Nerves bunched up and crackled inside me. All sense of calm gone. I knew where this was going. I tried to swallow down a dry lump in my throat but it wouldn’t budge.
‘Guilty people,’ Samuels carried on. ‘See, I don’t get why you and your friends wouldn’t have said something. Makes me think you four have something to hide. Now, I can’t see Miss Wakefield or your little sister doing anything to that girl, but you? The Buchanan boy? Well now, that’s a whole ’nother ball game.’
‘Sheriff, I don’t—’ Pastor Jacobs started but Samuels held up his hand.
I opened my mouth to say, no, you’re wrong, but nothing came out.
‘Why’s your shirt ripped, son?’ the sheriff said.
The question came out of nowhere and stunned me. My t-shirt. Ripped? I looked down and saw a swatch torn out.
‘That’s blood right there.’ Samuels pointed with his pen to a small smear of reddish brown at my side I’d not noticed. ‘If I test that, is it going to be the dead girl’s blood?’
All words stuck in my throat except one. ‘Jenny.’
‘John?’ Pastor Jacobs put his hand on my shoulder and snapped me out of it.
‘It’s Jenny’s blood. She … she fell over and cut her leg. I tore a piece off my shirt to clean it up.’
‘Well ain’t that convenient,’ Samuels was relentless. ‘We found you by the body, with blood on you. Can you see what that looks like? Maybe you slept down there to make sure no one else found out what you done? That sound about right to you? You and the Buchanan boy plan it together? Was he going to come back in the morning and watch her today? Were you going to bury her?’
‘No!’ I leaned forward in my chair. ‘This is crazy. I didn’t do anything, neither did Rudy. We just found her in the lake. That’s it. We didn’t do anything. We found her like that. Jenny has a cut on her shin, go check for yourself.’
My heart beat frantic in my chest and my eyes jumped from Samuels to Jacobs and back and forth and to that stupid notepad and those lies he was scribbling and I wanted to lunge at them, rip them up and make him write the truth.
‘Len,’ Pastor Jacobs said, firm enough for the sheriff to lean back in his chair and raise up his hands in mock surrender.
‘We have to explore all kinds of theories, son, you understand.’ He paused for a moment, then asked, ‘Do you know the dead girl?’
‘No,’ I said, just as firm as the pastor. ‘Never seen her before. Who is she?’
He ignored my question. ‘You live in that farm, huh, the old Mitchell place before they upped it and headed east, right?’
I nodded.
‘That’s about a mile from the valley. Were you “hanging out” down there on Monday evening?’
Monday.
Monday?
My mind emptied of anything useful. The day was blank in my head and Samuels was staring and waiting, his brow scrunched up, blotches of red blooming on his neck and sweating. My crackling nerves stung, wrapped around my bones and tightened. It was only a few days ago. Come on, Johnny boy, get your head together, the sheriff is going to throw you in a cell if you don’t.
‘It’s okay, John,’ Pastor Jacobs said, leaned into me. ‘I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning. If the sheriff here asked me, I’d be looking just like you are. I find it helps to start at something you will remember, like, what was your last lesson at school on Monday?’
Samuels sighed, muttered something about wasting time. I thought back, the grey block of time in my head coloured, came into focus. Monday. Mr Alvarez.
‘History,’ I said.
‘Good,’ the pastor smiled. ‘So after the bell went, what did you do?’
‘Uh …’ then it hit me, a freight train of a memory. All my words came out in one long stream.
‘We watched football practice after because Rudy always says he wants to play running back for the Lions when we start high school so he needs to study the plays. He’s going to be so famous, he says, people would be all, “Superstar Mark Easton, who?”’ I smiled, then caught the red glare from Samuels. Get to the point, that look said, or its bars and biscuits for you tonight.
‘After practice, the four of us went to Gloria’s house. Mandy … that’s Gloria’s housekeeper, she’d lit the grill and was in a pretty bad mood.’
Samuels raised both eyebrows. ‘Why’s that?’
I pictured Mandy, in Gloria’s back yard, hands on hips next to the flaming grill, plate of charred steak on the patio table. She filled up my flicker reel. As soon as she saw us, she threw up her arms, shouted that she’d had enough. Mandy was always fit to burst, full of hot anger. She was an Ozark mountain woman sprung right out of the stone, impossible to soften and you wouldn’t want to.
‘Mandy said that Gloria’s dad had asked for steaks for dinner for him and some of his work friends and he wanted it on the grill, ready for when they got back at six sharp. She’d done it but he hadn’t shown up and it was past seven. Gloria said he was probably caught up with a case. Sometimes, Gloria said, when her dad’s law firm gets a big case, he can forget the time.’
Samuels scribbled it all down. ‘How long did you stay at the house?’
‘A while. Mandy let us have the steaks. Then we watched Bandstand.’
‘When did you leave?’ Samuels sighed out the question, getting impatient, writing it all down as if it would be useful one day.
‘Nine. Maybe a bit after.’
‘Had Mr Wakefield returned by then?’
I shook my head.
An exchange of looks between pastor and sheriff. A few seconds of silence.
‘Is … Did I say something wrong?’ I asked.
Like a click of the fingers, Samuels changed direction. ‘So what were you and your sister doing down at the – what’s that you kids call it?’ he checked the paper, ‘the Roost, last night?’
Everything in me clenched, talons around soft marrow.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ Samuels said, leant forward. ‘You were found sleeping beside a corpse, son. You really sitting in my office, trying to tell me that’s nothing? I’m the sheriff here, I’ll be the one deciding what’s nothing. Now you answer my question. Why in God’s name would you do something like that?’
I wanted to tell him he wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t get it. I didn’t get it. Only Jenny really knew, but I had a lie. I just hoped it matched Jenny’s.
‘John, are you okay?’ the pastor said.
‘We were making sure nothing happened to her. Animals, you know.’
‘Sorry, son, but that smells like bullshit to me.’
‘It’s true!’ Wasn’t it? Was that what Jenny had told him too? Oh God, what if she hadn’t? My bones felt like they’d crack under the tension, my muscles split and frayed like old rope.
‘Come on, son. You were all but spooning that girl. Did you get some kind of thrill out of it? Did you like being that close to a naked girl?’
‘Enough,’ the pastor shouted. Samuels stopped. I opened my eyes and he threw the pen onto the desk. ‘That’s enough, Len. He’s just a kid.’
‘I need answers to my questions,