I agreed and told him so with my face. “If there were more teachers with that kind of attitude, we would probably be out of a job. I doubt we’ll keep you that long, Mr. Estevez. We just want to ask you a couple of questions about Danny.”
He leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, and shook his head. “I don’t know what I can tell you. You spoke to Don? He’s said just about everything there is to say about it.”
Dehan said, “You believe, like him, that Danny was killed by an extraterrestrial?”
He shrugged. “I know it sounds crazy, but any other explanation is even crazier. Plus…” He shrugged and shook his head again. “You had to be there, man.”
I said, “You were there on the Friday night…”
“On Macomb Mountain? Yeah, I was there. That was weird, man. It was…” He laughed. “That was fucked up.”
“In what way, exactly?”
He put two massive fists on the desk in front of him and seemed to study them. “It was a long time ago, but it seems like yesterday. We’d all seen the lights, on the system Don had rigged up. They were there, you know what I’m saying? You couldn’t argue with that. We all saw them. Then they went away and we sat around the fire for a couple of hours. One by one, the guys started getting sleepy and going off into their tents, till it’s just me and Don, Jasmine, Jane, and Danny and maybe one or two others. And all of a sudden, Jane just kind of lies down and she starts shaking, and her breathing is going crazy. And then she starts talking, man, but in a voice that is not like her own. And it says how she and Danny are kind of chosen to spread the word, and Don is like the rock on which they will build their temple or something, and the rest of us were going to create new paths. I don’t remember the words exactly.” He paused, nodding, “But then she comes out with this. And I felt myself go cold inside, you know what I’m saying to you? It was like cold terror went right through me. She says that Jasmine and Danny have to go down this track, it’s like half a mile long, through this forest which is like a jungle, at two o’clock in the morning, to a clearing down there. On their own. And in that clearing they are going to have a close encounter. I’m not kidding. I was shitting myself. I was thinking, please, God, don’t let them call me. Please don’t let them call me.”
Dehan was watching him like a cat watching a mouse. “So what happened?”
“I guess Don was feeling like me, and he says no way, man. Danny can go if he wants to, but there is no way Jasmine is going. He was crazy about her back then. He doted on her every move. You know what I’m saying? She was the love of his life. And he said, no way.”
I scratched my chin. “How did she feel about that?”
“To be honest? I think she was kind of relieved. And I think it meant a lot to her that he didn’t let her go. But for him…” He shook his head. “For him it was a catastrophe. It destroyed him as a man.”
Dehan frowned at him. “Yeah? Why?”
I said, “In what way did it destroy him, Mr. Estevez?”
He studied Dehan’s face a moment, then he studied mine. “Because he blamed himself for what happened next. He never forgave himself. I liked Don, you know? He was not just a friend, he was my mentor, my guide. He was like the father figure I never had at home.” He gestured at the dojo around him. “This? This is all thanks to him. Today I am off the streets, believing in myself, teaching other kids that they have other options than crime, because of Don Kirkpatrick. But, man, over the last twenty years I have seen him slowly go to pieces, one week at a time, one month at a time. And all because he blames himself for what happened to Danny.”
Dehan flopped back in her chair with her face screwed up like an incredulous fist. “He believes that Danny was punished by aliens for not going to the glade?”
He smiled at her and there was something almost condescending in his expression. “You can laugh, Detective, but that is what Don believes, and I think he’s right. How else can you explain what happened on Sunday night? Or Saturday? Who knows when it happened? Who knows what happened Saturday, right?”
I raised a hand. “Slow down. Let me get a handle on this. You are telling me that up until Sunday, June 7th, 1998, Donald Kirkpatrick was a loving, doting husband…”
Paul was shaking his head. “Not just that, man. He was a different person. He was positive, outgoing, respectful…”
“And all of this changed that weekend.”
He nodded. “Not overnight. But in the following weeks. He blamed himself for Danny’s death. He tortured himself. We talked about it many times, and he cannot get past the question, ‘What if I had let them go?’ What if he had let Jasmine and Danny go to that glade? Would Danny be alive today? And every time, I ask him, but what if they had both been killed? Wouldn’t you be even more responsible?” He shrugged, spread his hands, and shook his head. “I think he did the right thing. I think he did what any man would have done. I know for sure I would not have let my wife go
