Lawrence Block - The Best American Mystery Stories 1999

At 9:45 P.M., Andy Leonard crawled up onto the roof of his father’s pickup truck and watched the fireworks’ grand finale. The truck’s radio was tuned in to WLCB. The bombastic finish of The 1812 Overture erupted along with the fiery colors in the dark heaven above.

The music and the fireworks ended.

Whirling police lights could be seen approaching the park. The howl of sirens hung in the air like a protracted musical chord.

Andy Leonard shoved the barrel of the rifle into his mouth and blew most of his head off. His nearly decapitated body slammed backward onto the roof, then slid slowly down to the hood, smearing a long trail of gore over the center of the windshield.

Twenty minutes later, just as Russell Brennert and Mary Alice Hubert turned onto Merchant Street to find it blocked by police cars and ambulances, one of the officers on the scene at the park heard what he thought was the sound of a baby crying. Moments later, he discovered Joseph Hamilton, still alive and still in his safety seat, on the passenger-side floor of the pickup. The infant was clutching a bottle of formula that had been taken from his mother’s baby bag.

I stopped at this point and took a deep breath, surprised to find that my hands were shaking. I looked to the ghosts, and they whispered, Courage .

I swallowed once, nodded my head, then said to my students, “That baby was me.

“I have no idea why Andy didn’t kill me. I was taken away and placed in the care of Cedar Hill Children’s Services.” I opened my briefcase and removed a file filled with photocopies of old newspaper articles and began passing them around the room. I’d brought some of my research along in case I’d needed it to prompt discussion. “The details of how I came to be adopted by the Conover family of Waynesboro, Virginia, are written in these articles. Suffice it to say that I was perhaps the most famous baby in the country for the next several weeks.”

One student held up a copy of an article and said, “It says here that the Conovers took you back to Cedar Hill six months after the killings. Says you were treated like a celebrity.”

I looked at the photo accompanying the article and shook my head. “I have no memory of that at all. At home, in a box I keep in my filing cabinet, are hundreds of cards I received from people who lived in Cedar Hill at that time. Most of them are now either dead or have moved away. When I went back I could only find a few of them.

“It’s odd to think that, somewhere out there, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people who prayed for me when I was a baby, people I never knew and never will know. For a while I was at the center of their thoughts. I like to believe these people still think of me from time to time. I like to believe it’s those thoughts and prayers that keep me safe from harm.

“But as I said in the beginning, this story isn’t really about me. If there’s any great truth here, I’m not the one to say what it might be. The moment that officer found that squalling baby on the floor of that truck, I ceased to be a part of the story. But it’s never stopped being a part of me.”

Details were too sketchy for the 11:00 P.M. news to offer anything concrete about the massacre, but by the time the local network affiliates broadcast their news-at-sunrise programs, the tally was in. Counting himself, Andy Leonard had murdered thirty-two people and wounded thirty-six others, making his spree the largest single mass shooting to date. (Some argued that since the shootings took place in two different locations they should be treated as two separate incidents, while others insisted that since Andy had continuously fired his weapons up until the moment of his death, including the trail of shootings between his house and the park, it was all one single incident. What could not be argued was the body count, which made the rest of it more than a bit superfluous.)

Those victims were what the specter of my uncle was thinking about as Jackson Davies and Pete Cooper walked through him.

Andy’s ghost hung its head and sighed, then took one half-step to the right and vanished back into the ages where it would relive its murderous rampage in perpetuity, always coming back to the moment it stood outside the house and watched as two men passed through it on their way toward a police officer.

Russell Brennert looked at the two other janitors who’d come along tonight and knew without asking that neither one of them wanted him to be here. Of course not, he had known the crazy fucker, he had been Andy Leonard’s best friend, his presence made it all just a bit more real than they wanted it to be. Did they think that some part of what had driven Andy to kill all of those people had rubbed off on him as well? Probably — at least that would explain why they hadn’t told him their names.

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.”