Hell with it, he thought. Call them Mutt and Jeff, and leave it at that.
He checked to make sure each plastic barrel had plenty of extra trash bags. Then Mutt came over and, fighting the smirk trying to sneak onto his face, asked, “Hey, Brennert — that’s your name, right?”
“Yeah.”
“We were just wonderin’ if, well, it’s true, y’know?”
“If what’s true?”
Mutt gave a quick look to Jeff, who turned away and oh-so-subtly covered his mouth with his hand.
Russell dug his fingernails into his palms to keep from getting angry; these guys were going to pull something, or say something, he just knew it.
Mutt sniffed dryly as he turned back to Russell. He’d given up trying to fight back the smirk on his face.
Russell bit his lower lip. Stay cool, you can do it, you need the money...
“We’d just been wonderin’,” said Mutt, “if it’s true that you and Leonard used to... go to the movies together.”
Jeff snorted a laugh and tried to cover it up by coughing.
Russell held his breath. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“Just the two of you, or you guys ever take dates?”
You re doing fine, just fine, he’s a mutant, just keep that in mind...
“Sometimes it was just him and me. Sometimes he’d bring Barb along.”
“Yeah, yeah...” Mutt leaned in, lowering his voice to a mock-conspiratorial whisper. “The thing is, we heard that the two of you went to the drive-in together a couple of days before he shot everybody.”
Fine and dandy, yessir. “That’s right. Barb was going to come along, but she had to baby-sit her sister at the last minute.”
Mutt chewed on his lower lip to bite back a giggle. Russell caught a peripheral glimpse of Davies and Cooper heading back up to the porch with one of the cops.
“How come you and your buddy went to the drive-in all by yourselves?”
“We wanted to see the movie.” Jesus, Jackson, get down here, will you?
Russell didn’t hear all of the next question because the pulsing of his blood sounded like a jackhammer in his ears.
“...thigh?”
Russell blinked, exhaled, and dug his nails in a little deeper. “I’m sorry, could you run that by me again?”
“I said, last week after gym when we was all in the showers, I noticed you had a sucker bite on your thigh.”
“Birthmark.”
“You sure about that? Seemed to me it looked like a big of hickey.”
“Stare at my thighs a lot, do you?”
Mutt’s face went blank. Jeff jumped to his feet and snarled, “Hey, watch it, motherfucker.”
“Watch what?” snapped Russell. “Why don’t you feebs just leave me alone? I’ve got better things to do than be grilled by a couple of redneck homophobes.”
“Ha! Homo, huh?” said Mutt. “I always figured the two of you musta been butt buddies.”
“Fag bags,” said Jeff, then the two flaming wits high-fived each other.
Russell suddenly realized that one of his hands had reached over and gripped a mop handle. Don’t do it, Russ, don’t you dare, they’re not worth it. “Think whatever you want. I don’t care.” He turned away from them in time to see a bright blue van pull up behind the police cruiser. A small satellite dish squatted like a gargoyle on top of the van, and Russell could see through the windshield that Ms. Tanya Claymore, Channel g’s red-hot news babe, was inside.
“Oh shit,” he whispered.
One of the reasons he’d agreed to help out tonight — the money aside — was so he wouldn’t have to stay at home and hear the phone ring every ten minutes and answer it to find some reporter on the other end asking for Mr. Russell Brennert, oh this is him? I’m Whatsisname from the In-Your-Face Channel, Central Ohio’s News Authority, and I wanted to ask you a few questions about Andy Leonard blah-blah-blah.
It had been like that for the last three days. He’d hoped that coming out here tonight would give him a reprieve from everyone’s constant questions, but it seemed—
— put the ego in park, Russ. Yeah, maybe they called the house and Mom or Dad told them you’d be out here, but it’s just possible they came out in hopes of getting inside the house for a few minutes’ worth of video for tomorrow’s news.
Mutt smacked the back of his shoulder much harder than was needed just to get his attention. “Hey, yo! Brennert, I’m talking to you.”
“Please leave me alone? Please?”
All along the murky death membrane that was Merchant Street, porch lights snapped on and ghostly forms shuffled out in bathrobes and housecoats, some with curlers in their hair or shoddy slippers on their feet.
Mutt and Jeff both laughed, but not too loudly.
“What’s it like to cornhole a psycho, huh?”
“I—” Russell swallowed the rest of the sentence and started toward the house, but Mutt grabbed his arm, wrenching him backward and spinning him around.
One of the tattered specters grabbed her husband’s arm and pointed from their porch to the three young men by the van. Did it look like there was some trouble?
The ghosts of Irv and Miriam Leonard, accompanied by their grandchildren Ian, Theresa, and Lori, stood off to the side of the house and watched as well. Irv shook his head in disgust, and Miriam wiped at her eyes and thought she felt her heart aching for Russell, such a nice boy, he was.
On the porch of the Leonard house, an impatient Jackson Davies waited while the officer ripped down the yellow tape and inserted the key into the lock.
“Jackson?” said Pete Cooper.
“What?”
Cooper cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Do you remember what you said about no reporters being around?”
“Yeah, so wha—” Then he saw the Channel 9 news van. “Ah, fuck me with a fiddlestick! They plant a homing device on that poor kid or something?” He watched Tanya Claymore slide open the side door and lower one of her too-perfect legs toward the ground like some Hollywood starlet exiting a limo at a movie premiere.
“Dammit, I told you bringing Brennert along would be a mistake.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hindsight. Let me worry about it?”
Cooper gestured toward the news van and said, “Aren’t you gonna do something?”
“I don’t know if I can.” Davies directed this remark to the police officer unlocking the door. The officer looked over his shoulder and shrugged, then said, “If she interferes with your crew performing the job you pay them for, you’ve got every right to tell her to go away.”
“Just make sure you get her phone number first,” said Cooper.
Davies turned his back to them and stared at Tanya Claymore. If she even so much as looked at Russell, he’d drop on her like a curse from heaven.
Down by the trash barrels and buckets, Mutt was standing less than an inch from Russell’s face and saying, “All right, bad-ass, let’s get to it. People’re savin’ that you maybe knew what Andy was gonna do and didn’t say anything.”
“I didn’t,” whispered Russell. “I didn’t know.”
Some part of him realized that Tanya’s cameraman had turned on his light and was taping them, but he was backed too far into a corner to care right now.
“Yeah,” said Mutt contemptuously. “I’ll just bet you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know, all right? He never said... a thing to me.”