Blindfold (7 page)

Maggie had never seen him so angry. He hadn't even stopped in to see his mother that day.

After a while, he got beyond all of that. Brooding wasn't Alex's style. Then, too, his mother's success had helped.

Still, Maggie had been surprised when Alex had joined the forces intent on razing the old courthouse. She'd have thought he would have wanted it left standing, not just because of his love of architecture, but to remind him of his father. And maybe he would have felt that way ... if his father hadn't been fired. Now, he just wanted the building gone.

As they all began making their way across the parking lot to Scout's Jeep, Mr. Petersen called after them, "So, who's going to pay for this broken window?"

Maggie burst into laughter. "Broken window?" she gasped through the laughter that came, she knew, more from her relief at being free of the basement than it did from Petersen's idiotic question. "The place is practically falling down around him and he's worried about that one little basement window being broken? He is obviously the sort of man who sweats the small details."

No one answered Petersen's question.

The stitching of her arm hurt. "You lied," Maggie told the nurse through clenched teeth. "You said that needle you stuck me with would numb my arm.

My arm is not numb. Having my teeth drilled isn't this bad. It pinches."

"That," the nurse said matter-of-factly, "is because you're watching, Maggie. You feel every stitch because you see Dr. Nelson put that needle into your skin. Quit watching. No one else ever watches. How'd you do this, anyway?"

Helen, hovering anxiously beside the table, answered before Maggie could open her mouth. "She broke a window in the courthouse basement with her arm."

The nurse's eyebrows arched. "The old courthouse, or the new one?"

"The old one, of course," Maggie said testily. "What would we be doing in the new courthouse?"

Nurse Winslow aimed a level gaze at her. "I might ask the same of .the old courthouse. Especially the basement."

"We were just exploring. We didn't know a beam was going to give out on us," Maggie explained.

On their way out of the hospital, as the arm began to throb mercilessly, Maggie told Helen, "I know what's been bothering me. Remember what people were saying about the ceiling collapsing? When we were all lying in the parking lot?" Lane, Whit, Scout, and Alex were waiting on the hospital steps. "I heard someone say there wasn't anyone on the first floor when the ceiling collapsed. But that's not true. There was. I heard footsteps above me when I was in the coal bin."

Before anyone could answer her, the sheriff and a deputy approached from the parking lot. When

they reached the group, Sheriff Donovan first asked Maggie how her arm was. When she shrugged, he said, "I need to talk to you folks. But you look to me," addressing Maggie, 'like you could use a nice place to lie down. So I won't ask you to come to my office. Only got one question, anyway, so maybe you could answer it right here, save us all some time."

"What question?" Alex's tone of voice was hostile. The sheriffs office was in the old courthouse, so Alex automatically saw him as part of the establishment that had fired his father.

"A simple one. Anyone else in that basement with you? Besides the lot of you, I mean?"

"Not as far as we know," Whit answered. "We didn't see anyone else, but then, we couldn't see much of anything. We couldn't even see one another. Too dark."

Maggie took a step forward. "But there might have been," she offered. "Because someone locked me in the coal bin room, and my friends all said it wasn't them."

That brought forth a skeptical look from the sheriff. "And you believe them?"

"Of course! They wouldn't lie. I thought one of them was just fooling around, but if it was someone else, it wasn't a joke at all. So ... I guess there had to be someone else down there. Why?"

Sheriff Donovan drew his words out slowly and carefully. "Well, see, the thing is, the city engineer took a look at that beam. A quick look, granted, but still . . . and he says it looks to him like that beam

didn't just collapse. It was weak and old, he admits that, but he still insists it would have taken a heavy blow or a sharp kick, maybe someone pushing against it hard, to make it give way like that. So I was just wondering . .. you boys are pretty hefty, any of you lean against that beam, put your full weight on it?"

Alex, Scout, and Whit all said at the same time, "No," and Alex added, "the only thing we leaned against was the wall."

The sheriff thought for a minute, exchanged a look with his deputy, and then asked, "But you did say you couldn't see down there, right? Couldn't see anything? So someone else could have been down there?"

"Right."

He nodded. "Okay, then." Waving a hand toward Maggie, he said, "Well, you get that girl on home now where she belongs. We'll talk again when you've all had a chance to pull yourselves together." He and his deputy turned to leave.

"Sheriff?" Whit hesitated, then forged on. "Are you telling us that someone pushed that beam out of place? Deliberately?"

"Didn't say that." The sheriff didn't stop walking, didn't turn around. "But looks like, maybe. We'll let you know."

They were still standing on the hospital steps, as slack-jawed and stunned-looking as if he'd told them they were all under arrest, when the tan car with the official emblem on the side pulled out of the parking lot.

ten she had taunted Dante to the point of striking her. He never had, but I suspected she wouldn't have been surprised if he'd finally done so. But he hadn't. / had, and that was something that Christy would never have been able to comprehend.

There was a moment then that is as real to me today as if it had only happened this morning instead of four years ago. I remember everything about it... the sound of my own breathing, harsh and ragged from a combination of fury, the exertion of lifting the heavy tire iron and striking the blow, and the shock of seeing her fall and knowing what I had done. I remember the way the frigid air turned my breath visible as it left my body, creating little clouds in front of my face, as if I were The Little Engine That Could, chugging up a steep hill. I remember that my breathing was the only sound I heard and I remember thinking that the violence of my act must have frightened even the trees around me. There were no cars roaring along up on the highway. There wasn't a sound from any animal on the nearest farm, which happened to be the Guardinos. The cold, dark winter evening was as deathly still as Christy herself as I stood there in the woods alone with the knowledge of what I had just done.

I remember standing motionless in the underbrush beside the truck. The heavy tire iron, now smeared with Christy's blood and a few long strands of hair (cornsilk), was hanging loosely in my right hand. I remember thinking, My right hand? But I am left-handed. What is this doing in my right hand?

I knew the answer to that, of course. The tool lying in the truck bed had been nearest to my right hand and I had been so furious, I had snatched it up without thinking. (Later, this would work against Dante, because unlike me, he was right-handed.)

I remember suddenly becoming ill and having to turn away from the truck, as the supper I had eaten earlier in the Guardino kitchen abandoned me, probably in revulsion for what I had just done.

I had called Christy from that very kitchen, after Dante and his parents left. (Another strike against Dante, because the call to Christy's house that night was on the Guardinos' phone bill. The police looked it up. They assumed then that he had called her to set up a meeting in the woods when, in fact, it was I who had called her, and for that very reason.)

I remember leaning against the bed of the truck for what seemed like a long time, looking down at her. I had no idea what to do next. But then, it wasn't as if Fd planned the whole tiling. Still, there she was, dead as grass in winter (or so I believed then) and I had no clue what to do with her.

I also remember what had happened right before that awful moment took place. I remember the very last thing that Christy Miller ever said to me. "Why don't you mind your own business? Dante can take care of himself. Get a life!" And then she turned away, tossing her head in that maddening way she had.

It would have made anyone crazy. I know it made me crazy. Crazy enough to pick up the tire iron.

And what I remember most is, at the very instant that it was happening, as the back of her head turned scarlet and her knees crumpled, something swept over me that was so sickening, so heavy and dark and thick, that it was like being suffocated. Even in my wild state of mind, I recognized the feeling for what it was: gut-deep regret. It was an agonizing need, even as it was happening, for it not to be happening. Even as she was falling, even as I knew beyond any doubt that I had killed her, the black blanket of wet wool sweeping down upon me was my fervent wish that I hadn't done it. Everything inside of me was screaming, No, no, no, don't let it be this way, don't let this happen, I want to take it back, I don't want this to be what it is!

But it was already too late. And the black, suffocating cloak was engulfing me because I knew that. The thing about wanting to change something when it's already too late is, it's just not possible. No matter how much you might want to.

There was another moment then, a moment of utter darkness, when it occurred to me that I wanted to die, too. How could I go on with my own life when Fd taken hers?

I snapped out of that very quickly. First of all, I realized that Dante was safe now, which was what Fd wanted all along. And second, I couldn't very well hit myself over the head with the tire iron. So the moment passed.

If the truck had had a trunk, I'd have hidden her in there. She was smaller than me. I could lift her easily. But there was no trunk, so I had to settle for

rolling her limp body underneath the truck and leaving her there. Couldn't very well toss her into the pond. It was one solid, shiny sheet of ice. I kicked a few dead leaves in on top of her, hoping they'd hide the bright red coat she was wearing.

I wondered as I left the woods and loped back along the road toward my house if she'd told anyone she was meeting me. When I'd called her, Fd told her that Dante had a surprise for her, that she was to meet him at his place, on the road by the woods. She had answered the phone when I called, so if she hadn't told anyone else who she was talking to, I was safe enough.

I didn't go straight home. Too upset. I was afraid my mother would see something in my face. I hid out in the Swansons' barn for a couple of hours. They were in Kentucky, antique shopping, Fd heard, and were staying overnight. If anyone asked where I'd been all evening, I could always say I'd hitchhiked to the library in Felicity, so much better than our tiny branch library, and I'd gone down to the computer room. The computer cubicles are private, so Fd have a good excuse for not having been seen.

But I wasn't really worried. There wasn't any reason for me to be a suspect.

And I have to say, it really didn't occur to me that Dante would be. It should have, I know. But it really didn't. Like I said, it wasn't as if Fd thought things through. If Fd ever for one minute thought that Dante would be accused, I wouldn't have done it.

<<<4

Well... yeah, I guess I would have, because she still would have made me furious and I still would have lost my cool. But I would have hidden her somewhere else, at least, and got rid of the tire iron. I just wasn't thinking. It wasn't as if I'd ever done this kind of thing before.

What did I feel as I lay huddled in the sweet-smelling hay in the Swansons' barn? Nothing. I felt nothing at all. I kept hearing the sound the tire iron made against Christy's skull. It wasn't the sharp crack of a home run when the bat hits the ball and you know that one's long gone, out of the park. It wasn't like that at all. More like a heavy, booted foot stomping down on a melon. That kind of sound. Disgusting. Sickening. And so ... final.

There in the Swansons' hayloft, I heard again the shocked whoosh of air that came from her mouth when the tire iron hit, though she didn't cry outc And I saw her fall again, face forward onto the ground. But still I felt nothing. It was as if, after that one black moment when I wanted fiercely, passionately, to take it all back and realized that I couldn't, I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to make myself crazy feeling things. Things like regret. It was too late for that. Regretting is nothing but wasted energy anyway, since it can't change a thing. Better not to have done the deed in the first place.

She deserved it, that's what I had to tell myself. She was ruining everything and then, even when I begged her, she refused to stop. Refused! What choice did I have?

When Dante was arrested the following morning, I wasn't worried. Because he hadn't done anything. Who knew that better than me? He was innocent, so how could anything bad happen to him?

It couldn't.

That's what I told myself.

But I was wrong.

cause the sheriff is jumping to conclusions, doesn't mean we have to. That building is on its last legs and everyone knows it. If J were over one hundred and thirty years old, my beams would be collapsing, that's for sure."

"I need to go home," Maggie said suddenly, reaching out with one hand and grasping Helen's arm to steady herself. "I'm dizzy."

Scout lowered her to one of the steps. "Sit down," he ordered. "I'll go get the Jeep. It's in the parking lot. Wait here."

Maggie smiled wanly. As if she were in any shape to do anything but wait. "Are you guys in a big hurry to get home?" she asked while they waited. "You could come to my house. I'll feed you." Being alone would almost certainly mean a mental replay of that black, terrifying moment in the dark, airless passageway beneath the courthouse when the ceiling had collapsed. She wasn't ready to deal with those thoughts yet. And now she had the sheriff's weird suspicions to worry about, too. Although Scout was probably right. The building was so old. "We'll sit out on the back porch. I can rest there. That should get me into shape for the fund-raiser tonight."