'Anything with Jared Clark?'
'No. Never even heard of him until the Grant kid fingered him after the shooting.'
'Ever talk with anybody about him?' I said.
'Talked with the school shrink.'
'Dr. Blair?'
'Yeah. You met her?'
I nodded.
'She's something, isn't she?'
'She is,' I said. 'What did she tell you?'
'Classic stuff,' Cromwell said. 'Jared was bullied a lot. Kids picked on him. Pushed him around. She feels he allied himself with Grant so that Grant would protect him.'
'Why would Grant protect him?' I said.
'Don't know. He was the school tough guy. Big kid. Football player. Who would have thought it, him having the mother he did?'
'Sometimes, I guess, the apple falls as far as it can from the tree,' I said.
He nodded.
'You know of any previous connection between Clark and Grant?' I said.
'No. But, you know how it is, they don't pop up on the screen unless they are causing trouble.'
'And these guys weren't?'
'Except for the cat killings,' Cromwell said.
'Love to know how they got together,' I said.
'Maybe Blair knows,' Cromwell said. 'Ask her. Be a good excuse to talk with her.'
'I will,' I said. 'Maybe she'll show me her knees.'
'You gonna tell me about where they got the guns?' Cromwell said.
'No,' I said.
'Isn't that sort of like withholding evidence?' Cromwell said.
'It's not like you need it for a conviction,' I said.
Cromwell nodded.
'Just thought I'd ask,' he said.
Chapter 36
IT HAD BEEN a wet summer. Outside my office window, it was raining again. I was watching it. Pearl was resting on her couch. Later, when the excitement died down, I might read the paper. My phone rang. Pearl had no reaction. She didn't care about phones. I didn't, either, but somebody had to answer, so I picked it up.
AN HOUR LATER, Pearl and I pulled up in front of the Dowling village market. The rain was steady but not abusive.
Through the steady sweep of the wipers, I saw him in front of the market, the red-haired kid from the Rocks. He was pressed against the front of the building, trying to stay dry. He was wearing the zippered top of a warm-up suit, his cap on backward, and sucking on a cigarette. His jeans were baggy, and his sneakers were black Keds high-tops. Retro. When he got in the front seat, Pearl growled at him from the back.
'What's wrong with him?' the kid said.
'Her,' I said. 'She doesn't like you.'
'She bite?'
'Not today,' I said.
I reached back and patted her. He hunched forward and a little sideways in the passenger seat, away from Pearl.
'Where we going,' I said.
'How much is the reward?' he said.
'Depends on what you show me,' I said.
'I'm going to take you where they did a lot of shooting,'
'So you said. Let's go there and see what we see.'
'But there's some reward.'
'Absolutely,' I said.
I couldn't figure out what I was going to get from this, but Spenser's Crime Buster Rule #8 is Always look.
We drove past the park that backed up to the Rocks, and down a narrow road that skirted the west end of the lake, and parked in a dirt turnaround next to a rutted dirt road.
