He swallowed hard, but didn’t say anything. His face suddenly rippled with anguish and he closed his eyes, squeezing them so tight his whole face seemed to collapse on itself. He took a deep breath and what should have been a howl of pain came out only as a high, thin keening.
“I don’t know. I don’t know why I did it.”
“You brought a gun to school that day”
“To prove I had one. They didn’t believe me. They said I was making it up.”
“Who didn’t believe you?”
“J.D. and Eddie. They’re always bragging that their dad lets them shoot his guns.” jack Reid’s sons again. Wanda Darnell had said they were a bad influence, and she’d been right.
“So you brought the gun to school,' said Claire. “Did you plan to use it?”
He shook his head. “I just had it in my backpack. But then I got a D on my test.
And Mrs. Horatio-she started yelling at me about that stupid frog.” He began to rock, hugging his knees, every breath catching in a sob. “I wanted to kill them all. It was like I couldn’t stop myself I wanted to make them all pay” He stopped rocking and went very still, his eyes unfocused, gazing at nothing. “I’m not mad at them anymore. But now it’s too late.”
“It may not be your fault, Taylor.”
“Everyone knows I did it?’
“But you just told me you weren’t in control.”
“It’s still my fault.
“Taylor, look at me. I don’t know if anyone’s told you about your friend, Scotty Braxton.”
Slowly the boy’s gaze lifted to hers.
“The same thing happened to him. And now his mother is dead.”
She saw, by his look of shock, that he had not been told the news.
“No one can explain why he snapped. Why he attacked her. You’re not the only one it’s happened to.”
“My dad says it’s because you took away my medicine.”
“Scotty wasn’t taking any medicine.” She paused, searching his eyes. “Or was he?”
“No.”
“This is very important. You have to tell me the truth, Taylor. Did either of you boys take any drugs?”
“I am telling the truth.”
He looked at her, his gaze unflinching. And she believed him.
“What about Scotty?” he asked. “Is Scotty coming here?”
Tears suddenly stung her eyes. She said, softly: “I’m sorry, Taylor. I know you two were good friends…
“The best. We’re best friends.”
“He was in the hospital. And something happened. We tried to help him, but there was-there was nothing-”
“He’s dead. Isn’t he?”
His direct question was a plea for an honest answer. She admitted, quietly:
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
He dropped his face against his knees, and the words spilled out between sobs.
“Scotty never did anything wrong! He was such a wuss. That’s what J.D. always called him, the dumb wuss. I never stood up for him. I should’ve said something, but I never did..
“Taylor. Taylor, I need to ask you another question.”
“I was afraid to.”
“You and Scotty were together a lot. Where did you two spend your time?”
He didn’t answer; he just kept rocking on the bed.
“I really need to know this, Taylor. Where did you two hang out?” He took in a shaky breath. “With-with the other kids.” “Where?”
“I don’t know! All over.”
“In the woods? At someone’s house?”
He stopped rocking, and for a moment she thought he hadn’t heard the last question. Then he raised his head and looked at her. “The lake.’
Locust Lake. It was the center of all activity in Tranquility, the place for picnics and swim races, for boaters and fishermen. Without it, there would be no summer visitors, no flow of money. The town itself would not exist.
It all has something to do with the lake, she thought suddenly. Water and rainfall. Floods and bacteria.
The night the water glowed.
“Taylor,” she said, “did you and Scotty both swim in the lake?” He nodded.
“Every day.”
15
The town meeting was scheduled for seven-thirty and by seven-fifteen, every seat in the high school cafeteria was filled. People were crowding into the aisles, lining up along the walls, and spilling out the rear doors into the cold wind.
From where Claire was standing, off to the side, she had a good view of the speakers’ table at the front. There Lincoln, Fern Cornwallis, and the chairman of the Town Board of Selectmen, Glen Ryder, were seated. The five members of the board were clustered in the front row.
Claire recognized many of the faces in the audience. Most of them were other parents, whom she’d met at high school functions. She also saw a number of her colleagues from Knox Hospital. The dozen teenagers in attendance had chosen to stand at the rear of the cafeteria, and were tightly clustered together as though to ward off attack by their elders.
Glen Ryder banged his gavel, but the crowd was too large, too agitated, to hear him. The frustrated Ryder had to climb onto a chair and yell: “This meeting will come to order now!”
The cafeteria at last fell silent, and Ryder continued. “I know there aren’t enough seats for everyone in here. I know there are people outside who are upset about having to stand in eight-degree weather. But the fire chief says we’ve already exceeded this room’s occupancy limit. We just can’t allow anyone else to enter, unless someone else exits first.”
“Seems to me some of those kids in the back could leave and make room for adults,” a man grumbled.
One of the teenagers retorted: “We’ve got a right to be here too!”
“You kids’re the reason we’re here in the first place!”
“If you’re going to talk about us, then we want to hear what you’re saying!”
Half a dozen people started to speak at once.
“No one’s being kicked out of here!” yelled Ryder. “It’s a public meeting, Ben, and we can’t exclude people. Now let’s get on with it.” Ryder looked at Lincoln.
“Chief Kelly, why don’t you bring us up to date with the problems in town.”
Lincoln rose to his feet. The last few days had drained him, both physically and emotionally, and it showed in the drooping slope of his shoulders. “It hasn’t been a good month,” he said. A typical Lincoln Kelly understatement. “What everyone seems to focus on are the murders. The shooting at the high school on November second, and then the Braxtons on November fifteenth. That’s two murders in two weeks. What scares me even more is, I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of it yet. Last night, my officers responded to eight different calls involving juveniles assaulting others. I’ve never seen this before. I’ve been a cop in this town for twenty-two years. I’ve seen minor crime waves come and go. But what I’m seeing now-kids trying to hurt each other, kill each other-trying to kill the people they love…“ He shook his head and sat down without another word.
“Miss Cornwaffis?” said Ryder.
The high school principal rose to her feet. Fern Cornwallis was a handsome woman, and she had taken pains
