pull the gun on him in time.

The confession presented another problem.

Microcassette recorders might have been around in 1979, but I sure didn’t have one, nor did anybody I knew. We had big, clunky tape recorders. Though technically it would fit in my backpack, I couldn’t shove it under some other stuff like I did the gun or it would be too muffled to record anything. And if I was there longer than half an hour, it would shut off with a loud snap, which would be extremely inconvenient.

Thus, I couldn’t present a recorded confession to the authorities. I just had to get something I could use against him. A confession obtained at gunpoint wouldn’t be admissible in court, but my goal was to force him to give me proof about what he’d done.

And if I couldn’t make that happen, I’d kill him.

I rode my bicycle over to his house, hoping he wouldn’t be home.

A car was in the driveway. The same car that had been there when I brought the state trooper over.

I stared at the house for a long time, trying to work up my courage.

I finally accepted that there was not going to be a moment where I wanted to do this. I just had to walk up there and knock on the door.

Feeling like I was going to throw up, pass out, and wet my pants, I went up to his front door. I stood there for a moment, sweating. Then I knocked.

Gerald Martin answered the door.

4

He frowned when he saw me.

He hadn’t seen my face on the night of the abduction, but he might know who I was. Todd and I weren’t very popular. It wouldn’t take a whole lot of sleuthing to discover that we were best friends. Seeing Mr. Martin behind the wheel of that car was permanently seared into my memory, and if he had a clear memory of looking at me, he’d know my hair color and body type. I’d knocked on his door knowing perfectly well that he might immediately realize who was standing there.

“Yes?” he asked. His tone was annoyed. More “Why are you bothering me, kid?” than “It’s you!”

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Curtis Black.”

“Okay.”

“I wanted to call, but you’re not in the phone book.”

“That’s right. There’s a reason for that.” Mr. Martin scratched his chin. He was fully dressed in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, but he hadn’t shaved and, from the smell of him, hadn’t bathed. I could see a tan line around his neck. He had the lean but muscular build of somebody who spent his days working outside.

“I apologize for that,” I told him. “I was wondering if I could interview you.”

“About what?”

“About you. I have a school assignment where I’m supposed to interview somebody and write an essay about them.”

“School’s out.”

“They give us work to do over the summer.” This wasn’t true, but would a childless construction worker know that? My cousins in Ohio said they got a summer reading list, so this didn’t seem completely out of the realm of possibility.

“Then interview your mom.”

“We’re not allowed to interview relatives. That would be too easy. It’s supposed to be somebody we don’t know.”

“Why me?”

I had toyed with the idea of making up something, like wanting to interview him about what steps were involved in paving a road. But when I made the final decision that I was really going to do this, I decided to stick to the truth as much as possible, to decrease the chances that he’d figure out that I was a lying little weasel trying to get him to confess to a trio of murders. “You were falsely accused of kidnapping Todd Lester. I thought that would be an interesting interview. Most of my friends are picking really lame subjects.”

“Such as?”

“Excuse me?”

“What really lame subjects are your friends picking?”

I honestly hadn’t expected him to question me on something like this, and my mind suddenly went blank. I hoped my eyes didn’t go wide. “Y’know,” I said, “teachers and stuff.”

“Your friends are interviewing teachers?”

“Yes.”

“You’re right. That sounds boring.” This seemed like a comment that would be accompanied by a smile, but it wasn’t.

“And one of my friends is interviewing a barber. Another one is interviewing the guy who owns the bowling alley.” Was I giving too much information? I was definitely giving too much information. I needed to shut up now.

“Which bowling alley?”

“Arctic Bowl.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t know there was another one.”

“I don’t know if there is or not. I don’t bowl.”

“I do sometimes,” I said.

Mr. Martin said nothing.

“Anyway, would it be all right if I interviewed you?” I asked.

“It sounds like your friends are interviewing people about their jobs.”

“They are. Most of them are. But the assignment doesn’t say we have to do that. We can interview them about anything.”

Mr. Martin stared at me for too long of a moment. “Do I get to read your essay before you turn it in?”

“Yeah, sure, of course.”

“All right.”

Though he’d said “All right,” he just continued to stand in his doorway and stare at me, as if waiting for me to make the first move.

“I was hoping to do it now, but I can come back later,” I said.

“When’s it due?”

“Next week.”

“Procrastinator, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on in,” he said. “Place is a mess.”

“That’s okay.”

I switched my backpack, which felt extremely heavy, from my left shoulder to my right as I followed him through the doorway into his living room. Gerald Martin had a very different definition of “Place is a mess” than I did. As far as I could tell, he meant that he hadn’t vacuumed in the past half hour. I’m not suggesting that he’d wiped everything down with bleach while ranting about being able to see the germs slithering over his skin, but Mr. Martin was a very tidy housekeeper.

The place was way less creepy that I’d expected. Obviously, I’d known that there wouldn’t be severed human heads mounted upon the wall, but I’d expected maybe a caribou head, its face frozen in terror.

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