I followed her in. The entryway was small. The living room to my right was small. The dog that came bounding out of nowhere was big, big and hairy and brown. He tried to stop his rush at me but slid on his nails on the tile floor and bumped into me. I didn’t fall but it was close.
“Clutch,” she said. “Get out of here.”
Clutch was panting, tongue out, looking from me to her.
“Out,” she repeated.
The dog took a few steps into the tiled living room and then looked back at me.
“Out,” she repeated.
The dog slowly, almost mournfully disappeared through an open sliding door.
“I did call Nancy Root,” she said. “She told me you were working for her. Mr. Fonesca, Andy got a little, well, nervous when I told him you were coming by. He was better, but not much, when I told him I’d talked to Kyle’s mother about you.”
“How has he reacted to Kyle’s death?” I asked.
She shook her head and said, “Odd; he seems-maybe I’m just imagining it-frightened. He puts on a front, but the more he says everything is fine, the more I’m convinced everything isn’t fine. He won’t talk to me about it.”
“Andy’s father?”
“Dead,” she said. “He was a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. It went down. Everyone on board died. The captain who came by said it wasn’t downed by enemy fire. As if that makes a difference.”
“Andy?”
“Andy’s in his room,” she said. “I told him you were coming. Don’t expect a lot of cooperation.”
“You said you didn’t know Kyle McClory well.”
“Not well,” she said. “Tell the truth, the few times he came over he worked a little too hard to be likeable. Tried to say what he thought I wanted him to say. Couldn’t get past that. Can’t say I really tried too hard to break through. Poor kid.”
“Andy?”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Come on. Call him Andrew, at least to start out. My guess is if you call him Andy, he’ll tell you to call him Andrew. If you call him Andrew, he’ll tell you to call him Andy.”
I followed her through the living room into an alcove with three doors. The door in the middle was the bathroom. That door was open. The door to the right was obviously Mrs. Goines’s bedroom. The door to the left was closed and a yellow plastic streamer said, verboten.
She knocked.
“Yeah,” came the boy’s voice.
“The man I told you about is here,” she said.
“Changed my mind,” he said.
“Andy, he’s working for Kyle’s mom,” she said. “Give him five minutes.”
“I haven’t got anything to say that’ll help him.”
“You never know,” I said. “Five minutes is all I need.”
Long pause, the door opened. Andy Goines, barefoot, cutoff jeans and a Def Jam T-shirt, stood in front of me. He was short, stocky, round pink face, dark hair brushed straight back. He looked at me and clearly wasn’t impressed.
“Okay,” he said. “Come on in. Five minutes. I’m watching the clock.”
Andy’s mother excused herself, saying she had to get back to her grant proposal. Andy kicked the door closed behind me.
The room was clean, the bed made with a plain green blanket and four green pillows. A black director’s chair sat next to the bed. Nothing on the wood floor. CDs and DVDs neatly stacked on shelves next to a low dresser on top of which sat a television set and a CD deck on top of a DVD deck. There was a speaker on each side of the dresser. Next to the dresser was a small desk with a computer and chair. The desk wasn’t cluttered. A blue backpack sat on the chair.
On one wall were two posters, both framed, lined up next to each other. One poster was for one of the Lord of the Rings movies. On it, Sean Astin was leaning over Elijah Wood, his hand resting on Wood’s shoulder. In Wood’s open palm was the bright gold ring. The other poster was Eminem. I knew who it was because his name was printed in bold blood red across the top of the poster. Eminem was holding a microphone in one hand and pointing at me. Eminem looked angry.
On the other wall were three posters, all brightly colored sports cars. One car, a convertible, was red. The second car was a squat, dark Humvee with what looked like teeth, and the third car, a yellow Mini Cooper.
“Okay if I sit?” I asked.
“Suit yourself,” he said, his hands plunged into the pockets of his jeans.
I sat in the director’s chair. Andy Goines stood across the room in front of the television set.
“I’ve got nothing new to say about what happened to Kyle,” he said.
“Tell me again, please.”
“You a Cub fan?” he asked, looking at my cap.
“Yes,” I said.
He shook his head. I thought he was going to say something like “loser” or maybe he was thinking it.
“We went to the movie, got out,” he said flatly. “We were supposed to be picked up by Kyle’s dad. Kyle called him. We had time. We walked around the block. Kyle told me he’d meet me in front in a few minutes. Had something he had to do. He ran through the parking lot. I thought he had to find a toilet or something. I went out in front. Kyle didn’t show. I called my mom and asked her to pick me up. That’s it.”
“You didn’t see Kyle’s dad?”
“Nope, but I wasn’t looking for him.”
“You didn’t think something happened to Kyle?”
“Nope. He did stuff like that. Went off. Called me the next day to tell me something cool he’d done. It happened.”
I nodded and said, “What phone did you use to call your mother?”
“Kyle’s,” he said.
“But Kyle wasn’t with you. Did he give you his phone?”
Andrew Goines looked at his watch. He was definitely uneasy.
“Wait, now I remember. I called from the pay phone in the Main Street Book Store.”
“Main Street Book Store doesn’t have a public phone,” I said, not knowing if they did or didn’t.
“I don’t know. Maybe I called from the Hollywood 20,” he said. “What’s the difference?”
“What time did you call your mother?”
“What time? How the hell would I know? Maybe ten, fifteen minutes after we got out of the movie.”
Since one lie had worked and the kid looked beyond nervous, I went for two more.
“I checked the movie times,” I said. “You got out at nine-thirty. You mother says you called her at about ten-thirty. That’s an hour.”
“We were talking, following some girls we knew,” he said.
“Who were the girls?” I asked.
“You mean their names?”
“Yes,” I said, taking out my notebook.
“What’s this? Law amp; Order? They were just girls we see at school in the halls and stuff. They didn’t even look at us.”
“Kyle was your best friend, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
His hands were out of his pockets and his palms were beating gently against his thighs. I looked at the poster.
“Frodo and Sam,” I said. “Kyle was Frodo. You were Sam.”
“You saw the movies?”
“Read the books,” I said. “Long time ago. Sam saved his friend.”
“You’ve got a point? You saying I could have saved Kyle or something?”
He took a small step forward. The crack in his voice was small, but it was there.
“I don’t know. What happened to Kyle?”
“I told you. I told the police.”
I was shaking my head no.
“You don’t believe me? You calling me a liar?”
“You put it that way, I guess I am, but I think you’ve got a reason to lie,” I said. “I think you’re scared.”
“Of what?” he said, aiming for defiance but hitting fear.
“Of who,” I said. “He called me.”
Andy Goines tilted his head to one side.
“What? Who called you?”
“The man who killed Kyle,” I said.
“You are shitting me, man,” he said, his voice rising, pointing a finger at me the way Eminem was across the room on the wall. Only Andy’s look was definitely not anger but fear.
“No.”
“You’re lying. Why would he call you?”
“To tell me to stop looking for him,” I said. “I think he tried to run me down the way he did Kyle.”