Chapter Seven: Murderous Misconceptions
Steve shuddered violently as Donnie Baxter pressed a hot rag against the wound in his shoulder and gritted his teeth to hold back the moan that wanted to escape. Cletus had made it abundantly clear that he wasn't to speak unless spoken to, and he assumed that also went for moans, groans, and other sounds of discomfort. When Donnie had failed to return with the first aid kit, it was as if someone had pulled the plug on the last of his hopes, and he had been circling the drain of despair ever since.
Though Donnie had been cleaning his wound, changing and washing the rag dressings every few hours, Steve could feel the throbbing in his shoulder as it worked its way down his arm, across his chest and into his neck. The heat that surged with each beat of his heart and receded with the pauses in between told him he had a raging infection. The alternating fever and chills told him hot water and clean bandages would not be enough to save him. He needed antibiotics, and he needed them quickly.
Steve knew he was much too weak to make another escape attempt, and he had no idea how long he had been drifting in and out, though he thought it might have been a day or two by now. He did know his only remaining chance for survival depended on convincing Donnie to help him, and that depended on him driving a wedge between father and son. With a discrete look around, he spied Cletus standing in the doorway of the cabin looking out at the trees and decided to use the moment to work on Donnie a little more.
"You know," he croaked in a dry whisper so that Cletus couldn't hear, "if you were to go off on another 'errand' and come back with the police, I would testify on your behalf, tell them that you tried to help me, tried to protect me from your father. I would ask the judge to go easy on you."
"Would you really?" Donnie sounded surprised and slightly interested as he gently pressed a fresh bandage against Steve's shoulder.
Steve nodded, "Sure. I could tell them that your father forced you into this, that he threatened you, that you were as much a victim as me. I might even be able to convince the DA not to charge you."
"You would do that for me?" Donnie asked.
"Sure . . . Ohhhhhh!" Steve groaned as the bandage was tied in place a bit too tightly with another clean rag. As he writhed in pain, he saw Donnie's glance shift toward the door, and then he stopped moving entirely as he felt Cletus press the barrel of his ever-present rifle hard against his chin. He knew then that he must be even sicker than he thought to have missed the old man's approach.
"Would you betray yer pa like you're askin' my boy to do me, Cop?" Cletus hissed angrily, and the cold voice betrayed the building rage that Steve knew was about to explode. The rifle pressed harder against his chin, tilting his head back against the floor. "I expect an answer, Boy!"
Steve swallowed hard and managed to whisper, "No."
Cletus leered cruelly and slid the barrel of the weapon down to rest on his prisoner's Adam's apple. He spat some tobacco juice in Donnie's direction and the younger Baxter flinched away. "'No', what, Boy?"
The rifle pressed harder, making it difficult to swallow or speak, but Steve managed to croak out, "No, Sir."
"Well, neither will my boy," Cletus replied, pressing steadily harder on Steve's throat as he spoke. "He hates me, an' he hates himself for bein' too much of a coward to do anythin' about it. Now, he might just grow a backbone an' blow my head off someday, but I doubt it, an' either way, I'm blood, an' he knows blood don't turn on blood for nobody else, no matter what. You unnerstan'?"
By now, the pressure on the gun was making it hard for Steve to breathe, and he was shivering, though from fear or fever, he couldn't tell. He let his gaze slide over to Donnie and he looked at the cowering young man half in sympathy, half in desperation, and his meager hopes sank when he saw that no help would be coming from that quarter. Finally, he looked back at Cletus, knowing his only chance now was to bow to the old man's will and try to stay alive long enough for help to arrive.
"Yes, Sir," he breathed, though with the rifle barrel pressing on his larynx, he could give the words no voice.
Cletus smiled almost beatifically then, as if he were overjoyed with the thought of having finally broken the tough cop's spirit, and Steve closed his eyes and relaxed slightly, grateful to have escaped a beating. Donnie's horrified gasp came too late to let him brace himself for the impending assault, and the blow from the rifle barrel against his Adam's apple left him coughing, retching, and fighting for air.
Sloans' Deck
Mark felt his knees begin to buckle and his head start to swim, and the world around him moved in slow motion as Amanda and Jesse helped him to a chair in the observation room. "My, God," he gasped, "what do we do now?"
For two days, Cheryl and Ron had insisted on working by the book and interviewing Tucker's classmates in alphabetical order while Jesse and Mark had begged them to interview Jeremy Stalling first. The two investigators felt that jumping down the list of students Mr. Stalling had provided for them could be construed as singling the boy out without reason. The two doctors believed that the fact that the principal neglected to mention that his son attended classes with both the victim and the alleged killer was reason enough to question Jeremy first. Only when Jason Abercrombie, Nicole Ashley, and Diane Boyle, the first three students on the class list, all mentioned that Jeremy had also been a prime target for Rico's taunts did Ron and Cheryl relent and agree to question Jeremy Stalling next.
When Lydia Stalling refused to let the police or the FBI speak to her son without a lawyer present, their curiosity and suspicions increased. They made an appointment for Mrs. Stalling to bring Jeremy into the precinct for an interview and in the meantime continued their investigation with Patrice Danforth, David Elias, and Susan Ellison, all of whom agreed that, after Tucker, Jeremy was the next likely candidate for class killer.
Mark had arrived early for the interview so that he could slip into the observation room unnoticed. His hopes for catching the real killer and rescuing his son were high, but within five minutes of Lydia and Jeremy Stalling's arrival, he knew they had the wrong person. Just by observing Jeremy's interaction with his mother and his reaction to the strange place, he knew the boy was intellectually incapable of formulating the intent, let alone carrying out the plan, necessary for him to commit first degree murder. They had wasted two days, they were right back where they had started from, and Steve's time was running out.
Mark looked on in despair as Cheryl and Ron entered the room. Before they even began speaking, Jeremy Stalling's lawyer, a man named Wilbur Smith, said, "My client isn't saying a word until you grant him immunity."
"Hi!" Jeremy said, and grinned at the new people who had entered the room.
"Jeremy, hush!" Lydia Stalling reprimanded him.
"Immunity?" Ron said curiously, "From what?"
"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" Jeremy began chanting and waving.
"Jeremy, be quiet!" his mother warned.
"Any and all charges having to do with the death of Rico Alonso."
"What makes you think we're going to charge him?" Cheryl asked casually. "We're just interviewing Tucker's classmates to see if there is anything we missed in our initial investigation."
"Now you say hi," Jeremy instructed no one in particular. "It rude not say hi when someone say hi you."
"Jeremy, Baby, please, hush. This is real important, and Mama needs you to be quiet for now," Lydia Stalling pleaded, nearly in tears. "Please, Baby, can you just not talk until Mr. Smith says you can?"
Jeremy touched his mother's face, gave her an angelic smile, and said, "Ok, Mama, I sorry."
"Thank you, Jeremy."
"I know how many people are killed in this city every year, Detective," Mr. Smith replied, and smiled at Jeremy as the young man suddenly turned his full attention toward him. "You wouldn't be wasting your time on further interviews unless you believed you had missed something, and now that you have a suspect in custody, I don't want you to start spinning a conspiracy theory and sucking my client into it."
"I kilt Rico!" Jeremy crowed triumphantly. He rocked back and forth in his chair, applauding himself with the stiff-fingered claps of a young child, grinning foolishly, and braying like a mule with laughter. "When he comin' back?"
Suddenly the room was in chaos.
"Jeremy, no!" his mother screeched and slapped the boy upside the head. Then she looked in shock from her son to her hand, amazed and mortified that she had struck her child.
Cheryl turned and looked through the one way glass toward Mark, Amanda, and Jesse, exhilarated that they had finally gotten a much-needed break and horrified that she and Steve had, apparently, arrested the wrong individual.
Jeremy began to sob and crawled under the table, wailing, "I sorry, Mama, I sorry! No hit. Pease, no hit!"
"My client has the intellectual capacity of a two year old, Agent Wagner," Mr. Smith began lecturing at the top of his lungs to be heard over the din. "He is not capable of criminal action, because he unable to form intent. He doesn't understand his rights and cannot comprehend the consequences of his actions. Hell, he doesn't even know that death is permanent!"
Ron took a moment to survey the situation before he spoke, then he began issuing orders. "Mr. Smith, please wait here. Detective Banks and I will be right back. Mrs. Stalling, please try to calm down and see if you can't get Jeremy out from under the table. Detective Banks, come with me." As he took Cheryl by the arm and guided her out of the room, he looked into the mirrored observation window and jerked his head toward the hall indicating that he wanted Mark, Jesse, and Amanda to meet him there.
Sloans' Deck
Donnie pressed a cool wet cloth to the cop's brow and placed his hand against the man's warm face. He tsked and tutted and shook his head over the fever he felt there, and after pulling the musty-smelling blanket up close under Steve's chin, he took a deep breath and approached his father.
"Pa-a," he began, but his voice cracked, making him sound and feel weak and afraid. He took another breath and tried again. "Pa, if that man dies, we're both gonna be facin' the death penalty."
"If he dies?" Cletus parroted, and began to laugh his crackly laugh. "If he dies? Whoo-hoo!" He pierced his son with a steely glare and said, "Boy, don't be a fool. First of all, he ain't no man, he's a cop. An' second, he's dead already. He was dead the minute we snatched him from his driveway."
"Pa, what do you mean, he's dead already?" Donnie asked fearfully.
Cletus looked at his son and shook his head regretfully. "Stupid must run in your ma's family. I mean, we can't let him go, we can't keep him, an' we can't risk exchangin' him for Tucker 'cause the cops will be waitin' for us wherever we try to make the switch."
"Well then, why did we take him in the first place?"
Cletus shrugged and spat some tobacco juice in Steve's general direction. "'Cause we was both liquored up and it seemed like a good idea at the time," he said indifferently.
"What?" Donnie shouted in disbelief. "Are you tellin' me we kidnapped a cop because we was drunk?"
"Yep," Cletus replied laconically.
"But, Pa, that's insane!"
"Yup," Cletus agreed readily. "You got that from me." He grinned maniacally and howled like a coyote at a full moon.
Donnie was too upset to see that his father was simply having a cruel joke at his expense, and he ranted on, "Pa, we can't just let him suffer an' die!"
Cletus dropped all pretense of humor, then, not that Donnie noticed, and said disdainfully, "You got yerself a gun. Put a bullet in his head and make it quick and mercy-full."
"Pa, I, I couldn't. I couldn't never kill a man in cold blood."
"I know, Donnie," Cletus said in disgust. "Weakness ran in your ma's family just as much as stupid, but that's all right. I'd kinda like to watch him die slow, just for the hell of it."
Donnie opened his mouth to speak several times, but couldn't find the words to respond to his father's cruel suggestions. Finally, to the sound of Cletus' mocking laughter, he just hung his head and crossed the room to place a fresh, cool cloth on Steve's forehead.
Sloans' Deck
Out in the hall, Ron continued barking orders. "Detective Banks, find a judge and get a warrant for that boy's academic and medical records. If the DA offers a deal based on the Jeremy's weak mental faculties, he's gonna need documentation to justify it."
"Right!" Cheryl gave a brisk nod and she was off.
"Dr. Sloan, as many criminals as you have put away, I am sure there is at least one person in the DA's office who owes you a favor. If that kid really did kill Rico Alonso we can cut Tucker loose and get him to help us find Steve."
Mark nodded. "I'll call Neil Burnside. All I have to do is say 'Carter Sweeney', and he'll have someone here within the hour."
Ron grinned as the old man walked away. He knew Dr. Sloan generally shunned the use if his considerable influence and hated trading favors, preferring instead to rely on his natural charm and intelligence, but he also knew the elderly doctor treasured his only son above all else and would do anything to get him back safely.
"What about me?" Jesse piped up.
"Amanda," Ron said, ignoring the eager young doctor for the moment, "get them some coffee, a soda for Jeremy, maybe even some sandwiches and cookies. Ask a uniform to scare up a coloring book and some crayons for the kid or something." She frowned as if she was about to protest the menial assignment, but Ron explained his reasoning before she could say anything. "They're scared right now, Amanda, and more cops will only frighten them worse. You are calm and kind and patient. I am counting on you to make them feel comfortable and to keep them from leaving. Tell them we're working on a deal right now, but we need them to give us enough time to consult with the DA."
"Ok," Amanda nodded. "Just let me call my sitter and tell her I'll be here a while."
Turning to Jesse, Ron rolled his eyes heavenward in a quick plea for patience. For all his puppy-like exuberance and boyish charm, the young man was unusually observant and more insightful than one would expect from a person his age, and it was precisely those qualities, as well as Jesse's medical knowledge, that he needed right now.
"Dr. Travis, I need you to go back into the observation room and watch Jeremy." The young man's eager grin slipped into a disappointed pout as he thought he was being dismissed and put out of the way, but just as he did with Amanda, Ron made it clear that he was giving the young man a vital job to do. "We don't have time to wait for Detective Banks to come back with Jeremy's records, so I will be counting on your assessment to help me advise the DA in writing an immunity agreement or a plea bargain. I particularly need to know if he is capable of malice aforethought, whether he could plan and execute a murder, and especially if he understands that death is permanent and killing someone is wrong. Also, if you think he had been coached in any way, or if any of his behavior seems phony to you, I need to know. Do you understand?"
Jesse was grinning again, and he nodded, "Sure. Can you get me a pad and pencil to take some notes?"
"I'll have someone bring it in to you," Ron said. "Meanwhile, I'm going to speak to Victor Stalling and find out why he happened to overlook the fact that his son had as much reason to kill Rico as our boy Tucker did."
Sloans' Deck
Steve opened his eyes on a soft white light shining in the darkness, and briefly wondered if he had died. Then the edges of the cabin door took shape, and he could see the sun shining on the porch outside. He closed his eyes and tried to convince himself that he was glad to be alive. As he contemplated the benefits of letting himself slip into oblivion for good this time, he could hear Donnie and Cletus conversing somewhere in the room.
"Pa, how are we gonna get Tucker back if we can't use the cop?"
"Hell, I don't know. Now, quit pesterin' me with your damned fool questions!"
"But, Pa, I know Tucker couldn't a kilt that boy, he just doesn't have it in him."
"I wouldn't a thought so either, but you heard what they been sayin'. That boy died just like Tucker said he would in that letter he wrote. There ain't no way we can get him away from the police now. He's old enough to understand the price of gettin' caught, so I reckon he'll just have to take his punishment like a man. 'Course it wouldn't surprise me none if he started cryin' and beggin' for mercy 'cause he does have that weakness you got from your ma in him."
Hearing the desperation in Donnie's voice and the indifference when Cletus spoke, Steve wanted to call out some encouragement to Donnie, to point out that the quality Cletus called weakness was something most people called humanity. He needed to win the younger Baxter as an ally, but he was too weak to open his eyes once more and banish the darkness, let alone shout across the room.
"But Pa, we got to do somethin'! Tucker's my son!"
"Oh, I plan to do somethin', idjit. I plan to go out on the porch and sit right there sippin' my whiskey an' enjoyin' this fine evenin'. It's due to storm again soon, prob'ly tomorrow night. Yer cop'll be dead of blood poisonin' by then, so I'll just dump his body somewhere for the critters and the creepy crawlers to pick clean, and then I'll take the truck and head down to Mexico, find me a señorita to have fun with for a while, an' come back in a year or so when the heat's off."
"But what about Tucker?"
There was a meanness in Cletus' voice the likes of which Steve had never heard when he replied, "I done told you when you took up with his addle-brained, drug whore of a mother that you was a-lookin' for trouble. Now you've gone and found it, an' I just lost interest in helpin' you solve yer problems."
Donnie made an anguished sound, and Steve heard something shatter on the floor. Cletus cursed loudly, and there was the sound of a fist meeting flesh, followed by the thump of a body hitting the floor. Someone walked out, Steve recognized the smell of whiskey and wondered which of the Baxters had broken the jug as he fell asleep to the sound of Donnie's crying.
Sloans' Deck
It was nearly five o'clock when Mark, Jesse, Ron, and Cheryl reconvened in a conference room at the precinct. Joining them was Assistant District Attorney Sara Meyer. Amanda had stayed with Jeremy and his mother and lawyer, but she was just a few doors away, so if they needed her input, she could easily join them.
"Ok, I guess I'll start," Ron began. "As it turns out, despite what the school paperwork says, Victor Stalling, the principal of Southgate High, isn't Jeremy's father after all. He is, however Lydia's ex-husband, and he was married to her when Jeremy was born, but routine blood testing at birth revealed that it was biologically impossible for Jeremy to be Victor's son."
"I guess the blood types didn't match, huh?" Mark interjected.
"You can't be type O when one of your parents is AB," Ron said by way of confirmation. "He divorced his wife and had the court absolve him of all parental responsibilities by the time Jeremy was a year old. Lydia has been raising him on her own ever since."
"What about the biological father?" Sara asked.
"She couldn't sue him for support because she didn't know his name," Ron explained. "He was, in Victor's words, 'a fling she had on spring break in Cabo San Lucas' while he was doing his teaching internship. Victor claims he might have been able to forgive the infidelity, but he couldn't bear, and again I quote, 'the idea of that freak calling me Daddy'."
"You know," Jesse said thoughtfully, "as principal, Victor Stalling had the freedom to roam the school without suspicion. If he knew about the letter Tucker wrote, if he was that embarrassed by his connection to Jeremy, and if Rico had figured out their relationship, then he would have had a pretty good motive for killing Rico himself."
Sara frowned. "There are three if's in that theory we'd have to prove, Doctor, and it would still just be circumstantial evidence. That's pretty shaky stuff when we have a suspect waiting to confess just down the hall."
"It could be murder by proxy," Jesse suggested. "I know for a fact that it has happened before because I once had a crazy woman use me as the proxy."
"I suppose it could be possible, but it could also be that Tucker used the same information to frame Victor Stalling for using Jeremy to kill Rico," Ron countered.
Jesse shook his head adamantly. "Tucker isn't that smart."
"Whatever the case, we can look into it further after we get Jeremy's full story and get Steve back!" Mark interrupted desperately. "Right now we just need to work out an agreement that will get that lawyer to let the boy talk to us!"
Both Jesse and Ron hung their heads in embarrassment.
"Mark, I'm sorry," Jesse said.
"You're absolutely right," Ron agreed, and he went straight back to his report on what he had found out about Victor Stalling. "It's just coincidence that Jeremy attends the same school where Victor works. Jeremy has been there for three years, since he was sixteen, and since state law requires public schools to educate children until they graduate or turn twenty-one, his mother intends to keep him there another two years. Victor Stalling only arrived at Southgate last year when he completed the classes for his principal's certificate.
"Since then, Jeremy has been the focus of several vicious disagreements between Lydia and Victor. It seems she is a big fan of a concept called inclusion, which requires that children with special needs be placed in regular classes with their peers. They complete modified assignments and are graded on different criteria while they learn social skills from interacting with so-called normal kids. It's great in theory, but the way Stalling has put it into practice at Southgate, with as many as fifteen special needs students in a class of thirty academic underachievers taught by a novice teacher, it just turns in to a breeding ground for trouble, bullying, and failure."
Jesse nodded. "That fits in with what I observed," he said. "Jeremy has excellent social skills, a great sense of humor, and good manners, but his verbal and reasoning skills are extremely poor. I'm sure he was socially promoted because he's so much bigger than the average middle school kid."
"That's all very well and good, Doctor Travis, but is he capable of criminal intent or malice? Is he capable of executing a plan with the objective of ending a human life?" Sara demanded. "I need to know before I can even consider any kind of a deal."
Jesse took a deep breath and gave his answer careful consideration. After a few moments, he shrugged his shoulders. "It's not as easy as yes and no. He knows the difference between right and wrong, and he knows it is wrong to hurt someone."
"So did he know what he was doing when he apparently beat Rico Alonso to death with a hammer or not?"
"Yes," Jesse said confidently, and then he got an apologetic look on his face and added hesitantly, "uh, and no?"
Sara sat back in her chair, arms folded, and did not look amused or patient. "Doctor Travis, I have been in court all day and I still have cases to prepare for tomorrow. From what I understand, you already have someone in custody for this murder, why are we here, anyway?"
"Because my son's life depends on it, dammit!" Mark shouted, slamming his fist on the table. He stood up and began pacing the small room. After several laps, he began speaking in a more reasonable tone. "Ms. Meyer, even if Tucker Baxter's relatives didn't have my son, I would want to hear what this young man had to say because it seems the wrong person is about to go on trial for murder. I just wouldn't have quite the same sense of urgency about it."
"Or the same willingness to cut corners, Doctor Sloan?"
Mark stopped pacing and stood ramrod straight, fixing Sara Meyer with a steely gaze that had more than once frightened hardened criminals into confessing. "Madam, I am no fool. I know every second we waste increases the jeopardy to my son, if he is still alive. I also know he could be dead already. If he survives this ordeal, and I choose to believe that he will, he would forgive me for using unethical means to save him, but he would never forgive himself for putting me in such a position. I will not place that kind of guilt on him, and I will not risk tarnishing his memory should we fail to get to him in time. I am not asking you to do anything inappropriate, I am just asking you to do something quickly. Find a way to convince Mr. Smith to let Jeremy talk to us. Please."
The room fell silent as Sara considered the worried father's impassioned plea for help. For several seconds, no one moved, then she hung her head and sighed. "Right, ok, we are going to make this happen in the next ten minutes."
As the room breathed a sigh of relief, she turned to Jesse and said, "Doctor Travis, do you think Jeremy Stalling is capable of planning and committing cold blooded murder?"
"Not a chance, he lacks the reasoning ability to work out a plan."
Sara began scribbling on a legal pad as she continued questioning Jesse. "Could he follow a plan that had been laid out for him?"
"Yes, I think so, he seems to be good at following specific instructions, but if that's what Tucker had in mind, why take the fall for it?"
"I'm not concerned with Tucker Baxter right now, Doctor, I just need to know how much Jeremy Stalling has on the ball and whether he is capable of killing someone. Do you think he could get angry enough to choose to kill the other boy when the opportunity presented itself, would he carry a grudge or would it have to be purely a crime of passion, with no decision-making required?"
"Ms. Meyer, he doesn't know what it means to kill someone, so I doubt he could make that choice. He doesn't comprehend death."
"The living rarely do, Doctor."
"You don't understand. He has no idea that death is permanent, that what he has done, if in fact he did kill Rico, is irreversible, and as for a grudge, his attention span isn't long enough to stay angry with anyone. He was asking if Rico would be back to school in time for his birthday. He wanted to bring cupcakes and didn't want him to be left out. Jeremy is a sweet kid with the mental age of two or three. In his mind, pounding the life out of someone with a hammer because he teases you relentlessly is no different than shoving him down because he takes your toys. He's not capable of evil, and while I am no lawyer, I doubt he could be found legally culpable of murder."
Sara nodded and looked to Cheryl. "When will we have the medical and school records to back this up?"
"First thing tomorrow. I would have had them today, but the offices were closed by the time I got the warrants."
Turning to Ron, Sara said, "A child is dead, Agent Wagner. He died violently, in a school, the one place where we as a society should have been able to guarantee his safety. My boss won't let me just make this go away."
"I know, but I also know Neil Burnside, and seeing as how it is not an election year, even he would understand that it is simply wrong to prosecute this boy for a capital crime."
Sara finally smiled. "You do know Neil, don't you? Ok, look, Burnside's gonna hate losing a slam dunk first degree homicide, but he gave me full authority to make the deal, and I happen to agree with you."
"So what are your terms?" Mark demanded anxiously.
"He pleads guilty to a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter, no jail time, probation to be determined by the judge," Sara began writing as she spoke. "He is pulled from regular classes and placed in a self-contained class with a full-time aide trained in dealing with violent clients who escorts him everywhere, including the bathroom, locker room, and gym showers, from the time he leaves his home in the morning until he returns there at the end of the day, and he will be electronically monitored. After one year, he will be reevaluated by a court-appointed psychologist, and if he still has no concept of what he has done, shows no remorse for his actions, or doesn't seem to understand why it should never happen again, he will be placed in a state facility for the mentally handicapped. All of this is contingent upon school and medical records supporting Doctor Travis' observations and upon evidence and/or testimony supporting his story."
She finished the notes she had been jotting down, signed the paper with a flourish, and handed it to Ron. "You can take these terms to them now, and if someone will show me to a computer, I will have the full agreement written up and ready for signatures within the hour."
Mark snatched the document from Ron's hands and glanced over it quickly. Breaking into a smile, he looked at Sara and said, "Thank you, Ms. Meyer, for helping Tucker, and for helping my son."
"You're welcome, Doctor Sloan. Good luck, and Godspeed."
Sloans' Deck
Tucker sat in the visitor's room twiddling his thumbs and fidgeting nervously. It was after lights out, so something big had to be up for them to bring him down here. He didn't know what to think when Doctor Sloan showed up, so he just kept quiet and waited.
For several long minutes, they sat there, watching each other. The old man looked tired and worn, probably from worrying about his son, and Tucker idly wondered if his disappearance would have such an effect on his own father, and he decided his grandpa wouldn't care one way or the other beyond being glad to have a good excuse to raise hell.
Mark finally broke the silence. "Jeremy confessed."
Except for a slight widening of the eyes, Tucker gave no indication that the words meant anything to him.
"He told us about how the two of you discussed teaching Rico a lesson," Mark elaborated. "He told us what you wrote in your letter, how he managed to steal the hammer, get out of class, and kill Rico. We found his bloody clothes in the dumpster behind the gym, too. He's very hurt that you actually got mad at him when you found out what he had done. He thought he was doing you a favor."
"Yeah, well, Jeremy's an idjit," Tucker responded, trying to sound indifferent. He succeeded only in sounding like a very frightened child who was pretending he wasn't scared. "What d'you want?"
"Well, I only have three questions that Jeremy couldn't answer for me. I was hoping you could," Mark said.
"Oh, yeah, an' I even have three answers for you already. I . . . ain't . . . talkin'." Tucker's tone was disdainful, but his body language showed he was deeply concerned. Instead of adopting an arrogant and aloof posture, he sat hunched forward, head bowed, hands clasped between his knees.
Mark smiled. As long as he was patient and persistent, he would get the information he needed. "I think I'll just ask you anyway. Maybe once you hear what I want to know, you'll decide to answer me after all."
"Suit yourself," Tucker said with a shrug.
"Ok, first of all, why did Jeremy have a change of clothes in his locker and how did you know he had them?"
Tucker laughed slightly. "Like I told you, Jeremy's stupid. He still pisses his pants sometimes when he gets excited or scared, an' he slops himself up when he eats. His mom makes sure he always has a change of clothes, just in case. Everybody knows about it. The teachers are lucky he knows how to dress himself." After a thoughtful moment, Tucker added, "Funny thing is, he didn't wet himself that day."
"Maybe he wasn't excited or scared, he doesn't seem to understand that he did a bad thing."
"I don't think he does," Tucker agreed. "He's real dumb." Tucker gave his assessment of his classmate as a simple statement of fact, and Mark found himself liking the young man. He didn't look down on Jeremy because of his disability, he was just fully aware of the other boy's limited faculties and had no better way to express it.
"Well then, how did he sneak out of class and back in without Mr. Kennedy noticing?"
Tucker's disdain was real this time. "Mr. Kennedy's almost stupider than Jeremy," he said. "He's a new teacher an' he don't have a clue what happens in his class. The pencil sharpener is by the door. You get up to sharpen your pencil, an' when his back is turned, you go out into the hall. Sometimes I think he really doesn't notice, an' sometimes I think he is just glad to have a few of us gone. It's a big class with a lot of troublemakers, so I guess I can't blame him too much."
"Is that how you and Rico got out, too?" Mark asked, knowing that Mr. Kennedy and Southgate High School would soon be facing a huge civil lawsuit due to the new teacher's inattention to his students.
"Yeah. Piece of cake."
"Ok, Tucker, one more question. You could have just admitted to showing Jeremy the letter and then told everyone that he decided to kill Rico himself. Why did you take the blame for him?"
Tucker didn't move, but he did grow noticeably more tense. For the longest time he didn't say anything, and when he finally did look up to answer, there were tears in his eyes.
"I didn't want him to get in trouble," he said emphatically. "He didn't know no better, but I couldn't be sure his dad would believe that, an' if Mr. Stallin' wouldn't take his side, the police sure as hell wouldn't."
Deciding it wasn't his place to fill Tucker in on the situation with Jeremy and Victor Stalling, Mark asked instead, "What makes you think Mr. Stalling wouldn't take Jeremy's side?"
"'Cause he hates him almost as much as Grandpa hates Pa and me!"
The heated response took Mark aback. Not wanting to say the wrong thing, he elected to keep quiet. It took several minutes, but finally, Tucker filled the silence.
"I never seen him hit Jeremy, but he's always makin' fun of him, callin' him names an' laughin' at him an' stuff." Tucker paused briefly, debating whether to continue, and then he elaborated. "He hates everybody who's in the special classes, an' he tells us all the time how we pull test scores down an' slow down the normal kids an' make the school look bad, but it's worse with Jeremy. I guess he does it because it's embarrassin' for a principal to have a dumb kid."
"I suppose that might be true," Mark agreed neutrally, "but that's no excuse for anyone to treat you badly."
"I know!" Tucker insisted angrily, "but what can you do when everybody knows the principal already hates you an' will look for trouble to blame on you? I can't tell my dad, 'cause he's scared to go to the school board an' complain, an' I can't tell my grandpa 'cause he'd probably beat someone up or hit me for not bein' able to stick up for myself."
The tears Tucker had been holding back for so long finally slid down his cheeks. Mark reached out and squeezed him on the shoulder as he would have done when Steve was a boy and said, "Well, now you have told me, and I am not afraid to do something about it, and I won't start a fist fight, ok?"
Sniffling, Tucker nodded. "Ok . . . Wh-what's gonna happen to Jeremy? Is he gonna go to jail like me?" Becoming suddenly more tearful, he added, "You know if he does, they'll kill him!"
Not sure whether the boy was talking about the courts or the other inmates, Mark said, "No, he's not going to jail. The police figured out for themselves that he didn't really understand what he was doing."
Tucker nodded. "That's good."
Mark smiled at the boy. "You're not staying here either, you know."
"Really? Where are they takin' me?"
"I spoke with the police and social services, and you're coming home with me."
Tucker's eyes grew wide. "But I . . . I don't know where they're keepin' your son!"
Mark gave the frightened youth his kindest smile and spoke gently, "I know, Tucker. It's ok. I'm hoping you might be able to help somehow, but even if I knew you couldn't, well, you don't belong in jail, and it's not always easy to find someone to take a young person in on such short notice."
"But it's my fault he got took!"
Mark shook his head, "No, that's your dad and your grandpa's fault. I don't hold it against you."
"Nah, if you look at it that way, it's all Grandpa's fault. Pa's too afraid to do anythin' about anythin'. You just wait, you'll find out Grandpa scared him into doin' it."
"Well, we'll wait to sort that out once my son comes home, ok?"
Tucker nodded and after a moment, Mark asked, "So, are you ready to go?"
Tucker nodded again and stood up. "As long as you don't tell my grandpa what I done."
"Tucker, why on earth not?" Mark asked in surprise. "You might have done the wrong thing, but you did it for the right reason. You were helping a friend who couldn't help himself. That's something to be proud of."
"Not to my grandpa. He'd call me stupid for riskin' my neck for someone else, an' he'd beat me for all the trouble I caused him."
"Ok, Tucker, I won't tell him," Mark said, feeling saddened that the young man would fear punishment for protecting a friend.
Sloans' Deck
Gentle hands placed a cool cloth on Steve's hot forehead. He sighed with relief then tensed as he heard Donnie's tearful voice whispering to him.
"I hate that mean old son of a bitch! I don't know if you can hear me, but I want you to know that, no matter what he says, I'm gonna get you back to your pa before it's too late. He doesn't think I got it in me to kill him, but so help me God, if that's what it takes, I'll do it!"
Steve was so feverish that he didn't know whether he actually told Donnie not to kill his father, but he knew he wanted to.