Tunnel Vision (7 page)

FOURTEEN

I have a rule of thumb. If something sticks out, it’s worth looking at. Hidden basements, attics with secret accessibility, or in Jack’s case, a pair of toolsheds out back. One toolshed? I would have looked, sure. But two? I need to know.

I walk swiftly to the leftmost one, making sure to check Jack’s fenced-in rear yard for anyone hiding out or peering in, and then get my kit back out. This lock is harder than the ones on the front of Jack’s house. Still doable, but I’m eating time like a bowl of potato chips.

The first lock clicks open after a few minutes of frustration, and as the door swings open I’m hit with a chemical smell. Letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see something that I never would have expected to be here.

I’d been ready for Jack to be a monster, but either he’s one that will be remembered for a long time, or I’m way off the mark. This first shed, perfectly waterproofed and climate controlled, contains an amazing woodworking setup.

I know what you’re thinking: So what?

But seriously, Jack has everything, to the point that it’s hard for me to imagine the man having time for another obsession in his life. There’s barely even room to move for all the equipment. Which begs the question of how he even uses the stuff within that little space.

Then I know the answer’s next door.

I secure the first shed, walk to the second, and fiddle the lock open. Swinging the door wide, I know there’s no reason to give it much more than a glance, but I can’t help myself. Shed one was for storage, but shed two is where Jack puts in work.

Right now he’s in the middle of stripping an old hope chest, but the walls are lined with pictures of other projects. The man knows his stuff. Why this fastidious dedication to his craft doesn’t transfer to the rest of the house is beyond me, but Jack is off the list, at least for me. The only thing that stands out is an old press for loading bullets, but there’s no ammo stacked on it, just a few cartons of powder underneath of it, along with a few boxes of empty shotgun shells. None of it matters, though, not even the equipment for reloading. Jack might have known the victim, might’ve been in the right place at the right time, but nothing else fits with my profile.

He had to have been discussed by the cops working this case. Still, it’s hard to imagine even a really good detective being able to turn away for long from the smoking gun that was Duke Barnes, especially since Duke confessed. And now, all these years later, I certainly don’t hear anything shouting otherwise at me. It looks like Duke Barnes has a few more days in jail ahead of him.

So why then, walking away from the house to my bike, do I feel like I missed something, like I should be trying harder to find some sign of Jack’s possible secret life? Maybe it’s because I can only name half a dozen humans on the planet I completely trust. Some people see things in shades of gray, and some in black and white. I see mainly black, and while I have my reasons for that, it doesn’t mean it’s an accurate view of the world.

So I keep walking, letting Jack’s lonely home fade in the distance. Claire hired me to watch June, so now it’s time to find her and see if there’s anything that her mother doesn’t know about.

FIFTEEN

Betty shared the good news with June as the two of them walked into school the next morning, but Betty could tell that the reality of the situation was sinking in for June. She wasn’t talking much and seemed detached when she did speak. Betty frowned at the second of these oddly flat exchanges—something was bothering her friend—but they had to split up for class.

When fourth period finally rolled around, Betty felt as if she’d spent a week inside Northview High, instead of just a few hours. Seeing June waiting for her by the door made her smile, though. June was smiling, too, and they began walking without a word.

“I seriously considered asking my mom last night, Betty,” said June after they’d walked awhile. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but I felt bad for even thinking about it. There’s no way my mom would let me do this project if she knew what it was about, and I really want to learn more about Mandy.”

“June, listen to me,” Betty said. “If getting answers from your mom is what you want to do, then go for it. There’s school, and then there’s life.”

June threw an arm around Betty at that, a gesture that almost saw the pair of them face-plant to the concrete before correcting their footing, and then unleashing a spray of laughter that sent birds flying from the budding trees.

“Jesus, you’re going to kill somebody if you’re not careful,” said Betty, which only made June laugh even harder.

“I think I want to meet him,” said June as the laughter faded. “Duke, I mean. Do you think your mom could set that up?”

“Probably.” She’d had the idea herself, but she wasn’t all that sure she really wanted to meet Duke Barnes face-to-face. The old photos made him look cold, almost as if he was willing whoever was holding the camera into a fight, or was perhaps sizing up the camera itself. Even in the earliest, prearrest photos Duke had a look about him, a hard look, and Betty doubted that a false imprisonment would have done much for his demeanor.

“It was just a thought,” said June. “I don’t really know how far any of this can go, anyway. We’re at, like, the worst possible age for this sort of thing. We’re smart enough to know what’s going on, but no one is going to take us very seriously because we’re still just a couple of kids.”

“I guess we’ll just have to see,” said Betty. “We’re still a long way from even being well educated on the case. I mean, there are tons of people that have spent a lot of time working on this, and they’re no closer to getting any real answers than we are. The advantage that we have is it sounds like a lot of the research has already been done for us, but everyone is reaching the same conclusion. All we need to do is find a different finish line, and then we’ll really have something.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I have some ideas,” said Betty as they made the doors across the campus. Betty swung the heavy door open, and they returned to the bustle of a living and breathing high school. “I’ll go over it once we get some privacy,” she said. “Maybe Mr. Evans will let us work in the library.” And then she and June were splitting the crowd so they could get to Mr. Evans’s room on time.

As it turned out, Mr. Evans suggested the library idea before they could even bring it up. They left the quiet class behind them, the eyes of their classmates locked on their backs, the others wondering if those two had fucked up or were getting special treatment for some reason.

When Betty and June got to the library, they walked immediately to the row of desktop computers at the back of the room. Younger kids gave them a wide berth as they passed through the rows of books, the smell of the aged hardbacks as welcome as the blissful hour away from Mr. Evans’s classroom. Finally they had privacy, and as Betty got to work on Google, June grabbed a chair to sit next to her.

The website loaded slower than it did at home, but soon enough it was up and the two of them were staring at stylized blood spatter, Duke Barnes, and the pretty and impossibly familiar face of Mandy Reasoner.

“God,” June said. “Seeing her face is . . .”

“Unnerving?”

June nodded, still lost in contemplation of her tragic mirror image on the screen. Finally she broke away and turned to Betty. “So,” she said, “spill.”

“All right,” said Betty. “I think we need to task ourselves with the things that aren’t on the website.” She tapped the monitor with her fingertips. “For example, whoever set this page up can tell you thirty different ways that Duke’s trial was unfair. What they don’t do is explain how Duke was really innocent, and not just a victim of a poorly run court. I don’t see even one theory as to who the killer could really be.”

“Do you?” June asked hopefully, and Betty shook her head.

“Not really. I mean, there’s some pretty interesting stuff here, but nothing to really go off of. For example, the site basically accepts it as fact that Duke was working as a hooker that day, and Mandy was probably out doing the same thing.”

“He looks like a fucking creep,” said June, her voice raised well above a library whisper. “Seriously, just look at him. I mean, I usually think hard-looking guys like that are cute, but this guy . . . He might be innocent, but you can tell he still did bad things.” She shuddered. “He’s not cute, not even a little. He looks like he’s been angry his whole life.”

“So what is our goal going to be?” Betty asked. “Mr. Evans said college grading, and I don’t even really know what that means, other than that he is going to be really hard on us. I feel like he gave us this challenge for a reason, but I can’t really tell if he wants us to fail or succeed. It’s not that I don’t think we can do it, but if all we do is spit back what we found on a website, Mr. Evans is going to kick our asses, and he’ll probably smile while he’s doing it.”

“Well, shit,” June said. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ll keep it simple to start with. We’re going to spend the rest of the hour reading that website, and then we can move on from there. Also, I’m sure they’re boring, but I bet we can get our hands on an actual court transcript.

“As for a goal for the whole project, that seems pretty simple, too. Our aim shouldn’t be to try and prove that Duke is innocent, but to try and find out who else could have done it. If I’m right and Mandy was hooking, then we should look into anyone with an arrest for hiring a prostitute back then. I think that information’s all public. And we also look into who was living with Duke and Mandy at the time.”

“Damn, Detective Martinez,” June said. Betty couldn’t quite figure out if she sounded impressed or was mocking her. “OK, then. How do we find out who was living with them?”

Betty answered with a pair of mouse clicks and some scrolling before pointing her index finger at the screen.

“Look at what it says right here,” said Betty, and June crowded back in. “This says that Duke and Mandy had roommates, that their house was basically a place for homeless people to stay illegally, and that lots of other people stayed there, too.”

“So this is going to be impossible, basically,” said June. “That’s just great. My mom already hates me enough. A failing grade on this project should infuriate her in ways I didn’t even know existed yet.”

“Oh, get the knot out of your thong.”

June scowled and socked her on the arm. “I’m serious, though, Betty. This all sounds pretty flimsy.”

“We don’t even know that yet,” said Betty. “Like I said, we’ll look over this page, read it all, top to bottom. And then, as far as I’m concerned, we have three things to figure out. We need to know who was with Mandy in the week or so before she died, we need to find out where they lived and if it’s somewhere we can visit, and, unfortunately, we’re going to need to learn a lot about Duke.”

“God,” June said, her eyes settling against their will on the man’s sneering image on the screen.

“He’s the only person who knew who was there that day,” Betty said. “We need to read his articles from
Maximum Rocknroll
, we need to find out why the cops were so sure it was him and not anyone else, and if worse comes to worst, we really might need to find a way to talk to him, face-to-face.”

“Christ,” said June. But then she took a big breath and took over the mouse, scrolling down to the next screen of text. “I guess we better get to it.”

I don’t like Mondays. It’s pretty much the worst cliché, but I really don’t. Mondays were always the end of the party when I was still in school—or at least had friends in school—and I never really got over it. I never got over that blunt feeling that life really will catch up with you.

Example: take your average nine-to-fiver. Do they like their job? Nope. Are they satisfied with the money they make? Nope. Do they realize how lucky they are? Oh hell fucking no. I get it, though, at least now I do. Being some modern Kerouac-esque vagabond seems pretty romantic, at least it did to me, but when you realize that you never travel and that you’ll do anything for heroin, it sort of takes some of the shine off. God, I feel like such shit right now, so fucking weak and useless.

I want to get high and listen to Jawbreaker, let Blake just soothe me into a coma. I want to shoot speed and listen to Motörhead, stop giving a fuck. More bands, too, all with drugs that match the music—cocaine and Avail, a buttload of beer and Hot Water Music, weed for any of them. Vodka for Crass, everything for the Dead Kennedys. That’s how my brain has been for so long, it’s hard to see it any other way. Heroin can be the best for relaxing, but it needs to be the right shot. The kind I can’t find, the kind Duke can’t find, that first blast of good clean pure shit. The kind I’ll never have again. But I’ll fucking chase it.

Jason came on to me last night, and I know what you’re probably thinking, that Duke would kill him if he found out, but is that even the truth anymore? The stuff that Duke and I do to get a fix isn’t what most people would consider good for a relationship. I mean, even if you discount what I do, having a boyfriend that goes to the rough trade district selling bareback sex can be a strain. If that sort of thing is OK, then why is it that I know that Duke would be furious about Jason sitting next to me on the couch last night? Nothing really happened, not really, at least not from what I remember, but the stuff that he told me was so sweet. It made me feel like maybe I was worth something, like maybe I could even turn all of this shit around if I got my act together.

I know I won’t, though. I’m too scared of getting an HIV test, too scared of life without getting high, and way too scared of having to face my family ever again. For all I know they think I’m dead, and I may as well be at this point. Dead, gone, and forgotten, like a real-life zombie just sticking around for a fix. Have to go.

Better now. I saw Duke when he came to shoot up, and after he left again I finally talked to Jason. Nothing happened last night, so there’s nothing to worry about. He said he was sorry I thought he was hitting on me. He was just messed up and being friendly. I don’t remember what happened, but I think he’s probably telling the truth. There was a time where I would have known for sure, and probably even freaked out about something like that, but all I can think of now is how good it felt to sit on the couch with his arm around me. If something else did happen then I don’t remember it, so it doesn’t matter.

I wish Duke and I were like that again, instead of just living like animals. I just want to have someone care about me. I want to feel as good as I used to on dope. I want to feel like more than just something for men to get off on. Jason made me feel like that and he says nothing happened, so I believe him.

This is the first time I’ve ever felt like I should just destroy this journal. Maybe in the morning, but right now I’m going to lay down for a little bit, it might help with how sick I’ve been feeling.

Kiss kiss,

Mandy