Smoke (35 page)

A few minutes later, Willow is sitting in front of Detective Donaldson. He’s got a notebook open in front of him, and a mini-recorder’s red light is blinking next to her. Her mother is sitting in the other chair in his office, while I’m standing in the doorway. Everyone else has been banished to the bullpen.

“Go ahead, Willow.”

“Tucker Wells and them, his gang, well, they’ve been picking on Angus since last year.”

“Why?”

“I think because . . . Tucker has a crush on me. But he’s a creep. He kept bugging me and bugging me, and one day I told him I liked Angus. I figured that would make him go away.”

“And did it?”

“For a bit. I mean, he started being nicer to me and to Angus. We hung out together sometimes. But I knew he was still a jerk.”

“Why hang out with him, then?”

She shrugs.

“What happened next?”

“One day, Tucker was teasing me, stupid stuff, I don’t remember exactly, and Angus stood up to him. Told him to leave me alone. That made Tucker pretty mad.”

“What did he do?”

“He was ragging on Angus all the time, you know? He was being so stupid. And I knew Angus liked me then, so we started hanging out. I didn’t tell anyone because I’m not allowed to see boys.”

“Did Tucker know you guys were hanging out?”

“Yeah. He figured it out eventually. That’s when he got really nasty.”

“What was he doing?”

“Angus isn’t going to get in trouble, right?”

“I think we’re past that right now, Willow,” I say. “Just tell Detective Donaldson what you know.”

“I’ll ask the questions,” Detective Donaldson says. “Go on, Willow. Tell us what happened.”

“Last year, Tucker wrote this story in English that got him into a bunch of trouble. About how he wanted to kill his sister? Anyway, his parents got him out of it, but he was pissed at the teacher for turning him in, so he had this cut-up ballet uniform put in his mail cubby.”

“What does that have to do with Angus?”

“Angus put it in the mail cubby for him. It was one of his sister’s. And he’s good at getting into places. Like bypassing alarms and things like that? He figured out what the code was to the teacher’s lounge and put it in there one day after school. That was when he thought he and Tucker were friends. I told him not to trust Tucker, but he didn’t listen.”

“I don’t get the connection,” Detective Donaldson said.

Willow shakes her head. “Tucker figured out Angus and I were still hanging out this summer, and he started to threaten to tell on Angus. About the ballet uniform.”

“When was that?”

“A couple of weeks ago. I told Angus to tell him to get lost, but Angus was really worried about what would happen to him if the school found out. And I was pretty mad at him.”

“Mad at Angus?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know he’d done that with the leotard.”

“Then what happened?”

“We got into this big fight last weekend. Then Tucker messaged me that a bunch of them were sneaking out that night, and I decided to go.”

“To make Angus jealous?”

She nodded. “I forwarded the messages to Angus so he could see I was going out with them. He wrote me back saying it was a bad idea, but I didn’t listen. I don’t know why I did that.”

“Did you sneak out of the house?”

“Yeah. I met up with them near the town square.”

“Is that you on the video? You’ve seen it?”

“It’s me. I thought there were going to be other girls too, but when I got there it was just Tucker and the guys he hangs around with. And Tucker was acting like he’d won some bet or something when I showed up, so I texted Angus. I told him we were going to John Phillips’s house.”

“Why did you go there?”

“Tucker has this weird obsession with him. I think those guys have been playing pranks on him for a while. They’re such a bunch of jerks.”

“What happened when you got to his house?”

“We just sat around the fire pit. Tucker brought beers with him—I think he stole them from his dad—and he was drinking them real fast. He wanted me to drink too, but I said I wouldn’t. Then he tried to kiss me.” She looks down at her shoes. “I pushed him off me, and then Angus was there and he kind of jumped on Tucker. Those other guys were about to beat Angus up, but I said I’d start screaming, so Angus and Tucker kind of tumbled around on the ground for a bit, and then Angus punched Tucker in the side real hard, and Tucker rolled into the bushes and puked.”

“What happened next, Willow?”

Willow wipes the tears from her cheeks.

“Tucker and them took off, and Angus walked me home.”

“There must be more to this,” Detective Donaldson says. “There’s no reason you couldn’t have told us all this a long time ago.”

“We couldn’t. Tucker was kind of . . . um, blackmailing us.”

“What was Tucker blackmailing you with?”

Willow stays silent for what seems like a very long time as her face turns red. She’s avoiding making eye contact with her mother, who has shoved her hand in her mouth in horror. Then she says, “Pictures.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“Some . . . some private pictures I took for Angus. All the girls do it,” she said, equally defensive and embarrassed.

“Did Angus ask you to take these pictures?”

“No! I just wanted him to know how much I liked him. But it was really stupid. And I’m never going to do it again, okay, Mom. I’m not.”

“How did Tucker get these pictures?”

“I forgot to erase them from my phone. He was bugging me one day at my locker, and he took my phone when I wasn’t looking, and he found them. I guess he e-mailed them to himself. I didn’t even know he had them until this week.”

“What was he going to do with them?”

“Send them to everyone in school.”

“But why?”

“Because Angus said he’d tell everyone Tucker started the fire to get back at him for trying to kiss me. He wasn’t trying to get Tucker in real trouble. But when Tucker said he had those pictures, Angus told him he’d talk to the police unless he gave the pictures back. But Tucker wouldn’t give them back, so we didn’t know what to do.”

“So, it
was
Tucker who started the fire?”

“No. I mean, he did make a fire in the fire pit, but it was small and it was almost out, and then after those guys left, Angus and I poured the rest of the beer on it and we made sure it was out.”

“That’s a bit hard to believe given what’s happened.”

“But we know who started it. Angus and me. We saw.”

“What did you see?”

Willow turns and points at someone who’s visible through the glass wall of Detective Donaldson’s office. John Phillips. “We saw him start the fire.”

CHAPTER 41

Flaws in the System

John

John woke that night from a fitful sleep.

In fact, he’d never fallen asleep, not really, just skimmed along the surface of it like trailing your fingers in the water over the edge of a sailboat.

It was those damn papers. That thick buff envelope sitting in the middle of the dining-room table where he’d left it after finding it on his front step when he returned from the grocery store.

He didn’t think you could just leave envelopes like that on someone’s front stoop. Not when the papers inside said you were going to lose your house and everything in it if you didn’t come up with more money than you’d ever had in your whole sixty-seven years. Seemed to John like you’d have to hand those kinds of papers to a person directly. Give them a chance to know there was terrible news inside before they opened it. Give them time to work up to the moment.

But maybe that’s just how it went on the TV. He didn’t know. All he knew was that’s what the papers said, far as he could understand them through all the
whereas
es and
aforesaid
s.

Why couldn’t people just write what they mean, anyhow?

“You have not paid your mortgage in six months, and so now we are going to take your house away from you.” This John could understand. This John knew was coming. Sometime. Just not that day, in a thick manila envelope waiting innocently for him after he’d spent all the money he had to spend that week on nearly expired tuna fish and reduced-price bread.

He turned on the lumpy mattress, trying to find a more comfortable position. The bed creaked loudly, and he was completely awake now. Awake and unsure of how he was ever going to get to sleep again. Not with that . . . that intruder in the house, yes, that’s what the envelope was, an intruder in his life. Well, he’d dealt with intruders before, hadn’t he?

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, a plan forming. He slung on the worn bathrobe Kristy bought him for their last Christmas together, three years ago that had been. He liked to think she’d be sympathetic about his current situation, but something told him she’d just shake her head in that way she had, taking a deep drag on her perpetual cigarette.

“You never could plan worth a damn,” Kristy would say in a voice that’d grown raspy and hard. John remembered how beautiful and soft her voice had been when he’d met her in the church choir, but that was a long time ago.

“Ayuh,” John said into the stillness, like Kristy might be able to hear his laconic agreement with the words he imagined she would say if he were talking out his plan with her, seeking her approval or amendment.

But silence was his answer, just as it had been every day since she’d died.

“Ayuh,” he said again, like a bullfrog greeting the night. He was comforted by the sound of someone talking, even if it was only himself. “That ought to do the trick.”

Plan at the ready, he belted his robe against the chill and crept down the stairs. Silence was a key part of the operation. You had to be careful not to startle an intruder. You never knew how they were going to react when caught. That was the way people got killed. Like that eighteen-year-old Mexican kid who almost died right down the street about a year ago, when he was found creeping around Rayland Irving’s living room. Rayland didn’t give him a chance to explain. He’d just pumped off both barrels of his shotgun,
blam! blam!
, and that was that.

’Course, the envelope couldn’t hear him coming. It didn’t know he’d picked up a package of cheap diner matches from the bowl full of them in the hallway, left over from when he used to bring them home for Kristy so she’d never want for a light. And it surely wasn’t aware of the fire pit at the back of his property or his intentions in that regard.

John slid his feet quietly against the cold floor. In the living room, he stared at the package, watched the way it reflected the moonlight that streamed through the windows he’d washed only the other day. He could hear his own breathing in the gravelike house. Silent like the grave.
Where did that expression come from?
he wondered before telling himself to focus.

He scooped up the envelope. Working quickly now, he held it against his chest and rammed his feet into the gum boots he always kept by the back door. The porch door swung behind him, oiled silent, and now he was outside. It was actually warmer outside than in, the leftovers of the warm breeze that had been blowing all summer, drying out the air, the trees, the grass, still lingering despite the hour. As he walked across his property, the ground crunched underneath him like it was covered in frost. John wondered where he’d be when the snow came. He always loved the first snow, and all the ones that followed, how it made the world go hush, how you could feel alone inside it without feeling lonely.

He reached the fire pit. Some half-charred wood lay in it, just visible in the moonlight he was navigating by. A couple crushed beer cans twinkled up at him. Those damn kids had been here again, drinking on his property. He’d heard them a few nights ago but hadn’t had the gumption to confront them.

No gumption
. That was Kristy’s voice again. Well, he was showing her, wasn’t he? He’d show everyone.

He placed the envelope on top of the logs and flipped open the book of matches. They were old, having sat in the bowl for years collecting dust, and it took him several tries to light one. When the fourth one finally caught, he bent his stiff knees and held the yellow flame to the envelope’s corner. It had some kind of coating on it, and it took a moment to catch. The flame licked John’s fingers, and he dropped the match, cursing. He put his thumb in his mouth, sucking it, while he watched the thick legal papers slowly burn.

When he was sure it was well and lit, that there wasn’t any undoing what he’d done, he turned back toward his house.

So as the fire receded behind him, he didn’t see the charred corner of the envelope detach, glowing, as it rose into the air and came to rest at the edge of the longer wheat-colored grass that surrounded his property.

Instead, all he thought as he sucked his still-stinging thumb and slopped back to his house in his crunching gum boots was:
Maybe now I can sleep
.

CHAPTER 42

Corralled

Mindy

When Mindy got home with Angus
hours later, Peter and Carrie were waiting for them on the front stoop.

It had been a slow drive through eerily quiet streets. The smoke was pea-soup thick. When Mindy turned on her fog lights briefly, the world disappeared, like they were inside a snow globe.

It was just the four of them in the car. Mindy, Angus, Willow, Cathy. Cathy was a tight ball of anger and kept pulling at her seatbelt like Carrie used to do when she was little, claiming it was strangling her. Angus and Willow were mirrors of each other in the backseat. Each in their separate corner, but with a hand laid flat on the seat between them, the edges of their fingers touching.

Was this something lasting between them?
Mindy wondered. Would this experience bring them closer together, or would Willow’s sacrifice of her privacy be too much for Angus? Their combined explanation for why they didn’t tell about John Phillips’s involvement sooner was that they didn’t think anyone would believe them, that they didn’t want to get him in trouble, and that they’d get into so much trouble themselves for being out that night in the first place.