Ollie Clark—Thursday, June 27, 2019
Eli tried calling Jared again before they went up the crumbling concrete steps, but there still wasn’t an answer so his phone went into one pocket while he dug keys out of the other. It turned out that one of the unknowns on Dad’s usual key ring fit, but Ollie held back as Eli went inside, just in case Jared slept naked. Okay and maybe a little bit because she didn’t really want to see his initial reaction when Eli told him.
Eli went through the doorway from the living room—Jared had a separate one—into the other main room of the apartment, since that led him to the bedroom door, but Ollie stopped in the living room and let the door close behind her. She usually avoided coming here because Jared’s apartment made her sad. He’d been here for years and had permission to hang things on the walls, but hadn’t. Most of his furniture once sat on someone else’s lawn with a FREE sign on it, and the blinds were the ones that came with the apartment. He didn’t keep it neat so much as ascetic, and the cans not quite overflowing the plastic bin by the couch were about the only touch of personality. Ollie couldn’t imagine living like this. She couldn’t imagine Birdy living like this, and that was the depressing part, wasn’t it? There was absolutely no proof that Birdy and Jared would’ve stayed together if that night hadn’t happened, but Ollie was fairly certain Jared wouldn’t be here, like this, if Birdy were still alive.
She jerked out of her reverie when Jared came into view, pushing his hair back from his forehead with one hand while clutching a sheet around his waist with another. Ollie didn’t know guys did that outside of television shows that weren’t rated to reveal more than naked male torsos.
“Olls, what the fuck?” he asked, blinking.
“They just arrested Dad for the murders.”
“Yeah, that’s what he said, but …” Jared looked like he wanted to rub both hands over his face but caught himself just in time and made do with one. “Based on what? Len’s blood type information?”
She shrugged, crossing her arms and trying not to take too deep a breath. It didn’t smell bad in here, but Jared wasn’t the kind of guy to open windows and let in some fresh air. “I think they’d have to have more than that, but it’s not like they told us. They just pounded on the door and arrested him.”
Jared nodded, then shook his head. “Wait, you were up there? Your dad asked you to come?”
“Cindy asked us to,” Eli corrected. “Because Randy’s lawyer wanted us to. So he’s got one, and she was there, and she told him not to say anything until she got downtown.”
“But …” His hand worked over his face again, pulling it down into a mask of tragedy. “But Randy didn’t do it.”
And ten years ago Eli hadn’t done it, either, thanks. Ollie took a breath and firmly reminded herself she hadn’t seen Jared’s reaction back then, so maybe it was exactly the same. Jared saying Dad didn’t do it wasn’t Jared saying that Eli did. God, she needed some Excedrin.
“They have forty-eight hours to charge him,” Eli pointed out, either patiently or just slowly. “And there’s not really anything we can do in those forty-eight hours, but we thought you’d want to know.” He shrugged when his cousin turned to look at him. “And hear it from us instead of … I don’t know. Roger, maybe.”
Jared looked toward the front door and reflexively pulled the sheet higher. “Be right back,” he murmured, narrowly avoiding Eli as he returned to the bedroom and shut the door.
Eli sighed and jingled the keys in his pocket as he came to join Ollie in the living room, not relaxing enough to put an arm around her but touching shoulders. Well, letting her shoulder touch his upper arm because of the height difference. “There’s literally nothing we can do right now for your dad, hey?”
She nodded. “He’s got Deborah. That would be the only thing I can think of.”
“And Cindy?”
“I mean, I just kind of hope she doesn’t mess anything up.”
He sighed. The jingling stopped, but he hunched his shoulders. “They both need to just clam up. Let Deborah do the talking. But, uh … the police can lie to you, did you know? They could be telling him right now that they absolutely have some piece of evidence that proves he did it, just to see what he’ll say.”
Ollie opened her mouth to protest that Dad wouldn’t confess, but she shut it again before making a sound because hey, confession wasn’t the only thing they were after. Get Dad in a mood and he’d say a lot of things to add to the suspicion, especially if he thought he should stand on keeping all of Mom’s secrets. He didn’t seem to realize that it wasn’t being disloyal to Mom if they talked about it in order to keep Dad out of prison.
“God, Jared doesn’t even have a deck of cards,” Eli murmured, eyes roving around the room he’d seen hundreds of times before.
“We can go back to Dad’s. There’s that shelf of board games down in the basement.”
He almost smiled. “Did every kid think they were bored games because your mom only told you to play them when you were bored?”
Ollie tilted her head. “I think Mom usually got them out before we said we were bored. Like, if I was bored I’d get out a book and just sit there, but if Birdy didn’t have something to occupy herself, she’d get destructive.”
“Destructive.”
“Too much energy.”
He looked over, and then past, her. “Aw, hell. I was going to say you always see her through rose-colored glasses, but …” The blinds were open enough to see Len Wilcox coming their way.
“Maybe it’s just harder for me to forget that she was a literal child,” Ollie pointed out, locking the doorknob with one hand before pushing Eli back into the other room and out of sight. Len’s arrival didn’t have to interrupt their conversation
“I think he saw us.”
“There’s glare on that glass. And even if he did, nobody has to answer.”
“If he’s hanging around, we’re going to have a harder time getting back to your dad’s.”
Ollie shrugged and winced a little at the loud knocking, but at least Jared emerged from the bedroom and raised an eyebrow at them instead of calling out. “Len,” she explained.
Jared’s eyes closed briefly. “God. Okay. Get down under that window—he’s tall.”
Eli frowned, like he wasn’t sure what Len’s height had to do with anything, but then he nodded and the three of them sat on the floor beneath the window that Len would probably peer through, far enough over so that they wouldn’t be visible from the windows in the living room, either.
“It’s like an active shooter drill,” Ollie grumbled, hands linked around her knees. “Except the principal’s not going to give us an all-clear.”
Jared, on the other side of Eli, checked his watch. “Right, so how long do we give him?”
Ollie shook her head and then groaned when Eli started singing: “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall …”
Phone Call, Roger Porvoo with Len Wilcox, June 27, 2019
RP: You find them?
LW: No. No answer anywhere.
RP: Cindy’s down at the station. She wouldn’t talk to me.
LW: I could have a run at her.
RP: Doubt it. She and I are in agreement: we both think this is because of you.
LW: I made connections, but I don’t have evidence.
RP: Speaking of connections, mine just gave me two things. He said “blood type” and “we found the gun.” Either of those mean something to you?
LW: They found the gun?
RP: Yeah, that’s what I said. He didn’t clarify. I don’t think they can even match an individual shotgun to the crime right after, much less ten years later, but that was it. “We found the gun.” Do you know anything about the gun?
LW: I know of a shotgun that was stolen only weeks before the murders.
RP: Yeah?
LW: It’s your town. Your own paper reported it.
RP: You city kids think you’re all the Lone Ranger. You know something about the Lone Ranger? He was useless. He was just the white guy who listened to Tonto.
LW: Randy’s blood type is O.
RP: Randy’s blood type is O. That’s, um … still basically nothing, kid.
LW: You can find everything else on your own. If you actually look. You telling me that reporters up here don’t do any better than the police?
RP: You don’t have many friends, do you?
LW: You know what? Not all of us had our best friend’s dad offering us steady gigs right out of college.
RP: You …
LW: It’s called research.
Bury the Dead 22 – coming April 22
Rebecca Frost 