The Tramp (The Bound Chronicles #1) (36 page)

chapter forty-four

Have a sudden urge to do some laundry, son?
James eyed John’s crouching form, bent over and sorting clothes in the laundry room that was just off the kitchen. Busy as a bee.

Sheriff Jameson sat across from him, and James leaned close with his voice lowered, “Listen, Mike. John has already made his statement to your deputy. All the kids were dropped home before midnight Saturday, and Antonio was fine the last time he saw him. Ours would’ve been the first house on the route, but there’s no reason Antonio wouldn’t have made it safely home within fifteen or twenty minutes after John got home. I saw John come in, and I saw him to bed.”

James made no mention of the fact that he heard his son sneak out of his room shortly after that. Through a darkened window, he had watched him put his car in neutral, roll it out to the road, and turn the ignition once he was clear down the drive. James hadn’t thought the secretive behavior was of concern; he himself had snuck out more than once when he was John’s age, and teenage boys needed some freedom. After Antonio had turned up missing, though, he had to ask. John confessed to meeting with Lindsay Yates (whom James remembered to be quite pretty). He said he didn’t wanted to shame his date to the dance by leaving with another girl, and apparently, Lindsay had invited John to visit her at the Jameson’s house. Did Mike know the girls had visitors while he and Stephanie were away for the night? John insisted that Antonio wasn’t a part of the after-party, and though James trusted his son, he sensed the need to tread lightly with the sheriff.

“Well,” Mike grunted, leaning back against the back of the booth, “that’s the information that we have from the limo driver, too.” He seemed about to say more, then hesitated, as if unsure whether or not to divulge his thoughts.

“Has anyone been able to ascertain whether or not Antonio left the Walsh house that night? Well, clearly he did. But any idea why, or where he went?” James hinted, fishing for mention of the party at the Jameson house.

Mike narrowed his eyes. “Thing is, Jamie. I have in my possession Antonio’s personal notebook.”

‘I’ have in ‘my’ possession; not ‘we,’ the police force.

“Aaron Walsh was the man who found the body. Know him?”

“Slightly.”

“Good fella. Has a real thing for the hounds. When he watched them scenting around the crime scene, he invited us to the Walsh house straight away. Let us look wherever we pleased, let the dogs sniff where they would, and the notebook turned up right quick. Under the boy’s bed.”

“And, you’ve read it?”

“What do you think?”

James rubbed the scruff on his chin with both hands. “I’m surprised it wasn’t in Italian.”

“Looks like he was practicing English. One part would be in Italian, then the next in English.”

“That makes sense,” James said. He tried to shrug, but he was tense from his ears to his toenails.

“I’ll be honest with you, Jamie. John was mentioned quite a bit, and we all know boys will be boys.”

James had no choice but to hold Mike’s gaze, unreadable as it was. He had to return the challenge, “The two were pretty good friends. John told me Amanda had recently joined their little crew, as well.” He watched Mike flinch, almost imperceptibly.

“No, Amanda was never mentioned in the notebook.” Mike recovered his composure in an instant. “She only knew the boy in passing.”

And who could prove otherwise, Mike? Since no one shall ever see Antonio’s writings, but you?
“John must have been mistaken,” James offered magnanimously. “He’s still getting to know everybody, you know.”

“John’s a good kid. I understand.”

James sensed that Mike’s subtext was, “We understand each other,” and he shifted in his seat, dreading where the conversation might be headed. What was James “understanding,” exactly?

“Look, Jamie,” Mike rapped his knuckles on the table between them. “You and I go back a long time. Our families go back a long time. We’re on the same team. Neither one of us wants our kids mixed up in something as serious as this murder case.”

James felt the subtle threat in Mike’s unblinking eyes and it pissed him off. But he sympathized with his need to protect his daughter as certainly as James would defend his son. Leaning back he nodded—yes.

“There’s a punk mentioned several times in the journal, name of Sam Castle. Been up to his share of trouble. Sound familiar?” Mike asked, finally seeming to arrive at the crux of his mission to the Robinson household.

“Another kid from Andrew Jackson?”

“Dropped out of Jackson, I guess. This Castle kid lives down in Finley Hollow.”

“You’re talking about the Southern Cove Mobile-Home Park.” James corrected the slur. He had no patience for the old warring families theme, and didn’t find any humor in the joke that so many members of the Finley family were poor that they might as well name the lower-valued properties in town after them. “What does the boy’s neighborhood have to do with it, Mike?”

“I’ve had more than enough calls down there, made enough arrests in the hollows, to know unsavory events happen there. More drugs, more drunks, more of just about everything we don’t want in Shirley, friend.”

“What makes you think this Sam kid is involved with Antonio’s murder, though?”

“Things I’ve heard. My daughter may not have known Antonio di Brigo very well, but she seems to have known plenty about Sam Castle. Wouldn’t say much, but I get the idea he’s not a good guy. Does John know him?”

“Wait a minute, Mike. We’re talking about kids here. ‘Not a good guy,’ maybe, but how does that correlate with killing someone?”

“Does John know him?” Mike repeated.

“I have no idea. Why do you suspect him?”

“Just a hunch. Let’s say something I read,” he murmured, then turned his head toward the kitchen and hollered, “Hey John, that you skulkin’ around back there?”

John had been loitering close enough to appear within seconds, padding around the corner in bare feet, politely curious. “Sir?”

“You have any dealings with a boy named Sam Castle? Used to go to Andrew Jackson.” Mike rose from his seat to stand in front of John, cocking his head in the manner of one listening to a small child.

“I’ve talked to him once or twice, but we’re not really friends.” John used the new air of forced unconcern that James noticed had settled over his son during the past few days.

“What do you think of him?”

“I don’t,” he shrugged, and then amended his statement to sound more kind, when Mike snickered and clapped him on the shoulder. “I mean, I don’t really know him. He seems alright.”

“You be up for a trip down to Finley Hollow, to talk to him? You and your dad?”

John looked to his dad.

“Is that really necessary, Mike?”
There’s something else there. What is it, son?
“We don’t want to get involved in law enforcement activities.”

Mike’s pitch rose in humorous defense, “I just want to ask a few questions, clear up some foggy details.”

John bristled. “Am I a foggy detail?”

James gave his son a warning look.

“Ho! Fiesty, I like that.” Mike let loose a stilted guffaw and wrestled John around the neck, adding a noogie that deepened his scowl.

“Relax,”
James mouthed to his son’s sour mug, strangled in Mike’s bicep.

“You Robinson’s, I love you guys,” Mike laughed, hanging an arm around James next as he rose to stand. “You all follow me, this won’t take long.”

“We’ll take the Mercedes, meet you around front,” James called after him, motioning towards the garage. “Son, grab your coat, it’s getting chilly.”

“Mercedes. You Robinson’s…” Mike chuckled, disappearing through the front door.

John shoved his feet into a pair of flip-flops, then headed for the garage without bothering to get a jacket. “At least he didn’t handcuff us and toss us into in the back of his cruiser,” he muttered.

“Should he have, son?” John jerked one shoulder up as he pushed past him. “The more you tell me, the more I can help you, John,” James hissed, resisting the urge to grab the top of his arm and yank him back to look his father in the face.

“Yeah, like you’d listen.” He opened the car door and flounced into the passenger seat, then settled with his arms folded, staring straight ahead and affecting boredom.

James closed his eyes and prayed for patience, reminding himself that John had just lost a friend—probably a close one, and in a terrible way. Descending into his seat, he watched the side of his son’s face and wondered how much John actually knew about the details of Antonio’s death.

“Have I not been listening?” he asked. When James didn’t get an answer, he sighed and punched the button on the garage door remote. “Have you been trying to tell me something?” His son sat as still as a statue next to him. “Is there something that you want to tell me now, John?”

John turned away to gaze out the car window in reply, and James noticed with a groan that a deputy had been waiting in the police cruiser to accompany them. He’d hoped that it would just be the three of them—and that the Castle house would be empty when they arrived. But so far the errand was ratcheting in drama, instead of fading into a non-event. The two officers waved as James slowed to a stop and let the cruiser take the lead down their long driveway.

Please don’t turn on any sirens, Mike.
He didn’t, and James relaxed a fraction, as they turned onto Riverbend Road.

When they came to the intersection with the state road, he glanced at John, contemplating the countryside. He looked disinterested, but his brain was likely buzzing with activity. James resigned himself to a long, apprehensive ride, and began sorting through the events of the past few weeks in his mind, trying to remember when his habitually cheerful son had become so glum. He thought he could trace it back to well before Antonio’s death.

John broke the silence after they had only driven a short distance, to James’s surprise. “Have you ever felt like this place is…I don’t know, a little off?”

“Small towns are all a bit weird, I think.”

“No, not weird.”

“How would you describe it?” James ventured, fearing his son would lapse back into the personal censorship that he had been practicing for the last several days—the last several weeks really. He hadn’t been trying to ignore John’s moodiness, just unsure of how to react.

John thought for a while before replying. He watched the cows in the fields, clumps of elm trees, the sunset in the distance—turned just enough away so his dad couldn’t see his face. “I don’t know. Sort of dangerous. Somehow.”

“Dangerous?” After several minutes of dead air, James prodded, “I suppose when a good friend is killed like Antonio was, the world seems a lot more dangerous than it used to.”

“I’m not only talking about Antonio. Something…unsettling is going on. More than unsettling. I think I felt it when I was little, but I just couldn’t recognize what my instinct was telling me. Now that I’ve been gone for a while and came back, though. Or maybe because I’m older now…” He shrugged and looked at his hands. “It’s stronger now.”

“You are older now, son. Things can get pretty jumbled in your head, at your age. I understand why you feel confused.”

“I don’t feel confused, Dad, I feel protective. Aggressively protective.”

James cleared his throat and began, “Well—”

“It’s not hormones that I’m talking about.”

“Why do you think I would mention hormones?” James chuckled.

“Because you cleared your throat and squeezed the steering wheel in exactly the same way when I asked you what a condom was. When I was ten?”

You remember that from when you were ten?
James didn’t remember a condom discussion, but he was certain that John could recite every one of his father’s embarrassed sexual context blunders, word for word.

“I worry about Candy, yes. But not because of why you think.”

“Well, you both experienced your share of danger when you were little here, John. When Candy was kidnapped, well, that was something no child should ever have to think about. You, or her.” James shuddered at the memory, rising so unwelcomed into his mind. “You saved her from probably a very horrible outcome, though, John. You should be proud of that.”

“I didn’t save her.”

The words were bitten out, and James glanced over to see that John had his fist jammed against his mouth in a grimace of anguish, his eyes lost beyond the racing fields outside.

“Of course you—”

“I’m not just talking about Candy either. It’s more than that. Don’t you care about those drawings that Grandpa made in the hospital? Do you think that’s normal?”

James racked his brain for the “drawings,” knowing he was in trouble if he couldn’t remember something. He had been working so much since he got there, taking over Dad’s business and simultaneously keeping his own afloat remotely.

“They weren’t just drawings.” John finally turned towards him, gesturing with his whole arms. “I don’t know why I know that, but I do.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“No, you don’t. There was a giant release when Antonio died, like something was…I don’t know, satisfied. For a minute. I felt it in the air and in the ground. Like a sigh.”

“Were you there, when Antonio died?”

John’s face fell, and he turned away. He was sullen, closed again.

“John,
were
you?”

James watched him fume for several seconds, glaring out through the front windshield, before he finally answered. “No.”

“Well, I’m glad. If that’s true. The boy died horribly.” He breathed a sigh of relief, but something that his son said left him worried. He had to ask, “Do you know how he died?”

“He was shot.”

“Yes.”

“In the face,” John said, so bluntly that he almost sobbed the words.

James’s jerked his head in reaction; he couldn’t remember the last time John had cried. His suspicions returned to the possibility that he had witnessed at least some part of the macabre scene.
No, that’s insane. How could my own son have been involved with a murder? In any way?

It was unthinkable. He forced the possibility out of his mind.