Following Christopher Creed (27 page)

"No," I admitted. "Small-town boy. My dad wasn't in the picture ... I left home at seventeen."

"So why do some people make it and some people don't?" he asked.

He was still making a comparison between me and his sister. I didn't feel it was my place to answer, though I could have spoken for hours. He didn't expect an answer, I guess.

"And ... what is up with Justin? Is he a druggie or are my ears catching things wrong? People out in the boondocks are talking up a storm."

Ali looked stricken, and he said to her, "He's been doing everything shy of crack from what I hear."

"Oh, damn..." she said, resting her forehead on her fingertips. "I'm learning about this in my classes right now. How siblings are often coeternal opposites."

"And here's what's worse." Bo leaned over the table. "You ready?"

They said they were.

"Justin thinks his brother is out in the woods."

"His ... brother Matt?" Ali asked, confused. Adams froze in a way that, I guess, only I could understand. The weirdness strikes you hard enough to freeze you only if you spent an inordinate time thinking about the kid.

"Not Matt," Adams guessed when Bo didn't answer.

Bo sucked in a deep breath and blew it out again. "There was a whole crew of kids down in the Lightning Field after I left you, Adams. I stopped by to check on Justin like I said I would, thinking maybe I'd lecture him, give him a few needed swats on the head. There must have been, like, nineteen of them ... all brewed out and smoked up, all waiting for Chris Creed to show up across the swamp."

"Do we ... have any reason to believe that Chris might actually be around here?" Ali asked, casting a cautious glance at Torey, who suddenly looked depressed. He could never 314 stand the way kids created a circus out of Chris's disappearance. He said nothing. He just stared into the table, thinking God knows what. I wished he would blog it so I could read it tomorrow.

"Come on, Ali," Bo said, shifting impatiently enough to bounce me once. "Look at the reality of it. If Chris were coming home? Chris would
go to his house.
He's either twenty-one like us, or he's close. He'd go see what was up with his family. He's not going to show up at the Lighting Field to juggle balls of fire for the loadies. Jeezus. I should have known I'd come home to something like this."

"You think it's Justin's drug use that's making him think this?" Ali asked with a grimace. She obviously had liked the kid.

Bo jerked his head my way and his eyes landed on the napkin on my plate. "Mike would know better than me."

I was back to my journalistic conundrums. Was Justin an interview, and hence, did I protect his privacy? Or was Justin a hurting person and these people might help him?

I felt my heart melting, my career choices turning into sludge yet again. "Uh ... Justin seriously needs to go back to rehab. But, as is sometimes the case, drug use is a symptom. He's been diagnosed as bipolar."

Ali said thoughtfully, "I've long suspected that about his mother..."

"The drugs, her alcohol—I'd humbly submit they're self-medicating. He needs to work the shit out that's in his household. It's ... pretty unbelievable."

"You saw his mom tonight?" Bo asked.

I shuffled around in my seat until the urge to spill left me. I felt proud of myself for not announcing that the woman had all but raped me. But I got an idea. I wasn't working on the dead sister angle. Without spilling, maybe there was something I could imply to Bo about his sister and my suspicions...

"Can I ask you a question?" I looked at Bo and laid down my pen.

He looked glazed. "Sure."

"Did your sister, um, write anything to you? About Justin?"

He chuckled sadly. "She IMed me, like, twice, and both times it was something like 'I love you, but stay the fuck out of it. Luv, Darla.' That was in response to my five dozen IMs to her, to leave Danny alone and shit. She knew I sicced Justin on her, which amused her greatly, and to get even, she threatened to come on to him also. Hey, wait a minute."

He leaned away from me, staring suspiciously, and I suddenly saw a streak of Bo's wild-and-crazy eyes from the myths in these parts. I put my hands in the air, showing they were nowhere near my pen.

"This isn't part of my story," I said defensively. "All this is off the record. I just thought it might help you ... I just spent a good part of the day with your man Justin."

"What did he say?" Bo asked. "Something about Darla?"

I wished I hadn't started this. For one thing, my suspicions had not been confirmed by Justin. But I plodded on. "Actually, he talked a lot of stoner rot all day and refused to talk about Darla at all. Maybe that's my problem. He signs himself out of rehab for a funeral and he refuses to say one word about the deceased. It's, shall we say, odd, especially considering he's still slightly manic and talks a hundred miles an hour about everything else in the world. I'm just suspicious he knows more than he's saying—that's all. I don't know if that helps you."

Bo drummed on the table, his eyes growing wider and wider. He finally shut his eyes and said, "Oh my God. I just had a terrible thought."

The waitress came and gave me my check, and I sent her off with the money. It gave Bo time to collect his words, which apparently he needed.

He leaned forward. "You don't think ... Darla actually came on to Justin? And maybe ... one of those two guys shot her in a jealous rage?"

Ali's hand flew to her chest, and her eyes darted heavenward. "Welcome back to Steepleton," she said.

T
OREY CONTINUED TO STARE
at the tabletop until Bo ran his fingers over his buzzed army hair, saying, "I'm sorry, you guys. Ali, you're engaged, and Tors, you're almost famous, and you have to come back here for my games of the dark side."

"No, man, that's what we're here for." Torey came to life, reaching across and laying his million-buck guitar hand on top of Bo's arm this time. "The truth'll set you free. You know? You can't help your sister this time around, but you can find out the truth."

I took it Torey's fascination with truth had not changed.

"Oh, God," Bo said. "I don't want to see Justin wind up in jail ... for
any
reason." He turned his agonized face to me. "Did he say anything today that would imply, you know, he was ever 'with' my sister? Romantically?"

I shook my head, and somehow sensed that could not be right. "Have you seen the suicide note?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I was at the Burdens' house earlier tonight to hug on Wiley some. The mister and missus said they weren't ready to see it yet."

I pulled my copy out of my notebook and laid it in the middle of the table. "Don't say who showed this to you. But I think it implicitly denies that Justin could have shot your sister."

Bo read it aloud for the first few paragraphs, as Chief Rye had, then gave it to Torey with a shake of his head. "Damn, that Danny was a worse writer than I am. How'd he expect to pass college English?"

Torey picked it up and slowly and patiently took over reading Danny's tale of grief aloud. It reminded me of him pouring over another letter, once upon a time.
I wish to be gone ... therefore I AM.

Torey got to the bottom and handed it back with slow respect, maybe a few memories of his own.

"You think it was a ruse?" Bo asked. "Danny writing this to protect Justin?"

Ali shook her head. "He wouldn't kill himself to protect Justin. I think he was being sincere. I think ... well, she killed herself, and he panicked after the shock of what he saw."

Bo sniffed. Angrily. Maybe in frustration. I didn't exactly want to be sitting beside him, given what I knew about his temper when he got mad. He seemed to have outgrown his outbursts, but I was still on edge. I'd already been beat on once tonight.

"Doesn't explain how she got six feet under out in the Pine Barrens," Bo said.

"Look." Ali reached across and rubbed his elbow some. He acted like he didn't notice. "We all know the loyalty of people out in the boondocks—though I understand we're not calling it that anymore."

"Conovertown," Bo said. "We're still boons at heart."

"Yeah, and those are pretty big hearts," she said. "I'm sure somebody saw what happened and tried to cover Danny's back. Whoever it was thought they were doing a good thing ... a heroic thing. For the living. It's a shame it didn't work out, but let's focus on the intentions of people who really do care ... beneath all their toughness."

"This stinks of the McIntyre brothers, Mack and Ozone," Bo said, unable to resist. When Ali's eyebrows shot up, he said, "Half brothers of Mrs. Creed, if you can believe that. We call them the Brownie's Mafia, though it's more bluster than anything. They're always threatening to kill somebody. Problem is, their aim is so bad, they couldn't drop a turkey. We all know it."

Torey smiled.

"If a body needed burying, they'd give it a whirl, I bet, without totally fucking it up. They could keep somebody buried for three months. That sounds like their work."

"How does Justin fit in to this?" Ali swung the conversation back around. "Do you think he's in some sort of trouble?"

I didn't tell them he had driven me here and was only about twenty feet away. I just had a bad feeling about it, given that he'd seemed even more manic after his mother came to grizzly life than when Bo had dropped him off. I thought his condition might set Bo off worse. "I'm not sure. But I will try to find out what he knows. He, um ... he's taken a liking to me."

Bo nodded, watching me gratefully, probably remembering how Justin had wanted me to stay for their private talk. "Thanks, man. I don't need his monkeys on my back right now unless they need to be there ... I got a lot to deal with. You'll see what you can find out?"

I said I would, this time doing it right, putting
Bo's
cell phone number in my phone. "I'll call you if I find out anything about him being involved."

"And do me another favor, too," Bo said. "While you're hanging out with Justin and trying to find out if he got caught up in my sister's shenanigans somehow, can you please try to find out something else?"

"I'll try."

"Find out why that twerp picks
now
to think that his brother is coming back. It doesn't have to do with how he knew
we
were coming back, does it?" His finger circled to imply Ali and Torey and himself, the inner circle of Creed memorializers.

"No," I assured him. "I know why he thinks his brother is coming back. It's probably nothing that would sound very interesting to anyone but him."

"So, it's nothing credible. Right?" Ali asked, looking concerned. "I mean, let's face it. Everyone at this table thinks Chris is going to show up someday. But when a time comes that he might actually show up, we're skeptical before we even find out the reasons why. You're saying that there is
no real reason
to suspect that Chris would show up here, right?"

I didn't know how to answer that honestly. My jaw kind of bobbed in a way that they misinterpreted. Bo and Ali sat straight up, staring for all they were worth.

I had only been pondering how I wasn't entirely dismissive of quantum thought influencing a brother's heart from across the miles. I hadn't meant to give them heart seizures.

"You don't think he's going to show up here in the next day or two. Do you?" Bo asked more directly.

All I said was "I'd be inclined to say no."

It sounded more hopeful than I'd meant it to. I thought of Chris as a forgotten chapter in their lives, but apparently he could be easily remembered, and with a lot of excitement.

"What do you know? Come on," Ali begged.

"Nothing," I said, feeling bad for having accidentally led them on. I stumbled, "I'll tell you what ... your guess is as good as mine, okay?"

"Since I have no reason to believe he will show up while we're in Steepleton, my guess is no," Ali said, watching me, as if I was supposed to add to it. I let out a sigh of frustration.

"I'm a no," Bo said. "I ain't even so sure he's alive anymore, poor kid."

Adams had been pretty quiet throughout the back end of the conversation, leaving me to think that he got a lot out in writing and maybe had become the type of person who didn't have a whole lot to say. And I sensed he kept his words concerning Chris at a minimum. Maybe out of respect.

He had his chin on his chest, his eyes shut. At first I thought it was dislike of the conversation. But Bo nudged him. "Yo, Trancelike. What are you doing? Reaching for that gift of ESP you got? The gift that found you a dead body in the woods, once upon a time?"

"I didn't find that body via ESP," he said quietly, without opening his eyes. "I found it via a psychic who told me I was going to find it."

In Adams's tale, he and Ali ended up at a psychic's, who told him he would find "death in the woods." He thought it would be the body of Christopher Creed. He actually did stumble upon a body, and Adams wrote a compelling passage near the end of his story. He marveled at how accurate the psychic actually had been, even though she was a chain smoker living over a garage, and had some game show blaring on the TV in the background when she announced her "death in the woods" prediction.

Adams pulled himself forward, leaning over the table. He was smiling and shaking his head, as if he was undecided about something.

"I shouldn't tell you this," he said.

That's the last thing you should say if you don't want to tell something. Ali nudged him and said, "Don't do that to us!"

He wouldn't have started if he didn't plan to spout. "I posted on
ChristopherCreed.com
yesterday when my mom e-mailed me they'd found a body..."

"I know," Ali said. "I still get e-mail alerts when you post. And?"

"There was something I didn't include. An attachment my mom sent along that was supposed to make me laugh. I guess it did..." He brought a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it. "Since we're talking about that stupid psychic, remember how she was mooching a room over her niece's garage? Apparently, she finally got her own permanent digs and is doing well."