Jesus Jackson (16 page)

Twenty-eight

Okay, so I won't go into too much detail about what actually happened in the back of that limo, but I will just say that for the whole ride back to Cassie's house, I didn't spend too much time thinking about Alistair or Ryan or Henry or Jesus Jackson.

It all came back pretty quickly, though, when Cassie said, as the limo drove away, “So my mom went to some party and shouldn't be home until after one.”

I looked at my watch. It wasn't even ten yet. “All right, then.”

This was obviously good news on a lot of different levels, and I felt instantly at ease about the whole plan. After all, Alistair was being taken care of by Tristan, their mom was hours away from becoming an issue, and Cassie and I had the house to ourselves. So when Cassie excused herself to the bathroom, I laughed a self-satisfied sort of chuckle, and began confidently strolling around the house.

I soon made my way into the living room, where I found dozens upon dozens of the St. Claire family pictures, all framed on the walls and the coffee table and the TV stand and on windowsills: the St. Claires on vacation somewhere tropical, Alistair and Cassie as children on Santa's lap, Cassie's mom with some old woman (presumably her grandmother)—the usual type of stuff. As I was looking at these pictures, though, I started to become more and more aware of a potentially serious dilemma. Every time I looked at Alistair, I started to feel viscerally angered, almost to the point of violence (which I guess was natural), but every time I looked at Cassie, I smiled, felt lightheaded, and had this sudden urge to sigh.

Now, although I guess it should have been pretty obvious, this was the first time that this very disturbing fact actually surfaced in my mind: I was falling for, not just Cassie, but Alistair St. Claire's sister.

I know, I know: Duh. But you've got to understand that before this very moment I considered her more of a pleasant obstacle in my plan, a surprisingly enjoyable way to get through to Alistair. I looked up, catching my reflection in the window of the living room, when I felt Cassie's hand on my shoulder. I turned, now looking at her a bit more wearily, which she didn't seem to notice as she kissed me, hard, and then pushed me back onto the sofa.

Of course, as soon as I was on my back, looking up as Cassie took off her shirt and unclasped her bra, all of my thoughts about a conflict of interest came to an abrupt and immediate end. I tried to bring them back, thinking,
No, no no…. Focus…The plan…The plan…
But it was no use.

What followed was something like forty-five of the best seconds of my life, followed immediately by twenty of the worst possible minutes.

This is what happened:

There I was, lying on the sofa, my tongue exploring the reaches of Cassie's mouth while my anxious hands explored her body, when what did I hear, just on the other side of a thin plaster wall, but the opening of the front door, followed by the unmistakable sound of Tristan's voice, and then a far lower voice, surely belonging to none other than Alistair himself.

“Oh shit,” said Cassie. “Al.” And then she rolled off onto the floor, hiding between the couch and the coffee table as she struggled back into her shirt. From the front hall we could hear the footsteps and the voices clearly moving toward the living room, and on top of that, there were more voices and footsteps—quite a few more—steadily making their way in through the door. I grabbed Cassie's bra and stuffed it under the rug just as she hoisted herself back on the couch (disheveled, but presentable) just a second before Tristan and Alistair turned the corner and saw us.

They stopped for a moment, staring at us. Alistair, holding a case of beer, appeared surprised, and then angry; Tristan met my eyes for a moment—pleading, apologetic, embarrassed—and then turned away.

“What are you doing here?” asked Cassie, with a nervous giggle.

Alistair didn't even acknowledge her. He just glared straight at me. “Mom called earlier. She's staying over at Aunt Kim's. What happened to the party?”

I avoided meeting Al's gaze, as Cassie said, “Oh, I wasn't really feeling that great. So we were just—”

“Yeah, I know what you
were just
,” he broke in, as the rest of the guests filed in around the corner. Of course, it was both of the other stupidfucks who had been there when Ryan died, each clearly wobbling and obviously confused by my presence.

Phil, the tall one, looked as if someone had just asked him the square root of pi. “Al,” he said. “I don't get it. What's going on?”

Alistair looked from me, to Cassie, and back several times. I tried to get a read on things from Tristan, but she just avoided my eyes. Finally, Alistair said, “Nothing's going on. We're just having a few beers.” Then he strutted across the living room, sat down between Cassie and me on the couch, cracked open a can of beer, and handed it to me. “Relax,” he said.

The two meatheads clearly didn't need any convincing, and started right in on drinking, laughing, and speaking in some dialect of dumbfuck that seemed to resemble English, but just barely. Tristan found a seat at the end of the couch, clearly placing herself on the other side of Alistair and Cassie so I'd have no chance of making eye contact with her at all. When I did catch a glimpse of her, she was hunched over, head resting heavily in her hands, staring painfully at Alistair.

After a few minutes of hanging out with Al and the boys, I felt like scratching my eyeballs out, so I mumbled something about not feeling well, and speed-walked to the bathroom. Once safely locked in, I splashed some cold water in my face, stared at my bloodshot eyes in the mirror, and realized that my whole plan was officially screwed. So I tried to come up with an exit strategy. The first thought that came to me was the bathroom window, but I decided that would be a bit rash, and might ruin my chances of ever getting back into the house with Cassie. I then considered a few more options, all equally as useless: faking a seizure, chugging five beers and then stumbling out mumbling, passing a note to Cassie telling her to meet me outside so we can run away together to Mexico.

In the end, I decided that the best course of action would be to put up with it until an appropriate lull in the conversation, and then make up some excuse about a curfew and take off. I felt good about this decision, too. It seemed reasonable, doable, and perfectly sane…of course, it lasted all of about thirty seconds.

As soon as I stepped out of the bathroom, without even seeing it happen, I felt a hand grab my arm and pull me into a dark room. For a moment I thought (wishfully) that it was Cassie with a plan to get out of there. But it wasn't. It was Alistair.

He pushed me further past the door and turned on the light, revealing that it was his room we were in. “What's this…” I began.

“Shut it,” he said, closing the door.

“Sorry.”

Alistair came closer, leaning in mere inches from my face.

“This has to stop,” he growled. “Now.”

“What has to—”

“No. Shut the fuck up. You know what I'm talking about.”

I began to say, “I really don't know…” and then SMACK. He whipped his arm around and slapped his palm into the back of my head. “Ow! Jesus!” I screamed.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” he said, now pacing back and forth as I rubbed my scalp. “I didn't mean to…well, I did. I just—” He stopped pacing, and got real close again. “Look, I get it. I see what you're doing.”

He paused, as if waiting for me to say something, to confirm his suspicions. I remained quiet, and pissed off.

He continued, hushed and frustrated: “The snooping, the following, the spying, your little Chinese friend just lingering somewhere every time I turn my head, and now this crap with my sister. I get it. And it ends tonight.”

“Actually, he's Korean. But I don't know what you're—”

SMACK! He hit me again. Same spot, but a lot harder. My vision went purple for a second, and I dropped to my knees.

When my vision came back into focus, I realized that I was staring right at the tower for Alistair's computer. I peeked to the right a bit and, sure enough, there was the hard drive, right on the floor next the power chord. I snuck a look back at Alistair, who had now started pacing, and (I almost couldn't believe my eyes) he actually seemed to be crying. I saw my opportunity, and I took it: quickly grabbing the hard drive and stuffing it in my shirt.

“Whatever you're trying to get, whatever you're trying to find, just forget it.” His voice was cracking now. “There's nothing there. Just give it up and leave Cassie alone!”

It occurred to me at that moment that Alistair wasn't just some bully who might slap me in the head a few times. He was a murderer. Clearly not a rational or a cold-blooded one, but a killer, nonetheless. There was something honestly crazy and uncontrollable in his eyes right then. Something sad and tortured and undeniably dangerous.

“Okay, man,” I said. “Fine. It's over.”

He nodded, somewhat spastically. “Good,” he said, wiping his eyes and nose on his sleeve. “Good.” And then he walked out of the room.

I stayed there for a few seconds, trying to decide what to do next. Clearly, my suspicions about Alistair were correct, but if he knew I was on to him, and he'd already gotten rid of the evidence…what would I wind up with but a concussion, or maybe worse?

But then I saw it: his phone.
Alistair's actual phone
, lying right there on the floor by the bed. He must have dropped it while he was smacking me around.

This was so much better than a copy of his hard drive (which probably didn't contain anything other than plagiarized papers and porn, anyway). I picked it up, and began scrolling through his messages, going back to the day that Ryan died. And then I saw it: two lines of text—one sent to Ryan, and one received back.

Sent: We got it. Meet in usual spot in woods?

Received: Great. We'll be there.

So, what else was I to do? I thought about Cassie, back there in the living room, sitting miserably with Alistair and Tristan and the boys. And I sighed, resolving myself to my fate. When I heard what sounded like Alistair being greeted by his friends in the living room, I put the phone in my pocket, opened the window, and ran out into the night.

Twenty-nine

I began speed-walking through the darkness as I scrolled through every text message, app, and voicemail on the phone. As far as I could tell, there was nothing else even remotely tied to Ryan's death, but I was sure that those two messages would be enough. They had to be…

I was about halfway home when I noticed a car following me, barely crawling along the side of the road, about fifty yards back. At first I just noticed the headlights hitting the bushes beside me, creeping at the exact pace I was walking. I began to panic a little, picking out lawns on either side of the street that I could sprint through to get away. After about twenty seconds I ventured a sideways glance, trying to make out if the general size and shape of the headlights matched the ones on Alistair's pickup. But I couldn't quite see enough to tell much of anything.

I took a right onto a side street to see if the car would follow, and when it did, I broke for it—sprinting into the nearest backyard, hopping three fences, crawling through a prickle-bush, and finally taking refuge in a little girl's plastic playhouse in some backyard about a half-block away from where I started.

I tried to sit on the pink plastic chair, but it kept falling over, so I finally just let myself flop down on the dirt covered floor. There was a thin layer of grime covering the floral printed walls and the fake little stove and the tiny plastic sink. But I didn't care. I was clutching the phone, just happy to be safe.

I stayed there for what felt like hours (though was surely only minutes) before I began to hear the yells. They were muffled at first, only recognizable as a voice in the distance—I couldn't make out anything of the content or the speaker. But then it began to grow clearer. It sounded like a girl, trying hard not to wake up the neighborhood, trying to whisper and yell at the same time. A breathy call that finally materialized as: “Jonathan. Jonathaaaaaan! It's Tristan, Jonathaaaaan.”

My heart rate slowed to a more human pace. It was only Tristan. Not Alistair, his boys, or even Cassie (which might have been the most frightening of all, at that point). I opened the little plastic shutters and called out, “Over here.”

There was some rustling in a nearby shrub, and then Tristan's voice again, only a few feet away. “Jonathan?”

“In here.”

“The playhouse?” she said, walking closer.

“Yeah.”

“Well get out of there, come on.”

“No,” I said. I kind of liked it in there. It felt safe, comforting…I don't know, maybe it was the plastic tray of plastic cookies on top of the plastic oven. I found it oddly soothing.

She opened the door, crouching down to see inside. “I'm sorry,” she said.

I shrugged.

“Do you want to talk?”

I shrugged again.

Tristan glanced around the yard to make sure no one was coming, and then crawled inside and sat down beside me. “Alistair didn't tell me we were going back to his house.”

“I figured.”

She paused. “What did he say to you?”

“Same as before, but with a little more violence.”

“Are you okay? Did he hurt you? Did he threaten anything bad?”

“I'm fine. It was nothing.” Then I took a deep breath, not sure if I wanted to know the answer to my next question. “Did Cassie say anything after I left?”

Tristan winced. “She was pretty upset.”

“Shit.”

“I mean, you just left her there. Alistair walked back in the room like everything was peachy, and you were just gone.”

“Shit, shit, shit.”

“Oh, don't sweat it too much.” She put her hand on my back, rubbing my shoulder. “She'll get over it, eventually.”

I didn't say anything. All I could do was picture Cassie, sitting on that couch, wondering where I had gone, why I left her. The only conclusion she could possibly have reached is that I was too much of a pussy to deal with her brother, so I ran away without even a good-bye.

“Anyway, I understand,” said Tristan. “If that had been me getting beat up by Alistair, I would've run away too.”

“I didn't run away because Alistair was smacking me around.”

She seemed confused. “Then why did you?”

“Because of this,” I said, lifting up the phone.

“Is that Alistair's phone?”

“Yup.”

“But what about the hard drive?”

“Oh I got that too,” I said, patting the bulge under my shirt. “But this is so much better.” Then I lifted the phone for her to see, and showed her the two messages.

“Wow,” she said quietly, almost as if she wasn't sure what to think of this new development. “What are you going to do with it?”

“I don't know yet,” I said. “I need to talk to Jesu—“ But then I stopped myself. “I mean, Henry. I need to talk to Henry. He has the rest of the evidence, so…”

“Right,” she said. “But, I mean…that still doesn't really prove anything, does it?”

“It proves that Alistair was lying. That he was there. That he was doing drugs.”

“But it doesn't tell us anything about what happened
after
that. What happened with Ryan? Didn't you find anything? A message to Phil about what happened? A voicemail from someone he told? Anything?”

“No, nothing like that.” I sighed. “Not that it matters, though. I mean, what we need now is just something to take to the cops. We know, basically, what happened with Ryan and Alistair.”

“We don't know anything!” she screamed, in an outburst of emotion. “Nothing! And these stupid text messages don't tell us a damn thing.” Then she began to sob.

“Hey now. Hey,” I said, trying to calm her down a bit. “It's alright. We're not done yet. We can still find out more. We can still investigate. It's not over.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I just have to know….I just have to know.”

I guess it hadn't occurred to me before that Tristan's motives in this thing could be different from mine. I was searching for a way to get Alistair on the hook (however I needed to do it), but Tristan was still trying to figure out if he was even guilty. But I let it go, figuring that it was only because she hadn't seen everything that I saw back in those woods.

“Anyway,” I said, as gently as possible. “We should probably get going.” I began to shift myself up to get out, but she tugged me back down.

“Let's just hang out a bit,” she said. “Do you mind?”

“In here?”

“Yeah.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “It's kind of nice in here.”

“Okay,” I said, settling back down. “Okay.

Only then did I remember that Tristan had been “investigating” as well, so I asked her if she managed to learn anything from Alistair. But she just shook her head, staring down at the dirty floor. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing that I didn't already know.”

And so we stayed in that little plastic house for maybe an hour, barely saying a word. Every so often I would catch her staring at me, a few tears running down her cheek, as if I were the one who had caused her all this pain. And after a little while she took my hand and she held it until we left. Sure, it seemed strange…but, I don't know, I just figured she was sad, like I was sad, and sometimes when you're that sad and it's late and dark and you're sitting Indian-style in a little plastic house in a stranger's backyard, you do strange things.