Andy Goines was shaking now. He pulled the backpack from the chair by the desk, dropped it on the floor and sat down, hands rubbing his legs.
“Did he say anything about me?”
“No,” I said.
“I think he’s going to try to kill me. Oh shit. Shit. Shit.”
He was pounding his fists on his legs now. He bit his lower lip and looked at Eminem for help, didn’t get any and turned back to me.
“Help me find him,” I said.
“Shit,” he said once more. “He went crazy, man.”
“Kyle?”
“No, that guy.”
“Kyle’s sister said you and her brother were into doing things?”
“She’s a lying whore. What kind of things?”
“Scratching cars, dropping water balloons.”
He looked at me and began blinking fast.
“You know, don’t you?”
I shrugged.
“I mean, we shouldn’t have done it, but we were just shitting around. It wasn’t the first time. Other guys up there did it.”
“Did it?”
Andy got up and sat down again.
“Okay, after the movie we went to the top of the parking garage. You know, the one behind the 20. We leaned over and waited for people to go by and we spat down on them, tried to hit them. Then we’d duck back before they could look up and we listened to hear if they said something that’d show we had a hit.”
“You spit on people’s heads?”
“Four levels up,” he said. “It’s not easy.”
“I’m sure it takes a lot of skill.”
There was a lot more I could say, but I stopped. I didn’t want him to stop now that he was going.
“We hit a guy with a girl,” he said. “Then a while later we looked down and saw this older guy with white hair. He was with a girl. They were walking real slow, right on the walk under us. We dropped big ones on them.”
He stopped. Andy was breathing hard now.
“You’ve gotta understand,” he said. “It didn’t mean anything. Just messing around. You messed around when you were a kid, right?”
“No, not like that,” I said.
He ignored my answer and started to rock in the chair.
“Anyway, we heard a scream,” he said. “Like someone got hit by a rock or something. It was just spit. Kyle and I looked over the roof and the guy with white hair was looking up at us and the girl was holding the top of her head and screaming real weird-like.”
Andy went silent, remembering, and then went on. “Well, anyway, we moved back from the edge of the roof and started to go back to the ramp. I was the one who heard it first.”
“It?”
“Footsteps, someone running, like an echo,” he said. “That crazy son of a bitch was coming up after us.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure? We were at the ramp when we looked back and there he was screaming at us like a nut. For spitting. We ran. He didn’t catch us. We hid out in the main-street bookstore on the second floor for about ten minutes and then came out to wait for Kyle’s dad. And there he was.”
“Kyle’s dad?”
“No, the crazy guy. In a car coming right up in front of the movies. There was someone in the back, but I couldn’t see. He saw us. We ran like hell back down the sidewalk toward the parking lot. When we hit the lot, we heard a car screeching into the parking lot. It was him, same car.”
“What kind of car?”
“Taurus. Blue. Late model. No more than a year old. He saw us, came flying over the speed bumps. We ran through the lot and went over the fence on Fruitville. Ran across the street, almost got hit by a pickup. Then we went down the first street. I don’t know what it was.”
“He was still following you?”
“He must have seen us go down the street. We were half a block down, running, when we heard the car turning behind us. We didn’t know where we were. I followed Kyle between two houses. A couple of guys, Mexicans, yelled at us, asking us where the hell we thought we were going.”
“The guy in the car?”
“Didn’t look back,” he said. “Went through a yard full of old tires and stuff and ran around down 301 and into the Walgreens on the corner. We went to the toilet in the back and locked ourselves in. I’m telling you, that guy was nuts.”
“You decided to separate,” I said.
“Yeah, but not until we got out of the toilet and saw the guy running out of the store. The girl at the checkout counter said she thought a guy who just left was looking for us. She said we could catch him if we hurried.”
“That’s when you decided to separate?”
He nodded.
“We looked through the window and saw him pulling out of the lot,” Andy said. “He wasn’t going to give up. So we split up. I went back toward the 20. Kyle went back around the drugstore. That’s it. Who’d ever think someone would kill a kid because he spit on his wife or daughter? Have to be nuts.”
“You’d recognize him again if you saw him?”
“I’m pretty sure, yeah. White hair, little beard. Pretty big guy.”
“Old?”
“Yeah, like your age, maybe.”
“Anything else?”
“He had a bumper sticker,” Andy said, looking at the Lord of the Rings poster. “Saw it when he pulled out of the drugstore lot. Manatee Community College parking sticker.”
“How do you know that?”
“My mom has one, blue and white. She teaches a course there Thursday nights.”
I got up. So did Andrew Goines.
“You’re going to tell the police, aren’t you?”
“Soon,” I said.
“You have to tell my mom?”
He had quickly gone from being a cocky fifteen-year-old to a frightened ten-year-old.
“She wouldn’t understand,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t say anything to the police. Kyle was dead and I wasn’t sure it wasn’t just an accident. But now…”
“Now?”
“He called you. You said he called you, right?”
“He did,” I said.
“My mom thinks I’m some kind of perfect kid,” he said. “She’s all the time telling people how much I’m like my dad. I’m not like my dad. She’s going to find out, isn’t she?”
“About the spitting?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. Maybe not for a while. Maybe not any time.”
Andy Goines looked at his watch.
“Almost fifteen minutes,” he said. “I told you I’d give you five. You done?”
“I’m done.”
“You’re going to find him, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Thanks.”
He awkwardly held out his hand. I shook it. His palm was wet. He walked with me to the front door. His mother was in another room talking on the phone and tapping something out on the computer at the same time. I didn’t wait to say good-bye.
“I should have stayed with Kyle,” the boy said. “I should have been there to help him. My dad would have.”
“He might have run you down too,” I said. “Then your mother would have to go on without your dad and you. It’s hard to go on alone.”
I was going to add, “Trust me,” but I didn’t trust people who said that. It almost always meant that I had just heard something I definitely should not trust.
He closed the door behind me.
I stopped to report to Marie Knot that I had handed out the two summonses and to pick up a check for my work. Then I drove to the DQ lot and parked. It was a little before six. I got a double burger and a large chocolate cherry Blizzard, went up to my office and turned on the light.
The phone was ringing.
“Fonesca,” I said.
“I was watching you. I could have killed you,” he said. “You didn’t see me.”
“Thanks for not killing me,” I said, sitting behind my desk, Blizzard and burger in front of me.
I took off my cap and waited. He was sitting out there no more than a few hundred feet away. He had seen me go through the door.
“Can’t you understand?” he pleaded.
“Explain it to me,” I said. “Come on up to my office. I’ll split a burger and a Blizzard with you.”
“It’s useless, isn’t it?” he asked.
“You mean trying to get me to stop looking for you? Yes, but it doesn’t hurt for us to talk. Call whenever you like.”
He started the car he was in. I heard it over the phone and out the window.