214 Palmer Street(71)

Before he could leave, Gavin had grabbed him roughly by the arm. “He’s dead, Kirk. Dead.”

Kirk ran his fingers through his hair. “He can’t be dead. He was fine a minute ago. I mean, we were just talking to him.” He was hyperventilating. “We’ll call for help. They’ll bring those shock paddles.”

Gavin shook his head. “Defibrillators? No, it’s too late. That wouldn’t work. He’s gone.”

“But they bring people back all the time!”

“Not this time,” Gavin said.

Kirk staggered backwards, leaning against the wall. “I don’t believe this.”

“He’s really dead?” Clarice said, her voice a screech. “Oh my God, Gavin, you killed him!” She started gathering up her clothing and began getting dressed.

“You killed him!” Gavin had said, pointing a finger in her direction. “You had to pick up that stupid machete.”

“Why was he even here in the first place?” Clarice had asked Kirk accusatorially. “You guys never come out here at night.”

“His dad beat him up,” Kirk said, his voice flat. “He was going to spend the night out here.”

“Why here? Why not in the house?” Clarice asked.

“He didn’t want my parents to see his face. His dad gave him a fat lip.” Kirk slid to a crouch, hiding his face in his hands.

The three of them argued, then, Kirk making a case for telling his parents, Clarice insisting she’d done nothing wrong. The pair of them had been useless. If it hadn’t been for Gavin and his clear-headed thinking, they’d all have been arrested that night. Worse yet, they’d have been tried as adults and sent to prison.

Gavin came up with the only sensible solution. “Look. No one expects Jeremy home anytime soon. Did anyone see you with him?” He looked to Kirk, who shook his head. “We have the perfect opportunity here. I say we wrap the body in plastic and bury it somewhere. If anyone asks, we say we haven’t heard from him.”

He presented such a foolproof plan that he hadn’t expected any objections, but Kirk, as usual, was full of them. Finally, Gavin settled it once and for all, telling them all the ways the law would interpret what had happened and how they’d be prosecuted.

“Even if by some miracle we aren’t charged and convicted, this will ruin everything. Your scholarship, Kirk? Gone! Anyone you want to date, Clarice, will know you as the girl who killed a guy. This will follow us for the rest of our lives.”

Seeing them hesitate, he added firmly, “We’re doing it my way or else I’m pinning it on both of you. My dad is the chief of police. Who do you think they’ll believe?”

“But it was an accident,” Clarice wailed.

“It doesn’t matter. Murder is murder. You killed him, Clarice.”

That shut her up. In short time Kirk had retrieved one of the blue plastic tarps his dad kept in the garage. They wrapped poor Jeremy up inside it. Gavin was the brains of the operation and he came up with the brilliant idea of burying Jeremy right where he lay.

“Your mom has been wanting to seal this thing up forever,” he said to Kirk. “You’re going to tell her you agree with her, that we’ve outgrown it. We’ll fill it up with dirt or something and lock it up. Jeremy will have his own crypt.”

“What if she wants to know why I suddenly want it filled in?” Kirk asked, trying to hold back tears.

“You’ll think of something,” Gavin said. “You’re smart.”

Kirk was smart, but Gavin was smarter. It had been his idea to leave the note in the Bickleys’ mailbox. Jeremy kept his notebook on the shelf in the shelter, so Gavin ripped out a sheet of paper, grabbed a pen, and mimicked Jeremy’s awkward printing. On the way home, he dropped the folded sheet into the Bickleys’ mailbox.

When he’d left, Kirk had been such a blubbering mess Gavin was sure he’d spill the beans, but as it turned out, Gavin was the one whose resolve was tested. When he got home that night, his dad was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping from a can of beer. His mother, he surmised, was already upstairs fast asleep. Normally, Gavin would say goodnight and head up to bed, but on this evening, his dad put out a hand to stop him.

“Gavin,” he said, looking him up and down. “What’s new?”

His dad noticed the stains on his knees and the dirt on his shoes. Nothing ever got past him. Gavin, who was calm and collected when among his peers, couldn’t hold it together under his father’s scrutiny. Chief Bill Kramer was nobody’s fool.

“Nothing much.” Even he heard the waver in his voice.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Just hanging out at Kirk’s.”

“What’s new over there?”

“Same old, same old.” He took a deep breath. “His mom has been wanting to seal up that bomb shelter for the longest time. Kirk’s thinking it’s a good idea. We’ve all outgrown it, and it’s sort of a death trap.”

His dad raised one eyebrow. “A death trap?”

“The stairs are crumbling and it’s not well ventilated.”

“I see.” His dad turned back to his beer.

And then Gavin said goodnight and headed upstairs. He threw out his clothes from that evening. His dad never brought up their conversation again, but when Jeremy was reported missing, Gavin could tell that his father guessed what had happened by the way he handled the investigation. When it came time to check the bomb shelter, his dad took him along and sent him down to make sure Jeremy wasn’t hiding there. By then the smell was terrible, but Gavin somehow forced himself down the stairs and was able to come back up and truthfully report the shelter was empty. Afterward, Gavin’s dad told the Adens he’d inspected the shelter himself.