Everything was different.
He’d seen it first in Eric Holmes’s eyes. They’d all stared down at the broken body in the brush, a terrible silence falling over them. Then, after what seemed an eternity, Eric had spoken. “Jeez, Matt,” he’d breathed. “What happened? What’d you do?”
Matt’s gaze had slowly shifted from his stepfather to Eric, and that’s when he’d seen it. There was something in Eric’s eyes that told him in an instant that everything had changed. Seemingly out of nowhere, a memory rose in his mind. He and Eric were in biology class, dissecting a frog. As he had cut through the skin of the frog’s belly, laying it back in neat flaps, he’d glanced up at Eric. The expression on Eric’s face — and the look in his eyes — as Eric watched him lay open the frog’s abdomen were exactly the same as the look he’d given Matt as he asked what Matt had done.
Revulsion, only slightly tempered with curiosity.
On the bluff above the river, he’d seen Eric turning away from him, just as he turned away from the frog in the lab that day.
From that moment, Matt sensed everyone watching him, and there was no friendliness in their eyes.
Now they were watching him as if he were some kind of specimen, some individual of another species, no longer part of what had been his world only a few hours ago. He’d been squeezed out of it in an instant.
But why?
He hadn’t done anything!
Or had he?
He hadn’t answered Eric’s question when they were standing on the bluff, and even now he had no real answer. Rather, there were just more questions, questions and images, tumbling through his mind in a jumble of confusion.
The deer.
He’d been aiming at the deer! And his stepfather hadn’t been there —
Had he?
Of course not! He’d have seen him!
But even as he tried to reassure himself, he kept seeing another image, just the faintest flash of a memory, of something else in the gun sight, something he’d barely been aware of as the strange aroma filled his nostrils, spreading like a mist over his mind, sending him —
Where?
Even now, long after Eric’s voice had brought him out of the strange reverie he’d fallen into, he had no real idea of what had happened. It wasn’t as if he’d been sick, even though he hadn’t slept very well last night. So what had happened? Had he just passed out? Had it been some kind of fumes he’d smelled, that knocked him out for a while? But if he’d passed out, how come he hadn’t fallen?
So he couldn’t have passed out.
The questions kept churning in his mind.
He had no memory even of following Eric and his father down the bluff, though he knew he must have. And he’d been only vaguely aware of everything that had happened since, of Dan Pullman arriving, and the ambulance, and then more deputies. He vaguely recalled one of the deputies asking him what had happened, and putting him in the backseat of one of the cars, but he’d been no more able to tell the deputy anything than he’d been able to tell Eric.
“I don’t know,” was all he’d said. And now, as he looked up at his mother, he could only repeat the same question the deputy had asked him.
“What happened, Mom?” he said softly. “What happened to Dad?”
Before his mother could answer, Dan Pullman appeared next to her, and as Matt’s gaze shifted to the police chief, he saw the same look in Pullman’s eyes that he’d seen in Eric’s.
“I think you know what happened to your dad,” Pullman said softly. “Do you want to tell us about it?”
“I — ” Matt began, then fell back into silence.
Immediately understanding the implication of Pullman’s words — and seeing the pain they brought to her son’s face — Joan’s anguished eyes fixed on the police chief. “How can you even think that?” she breathed, her voice trembling as she struggled with her roiling emotions. “Matt loved his father! He’d never do anything to hurt — ”
Pullman raised both his hands as if to fend off her outburst. “I never said that, Joan. Whatever happened, I’m sure it was an accident. And Matt was there. Who else can tell us — ”
Joan shook her head as if to throw off the words as a dog sheds water from its coat. “Not now,” she said. She reached out and took Matt’s hand in her own, and this time, at least, he didn’t try to pull away from her. “How can you expect him to say anything now?” she asked. “How can you expect either of us to — ”
“It’s all right, Joan,” Dan cut in. “Nobody has to say anything right now.” He glanced around, then signaled to Tony Petrocelli, in whose squad car Matt was sitting. “Can you drive them home, Tony?”
Knowing from long experience that his boss wasn’t asking a question, Petrocelli nodded. “Right away.”
As his deputy moved around to the driver’s door and Joan Hapgood joined her son in the backseat, Dan Pullman spoke. “It’s going to be all right, Joan,” he said, trying to reassure the woman whose husband’s body was at that moment being loaded into the ambulance to be transported to the coroner. “I’m sure it was an accident.” He shook his head, sighing. “I’ll come by later, okay?” When Joan didn’t respond, he reached through the open window and laid his hand on her shoulder.
Just as her son had pulled away from her own touch a few moments ago, Joan now recoiled from the police chief’s gesture. “I know what you think,” she said, looking directly into Pullman’s eyes. “You think Matt shot Bill. But I’ll never believe that. He couldn’t have. He just couldn’t have.”
Dan watched the car until it disappeared from view, then went back to his examination of the scene of the accident, taking careful notes as both Marty Holmes and Paul Arneson recounted the argument between Matt and his stepfather that morning.
Then, when Gerry Conroe arrived, he heard about the scene that had transpired at the Hapgoods’ last night.
“Go up on the bluff and start searching,” he finally told his deputies. “I want the casings of every bullet Matt fired. And I want the bullets too. But first find the casings. Then at least we’ll know how many bullets we’re looking for.”
“What about the buck?” one of the deputies asked. “Seems like we shouldn’t just let it rot.”
Pullman hesitated. He couldn’t imagine why either Joan or Matt would ever want to see the buck again, but on the other hand, Matt had shot the deer on their property, and the last thing he needed was anyone accusing him of disposing of it without permission. “There’s a shed behind the Hapgoods’ carriage house — that’s where Bill always hung his game. Guess you might as well put it there. Someone call Petrocelli and have him tell Mrs. Hapgood where it’ll be. If they want to get rid of it, they can do it themselves.”
As the deputies set to work, Dan Pullman turned to Gerry Conroe. Like almost everyone in Granite Falls, they had both been born there, had known each other all their lives. “Well?” Pullman asked. “What do you think? Was it an accident?”
Conroe hesitated only a second before shaking his head. “I’d like to say it was,” he replied. “But I can’t. I just can’t.”
CHAPTER 8
NUMBNESS FELL OVER Joan as Tony Petrocelli drove her and Matt back to the house. When the deputy pulled the squad car to a halt in the circular drive at the foot of the wide steps leading up to the front door, she neither said anything nor made any move to open the door. Instead she gazed through the car window at the sprawling brick house she’d lived in for the last ten years.
It looked completely different now.
But what had changed?
