All for One (50 page)

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” one of the workers said genuinely, pleasantly. “We’ll get it.”

comeonMARYletstalknowokayMARYletstalk

“GO AWAY!” Mary shouted, giving her resistance voice by accident. Or was it...

The worker’s pleasant face receded and he turned away and began pushing his broom again.

Mary, too, turned away, facing the dining hall’s picture-covered front wall.
You made me say that,
Mary accused in thought now.

icanmakeyoudoworsethanthatMARY

ialreadyhave

Mary’s hands came to her chest, fingers clawing at the slick letters screened to the front of her TOTY sweatshirt.

talktomenowMARYoriwill
MAKE YOU FUCKING REGRET YOU WERE EVER BORN!

No
. Her feet began to slide backward on the plank floor. Back toward the door.

youcant
RUN FROM ME YOU COCKSUCKING SLUT!

I’m not running.

yourmistake

And Mary felt herself propelled backward, fast and hard at the double doors, her feet shuffling furiously to keep up with the momentum, trying in vain to keep her upright.

Her back slammed into the dining hall’s twin doors and she fell through as they swung out, landing on her butt.

The two workers inside gawked out the screen windows, and one of them ran to the door to see if the lady who’d lost her balance in the weirdest way he’d ever seen needed any help. But when he got through the still flapping doors she was gone, on her feet fast and jogging up one of the trails into the woods.

*  *  *

He left the room with the piano, wanting to give the hulking instrument a sharp kick but resisting. It was just a thing. An inanimate thing.

Like a wire. Like a wire used to strangle.

Hands played the piano, hands pulled the wire taut around a neck.

Hands he knew? Her hands? Hands that had touched him?

Dooley squatted low in the living room and hung his head over his knees.

Why? Give me one reason why?
he demanded of himself.
Why would she do it? Why would she kill Bryce?

Why would Michael?
Dooley volleyed back to himself.

Because he thought Bryce was going to spill the beans. Give up the terrible secret.

Why would
she?

He didn’t have to think long.
The same reason?

His head came slowly up as the answer became a possibility, a reason, a scenario. A recollection of recent events sputtered into his train of thought.
Screaming dreams? Elena had screaming dreams like the one Mary had. Elena was molested by Guy. Mary was molested herself.

My God, was that it? Did Mary know?

Did she...

Dooley sprang up on his feet and stared straight ahead, through the hallway and into her bedroom. Before he knew it he was in there, looking left and right, scanning the corners and the furniture, looking for what he did not know. For something. Evidence.

He was a cop again, instantly, as if someone had thrown a switch. Only he technically wasn’t a cop anymore. That was fine, too, especially when he made it his purpose to start going through her drawers without a warrant.

He pulled the top drawers out and dumped them. Underwear and tee shirts fell in a lopsided pile on the floor. The next drawers down. Socks, shorts, a couple nightgowns, and some brightly colored knit clothing, the kind that looked homemade and too damn obvious to wear in public. All those things were added to the pile by the time Dooley started asking himself if there was something specific he was in search of. The piano wire, a.k.a. the murder weapon? Maybe.
What else?
he pondered, dumping jeans and long pants from one of the bottom drawers.
What else?
he pressed himself as the last drawer slid out.

He dropped to his knees before the last drawer and thought he might have what he was looking for.

Drawings. Hundreds of them. All signed like the ones on the refrigerator by Mandy Fine, and all dated...dated...

...dated 1974. These were all dated 1974.

The year she’d been molested.

The year her father had died.

Her bad year. Her very bad year.

Dooley took a handful of the pictures and looked through them. There were drawings of the same little girl whose crayon incarnation he’d seen on the fridge. And drawings of her with the little boy, though in these, older images his hair was black, not orange.

Chester ambled into the room and mewed loud at Dooley’s prying.

“I’ll punt you, cat,” Dooley warned. “Shut up.”

The tabby flopped to its side and watched Dooley with deadpan eyes.

He moved through the childish art quickly now, seeing images of the little girl standing very close to a bigger man. An adult. Her dress was up, and his pants were down.

“Jesus Christ,” Dooley commented.

There were many more like that, and some of the little girl standing next to a long box topped with flowers. A casket.

“Your father,” Dooley said aloud.

And on through the drawings, the little girl skipping in one, knees high in the air, her dress flopping inappropriately up to reveal nothing underneath. More like that, more with the big man, the man Dooley had decided was Bannister. More with him and his pants down. More with—

Dooley stopped on one drawing, not adding it to the scattered pile at his knees. There was a little girl in this one, but it was not the same one. The hair was darker, and the features were smaller. And drawn next to this other girl was a bigger man, though very thin and not as big as the man depicted previously. This thin man was smiling, a crazy smile Dooley thought, and he had the little girl’s dress up and his hand between her legs.

They were standing near a building. Near steps leading into a building. Steps leading to a door into the building. There was a number on the door. The number was 18.

Dooley looked quickly to the bottom of the drawing. It was signed by Mandy Fine, and dated this year.

His breath leaked slowly out as he slid that picture from the pile in his hands and looked at the next one.

The thin man was there, but in close-up now, glaring wildly at the little girl. And beyond them there were five little heads, mouths wide like O’s. Four boys and one girl. And above the thin man’s head there was something coming down, motion streaks drawn to show this. Fat at one end and thin at the other where anonymous hands gripped it. The bat.

It was Guy and Elena, Dooley knew. And Joey and PJ and Jeff and Bryce and Michael. And someone holding the bat. Someone swinging it down at Guy Edmond’s head. Someone.

One tear rolled down Dooley’s cheek as he looked away.

*  *  *

Jeff wiped his eyes and went through it again. “Bryce finally gave in and said he’d talk to Mike, so Mike was going over there to sneak in and when he got through Bigfoot Woods he saw Miss Austin coming out of Bryce’s window. She ran away, and when he went in he found Bryce. He was dead.”

“Why would...” PJ held Elena tight and searched for the words. The questions to ask that would make this all clear. That would make everything make sense. But what words were there to make sense of
this
?

“Mike said that Bryce didn’t think he’d be able to keep the secret anymore.” Jeff sniffled and wiped it on his sling. “Right after that he went to talk to Miss Austin to get help on some work he missed. Bryce must have told her what he told Mike.”

“Why would she kill him?” PJ demanded calmly. “Why?”

“To keep him from telling,” Jeff said. It was obvious.

“But people think Mike did it,” PJ said. “She wouldn’t let that happen.”

“She is,” Jeff told her. “That’s exactly what she’s doing. That and getting real friendly with that cop. I heard them on the phone. He’s staying at her house.”

PJ looked to Joey. “This can’t be right, Joey. It can’t. It can’t.”

Joey thought for a moment. Actually he’d been thinking about it every second since Jeff had told him, all the way through a nearly sleepless night. He’d dreamed of that bat. That damned bat, and them all holding it because of...him. Because he had had the idea. It was him. He was responsible for this. He had gotten them into it, and they had trusted him. Believed in him.

When he looked at PJ, her eyes begged him silently for an answer.

Actually, he had come up with one before the sun ever rose. “Who believes Mike?”

“I do,” Jeff said without hesitation.

PJ swallowed hard, then added her ‘yes’ with a nod.

“Elena?” Joey prompted. This felt so familiar. The beginning, now the end. Her hesitancy here again. “Do you believe Mike?”

Her head bobbed against the jacket PJ wore. Joey’s jacket.

“All right then,” Joey said. “This is what we have to do.”

Forty Seven

After seeing the drawings, he knew there was one place he had to go before any other. One person he had to talk to. One little person who had to know the whole story.

Dooley found Jack Prentiss standing outside the garage of his house, polishing the rear of his beautiful Corvette.

A FOR SALE sign lay slanted in the back window.

“I need to talk to your son,” Dooley said, but Jack Prentiss put a boot on the back stoop to block him.

“You’ve got nerve.”

“If you love your son, you’ll let me see him. I want to help him.”

Jack Prentiss worked a chamois between his hands and looked at his car. The car that would have been his son’s. “You know, if you want to help him, how about buying my Vette? How about that? Lawyers cost money, you know, so help out that way. Otherwise, get the hell off of my property.”

Dooley stepped closer to Jack Prentiss, close enough to feel hot breath when the man turned to face him. “Your son didn’t kill his friend.”

“I know that.”

“I know that now, too. But unless he talks to me he’s going to get sucked deeper into this.”

“Into what?”

“Do you want your son back, Jack? Do you?”

Michael’s father studied the detective sideways, his chin rising. “So help me, if this is a...”

“Take me to him,” Dooley ordered. “Now!”

Michael sat on his bed paging through the new Sports Illustrated, and looked up only when he realized that the feet just come into his room were not his father’s.

“Hello, Mike,” Dooley said. He took off his coat and tossed it over a chair shaped like a fielder’s glove. The chair spun away from the impact.

“What do you want?”

Dooley sat on the bed, close to Michael, invading his space, and fixed a stare on him that seemed the precursor to an attack. He didn’t have time to make this child like him. Didn’t have time to get to like this child, either. He needed to make him talk, and talk fast.

He needed to be the bad cop for this one. A real bad cop.

“You didn’t kill Bryce.”

“I told you all that from the start.”

“Yeah, but you lied about one little thing.”

Michael looked down at the magazine. Dooley ripped it from his hands and flung it noisily across the room. He put his face close to Michael’s. Very close, cocking it to see into his downcast eyes.

“You were there. That night. The night your best friend died.”

“No.”

“Yes you were. You found him. You saw him on the bed. You were in that room and you saw him on the bed.”

“I was in there lots of times.”

“Not when your
best friend
was laying there, not moving, not breathing. No. You were there then. You were.”

“No.”

“You saw him. You went to him. You went to the door to get help... But you didn’t. You didn’t get help. You didn’t scream. You didn’t call nine-one-one.” Dooley lifted the boy’s chin roughly. “You didn’t help your
best friend!
”

“My lawyer said I don’t have to—”

“No lawyer is gonna help you now, Mike. We’re not talking jail here. You let your
best friend
die. He might have still been alive, and you didn’t help him. You went to that door and you stopped.”

“I didn’t do—”

“Kids like you go to hell,” Dooley said authoritatively, using what he’d learned from the case file. Good little Michael. A church-going boy. An altar boy. “You turned your back on your best friend and he died. You’re going to hell.”

“No!”

“Hell, Mike. That’s worse than jail. You’re not going to jail, I can tell you that right now. You’re going to hell.”

“I am not!”

“You turned away from your friend and you snuck out that window like a chicken and you ran home. Probably crying like a baby. Like you want to right now.”

He didn’t want to, but the words were enough to make it happen anyway.
Bryce...

“You ran away. Left him there.”

Tears spilled down each cheek.

“You ran, Mike. You know why people run? Because they’re scared. You ran because you were scared.”

His head moved with the sobs, almost nodding. Almost.

“You were scared because you saw something.”

The wet eyes widened.

“You saw someone there, Mike.”

Sob. A nod?

“Someone was there,” Dooley said, his voice lowering now. He could see the hurt. The hurt like his own. “She was there, Mike.”

Quick breaths now. Surprise. Surprise that he knew. That someone knew.

“You saw her, Mike. You did.”

Head moving again. A nod. Yes. A nod.

“Miss Austin, Mike. You saw her there.”

“I... I saw her there.”

“She killed him, Mike.”

“She killed him.”

“She killed your best friend.”

Michael’s head bowed. Tears fell like rain onto his Green Bay Packer sweatpants.

“Why did she kill him, Mike? You know. You know.”

“Because...”

“Because?”

“Because he...he didn’t want to lie anymore.”

“She killed him, Mike.”

Sobs.

“She wrapped a wire around his throat and strangled him. It hurts to die that way, Mike.”

“No! Bryce! Bryce, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Dooley grabbed Michael by the biceps. “Bryce didn’t want to lie anymore, Mike. You don’t have to either, now.”