Shine (31 page)

“I have to call him,” I told Jason once we were in the car. “Can I use your phone?”

Jason looked at me like I was crazy. “No way.”

“But . . .” I floundered. If Beef was Patrick’s boyfriend . . .
if Beef was
gay
, if all along he was gay and he didn’t tell anyone . . . what else was he hiding? I beat my thigh with my fist. “He knows who attacked Patrick. I just know it.”

“And what are you planning on saying to get him to tell you?” Jason said.

I hadn’t gotten that far, but I was beginning to see that it was going to be harder than just popping out with it all. According to the Kid, Beef had traded sex for drugs. That was one ugly, steaming pile of cow shit.

“He’s kept quiet for a reason, Cat. And he wants
you
quiet, too, or have you forgotten?”

My breaths were shallow. I didn’t want to think like that.

“He put a cow tongue on your pillow,” Jason said.

Oh my God
. From Huskers, that’s where he must have gotten it. That flaccid sawed-off slab.

Jason glanced at me, and his eyes were deep pools. “You don’t need to be calling Beef, Cat. You need to call the police.”

I shook my head, because that wasn’t the answer. At this point, all we knew was that Beef was mixed up in something bad, and not just mixed up in it but
part
of it, in so deep that he may have led that badness straight to Patrick, his best friend. His
boyfriend
, Lord have mercy.

Beef knew more about Patrick’s attack than he was saying, that much was clear. But going to Sheriff Doyle wasn’t the answer. It might come to that, but not yet.

I rubbed my hand over my face. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I could figure everything out if I just put my mind to it.

“Do you think Bailee-Ann knows Beef is gay?” I said. “Is that why she gave me the pack of matches, so I’d find out?”

Jason’s jaw was tense. “You know her better than I do. What do
you
think?”

I bit my lower lip. Maybe she knew, but didn’t want to. Maybe she had a streak of Aunt Tildy running through her.

I thought about Beef and Robert’s trips to Asheville. Robert on Beef’s motorcycle, holding tight to Beef’s waist. Beef teaching Robert “to be a man,” and to never go down that faggot path, not ever, because homos always got what they deserved.

Beef had been talking about himself, hadn’t he? That bad things happened if you were gay, because look what he’d gotten his very own boyfriend mixed up in. So Beef had been hating
himself
, that’s what it looked like now. And maybe he didn’t want Robert to face the same fate, but probably it was just more that he needed to talk his feelings out, and who better for an audience than a hero-worshipping kid?

Only Beef, with his rash of dark moods, had stopped talking to Robert . . . and he’d threatened me . . . and then there was the redneck posse, with their secretive looks and their wall of silence . . .

My blood stopped moving. For one sickening pulse, my heart quit beating, and then it started up fast and heavy.

“Jesus,” I whispered. Jason met my gaze, his expression grim. He’d gotten there, too, just a flick of a second ahead of me.

I’d been so suspicious of Tommy that I’d blinded myself to
something huge: Tommy wasn’t the only one with a sketchy alibi during the time Patrick was hurt. Beef’s alibi was even sketchier. He’d driven back and forth along the highway deep into the night, and not just once but multiple times. Ridings told me that, and I looked right through it, choosing to see what I wanted to see and nothing else.

My mind reeled. I could hardly take it in.
Beef
?

I put together the chronology of the night as best I could, hoping it would give me the answers.

First Beef had partied with the others at the Frostee Top. At eleven thirty or so, Tommy suggested a beer run, though his real motivation was to collect Patrick. The redneck posse had decided to confront one of their own, and they planned to do so as a group. Beef argued against the trip to the Come ‘n’ Go—Patrick had already been riding him for screwing up his life, and Beef had no desire to face more of the same—but he was overruled.

At eleven forty-five, they pulled up at the Come ’n’ Go, where Patrick was finishing up his shift. Patrick wasn’t quite ready to close up, but he put off his closing duties, knowing he could return and finish them later. Everyone piled into Bailee-Ann’s pickup, they dropped off Robert at Patrick’s insistence, and then they drove into the forest. By foot, they made their way to Suicide Rock, where Dupree and Bailee-Ann got loopy on some old-timer’s herbal remedy while the others had a talk with Beef.

He must have felt cornered. He must have been furious.

At around one, the party wound down, and Beef drove everyone back down the mountain in Bailee-Ann’s pickup truck. Beef dropped the others off. Then he took Patrick back to the gas station so that Patrick could finish stocking the napkins or whatever. But Beef himself didn’t turn in for the night.

Maybe he cruised by Wally’s. If he scored a fix, he’d have been amped within minutes. He’d have felt like Superman. Or if Wally didn’t give him a hookup, then his rage would have escalated to a new level.

I might not ever know that part. What I did know was that instead of going home, he drove back to the Come ’n’ Go.

Maybe he and Patrick talked. I was purely speculating, but maybe Beef just wanted Patrick to hear his side of the story, while Patrick just wanted Beef to stop lying to himself and get clean.

Somehow things turned ugly. Patrick might have given Beef an ultimatum, like stop using or I’ll tell Roy, or I’ll break up with you, or I’ll turn you in, or whatever. And then, because Bailee-Ann’s truck was there . . .

I refused to believe that Beef set off that night planning to hurt Patrick. No and no. But people in the country always had stuff in the backs of their trucks. Tarps for spreading on wet ground, rope for lashing stuff down when there was hauling to be done, a container of gas for refueling on isolated mountain roads. In Bailee-Ann’s case, apparently one of Robert’s baseball bats.

So Beef, most likely high on meth, had gone with what
the opportunity gave him. He bashed in Patrick’s skull with Robert’s baseball bat and strung him to a gas pump. Afterward, realizing what he’d done, he’d hosed down Bailee-Ann’s truck from top to bottom.

Beef made sure my truck was back in my driveway by the time I woke up
, Bailee-Ann had said.
He even washed it for me. Wasn’t that sweet?”

“We have to go to the police,” Jason said. “What if he does something else crazy? Goes after someone else?

“I know.” I was twitching my foot like a scared rabbit. “But no one’s in danger this very second, right?”

“They have a cop outside Patrick’s hospital room, so Patrick should be safe,” Jason said, as if he was thinking out loud. “Beef’s a loose cannon, but unless something sets him off, I don’t guess I see him lashing out at someone for no good reason.” He glanced at me. “Do you?”

“All I know is that he pretty much hates me right now.” The gift he left on my pillow made that abundantly clear. He’d hitched himself over my window while Christian was with Tommy, or possibly earlier, since I was out and about most of the day.
Stop flapping your tongue, or I’ll cut yours out, too
.

“Yeah, and that’s why you need to stay away from him,” Jason said. “When we get into town, we go straight to the police. Deal?”

I flopped back against the seat, knowing he was right. Was that enough, or did I need to do something now? What if I didn’t, and someone else got hurt?

“What about Bailee-Ann?” I said. “If Beef finds out she’s cheating on him with Tommy . . . and he could, because Robert knows all about it, and he could say anything at anytime. For that matter, what about
Robert
?”

I thought about the bus trip together, and how he smelled my hair. How he waggled his eyebrows at the ice-cream shop, when I told him he was a big boy and could wipe his own mouth.

“He acted strange that day in Toomsboro,” I told Jason. “Like . . .
sexual
, in a weird way.”

“How old is he?”

“Eleven, same as your sister.”

“Well, not to be crude, but . . .” He broke off, his neck turning red. “Guys are interested in girls by then. Even at eleven.”

“This was different,” I insisted. Robert had been . . . courting me, almost, as if he’d learned that acting like that got him attention. Then, after I bought him ice cream and actually
gave
him attention—in a normal way, a talking-and-listening way—he went back to being a kid. He was still Robert, don’t get me wrong. He was still squirmy and annoying and yet somehow slightly adorable. But he’d stopped pretending to be something he wasn’t.

“What if . . .” I stopped, not wanting to put it in words.

“Go on and say it,” Jason said. The car swerved out of the lane as we rounded a curve, and he overcorrected to pull us back. The engine protested with a high-pitched whine. “Might as well lay it all out.”

“In school, Beef always stood up for Patrick. Beef was a jock. Patrick was nerdy and got picked on.” I quickly added, “I didn’t know anything else was going on between them.”

“Okay. And?”

“So . . . Patrick really looked up to him. And more than that, obviously. But then things changed, and Patrick was constantly on Beef’s case, and then finally Beef just . . .”

My stomach turned over as I substituted Robert for Patrick. Being gay didn’t make a person dangerous. Being lonely and depressed enough to groom a little kid into worshipping him was a different story. Add meth to the picture, and Beef’s mood swings and Robert’s absolute inability to tone himself down when toning down was called for . . .

Jason dug his phone out of his pocket. “Call her. Call Bailee-Ann.”

“I could be wrong,” I said.

“Or you could be right,” Jason said. With only one hand on the wheel, he took another curve too fast, this time coming perilously close to flying off the side of the road. Five feet to my right, the mountain dropped sharply off.

“Oh God,” I whimpered. “I’m really bad with heights.”

“Sorry,” Jason said. He tried to be less lurchy. “Tell her about Beef. If you’re wrong, no harm done. But if you
are
right . . .”

I accepted the phone and felt its slimness in my hand. Bailee-Ann’s cell phone number was in Jason’s call history
from when I’d borrowed her phone to ask him to come get me. I called it, but it went to voicemail.

“Bailee-Ann, this is Cat,” I said. “Um, we need to talk, okay? It’s about—“

I was cut off by a high-pitched electronic whine, followed by a nonexistent woman saying, “If you’re satisfied with your message, hit one. If you are finished with your call, hit zero, or simply hang up.”

Aaag
. Cheap throwaway cell phone.

Her home number still lived in memory and probably would forever, since in middle school we called each other ten times a day. I punched the buttons and put the phone to my ear.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” I chanted under my breath.

“Tell her to keep Robert away from Beef, no matter what,” Jason coached.

I got their answering machine. I groaned. I didn’t want to leave a message, but as I listened to Bailee-Ann’s mother’s prerecorded voice, I decided I better, just in case. If Bailee-Ann wasn’t the first to hear it, well, the news would be out soon anyway.

At the beep, “Bailee-Ann, it’s Cat. So, listen. Those matches you gave me? You were right about where they were from. And the thing is, I think Beef is that same way. As Patrick.”

I gripped the phone, knowing I had to do better. “I think Beef and Patrick were . . . more than friends . . . and I think he’s the one who attacked Patrick at the Come ’n’ Go. I hope I’m
wrong. I
really
hope I’m wrong, but keep clear of him, okay? He’s not himself. And keep Robert away from him, too. Don’t let Robert go off with him. Don’t let—“

Beep
. My time was up. I lowered Jason’s phone, feeling sure I had totally screwed up. And yet, I was glad I had done it.

“Was that okay?” I asked Jason. “Do you think she’ll understand? Do you think she’ll listen?” I hit my knee. “
Aghh
. I should have left your number. I didn’t leave your number.”

“Caller ID,” Jason said.

I shook my head.

“Oh yeah,” Jason said, because we weren’t talking about the newish landlines at Toomsboro Community College. Bailee-Ann lived in Black Creek, and unlike most of the the rest of the country, people in Black Creek didn’t have caller ID.

“She’ll have it on her cell,” he said.

“If she thinks to check,” I said. “I’m going to leave it anyway.”

I redialed her home number. Again, the answering machine picked up, and I said, “Me again. I’m on a friend’s phone if you want to call me. His number is—“

Jason started to supply it for me, but I said it without his help, making his eyebrows rise. I blushed and pretended not to notice and said to Bailee-Ann, “So call me
as soon as you get this
, okay? And
don’t
let Robert go off with Beef. Don’t tell him why, just—“

I was interrupted by scratchiness and a squeal of feedback. Someone had picked up.

“Hey, Cat,” Robert said.

“Robert!” I said, relief making me feel weightless. “Is Bailee-Ann there? Or your mother?”

“The phone’s never for me, so that’s why I didn’t pick up the first time,” he said. “No one ever calls me. It’s always some boring person selling something, or some boring person wanting Mama to trade shifts with her, and when I forget to write it down, Mama gets mad, so that’s why.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “Just put me on with Bailee-Ann.”

“She ain’t here, but I’m sure glad I am.
Your
message was real interesting, for once.”

I was no longer weightless. In fact, my limbs felt like dead wood dragging me down.

Robert laughed gleefully, the laugh of knowing he had something juicy to hold over someone’s head. “Is that true that Beef’s a faggot, just the same as those fags he’s always railing on?”