The Hunt Chronicles: Volume 1 (22 page)

“I told you, I don’t
know.  Simon was the only one that spoke to us, and he didn’t say much, in
fact he…” I trailed off, my mind returning back to the night of the
party. 
He just stood there
Little
Reevan’s
voice said. 
He just stood there in the doorway while the other one
walked off.  He wanted to say something, but I don’t think he ever said
it.

“What?” Myron asked,
bringing me back to the car which was now slowing down as it passed the shops
on Pendleton Avenue.  “What are you thinking?”

“The kid, Simon,
just stood in the doorway watching us before he left.  The other one
walked off, but Simon just stood there staring at us, like he wanted to say
something but it was stuck in his throat.”

“How did Arnold know
the kid’s name?”  Myron asked, and it was a question I hadn’t ever
considered.

“I don’t know,
Myron, but he tipped the kid well enough to put some spring in his step. 
Tipped him more than I would tip a delivery boy.”

“Maybe Arnold did a
lot of business with these particular caterers?  Maybe he got to know the
kid before that night?”

“Could be,” I
replied, but something still wasn’t right.

“Well, we’re here,” Myron
said, bringing the cruiser to a halt in front of
Dunlowe
Caterers.  “If you’ve got any ideas, let’s hear them now.”  We sat in
the car for a moment just mulling over the facts we had already
collected. 
What did he want to say?  Why didn’t he say it?
 
Just as Little Reevan was about to spew out another sarcastic quip, a stringy
young man walked out the front door of
Dunlowe
Caterers.  My eyes opened wide as the young man turned and eyed the
cruiser, then hunched up his shoulders and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Stop him, Myron,” I
said very quietly.  There was no way the boy could have heard me, but I
whispered anyway.

“What’s that
Professor?”  Myron asked.

“Stop that kid,” I
said, nodding my head towards the scruffy stranger.

“Is that him? 
Is that Simon?”

“No,” I answered,
still speaking quietly.  “It’s the other one.”

“What are you
doing?”  The kid screamed as Myron grabbed his collar and tossed him
against the front of the building.  “What the hell?”

“Tommy Hall,” Myron
said, peering down at the skinny twerp with a smile.  “I didn’t recognize
you with that black hair.  Do that to piss off your old man?”  The
kid, Tommy, tried to make a break for it, but Myron was fast for such a big
man.  He slammed his huge palm into Tommy’s shoulder, slamming him back
into the wall again.  “Easy there, big man.  We need to talk.” 
Myron turned to me.  I had gotten out of the cruiser and was leaning
against the passenger door.  I straightened out and headed towards the
pair of them.  My reflection eyed me from the glass in the caterer’s door
as I passed.  I looked so much older than I used to.  “Is this the
one?”  I looked Tommy over.   His face meant nothing to me; I
never really saw it.  But his slouched posture and
pissy
attitude seemed very familiar.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“What?”  Tommy
asked, eyes bouncing between Myron and me.  “What did I do?”  Myron
tried to open his mouth but I jumped in before he could.  In the time it
took me to walk from the cruiser to the kid against the wall, I had formulated
a plan.

“You killed
someone,” I blurted out flatly.  “Isn’t that right?”  Tommy and Myron
both turned to look at me with wide eyes.  When Tommy spoke again, his
voice was high and trembling.

“
What?
” 
He exclaimed.  “I didn’t, I swear.  I didn’t hurt anyone.”  Just
then, another young man, Simon, came running out of the caterers.

“What’s going
on?  Tommy?  What did you do?”

“Nothing, I swear
man.  These old dudes are
buggin
’ out on
me!”  Simon turned to me and recognized me instantly, as I hoped he
would.  He never seemed to acknowledge
Myron,
he
just stared straight at me.

“We know he killed
Arnold Medley, Simon,”
  I
said.  “Did you
help him?  Did you help him rob and kill the old man?”

“No! 
No!”  Simon screamed.  “We didn’t hurt Mr. Medley!  We didn’t!”

“Come on, buddy, the
game is over,” Myron piped up, finally catching on.  I turned to him and
smiled.  Tommy saw me smile, just as I hoped he would.

“Don’t say anything,
Simon!” Tommy yelled.  “It’s a trick!  They’re playing us for
suckers.  They don’t know
nothing
!”

“Oh, we know it all,
Simon!”  I yelled back.  “What
happened
Simon?  He
tell
you to kill the old man after the
party?  You looked scared Simon.  You looked scared before you
left.  Did you know what was going to happen, Simon?”  Simon put his
hands up to his ears and shook his head.

“No!  No!”

“How could you
Simon?”  I wailed.  “He was good to you.  He was good to you,
Simon.  How could you?”

“Don’t listen,
Simon!  Don’t listen!  They don’t know
nothing
!”

“He’s dead, Simon,
he’s dead!  And it’s
all your
fault!”

“
No!
” 
Simon shrieked, and we all fell silent.  The sound that emanated from
Simon was powerful, and truthful, just as I had hoped.  We all shifted our
gaze to Tommy, who was nodding his head.  “It’s over,” Simon said, and
walked back into the shop.  Myron stood straight up and took a step
forward, but I put up my hand.  Myron froze in his tracks, still clutching
Tommy Hall by the shoulder.

Simon disappeared
into the shop, and we all stood silent for a few moments.  I turned to
Myron. “Wait here.”

I walked into the
empty shop and slinked behind the service counter.  I heard sounds of
rummaging, and followed them to the back of the shop.  A large walk-in
freezer stood gaping with its door ajar.  Simon was inside it, shifting
and lifting and tossing boxes aside.  He stood on his tiptoes and reached
way back on one of the shelves.  He pulled out something, something heavy,
wrapped in a cloth napkin.  He turned to me with tears in his eyes and
handed the heavy gift to me.  I clutched it with both hands as I
maneuvered the napkin open.  “I told him not to take it,”
  Simon
said, wiping his nose.  “It happened so
fast.”  In my hands lay a heavy golden rhino.  “I told him not to
take it,” he said again, and began to cry.

I walked out of the shop
with an arm around Simon.  Myron had moved Tommy into the back of the
police cruiser.  He was leaning against the door, talking into the open
rear window at the young man with his hands cuffed behind his back.  He
stood straight up as we neared.  “What’s that?”

“Looks like your
missing murder weapon, Sheriff.”  I said, handing the napkin to
Myron.  He
unwrapped
it, stared at the rhino with
wide eyes, and then wrapped it up again.

“Is he
talking?”  Myron asked, nodding his head towards Simon.

“Not much,” I
said.  Myron stepped forward and grabbed Simon by the arm.  He led
him to the door, opened it and let Simon get in.  I heard Tommy mutter
something to Simon, but I couldn’t make it out.  Simon just stared into
his lap, tears streaming down his face.  Myron walked back to me and
stared behind me into the shop.

“It was freezing,”
he said.

“He hid it in the
freezer,” I replied.

“How did you know
they had it?”

“I didn’t,
honestly.  Not for sure anyway.  I finally remembered Simon and Tommy
on the night of the party.  Simon looked nervous, anxious, kind of like he
saw something that bothered him.  I watched as Tommy walked straight for
the door without waiting for a tip or for his partner.  His hands were in
his pockets, and his shoulders were hunched.  He looked like a man coming
in from the snow, which didn’t seem that odd since Arnold said himself that his
office was an ice box.  Plus, they just finished unloading frozen desserts
onto a dessert cart.”

“But he wasn’t all
hunched over for warmth, I guess,” Myron said.

“No, he must have
pocketed the rhino when he and Simon were in Medley’s office.  That’s what
Simon saw, and that’s what shook him up.  I saw the rhino before we
started eating, the first time Medley had me in his office.  The second
time, before we all left, only the giraffe was there.”  I stopped, and
then added. 
“The giraffe and a ring of dust.”

“So when did they
kill him?”  Myron said bluntly, and I rocked back a few steps.  I was
expecting the question but it still landed like a blow to the gut.  It
just seemed so… inappropriate
. 
One of the boys was racked with
guilt twenty seconds after the crime was committed. 
Could they be
capable of murder?
I thought to myself.

“I don’t know,” I
said, “but something is-”

“Oh you
gotta
be kidding me!” A booming voice bellowed from behind
me.  “Simon?  Tommy?  What the hell is going on?”  Myron
quickly shuffled between me and a very bulky man that was barreling towards the
cruiser.  He was about my height, but built like a brick outhouse.  He
peered around the towering Myron and into the cruiser.  Simon peered out
through the open window, eyes dripping.  “What’s going on?”

“Easy
now, sir.
  Easy,” Myron said,
holding up a hand.

“Easy
nothing!”
  The man
replied.  “What’s my boy doing in there?”

“Which one’s your
boy?”  I asked.

“Simon, there,” he
said, pointing.  “Simon
Dunlowe
.  What’s he
done?”

“
Dunlowe
?”
 
I said, surprised. 
“The
caterering
Dunlowe
?”
  I asked, pointing a thumb to
the sign.

“Yeah,” he
said.  “Now what the hell is my boy doing in the back of a police car?”

“Mr.
Dunlowe
,” Myron said firmly, finally getting his
attention.  “You’re going to want to lock up shop here and come down to
the precinct.  You should probably call a lawyer too.”  Myron turned
and signaled for me to get into the passenger seat, which I did without
hesitation.  Myron walked around the front of the cruiser to the driver’s
side and got in.  Mr.
Dunlowe
ran up to the open
window behind mine and barked at his son.

“What’s going on,
Simon?  What has he done?”  He pointed to Tommy.  “What did you
do?” He yelled.  The man’s rage was clear, and Tommy Hall must have seen
it too, because he shuffled as far away from Simon’s side of the car as he
could get.

“Mr.
Dunlowe
!”  Myron hollered, starting the cruiser and
then turning around to look at him in the face.  “Get yourself down to the
precinct, sir.  Your boy is being arrested for the murder of Arnold
Medley.”

“Are you sure,
Myron?”  I asked as we sat in his office.  He got up and started
pacing the room.  “They’re just kids.”

“Tommy Hall has been
a bad seed since the day he was born.  It started as little stuff;
throwing firecrackers at passing cars, shoving cats in garbage cans, graffiti
on the wall of the
Cinemaplex
.  It was only a
matter of time before he went out of control and now he took someone with him.”

“But they’re both
saying he only took the rhino.  I can’t see either one of them having the
guts to come back later to bash Medley’s skull in with it, can you?”

“We’ll see,
Professor.  The rhino has a lot of carvings, a lot of detail. 
They couldn’t have gotten all of the blood off, not all of it.
 
The lab has it right now.  We’ll see what they have to say.”

“But they didn’t
steal anything
except the rhino
.”  I said. “Why kill him and leave everything
else in his office?  This doesn’t make any sense.”

“They’re kids, you
said it yourself.  Maybe the rhino was all they could grab during the
party, so they came back later and surprised Medley while he was on the
phone.  Dolores said his phone rang.  They might have walked right in
on him and panicked, killed him when he recognized them and ran.  Who
knows?”  I sat in my chair, nodding.  I didn’t buy it.  I
couldn’t but it.  Somewhere behind me, in two separate rooms, Simon
Dunlowe’s
father was tearing his son a new corn shoot, and
Tommy Hall’s mother was crying into her hands.  Lawyers for both boys were
trying to calm down their respective parents, but with little success. 
“Face it, Reevan,” Myron said sharply, “this is it,
it’s
over!  They might just be kids, but it’s over.”  Myron was breathing
heavily.  His face was red and sweaty.  I stood up and guided him to
his chair.  He sat down, and I bent over his desk to meet him face to
face.

“Relax, Myron. 
You’re right.  It’s over.  It’s all over.  The worst crime ever
committed in this town is over.  You did alright.”  I spoke softly
and slowly, and the big man’s chest slowed its frantic pace.  “And how
dare you call me by my first name.  I’m your Professor.”  He laughed and
went for his handkerchief once more, swiping it across his brow and then
holding it over his mouth.