Blind Spot (4 page)

Suki jumped up.

“It … it’s so horrible,” Alexa said as Suki crossed the room toward her.

“What?” Suki’s voice shot up an octave. “Did Brendan hurt you?” If that boy had done anything to Alexa, she would tear him in two.

“There … there was a shooting,” Alexa stammered.

“Are you okay?” Suki’s eyes scoured her daughter’s face and clothes for blood, while her fingers felt for broken bones. Alexa felt like a hummingbird, trembling within her tiny frame. Suki had to be careful not to press too hard. Alexa might break.

“I’m okay,” Alexa whispered.

Satisfied Alexa was indeed unhurt, Suki pushed her to arm’s length. “A shooting,” she said. “You say there was a shooting?”

“Yes.” Alexa twisted the end of her blouse. “A shooting.” She was confused, clearly disoriented, most likely in shock.

Wandering … disoriented …
Suki heard Detective Pendergast’s voice in her head. She held her breath.

Alexa seemed to come back to herself. “It … it was like I said. Like I saw …” She broke into hiccuping sobs. “It was awful.”

Suki tried to wrap her arms around her, but Alexa stiffened and leaned away. Suki persisted and finally Alexa allowed herself to be led, zombielike, to the couch. She sat huddled into herself, her body shaking violently as she cried. Suki looked at Kyle. He started to say something, but Suki shook her head.

“Devin … Devin …” Alexa began, then dissolved into tears again. Devin McKinna was Brendan’s best friend, and although he too made high honors, rumors were constantly circulating that linked Devin with fast driving, wild parties and just about everything negative with which a teenager could be involved.

“Devin …” Suki prompted.

“Devin shot Jonah,” Alexa whispered so low Suki could barely catch the words. “It was just like I told the policeman.”

Suki closed her eyes. Was this a rerun of yesterday? Was Alexa hallucinating, confusing fact with her own mental fiction? Suki opened her eyes and gently raised Alexa’s chin so she could see her face more clearly. She pressed a hand to each cheek to orient Alexa in reality and asked softly, “Alexa, honey, do you know where you are?”

Alexa’s eyes had the shell-shocked sheen Suki so often saw in her trauma patients, but they were also wide open and met Suki’s straight-on. “Mom,” she said slowly, but distinctly, “I know exactly where I am.”

Suki took in Alexa’s clear gaze, her unequivocal tone, her disheveled clothing, and she was filled with a dread like none she had ever known.

Alexa was telling the truth.

CHAPTER THREE

K
yle jumped up and stood in front of his sister.

“Jonah’s dead?” he demanded.

Alexa buried her head in her hands. “I don’t know,” she wailed.

He’s not dead, Suki thought, hope rising in her chest. “Do you think he’s all right?”

“I saw him fall when we drove away,” Alexa mumbled.

In her mind’s eye Suki saw Jonah gliding effortlessly across the basketball court. Darcy Ward raised her arms and a wide grin split her face as she watched her son score the winning basket against Lincoln-Sudbury. As Suki’s fear for Jonah cut through her fear for Alexa, Alexa’s words slowly took on meaning. Suki grabbed Alexa by the shoulders. “What do you mean, ‘when
we
drove away’?”

Alexa’s head jerked back from the roughness of Suki’s grasp, but she didn’t say anything.

“Did you leave Jonah by himself in the road?” Suki was appalled. “Were you driving?”

Alexa nodded mutely in answer to both questions.

Suki let go of her and reached for the telephone. “We have to call the police.”

After she hung up, Suki turned to Alexa. “They want us to come down to the station,” she said, although she knew Alexa understood this from hearing her end of the conversation. “I told them we’d be there in half an hour.”

The girl stared at Suki but said nothing. Tears streamed silently down her face.

“I know this is upsetting,” Suki said, well aware she was understating the obvious, “but you’ve got to pull yourself together. You’ve got to tell me everything that happened tonight. Then you’ve got to tell the police.”

Alexa’s face paled from gray to white and she started to sway. Suki grabbed her. “I’m with you, honey,” she just about shouted. “I love you. I’ll help you. We’ll get through this together.”

We’ll get through this together
. Suki heard the echo of Alexa’s voice from four years before. It was about a month after Stan left, a month in which fury had overwhelmed any other emotion Suki might have felt. Then, as that first burst of rage burned itself out, Suki found herself sucked into a vortex of sadness. She cried for three days, sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by used tissues and half-drunk cups of tea. On the afternoon of the third day, thirteen-year-old Alexa came home and laid her head on her mother’s lap. She wrapped her arms around Suki’s waist and said, “It’s going to be okay, Mom. I’ll help you. We’ll get through this together.” And they had.

Suki kissed her daughter’s forehead. “We’ll get through this together,” she repeated, although she had no idea what
this
might be.

Suki’s words seemed to have an effect. Alexa blinked and raised her chin. “We, we didn’t go to the movies,” she said softly. “There was a party at Devin’s …”

Suki stood and began to pace the small room. Alexa knew she neither liked nor trusted Devin McKinna—an antipathy now more than justified—and she also knew Suki would not have allowed her to take her car to a party at Devin’s house. Alexa had lied.

Suki turned from Alexa and looked out the window. The irate face reflected in the dark glass scared her. Whirling away from her anger, Suki sat down beside Alexa. “Okay,” she said. “Then what happened?”

Alexa had three rings on her left hand. She twisted two of them before speaking. “The party was a bust so we left and went driving around.”

“In my car,” Suki said before she could stop herself.

Alexa stared at the ring on her thumb as if she had never seen it before. Her remorse-colored bewilderment reminded Suki of Alexa as an eight-year-old, when she had found the scrambled eggs Alexa hadn’t wanted to eat for breakfast at the bottom of the basement steps. “I don’t know why I threw them down there,” Alexa had said through her tears. “It kind of just happened before I could stop it.”

Now, as then, Suki wrapped Alexa in her arms and pressed her to her chest. “It’s okay, baby,” she said. “Just tell me what happened.”

“I … I was driving,” Alexa said haltingly. “Just like I promised.”

Suki nodded. That Alexa never let anyone else drive was a stipulation to her taking the car. It was only insured for the two of them. Of course, there had been that one time last year when Jen had seen Jonah at the wheel of Suki’s Celica cruising through Witton Center.… But after being grounded without a car for a month, Alexa appeared to have learned her lesson.

“Brendan,” Alexa was saying. She stopped and swallowed hard. “Brendan was in front with me. Devin and Sam were in back.” She stood up and began to pace, outlining the same small square Suki had just walked.

Suki noticed the shoelace of Alexa’s right sneaker slapping around her foot and she had a powerful urge to tell her to tie it. She caught her lower lip in her teeth.

“We were on our way to the center,” Alexa continued. “You know, to cruise through the parking lot. See who was hanging out …”

Suki wanted to question her, to press her: “Was this what you saw yesterday? Was there blood all over the leaves?” Instead she took a deep breath. Alexa needed the space to tell the story her own way.

Alexa stared silently into the dark glass, just as Suki had done, her back to the room. When she turned, her eyes were clearer, her face set and determined. “Jonah was walking along the side of the road and Devin told me to pull over so he could talk to him.”

“I didn’t know Jonah and Devin were friends.” Jonah was a junior at Witton High, as were all the others, but he hung with a very different crowd. Devin and Brendan were faster and flashier, strutting their intellect and daring. Jonah, an athlete, hung out at the boathouse and didn’t waste his time on schoolwork. Suki had known all of them since they were in kindergarten together.

“They’re not,” Alexa said. “Brendan … Devin …” She looked as if she wanted to say more, but checked herself.

“So you pulled the car over …” Suki prompted, suddenly afraid if they didn’t get to the police station at the time she’d promised, the police might come get them. Even as she thought this, she knew it was ridiculous. Things didn’t work that way in Witton.

Avoiding her mother’s eye, Alexa pushed the toe of her sneaker into the carpet. “Before I even got the car to the side of the road, Devin was leaning over the front seat, screaming at Brendan to roll down his window.” She glanced quickly at Suki and then averted her eyes again. “You know how the back window on that side of the car’s broken? How it doesn’t open?”

“Please, Alexa,” Suki begged, all too familiar with the many failings of her ancient Toyota. “We need to get going. Just tell me what happened.”

“I’m trying,” she wailed. “I’m trying.”

“Okay,” Suki said quickly. “Okay.”

Alexa took a deep shuddering breath. “So Brendan rolled down his window and Devin stuck his head out.” She covered her face with her hands. “They were all yelling at once. I couldn’t see what was going on. They were all blocking my view. I don’t know what they were saying. But it got angrier and angrier and I got more and more scared. I kept begging Brendan to let me leave. But he wasn’t listening to me. He was yelling at Jonah, too.” She dropped her hands and looked at Suki, her wide gray eyes full of terror.

Leaning into the wall for support, Alexa continued. “So I decided to just go. At first I was scared Devin might fall out of the car. Then I didn’t care. But I was so nervous when I put the car into gear, I stalled out. Then, when I looked up, I saw there was a gun in Devin’s hand. I think I screamed, and I think Brendan told Devin to put the gun down and then told me to get going. Somehow I managed to get the car started, but as we drove away, Brendan and Devin, they, they were both leaning way far out the window. Then someone, Devin … then Devin shot Jonah.”

“Holy shit,” Kyle said.

“Watch your language,” Suki corrected instinctively.

“Like it really matters compared to this,” he retorted.

Without acknowledging the truth of Kyle’s comment, Suki turned back to Alexa.

“Then he fell down. I saw him in the rearview mirror. He looked so, so surprised.” Alexa covered her face again. “It was just the way I saw it yesterday. How he was lying. All the blood … all over the leaves …” She burst into tears and dropped to the couch next to Suki. “I didn’t mean it when I said I wished he was dead,” she wailed. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Where are the boys now?” Suki asked, trying to get a grip on the situation. “Where’s the gun?”

“They were going to throw it in the river,” Alexa mumbled. “I dropped them off at Devin’s house. Then I came straight home.”

Suki wrapped Alexa in her arms and held her tight as the enormity of the disaster flooded over her. A drive-by shooting. In Witton. In her car. A hurt child. Maybe a dead one.

And Alexa saw it all happen twenty-four hours before it had occurred.

They needed a lawyer, Suki thought as she drove the narrow river road that led to Witton Center, imagining she could smell gunpowder in the car. She had spent enough time in courtrooms to know that only the stupidest people talked to the police without a lawyer.

“Do you think I need a lawyer?” Alexa asked as Suki took the tight turns faster than she knew she should. The Concord River was high and swift, swollen by winter melt and recent rains. For a moment Suki imagined she saw something small and shiny skimming the tops of the waves, but when she looked again, there was nothing.

“I’m sure a lawyer won’t be necessary,” Suki said, trying to keep her voice light, her mind focused on things that could be explained, away from things that could not. “You’re a good kid who got a bad break. The police will see that right away. You’ve never been in any kind of trouble before—you got over fourteen hundred on your SATs and you’re going to be applying to Princeton early decision, for God’s sake.” She recognized the foolishness of her words as soon as she spoke them.

“But I left Jonah there all alone.” Alexa paused. “What if he’s … what if I could have saved him?”

Suki reached over and squeezed her knee reassuringly. “Let’s take this one thing at a time,” she said. One thing at a time, she repeated to herself. Shootings before the paranormal. Things for which there might be answers before things for which there were none.

When they got to the squat brick building that housed Witton’s police station, town offices and school department, the place was in an uproar. A vaguely familiar-looking woman was shoving a microphone at Charlie Gasperini, the chief of police. Channel 5’s
News at Six
anchor stood under a flood of lights and spoke into a camera with a self-important expression on his face. More uniformed police than Suki thought Witton employed raced in and out of the front door.

She gripped Alexa’s arm tightly and they marched up the steps. They found themselves in an anteroom so small that even its two glass walls didn’t mitigate the claustrophobia; it smelled like men. A uniformed officer with a sour expression on his face sat behind a half-open window. Rubbing her palms on her jeans, Suki shot Alexa what she hoped was an encouraging smile, then approached him. When she gave him her name, he buzzed them into the station. Before they’d cleared the doorway, a tall, lanky man with a bushy red beard and even redder hair, was upon them. He reached out a large hand to Suki.

“I’m Detective Kenneth Pendergast,” he said with a gracious smile. “Sorry I missed you yesterday.”

Yesterday. He knew all about yesterday. Suki had forgotten.

Unperturbed by her silence, the detective covered Suki’s hand with his for a second, then released it. “You have a son Kyle who plays soccer, right?” he asked. At her nod, he explained, “I sometimes help the coach out at the middle school. I remember Kyle—he’s a tough competitor. Good kid.”