The Escape. Part 5

Avery glanced up at the officers fielding questions and frowned.

"So you're saying that you really have no idea why these boys were targeted, Chief Templeton?"

The question came from a man in the front row, and though her father looked completely confident and comfortable, Avery could see the way his sharp eyes faltered, the almost imperceptible shift of his body at the scornful tone in the questioner's voice.

"We're still figuring out leads and tips, sir, but we're making progress."

Avery had heard that answer a dozen times over the last year and she knew what it meant. They had no idea. She glanced back down at her notepad and the single name written there. Then, in black capital letters, she wrote "WHY" at the top of the page. Why would anyone want to hurt Adam or Fletcher?

She scanned the room a second time, dismissing young kids. She was about to cross off anyone from her school too-she thought there was just no way that someone she'd grown up with and gone to cla.s.ses with, or who cheered on the Dan River Falls Wildcats, could have done this-but she paused. Especially when she saw who was sitting in one of the back rows.

His name was Jimmy Jerold, and he was the kind of guy every kid feared until they realized that he was just a high-school dropout in a frayed shirt trying to look mean. He had been in and out of juvie since he left school. Avery's father would never tell her exactly, but the rumor was that Jimmy had a mean temper and had broken his own stepfather's nose in a fit of rage.

What if Adam and Fletcher had run into Jimmy and made him mad? Avery tapped her pen against her notepad as her eyes cut to Jimmy and the girl who was sitting next to him. She didn't recognize the blond but Jimmy sure did. He nuzzled the girl's arm and then her chest. The girl clamped her hand over her mouth and giggled, her curls bobbing as she did. Someone turned and shushed them. Jimmy rolled his eyes.

It seemed like a long shot, but her father had always told her that the most obvious answer is usually the right one, so Avery wrote down Jimmy's name with a question mark next to it. As if he knew, Jimmy turned toward Avery, pinning her with his stare, his eyes smoldering and dark. He grinned slowly, rubbing his lips along the girl's arm but never breaking his gaze with Avery.

"Looks like you have some cracked ribs to go with your broken arm, and other than the cut on your head"-the nurse paused while she looked around the bandage on Fletcher's skull-"nothing overly severe. Should only be another day or two at most."

Fletcher didn't know why that didn't make him happy. He hated being in the hospital-being hooked up to the beeping machines and the constant interruptions from the nurses-but he wasn't sure he wanted to go home. He had been having trouble sleeping, and his eyes felt dry and itchy. Every time he closed them, the dream-or memory, he couldn't figure out which-came back.

The nurse stepped back from his bedside. "How are you feeling? You're looking a lot better, handsome guy." She grinned, but Fletcher knew she was lying. He felt swollen and achy, and he could see the salve glistening on the scratches and cuts on his arms, the spots where his bruises were starting to yellow.

"I'm okay, I guess."

"Are you ready for your meds?" She held a Dixie cup in each hand. She shook the one with the pills in it and grinned. "They will help you sleep."

Sleep. He welcomed heavy and dreamless sleep. No echoes of Adam's voice. No running for safety. No remembering.

Fletcher swallowed the pills and water in a single gulp.

Avery was only popular when her father was working on a big case. On any regular day, she was invisible. But after Adam's body was found and the parade of grief counselors was giving "circle talks" in every cla.s.sroom, Avery was a celebrity. Everyone wanted to sit with her, to pretend they were friends and had never snubbed her in the halls or at a party. They wanted to know what she knew. They wanted to know about Adam.

"I don't really know anything," she said slowly. "I don't know anything that you guys don't."

Michele, a cheerleader who had orbited Adam for as long as Avery could remember, leaned in. "How do you know we know the same things? Tell us what you know, and we can compare notes."

The students-strangers, really-at her lunch table nodded in agreement. Avery could feel the burn of embarra.s.sment on her cheeks, followed by the sting of anger. For two days, kids had been slinging their arms over her shoulders asking if she was okay. For two days, teachers had tentatively dropped test papers and homework a.s.signments on her desk, breathily whispering things like, "if you can't manage it right now, that's okay."

For ten grades she had been little more than a speed b.u.mp in the Dan River Falls High social strata, but now she was suddenly worthwhile. Avery wondered if it was just because her father was the chief of police or because kids knew that Fletcher had asked for her. Either way, she was uneasy with the attention.

"Hey." Ellison squished into the five-inch s.p.a.ce between Avery and another girl. Ellison wasn't big or outspoken, but she had a way of getting her message across and that's why Avery liked her.

"What's with the French homework?" Ellison asked, picking a potato chip off Avery's lunch tray. "Is that what everyone's talking about?

Avery grabbed her tray and stood abruptly. "I've got to get to cla.s.s."

"Fletcher...Fletcher..."

Fletcher shifted, realization dawning on him as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He was at home, lying in his bed. The clock on his nightstand read 2:41, its red numbers glowing in the darkness. What woke him up?

"Fletcher..."

It was a low, throaty whisper, someone drawing out his name, holding the R for far too long.

Fletcher kicked off the covers and sat up, his gaze darting around his bedroom.

"Is someone here?"

"Fletcher..." It was like the voice was right beside him, lips whispering in his ear. He swore he could feel the breath on his face. He recognized the voice. His throat constricted; his lips trembled.

"Adam?"

Suddenly, there was a chorus of whispers. A low din, all of the words tangling together, voices all talking at once so he couldn't decipher one thread of conversation from the other. Where did Adam go?

"Adam?"

The whispers grew more insistent, and Fletcher swatted at his ear. "Shhhh!" he commanded.

The voices responded by getting louder, and a few discernable words broke through the murmuring: "Killer... Do it again... You could have saved him... Do it again... Killer."

He scrunched his eyes shut and pressed his hands over his ears. "Stop!"

"Fletcher!"

It was Adam; he was sure of it.

"Come on, man."

"Adam?" Fletcher could feel tears stinging his eyes. It was as if his saliva were thickening and sticking on Adam's name. How could Adam be here? How could Adam be talking to him?

"No." Fletcher's eyes flew open and he was staring at himself in the mirror, hands still clamped against his head. His cheeks were glossy with tears. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Why are you doing this to me?" Adam's voice mocked. "Why are you doing this to me?"

Nine.

Avery poked through the candy bowl on her father's desk. She unwrapped a Jolly Rancher, popped it in her mouth, and stared at the whiteboard in front of her. It usually drifted from office to office, filled with colorful scrawl and "notes to remember." It looked totally different now.

Avery knew what it was: a murder board. She also knew that somewhere on her father's desk was the murder book, a three-ringed binder that would grow fat with each new piece of evidence from Adam's murder-doc.u.ments, photographs, witness statements. Her statement.

She wanted to look away, but she couldn't. The board fascinated her.

Scotch-taped to the upper left corner were smiling school portraits of both Adam and Fletcher with their names written underneath in red marker. The word "deceased" was scrawled in parentheses below Adam's name. A vague timeline ran across the top of the board, an imperfect black line hashed with slashes: 12 noon boys leave Adam's house; 13:03 arrive at Cascade Mountain Park, Lot B. A photocopy of a faded parking receipt was taped by the black hash mark, next to a long blank s.p.a.ce. Someone had inserted a Post-it note and written, "Lime Kiln Trail (3.8 mi); no witness came forward/per vic: no one seen on trail."

Avery scanned the next few entries-"vic (FC) reported missing by mother M. Carroll, OFC KG and RH prelim search." Her stomach dropped. A handful of crime-scene photographs were arranged at the end of the timeline.

Most were of where they found the boys, but one showed Avery, eyes wide and bleached by the camera flash, as she knelt next to Fletcher, her hand looped with his. There was a smear of blood-Fletcher's blood-on the back of her hand. Avery's hand burned as though the blood were still there.

Then, in her mind, she saw her mother's body crumpled and pinned by the steering wheel. Her blood had begun to pool on the seat. It was so impossibly red that Avery had been mesmerized by its rich, jeweled hue. She never knew that one body could hold so much blood.

The interrogation room looked nothing like the ones Fletcher had seen on TV. It was small, and instead of two chairs and a table with handcuff loops, there were a long, wooden veneer desk, a dusty fake ficus, and an ugly couch that looked like it had come from someone's bachelor pad. The walls were made of those Styrofoam-looking cement tiles like in school, and the carpet was the same industrial gray as Fletcher had seen at every other business in town. He fingered his cup of water and wondered if they were going to use it to collect evidence, lifting his DNA or maybe a row of fingerprints from it. But evidence for what?

They have all that, he reminded himself. It all came flooding back in a hot blur: Chief Templeton leading a lady cop into his hospital room, her inking his hands, then rolling his fingertips, one by one, on a card. The woman had used gentle pressure, but just her fingers on his caused an explosion of pain, and the line of st.i.tches on his right index finger had left a weird smudge.

What about the whispers?

He hadn't heard them since that night-well, not Adam. The whispers crept up on him every once in a while, muttering words he couldn't quite make out, clouded figures chattering just beyond the edge of his periphery. He pressed his fingertips to his temples. The mere thought of the voices sent a ripple of fear down his spine.

"Fletcher, sorry to keep you waiting."

Fletcher looked up nervously and dropped his hands into his lap.

The man was wearing a Men's Wearhouse suit that didn't quite fit right, with an American flag pin on the lapel of the jacket. A DRFPD badge hung on a chain around his neck.

"I'm Detective Malloy." His green eyes gave Fletcher a once-over, and he nodded at Fletcher's water. "I see Connie got you something to drink. Would you rather have a c.o.ke or something?"

Fletcher shook his head. His grip tightened on the cup, his palm sweating. Adam is dead. Adam was dead, and he had barely escaped the woods with his life, and Detective Malloy wanted to know if he'd like a c.o.ke.

"Can we just get this over with, please?" Fletcher's voice sounded small and the detective nodded.

"I can only imagine how hard this must be for you, losing your friend like that. And then we have to bring you through it over and over again." Malloy shrugged, his face apologetic. "I'm really sorry, son. It's procedure."

The word "son" stuck out of Malloy's sentence, and Fletcher almost wanted to laugh. Not even his father called him "son," unless he was talking to Fletcher's mother. Then it was "your son"-as in, "Your son has ruined everything again."

Malloy clicked open his ballpoint pen. "I know we've talked before and you've talked to Chief Templeton already. How you feeling, by the way?"

Fletcher instinctively touched the pads of his fingers to the bandage wrapped around his head. The st.i.tches itched but didn't hurt. Everything else hurt. "I'm okay," he lied.

"So, the twelfth of September. It was a Sat.u.r.day..."

Malloy didn't need to say the date or the day of the week. "That night" was all the description that would ever be needed. As Malloy talked, Fletcher's eyes felt heavy. His lips start to move as he recounted the story yet again.

"We were in Adam's room and kind of bored. We thought we'd go for a hike."

He remembered that Adam's mother had come in, carrying a basket full of clean, folded laundry. She had set to work pushing the neat bundles into Adam's drawers when he'd rolled his eyes and told her to get out.

Fletcher closed his eyes and remembered the shards of sunlight that came in through the blinds. The vision morphed into the mottled sunlight in the forest. The pine had smelled so fresh and strong.

They had hiked for a while-a couple hours, maybe more-and far enough in so the trees were thick and close together. He couldn't remember if they were still walking or if they had stopped. They must have stopped. Fletcher racked his mind to remember why. What stopped them?

He tried to force a picture of himself with Adam, back on the trail. Fletcher had seen them do that kind of thing on cop shows to lead a witness to remember a detail that would crack the case. If he could just imagine himself with Adam on the trail, maybe he could remember what had happened. But his mind refused to cooperate.

He flashed back to the two of them sitting in Adam's bedroom, then riding in his car, then at the trailhead. Detective Malloy started to whisper.

Fletcher blinked. "Excuse me?"

Malloy looked up from his notepad. "What?"

"I didn't hear what you said."

Malloy looked confused. "I didn't say anything."

Frustration mounted in Fletcher's gut. "Just now. You were whispering."

"No." Malloy drew out the word.

Was this some kind of cop game? A strategy to make a witness feel crazy until he ultimately confessed? Confess what? Fletcher wanted to scream. He swallowed hard. "I-I guess I heard something else."

The detective resumed his questioning. "You say you left Adam's house and-you were driving, correct?"

Fletcher nodded, distracted.

"Fletcher, son, are you okay?"

The first blow came out of nowhere, and his entire body vibrated with the impact. Even his teeth rattled. He wasn't sure if he was still standing or if he'd been knocked off his feet. He tried to look around but all he could see was the mosaic of pine needles on the ground, and then his vision clouded and everything went red. Sweat p.r.i.c.ked at the back of his neck and someone was talking to him, trying to get his attention.

"Fletcher? Fletcher? Are you okay, son?" Malloy's beady eyes looked concerned, his bushy brows diving into a V.

Fletcher blinked, the slap of pain clearing immediately. He was in the conference room. He was safe. He rubbed his hands against his jeans, his clammy palms catching on the fabric. His heart was wailing against his chest.

"I'm sorry," he said, working to focus on Malloy. "I just-"

Malloy held up one hand and blew out a long, slow breath. "That's okay, son. We're going to find this guy. You're going to be okay."

There was no parking at Dana & Mo's. But there was always parking at Dana & Mo's, especially on Thursday nights when Avery and her father came in at six forty-five for mammoth slices of the Kitchen Sink, a pizza laced with more toppings than Avery could count, all blended together in one harmonious, delicious mess of cheese and grease.

This Thursday night though, the parking lot was packed with cars. Kids from Dan River Falls High streamed from the doors and congregated in circles, laughing.

"What is going on?" Avery wanted to know.