Stuart Kaminsky - Denial

“Okay,” he said. “Come on in. Five minutes. I’m watching the clock.”

Andy’s mother excused herself, saying she had to get back to her grant proposal. Andy kicked the door closed behind me.

The room was clean, the bed made with a plain green blanket and four green pillows. A black director’s chair sat next to the bed. Nothing on the wood floor. CDs and DVDs neatly stacked on shelves next to a low dresser on top of which sat a television set and a CD deck on top of a DVD deck. There was a speaker on each side of the dresser. Next to the dresser was a small desk with a computer and chair. The desk wasn’t cluttered. A blue backpack sat on the chair.

On one wall were two posters, both framed, lined up next to each other. One poster was for one of the Lord of the Rings movies. On it, Sean Astin was leaning over Elijah Wood, his hand resting on Wood’s shoulder. In Wood’s open palm was the bright gold ring. The other poster was Eminem. I knew who it was because his name was printed in bold blood red across the top of the poster. Eminem was holding a microphone in one hand and pointing at me. Eminem looked angry.

On the other wall were three posters, all brightly colored sports cars. One car, a convertible, was red. The second car was a squat, dark Humvee with what looked like teeth, and the third car, a yellow Mini Cooper.

“Okay if I sit?” I asked.

“Suit yourself,” he said, his hands plunged into the pockets of his jeans.

I sat in the director’s chair. Andy Goines stood across the room in front of the television set.

“I’ve got nothing new to say about what happened to Kyle,” he said.

“Tell me again, please.”

“You a Cub fan?” he asked, looking at my cap.

“Yes,” I said.

He shook his head. I thought he was going to say something like “loser” or maybe he was thinking it.

“We went to the movie, got out,” he said flatly. “We were supposed to be picked up by Kyle’s dad. Kyle called him. We had time. We walked around the block. Kyle told me he’d meet me in front in a few minutes. Had something he had to do. He ran through the parking lot. I thought he had to find a toilet or something. I went out in front. Kyle didn’t show. I called my mom and asked her to pick me up. That’s it.”

“You didn’t see Kyle’s dad?”

“Nope, but I wasn’t looking for him.”

“You didn’t think something happened to Kyle?”

“Nope. He did stuff like that. Went off. Called me the next day to tell me something cool he’d done. It happened.”

I nodded and said, “What phone did you use to call your mother?”

“Kyle’s,” he said.

“But Kyle wasn’t with you. Did he give you his phone?”

Andrew Goines looked at his watch. He was definitely uneasy.

“Wait, now I remember. I called from the pay phone in the Main Street Book Store.”

“Main Street Book Store doesn’t have a public phone,” I said, not knowing if they did or didn’t.

“I don’t know. Maybe I called from the Hollywood 20,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

“What time did you call your mother?”

“What time? How the hell would I know? Maybe ten, fifteen minutes after we got out of the movie.”

Since one lie had worked and the kid looked beyond nervous, I went for two more.

“I checked the movie times,” I said. “You got out at nine-thirty. You mother says you called her at about ten-thirty. That’s an hour.”

“We were talking, following some girls we knew,” he said.

“Who were the girls?” I asked.

“You mean their names?”

“Yes,” I said, taking out my notebook.

“What’s this? Law amp; Order? They were just girls we see at school in the halls and stuff. They didn’t even look at us.”

“Kyle was your best friend, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

His hands were out of his pockets and his palms were beating gently against his thighs. I looked at the poster.

“Frodo and Sam,” I said. “Kyle was Frodo. You were Sam.”

“You saw the movies?”

“Read the books,” I said. “Long time ago. Sam saved his friend.”

“You’ve got a point? You saying I could have saved Kyle or something?”

He took a small step forward. The crack in his voice was small, but it was there.

“I don’t know. What happened to Kyle?”

“I told you. I told the police.”

I was shaking my head no.

“You don’t believe me? You calling me a liar?”

“You put it that way, I guess I am, but I think you’ve got a reason to lie,” I said. “I think you’re scared.”

“Of what?” he said, aiming for defiance but hitting fear.

“Of who,” I said. “He called me.”

Andy Goines tilted his head to one side.

“What? Who called you?”

“The man who killed Kyle,” I said.

“You are shitting me, man,” he said, his voice rising, pointing a finger at me the way Eminem was across the room on the wall. Only Andy’s look was definitely not anger but fear.

“No.”

“You’re lying. Why would he call you?”

“To tell me to stop looking for him,” I said. “I think he tried to run me down the way he did Kyle.”

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?”