Shadow of the Past (18 page)

“Just because you’ve been in my house
doesn’t mean you can just talk to my nephew whenever you want. I’m
still responsible for him.”

“I know,” David said, “but if you could
just calm down, we can talk about this rationally.”

“Rationally my ass,” Joe said. “I get a
call down at work,” he tugged on the postal jacket for effect, “to
say that the police are going to talk to my nephew and you wanna
talk ‘rational’ to me? Like hell, buddy! If you want to talk to
him,” he jabbed a thick finger in Mark’s direction, “then you talk
to me, and my lawyer, understood?”

“Mr. Nelson,” David started again, but
Joe waved him off.

“Don’t fucking ‘Mr. Nelson’ me,
alright? Save that shit for someone else, ‘cause I ain’t buyin’.
Last I checked we had rights.”

David’s eyes narrowed, and
then he said. “Fine, if you want to do this the hard way, we will.
I’ll take Mark down to the police station and we’ll wait there
for
Mark’s
lawyer.
I just wanted to ask him a few questions, but if you want a lawyer
present that’s your right. Agreed?”

“Good.” Joe said, crossing
his arms and puffing out his chest like he’d won something. He
looked at Mark and said, “You go with him. Don’t say
anything
, get
me?”

Mark just nodded.

Joe looked back at the Detective and
then turned on his heel and left, not even looking at anyone
else.

“C’mon, Mark,” Detective Prescott said.
“I’m parked on the street.”

They left the building and Mark’s heart
sank. David had come in an unmarked car but it was flanked by two
squad cars. There weren’t any cuffs and Mark knew that you couldn’t
see David’s badge, but it was obvious to anyone looking out the
window where Mark was going. If Mark knew anything about high
school kids, he knew they were all looking out the
window.

His guidance counselor gets
killed and then he’s taken away by the cops! Holy shit he’s as
crazy as they always said he was.

Thanks Joe, he thought. I really needed
a lawyer to lie and tell them that I don’t know
anything.

The questioning took a pathetically
short amount of time. Mark told David he’d had an appointment with
the guidance counselor during lunch that day. They talked about a
fight he had been in the week previous. He hadn’t had any
interaction with her before then. That night he’d been home,
upstairs in his room all night. All in all, it was a terrific waste
of thirty minutes.

Mark had been more emotional in his
last visit and been close to that in the Vice Principal’s office,
but the car ride to the station and the wait for his Uncle and
lawyer to join them did exactly what David hoped it wouldn’t: calm
him down and make him less like to give something away. The lawyer
that Joe Nelson showed up with looked like he’d been picked
randomly from the phone book and had been barely been told what was
going on. Mark, Joe and the lawyer spoke for only a couple of
minutes before they told David they were ready for his
questions.

“Do you know anyone that might want to
hurt her?” David asked.

It was the one time that Mark
hesitated. “No, I don’t. I didn’t really see her much.”

“Until the fight.”

“Yeah.”

“And you two argued because
why?”

Hesitation again. “It was stupid. She
was trying to help and I didn’t want her to bother me. She thought
I should do mediation or something because of the fight and I just
wanted to be left alone.” There was a genuine crack in his resolve
then. “She was just trying to help. I wish I’d been
better.”

“Better?”

“Nicer. I mean nicer.”

He hadn’t meant nicer, David was sure
about that, and it left him with more pieces of the Mark Watson
puzzle than he’d had before. A puzzle that was like a polar bear in
a snow storm.

Chapter
Eighteen

“I do not need this,” Joe
shook his head from side to side like a mule. “
We
do not need this. First the fight
and now this? You are really fucking lucky that Morty was able to
come down and help you out. You’d be in deep shit if I didn’t know
a lawyer, you know that?”

“I thought Morty was a tax attorney,”
Mark said, head leaning against the passenger window.

“Yeah, but he’s all you’ve got so I
wouldn’t be throwing around that lip of yours.”

Life would’ve been so much easier on
them both if Joe didn’t insist on setting Mark up like that. When
he was a kid, Joe would tell him to watch his mouth and Mark would
run around the house with his jaw and lips jutting out, trying to
stare down at them. Clean up your act? Get me a broom. It was the
only thing Mark could think of to combat the comical pointlessness
of Joe’s tirade. As if that were the biggest thing Mark had to
worry about.

“I’m just saying if I
am
in any trouble, which
I’m not,” Mark said, “he wouldn’t be able to help anyway. He’d just
sit there and not say anything.”

“Oh, he’d say something! Believe me,
young man he most certainly would say something. You think you’re
so smart don’t you? If he hadn’t been there they would have twisted
things around and before you knew it you’d be sitting in some cell!
Do you even understand that?”

“Yeah, sure.” Now that he
was too old for childish mockery this was his only way of dealing
with Joe. Yes, you’re right. I’m wrong. I’m mistaken. I’m
worthless. I never will amount to anything. You’re right. You’ve
always been right.
They pulled into the
driveway and Mark got out as soon as the car stopped
moving.

“Hey! Hey!” Joe yelled,
rolling down his window. Mark stopped and turned to listen. “I’m
going back to work.
Someone
has to pay the bills around here. I want you up in
that room of yours till tomorrow. I don’t want to see your ass till
then, you get me?”

“Yeah,” Mark said, “and you can kiss it
then too.”

See, you were almost free
and then you had to go and do something like that.

Joe’s eyes narrowed and he
was out of the car before Mark even realized that he’d spoken. “You
think you’re so goddamn
smart
, don’t you?” He shoved Mark
hard, almost knocking him off his feet. “You ain’t too smart or too
big for a beatin', I’ll tell you that right now!” There was another
shove and this time Mark landed on his back.

“I will not tolerate that kind of shit
from some dumb punk who gets his dumb ass taken down to the goddamn
police, you hear me? I promised your Aunt I wouldn’t take my hand
to you, but I swear to GOD I will if you keep that kind of shit up,
do you get me?”

Mark nodded furiously. Joe
was practically on top of him now, finger pointing, face reddening,
and saliva flying. “Now,
Mr.
Smart
, get your worthless ass in that house
so I can get back to work. And don’t make any fucking plans,
because you are going to be in that house for a long time, do you
get me?”

Mark nodded again, and Joe turned back
to the car. Mark just sat there, and when Joe got behind the wheel
and saw Mark still sitting there, he yelled “Go!” so loud Mark was
sure the force of it was what pushed him to his feet.

The ceiling above his bed was
fascinating, Mark realized. He’d been staring at it for hours since
he’d gotten home, hoping that he’d drift into some sort of
dreamless sleep he’d never wake up from before anything else
epically shitty happened to him.

Instead, the phone rang. The chances
were slim that whoever was on the other end wanted to kill him, so
he figured he’d pick it up.

“Mark, are you okay?” Christine
asked.

“Yeah, I’m alright. It was no big
deal.”

“Really? Steve said that he heard from
someone that you were taken to the police station. Is that true,
‘cause that sounds like a big deal.”

“It got around that fast, huh? Why am I
not surprised?”

“Mark, please! Are you okay? They’re
saying on the news that Ms. Kennedy was killed at the school last
night!”

“Yeah, that’s what they told me. They
just wanted to ask me some question because of Clara but it was no
big deal.”

“Mark,” she said, letting out a deep
sigh. “These are the police, okay? They don’t just haul you down to
the station and put you in a room for nothing. And . .
.”

“And what?”

“What about those dreams? You said you
told Ms. Kennedy about dreams you were having and that she thought
that it was serious, but--”

“But nothing! I don’t know what she
thought! She got all weird and was making a way bigger deal about
the whole thing than it really was.”

Nice way to speak of the
dead. Well, the murdered. The murdered because of . . . well, let’s
not make a big about it.

She was quiet for a long time, and then
said “But why would she think it was such a big deal? What did you
say?”

“It was nothing.”

“Mark, how could it be nothing if she
thought this and now--”

“Now what? Now she’s dead, and that
means what?”

“I don’t know what it means, Mark! It’s
just weird and fucked up that this happened, again, and I
just--”

“Oh, ‘again?’ That’s great. Don’t worry
I can assure you that I don’t make a habit of this.”

There was a long pause.

“I’m just trying to help Mark,” she
said. “You don’t have to be so fucking defensive about it. This is
a big deal.”

“I know it’s a big deal! I
know because it’s happening to
me
, okay?
I’m
the one whose friend was
killed.
I’m
the
one who got taken into the Police station in front of
fucking
everyone
,
okay? So don’t you tell me that this is a
big deal
, okay? I kinda fucking got
that already.”

The pause was longer this
time. “I know you’ve had a really bad day so I’m not going to tell
you to fuck yourself, which is what I’m
dying
to do, by the way. I’m just
trying to be supportive and help you out because you’ve laid some
pretty heavy shit on me and I’m just trying to figure out how to
deal with it, okay?”

He was chewing back the next wave of
bile and anger when he remembered Ms. Kennedy, bleeding to death in
the fire light. He remembered Clara, and her head rolling across
the floor towards him. If he didn’t watch his mouth then she could
be next.

“I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to
help and this whole thing has just been so fucked up.”

“I know,” she said. “I just don’t know
why this is happening. Why would someone do this?”

“I don’t know. But Christine, they were
just dreams. I promise. I don’t know why Ms. Kennedy got so excited
about them, but they weren’t any big deal. I promise.”

“Okay. Okay, that’s fine. I just . . .
it’s scary, y’know? And I just want to know what’s going
on.”

“Believe me, I know the feeling. I’m so
sorry that this is something you have to deal with and I hate the
fact that you have to put up with me being a basket case about it
on top of everything else. I’d totally understand if you want to
just jump ship right now and never talk to me again.”

He held his breath though the silence
on her end of the line, and then she let out a long sigh. “Don’t
say that, Mark. I mean, this is pretty fucked up but I want to be
able to help. I just remembered you said she got all weird and I
hoped that she didn’t say something to anyone else about it and for
the cops to take it the wrong way. God knows how touchy everyone is
with that kind of stuff now.”

“Yeah, I know. It was just questions,
okay? Nothing major, no intense grilling. Or any of that Law and
Order shit.”

“Thank god. So . . . your dreams are
okay?”

“Not great, but nothing
serious.”

“Okay. Look, I better go. I think my
Mom would freak if she knew I was talking to you.”

“Good news travels fast,
huh?”

“Something like that. I’ll see you
tomorrow, okay? Take care of yourself.”

“I’m trying.”

He was pulled awake from a shallow and
dreamless sleep by the door to his room slamming open.

“Hey!” Joe yelled up the
stairs.

“Yeah?” Mark said, looking over to
check the time. It was after midnight, which meant the Drunk Uncle
Index was about as high as it was going to get.

“Hey! Get down here when I’m talking to
you, dammit!”

Mark sighed and walked to the top of
the steps. “Yeah?”

“I’m not gonna put up with that
bullshit like from before, y’hear?” Joe bellowed, leaning on the
door frame.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry,” Mark said.
He didn't mean it and it probably didn't look like he did. Joe
wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t notice.