Shades of Simon Gray (18 page)

“He wanted to be one of the ghosts.” Devin knew she sounded defensive, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She didn’t like this woman prying into their lives.

“Really?”

“Yes,
really
,” Devin said. She told herself to calm down. What was she getting so uptight about? She leaned against the back of the chair, folded her arms across her chest, and tried to rearrange her expression into something between pleasant and noncommittal. She didn’t need to piss off the lieutenant right now.

“Did he say why he wanted that particular part?”

Devin thought she knew the answer to this, but didn’t see any reason to tell the lieutenant. It was none of her business. “No,” she said. She shifted uneasily in the hard chair. She was thinking about what Simon had said when
she had asked him the same question, the afternoon the two of them went to Alfonso’s on Main Street for pizza after tryouts. He’d only grinned at her, a small blob of pizza sauce on his chin, and said, “Macbeth’s a haunted man. I’d rather be the one doing the haunting than the other way around, wouldn’t you?”

Lieutenant Santino watched Devin with interest.

“Anyway, what does it matter?” Devin told her. “He didn’t get the part.”

After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, the lieutenant said, “So you’d say Simon Gray was a fairly interesting guy? Well-rounded. Not exactly what you kids call a geek.”

“He’s no geek,” Devin informed her. “And yes, he
is
interesting. In his own way.” Devin thought she understood what Lieutenant Santino was trying to do. She was trying to make it seem as if Simon wasn’t the type of kid Devin and her friends would hang out with. That might mean they had another reason for letting him tag along—namely exploiting his computer skills. But she wasn’t about to let this woman trick her into giving anything away.

“It says in your file that you’re thinking of majoring in psychology.”

Devin didn’t have a clue where this was going. It wasn’t what she was expecting to hear next. And since the lieutenant’s comment wasn’t really a question, she sat tight. Waiting.

“Do you ever use the Internet for your research?” the lieutenant asked.

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Would you consider yourself fairly knowledgeable about computers?”

Devin stared down at her folded arms. “I don’t know. Not really. I know how to find information, send e-mails, use it to write papers, things like that. Same as most kids in the school.”

“Did Simon help you when you had computer problems?”

“Yeah, he did. I was always messing up, losing files, deleting things accidentally. Sometimes my monitor would freeze up. Or I’d get these weird error messages.”

“Did he help your other friends?”

“You mean if their computers were giving them grief?” Devin shrugged. “I guess. I never asked him.”

“Did he ever help you with anything else?”

Devin felt a warm flush creeping up her neck to her face. She shot a look at Principal Schroder. “What’s this about, anyway? Is Simon in trouble or something?” The principal looked momentarily caught off guard, which was what Devin had intended. Then, before either woman could respond, Devin said, “I can see why you wanted my parents here.” She shoved her hair behind her ears and shook her head. “Simon’s a friend. What if I say something wrong, even if it’s an innocent remark? What if … Does his dad know about this little inquisition?”

Principal Schroder’s lips parted as if she was going to say something, then snapped closed again.

“As Dr. Schroder said, you don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to,” Lieutenant Santino informed her. “It’s just that Simon Gray, as you know, is in a coma.
We’re trying to find out as much about the accident as possible. Putting together a personality profile based on what friends and family tell us could be useful.”

“Useful, how?” There wasn’t a doubt in Devin’s mind what this woman was really after. She was using the accident as a cover.

“Sometimes these cases—accidents—aren’t really accidents.”

“Are you saying someone tried to kill Simon?”

Lieutenant Santino left her seat on the desk and moved across the room to the window. Her back was to Devin. “Not at all.”

“You think he ran into that tree on purpose? That’s crazy. He’d never do that.”

“Hopefully not,” the lieutenant said. “In any case, you’ve been very helpful. If you think of anything else that may shed some light on Simon’s accident, I’d appreciate it if you’d let Dr. Schroder know.”

As Devin was leaving Principal Schroder’s office, she heard someone call her name and looked up to see Danny sitting in the row of seats by the wall across from the secretary’s desk. His father was with him. Danny looked worried. But with Angela Beckett blatantly watching them, Devin didn’t dare so much as hint at what was to come. She only hoped Danny could keep his cool and wouldn’t let Lieutenant Santino trip him up.

After school, as he pulled out of the school parking lot, Danny spotted two vans for a local news team cruising
down Edgewood Avenue. The first thing he thought of was that they’d come to report on the story about the breach of computer security at the high school. Maybe they wanted to be right there at the scene when the police rounded up the suspects. Or whatever it was they were going to do.

If he went home, the cops might already be waiting for him. This wouldn’t have surprised him in the least, not after the interrogation Lieutenant Santino put him through a few hours earlier. All those questions about Simon, trying to make Danny think this investigation was about the accident. He hadn’t bought any of it. He knew Lieutenant Santino was looking for something else, could tell she was waiting for him to screw up.

And then there was Devin, coming from Dr. Schroder’s office as he waited outside with his dad. So it wasn’t just him. That much was obvious. Santino was checking out the whole group, maybe even their friends who weren’t in on “the project.”

Instead of going home, Danny headed for the river and parked his Mustang near the boat ramp. He did his best thinking at the river. Usually when he was fishing. But he didn’t want to risk going home for his rod, even though trout season had opened a few days before and he was sorely tempted.

The Delaware was swollen with the runoff from Wednesday’s snow and bulging with trout. It was close to overflowing its banks. Low branches, bending into the water, were being pummeled to the breaking point. The trees were black with noisy crows.

Danny eyed them nervously. He was angry as hell about their return, but he figured there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. And he sure wasn’t about to let them dictate where he could hang out. He pulled his sunglasses from his pocket, slipped them on, and sat on the ground, leaning back against a pine tree. He didn’t notice the sticky sap seeping into his shirt, although he was aware of the pungent smell.

He was staring up at the narrow metal bridge a few hundred yards away that linked New Jersey and Pennsylvania, worrying about the cops and thinking how easy it would be to walk across the bridge into another state, when Kyle showed up.

“I figured you’d be down here,” Kyle said. He parked himself on a flat rock near the riverbank.

Danny squinted at him through his sunglasses and waited.

“Santino talk to you this morning?” Kyle asked.

“Yeah, so? She talked to Devin too.”

“And me.”

The crows overhead had grown silent, except for the occasional rustling of their wings. Danny had the eerie feeling they were eavesdropping. “Anybody else? I mean, was it just the three of us she questioned or some of the others in the posse?”

“Just the three of us, as far as I can tell.”

“Why just us three? How could she know?”

Kyle pulled his legs up and circled them with his arms. His sneakers glinted pure white in the sunlight. Danny couldn’t figure out how anyone could keep their sneakers
looking that clean. “Maybe she’ll talk to the others later,” he said. But Danny could see that Kyle didn’t really believe that.

“That was all bullshit about Simon’s accident, right?” Danny leaned forward, feeling the pull of the sticky bark on his hair. “Trying to make us think he might have done it on purpose, running into that tree.”

“She was trying to find out how much we know, without letting on what this investigation is really about.” Kyle picked up a flat stone and skipped it several yards along the surface of the river.

“You think she knows about the project?”

Kyle shook his head. “She probably isn’t even sure about Simon. I think she’s just grasping at straws.”

“What if they’ve found something on his computer?”

“Then they’ll have to talk to Simon about that.” Kyle snickered and skipped another rock.

Danny stood up and walked over to the edge of the river. He watched the water beating against the muddy bank. “Who knows what Simon’s going to do when he comes out of this coma? Maybe this whole accident thing will have him all freaked and ready to confess damn near anything.”

“Who says he’s coming out of the coma?”

Danny looked down at Kyle’s upturned, expressionless face. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“From what I saw of that accident, man … He was really messed up. Even if he lives, which I sort of doubt, his brain might not function the same.”

“You mean, like a permanent veg-out?”

“Something like that.”

Except for those first few panicky minutes after Kyle had called to tell him about the accident, Danny had fully expected Simon to pull through. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that Simon might not recover from the coma, or if he did, that he could end up a vegetable. Danny had never known anyone his own age who had died. Simon was a kid, for god’s sake. A year younger than he was. He had his whole life ahead of him.

“He could still make it,” Danny said, surprised by the level of defiance in his voice.

Kyle got to his feet and came to stand by Danny. He had his hands in his pockets; he looked thoughtful. “That’s not exactly in our best interest, you know.”

Danny looked away. This wasn’t something he wanted to think about. “Well, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.”

Kyle nodded and looked out at the river. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Danny felt a chill run along his spine. There was something about the matter-of-fact tone in Kyle’s voice that disturbed him. Danny looked up at the branches overhead, limbs bent to the breaking point with the weight of hundreds of crows. He tried to think of what he would do if Simon recovered and decided to spill his guts, but he came up empty-handed. He turned to Kyle. “So what do we do?”

Kyle shrugged. “The way the system works, as far as I can see, is you can do just about anything you want. The trick is, you have to make sure no one ever finds out.”

“And if they do?”

“You lie like hell.”

“Meaning?”

“They think Simon’s their man. We just need to make sure all the evidence points to their prime suspect and no one else. Being good Bellehaven citizens, it’s our civic duty to help the police in any way we can, right?”

Danny couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was Kyle suggesting they frame Simon?

Kyle turned to leave, then stopped a few feet away and looked back at Danny, who stood gaping at him in disbelief. “Face it, man. It’ll be a lot easier for all of us if he just stays in a coma.”

Simon was surprised to find himself standing on the bank of the Delaware in broad daylight, watching the churning brown water, water so muddy it resembled a pot of boiling hot chocolate. The water gouged the riverbank, carving out chunks of mud as it charged along, pulling at low branches, exposing roots.

He wasn’t sure why he’d come here instead of the Liberty Tree. He’d sensed unfinished business there, in that other place.

The sound of rocks hitting water drew his attention. Simon turned to see Danny sitting beneath a pine tree. Kyle sat a few feet away, tossing stones into the water. The spot where they sat, even the tree Danny leaned against, was familiar. Simon himself had come to this place many times, when he wanted to get his head straight. But
something was different about it that day. Maybe it was the thousands of crows lurking in the bare branches, along the river’s edge. Black feathers in place of leaves. Or maybe it was the muted, almost mournful caws they murmured, so unlike their usual barking cackles. The sound cut right through him. He felt a tingling in his fingers and on the back of his neck. This place had begun to remind him of something disturbing, although he couldn’t remember what.