“You think we’re lying?” Rick
said.
“No way to know,” Jesse said.
“Yet.”
“For crissake …” Rick said.
“I’ll go,” Sid said.
“We ain’t lying. I’ll just go with
him.”
Cox got out of the driver’s side and opened the back door. Sid
got out and they walked toward Jesse’s car. Jesse reached over and
shut off the blue light.
“What’d you see, Rick?” Jesse
said.
“Me and Sid come over here to skateboard, you know, it’s nice
pavement, and they got that handicap ramp, and they turn the lights on every night.”
“Even in the rain?” Jesse said.
“Yeah, sure, we don’t care about
rain.”
“You got here after the lights were on.”
“‘Course, you can’t board in the
dark.”
“‘Course,” Jesse said.
“Anyway, so we’re boarding, maybe five minutes, and I come down
the ramp and hit a pebble and fall on my ass and the board goes off into the dark. And I go to get it and I see this guy and I yell for Sid and we can tell he’s dead, and -”
“How?”
“How what?” Ricky was slightly annoyed at the
interruption.
“How’d you know he was dead?”
“I … I don’t know, you can just
tell, you know. Ain’t you
ever seen dead people?”
“I have,” Jesse said.
“And he’s got this pink stain like blood on his front,” Rick
said. “So we run like hell for the church and tell the minister,
and he calls the cops, and you guys show up.”
“You see anything that might be a clue?”
Jesse
said.
“I told you all we seen,” Rick said.
“Aside from the cop cars,” Jesse said.
“There’s a maroon
Chevrolet Cavalier and a brown Toyota Camry in the parking lot now.
Did you see any other cars?”
“Just the Saab,” Rick said.
“Tell me about the Saab.”
“It was a Saab ninety-five sedan, red, with the custom wheel
covers.”
“Where was it?”
“Parked by the driveway over there, when we come by with our
boards.”
