Swallowing Stones Page 13

  With school less than a week away, he had gone back to his daily routine of running, trying to get in shape for track. He had done very little training since early July. But now he ran almost every morning at dawn and again in the early evening, to make up for lost time.

  On most nights, after he’d run several miles, he would end up resting on the church steps across from Jenna’s house, just as he had been doing since the accident. But he had grown increasingly uneasy about these visits ever since she had approached him two nights ago at Judd’s party. He could not remember a single word of that conversation with Jenna. He remembered only glancing in the rearview mirror as he maneuvered out of his parking space, and catching a glimpse of her face, frozen in the pale glow of the streetlight. It was obvious that she knew who he was. She probably recognized him from the pool. She was bound to wonder what he was doing hanging out across from her house.

  He had not wanted to stop by Judd Passarello’s party that night. He’d known Darcy would probably be there. So far the two of them had managed to avoid each other since they had broken up. Darcy stayed within the secure confines of her group of friends whenever she came to the pool, and Michael had not been to a single party since Steven Chang’s. That is, he had not actually set foot inside any of the houses where the parties were under way. Instead, much to his dismay, he found himself waiting outside these houses in his father’s car, hoping to get a glimpse of Amy.

  He had tried calling her on several occasions, but she had never returned his calls. He even wrote her letters explaining everything, about how Darcy had just been trying to get back at him. The letters came back, unopened. His sense of loss was far greater than he had ever imagined it would be. For the first time in his life, he felt absolutely alone in the world.

  He stared across the road at Jenna’s house. The yard was looking pretty good these days. He was proud of that. For weeks the flower beds had gone untended. The Wards did have a local boy mow the lawn each week, but the flower beds had disturbed Michael. They’d been choked with weeds. He wondered what Charlie Ward would have thought if he could have seen them.

  And so Michael had taken to weeding the flower beds each night after Jenna and her mother had gone to sleep. He had more or less appointed himself the Wards’ personal caretaker. He thought Charlie Ward would approve.

  When the heavy rains had come in mid-August, Michael had noticed how the water flowed off the roof instead of coming down the drainpipe. The water formed large pools around the foundation. If their basement wasn’t already flooded, it soon would be. So he had come up with a plan.

  He had waited until almost four in the morning to leave his own house. When he got to the Wards’, he sneaked into the garage, found an extension ladder, and as quietly as possible climbed up on the roof. The soles of his sneakers had almost no traction on the wet rungs, so he kicked off his shoes and mounted the ladder barefoot. Two large plastic trash bags bulged from his back pockets.

  Using his hands, he dug at the clumps of wet leaves and twigs, tossing them into the bags. The heavy rain blinded him, making it difficult to see what he was doing and slowing him down. Unlike those other times when he came to weed the flower beds, he had badly underestimated the time it would take to clean the gutters. He had suddenly realized it was almost daybreak. Fearing discovery, he had retrieved his sneakers, carried the ladder back to the garage, then dragged the trash bags out to the woods at the back of the house to dump the soggy contents. He had forgotten his watch, and the thick mist had tricked him into thinking it was earlier than it really was. So the last thing he expected to see as he came out of the woods was Jenna sitting on the steps of the deck, staring right in his direction.

  Momentarily stunned, he had wadded the empty trash bags in his hands and darted back into the woods, avoiding the path. He stopped a few yards away, crouched behind a clump of shrubs, and watched as Mrs. Ward came out onto the deck and began talking to Jenna. Neither of them seemed alarmed about anything, least of all a trespasser. He had let himself breathe again. Maybe she hadn’t seen him after all.

  But now he wasn’t so sure, because on this particular evening he saw a patrol car drive by twice. It was obvious that the officer was paying particular attention to the Ward house. When the police car came by a third time, Michael recognized the Hangman behind the wheel. He was no longer watching the Ward house. His attention was on Michael. As the car slowed down, Michael got to his feet. It took tremendous effort, but he managed a friendly smile and a wave as he jogged down the church steps and headed nowhere in particular, glancing over his shoulder occasionally to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

  It was only six o’clock. So he began to run again, and he would have kept on running until he collapsed if he hadn’t seen Amy Ruggerio getting into her grandfather’s car in front of the local 7-Eleven. He stopped so abruptly he almost fell over.

  Amy was obviously flustered by his sudden appearance. Her hand rested nervously on her throat. Caught off guard, she seemed less defensive than the last time he had tried to talk to her. He approached her cautiously, as if he were afraid she might vanish into thin air if he made one false move.

  They were standing less than three feet apart. Michael glanced into the car to see if anyone was with her. She was alone.

  Neither of them spoke. Then, just as the awkward silence threatened to blow Michael apart, Amy said, “I had to get some eggs. We were out.”

  It was as if they were picking up in the middle of a conversation, right where they’d left off. Eggs, for pete’s sake! Michael wanted to burst out laughing. He wanted to throw his arms around her. But he did neither. “Do you have to go right home?”

  Amy glanced back at the 7-Eleven. She seemed preoccupied. “I think I’d better.”

  “None of what she said was true, you know. Darcy, I mean. She was trying to get back at me.”

  Amy’s eyes glazed over with a few renegade tears. But she fought them back.

  “I care too much about you to ever do anything to hurt you.” He had not meant to put it all on the line like that, but somehow the words had just come out.

  Amy slowly took a step back toward the car. She reached behind her and grabbed the door handle. “It isn’t just about Darcy,” she whispered, pulling the door open.

  Michael shook his head. “Then what? Tell me what it is.”

  “Your party …”

  At the mention of his party, his body tensed. “What about it?”

  “I don’t know.” Amy’s face flushed a soft pink. “I guess I’ve been wondering how—no, not how, why—we ended up in your garage.”

  Michael had no idea where this was leading. What could he say? That the only thing he’d had on his mind that afternoon was sex? He tried desperately to recall what he had said to her at the party. He’d fed her a line, he didn’t doubt that, but what? And what had he said to her in the garage when they were rolling around on a pile of old lawn furniture cushions his mother was planning to throw away? Something about having wanted her since the first time he set eyes on her. It had been a bald-faced lie. Or so he thought. Now, standing across from her in the 7-Eleven parking lot, he wasn’t so sure.

  Amy was still waiting for his answer.

  “I wanted you, okay?” He almost moaned the words.

  “But I was with Joe.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I was his … date.”

  Michael did not miss the disdain in her voice.

  “I’m just trying to understand something. About what was going on. I mean, Joe’s your best friend, isn’t he?” Amy rested one hand on the top of the open car door, as if for support. “Why would you try to move in on your friend’s date?”

  Michael spread his hands. He looked like a preacher about to deliver a benediction. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it like?”

  “What?”

  Amy sighed and stared up at the sky. “The artful dodger.”

  “The what?”

  “You keep dodgi
ng my questions.” She shook her head and slid into the front seat of her grandfather’s car.

  Michael was practically at his wits’ end. “What about us?” he managed to say as she was inching the car out of the lot. “Can I see you again?”

  Amy rolled down the window and stared up at him. Then she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “I need time, Mike. We have things we need to … talk about.”

  “We can talk now,” he said, brushing her hair over her shoulder and lightly touching her face.

  Amy smiled. It was just the tiniest curve of her full lips. But it was a smile. He was certain of it. “Later, okay?”

  He watched her pull out of the parking lot, then took off for home. It was almost dinnertime. He felt lighter, somehow, and his feet were moving faster than ever; his body seemed to fly. Being in love could do that to you.

  Fifteen minutes later Michael bounded up the front steps, through the house, and into the kitchen just in time to find Ralph Healey, Doug Boyle, and two other men from the police force scanning his backyard with metal detectors.

  17

  doug Boyle and Sergeant Healey searched along the edge of the woods behind the house, while two cops Michael didn’t recognize carefully skirted the area around the large aboveground pool.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Michael’s mother said when he asked what was going on. “They have a search warrant.” Karen MacKenzie was at the back door, watching the police comb through her yard with their equipment. “They’ve been all over this house. They’ve gone through all our … things.” Her shoulders twitched, as if she had just told him she’d found cockroaches in the bread box.

  His heart began to thump wildly. The police knew something. That was why they had come back.

  He spotted his father and Josh outside, standing with their arms folded, side by side on the patio, looking as if they were prepared to defend their small two-story colonial with their lives if they had to. He tried to determine the look on his father’s face, to see how much he knew, but Tom MacKenzie’s face was blank, like that of a man stunned by an unexpected blow.

  Michael looked over at the woodpile behind the garage. No one was back there. But then, he seriously doubted the metal detectors would be able to locate the rifle where he’d hidden it: three feet in the ground below all that wood.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Doug Boyle disappear into the dense woods. He emerged a few minutes later holding something on the end of a stick. He studied it for a few minutes, then brought it to Ralph Healey. The older man called the other two officers over to look at what Boyle had found.

  Michael’s father glanced toward the back door. Without a word, Karen MacKenzie punched open the screen door with the side of her fist and stepped out onto the patio. Michael followed her, although each step he took felt as if his feet were weighted.

  Doug Boyle handed the stick, with something stuck on the end of it, to Healey, who dropped the object into a plastic bag, sealing it as he walked toward the patio. He held it out to Michael’s father. “Doug found this empty casing over in the woods there,” he said.

  That was when Michael realized Boyle had purposely slipped a stick inside the shell in order to pick it up. He didn’t want to contaminate possible evidence.

  Michael stared down at the two-inch casing as a wave of panic swept over him. Of course the empty shell would have been ejected after he fired the gun. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Why hadn’t he tried to find it?

  “All you’ve got there is an empty casing,” Tom MacKenzie said. “How do you know it matches the bullet?”

  Healey told Boyle and the other men to meet him out front. When they’d gone, he turned back to Tom MacKenzie. “The bullet that killed Charlie Ward was a forty-five-caliber, five-hundred-grain. One of those old lead bullets the government used to issue to the cavalry.” He pointed to the bottom of the cartridge, where .45-70 GOVT was printed. “You don’t see too many of these around anymore. It didn’t come from a pistol. Too big.” He looked over at Michael. “The bullet came from a forty-five-seventy rifle, son.”

  Michael felt a tightness in his throat. The bullet Ralph Healey described was identical to the ones Michael’s grandfather had given him along with the Winchester. At the time, his grandfather had explained that he’d had the bullets for years but that they were still good. He’d given Michael several rounds.

  “Are you saying Mike fired that shot?” Karen MacKenzie asked, grabbing her husband’s arm for support.

  Healey stuffed the bag with the casing into his pocket, then pulled out a pack of Marlboros. He looked apologetic as he lit a cigarette. “Sorry, I haven’t been able to kick the habit yet.” He took a long draw on the cigarette. “I’m not saying Mike shot it,” he told Karen MacKenzie. “I’m just saying it looks like it came from his rifle.”

  Tom MacKenzie’s face had turned a deep red. Michael could see he was furious but working hard to control it. “That rifle was locked in my gun cabinet in the basement,” he sputtered. “I put it there myself.” He spun around and was almost nose to nose with Michael. “Do you know anything about this?”

  Michael ran his tongue back and forth along his lower lip. “Well, I did take it out for a few minutes to show a couple of my friends.” This part was true. What he didn’t bother to mention was that he and Joe had then taken the gun back into the woods. Nor did he mention that he had left it propped next to the garage door later, while he was with Amy. “But I put it back.”

  “Did you lock the cabinet?” His father narrowed his eyes.

  Michael puffed up his cheeks, pretending to remember. “Sure. At least, I think I did.”

  “You think you did?”

  Michael could tell by the way his father was clenching his jaw that he was only seconds away from exploding.

  “Dad … I’m sorry. I can’t remember.” He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. “I didn’t shoot that rifle, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Tom MacKenzie’s red face paled to a neutral pink. Michael had managed to defuse him for the moment.

  “Well, then, who did?” his mother asked.

  Michael forced himself to look at his mother. The fear in her face was terrible to see.

  “Anybody could have fired it,” his father told Ralph Healey. “There were over forty people here that day.”

  Sergeant Healey looked at Michael, then turned to Michael’s father. “Forty people?”

  “It was Mike’s birthday,” Tom MacKenzie told him. “We threw him a big party. The rifle was one of his gifts.”

  “So you’re saying maybe somebody decided to try it out when no one was looking?”

  “Why not? Kids do crazy things these days.” But even as his father said this, Michael could see the desperation on his face. He was grasping at straws.

  Ralph Healey took a drag of his cigarette, then squinted through the smoke. “You were here the whole time?”

  Michael’s parents nodded in unison.

  “And you didn’t hear a rifle shot?”

  “It was the Fourth of July,” Michael reminded him, working hard to steady his voice. “People were setting off firecrackers and cherry bombs all over the neighborhood. Nobody would have known the difference.”

  Michael’s father sat down on the lounge chair. “Do you have any idea who might have done something like this?” he asked Michael. “I mean, which of your friends could have sneaked off to the woods back there and fired the rifle?”

  Michael shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see anyone touch it.”

  Josh had remained unusually quiet amid all the questions. But now he said, “What about Joe?”

  They all turned to him. Michael felt the prickle of sweat on his face. He knew where this was going.

  “What about him?” his father asked.

  “Why did he suddenly want to borrow Mike’s rifle?” Josh looked incredibly pleased with himself. A thin, crooked smile spread across his face. �
�Then when Mike wants it back, Joe tells him it was stolen. If you ask me—”

  “We’re not asking you,” Michael interjected angrily. “You’re talking about a friend of mine.” But it was too late.

  Ralph Healey tossed the half-smoked cigarette on the ground and crushed it beneath his shoe. Michael could see he was giving Josh’s idea serious thought, although he didn’t say anything.

  Michael’s eyes were so dry they had begun to burn. He wondered if he had dared to blink even once since he’d come home and found half the Briarwood police force scouting his backyard. His tongue felt like an oversized cotton ball. “At least forty other people were here that day,” he reminded Healey. “I know it doesn’t look good for Joe, but you can’t pin something on him just because of some lousy coincidence. It’s not his fault the gun was stolen.”

  “If it was stolen,” Josh said.

  Michael fought the urge to pummel his brother into the ground.

  Ralph Healey shook his head. “I’ll need a list of everyone who was here that day,” he said. “Maybe somebody saw or heard something.”

  after the police had gone, Michael went inside with his family. They all sat down at the kitchen table as if they were going to eat dinner, although there was no food on the table and no dishes had been set out.

  For a while no one said anything. Michael looked up at the clock. It was past seven-thirty. His father and Josh had missed Jeopardy! and hadn’t seemed to notice. If he had not felt so miserable, he might have found that funny.

  “I bet it was that Sadowski kid,” his father said. “This is just like something he’d do.” Michael knew his father needed to believe Joe had fired the rifle, because it was too terrible to imagine it might have been one of his own sons.