Eighteen

“Why?”

“He had bled on them, when his father cut his chin.”

“Where were you when you changed your clothes?”

“I don’t know!”

“You know what I think, Jordan? I don’t think you did kill Toller.”

Jordan looked panicked. “Yes, I did! You gotta believe me.”

“I don’t.”

“Why would I lie about that? Why would anybody lie about that?”

“To protect someone they care about.”

“I’m not saying anything more to you. Weren’t you supposed to read me my rights or something?”

“You aren’t under arrest.”

“I’m not under arrest? I confessed to murder and I’m not under arrest? What the hell kind of police department is this? I can’t remember where I dropped off my dirty laundry, and you’re going to let me go free?”

Pete returned, and motioned Frank out of the room again.

“Good call, Frank. Coroner says the poker wasn’t the murder weapon. Something bigger hit him first. He was already dead. What do you think this kid’s game is?”

“Is Sarah Crane still here?”

“Yes, and not happy about it.”

“Bring her and Lex down here.”

“Lex?” Jordan said. “Don’t tell them anything.”

“Jordan, what is going on here?” Sarah asked.

Jordan just shook his head.

“Lex, Jordan is really a great friend, isn’t he?” Frank said.

Lex nodded.

“He’s in big trouble right now. And I only know one person who can help him.”

“Lex, I’m not even under arrest.”

Frank stayed silent.

“Lex, do you know something about your father’s death?” Sarah asked.

Lex nodded.

“Lex, no!” Jordan said.

“You butt in again,” Frank said to him, “And I’ll have you locked up.”

Lex’s eyes grew round. “Don’t hurt him!”

“It’s okay,” Jordan said quickly. “He’s not going to hurt me. Nobody’s going to hurt anybody. Not anymore.”

Lex looked from Jordan to Frank.

Frank said, “He wants me to arrest him, Lex. But I don’t want to.”

“Jordan?” Sarah asked. “What’s going on?”

“Jordan won’t give you a straight answer,” Frank said. “His intentions are good, and he’s trying to be a good friend to Lex. Lex has needed his protection, and I think Jordan would do just about anything for him. But he isn’t thinking about how hard it will be on Gabe and his father and his stepmother if he goes to jail.”

“Jordan, you said nothing bad would happen to you!” Lex said.

Jordan leaned his elbows on the table, and covered his face with his hands, but didn’t answer.

“Aunt Sarah visited me,” Lex said quickly, as if in a rush to set things straight. “I was bragging to her, because I’d just hit a home run. But my dad heard us talking, and he looked out the window. He saw us walking before I could hide my baseball things.”

“Under the house?” Frank asked.

Lex nodded.

“Victor grew angry with me because I bought Lex a baseball bat,” Sarah said. “A baseball bat-can you believe it? But Victor said Lex couldn’t have anything he didn’t give him, and he never gave the poor child a thing.”

“He said I was bad. He said I wasn’t good enough to have toys,” Lex said.

“That’s the sort of thing he often said to Lex,” Sarah said. “Victor and I argued about that, and a number of other subjects before I left last night.”

“He was drunk,” Lex said.

“Another thing that happened a lot,” Sarah put in.

“He said I could never live with her. He said I couldn’t play baseball any more, or go over to Gabe’s house, or talk to Jordan. I figured it was just talk, but then he wrecked my picture.”

Frank crouched down so that he was eye-level with the boy. “Your father hit you on the face with the picture of you and your aunt, didn’t he Lex? That’s how you got the cuts?”

Lex nodded. “It-it made me really mad. I had been mad before, but this time, I don’t know, I just couldn’t take it. I told him I was going to tell on him. I told him I was going to tell Jordan, because Jordan said that if he ever hurt me again, he was going to kick my dad’s ass. And he would have, too!”

Jordan looked up at him. “Lexie-don’t say anything more.”

Lex shook his head. “I don’t care if they put me in jail.”

“No one’s going to put you in jail,” Sarah said, but she looked uncertainly at Frank.

“He said he’d teach Jordan not to put ideas in my head,” Lex went on. “He said he was going to kill him. I tried to grab on to him, to stop him. I said, ‘Pick on someone your own size!’ He pushed me down, and I hit my head. But I fell down near my baseball bat. He was laughing, and making fun of me. You know, saying ‘Pick on someone your own size!’ over and over. So I picked up the baseball bat and I got up on top of the chair, because then I was his own size, and I told him to stop. He thought that was real fu

Tears started rolling down his face, and he brushed them away. “He didn’t move. I hated him. But I didn’t mean to kill him. I just didn’t want him to hurt Jordan.”

“And Jordan came over and tried to help you?”

“He tried to make it look like he did it-with the poker. He hid the bat, because it had my fingerprints on it. Jordan always tries to help me. No matter what I do wrong, he’s good to me. When nobody else liked me, Jordan was my friend. He liked me even before Gabe. He stuck up for me. He taught me baseball.” He moved over to Jordan and said, “That came in handy, don’t you think?”

Jordan put an arm around his shoulders. “Lex, you say the damnedest things.”

Lex hugged him tightly.

The long evening grew longer, but by the end of it, Lex was released into Sarah Crane’s custody, and Jordan went home with Ralph Kendall. After long discussions with attorneys and district attorneys, no charges were brought against anyone involved in the case. Sarah had already started taking Lex to see a counselor-more, she said, to help Lex get over eight years of hell than one night of finally escaping it. Neighbors, teachers, and friends wrote letters to the district attorney on both Lex’s and Jordan’s behalf.

“Look out, Jordan!” Lex shouted, but his warning came too late-as Frank watched, Bingle intercepted the baseball throw and slyly lured the other players into a game of chase.

Due to public pressure, the D.A. decided quickly not to pursue a case against Lex. But Jordan was an adult, and baseball season was starting up again by the time the D.A. told Jordan that he had finally decided that no charges would be brought against him.

On the day they got the news, Jordan agreed to meet Frank and Ben at Sarah Crane’s house. Ben brought the dogs along, too. Lex took Jordan’s good news as if expected, but the presence of the dogs drew a response of unbridled enthusiasm. Frank thought he saw changes that went beyond the fact that his cheeks were no longer hollow, that the dark circles beneath his blue eyes were almost gone. That look of apprehension around adult men-always excepting Jordan-wasn’t completely gone, but there was a little more confidence in the way he moved.

Ben saw it, too, and again thought of David. Maybe with the help of Sarah and his friends, Lex would be okay. Maybe someday Lex would find something in life that would mean as much to him as search and rescue work had meant to David.

When he had worn down from playing with the dogs, Lex sat down beside them.

Ben said, “I hear you gave a lot of help to Jordan. Got people to write letters, things like that.”

“I had to. With me and Jordan-he’s my friend, but it’s more than friendship. It’s-what was that word you said, about the dogs? I don’t think people have it so often, but they should.”

Ben frowned in concentration, but Frank remembered it first.