"Jess," he called after me. "Hey, Jess!"
I turned at the sound of my name, and was mildly surprised to see Mark leave his car, which he'd been unlocking, and hurry up to me.
"Hey," he said. He had on a pair of Ray Bans, which he lifted as he looked down at me. "How are you? I was hoping I'd run into you. I hope I didn't get you into trouble last night."
I just blinked up at him. All I could think about was how, at any minute, the Feds might be hauling Douglas in for questioning about a couple of crimes he in no way could have committed.
If, that is, I didn't come clean about the ESP thing, and promise to help them find their stupid criminals.
"You know," Mark said, I guess judging from my blank expression that I didn't know what he was talking about. "When I dropped you off. Your parents looked kind of … mad."
"They weren't mad," I said. "They were concerned." And about Douglas, not me. Because Douglas hadn't been home. He had been off somewhere, alone....
"Oh," Mark said. "Well, anyway. I just wanted to make sure you were, you know, all right. That was pretty terrific, how you found Heather and all."
"Yeah," I said, noticing Ruth coming toward us. "Well, you know. Just doing my job, and all. Listen, I gotta—"
"I was thinking," Mark said, "that maybe if you aren't doing anything this weekend, you and I could, uh, I don't know, hang out."
"Yeah, whatever," I said, though truthfully, the thought of going to see Japanese anime with Skip was a lot more appealing than "uh, I don't know, hanging out" with Mark. "Why don't you give me a call?"
"I'll do that," Mark said. He waved at Ruth as she went by, studying us so intently she nearly barked her shins on her own car's bumper. "Hey," he said to her. "How you doing there?"
"Fine," Ruth said, unlocking the driver's door to her car. "Thanks."
Mark opened his own driver's side door, reached inside his car, and pulled out a duffel bag. Then he closed the door again and locked it. At our glances, which I suppose he perceived as curious—though in my case, it was merely glazed—he went, "Football practice," then shouldered the bag, and headed off in the direction of the gym.
"Jess," Ruth said when he was out of earshot. "Did I hear that correctly? Did Mark Leskowski just ask you out?"
"Yeah," I said.
"So that's how many people who've asked you out today? Two?"
"Yeah," I said, climbing into the passenger seat after she unlocked it from the inside.
"Jeez, Jess," she said. "That's like a record, or something. Why aren't you happier?"
"Because," I said, "one of the guys who asked me out today was, up until recently, a suspect in his own girlfriend's murder, and the other one is your brother."
Ruth went, "Yeah, but isn't Mark off the hook now, on account of what happened to Heather?"
"I guess so," I said. "But...."
"But what?" Ruth asked.
"But . . . Ruth, Tisha says they all knew about that house. Almost like . . . they're the ones who hang out there."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning it must have been one of them."
"One of who?"
"The in crowd," I said, gesturing toward the football field, where we could see the cheerleaders and some of the players already out there, practicing.
"Not necessarily," Ruth said. "I mean, Tisha knew about the house. She didn't say she'd ever been in there partying, did she?"
"Well," I said. "No. Not exactly. But—"
"I mean, come on. Don't you think those guys could find a nicer place to party? Like Mark Leskowski's parents' rec room, for instance? I mean, I hear the Leskowskis have an indoor/outdoor pool."
"Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Leskowski disapprove of Mark's friends bringing their girlfriends over for a quickie in their rec room."
"Puh-lease," Ruth said as we cruised out of the parking lot and turned onto High School Road. "Why would any of them kill Amber? Or try to kill Heather? They're all friends, right?"
Right. Ruth was right. Ruth was always right. And I was always wrong. Well, almost always, anyway.
I guess I didn't really believe—in spite of what Tisha had told me, about all of them knowing about the house on the pit road—that they'd actually been involved in Amber's murder and Heather's attack. I mean, seriously: Mark Leskowski, wrapping his hands around his girlfriend's neck and strangling her? No way. He'd loved her. He'd cried in the guidance office in front of me, he'd loved her so much.
At least, I think that's why he'd been crying. He certainly hadn't been crying about his chances at winning a scholarship being endangered by his status as a murder suspect. I mean, that would have been just plain cold. Right?
And what about Heather? Did I suppose that Jeff Day or someone else on the team had tied Heather up and left her in that bathtub to die? Why? So she wouldn't narc on Mark?
No. It was ridiculous. Tisha's theory about the deranged hillbillies made more sense. Maybe the cheerleaders and the football team parried in the house on the pit road, but they weren't the ones who'd left Heather there. No, that had been the work of someone else. Some sick, perverted individual.
But not—absolutely not—my brother.
I made sure of that, the second I got home. Not, of course, that I'd had any reason to doubt it. I just wanted to set the record straight. I stalked up the stairs—my mother wasn't home, thank God, so I didn't have to listen to any more lectures about how unsuitable it was of me to sneak out in the middle of the night with a boy who worked in a garage—and banged once on Douglas's bedroom door. Then I threw it open, because Douglas's bedroom door doesn't have a lock. My dad took the lock off, after he slit his wrists in there and we had to break the door down to get to him.
He's so used to me barging in, he doesn't even look up anymore.
"Get out," he said, without lifting his gaze from the copy of Starship Troopers he was perusing.
"Douglas," I said. "I have to know. Where were you last night from five o'clock until eight, when you came back to the house?"
He looked up at that. "Why do I have to tell you?" he wanted to know.
"Because," I said.
I wanted to tell him the truth, of course. I wanted to say, Douglas, the Feds think you may have had something to do with Amber Mackey's murder, and Heather Montrose's attack. I need you to tell me you didn't do it. I need you to tell me that you have witnesses who can verify your whereabouts at the time these crimes occurred, and that your alibi is rock solid. Because unless you can tell me these things, I may have to take an after-school job working with some particularly nasty people.
In other words, the FBI.
But I wasn't sure I could say these things to Douglas. I wasn't sure I could say these things to Douglas because it was hard to tell anymore what might set off one of his episodes. Most of the time, he seemed normal to me. But every once in a while, something would upset him—something seemingly stupid, like that we were out of Cheerios—and suddenly the voices—Douglas's voices—were back.
On the other hand, this was something serious. It wasn't about Cheerios or reporters from Good Housekeeping magazine standing in our yard wanting to interview me. Not this time. This time, it was about people dying.
"Douglas," I said. "I mean it. I need to know where you were. There's this rumor going around—I don't believe it or anything—but there's this rumor going around that you killed Amber Mackey, and that last night you kidnapped Heather Montrose and left her to die."
"Whoa." Douglas, who was lying on his bed, put down his comic book. "And how did I do this, supposedly? Using my superpowers?"