The Good Boy (21 page)

Pete’s not one to interpret behavior—he’s never met this kid and certainly, he saw no signs that his own kid would go off the rails—but if there’s one thing he’s noticed about suspects over the years, it’s that guilty people eat. Zack Fowler is not the bad guy he says he is. There’s more to this, and God help him if it has anything to do with Joel.

“Murphy?” It’s McHugh, and he’s coming down the hall from the conference room with two uniforms and twice as many suits in tow. He doesn’t look surprised to see Pete but he doesn’t look happy, either.

“Morning,” Pete says to the group, but McHugh keeps them walking right on by.

Pete supposes that’s his cue to get out of there, but there’s one more thing before he goes: he picks the first desk inside the perimeter, takes a seat and uses one of the phones.

He’s on hold when McHugh comes back around the corner. Alone.

“Seeing you again gives me heartburn,” he says.

“I couldn’t wait.”

“Understood, but you could have waited somewhere else. You aren’t the kind of guy who goes unnoticed.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Even so, you can relax. Fowler took the plea.”

“I heard. I don’t get it.”

“What, you
want
this to be complicated?”

“You think Fowler is telling the truth?”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“What about Linda Lee?”

“Don’t worry about her.”

“She says there were some other kids at the party with gang ties. Four Corner Hustlers. She thinks there’s more to the story than Zack’s telling.” Not her words exactly; not at all, actually, but—

“I don’t give a good god damn what she thinks. We’ve got a confession from a suspect with priors, and an unconscious victim with potentially litigious parents. We’ve got Fowler pled down to reckless conduct and we’re shaking hands now, while everybody’s still willing. This is the best possible outcome.”

“But there are things that don’t fit.”

“Brogan doesn’t care.”

“Why don’t
you
care? What about marker sixteen?”

“How do you— Are you kidding? It was blood. We don’t know whose.” McHugh takes off his eyeglasses, wipes them with his shirttail. “Anyway, why do
you
care? It’s not like it was your daughter’s.”

“I’m not here about my daughter.”

“Officer Murphy,” the dispatcher says when she returns to the line, “thanks for waiting.”

“Go ahead,” he says to the phone, then mouths,
Hang on,
to McHugh, who looks miffed, or else he can’t see so well.

The dispatcher says, “Aaron Northcutt was transported to Illinois Masonic. I’m sorry, but I wasn’t able to get an update on his condition.”

“All I need is a starting place,” Pete says. “Thank you.”

“What
are
you here for?” McHugh asks as soon as the phone hits its cradle. He hooks the temples of his glasses around his ears and studies Pete through split lenses. Still, Pete knows, he won’t see.

“I’m not here,” Pete says. “I’m going.” He zips his coat. “Thanks for your help.”

He puts out his hand to shake, while McHugh’s still willing.

14

Joel peeks in through the display window at Dinkel’s Bakery where a multitiered wedding cake decorated with thick sugarpaste flowers stands over smaller, simpler variations, each one tinted a shade of pink by the neon-tube sign above that advertises
PASTRY
and
CAKES
.

Joel’s stomach rumbles.

A line of folks spills out the shop’s front door and stretches along the sidewalk: men, women, and children, all bright-faced, numbered tickets in hand, await their turn. Once there, blond ladies in matching white aprons will use wisps of paper tissue to collect iced cookies, vanilla custards, jelly tarts, cream puffs, and cinnamon twists from their shiny glass cases. They will fill boxes; they will fill bellies.

Joel’s sweet tooth aches as a mother dressed in a fur coat brings her young son out through the double doors, the boy’s smile ringed with white powder. Mother carries a red-bowed box that must contain a wonderful assortment of doughnuts, rainbow sprinkled and chocolate glazed and crumb-caked. She is smiling, too, until she looks down at Joel.

It’s a buyer’s market,
she says, and throws the box up in the air, its ribbon unspooling in long coils. Joel steps back and looks up as the box rises, caught on the wind, a helium balloon.

Of course, the asking price reflects the understanding that the buyer would want to remodel,
she says. Her deep voice seems much farther away than her mouth, and when he looks again, she has gold fangs.

Her son grunts, and then everyone in line turns to look at Joel, their faces painted black. Joel tries to run but the red ribbon comes down all around him like ticker tape.

“My dad is parking the car,” he tries to explain, but no one can hear him over the sudden, deafening growl of his stomach.

The boy shakes his head and sounds like a grown-up when he says,
We would tear it down.

The mother insists, “
We can certainly
have that conversation,” her voice immediately more distinct as she reaches for Joel’s arm, but then she isn’t a mother anymore and he jerks away—and awake—and then it isn’t his stomach growling, it’s Butchie, his nose between cross-strips of lattice, wanting to know who in the hell is standing on the back deck of the empty house.

Joel takes Butchie by the collar, pulls him in.
“Schweigen,”
he whispers, his back bent against the curve of the tub. “Shh.”

“The backyard here adds another hundred square feet to the property,” a man says. Through the lattice, Joel sees two pairs of legs from the kneecaps down: one wears blue jeans and white sneakers, the other, slacks and black loafers. They step off the wooden deck and onto the grass.

Joel wraps Butchie in a hug and hopes it’s not as easy for the men to see inside as it is to peek out.

The guy in sneakers pivots, says, “I guess location is key.”

“Oh yes,” the other man says. “Here you’re close to the brown line and the Eleven bus, the nightlife on Lincoln Avenue—”

“I’ve got four kids under five. I don’t have a nightlife.”

“We’re also blocks from Welles Park and just a quick drive to Montrose Beach. McPherson Elementary is—”

“What about the necessities? Coffee? The grocery?”

“There are three coffee shops between here and the Jewel on Lincoln Avenue, and that’s a five-minute walk.”

Butchie tries to get up but Joel holds him there, buries his face in the nape of the dog’s neck.

“What’s the situation with the hot tub?” Wood creaks as one of the men steps onto the deck above them.

Joel looks up through the wood planks. There really isn’t much room under here, and as long as someone’s around, there’s no way out. This is the problem with hiding: there’s no believable excuse for getting caught in a place they aren’t supposed to be. Like that junkie who got arrested last night, they can’t pretend they’re invited when they snuck in.

“It’s not as expensive to maintain as you might think,” the man in loafers says, stamping down a patch of grass. “It’s got a pretty efficient gas heater, so the cost to keep it going year-round would be thirty, thirty-two bucks a month on average.”

“You’ve done the numbers,” the other man says, directly over them now, his shadow falling on Butchie. Joel closes his eyes, wishes they were invisible.

“You bet.”

“How much to get rid of it? Four toddlers plus a hazard like this is not a cost I want to calculate.”

“I can certainly look into it. May I ask, are you working with another Realtor?”

“No. My wife’s pretty set on staying where we are, so nothing’s official until I can make an offer she can’t refuse.”

“I understand. I’m here for you.”

“In that case, can you look into the zoning restrictions for me?”

“I’ve got some of the paperwork inside.”

“I’ll follow you.”

As they return to the house, Joel realizes that families move all the time, and it’s never easy; there’s always at least one person who’d rather stay put.

Butchie edges back and looks at Joel, one ear up.

“I know, Butch, okay? Once we get out of here we won’t hide anymore. Wherever we go, we’ll act like we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.” He pets the dog’s ear back into place and checks his watch: it’s just past seven thirty. Pretty early for house-hunting, and still too early for the library.

Butchie pants, dry-tongued, and stares at Joel as he wags his tail against the lattice. He’s hot, and thirsty, and probably hungry.

“I hear you, Dog Breath.” Joel turns over on his forearms to root through his backpack: he’s got Butchie’s leash and tags, the walkie-talkie, the tennis ball, and the copy of
White Fang.
In his wallet are his Game Planet card, his library card, the four bucks, and Owen Balicki’s picture—Owen looking back at him, same bad haircut, his crooked smile now more like a smirk.

“Hurm,”
Butchie says, trying to drill a hole right into Joel’s heart, those puppy dog eyes.

Joel’s stomach rumbles; he’s hungry, too. When he packed, he had no idea they wouldn’t be home in time for bed, let alone breakfast.

“Just a little longer,” he tells Butchie; they should probably stay here until the realtor and his potential buyer move along. But there could be other showings. And what if the next house hunter flips Butchie’s switch?

Butchie gets up, a vote for bailing now.

“Okay, okay, hold your hind legs.” Joel repacks his bag, hooks Butchie’s leash, and surveys their escape route. Then he straps on his pack and they make a break for it.

He doesn’t look back, not even once they hit Seeley Avenue, a block away, and that’s because the cop blood in his veins kicked in and he knows what he has to do.

Well, he half knows. His dad’s police DNA is spliced with his mom’s, after all, so part of him wants to go straight home. Still, he feels the pull of purpose—to tell the judge what happened at Zack Fowler’s, to exonerate Butchie, and to make his family understand that they had to leave home to show them that home is being together, no matter where they are.

Or maybe the pull is just Butchie on the other end of the leash.

As they cut through the neighborhood, right turns every time, Joel remembers to stay on the left side of the street. He knows from dad that the right-side tendency is something regular people do—and don’t realize they do—and that can give the police an advantage, if they’re looking.

And if they are looking, the real key to going unnoticed is to act natural, no matter what you’ve done or how unnatural it feels.

At Lincoln Avenue—the border of the Twentieth District—Joel sees the Jewel sign, the grocery situated on the west side of the busy avenue. If an official search party’s been started in the district, Joel’s about to slip Butchie out the back door; he’d be a dummy to stay on the perimeter, get caught right outside. And if the unofficial search party is still out, walking along a main route is really asking for it.

Still, his stomach.

When traffic splits he jogs Butchie across the avenue and then turns on the first side street, hoping to home in on the store like a pigeon. A few blocks down, he tries an alley, and at the end of it finds the faded wood fence that surrounds the store’s parking lot. He ties Butchie’s leash around a shopping-cart return in back—out of the way of any customers cruising for a good parking spot, and conveniently out of sight of anybody that might be cruising for a missing boy and his dog.

Inside the Jewel, the smell from the bakery makes Joel crazy. Warm lighting hangs over the snack aisle that stretches from loaves of bread to boxes of cookies. He goes to the last section, where doughnut, and cupcakes hide behind their pictures on wax-papered packaging. He can taste the cream filling.

He’s startled when a woman interrupts the store’s piped-in music to say,
“Twenty-one on two.”
When the song plays again, someone sings,
“You can’t always get what you want…”

Speaking of: the price tags underneath all the treats advertise 10
FOR $
10. Joel can’t buy ten; he only has four dollars and anyway, he didn’t want to spend more than two. He moves on.

Around the corner, off-brand snacks sit on an end display. Joel selects a small package of cheese-flavored crackers offered for a single buck; he can share them with Butchie.

In the dairy section, he waits for a woman with a baby boy wedged into a car seat wedged into a shopping cart wedged into the door of a cold case to make up her mind about yogurt. Joel really wants a box of chocolate milk, except the lady is blocking the way, and she’s too busy talking to her baby to make a decision.

She says, “I told Ashley she’s kidding herself.” A weird thing to say to a baby, but so is, “You don’t get it from a toilet seat.”

Joel isn’t sure what the baby is supposed to say to that, and apparently neither is the other woman pushing her cart past them. She goes real slow, looking down at Joel and then very critically up at the lady, who doesn’t notice either of them because she has a cup of yogurt in her hand now, and she’s reading its label.

Joel realizes it must look like this lady is his mom, and since he probably shouldn’t be alone here he plays the part, waiting patiently while she tells the baby and pretty much everyone what happened to Ashley.

“He needs to get tested,” she says, finally selecting a cup of banana-vanilla, tossing it into her cart and knocking the door shut. When she steers the cart around, her one-sided conversation makes a little more sense: she’s got one of those wireless buds in her ears that people use to talk without a phone.

Joel follows quietly behind, and while Mom stops for milk, the other lady stops to give them the stinkeye, so Joel pretends he’s real interested in the cheese.

“Yes, but let’s be honest. Ashley is a slut.”

The baby squeals, and Mom turns away from him to hear whatever her ear has to say. She doesn’t notice when the baby gets a hold of the yogurt and sticks practically the whole container in his toothless mouth.