“Yeah. You’re right,” I tell him, bobbing my head and trying to sound convincing. I figure it should be easy enough to check if Langston is lying. Pres’s dad has been a politician for a long time. A birth or an adoption in the DeWitt family should have been newsworthy enough for someone to report on. Too bad my disposable phone won’t get me online. I’m going to have to go home to do some research on the matter.
Langston is still hovering behind me. Something about this picture freaks him out, and he’s not going to let me keep it. But I need it. I know I do. “So how do you know that’s coke?” I ask. As he goes to pull the ziplock bag out of his pocket, I pretend to put the picture back into the hollowed-out trig book but palm it and slide it in the center pocket of my hoodie at the last minute. That’s a trick I learned from an older kid when I was homeless. Misdirection usually works, but not always, so only steal what you absolutely need.
Langston holds up the tiny baggie. “Powdered cocaine looks a lot like baking soda, but I tested it on my gums. Cocaine causes a numbing sensation.”
I nod. “Sorry, I guess that probably won’t help you find Pres’s killer, will it?” I slouch my shoulders forward and pray that Langston can’t see the rectangular outline of the photograph tucked in my hoodie pocket.
“We’re not inclined to think Preston’s murder was drug related, but it’s another lead we can follow up.”
We head back downstairs where Pres’s mom is still curled up on the sofa, stroking the Himalayan cat and staring at the television. She notices me for the first time. Her fake tan blanches white and her lips twist like she’s been sucking on a lemon.
I steel myself, wondering if she agrees with her husband or if she’s going to call me a murderer.
Instead, she starts to cry. “Oh, Max,” she wails. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why he’s doing this to you.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“WHO?” I ASK. “DOING WHAT?”
She doesn’t respond. Her sobbing escalates. Langston ushers me past the living room and out of the house. He’s still got a hand on my shoulder as we start heading across the grass toward the SUV.
“What the hell was that about?”
“She’s drunk. Distraught. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“Really, because she sounded pretty fucking lucid to me. Almost like she knew who was setting me up.” He doesn’t respond, so I keep talking. “Come on, if you guys know something, don’t I deserve to know too? Who is he?”
Langston’s dark eyes blend in with the night. “She was probably just talking about me, bringing you into your dead friend’s room. Or perhaps about the senator involving you in this mess.”
It’s plausible, but I don’t believe him, not for a second. I slide into the passenger seat of the SUV and have him drop me off a couple of blocks from my house, just in case my parents are awake and happen to be looking out the window.
Our front lawn is full of garbage. Bottles, old newspapers, just random crap like someone emptied their trash can onto our grass. As I scoop up some of the bigger pieces of paper and dump them in our metal can, I see the brick that’s left a fresh dent in the hood of Ben’s pickup truck. There’s a note tied to it: “Bring back DeWitt before next week’s game, or else.”
I guess Pres’s disappearance must have made the news, but not his death. Nice. People are dead and the local idiots are worried about the outcome of a high school football game. They’ll probably come burn down the house when they find out Preston is never coming back. I wonder how long Senator DeWitt can keep the details out of the media, if he’s got a bunch of political analysts crunching numbers and gathering data on how to best capitalize on his own son’s demise. Shaking my head, I let myself into the house.
The first thing I see are the boxes of Christmas decorations pushed to the corner of the living room. Amanda was dying to put the tree up, and I was supposed to help. It takes so little to make her happy, and I couldn’t even manage that. Once this is over, I’m going to have to make it up to her somehow.
I turn away from the boxes and listen for the sound of creaking doors or footsteps that would indicate someone is awake. Thankfully, all I hear is my own breathing. How could I even begin to explain all of this to my parents? Why I hid from the FBI, why I went to Vegas, how I managed to make bail? It’s madness. It doesn’t even make sense to me.
With a pang, I realize how much I miss Parvati. She was the one person I could tell everything to. She had a way of making the pieces come together. I think about calling her for a minute, but I don’t.
Ben has a home office set up in a cramped little room next to the nursery. I make my way through the darkness and flip on his old desktop computer. It takes forever to boot up. While I wait, I trace a question mark in the dust with my finger and mull over what it might mean if Preston was adopted. I have no idea if it would be relevant, but somehow finding that picture doesn’t feel like a coincidence. If Pres was adopted, it’s a major life thing we share and he never told me. If he kept me in the dark about something so huge, who knows what other secrets he’s kept? I think back to his closet, to the clothes belonging to two people. Maybe there was a whole other side to Preston that I never saw. I didn’t even know he wore contacts. Maybe I didn’t know him at all.
The computer beeps twice and Ben’s desktop fills the screen. He’s used the same picture for wallpaper since he bought the computer a few years ago—a picture of him, Darla, me, and Amanda at Disney World. I was fourteen and pretended everything was lame all day, even though I kind of had fun. Amanda was seven and dragged me around the park by my arm. By the end of the day, my parents and I were exhausted, but Amanda was still going strong. So much for cystic fibrosis being a disability. She kicked all of our asses. I wonder if she’s taking any crap about me at school, or if kids her age are too young to know what’s going on.
I open a search box and type in “Remington DeWitt.” Hundreds of hits come back: news sites, opinion sites, websites for the state of California and the U.S. Senate. Too much boring crap to wade through. I add “baby” to the search box. Still too much to sort. I change it to “birth announcement.” Four sites come back.
The first one shows DeWitt visiting a children’s hospital during his campaign for the U.S. Senate. The second site is what I’m looking for. It’s a link to the Los Angeles Times, a small news blurb about the birth of one Preston Abbott DeWitt to then-Governor Remington DeWitt and his wife, Claudia. There’s a tiny picture with the article. Sure enough, a younger-looking DeWitt is smiling down at a swaddled infant.
I flip through the third and fourth links, but they don’t have anything new to tell me. I feel like I’m back to square one. If Preston wasn’t adopted, then why was he at Rosewood?
TWENTY-NINE
MY PHONE BUZZES AND I jump. It’s Parvati. Indecision stabs me in the chest. Two seconds and then I answer. I need info. She might have it.
“What were you trying to tell me about Preston?” I ask.