Following Christopher Creed (31 page)

"Well, we are kind of in the same boat," I said, watching a third page slowly plop into the fax receiver. "You talked to me last night about how you'll be posh after your tour ends. I'll be posh after I win a lawsuit against my school over the baseball-in-the-head thing. In the meantime? If you got access to a car, I'll put some gas money in it."

"I have a car. And my mom gassed it up this morning," he said. "Tank's full. Thank God she wasn't relying on me for that."

We laughed together. It felt great.

I pulled the fax out of the machine. I moved the paper around until the headline came into view. "'Natural lightning reservoirs maintain an electrical charge after being struck,'" I read. "It's from ... a four-year-old
National Geographic.
My girlfriend, RayAnn—she's a research maniac."

"You got a girlfriend?"

Yeah, and we staked out your house yesterday.
I decided to skip it.

"We had a recent blowout," I confessed with a sigh. "You got a girlfriend?"

"No," he said. "Not since I left Berkeley." He left it dangling, leaving me with the feeling he didn't want to talk about his relationship any more than I wanted to discuss mine. "So what are we doing here?"

I passed him the pages, again shaking my head in disbelief that he was here. "Right ... tell me if that's anything interesting."

He took the pages and read the article aloud. I walked into the outer lobby slowly, listening as he followed me while continuing to read. I sat my weary legs down in one of the two chairs. Lanz lay down at my feet, sighing contentedly at his chance to rest. It was a luxury not having to read the thing. He stopped halfway through and said, "I knew about this. I knew about lightning traps."

I turned and found his face, which looked hypnotized. "Do tell."

"Well..." He laughed nervously. "After finding a dead body in a limestone cave, I read up on everything limestone in these parts. My mom helped me. Let me see if this article contains anything I didn't know..."

Officer Hughes came out of one of the rooms down the corridor and stopped in front of us, having seen Adams. Torey breezed through the rest of the story silently, then handed the article to the officer.

"We think you might want to look at this," I said.

I could tell it was of interest to Officer Hughes, because instead of simply scanning it, he sat down beside me and read the entire thing.

"Why did I never see this?" he asked. "Can I make a copy?"

"Why did I never post all my limestone findings on my website?" Torey asked guiltily.

I said to Officer Hughes, "I'm sensing that the concept of 'natural lightning reservoir' might provide the answer to a couple mysteries around here."

"Uh ... yeah," he said, then laughed uneasily. "Nothing will provide answers to all the mysteries these woods hold—unless of course the industrialists come through and knock down every tree in the Pine Barrens and wipe the slate clean. But this might explain why sometimes people have seen strange lights flickering out on Doughty Road, and other places near the Lightning Field."

"Lights flickering in the woods..." I reached behind my seat, trying to remember where I'd left my backpack.

"What are you looking for?" Torey asked.

I told him. He disappeared and a minute later returned with my pack. I pulled out one of the pads RayAnn used and handed it to him. I pulled out my recorder—what RayAnn and I called double backup—and heard him click a pen. Officer Hughes went on.

"It's just something that happens maybe once or twice a year. Someone calls in, says they think there's a fire in the woods, or with an unobstructed view, they say there's something that looks like lightning. But it's coming
up
from the ground, they say, and it's all very strange. When we get to the spot the caller points out, there's never anything happening. This has been going on since the Lightning Field got struck."

"Five years ago," I remembered from Mary Ellen's telling me.

"I remember that," Adams said. "I mean, I was avoiding everyone and writing my blog, but my mom told me about it. The spring after Chris Creed disappeared."

"Right," Tiny said. His laugh was even twitchier. "I don't think the two bear any relationship to each other, but lots of people like to keep their beliefs fun."

"I like fun as much as the next guy," I said with a grin as I took the article back, "but not at the expense of others. This article says that certain rocks and rock cavities are conducive to storing lightning charges."

He looked over my shoulder, intrigued. "Yeah."

"And one of those types of rock is limestone."

"Correct," he said.

I nudged Adams and said with due sarcasm, "And Torey. What do we know about limestone?"

He groaned. "Let's just say there's lots of it around here. There are lots of limestone caves, er, cavities."

"Exactly," Tiny said. "This might explain why that happens. Maybe I should call over to Stockton sometime this week. The geologists might be interested, might know how to detonate one—if that's what it is."

"Maybe you should do it sooner and with some urgency," I decided, pointing to a cutline under a picture:
The charge can be dangerous if it's stepped on, still containing enough voltage to stop a human heart.

"Has there been something like this recently?" he asked.

"A lot of us saw something bizarre out by the north side of the Lightning Field," I said, "including me and my girlfriend, RayAnn, who has never done a drug in her life. But I think some people out there saw it, maybe a month or so ago, and twisted it into an image of one dead Chris Creed..." I laughed, fumbling for words because I didn't want to bust anyone. That wasn't my terrain. "And there have been a few other sightings."

"The north side?"

"There's a place that looks to be an entrance from an old path. It's got two trees on the right and one on the left, with smaller trees in the background. You know..."

I was fumbling, but he picked right up.

"That's not actually a path. It's the foundation, or what's left of it, of where some say the Jersey Devil was born. Mother Leeds had this thirteenth kid, and all the Quaker ladies heard her utter the g-word when she found out she was pregnant. They said she cursed the baby and it was born with a forked tongue and other, uh, menacing traits."

"Probably a Down's syndrome baby," Adams put in. I laid my palm out for him to skin. That's what I'd always thought too.

"You guys are ruining local lore. But yeah," Hughes said.

"And regardless of who that foundation originally belonged to, you might actually have a natural lightning reservoir near it. And with those kids watching for spooks every five seconds..." I didn't mention Justin's name in particular, but Hughes was watching me, concerned. I finished, "I can't say how long or soon it will be before a group of them goes to investigate."

Torey added, "I don't know much more than what's written here. Except I remember my mom telling me something that she might have gotten from the Stockton geologists. The lightning traps start 'puking' lightning when they're getting ready to die. You'll see lightning daily rather than weekly or monthly. That's a sign, but they generally die by explosion. It's a small explosion, she said, but I wouldn't want to be standing within fifty feet, and sometimes they start fires..."

Hughes stood up. "I'll search my Rolodex and call somebody today. I got a couple of the Stockton geologists on hand ... had them ever since Bob Haines's body was found."

He moved quickly down the hall, and I held out a hand again for Adams to skin. "Glad you were here."

He skinned me. "Let's be glad when the thing is found and neutralized. What should we do now?"

I asked him to lead me to an ATM so I could have some cash on hand and so I could leave him some gas money, even if his mom had filled the tank. It seemed only right if he was going to drive me around for an afternoon.

"I see a bank a block away," he said once we got outside with Lanz. "Place has changed a bit. Bet there's an ATM there. You want me to get the car?"

"Nah, let's walk it," I said, not sure where I was going yet or what I'd be doing next. I just didn't want to lose his good company now that I'd lucked into it. I would maybe draw the afternoon out.

"Lightning Field," he said as we walked along. "That's another big change around here, I guess. I'd heard of kids hanging out down by the back bay. But we never went down there. It was mostly all boons back when we were freshmen."

"Bo gave us the lowdown on that," I said. "It's changed shape and the scenery's different, but it's still full of water moccasins, dead water, and, obviously ... charges of lightning that the loadies are thinking is one Christopher Creed."

Torey was quiet for a couple moments, and then he started to laugh. "Some things never change. Do they?"

The ATM distracted me, and I didn't think an answer was necessary. I decided to withdraw a couple hundred dollars ... gut instincts. I just felt like I might need it.

As we turned, a guy on a mountain bike pulled up beside us. I recognized the jerk that had tossed RayAnn's cell phone in the door and took off, laughing and burning rubber.

"S'up?" He smiled, watching Lanz, who made me a landmark.

I lit like a torch, amazed at how kids can do shit and then act like it was nothing the next day. I supposed, to them, it
was
nothing.

"Thanks for the phone," I said, my sarcasm cutting through.

"You're welcome." He bowed his head, kind of proud of himself, though his face turned red with heat.

"Anything else you want to say?"
Like "I'm sorry"?

He stared at my counterpart. His voice sounded surprised this time. "Whoa. Are you Torey Adams?"

Torey reached slowly past me and shook the guy's hand, who said his name was Steve.

"Oh my God." He studied him with an astonished grin. "It's the legend himself."

I sensed Torey stiffen as he elbowed me slightly. "Um, I think Chris Creed is the legend. I'm just the tale teller."

"No, I mean your music and all. Did you know there's a huge display case with posters of you in Steepleton High School?"

Adams cleared his throat before saying, "Yeah, my mom mentioned that to me. That's, um, nice."

I felt it was very nice considering he'd never graduated from there. He'd been all but run out of town when people suspected him of being an accomplice in Chris's disappearance.

"And the newspaper has a column in it called
This Day with Torey Adams.
Did she tell you that, too?"

He didn't answer this time, and Steve kept going. "Honest to God. They got a picture of you playing some huge concert, and every week they run it and they call your publicist, and he tells them whether you were in the studio, or who you were jamming with, or where you ate. It is very cool. They did it, supposedly, so that us kids in school would read the newspaper."

"Yeah ... I hope ... it helps—" He stammered, sensing my anxiety, I was certain.

"D'you do autographs? Come on. My friends will die when—"

"I'm here for a funeral, so I'm not doing autographs, and what is it you have to say?"
Definitely
he sensed my anxiety.

The guy laughed sarcastically. "You don't have to get snippy. Jeezus."

"What's this about a phone and last night?" Torey confronted him, jumping to my defense so quickly, it left me stunned. He looked quickly from the guy to me and back again.

I wasn't above grinning acridly and saying, "He could probably tell you better, being that I left him and his friends to look after my girlfriend ... I wasn't there."

"Look. We didn't hurt her." Steve's voice was loud, and he held up his hands defensively.

"She's got a fat lip and a handprint across her neck," I replied.

"That was Kobe, that wasn't me. I'm the one who brought her fancy cell phone back. I could have sold it," he said.

I lowered my head and stared at Adams's waist, laughing in disbelief. "Does any kid in this town know how to say 'I'm sorry'?"

"It's a long-standing problem," Adams replied.

I could only chuckle, which egged him on.

"Do you know what I mean?" Adams persisted.

"I know. My girlfriend is fine, but she left last night, kind of unglued. I'd be unglued, too, if someone threatened me with rape and murder after boosting my car." I wanted to see what the kid would do with that one.

"Kobe and Justin, man," this Steve went on with a red face. "They're kind of the center of things around here and they're on each other's nerves. Kobe's been losing it by looking for too many spooks, and Justin's losing it just because."

So this was Kobe's and Justin's fault.

He went on, "If you really wanted to keep your girlfriend safe, you shouldn't have left her with Kobe after spending a whole day with Justin."

"Oh. So it was
Mike's
fault." Adams jerked his thumb at me, so much on my wavelength that I skipped right over the intended moment of guilt and cracked up again. He was chuckling incredulously, too.

"Gee! I think I'll take a crash course in high school politics," I said without losing my glee. "I'll be such a wise person after that."

Maybe only the author of
ChristopherCreed.com
and myself as its most avid reader could get why this was so funny. The kid surely didn't get it. Torey pulled his shades up to look at me, and he'd been laughing so hard on the inside that his eyes were wet.

"Are you
sure
you want to write a story about Steepleton?" he asked. "Are you into self-abuse?"

"No, but I am wondering..." I sniffed and toned down my smile a bit. "Do you feel that Steepleton is
worse
than other towns, or are things the same all over?"

"I'd say it's worse." He chuckled. "But how much worse?" He moved toward Steve and put a hand on his shoulder, another hand on my shoulder.

"Steve. How long'd you guys boost that car for last night?" he asked, so seriously that I almost cracked up again.

The kid managed to say, "We were back in less than fifteen minutes." We ignored his defensive tone as Adams studied the sidewalk, nodding, calculating with pinched lips.