Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell #3)(32)

And it was surround by two police cars and an ambulance.

A crowd of onlookers was gathered on the front lawn of the neighboring house, and when Lon slowed the car, I saw why.

A sky-blue restored vintage car with a Road Runner logo on the trunk and a dragon sticker on the bumper was sitting askew across the shallow driveway. A bloody body lay on the cement beneath it, crushed under its rear left wheel.

Lon parked farther down the street, away from the cop cars. We trotted over to the crowd as a police tow truck was pulling up. Two officers were talking to the driver, and another officer was holding the crowd back. Lon pushed his way to the front of the crowd, tugging me along. And from where we stood, we got a pretty good view—or bad, considering.

The body was quite literally crushed. The wheel sat on what was once a chest. Bone and flesh spread out beneath it, looking like something that should be in a butcher’s shop. Bright red blood pooled around the carnage, seeping into the driveway. My stomach lurched. Then I spotted the lock of blond hair. I craned my neck to peer around the wheel.

It was Noel Saint-Hill.

I grabbed Lon’s jacket sleeve.

“What happened?” Lon asked a middle-aged man nearby. Another Earthbound.

He hesitated for a moment, looking at Lon’s gilded halo, while a woman who could’ve been his wife spoke up. “It wasn’t an accident. People are saying that it was a hit and run, but they’re wrong. I saw the car lift off the ground. Saw it through my living room window.”

“Brenda,” the man said warningly. “It’s none of our business.”

“Look at the grass,” she said, ignoring him. “No tire tracks. If someone drove the car up on the lawn like that and hit him, there’d be tire marks. That car was dropped on top of him.”

The cop handling the crowd was calling for witnesses and telling everyone else to go home. Brenda’s husband dragged her away, telling her to stay out of things. I wanted to talk to her, to ask her more about what she saw, but her husband was quick and the crowd was shifting.

Lon pulled me aside to the edge of the throng and spoke in a low, agitated voice near my ear. “You know damn well what happened, don’t you? Remember the safe in Diablo Market?”

I did. Nearly lifted through the counter by the other robber, the telekinetic kid who floated Tambuku’s register through the air. “A safe is a hell of a lot smaller than a car.”

“Maybe his knack got a little stronger.”

“Shit. You think that Brenda woman saw the telekinetic kid do it?”

Lon swiped a thumb over one side of his mustache. “Don’t know, but Brenda is an Earthbound.” He glanced over his shoulder. “The police aren’t. And based on what I heard of her husband’s feelings, he’s worried the cops might overhear his busybody wife telling a ‘crazy,’ unexplainable story about a boy lifting a car with his knack.”

And if the boy was deranged enough to kill his own friend, what else was he capable of?

“We need to talk to her . . . without her husband,” I said.

Lon nodded. We marched around the crowd. Lon’s healthy six-foot frame gave him a better view. After a few seconds of shuffling, he spotted them striding across the street. We trailed them, hoofing it to catch up. “You distract him,” I told Lon, then shouted the woman’s name. They both turned around. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

Her face lifted, as if she was more than happy to talk, then her husband said something I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, it annoyed her. Lon stepped up immediately, asking the man for directions to the civic center. As soon as the husband began spouting off streets and pointing, I pulled Brenda aside.

“I know this sounds weird, but I think I’ve seen a kid who has a knack strong enough to lift that car,” I said conspiratorially. “He was buddies with Noel. Dark hair—”

“Telly,” she confirmed, nodding her head quickly. “I don’t know his real name, but that’s what Noel called him.” Telly was a common nickname for Earthbounds with telekinetic knacks. I heard it around the bar all the time. “That boy’s been hanging around here a lot over the past few months, showing off, lifting things in the driveway where anyone could see him. Humans live on this block, too,” she complained. Yep, biggest gripe that older Earthbounds had against the younger generation, just like Andrew, the owner of Diablo Market. Don’t show off your knack around humans: it only leads to trouble.

“Did you see him lift the car?” I asked.

“No. It all happened so fast. I saw it in the air, then the crash shook the floor in my house. But I thought I saw someone running. I wouldn’t put it past Telly do something like this. That kid is bad news.” She leaned closer and spoke in a lower voice. “A couple of months ago, someone broke into Noel’s school and stole computers, money from the cafeteria registers. Wrecked the principal’s office and the teacher’s lounge. Did over a hundred thousand dollars in damage.”

Jesus. I remembered hearing about that in the news. “They never arrested anyone, but someone hacked into the school’s security system. Deleted school files.”

“That had to be Telly. Noel’s bragged about Telly’s computer hacking skills. Noel’s mother grounded him a few weeks ago for stealing credit card numbers and using them to buy things online. Noel said it was Telly’s idea. At least, that’s the rumor around the neighborhood.”