“I found it!” Kyle exclaims after returning to sifting through the drawers. “The key to my dad's security store.”
Kyle has known for a long time that that was exactly where his dad keeps the spare key. I only happen to know about it because he told me once when we were talking about great hiding places for things. Of course neither one of us owns anything worth hiding, but the subject came up because we were talking about Greg Sanders, which led to talking about his drug use and his black leather jacket he wore all the time. And because he was a stoner, the conversation led to speculation of what Greg could be hiding in his pockets. All of this ultimately led to Kyle talking about his dad abusing him, hitting him and knocking him around all the time, and of course that's when he mentioned his father’s spare key in the desk. Funny thing about conversation though; I've always been fascinated in the way it easily transforms from one subject to another without either party having any real notice of it. It changes before you realize it, just like we didn't realize that we could no longer hear the lawn mower outside. And because of that fact, his father's whereabouts cannot be determined. My mind races as does my heart because I can feel it pounding in my chest; and I suppose Kyle's is too because he's white as a sheet. His dad could be anywhere. He could even be in the house!
Kyle stuffs the key into his pocket, takes only a second or two to put any paperwork or anything else he and I may have touched back into its exact spot. I stand guard, ready to react, but react to what? And more importantly, with what? I try to use my power of perception, but it really doesn't work that way. I cannot force it. I cannot seek a feeling or knowledge. It has to come to me naturally on its own. And when I'm scared as hell, it's not natural. So nothing comes.
We both stand there in silence, listening for clues to his father's whereabouts. We step out into the basement hall and Kyle closes the door behind us. We ascend the stairs as quietly as possible and just as we near the top step, we both hear a toilet flush.
“He's in the bathroom down the hall,” whispers Kyle, looking somewhat relieved that we have at least a few seconds to make a clean shot of getting out of the house without being spotted. And so we clear the house, hop on our bikes and head over to my place three blocks away.
We get there and we walk in. Mom's pacing the floor with a worried look on her face.
“Simon Kruger, where in God's name have you been?” She barks in a tone that I have not heard since I wandered off during a camping trip in Glacier National Park when I was just a little kid. I'll always remember that. That was the only time that I recall really upsetting her.
“The school called and said you didn't report to class.”
Crap. I should have known better. I was not the kind of kid that skips, and obviously I had a lot to learn about covering my tracks or coming up with an alibi. The stoner's do it sometimes, and they aren't that smart. I wonder how they do it without getting caught. Then it occurs to me that maybe they do get caught but nothing is ever done about it because nobody cares anymore. They're labeled. They're expected to do these things. I guess they are professionals in their own right.
From past experience, I already know that I can't lie to my mother. I've tried before but it doesn't work, except for the times that I lied about eating my tainted peanut butter sandwiches she spiked with the drugs from the prescription my psychologist thinks he has me on. That required some real effort on my part, but those lies she bought, because I don't think she was in her own right mind herself at the time anyway. I suspect the owls were messing with her mind.
Confession time. I put on my most pitiful face, hoping it might help my case.
“We were both dead tired, mom,” I say. “We just had to get out of school for a little while and take a nap because neither one of us could function.” As I say this, I'm hoping that Kyle doesn't mention anything about the Knoll, because mom thinks it’s a dangerous place. She thinks that only weirdo's, druggies, and pedophiles hang out at the Knoll, so I'm not supposed to go there. I don't know where she gets her information, but I never heard anything about pedophiles. In fact, I'm not sure that I even know what a pedophile is. But I know a stoner when I see them. I know this because most of them look exactly like Greg Sanders.
Mom is staring us both down. Hand's on her hips, eyebrows scrunched together. She's taking a stand. I know that some kind of reprimand is in the works for me, but I think she's holding back only because she's not sure how to proceed in Kyle's presence. I'm sure I'll get what's coming later. So for now, before she sends Kyle home, we slip by her and head upstairs to my room.
My room is the only place in the house I find comfort. Kyle closes the door to the world outside, shutting us in. I love my little room. It's my favorite place in the entire house. Little do my parents know – or anyone else for that matter, except for Kyle of course, that this room will soon become the command center for what could be the biggest murder investigation this town has ever had. In fact, I like the words “command center” so much that I decide that outside of my own family, that is what me and Kyle will now call it. It's no longer a bedroom. It's an actual command center.
My desk, which sits directly under the window where I usually do my homework, will double as my chief investigator's desk. I tell Kyle that I don't think interviewing anyone in the command center will be a good idea, so we will have to do all our interviewing in the field. But the command center will be perfect for gathering and compiling all the clues, eye witness accounts and testimonials (if there are any) which I still hope there won't be, but a small part of me is starting to get excited and I find that in a strange way, as horrible as it might be, I hope we do find something.
“She's not too thrilled with you right now is she?” says Kyle.
“My mom? No, she's not,” I say. “But that's OK because she's part of my investigation.”
“You mean she's going to help us?”
“No. She's a suspect in my investigation,” I clarify.
“She hasn't murdered anyone I hope,” says Kyle. The thought of it creeps me out a bit.
“Not yet,” I reply. “The owls tell me that she's been poisoning my dad though.”
“What? Not the owls again. I thought we were past that.”
“Trust me Kyle. The owls are where we begin.”
Already I sense that I'm losing him. He looks somewhat disappointed.
“I thought we were going to investigate a real murder.”
“We are,” I say, “possibly several in fact. All of which may have been committed by women in my family tree. I just don't know how far back it goes. That's why I need your help. I cannot possibly do this alone. Can I trust you from here on?”
I'm not sure if he is entirely on board with me on this, but if we do find any possible clues – which of course I pray we don't, except for that small part of me that senses that I'm about to go on an adventure of sorts, I suspect he'll be on board then for sure.
“OK,” he says. “But what do we do if we do find proof of a murder?”
Hmm… a simple but very valid question. Unfortunately, I haven't even thought that far ahead yet.
“I have no idea,” I say. “I guess we'll cross that bridge if and when we get there.”
“So how do you want to start this so-called investigation?” he asks, as I retrieve two notebooks that I keep hidden down inside the floor vent under the window, one red notebook and one green notebook. I set the green one aside and thumb through several pages of the red one until I find a blank page and write the date at the top.
“That's a lot of stuff you have written down. What is it?” asks Kyle.
“It's my journal, a diary of sorts. I use it to...” then I stop for a moment in mid sentence, wondering how much I really need to tell Kyle. I desperately need him to trust me, so I have to tell him everything.
“...I catalog everything about my days,” I reluctantly tell him. “It's one of the few piece
s of advice I took from my psychiatrist. But what my psychiatrist doesn't know is that I actually have two journals. This red one is the real one. The green one I only write down what I think my psychiatrist would deem healthy for a kid my age. I write normal every day things that any normal kid would probably write, but for me, that is totally made up. I invent it all. My psychiatrist gets to see the green one once in a while, to see how my journal is progressing – which I'm sure he uses to somehow gauge my sanity. But this red one, this red one nobody sees. It has a lot more stuff, because it's all real. I write down my true experiences, my true feelings. Anything that happens to me throughout the day (or night) I commit to memory and then write it out in this secret red journal. So this is where I will document the murder investigations. And now you are the only person on this earth that knows about my red journal. So if it comes up missing or information is leaked out, I know exactly who I'll be coming for.”
Kyle looks at me, sort of taken back. He wasn't expecting this, but he has to know that I need to be able to trust him. No more playing games. No more humoring me. This is serious.
“OK, so what do we do?” he asks impatiently.
“Well, we need a good video monitoring system, so I had the idea that we hire Greg Sanders and Perry Scuttle to break into your dad's security firm and rip off some high quality spy cams we need.”
I can almost hear the gears in Kyle's head turning, spinning into over-drive.
“What! Are you crazy, Simon? Are you nuts? We would be thrown in jail! We can't do that.”
“I know we can't,” I say. “That's why we hire Greg and Perry. They'll do it. They would love to do it. I may not even have to pay them because I bet they would do it for free if we just gave them the idea – and the key. Because that's just the sort of thing you know they would get off on.”
Kyle is shaking his head in slow motion. This sort of thing is not something I'm exactly comfortable with myself. But when you put things into perspective, when my dad's life could be at stake, I have no problem committing a petty crime. And with guys available like Greg Sanders and Perry Scuttle to do the dirty work, even though we'll be just as guilty - all the more better.
I start to tell Kyle about how simple the break-in would go down.
“... The guys pick up the key we took from your dad's basement office and we leave it at a pre-determined place, say taped under the seat of one of the benches at the Knoll. They use the key to gain access to the store, then take a few small video cameras and bring them back to the Knoll in a book bag or school backpack where we'll be waiting for them. Simple.”
I suspect that Kyle wants to do this, but only if there is a one hundred percent guarantee we won't be caught. But of course there are no guarantees.
“What if Greg and Perry decide to just keep the stuff themselves, and your money? And what if they blab? They're idiots and I don't trust them. I think it's a bad idea, Simon.”
Kyle is still shaking his head. Obviously I haven't sold him on the idea yet.
“OK, what about this... What about we just do the break-in ourselves? You and me. Nobody else involved. We can control it better and won't have to put our lives in the hands of anybody else.”
I can see by Kyle's expression that he is more receptive to this scenario, but not quite on board with it yet. I know it's the spare key to his father’s store we took from the desk that is probably bothering him. So I quickly come up with an idea about it that might just suit him.
“I can take the key to Peter's Hardware and have a copy made. I'll bring the original by your house on my way home, and tonight, you slip the original back in your dad's desk before we do the break-in at the store. That way there's no missing keys and you and I won't be suspects.”
Now he's on board. I can see it.
“Yes. We'll do it,” he says, without anymore argument. “It'll be my dad's payback for beating the crap out of me the last few years. I could even take a hidden camera for myself and set it up to make sure he isn't beating my mom.”
“Now you’re thinking,” I say, and I'm so pleased he's on board with my plan. “So it's agreed?”
“Yeah, I want to do this tonight, Simon. In fact the more I think about it now, the more I know I have to do this. We have to do this together. We both have a good reason to. We'll be doing it to protect the ones we love. It's illegal as hell, but given the situation, it's the right thing to do. So we don't have to feel bad or guilty about it.”
“Good. Keep thinking that in the back our minds and we will succeed,” I say.
CHAPTER
6
_______________
Mom comes upstairs to my room, knocks at the door and tells Kyle that it's time to go home because we're about to have dinner. But before he leaves, he gives me the key to his dads store so that I can go have a copy made down at Peter's Hardware later after dinner. It won't be that far on my bike, so I think I can get there and get back before dark. I find myself constantly putting my hand in my pocket to check to make sure the key is still there, that I haven't lost it.
Sitting around the kitchen table, everyone is devouring another one of Mom's specialties, one of my favorite things to eat - hamburgers, but not just any ol' plain hamburger. She mixes up the raw meat in a bowl the day before, adds some powerful seasoning of some kind, lets it refrigerate overnight in a marinade she invented herself, then cooks up the burgers on the grill out back over some wood chips to add an unbelievable tasty smoky flavor.
Dad enjoys them just as much as I do, but he is pale, and white as a sheet. He looks ill enough to me that he shouldn't even be here. He needs to see a doctor or go to the hospital and find out what's wrong with him. I can tell he's still getting worse. Then it dawns on me. Mom's cooking. Every meal she makes is highly seasoned, but why? They don't need to be. Maybe the owls are right and she is actually poisoning him. She could be covering up a bad taste of poisoned meat with all the extra seasoning. God I hate this. I hate suspecting Mom of any wrongdoing. But what if the owls are right? What if I choose to ignore their warnings and Dad is being poisoned, just like Grandpa supposedly was (according to the owls).
I look at Dale. He looks OK to me, and so does Tina. And I feel fine. In fact, I can't remember the last time either one of us were sick. But Dad has been sick for months and it's only getting worse. Maybe it's something he's being exposed to at work. But then again, why did the owls tell me about mom, my grandma, her mom and grandmother before her – and maybe more. The thought that Mom could be poisoning Dad makes me lose my appetite, but I force it all down, praying that whatever is ailing Dad is not in my serving.
I pretend to enjoy the meal, but all the while I'm scheming. I eyeball a couple of prime locations that I might be able to hide a small hidden camera. I figure I should have at least two angles. One that covers the stove and oven area, and the another one to cover the kitchen island where Mom does most of the food prep, cutting, slicing, grinding, mixing,... pretty much everything she does except the actual cooking part. If the cameras are small enough, I figure I can put them in the light fixtures over each area. But I'll have to see what the camera's are like after Kyle and I steel them tonight.
I can't stop thinking about my investigation. I need to get organized, and layout a systematic way in which I will conduct interviews and gather facts and clues. I could separate the facts from clues, like the way I separate my real journal from my fake one using separate notebooks, but first things first. I don't have much time and I need to have a key made, so immediately following dinner, I grab my jacket and start out the door.
“Where do you think you're running off to?” says Mom, clearing the table without any help. Dale and Tina already ran off somewhere and Dad moved to the den to watch TV. I feel cornered, but I don't have the time to sway mom into letting me go. I'll just have to go no matter what she says.
This is another one of those times that I have to l
ie because I know she's going to try and stop me. I know that I must have some kind of punishment coming for skipping class today, but now is certainly not the time. I have to get the key duplicated, and I have to get the original back to Kyle.
“I left my books at Kyle's house,” I say. “I'll be right back.” I look back at her as I start to close the door behind me. I don't want to look, or rather I don't want her to see my face because I know she can tell if I'm lying or not. But I see that the owls have her attention now. I don't know if they are side-tracking her on purpose, allowing me to escape more easily, or if they are communicating something to her. But she has that look again. She's in a trance, a sort of suspended animation, as if time has stopped for her. I'm almost sucked into it myself because I start to feel this tingling sensation throughout my entire body, like I'm about to be struck by lightning or something, but it goes away after I close the door. I grab my bike and hit the pedals.
Fifteen minutes later I'm at Peter's Hardware having the clerk cut me a new key and I pay for it with some change I grabbed off of Dad's night-stand. I was lucky to have made it before closing time because my back tire was going flat on me so I had to make a pit stop at the gas station and throw some air in it.
With two identical keys in my pocket, and my tires topped off, I ride like the wind over to Kyle's house dodging traffic along the way. It's dark now and the air is cold, rushing over my hands and into my face, my eyes watering. Cold air always seems to do that to me. It makes me look like I've been crying. But when I finally arrive at Kyle's house, there's a police car parked out front in the street and his mom and dad are talking to the officer on the front porch. Kyle sees me from inside and comes out to the curb where I'm waiting on my bike some distance behind the black and white.