Sticks and Stones Read online

  She was just a sore loser was all.

  Dewey had gotten off the bed and was standing behind me in the pile of toys I’d hauled out. “What are you lookin’ for?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you ’bout it once I find it.”

  “If you tell me now, maybe I can help look for it.”

  I stared at him. “How would you have any idea where anythin’ in my room is?” I looked down at his feet. “Hey, you’re standing on Darth Vader.”

  He kicked Vader out from under him. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t really play with him much no more anyway. Here, help me throw all these toys back in the closet.”

  Once we did, I had to close the door really quick to keep the mountain of junk from tumbling back out. It took three tries, but I finally managed to get the closet to look completely normal from the outside. Now I had to think: Where would my mother put a big box like that forensics kit?

  I looked around my room and realized there was only one other place it could be. Dropping onto the floor, I stared under my bed. The view was obscured by some Hot Wheels tracks and a few books, one being my favorite, The Sword of Shannara, the others being the three different Lord of the Rings books. I had already read all of them in the last year or so. Dewey tried to borrow the first Lord of the Rings but told me he thought reading was too boring. Apparently, Dewey would rather spend rainy days lying around my room complaining that there was nothing to do than read.

  I pulled out the orange track and pushed aside The Return of the King, and sure enough, the big orange box with My First Forensics Lab written on the side came into view. I could tell it still had its plastic wrap on. Excitement swelled inside me. This could be our savior from wallowing in these wet, watery days.

  “Abe, what’re you doin’?” Dewey asked.

  “I found it, I just can’t . . . reach it.” I was straining to get my fingers on it, but it was pushed too far back. Then I thought of something. I sat back up and turned to Dewey. “You’re smaller than me. See if you can wiggle under my bed and get the box out that’s near the back.”

  “I ain’t smaller than you,” he said. Looking up at me even though we were both seated.

  “Dewey, you’re like three inches shorter than me and probably weigh forty pounds less. Just see if you can do it.”

  He rubbed his nose and considered this. “I’ll try,” he said, finally. “But if you can’t do it, I don’t see how I can. I’m as big as you.” This time his voice held no conviction.

  I watched him get down on his stomach and slide under my bed, fitting beneath it just like he was made to go there.

  “Is it the orange box you want?” he called out.

  “It’s the only box, Dewey,” I said.

  “But the orange one, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Dewey, the orange one.”

  Two minutes later, he came out with the box. “Here,” he said snappily, handing it to me. “But I still ain’t no smaller than you.”

  “All right,” I said, turning the box over so I could read all the stuff written on the outside.

  “What is it?” Dewey asked, looking on.

  I turned it front forward. “What does it say it is?”

  Dewey read the words out loud. “My First Forensics Lab.” He looked up at me. “ ’Fraid I still don’t know what it is. What’s ‘forensics’?”

  “Forensics is police work. It’s what a special group of experts down in Mobile do to help catch crooks. With forensics they can check stuff like fingerprints and blood and”—I couldn’t think of much else—“and other stuff. You know. Stuff police need to test.”

  “So you’re sayin’ this box has stuff to teach us how to work in Mobile?”

  Once again I stared at him. “Not just Mobile, Dewey. There’s forensics experts everywhere. Mobile’s just where my ma sends most of her stuff to for testin’.”

  This seemed to take a while for him to process. While I waited, I pulled off the plastic wrap and slid the top of the box off the bottom, revealing the contents. I couldn’t believe all the stuff inside. This present couldn’t have been cheap. I felt bad now for having left it waiting under my bed for so long.

  Dewey peered into the box, his eyes like hubcaps. “Wow!” he said slowly and with reverence. “Look at all that stuff. Are those two things real microscopes?”

  “I reckon so,” I said. “I don’t think they’d bother givin’ us stuff that didn’t work.”

  His expression only grew more wondrous, and I couldn’t blame him. The inside of this box reminded me of walking into Mr. Farrow’s garage and seeing all his tools. It just held so many mysteries. There were things inside the likes of which I’d never seen before.

  Reaching in, Dewey took the only thing that didn’t look interesting: a small flashlight. “Look!” he said. “A flashlight!” He pushed the button to turn it on and . . . nothing happened. His smile fell. “It’s broke.”

  I shook my head. “Or just maybe it needs batteries?”

  His smile came back. “You know, I bet it does!”

  I took it from him and unscrewed the front. Sure enough, there was room inside for one AA battery. I knew where my mother kept our batteries, so I ran with the flashlight into the kitchen, opened the junk drawer, and began rummaging through it, reminded of the mess of toys on my closet floor. Only, with the drawer it took me less than two minutes to find a AA battery. Pushing the drawer closed, some paper got stuck sticking out of the top. I didn’t care. I was too excited to get started doing forensics. I put the battery inside the flashlight as I walked back to my room.

  “Here,” I said, pointing it at Dewey’s face. “Voilà! A flashlight.” I pushed the button and something weird happened. Dewey’s face lit up all blue.

  “Holy!” Dewey shouted. “It’s a blue flashlight.”

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “What’s it for?” Dewey asked.

  I was wondering the same thing. “Forensics, I guess. I’ll have to read the book.”

  Again, his face fell. “There’s a book?”

  “Tell you what, Dewey. Since you hate readin’ so much, how ’bout I read the book and then just explain it all to you?”

  This idea brightened his spirits tremendously. He took the blue flashlight from me and kept turning it off and on while pointing it at his chin. “Look, Abe,” he said each time. “I’m Blueface.”

  “I reckon you’re an idiot,” I said.

  I pulled the book from the box. The title was Understanding Forensics. It wasn’t as thick as The Sword of Shannara, a book I’d read twice.

  “That’s huge,” Dewey said. “How long will it take you to read it? My ma wants me home for supper.”

  I couldn’t believe him sometimes. “I can’t read all this today, Dewey. It’s goin’ to take some time.” I flipped to the back and read the page number. “It’s a hundred and sixty-five pages long.”

  His frown came back. “We’re never goin’ to work in Mobile,” he said.

  “We’re not goin’ to work in Mobile!” I snapped. “Do you understand this at all?”

  “I understand the book is pretty near impossible to read. It might as well be a million pages.”

  “No, Dewey. It actually isn’t that long. Just give me maybe a week, I don’t know. Maybe two weeks. Depends how much time I get in. I’ll try to read fast.”

  “So we won’t be doin’ nothin’ till you’re finished it?” he asked, reproachfully.

  “We can still do stuff. Just not forensics. I’ll read it when you’re not around.”

  “Can we pull out the microscopes?”

  I thought this through and figured it wouldn’t hurt anything. “We need somewhere to do all this,” I said, looking around my room. My chest of drawers was too high and my bedside table wasn’t near on big enough. “I know, I’ll go get one of the foldin’ tables my mother uses at Thanksgiving and we can set it up against that wall.”

  “Need help?” Dewey asked.


  “No, I’ll be fine. Just . . . don’t touch anythin’ till I get back.”

  Sure enough, my mother’s three folding tables were in the garage right where I thought. I tried to remember the last Thanksgiving my mother invited guests over, and couldn’t. It had been a long time. I figured with Dan Truitt now in her life and Jonathon in Carry’s, Thanksgiving this year would be bigger than usual. That thought made me smile.

  I only banged the walls three times getting the table to my room, and only once did it make a gouge so big my mother might be in danger of noticing it. I wasn’t too worried, though. I’d just blame Carry.

  Dewey helped me pull out the legs and set it against my bedroom wall. Then he handed me the microscopes and I set them on top. “Wow,” I said. “This already looks professional.”

  Dewey squinted into the lens of one of the scopes. “You reckon your ma got you a box with two of these so we’d each have one?”

  “No, they’re different. Yours is taller than mine, and look at those silver things at the bottom—they’re bigger. I reckon yours might be more powerful.”

  “Maybe this one’s for the really expert stuff?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I have to read the book.”

  Many items were still inside the box, including a real camera. It was a Polaroid, the type my mother had for work. Carefully packed in Styrofoam were vials of different liquids, most of them different colors. They were labeled with words like phenolphthalein, leucoma-lachite green, luminol, and fluorescein. Not only had I never seen these words before, I couldn’t even pronounce them. Each vial had a picture of a skull and crossbones beneath the label and, in small print, the words: DO NOT DRINK.

  I laughed and Dewey looked over to see why.

  “How come they have to tell us that?” he asked. “Do they really reckon someone would be dumb enough to say, ‘Gee, I’m thirsty. I could sure go for a bottle of phenolphthalein?” I figured he hadn’t even come close to pronouncing it right.

  His question actually surprised me on account of the first thing I thought of when I read the warning was that they were put there because of people just like him.

  More stuff still remained in the box, including a little packet labeled FINGERPRINT KIT. That one excited me. I found miscellaneous things like small paper envelopes, plastic envelopes, a pair of scissors, and a whole lot more. It seemed like an assortment of stuff that nobody would ever think went together.

  “What’s all this for?” Dewey asked.

  “I dunno,” I said. “It’s why I gotta read the damn book, Dewey.”

  “You should start now.”

  I opened Understanding Forensics and flipped past the title page and contents and all that. I read the introduction and right away learned something called “Locard’s Exchange Principle.” It said that whenever a person contacts another person, or a place, or an object, or anything, it resulted in an exchange of physical materials. It was saying that if I went and petted the Clearsons’ dog, Mr. Olympus, Mr. Olympus would leave traces of hair or something on me and I would leave something from me on him. I don’t know what I could leave, maybe pimples or something. I supposed I would find out later in the book. But I was excited that I had only read three pages and was already learning new stuff. This was going to be awesome.

  I tried reading more, but I felt Dewey watching me. “What?” I asked him.

  “Nothin’.” He shrugged. “How’s the readin’ goin’?”

  “Dewey, I’ve read three pages. It ain’t goin’ like bottle rockets. If you ask me every three pages how my readin’s goin’, I’m apt to pitch a fit.”

  “Hmm,” Dewey said. I figured I’d just offended him.

  “Look,” I said. “Why don’t you head home for a while and let me read. I think I’ll go a mite faster if you do.”

  He frowned. “You’re sendin’ me home?” He gave me a look like I’d expect from Mr. Olympus if I ever kicked him.

  I sighed. “Tell you what, why don’t I read this later?”

  “Okay.” He smiled.

  “So . . .” I said, setting the book aside.

  “So . . .” Dewey answered.

  “What should we do?”

  “I dunno,” he said. “I reckon there’s nothin’ to do.”

  The rain still battered against my window, but there hadn’t been any more lightning. “Nope,” I said, “there ain’t.”

  “Sure wish it wasn’t rainin’,” he said.

  “Me too, Dewey. Me too.”

  CHAPTER 16

  All through Dan’s entire first week in Alvin, the rain continued pounding down like nails falling from a tipped-over toolbox. Today was Friday. Lightning and thunder filled last night’s sky the same way it had since Tuesday. This morning looked a bit brighter, though. The thunderheads had passed. Now it just rained, although it was some of the hardest rain Leah could remember coming down for some time and, every so often, a bitter wind wound up firing it at a slant.

  Leah and Dan continued driving from federal correctional institution to federal correctional institution all around the vicinity of Alvin. They limited their searches to facilities within a one-hundred-mile radius of the town. Each place they visited said yes when they requested to interrogate a “talker,” and each inmate they spoke to was as frustratingly useless as “Scoop” had been up in Atlanta. Sure, they’d all heard of the Stickman, but each and every one said the police shot him dead fifteen years ago. Leah let Dan handle all the interrogations while she watched, trying her best to learn what she could.

  Today, they had one more place to check out, the last one on their list: the Federal Correction Institution in Talladega. The very same one Thomas Kennedy Bradshaw took up root in for being the Buzzman. Leah remembered how he’d reacted when she called him by that name. She still had some hunches about Bradshaw. Something there didn’t feel quite right.

  By now, Dan had the whole thing down to a routine. The interviewee this time was named “Duck.”

  “Why can’t these guys have normal names?” Leah asked.

  “They think they’re above normal names. Besides, their street name usually means something. Duck probably quacks a lot, is my guess. Or he likes ponds. One or the other.”

  “Maybe someone was always shootin’ at him, so he had to duck a lot,” Leah suggested.

  The lieutenant in charge escorted them to the interrogation room where Duck was already waiting, his hands cuffed behind his back. Unlike Scoop, the rest of the inmates they interrogated weren’t shackled, only handcuffed. It made them appear less threatening. Duck actually looked quite civilized even in his orange outfit. His blond hair was combed, parted neatly down the middle, his chin recently shaved. The best word Leah could come up with to describe his face was “squat,” as though someone set something heavy on his head and squished it. He reminded Leah of a Muppet, with dark eyes peering out from beneath bushy brows.

  “This one’s goin’ to be different,” Dan said to Leah.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “There’s no fear in his eyes. Even Scoop had that wild animal look before you came in and he rattled your cage. Nobody likes going to the interrogation room not knowing what it’s about.” He took another hard look at Duck through the one-way window. “No, I have a feeling this one’s going to require a bit of finesse.”

  “Well then, finesse away,” the lieutenant, whose name was Stone, said.

  Dan walked into the interrogation room and did his “pretend to turn off the recording” thing. Unlike most of the times he used this ploy, Duck didn’t seem to care. In fact, before Dan could say anything, Duck took the initiative.

  “Look,” he said, rather calmly. “I’ve been in here goin’ on four years keepin’ my nose clean just doin’ my time. I got six left. I hope less with my great behavioral skills. I don’t need any shit thrown at me. Understand?”

  Dan thought this over. “All right, Duck, I won’t throw any shit at you. I won’t even play the good cop/bad cop routine. I’ll ju
st ask you straight-up. What do you know ’bout the Stickman?”

  Duck’s laughter echoed in the small room, bouncing off the metal table and chairs and those concrete walls that seemed ubiquitous to all interview rooms. “That’s what this is about? You think I have some ‘inside information’? Well, I’ll tell you ‘straight-up’ that I don’t. I just know he’s out killin’ again, so someone fucked up pretty bad when they nailed Harry Stork.”

  Leah felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Her cheeks went flush. She was glad to be out in the hall, watching through the window. Had she been inside, there’s no way she’d have been able to just let that one go by.

  “What makes you think it’s not a copycat?” Dan asked.

  There was a moment of silence and then Duck leaned forward, lowered his voice, and said something that made Leah’s heart skip. “Have you guys been gettin’ the letters?”

  A telltale pocket of silence came next, and Leah couldn’t blame Dan for reeling. She figured he’d expected that about as much as she had: not at all. “What letters?” Dan said quietly.

  Another laugh from Duck. “Oh, don’t play stupid, we’re both so above that. The letters tellin’ you ’bout the killin’? The ones with the stickmen drawn on ’em? Along with a time and location?”

  Dan shot a quick glance to the mirrored glass of the one-way window, as if to make sure Leah wasn’t missing this. It took him a beat or two to respond. “Okay,” Dan finally managed, “I’ll play, Duck. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, we are getting letters. What the fuck do you know ’bout them?”