Swallowing Stones (17 page)

“We can talk now,” he said, brushing her hair over her shoulder and lightly touching her face.

Amy smiled. It was just the tiniest curve of her full lips. But it was a smile. He was certain of it. “Later, okay?”

He watched her pull out of the parking lot, then took off for home. It was almost dinnertime. He felt lighter, somehow,
and his feet were moving faster than ever; his body seemed to fly. Being in love could do that to you.

Fifteen minutes later Michael bounded up the front steps, through the house, and into the kitchen just in time to find Ralph Healey, Doug Boyle, and two other men from the police force scanning his backyard with metal detectors.

d
oug Boyle and Sergeant Healey searched along the edge of the woods behind the house, while two cops Michael didn’t recognize carefully skirted the area around the large aboveground pool.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Michael’s mother said when he asked what was going on. “They have a search warrant.” Karen MacKenzie was at the back door, watching the police comb through her yard with their equipment. “They’ve been all over this house. They’ve gone through all our … things.” Her shoulders twitched, as if she had just told him she’d found cockroaches in the bread box.

His heart began to thump wildly. The police knew something. That was why they had come back.

He spotted his father and Josh outside, standing with their arms folded, side by side on the patio, looking as if they were prepared to defend their small two-story colonial with their lives if they had to. He tried to determine the look on his father’s face, to see how much he knew, but Tom MacKenzie’s face was blank, like that of a man stunned by an unexpected blow.

Michael looked over at the woodpile behind the garage.
No one was back there. But then, he seriously doubted the metal detectors would be able to locate the rifle where he’d hidden it: three feet in the ground below all that wood.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Doug Boyle disappear into the dense woods. He emerged a few minutes later holding something on the end of a stick. He studied it for a few minutes, then brought it to Ralph Healey. The older man called the other two officers over to look at what Boyle had found.

Michael’s father glanced toward the back door. Without a word, Karen MacKenzie punched open the screen door with the side of her fist and stepped out onto the patio. Michael followed her, although each step he took felt as if his feet were weighted.

Doug Boyle handed the stick, with something stuck on the end of it, to Healey, who dropped the object into a plastic bag, sealing it as he walked toward the patio. He held it out to Michael’s father. “Doug found this empty casing over in the woods there,” he said.

That was when Michael realized Boyle had purposely slipped a stick inside the shell in order to pick it up. He didn’t want to contaminate possible evidence.

Michael stared down at the two-inch casing as a wave of panic swept over him. Of course the empty shell would have been ejected after he fired the gun. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Why hadn’t he tried to find it?

“All you’ve got there is an empty casing,” Tom MacKenzie said. “How do you know it matches the bullet?”

Healey told Boyle and the other men to meet him out front. When they’d gone, he turned back to Tom MacKenzie. “The bullet that killed Charlie Ward was a forty-five-caliber, five-hundred-grain. One of those old lead bullets the government used to issue to the cavalry.” He pointed to the bottom of
the cartridge, where
.45-70 GOVT
was printed. “You don’t see too many of these around anymore. It didn’t come from a pistol. Too big.” He looked over at Michael. “The bullet came from a forty-five-seventy rifle, son.”

Michael felt a tightness in his throat. The bullet Ralph Healey described was identical to the ones Michael’s grandfather had given him along with the Winchester. At the time, his grandfather had explained that he’d had the bullets for years but that they were still good. He’d given Michael several rounds.

“Are you saying Mike fired that shot?” Karen MacKenzie asked, grabbing her husband’s arm for support.

Healey stuffed the bag with the casing into his pocket, then pulled out a pack of Marlboros. He looked apologetic as he lit a cigarette. “Sorry, I haven’t been able to kick the habit yet.” He took a long draw on the cigarette. “I’m not saying Mike shot it,” he told Karen MacKenzie. “I’m just saying it looks like it came from his rifle.”

Tom MacKenzie’s face had turned a deep red. Michael could see he was furious but working hard to control it. “That rifle was locked in my gun cabinet in the basement,” he sputtered. “I put it there myself.” He spun around and was almost nose to nose with Michael. “Do you know anything about this?”

Michael ran his tongue back and forth along his lower lip. “Well, I did take it out for a few minutes to show a couple of my friends.” This part was true. What he didn’t bother to mention was that he and Joe had then taken the gun back into the woods. Nor did he mention that he had left it propped next to the garage door later, while he was with Amy. “But I put it back.”

“Did you lock the cabinet?” His father narrowed his eyes.

Michael puffed up his cheeks, pretending to remember. “Sure. At least, I think I did.”

“You
think
you did?”

Michael could tell by the way his father was clenching his jaw that he was only seconds away from exploding.

“Dad … I’m sorry. I can’t remember.” He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. “I didn’t shoot that rifle, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Tom MacKenzie’s red face paled to a neutral pink. Michael had managed to defuse him for the moment.

“Well, then, who did?” his mother asked.

Michael forced himself to look at his mother. The fear in her face was terrible to see.

“Anybody could have fired it,” his father told Ralph Healey. “There were over forty people here that day.”

Sergeant Healey looked at Michael, then turned to Michael’s father. “Forty people?”

“It was Mike’s birthday,” Tom MacKenzie told him. “We threw him a big party. The rifle was one of his gifts.”

“So you’re saying maybe somebody decided to try it out when no one was looking?”

“Why not? Kids do crazy things these days.” But even as his father said this, Michael could see the desperation on his face. He was grasping at straws.

Ralph Healey took a drag of his cigarette, then squinted through the smoke. “You were here the whole time?”

Michael’s parents nodded in unison.

“And you didn’t hear a rifle shot?”

“It was the Fourth of July,” Michael reminded him, working hard to steady his voice. “People were setting off firecrackers and cherry bombs all over the neighborhood. Nobody would have known the difference.”

Michael’s father sat down on the lounge chair. “Do you have any idea who might have done something like this?” he asked Michael. “I mean, which of your friends could have sneaked off to the woods back there and fired the rifle?”

Michael shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see anyone touch it.”

Josh had remained unusually quiet amid all the questions. But now he said, “What about Joe?”

They all turned to him. Michael felt the prickle of sweat on his face. He knew where this was going.

“What
about
him?” his father asked.

“Why did he suddenly want to borrow Mike’s rifle?” Josh looked incredibly pleased with himself. A thin, crooked smile spread across his face. “Then when Mike wants it back, Joe tells him it was stolen. If you ask me—”

“We’re not asking you,” Michael interjected angrily. “You’re talking about a friend of mine.” But it was too late.

Ralph Healey tossed the half-smoked cigarette on the ground and crushed it beneath his shoe. Michael could see he was giving Josh’s idea serious thought, although he didn’t say anything.

Michael’s eyes were so dry they had begun to burn. He wondered if he had dared to blink even once since he’d come home and found half the Briarwood police force scouting his backyard. His tongue felt like an oversized cotton ball. “At least forty other people were here that day,” he reminded Healey. “I know it doesn’t look good for Joe, but you can’t pin something on him just because of some lousy coincidence. It’s not his fault the gun was stolen.”

“If it
was
stolen,” Josh said.

Michael fought the urge to pummel his brother into the ground.

Ralph Healey shook his head. “I’ll need a list of everyone who was here that day,” he said. “Maybe somebody saw or heard something.”

a
fter the police had gone, Michael went inside with his family. They all sat down at the kitchen table as if they were going to eat dinner, although there was no food on the table and no dishes had been set out.

For a while no one said anything. Michael looked up at the clock. It was past seven-thirty. His father and Josh had missed
Jeopardy
! and hadn’t seemed to notice. If he had not felt so miserable, he might have found that funny.

“I bet it
was
that Sadowski kid,” his father said. “This is just like something he’d do.” Michael knew his father needed to believe Joe had fired the rifle, because it was too terrible to imagine it might have been one of his own sons.

“Tom, we don’t know that for a fact.” Karen MacKenzie reached over and pressed her hand gently on his back.

“Can we have pizza?” Josh asked. “I’ll call.”

His mother nodded. “Go ahead. I don’t feel much like cooking.”

Tom MacKenzie pulled a can of beer from the refrigerator, then leaned against the refrigerator door. He stared down at Michael. “You know anything more about this?”

“Dad, I told the police everything I know.”

His father, seemingly satisfied with Michael’s answer, took a long swallow of beer. Then he began to drone on about the afternoon’s investigation. Michael had to force himself to listen. His mind was racing all over the place. According to his father, the police had gone through the entire house, probably looking for the Winchester, before bringing out the metal detectors
and scanning the backyard. If they had come to the house looking for the rifle, Michael suddenly realized, then they had never believed it was stolen in the first place. And his parents were probably thinking the same thing, which was why his father was so desperately trying to point the finger at Joe.

All this time Michael had been living with a false hope, believing that he had gotten the cops off his back after the first round of questions three weeks ago. And all this time they had suspected him. They had known all along that the bullet was a .45-caliber, 500-grain. When their investigation turned up no other guns in the area big enough to fire a bullet that size, they had come back to the one person who did own such a gun: Michael MacKenzie.

Things had gotten far worse than he’d ever imagined. At least he had bought a little time by telling Ralph Healey he’d give him a list of the kids who were at his party. It would take a while to question all of them. Michael felt a twinge of guilt. Somehow he had managed to drag forty of his friends into the mire. But that wasn’t what was making him feel sick; he knew they’d be questioned and that would be the end of it. No. What made his empty stomach turn sour was that he had done almost nothing to defend Joe. He had let Josh mouth off about his theory, raising Healey’s suspicions. He could have kept the investigation from going any further. He could have pointed the police in a different direction. All he had had to do was stand up and say that he was the person they were looking for. That he was Charlie Ward’s murderer. Instead he had kept silent.

Now he had no choice. He would have to tell Joe what he had done. He had to let him know what had happened before the cops showed up at Joe’s house with a warrant for his arrest.

m
ichael lay awake most of the night wondering how to break the news to Joe. Then, while the neighbor’s cat foraged below his window for crickets in the early-morning hours, Michael finally fell asleep, only to awaken a few hours later in sheets soaked with the sweat of his nightmares.

That morning he called Joe and told him to meet him in the parking lot at the pool after work. If Joe was surprised or even curious, he didn’t let on, simply saying that he’d be there.

Michael had seen Joe only a few times since the day he had come by Michael’s house to tell him how it had gone with the police. He wondered if Joe thought he was avoiding him, although Joe hadn’t exactly been seeking him out, either. But whatever was going on between them, Michael needed to believe he could still count on his friend. And sure enough, after work he found Joe leaning against his red Mustang in the parking lot, arms folded, head tipped forward as if he were dozing. He wore a rolled-up blue bandanna tied around his head. The single skull earring danced in the late-afternoon sunlight.

“What’s the deal?” he said when he saw Michael coming.

“Not here,” Michael told him.

Joe eyed him intently, then shrugged. “So get in the car. We’ll go wherever you want.”

Michael hadn’t thought about going anywhere in the car. He hadn’t set foot inside the Mustang since the day he failed his first driver’s test. He felt his chest tighten as Joe opened the car door. His nerves on edge, he listened as the engine roared awake, bringing the radio on full blast.

“I miss my CD player,” Joe said when Michael finally managed to force himself into the passenger seat. Then he grinned. “Think the cops’ll ever find the guy who stole it?” When Michael didn’t respond, Joe leaned down and pulled a can of beer from underneath the driver’s seat. He tugged at the metal tab, and warm beer erupted onto his hand like white lava. He chugged the entire can within seconds, crushed it beneath his foot, and tossed it under the car parked next to him. “Can’t get caught with an open can in the car while I’m driving,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Rules are rules.” Then he laughed.

Michael was painfully aware that Joe was rarely without a can of beer in his hand these days, at least on those few occasions when he’d seen him. Before, he had drunk only at parties. But this was something new. If Michael allowed himself to think about it, which he tried not to, he would have to admit that Joe’s drinking had gotten worse since they had learned about Charlie Ward’s death.