I just had to pray that my face hadn’t given anything away.
I’d play dumb.
“Mighty Mouse?” I asked.
“Maybe,” said Mr. Martin. “Some cartoon mouse.”
“I’ve never been a mouse for Halloween.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’d remember.”
“You don’t own a mouse mask?”
“No.”
Mr. Martin nodded. He didn’t look like he believed me.
Had he somehow walked into a trap that I’d failed to set? I’d blundered my way through this conversation without cleverly catching him in an inconsistency in his story, but had he been told about my mask? None of the news articles, and I’d read all of them, identified the witness as “a chubby kid in a mouse mask.” Would anybody have shared that detail with him? Had he just admitted to having information he shouldn’t have known?
And would that be sufficient? If I went back and said, “Hey, he knew what kind of mask I was wearing!” would that be enough to get him arrested?
What if they had told him? I wasn’t privy to any of the conversations he’d had with the authorities. Maybe they’d shared that with him. I couldn’t think of any possible reason that they would, especially since they were trying to protect my identity, but I wasn’t an expert on those kinds of things.
Should I confront him with this?
Did I want to be sitting a few feet away from a serial killer when he realized that he fucked up?
After a split second of indecision, I decided to compromise. I would not point out that Mr. Martin shouldn’t know about the mask—which might be a suicidal move—but I wouldn’t try to leave. I’d get more information to use against him. He’d proven that he could make a mistake.
“How many times have you been questioned?” I asked.
“I thought you said you had enough information for your paper.”
“I thought you said I didn’t.”
Mr. Martin shrugged. “That’s a boring question. The answer is just a number. If you want to impress your teacher, find out how I feel about being unfairly targeted. Capture the emotional impact of the story.”
I tried to speak but once again my voice failed me. Ironic, considering how often I got in trouble for speaking when I wasn’t supposed to. I coughed.
He stood up.
Walked over to me.
Picked up the glass of water, took a drink, and set it back down.
“See?” he said. “It’s fine. No poison. No drugs.” He walked back to his rocking chair and sat down.
“I didn’t think there was,” I managed to say. I still didn’t want to drink the water. He might not have put anything in it, but I didn’t want to drink from the same glass as the man who’d killed my best friend.
“Well, I can’t force you to drink. I’d offer you something else, but all I’ve got is beer in the fridge. Pretty sure your mommy and daddy wouldn’t appreciate that.”
“At least not this early in the morning,” I said.
Mr. Martin stared at me for a moment.
“Was that a joke?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Not bad.”
“Thanks.”
“Is humor your defense mechanism?”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“I figured. You’re all sweaty and inarticulate, but you can make a joke. Feeling like you need a defense mechanism now, huh? Why are you so scared?”
“I’m not scared,” I insisted.
“Oh, come on, Curtis. I know what fear looks like.”
I wiped some sweat from my forehead. “I’m just hot.”
“It’s not hot in here. And I get it, fat kids sweat a lot, but you’ve just been sitting there. I’m sure you’ve recuperated from your vigorous walk by now. You seem flustered. Why? You’re the one who knocked on my door. Do you think I kidnapped your buddy? Is that what this is all about?”
“No.”
“If I called your school, would somebody be able to confirm your homework assignment?”
I made a point of looking him directly in the eye. “Yes.” He was bluffing. He wouldn’t actually call the school. And if he did, I’d get the hell out of here while he was flipping through the phone book.
“All right,” he said. He rocked the chair back and forth, just once. “I told you to find the emotional impact of the story, but maybe when you write it up you should focus on your own emotions. Make the story about you. How scared you were, sitting in my living room, talking to the man that you thought took your friend away from you.”
“I don’t think it’s you.”
“You absolutely think it’s me.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I did.”
Mr. Martin smiled. “I’m not as smart as your teachers, but I’m smarter than a teenager. I’m a suspect in three different disappearances. That’s got to be scary for somebody like you, who fits the profile of the missing kids. So if I thought you were really here to do an interview for a summer assignment, I’d say, well, sure, of course he’s nervous, that makes total sense. But I don’t believe that’s why you’re here. You’re trying to play amateur detective. You think you’re Encyclopedia Brown or the Hardy Boys. You think you’re going to solve The Mystery of the Disappearing Kids. Be a great big hero all around Fairbanks.”
“That’s not it at all,” I said.
“No? Then is it revenge?”
“It’s a school paper.”
“You keep saying that, and you keep sweating like a goddamn pig. Look at yourself. It’s disgusting. Just being across the room from you makes me want to take a shower. No girl will ever want some overweight boyfriend that she has to towel off before she gets near him. Stop eating so much junk food. Play a sport or something. What did you think you were going to do, get a confession out of me? You’ve got the wrong guy. Now why don’t you just run along home before you waste even more of my time?”
This is where I could have simply stood up and walked out of his house.
That would have been the safe way to play this.
But just as Mr. Martin was convinced—correctly—that I was lying about the assignment, I was more
