Killing Mr. Griffin Page 12

  “I’ll try.” Susan drew in a long breath. “And after school?”

  “You go on home like you would on any other day. This is your part now. When you’ve carried this through, it’s over. The rest of us will take care of the other part—the bit in the mountains and moving the car and whatever. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Susan said. “If you say so, Mark.”

  She took a few steps down the hall and stopped abruptly as he said, “Sue?”

  “What?”

  “Relax, will you? Don’t walk in there looking like you’re facing a firing squad. Remember, you don’t know a thing about why they’re calling you in. It might be for something great, like telling you you’re going to be named student of the year.”

  He stood quietly watching with narrowed eyes as she continued down the hall to the office door. She paused and looked back at him. He raised his hand in a small encouraging wave.

  Susan opened the door and went inside.

  “Christ,” Mark said softly under his breath. He bent over the fountain and took a drink.

  CHAPTER 12

  At three thirty the four of them got into Jeff’s car and drove into the mountains. The afternoon was warm and still, and the air that poured in through the open windows smelled of pine needles and sunshine.

  “Don’t you feel like we are playing the same scene twice?” Jeff asked. “It’s like last Saturday all over again. You’re even all sitting in the same places in the car.”

  “I wish it was last Saturday,” David said wistfully. “I wish we could go back to then and start all over.”

  “There’s one nice difference,” said Betsy. “The creep’s not with us. How come you let her slide out, Mark? She’s in this as much as the rest of us. Why doesn’t she have to do some of the dirty work too?”

  “She couldn’t take it,” Mark said.

  “So you’re babying her? That’s not fair.” Betsy’s mouth puckered into a pout. “If Sue can get out of this part, why shouldn’t I? I’m a girl too.”

  “It’s not that,” Mark said impatiently. “There’s no ‘fair’ about it. It’s just that Sue’s at the freak-out point, and it’s not going to take much to push her over. If she does crack, she runs and tells her dad the whole story. Besides, she’s done her bit today. She had a scene with the cops this morning.”

  “I hope she didn’t blow it,” Jeff muttered.

  “She didn’t. I talked with her afterward. She fed them exactly what I told her to.”

  “Who couldn’t do that?” Betsy said. “It doesn’t take an Academy Award–winning actress. With that soft little voice of hers and those big, nearsighted cow eyes blinking behind those glasses—”

  “Cut it out,” David broke in sharply. “Don’t talk about her that way.”

  “Why not? Don’t tell me you like her, I don’t believe it! Not you—not her—it’s impossible!”

  “She’s a nice girl.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she is. So nice she can’t dirty her hands digging a hole in the ground or moving the car or anything like that. All she can do is sit on her ass and cry and slobber all over Mark’s shirt and—”

  “I said, cut it out!” David repeated angrily, and Jeff, glancing over at her in surprise, said, “What’s got into you, Bets? You’re sure in a shitty mood. None of us are looking forward to this part, but it’s got to be done, and you said yourself it’s good not having Sue along.”

  “Okay, now,” Mark said, cutting off the conversation with a gesture of his hand, “we’re almost to the clearing. There ahead—right around the bend.” He strained forward in the seat. “There’s the car. Did you bring the key, Jeff ?”

  “Sure. I wouldn’t come without that.”

  “Okay, pull up next to it here and let’s get going. We don’t have a whole lot of time if we want to blend in with the five o’clock traffic. You’ve got the shovel?”

  “In the trunk.”

  “Just one?”

  “It’s all I could find,” Jeff said. “We’ll have to take turns with it.”

  “Well, get it and follow along behind us, then. Dave and I’ll go ahead and check the place over for the best spot for digging.”

  When they reached the waterfall, Betsy gave a little gasp and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, god—there are flies on him!”

  “What did you expect?” Mark said, amused. “He doesn’t know the difference.”

  “Ugh—it’s grotesque. I’m going downstream to sit and watch the water.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I’ve never seen a dead person before except at a funeral.”

  “This is a sort of funeral,” Mark said. “Dave, where do you think? Right by the bank over there?”

  “I guess so,” David said, swallowing hard.

  “There aren’t many rocks there, which will make it easier. Here comes Jeff. You want to start us off, man? You’re the tower of strength among us. How about breaking ground there by the stream?”

  “Good enough, but I’m not doing the whole thing.” Jeff stuck the corner of the shovel into the earth and turned up a lump of soil. “I wish I had a spade. A pointed tip would sure make things easier.”

  “Well, we don’t have one, so dig in with what you’ve got. Dave, give me a hand and let’s roll the guy over. There’s no sense burying a wallet full of cash along with him.”

  “Is that it, in the hip pocket?” David asked grimly.

  “Yeah, here it is. A real beat-up old thing, isn’t it? Hell, there’s only a couple of bucks and a blank check and some credit cards. Too bad we can’t use those. Hey—” Mark’s face brightened “—that gives me a great idea! There’s a guy I know up in Denver where I used to live who can copy a signature. I mean, once when I was pretty young I got him to write a check and sign my dad’s name to it, and the two of us had spending money for a month before the bank statement came in and my old man caught on to what had happened. This guy and I have kept in touch, and I bet if I sent him Mr. G.’s credit cards he wouldn’t say no to buying himself a few nice things with them. Then, the first of the month, in will come the bills to Mrs. G. with her husband’s signature right there big as life, charging things from stores in Colorado. Wouldn’t that freak out everybody?”

  “Man, you’re a genius.” Jeff was beginning to breathe hard as he dug. “Say, I’m starting to feel like one of the grave-diggers in Hamlet. ‘Alas, poor Griffin, I knew him, Horatio.’ Somebody else take a turn.”

  “You dig awhile, Dave,” Mark said. “Let’s see, when I send the credit cards I’d better send along the driver’s license for I.D. Let me check what else is in here. A library card—we don’t need that. Here’s a picture of some woman, maybe his wife. Not bad-looking. I wonder what she saw in Mr. G.?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Jeff said. “You think Betsy’s okay?”

  “Sure. She’s tough. Where’d she go, anyway?”

  “She’s down there at the place where we had the picnic.”

  “Maybe you’d better go talk to her,” Mark said. “We can’t have her getting weird on us. We’re going to need her to drive down one of the cars.”

  Jeff walked downstream to where Betsy sat, dipping her hand in the water. She lifted her arm and held it suspended, letting the shining silver droplets fall back into the stream.

  “You playing at being Ophelia?” Jeff asked.

  “Don’t joke, Jeff. This is just sickening. I’m sitting here trying not to throw up.”

  “It didn’t bother you this way before,” Jeff said.

  “That was before I saw him. It was all like a story then, just something Mark made up and we all went along with. It was even sort of exciting. I didn’t picture him like that, all stiff and his eyes wide open and flies. I don’t see why Sue got out of coming up here and I had to.”

  “Mark explained,” Jeff said. “You want Sue to crack and blab on us?”

  “I don’t think that’s the real reason. You saw how she was with Mark last night, hanging on to him and crying and being all
helpless, and the way he fussed over her—‘Susie, it’s all right, baby; it’s all right, sweetie.’”

  “It worked, didn’t it? He got her simmered down. What’s it to you, anyway? Mark’s not your private property.”

  “I don’t like to see him lowering himself that way. It’s degrading.”

  “That’s a weird thing to say.” Jeff gave her an odd look. “Whose girlfriend are you anyway, Mark’s or mine?”

  “That’s a stupid question.”

  “So, I’m stupid. Or maybe I’m just beginning to get over being stupid.” There was a strange, flat note to his voice. “How long has it been since we’ve been out anywhere without Mark? Weeks? Months, maybe? How about last week when I wanted to see that motorcycle flick, and Mark had already seen it, and you said you didn’t want to go and we should pick something else to do so Mark could be in on it?”

  “He’s your best friend, isn’t he? I didn’t want him to feel left out.”

  “The way you’re acting, you’d think he was your best friend.”

  “Jeffrey Garrett, you’re talking like some sort of jealous—”

  “Hey, Jeff !” Mark’s voice rang down to them, faint against the sound of the rushing water. “Come here and take over the digging, will you? Dave’s exhausted.”

  “You’d better pull yourself together,” Jeff said gruffly to Betsy, “because you’re going to be driving one of the cars.” He turned on his heel and strode back upstream to where David stood, leaning on the shovel, staring down morosely into the shallow pit that was the result of their efforts.

  “You didn’t make much headway,” Jeff told him irritably.

  “I did my best. My arms are about to fall off.”

  “Time’s running out on us, Jeff,” Mark said. “You’ll have to finish this up. Another foot or so should do it, I think.”

  “It better,” Jeff growled, “because I’m not taking it down any farther.” He took the shovel from David’s hands and began to plunge it into the earth with great, ferocious stabs.

  “Thatta boy,” Mark said. “At this rate we’ll have it done in no time.” He stood watching, his hands in his pockets. Suddenly he smiled. “I wish I had my iPod.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “A little music makes work go faster. Besides, there’s always music at funerals. We could pick out some good songs for this one. ‘Down by the Old Mill Stream’ would be appropriate, or that Scottish thing, ‘Where, oh, where, has my highland laddie gone?’”

  “Some joke,” Jeff muttered. But a moment later he smiled slightly also. “Yeah, and that old group, the Grateful Dead, could lead the singing. That’s from Griffin’s era, isn’t it?”

  “Good one. Then just ’specially for Betsy they’d do ‘Brush Away the Blue-Tail Fly.’”

  Mark was hyper, running on a frequency above all of them. His eyes were shining so that their gray glittered like silver. He rocked back and forth from his toes to his heels, anticipating each shovelful of dirt as it was lifted from the grave.

  “That should do it,” he said after a time. “It would be better if it were deeper, but there isn’t time for that. Let’s lower in the body. Dave, what are you doing there?”

  “Just—just—” David was kneeling beside the dead man. He glanced up, almost guiltily. “I thought—his eyes—ought to be closed.”

  “That’s a nice gesture.” Mark turned to Jeff. “Go call Betsy up here. We can’t let her miss the last chapter.”

  “She’s pretty shook up, Mark. I think we ought to let herbe.”

  “Okay, if you say so. You know her better than I do. What’s that you’re doing now, Dave?”

  David had taken off his Windbreaker and laid it over the face of the man on the ground.

  “This will keep the dirt off him.”

  “He won’t know the difference.”

  “I will though,” David said stiffly. “I don’t want the dirt to be right on his face.”

  “Suit yourself. It’s your jacket. Are we ready? Jeff, get a grip under his shoulders. Dave, get his feet.”

  “I don’t want to,” David said. “You do it.”

  “It’s almost over, man!”

  “I said, you do it.”

  David turned abruptly and started back along the path toward the clearing. The thin, golden rays of the late afternoon sun fell on his back and shoulders, but the air had already grown cool enough to make him shiver. The hands at his sides were gripped into fists, fingernails biting into the palms. He could still feel the shape of the shovel handle as his fingers curled around it.

  “It has to be done,” Mark had said, and it was true, and “He doesn’t know the difference,” and that was true also. If the words the Reverend Chandler spoke from the pulpit were correct, the body they had come to bury was no more than the deserted shell of the man. Somewhere, even now, the soul of Brian Griffin soared high and free into eternal glory, the anguish of his last hours on earth of no more significance in retrospect than the discomfort of his birth.

  We should have said a prayer, David thought, and since he could not bring himself to turn and go back, he began to recite one, drawing comfort from the familiarity of the words that he had murmured nightly since babyhood.

  “Our Father—which art in heaven—hallowed be Thy name—”

  He reached the end of the path and stepped out into the clearing where the two cars stood side by side. He started first for Jeff’s car and then, on impulse, opened instead the door of the Chevrolet and climbed in behind the steering wheel. In times past he had sometimes amused himself by contemplating how cars often seemed extensions of the people who owned them. There was Jeff’s car, large and loud and flashy, and David’s mother’s, compact, economical and serviceable. Betsy’s mother’s Honda was small and fitful, a nervous little automobile, painted an eye-striking teal.

  Now, in Brian Griffin’s car, he closed his eyes and tried to feel the presence of the man who had driven it, hoping for one last image of warmth and life. It did not come. The car was as cold and devoid of personality as the thing in the grave by the waterfall.

  “We didn’t do it,” David whispered. “It was an accident, something that would have happened anyway. We weren’t responsible.” He kept whispering it over and over, and somehow he worked it into the prayer so that the two became one—“forgive us our trespasses—we didn’t do it—deliver us from evil—it was an accident.” He kept his eyes closed, mouthing the words in a desperate attempt to project them into space. “For Thine is the kingdom—we were not responsible. Please, please, believe me, it would have happened anyhow.”

  He heard their voices as they came back along the path, and opened his eyes and saw them approaching. Mark was in the lead, a strange Mark, no longer the cool, sullen, self-contained young man with the sleepy eyes, but a vivacious, sparkling Mark, talking and talking.

  Who is that person? David asked himself as he watched the boy come striding toward him across the clearing. I have never seen that person before. It was as though the life that had left Mr.Griffin had spilled over into Mark Kinney, and he was filled suddenly with an uncontainable double portion. Behind him, Jeff seemed almost stolid, and Betsy was tight-faced and expressionless.

  “There you are,” Mark said as he reached the car. “What did you run off for? Well, it’s over and done now, and all that’s left is the bit with the car. Bets, you drive down Griffin’s and Jeff and I will follow along and pick you up at the north end of the airport parking lot.”

  “Why me?” Betsy asked. “I’ve never driven that car.”

  “You won’t have any trouble with it. I’m sure it drives fine. If I could, I’d keep it for myself, but that’s not worth the risk. You drive it because you’re a girl and nobody’s going to expect a girl to be driving around in Mr. G.’s car. Dave, you go along with her. When you reach the airport, pull into the lower lot where they have the long-term parking. Wipe your prints off the steering wheel and anything else you may have handled. Leave the car unlocked
and the key in the ignition.”

  “Why should they leave the key?” Jeff asked. “Somebody might rip it off.”

  “That’s the whole idea,” Mark said with a grin. “Can you think of a better way to get rid of a car than to have somebody steal it?”

  “If the guy who takes it gets picked up with it—”

  “That’s his problem, not ours.”

  “That’s not bad.” Jeff regarded Mark with grudging respect. “You’ve really thought out everything.”

  “The thing that bothers me is, what if I get stopped?” Betsy protested. “The police are bound to be looking for the car by this time. What do I say if somebody spots us?”

  “Nobody will if you do your job right,” Mark told her. “Drive slowly and carefully and don’t do anything to draw attention. Join the line of cars coming out of the factories. Dave will be with you to keep his eye peeled for cops. He’ll spot them before they spot you, and if you see one, pull into the first driveway you see as though you lived there, and wait till he passes.”

  “All right,” Betsy agreed nervously.

  David slid over on the seat and let her in behind the wheel. They had little to say to each other. Betsy started the engine, and they drove back down to the highway and followed the line of the mountain range north and west until it intersected with Coors Road. There, as Mark had predicted, they were immediately caught up in a stream of traffic that swept them anonymously past the outer edges of town.

  They reached the airport and pulled into the lot, with Betsy leaning out of the open car window to take the ticket projected from the dispenser at the gate.

  “Where shall I park? Does it matter?”

  “I can’t think why. Any space should do.” Suddenly, David caught his breath. “Our luck’s run out on us. There’s a police car behind us.”

  “Right here in the lot!” Betsy glanced in the rearview mirror and her face went ashen, the freckles standing out like bright blobs of paint. “He followed us in! Or—did he? Maybe he’s just here to park like anyone else while he goes into the terminal for something. What should I do?”