Truth and Lies (18 page)

After he had gone I crept back to the hedge and followed it, trying to keep myself out of the line of sight of the house. I tried to move as if I belonged in this neighborhood, so that the people who lived in the big houses wouldn't notice me, wouldn't peg me as an outsider, someone potentially up to no good. When I got to the edge of the driveway I slowed my pace. I looked down to where the garage was, behind the house but visible from the sidewalk, doing my best to make it seem that I just happened to be glancing in that direction. The Hayeses had his-and-hers Beemers. Both of the garage doors were open, so I could see that Mrs. Hayes's Beemer wasn't there, which meant that Mrs. Hayes wasn't home either. It had been a lousy day in a lousy week in what I sometimes thought of as a lousy life, but, finally, something was going right.

I turned back and walked up the flagstone path to the front porch. I drew in a deep breath and pressed the doorbell.

When Jen appeared at the door, I couldn't help it, my mouth dropped open. I hadn't been up close to her in nearly two months. I'd forgotten how beautiful she was, how creamy her skin was, how green her eyes were, how golden her hair was, how soft and pink her lips were.
When she pushed open the outer door, I inhaled the flowery scent of the perfume she always wore. I would have been in heaven, I might even have felt hope—if only she had been smiling.

Jen frowned at me. The hand holding open the outer door trembled. For a moment I was afraid she was going to step back into the house and shut me out. I wondered whether grabbing the door before she could close it would make things better or worse.

“You shouldn't be here,” she said.

“I have to talk to you.”

“The police were here. They asked me about where I was a couple of weeks ago—the night that kid was killed in the park.”

When Jen was happy, when things were going her way, her green eyes were as cool and inviting as summer grass under a June sky. When she was mad, though, they were as hard and sharp and cold as emeralds. They were cold now.

“They came here and asked me all kinds of crazy questions,” she said. “My dad almost had a heart attack he was so mad. What are you trying to do to me, Mike?”

Her hand moved again. She was going to go back inside. She was going to slam the door.

“I'm in big trouble, Jen,” I said. “They think I was involved in what happened to Robbie.”

A puzzled look played across her face. I tried to remember if she had ever been in any of Robbie's classes, but couldn't.

“Robbie Ducharme,” I said. “The kid who was killed in the park.”

And there it was. That cold look, the one that always reminded me of Jen's mother. And there was that tilt of her head as she crossed her arms over her chest and studied me again. Her expression, her whole body language, said, Yeah, that figures.

“You and your friends managed to get into
big
trouble this time, huh, Mike?”

I couldn't have felt worse if she'd kneed me.

“Jeez, Jen…”

She just stood with her arms crossed, her expression like winter, like she was the exterminator and I was the bug.

“If they asked you all those questions,” I said, “then you've got to know where I told them I was.” I wasn't sure how Detective Jones would have gone about it. Would he have said,
Michael McGill told us …
and then gone on to tell her the story I had told the cops? Or would he simply have asked her to account for her whereabouts that night and then maybe asked her questions about it?
So you're saying you weren't down on Eastern Avenue at around midnight, you're saying you didn't
meet
someone down there, you're saying you didn't
get
into a car?
Either way, Jen was smart. She had to have figured it out.

Maybe if I hadn't been working so hard to convince her to help me, and maybe if BMWs weren't so well made and didn't run so quietly, I would have noticed that Mr. Hayes had returned. Maybe if Mr. Hayes had closed his car door when he got out or maybe if he'd turned off
the engine, I would have noticed that he was coming up the flagstone path behind me. But Mr. Hayes didn't do any of those things, so I didn't notice, not until a hand grabbed me by the upper arm and spun me around, not until I was actually staring into Mr. Hayes's furious face.

“Jennifer, go back inside,” he said. His hand was as tight and hard as a vise grip. There were going to be bruises, for sure. “And
you
—” If he'd yanked any harder on my arm, he would have dislocated it. “You get out of here before I call the police.”

“Daddy—” Jen said.

“I said, go inside,” he yelled at her. With each word his fingers bit a little deeper into my arm. Mr. Hayes had a grip like iron. I knew he belonged to a gym. He worked out four or five times a week. Played racquet-ball. Went mountain biking with a couple of lawyers the same age as him, looking for that forever-young experience. I used to think it was pretty funny, guys pushing fifty acting like they were closer to fifteen. I had never considered that all that working out could make Mr. Hayes a truly scary guy, a guy who, if he didn't hang on to that temper of his, could do some serious damage. I thought about it now, though.

Jen retreated into the house and closed the outer door, but she left the heavy inside door open and stood her ground behind it, watching through the glass.

“You,” Mr. Hayes said, pressing his face in close to mine, “you stay off my property and away from my daughter. You got that?”

I nodded. No way was I going to argue with this guy.

Mr. Hayes released me with a shove that sent me careening backward down the porch steps. I had to grab the railing to keep from falling. Mr. Hayes started down the steps toward me, his eyes on fire. He couldn't have been scarier if he'd been a hundred-pound Rottweiler with a law degree. I scrambled backward down the rest of the steps, then turned and retreated down the path to the sidewalk. Mr. Hayes came down a few steps. I drew back even farther and crossed the street. Only then did he turn. Only then did he guide Jen back into the house, away from the door. Then he came out again, down the path to his car. He pulled a jug of milk from the front seat before closing and locking the car. Well, that figured, The guy pays who-knew-how-much to belong to a gym, but when he needs a jug of milk, what does he do? He jumps in his Beemer and drives all of three blocks to the closest 7–Eleven.

Whenever I had a bad day—when I got in trouble with a teacher or when Vin was acting like a jerk for some reason, or when I'd had my heart set on something that I ended up not getting, like being tagged to play forward in soccer when I was nine—my mom used to say, “Tomorrow is another day.” She said it as if it were a good thing, as if I should look forward to the next day because, as she said, “You never know what it's going to bring.”

Except that sometimes you did know. And sometimes what it was bringing was something no one in his right mind would look forward to.

Like meeting with Rhona Katz. It wasn't Rhona so much. She was okay. Pretty. And I bet she was a real tiger in court. But it was the fact of having to meet with her. Being in that much trouble that all of a sudden I was a guy who needed a lawyer.

Riel put on a jacket and tie to take me down to her office, which I couldn't figure out. Rhona was supposed to be an old friend of his. Who was he trying to impress? Or maybe I had been wrong about him and Susan. Maybe they really were just good friends.

At the meeting, Rhona—Riel made me call her
Ms
. Katz—wanted the same thing as the cops. She wanted all the so-called facts of the case.

“Tell me everything,” she said. “And I do mean everything. Every detail you can remember. Anyone you noticed on the street. Anyone who might have noticed you, even if you don't know their names.”

I told her the whole story—again—stopping whenever she raised her hand. She was writing everything down, and sometimes I talked too fast for her. I wanted never to have to tell it again. I wanted it to end. She wanted what she called “a complete record.”

After I told it again, I answered all of her questions. Then I said, “I didn't do anything.”

Rhona just nodded. She looked at Riel as she said, “He was seen fighting with Robbie.” I bristled at that. I hadn't been fighting with Robbie. I had shoved him. Once. That was all. “He was seen near the park the night it happened. He has an alibi that doesn't seem to be holding water at the moment. They may try to get a search warrant—they may want to see if they can find the clothes he was wearing that night, check for blood. You know the drill, John.”

I couldn't begin to remember what I had been wearing
two whole weeks ago. Anyway, whatever it was, it had probably been through the laundry by now.

“I'm going to contact the girl,” Rhona said. She consulted a file. “Jennifer Hayes. See if I can talk to her. Also Ashley Tierney and her mother.”

Riel nodded. Meeting adjourned.

We got to school in time for second period. I got to my English class just as the bell rang. I tried to catch Sal's eye as I made my way to my seat, but he was staring down at his desk and didn't look up. When class finished he bolted from the room. I tried to follow him, but Ms. Stephenson called my name and crooked a finger to get me to go to her desk.

“Your essay on Hamlet,” she said.

“What essay on Hamlet?”

“Exactly,” Ms. Stephenson said. “It was due on Friday, Mike.”

I had completely forgotten.

“Get it in tomorrow and I'll only take ten points off. Any later than that, and you start losing five points a day. Got it, Mike?”

If things are going to go bad, why not go all the way? I sighed and nodded.

By the time I got out of Ms. Stephenson's classroom, Sal had been swallowed up among the thirteen hundred kids who were on lunch—assuming he was still on school property and hadn't taken off to one of the zillion restaurants along Gerrard Street or hadn't gone over to Gerrard Square. It was obvious he was trying to
avoid me. Maybe he felt bad about talking to the police. For sure I would have felt bad if I'd been in the same situation—especially if I had told the police something that would make Sal look bad, which I was pretty sure I would never do. But how was Sal supposed to have known? I had never told him that I'd lied to Riel about how I got my hands all banged up. And who knows how the cops asked him the question? The poor guy probably didn't have a clue what they were after. And that's what I wanted to tell him—it's not your fault.

Cat, though, Cat was something else. Cat knew exactly what she was doing when she talked to the cops. They didn't even have to ask her. She had
volunteered
the information.
Wrong information
. If I ran into Cat … Jeez, I had no idea what I'd do if I ran into Cat.

“Hey, Mike.” Vin caught me by the arm.

I shook free, mad at him too. Vin, who adored Cat. Sweet little Cat. Yeah, right. I turned, headed for the nearest exit and pushed my way out into the schoolyard.

“Hey, Mikey, wait up!” Vin burst out the door behind me. “Hey!” He caught me by the arm again and this time when I tried to shake him off, he held tight. “What's the matter with you?”

My hands clenched into fists as I faced my old friend. Old as in
used-to-be
.

“What?” I said. “She didn't tell you?”

“Who?”

“
Who?
” Like there were so many
shes
in Vin's life.

“You mean Cat?”

I just stared at him.

“Tell me what?” Vin said. He looked genuinely baffled.

I studied his face. We had been friends since we were five years old. We'd both been in and out of a lot of trouble since then. We'd had our differences too. And over that time I had learned a few things about Vin. One, Vin could sling the bull with the best of them. He'd got me going more than once about things that turned out to be his idea of a joke. Two, when he was slinging away, and when it was a good story he was slinging, he eventually gave himself away. Usually it was his eyes that did it. They just couldn't stay focused on his victim the whole time. They always shifted away. Most people didn't realize that, but I had caught onto it and, after that, Vin had never been able to put one over on me.

So I peered at him now to see whether his eyes would shift.

They didn't.

He stared right back at me, two little lines between his eyes, shaking his head slightly.

“Come on, Mike,” he said. “What's going on?” He really seemed to have no idea.

I unclenched my fists and let out a long sigh. I looked out across the schoolyard. There were kids everywhere, talking, laughing, smoking, flirting, shooting hoops. Probably some of them were complaining too. Some of them were thinking,
Boy, this is not my day
. Thinking,
I
have problems
. Probably even thinking they had
big
problems. Did they ever have it wrong!

“The cops asked me more questions,” I said.

Vin shook his head again. “What about?” he said, like he couldn't figure it out.

“About the Robbie Ducharme thing.”

“What? Are they crazy? They think you had something to do with that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “They do.”

“I don't get it. Why would they think that?”

I studied him again. And again Vin's eyes held firm on my own.

“Because of Cat,” I said.

“Cat?” Vin reacted as if I had said Hamlet told them I'd been involved. Or better, The ghost of Hamlet's father appeared to the cops and told them. “
My
Cat, you mean?”

I nodded. “She told the cops she saw me fighting with Robbie Ducharme.”

This seemed to be news to Vin. “You were in a fight with Robbie Ducharme?”