Blind Spot (30 page)

“This could be it,” Suki cried excitedly. “It really could. The drugs were why the boys were fighting. It all fits together, makes sense. And maybe the witness is involved somehow, too.” She tapped her finger on the desk. “Maybe that’s why the witness didn’t want to be found. Maybe he
is
the one pulling the strings—the one selling the drugs. Why else wouldn’t he come forward?”

“Whoa,” Kenneth said. “Slow down there. My experience with meth is from my New York days. Far as I know, there hasn’t been any around Witton yet. What gives you the idea there is?”

Suki explained what Brendan had told her.

Kenneth was silent for a long moment. “Does sound like it. But you’re making quite a leap there to pull in all the boys—not to mention the witness.”

“Leaps are about all I’ve got left.”

“Tell you what.” Kenneth said, lowering his voice again, “Let me see what I can find out. I’ll keep it separate from the Ward case. Just tell Frank I got a tip—and it’s the truth: I did just get a tip.”

“And I’ll see if I can dig anything up on my end.”

“I know it was me who suggested you check into this witness thing,” Kenneth’s voice was stern. “But if by some long shot you’re actually right about this connection, you could be treading in some real dangerous waters. Why don’t you just sit tight until you hear from me?”

“Sitting is a luxury I can’t afford.”

Kenneth’s sigh was resigned, but he gave it one last try. “Brendan may think he’s dealing with some ‘clean grown-up who knows what he’s doing,’ but let me tell you, people who deal drugs are never clean. They’re mean and easily angered—and they’re often armed.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

S
uki drove home from her office, Kenneth’s warning reverberating in her ears. She was anxious to see how Alexa was doing. Despite the positive result of their meeting with Frank Maxwell yesterday, Alexa had spent most of the night awake, prowling the house, watching old movies, playing computer games in the basement. She had been disheveled at breakfast, her expression blank, so wounded she was unable to integrate good news. Suki knew that no matter how this all ended, for Alexa, it was never going to go away.

Suki was the first car in line when the crossing guard stopped traffic in front of the middle school. While she waited, she compiled a mental roster of places she could search for information on the missing witness: TeenScene, the rec center, the mall, the hangout tree near the high school. Brendan had said Alexa didn’t know who sold the drugs, that he didn’t either; for the moment, Suki would take his word. She watched the kids, full of just-released-from-prison energy, so young, so innocent, as they danced and punched and flirted their way across the street. But were they as untainted as they appeared?

Of course they were, she told herself. They had to be. These were middle schoolers; they were only eleven, twelve, thirteen. Surely, “tainted” was not an appropriate adjective. But when Suki thought of all she had learned over the past weeks, about guns and sex and drugs, about the underbelly of teenage life, she wasn’t so certain.

Suki blanched as a young girl in a T-shirt and overalls, her heavy backpack slung across her shoulder, crossed in front of the car. The girl looked as Alexa had looked two, three years ago: slight, blonde, pretty, full of optimism. What to do? What to do for a daughter whose world had become so wretched that it couldn’t be lightened by hope? For a girl who feared she had the power to kill people with her thoughts—or one who was consumed by guilt?

Alexa had resisted the suggestion of counseling whenever Suki raised it, but maybe now was the time to insist. It was clear Alexa was depressed, that she needed to talk to someone—and she sure wasn’t talking to Suki. She might even need medication. There were wonderful meds on the market, serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors—Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and the like—that had been producing spectacular results with depressives. Although Suki was aware that in more than a few cases, the SSRIs had been so successful in alleviating the depression-related lethargy that the patient had found the energy to climb out of bed and commit suicide.

Of course, Alexa wasn’t suicidal. Suki pressed her foot to the accelerator, speeding toward home, toward Alexa who wasn’t suicidal. The girl might not be sleeping or eating or talking, but these were symptoms of depression, not self-destruction. Suki thought of Harriet and took the turn into Lawler Road without downshifting. Her tires squealed in alarm.

Breathless, she burst into the house. “Alexa?” she yelled up the stairs. “Alexa!”

“Up here, Mom,” Alexa called in her “before” voice. Before Jonah. “In the kitchen.”

The house was filled with wonderful aromas. Of baking. Of vanilla and sugar and all things resonating to home and family and love. Alexa was fine.

When Suki got to the kitchen, Alexa was bent over the open oven, inserting a toothpick into a cake pan. Her face was flushed and a finger of flour streaked her left cheek. She had obviously slept and showered: her hair fell in soft curls and her eyes were bright and awake. She grinned at her mother. “Surprise!”

“Is it my birthday?” Suki asked, thrilled to see the old Alexa.

“Better,” Alexa said. “It’s your appreciation day.”

Suki walked over to her daughter and kissed her brow, which was slightly damp with her exertion. Suki couldn’t resist wiping the flour from her cheek. “Sounds like my kind of celebration.”

Alexa carefully closed the oven door and set the timer. She turned to Suki. “I was up all night thinking,” she said. “Thinking about all you’ve been doing for me. Thinking about how awful I’ve been.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, honey. It’s not a big-”

“No,” Alexa interrupted. “I do worry about it, and I want to apologize. I need to apologize.”

Suki sat down at the kitchen table. She didn’t say anything. She just let Alexa talk.

Alexa ran her fingers through her hair, leaving a dusting of flour on the curls at her forehead. “You’ve been so great. Greater than any mom could be. And now that it looks like this is finally going to be over, now that the police are going to stop harassing me and go after the guys, now that everything’s going to be all right, I just wanted to say how sorry I am for being so awful—and to thank you for all you’ve done.” As her voice began to crack, Alexa turned and gestured grandly toward the oven. “So I’m making you your favorite vanilla-and-lemon layer cake.” When she turned back to Suki, her eyes were glistening. “I walked to the store and got all the ingredients.” She bit at the cuticle on her left thumb. “I didn’t know what else to give you.”

“Oh, honey,” Suki said around the lump in her throat. “This is perfect. A perfect gift. I’m happy to accept your apology, and I really appreciate the cake—although my hips won’t.” She held open her arms. Alexa knelt down and put her head in her mother’s lap. Suki silently played with Alexa’s hair. How could she tell Alexa that it wasn’t close to over, that unless she found the witness—and soon—things were about as far from “all right” as they could get?

TeenScene was billed as a “safe, alternative hangout and resource center” for the teenagers of Witton. It had been the brainchild of two fed-up mothers in the early nineties. The two had rallied the town into donating a warren of rooms in the basement under town hall and then rallied the community into donating enough money and hand-me-downs to partition and furnish the space. TeenScene was now on most Witton residents’ charity lists.

The ceilings were low and the windows small, but the rooms burst with color and light and noise. The neon yellow room held two pool tables and a Ping-Pong table, the crimson one was filled with battered desks and hand-me-down computers. Green-and-white stripes formed the background of the “movie room,” which was dominated by a large television and VCR, while a narrow room furnished with a mishmash of couches and overstuffed chairs was royal blue. The bright walls were plastered with movie and music and antidrug posters; boom boxes were everywhere. TeenScene was staffed by “peer leaders” from the high school, supervised by a parent or teacher, and was open from 3:00 to 9:00 on school days, 12:00 to 12:00 on weekends. It was usually packed.

But it wasn’t all about fun. There was a teen hotline: “When things get rough you can fall back on us,” an on-staff social worker three afternoons a week, and a Witton policeman came by to just “hang out” on a regular schedule. Pamphlets about contraception and drugs and AIDS filled a rack next to the front door.

Suki stood in front of a bulletin board packed with notices of math tutors and odd jobs and therapy groups for abused children of alcoholics. As she scanned the board, she wondered why, when she wrote her annual check to TeenScene, she had never thought to question its necessity. She wasn’t discovering the heretofore uncovered underbelly of teenage life in Witton; it had openly existed all along. She just hadn’t wanted to see it.

And now, despite Kenneth’s warning, she was going to confront what she had refused to see. She would stare this unpleasant reality in the eye, look directly into the black abyss of its soul, if that’s what it took. She checked for drug pamphlets on methamphetamine, but if there had been any, they were all gone. Marijuana, cocaine, crack, LSD, ecstasy, heroin—she hadn’t even known kids were still doing heroin—but no speed.

She stuck her hands in her pockets, glad she had changed into jeans, and ambled through the rooms. No one appeared to notice her, although she felt whispers in her wake. It was four-thirty in the afternoon and the rooms were full: kids were playing games, listening to music, doing homework, flirting, watching
Casablanca
. Suki recognized many of them, but no one would meet her eye.

“Can I help you with something?” A young girl with round glasses and a wide streak of purple in her hair smiled at Suki. According to her badge, her name was Kimberly and she was a peer leader. She looked like a freshman.

Suki wanted to ask Kimberly about the dark abyss, but instead she said, “I’m just looking around. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” Kimberly said, her voice as perky as her name. “Make yourself at home—and let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

Suki continued to wander, but the place was too small for her to wander for long. The kids didn’t look like drug dealers or killers, they looked like kids had always looked, hanging out and screwing around on a Tuesday afternoon. But Suki knew if she was going to help Alexa, Alexa of the vanilla-and-lemon cake, she had to push beneath the surface.

She walked up to Kimberly, who was sitting at a desk, her purple-striped hair falling over an open algebra book. “I’m a writer,” Suki said, “doing an article on teens and drugs. I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk with me for a moment.”

“A writer?” Kimberly’s eyes opened wide behind her glasses. “Like Mary Higgins Clark? Her books are just awesome,” she gushed. “Have you ever met her?”

Suki shook her head, both in answer to Kimberly’s question and in disbelief that she could lie so effortlessly. “I’m not that kind of writer,” she said. “I do pieces for newspapers, professional magazines—this one’s for a psychology journal.”

“Oh.” Kimberly’s face fell, then she perked up again. “And you want to interview me?” She looked around to see if any of the other kids had heard. Then said loudly, “Sure. Glad to. Awesome. Really awesome.”

Suki sat down at the desk next to Kimberly’s and pulled out a small pad and pen from her purse. A real writer would have a much bigger notepad, but Kimberly didn’t seem to notice. “Now Kimberly, this can be an anonymous interview, or we can use your name. Which ever you prefer.”

“Oh, we can use my name. It’s Kimberly, Kimberly Kitteridge. Would you like me to spell it?” Kimberly spelled it before Suki could answer. “I don’t do drugs,” she said. “That’s why it’s okay to use my name.”

“Good,” Suki said. “That’s very good. But what about other kids? Do a lot of kids in Witton do drugs?”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d say a lot.…” Kimberly paused. “But I guess there are a lot. Depending on what you call a lot, that is, of course.” She blushed slightly.

It occurred to Suki that Kimberly might be lying—or that she had already decided to lie about something Suki hadn’t asked yet. But, then again, maybe the kid was just uncomfortable talking with an adult about drugs.

“And what kind of drugs do they like to do? What’s everyone’s favorite?”

Kimberly shrugged. “I, ah, I’m not really sure. Beer. Lots of beer. And pot, I guess.”

Suki wondered if beer was considered a drug, but knew she had to stay on point. “How about other drugs? Do kids use cocaine? LSD? speed?”

A shadow fell over Suki. “What’s going on here, Kimberly?” a stern voice demanded.

“Oh, ah, hi, Mrs. Gasner,” Kimberly stuttered. “This is, this is, ah, a reporter. She’s doing an article.”

“Hi, Abby,” Suki said. Abby Gasner was on the library board with her. Her son, Jonathan, was the same age as Alexa. Suki thought she remembered that Jonathan played basketball, that he had been a teammate of Jonah’s.

Abby turned to Suki, her blue eyes as cold as glacial ice. “May I speak to you alone for a moment, please?” Her voice was just as frigid.

Suki stood and rapped on Kimberly’s desk. “Thanks,” she said. “You’ve been a big help.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Abby hissed as she pulled Suki into a corner. “Why are you here?”

“I’m trying to find out the truth,” Suki said, standing her ground. She and Abby had been on the same side of the acquisitions argument at the library last year; working together, the two of them had persuaded the board to add five hundred, instead of three hundred, new books to the library’s collection. “Trying to save my daughter.”

“You just can’t come in here and start badgering the kids.” Abby crossed her arms over her ample chest, but her eyes seemed to subtly soften.

“Abby.” Suki touched Abby’s sleeve. “Do you know anything about a drug called methamphetamine? It’s a kind of speed. Have you heard any of the kids talking about it?”

Abby took a step backward. “I’m sorry, Suki, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. It’s not that I don’t sympathize with you, I do, but I sympathize with Darcy more. Her child is gone. You still have yours.”