouldn’t they let anyone go?” PJ asked.

Joey shrugged, but Elena said, “His parents blame us. His friends. They think we should have known that Mike was mad at him.”

“Mike didn’t do anything,” Joey protested.

“Wait a minute,” Jeff said, looking hard at Elena. “How do you know they blame us?”

Elena swallowed and said, “My mom is friends with Bryce’s aunt.” She took another small bite and added morosely, “At least she used to be.”

PJ put a hand on Elena’s back. “Thanks for not telling.”

Elena shook her head. “Thank you all. This all happened because of me.”

Joey’s head shook slowly. “Guy started it. No one else. Everything is his fault.”

“He’s right,” PJ assured Elena. Jeff said nothing and dropped another handful of M&Ms into his mouth.

“Listen,” Joey said, bringing up what he’d been thinking of all morning. “We have to talk to Mike somehow.”

“He’s out of jail, you know,” Jeff said.

“I know. I tried to call him.” Joey laid his bag of chips on the tabletop and slapped a flat hand on it. It popped, splitting down the seam at the back. It was the cool way to open chips. “His parents won’t let him talk. Someone’s got to get to him and find out what happened.”

Jeff put his chips on the table and dropped his cast on the bag. It popped open down the seam, but all he had was a bag of salty crumbs. “Shit.”

“How are we going to get to him?” PJ asked.

Jeff sneered at the destruction his damn cast had caused and dumped the contents to the ground. Let the bugs at least enjoy it. “I’ll do it,” he volunteered with a snarl.

Joey looked at him. “You’ll do what?”

“I’ll get to Mike,” Jeff declared confidently.

“You?” PJ said. “How?”

Jeff grinned at her, that grin that made them believe he would either be president or a talk show host someday. “Who do you think taught him to climb through windows back in third grade?”

*  *  *

Bryce Homer Hool

Dooley stood alone before the temporarily placed headstone and stared long at the engraving, wondering if Bryce had ever been teased for his middle name. He felt infinitely sad and silly for never asking him.

And he felt guilty to the core for bringing this on.

The service was nice, if funerals for eleven year olds could be called that. Lots of flowers. Lots of tears. Anger boiling low, like a covered pot waiting.

No one had removed the lid, thank God.

The saddest part, Dooley thought, was seeing Bryce’s twin sisters led forward to plant little girl kisses on the casket, and then running back toward their seats with giddy smiles beaming. They just didn’t know. He wondered when it would hit them. What age? Seven? Eight?
‘Mommy, what happened to Bryce? How did he die?’

Someone wrapped a wire around his neck until he couldn’t breath, Dooley thought, adding, And it was my fault.

Dooley examined the years, born and died, and wanted desperately to come back with a hammer and chisel and change ‘died’ to ‘murdered’. And maybe add ‘by’, and the name of his murderer. And maybe the unwitting accomplice.

He wondered if there was a bar nearby. There should be, by logic. Bars should ring cemeteries and have two-for-one specials for the grieving.

Cheap booze couldn’t wash troubles away, he recalled someone saying. Who was that? Who?

“You picked the wrong friends,” Dooley said to the headstone, including himself in that grouping.

He walked six rows over and said to another one, with Guy Daniel Edmond carved into it, “And you picked the wrong enemies.”

Forty One

Dooley stayed away from Bartlett for almost two full days. He bought a new car and signed his pension papers.

He also dreamt of Mary, the kind of dream where she wasn’t what she was, but what he wanted her to be. In the snippets of drowsy fantasy she wore a hat and rode a horse a lot. The horse and hat were incidental. In the dreams she was with him.

He didn’t dream of Bryce. He suspected cowardice in his subconscious.

His only reason for returning to Bartlett that Thursday afternoon late was to meet with Tim Markworth at his request. He arrived as the sun was low behind grey-black ribbons of cloud, burning orange in an icy wind.

Elena’s father thanked him for coming and grabbed a coat. He didn’t invite Dooley in.

“So you have the one that did it, I hear,” Tim Markworth said. He led Dooley off the porch and across the lawn to a summer fountain. A naked little boy with curly hair and immature, stubby wings graced the center of the bowl. When it was warm, water would arc gently from his tiny stone penis. Inspired by a master, Tim Markworth thought as he touched the glaze on the rim of the basin. Dream it up today and you’d do ten to twenty.

“We do,” Dooley confirmed. He noticed that Tim Markworth kept his back to him, and his gaze low, except for a furtive glance toward one of the windows on the second floor. Light inside made the curtains yellow. Dooley thought he heard music from the spot.

“He killed both of them,” Tim Markworth almost muttered.

Dooley nodded at the man’s upturned collar. A label showed. LL Bean. “We believe so.”

Tim Markworth stared fully at the window now. His daughter’s room. Willa was in there with her, helping her pack for the conference at that camp. Elena had been smiling. Had even put a CD in her hot pink boom box.

It was the first time since summer there’d been any sounds other than night screams from her room. And she hadn’t cried out at all in nearly two weeks.

“I told you when you were here before that Elena was under a doctor’s care.”

“You did,” Dooley said, remembering. It hadn’t surprised him.

“The doctor is a psychiatrist,” Tim Markworth said in admission, as though he’d loosed some horrid secret. “I’m telling you this in confidence. Off the record.”

“That’s for reporters, Mr. Markworth.”

“Then it’s off whatever you guys call it,” Tim Markworth told him angrily.

“Fine. This is just you and me talking. Your daughter is seeing a psych.”

Tim Markworth turned away from the window and gripped the edge of the basin. The frost sizzled on his fingers. “There’s more than that. I didn’t ask you to come just to tell you what
kind
of doctor she was seeing.”

Dooley softened his stance, his demeanor. “I’m listening.”

“Sometime after school started in September, Elena began having nightmares. Terrible nightmares.” Tim Markworth’s chin sank toward his chest, his whole posture pained. A parent’s pain. “She always slept so well before, and then all of a sudden she starts waking up screaming. Just wailing like she’s being killed. She’d never even open her eyes. It was like whatever was terrifying her wouldn’t let her wake up. Like it wanted her to scream.” He reached up and wiped a tear with the back of his hand. “We’d go to her and calm her, and she’d quiet down and drift away. I don’t even know if knew she was screaming.”

Dooley listened carefully, closely, to what Tim Markworth was saying. “Does this happen every night?”