Shadowmaker (19 page)

T
he dispatcher may have thought I was some nervous nut, scared of the dark, but when he laughingly told the sheriff about someone calling because dogs were barking on her road, the sheriff knew what to do. At least, that’s what he told me after he’d called an ambulance to take B.J. to the hospital.

“Check the television set and the microwave in the attic for fingerprints,” I told him. “And B.J.’s gun too. Ballistics will match his gun with the bullet that killed the carnival worker.”

“You through tellin’ me how to do my job?” he asked, then seemed to relent as he added, “We got us a good case. Travis turned up with Duke and Delmar, all of ’em scared puppies, yippin’ out everythin’ they know about B.J. gettin’ ’em into all this. According to what they told me, the
robbery got out of hand, and B.J. panicked, pullin’ the trigger. Far as Lana Jean’s concerned, the others didn’t know what B.J. had done until afterward.”

“They’re just as guilty as he is,” I said.

“Maybe, if you’re talkin’ about being morally wrong,” he said, “but turnin’ state’s evidence, they won’t get near the same sentence as B.J.” He paused and thought a moment. “B.J.’s family came to Kluney around the late fifties, from New Jersey, as I remember.”

I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “So that makes them outsiders,” I said. “But B.J. was born in Kluney.”

Sheriff Granger threw me a suspicious look, but he said, “When young people choose evil over good it’s a terrible waste. Edmund Burke wrote, ‘What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.’ ”

And what shadows we create
, I thought.
B.J.—so desperate to feel important that he’d conceived the idea of Blitz, and so furious at being mislabeled a tagalong in class, instead of the instigator of the crimes, that he’d almost given it away by saying, “It was my …” My idea.

The sheriff said he’d stay with me until my mama came home, but I wasn’t frightened any longer, just terribly, terribly angry that because four guys had been so stupid two innocent people had been killed.

In spite of all that had happened, I went to the Future Farmers dance with Billy Don. I actually had a good time. It felt good to be doing some normal high school stuff. I told Billy Don I’d be leaving Kluney, and yet, I felt happy
to have a good memory of the place, because the dance was fun.

During August, Mom finished her novel, and we moved back to Houston. I returned to the High School for the Performing Arts and my wonderful ballet instructor.

Finally, I was honest with Mom. “The way your love of writing gets inside you and you can’t think of anything else—that’s how my dancing makes me feel.”

“You never told me,” Mom said.

“If I had, you wouldn’t have moved to Kluney and written your novel.” I grinned and asked, “Aren’t you glad now I didn’t?”

At first I was happy to be home, relieved to be far away from the shadowmakers and all the fear and pain they’d caused. But almost immediately Mom became involved in investigating a huge housing development that had been built in northeast Houston on landfill that covered a toxic waste dump, and last weekend eight people in Houston were killed in drive-by shootings, fights, and robberies at gunpoint.

I realized there are shadowmakers of all kinds, and you can’t hide from them. They’re everywhere.

Can something be done about them?

Only if we try.