“Did you hear?” he asked.
“Hear what?”
“So I guess you didn’t hear.”
“Hear what?”
“They arrested the guy who murdered Todd.”
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
“Who was it?”
“Somebody on Clerk Street.”
Holy shit. I felt this weird combination of elation and horror. “Was his name Gerald Martin?”
“I don’t know his name.”
“What did he look like?”
“I wasn’t there. I just heard that they took him away in a state trooper car.”
“So they might not have arrested him. They might just have taken him in for questioning.”
Markus looked annoyed, like I was messing up a great story. “I just thought you’d want to know, since you were friends with Todd.”
“I did want to know. Thank you. Do you know anything else?”
“Nah.”
I rode the rest of the way home. The “elation” part had vanished quickly, replaced entirely by horror. If Mr. Martin had been full of crap about his backup plan, this could be wonderful news, but if he hadn’t been bluffing, or if he got out on bail, this could be very, very, very bad.
I didn’t even bother to use the kickstand; I simply let my bike fall in the middle of our driveway as I hurried inside.
“How was work?” Dad asked, looking away from the television.
“Did you hear that Gerald Martin got arrested?”
Dad got up off the couch and turned down the TV volume. “I heard that he left his house with a trooper. I watched the news and they didn’t mention it.”
“It would be on the news if they actually arrested him, right?” Of course it would. The arrest of the man responsible for three child abductions over the summer would’ve made the six o’clock news for sure.
“Yeah,” said Dad. He seemed to interpret my expression as “disappointment” and shut off the television altogether. “It doesn’t mean they won’t arrest him. Or maybe they did and they’re keeping it quiet. He’ll eventually be punished, I promise.”
“I’m going to take a shower.”
In the bathroom, I stripped out of my sweat-soaked, dirt-laden, and slapped-mosquito-covered clothes. What the hell should I do? This could actually be fantastic news. In fact, I could go to the authorities, tell them everything that had happened, and pile that on to whatever new information had allowed them to take Mr. Martin away. This could be the end of him.
But what if they didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him? What if they didn’t believe me? What if he’d gone to the station to give his statement about the psychotic fourteen-year-old who’d come over and held him at gunpoint?
He hadn’t given me any definitive details, nothing that would lead to where the bodies were buried. He could say, “Yes, I told the kid these things, but he had a gun on me—what was I supposed to say?” Nobody else was in the room during our conversation. I was the only one who stared at his face as he spoke, who knew for certain that his confession had been real.
Would sharing the truth make things worse?
I hated to choose an official plan of action that was “do nothing for now,” but it seemed like the wisest move…or, lack of a move, I guess. If Mr. Martin was placed under arrest for the abductions, I’d blab every detail of what I knew, and explain that my parents and I might be in serious danger.
If they let him go, I’d find out what happened. This might require me to talk to him again, to try to smooth things over, which was not ideal, but I’d do it if necessary.
Unfortunately, I’d have to wait until after school tomorrow. I was on thin enough ice that playing hooky my second week back would be disastrous. My mom left for the bank after I left for school, so trying to sneak out fifteen minutes early so I could ride over and check on Mr. Martin before the bus got here wouldn’t work. Unless there was some sort of update in The Daily News Miner in the morning, I’d be in a news vacuum until tomorrow afternoon.
Maybe everything would be all right. Maybe they’d found one or more of the bodies and Mr. Martin was totally screwed.
I took a very long shower, got in my pajamas, and then remembered that it was only seven-thirty and that I was ravenous. Mom and Dad had already eaten but she’d made me a plate of fried chicken, which I gobbled down like a fat kid who’d been building a shed all day. Then I watched TV with my parents—constantly waiting for the news to interrupt with a breaking bulletin—until it was time for bed.
My body was exhausted. My brain was on fire. My body won.
12
When I stepped off the bus the next morning, Tina was waiting for me.
I don’t mean that she was standing right there on the sidewalk like some frightening stalker. She was standing on the front lawn of the school, near the flagpole, but she wasn’t really trying to hide that she was watching to see who got off the bus. When I did, she walked right over to me.
“My dad said yes,” she told me, beaming. “I mean, he wants to meet you first, if that’s all right. Maybe a study date sometime this week. I know we don’t have any classes together, but we wouldn’t have to study the same thing. It could just be the same subject, or not even that. Whatever we wanted to study. But he said yes, which was weird, and I didn’t even have to tell him very much about you. You’ll like him. He’s not scary or anything.”
“Oh,” I said.
Tina seemed a bit thrown off by this non-reaction. “I mean, you wouldn’t have to come over for a study date. He’d just want to meet you, so maybe you could come over early. Or if we met at the library, you could talk to him in the lobby for a few minutes. Nothing too
