Blur (Blur Trilogy) (24 page)

CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT

Even though there was no school toda
y,
Daniel woke up at his normal time and was frustrated he hadn’t been able to catch up on an
y
sleep.

Ma
yb
e his sleeplessness was causing all this.

Blurs.

Da
ym
ares.

Trapped forever in a dream.

He made it to the kitchen just as his dad was getting read
y
to leave for work.

“Are
yo
u gonna be able to take a da
y
off this week?” Daniel asked him.

“Hopefull
y
tomorrow morning, at least. He
y,
I thought I heard
yo
u talking with someone in
yo
ur bedroom last night. Was K
yl
e over?”

“No, I was . . .” He almost lied, almost said that there was a speech he was supposed to give at school, that he was practicing, but this time he gave his dad the truth instead. “It was Stac
y.
The girl I told
yo
u about the other da
y.
”

“In
yo
ur room? At that hour?”

“It’s not like that. We were just talking.”

“I don’t like
yo
u having girls over late. You know that. Not alone in
yo
ur bedroom.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorr
y.
It just sort of . . . Well, it came up out of nowhere.”

“So when do I get to meet her?”

Daniel realized that the last his dad had heard, Stac
y
was supposed to be going to the homecoming dance with him but had never shown. “Um . . . I’ll introduce
yo
u. The next time she’s around.”

“But not at that time of night.”

“Right.”

“B
y
the wa
y,
the FBI e-mailed me earl
y
this morning. The onl
y
prints on those glasses were some partials the
y
couldn’t identif
y,
and
yo
urs.”

“From when I picked them up.”

“Right.”

“So how did the
y
have m
y
prints on file?”

“I did. From that criminolog
y
project
yo
u gu
ys
did last
ye
ar for
yo
ur political science class. I included them when I sent the glasses down.”

“Oh.”

Another dead end.

Since Daniel had missed school on Monda
y,
his homework had piled up, and he spent the morning finishing some of it for tomorrow so he’d be free this afternoon for his trip to Mr. McKinne
y’
s house with K
yl
e.

He’d gotten his assignments from Nicole and now read the two chapters Miss Fl
yn
n had assigned for Frida
y.

Poetr
y.

Honestl
y,
Daniel didn’t even get what some of the poems were about. However, rather than anal
yz
e them, Miss Fl
yn
n usuall
y
chose to just let the poems speak for themselves and didn’t offer anal
yt
ical explanations like other teachers seemed to be into doing. So at least he wouldn’t be expected to dissect them.

Considering what he’d been going through latel
y,
however, one of them reall
y
struck him.

There is a moment be
yo
nd this moment

I finger it, fragile and delicate and hopeful,

torn sweetl
y
from the fabric of

the robe of time. I touch it, glancing

m
y
fingertips across its promises.

And something stirs deep within me

wondering,

buo
ya
nt,

and wild.

Could it be that

ever
yt
hing reall
y
matters?

The wind tastes like

spring-flavored freedom

this time of
ye
ar.

—Alexi Marënchivek

When he read it, he didn’t tr
y
to take it apart word b
y
word, but rather tried to “drink in its essence,” as Miss Fl
yn
n put it. “Stop tr
yi
ng to understand poems,” she’d told them one time in class, “and tr
y
to understand
yo
urself better after reading them.”

Well, he understood one thing: he hadn’t tasted spring-flavored freedom in a long time, at least not since hearing about Emil
y’
s death.

Afternoon came quickl
y,
and at one o’clock he met up with K
yl
e on the street that ran along the far side of the woods that la
y
behind Mr. McKinne
y’
s house.

“Are
yo
u sure
yo
u want to do this?” K
yl
e asked.

“Not reall
y.
But I want some answers. And if we can find out an
yt
hing while he’s gone, we can tell m
y
dad and have him look into things. But I think we need to confirm that Mr. McKinne
y
isn’t home before we do an
yt
hing.”

“I’m not exactl
y
sure how we can do that without knocking on his door, and that might be a little counterproductive.”

“How about this,” Daniel offered. “We call school, ask if he’s there, sa
y
we need to change a parent appointment with him this afternoon, something like that.”

“Cool.” K
yl
e drew out his cell and without hesitation found the number and phoned the school’s office. “Hello?” He tried to disguise his voice but sounded more like he had something stuck in his throat than like someone’s dad. “Is Mr. McKinne
y
there? I need to reschedule a meeting about m
y
son later this afternoon.”

He waited for a repl
y,
then said, “Wait, that’s our bab
y
cr
yi
ng. I’ll call
yo
u back. Thanks.”

He hung up.

“He’s there.”

“Alright,” Daniel said. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE

As the
y
made their wa
y
through the woods toward the house, Daniel said, “Stac
y
stopped b
y
m
y
house last night after I got home.”

“Reall
y.
Stac
y
showing up in the middle of the night at
yo
ur place. What a shocker that is.”

“She came b
y
to ask me about the glasses.”

Daniel hadn’t intended to sa
y
that. It just came out, and onl
y
when K
yl
e asked him what glasses he was referring to did he realize what he’d said.

He took a deep breath and explained ever
yt
hing about the broken glasses he’d found on the beach, about the missing lens, about how the FBI had looked them over for fingerprints and had onl
y
been able to identif
y
his.

“Wh
y
didn’t
yo
u tell me an
y
of this earlier?”

“I guess it was at least one promise I made to m
y
dad that I was tr
yi
ng to keep.”

“Well, it makes her death even more suspicious.”

“I know. An
yw
a
y,
like I was sa
yi
ng, Stac
y
asked me about
’e
m. Apparentl
y
she thought I was avoiding her, since she didn’t get an
y
of m
y
messages Saturda
y—y
o
u know, when I was tr
yi
ng to contact her about the dance. I guess something’s going on with her account or the phone compan
y
or something.”

When he said that, he realized he still hadn’t heard back after texting her last night, so ma
yb
e she hadn’t gotten that one either.

Daniel went on, “She suggested we tr
y
to find out who else was at the lake when Emil
y
went out there.”

“Makes sense. But how?”

“Ask around, I guess. I’m not sure.”

“Well, what are
yo
u thinking about her?”

“Stac
y?
”

“Yeah.”

“What do
yo
u mean?”

“I mean, do
yo
u still want to go out with her?”

“As opposed to Nicole?”

“Prett
y
much.”

The
y
were almost to the other end of the forest, and Daniel could see the back of Mr. McKinne
y’
s house. It looked like there was a wooden fence ma
yb
e four feet high surrounding his pool.

“I don’t know. I’m not reall
y
sure. I thought Stac
y
was blowing me off, but now I find out she wasn’t. With ever
yt
hing else going on, it’s actuall
y
a hard week to sort things out.”

“I hear that.”

After scanning the area to make sure no one was around, the
y
stepped onto Mr. McKinne
y’
s propert
y,
approached the pool, and saw that it was empt
y.

It was apparentl
y
drained for the winter and gaped before them like a giant mouth, open and hungr
y
and waiting. No diving board. A mildewed waterline ran around its inner edge.

Looking at the house, Daniel saw that one of the basement windows did face this direction, so it was possible that Mr. McKinne
y
had been telling the truth. However, with the fence encircling the pool it didn’t look like the angle was right for him to have seen his wife dive in.

K
yl
e must have been thinking the same thing. “Ma
yb
e he put up the fence after she drowned?”

“Ma
yb
e.”

Daniel imagined the pool filled with water and what Mrs. McKinne
y’
s bod
y
might have looked like l
yi
ng at the bottom. For a moment the image became terrif
yi
ngl
y
rea
l—n
ot quite as distinct as the blurs when he’d seen Emil
y,
but the water, the bod
y,
even summer sweeping across the forest all appeared before him and—

“You oka
y,
dude?”

He looked awa
y
from the pool. “What?”

“You. Are
yo
u oka
y?
I was asking
yo
u about the cellar.”

“The cellar?”

K
yl
e pointed to an outside entrance to the basement, one of those angled sets of double wooden doors that opens outward so
yo
u can access a set of basement stairs. A padlock was threaded through the hasp, but it hadn’t been snapped shut.

“What exactl
y
were
yo
u asking me?” Daniel said, but he thought he alread
y
knew.

“What do
yo
u sa
y?
Just have a peek?”

“Inside?”

“To check the angle,
yo
u know, from the basement window to the pool.”

Daniel and K
yl
e stared at the cellar doors for a long time.

Mr. McKinne
y’
s wife was dead.

Emil
y
was dead.

But there was no proof either had been murdered.

Ma
yb
e he has something noting that he was out at the lake; ma
yb
e he had a fishing trip or something on the da
y
Emil
y
died. That might be enough for
yo
ur dad to start looking into this.

“He’s at school. We could slip in,” K
yl
e said. “He’ll never know.”

You looked around Emil
y’
s room. This isn’t an
y
different.

Yes, actuall
y
it is.

Sneaking into a gu
y’
s house was a lot more than just opening the wrong door on
yo
ur wa
y
to the bathroom.

“There’s not nearl
y
enough evidence pointing to him
ye
t.” K
yl
e was e
ye
ing the open padlock. “There’s no wa
y yo
ur dad could get in there, get a search warrant, whatever. We’re here, Mr. McKinne
y
isn’t. This is our chance to get some answers.”

Daniel scanned the neighborhood. It looked like onl
y
a couple homes had a view of the back of Mr. McKinne
y’
s house, but no one was outside. The shades appeared to be drawn.

The onl
y
wa
y
to stop these blurs is to figure out what’s going on.

And the onl
y
wa
y
to do that is to eliminate Mr. McKinne
y
as a suspect.

This might be their onl
y
chance to do that.

The
y
approached the house and Daniel slipped the padlock out of the hasp.

He flipped the doors open and started down the steps into Mr. McKinne
y’
s basement.