Every Inferno Read online

  JJ was stunned. “What’s wrong with that? I thought you’d be excited. Don’t you want to know who killed your daughter?”

  “Of course I do!” By now Dr. Ben was standing up and waving his tea mug around. “But not at the expense of hundreds of people… including you! Didn’t you think this through at all? Are you going to inform the police of your plans? That you’re actually hoping a deranged psychotic will appear that night so you can capture him in some kind of great heroic moment?”

  “That’s not what I want!” Now JJ stood as well, wondering how many confrontations he could have in one evening. At least he didn’t feel like he had to be as calm as he had with Darryl. Dr. Ben sure wasn’t calm. “I just want to find the guy!” he yelled. “I have to! It’s the only way to break this fucking cycle! I have to find him. The police aren’t catching him, and I’m going to keep having these dreams until I die, and it’s the only way to fix everything.” JJ finished his speech by throwing his hands out by his sides and glaring at Dr. Ben.

  “JJ!” Dr. Ben wasn’t quite yelling, but his voice was definitely louder than it had been. “Is that really what you believe? That your happiness is entirely predicated on knowing who set that fire? Even if that was true, which it isn’t, do you realize just how dangerous that line of thinking is? Just consider the people attending this benefit. If these people ever thought that this event was designed specifically to catch a murderer, do you think they’d be attending? Of course not! They’d be afraid for their lives. Does McKinley’s mother even know what you’re hoping will happen at this party?”

  “Does it matter? Isn’t there always a chance the guy who started the fire would show up, whether I think he might or not? Anybody could show up at this thing. I’m not asking him to come. I’m just hoping he will. He has to come.” JJ finished that sentence and charged up the basement stairs out of the den, planning to find his clothes and get the hell out of Dr. Ben’s house.

  Dr. Ben didn’t follow him to the bathroom on the second floor, so JJ was surprised to find him waiting in the living room when JJ came storming downstairs. “Wait a second, JJ.” Dr. Ben sighed, putting his hand up. “Just hear me out before you go.”

  JJ waited.

  “You’re right.”

  He was?

  “This guy could show up no matter what. It doesn’t matter whether you want him to or not. The problem is, JJ, that you want him to. You want him to appear at this event. You want these people to be in danger. You want to put yourself in danger.”

  JJ considered this. “I don’t want to put other people in danger,” he muttered into his only partially dried T-shirt.

  “No? Just yourself, then?”

  “If it means I get to catch the guy… I guess I think it’s worth it.”

  Dr. Ben sank into the sofa he was standing in front of, but JJ stayed standing. He wasn’t exactly planning on staying. “Is it worth your life to catch this guy?” Dr. Ben asked.

  “Of course.” JJ was incredulous again. “Don’t you get it? I thought you, of all people, would get it. Wouldn’t you die to find the guy who killed your daughter?”

  Dr. Ben gave a harsh, dark laugh. “JJ, I spent the first three years after Sara died fairly suicidal. I would have given anything to catch the guy, to have her back—to have my life back.”

  He stood again. “Then I realized that it didn’t matter if that man was ever caught. I was never going to have Sara back, and it didn’t matter whether or not I lived or died. She was dead. That was all there was to it. I could spend the rest of my life living for her, trying to do good here and there in her name, or I could fall into a hole as black as the life of the man who killed her.

  “So let me ask you, JJ: where are you in that equation? Do you still think finding this man will somehow change what happened to your parents? Do you think they’d want you to give your life for this man? This man who means nothing?”

  “You don’t get it.” JJ was surprised by how quiet and broken his voice sounded. “It is worth it. I’m still having that dream, Dr. Ben. It’s not going away. I just had it again, like, two nights ago. And every single time, it’s like I’m reliving that day over and over again… over and over. I see everything. I see that bathroom, and that tattoo, and the fire next to me. It’s like I’m never going to be allowed to forget that if I just hadn’t wanted to go to the bathroom by myself, none of this would have happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Dr. Ben asked gently.

  “I wanted to go to the bathroom by myself. I wanted to prove to them I could; that I was old enough. I was only in kindergarten, but I wanted to be all independent. I was so proud that they left my little sister with a sitter that day and took me to the movies. It was supposed to be a reward because I was such a great older brother and such a big boy.” JJ shook his head. “I wasn’t. I was so jealous of her. I wanted my parents all to myself again. I had them, that day. But I had to go and prove that I could take care of myself, ’cause I was supposed to be so grown up now.”

  “JJ, you going to the bathroom isn’t the reason they died.”

  JJ was on the verge of angry, defiant tears now. “It is, don’t you get it? If they had come, they wouldn’t have been in the theater. They would have been with me. You would have saved all of us. They would have survived!”

  It was silent for several long moments while JJ stared at the door, sucking in long deep breaths and blinking tears out of his eyes. Then Dr. Ben spoke.

  “My daughter would have lived if I hadn’t gotten popcorn.”

  “What?” JJ turned and gave all his attention back to Dr. Ben, who seemed to have sunk farther into the couch since JJ had last looked at him.

  “There was a stampede… no one in the theater could get the door open because it had been jammed from the outside. Eventually some people got out, but in the chaos, my little eight-year-old didn’t. If I’d been in the theater with her… if I hadn’t gone to get us snacks… I could have gotten her out. I could have saved her. I never saw her again. All because I wanted popcorn.”

  JJ knew then why Dr. Ben didn’t mind him invading his house and using his shower, and why he’d rescued him from the Pediatrics Ward that day, and even why he’d agreed to talk to JJ that very first afternoon in his office: it was easy to help the people who knew your worst pain before they’d even met you.

  He sat down beside Dr. Ben on the couch.

  “But JJ… it wasn’t my fault. And it sure wasn’t yours for using the john that day. Somebody murdered them. That’s all there is to it. I know that now. It took me years. I don’t want it to take you as long.

  “And I do understand your desire to find this man. That doesn’t mean you should put yourself—or others—in danger.”

  JJ didn’t answer. It was something to think about.

  “Another episode of Scrubs before you go?” Dr. Ben finally asked.

  JJ looked around at the house and wondered if Maggie was even home yet. Probably not. “Sure, why not?”

  Within another episode, they had come to an understanding.

  Dr. Ben would consider coming to the benefit, and he wouldn’t try to stop it from happening, on the condition that JJ allowed him to call Detective Starrow and suggest they have some personnel on hand. “They should anyway,” Dr. Ben had said. “There is a very real chance this guy could return to the scene of his crime. You and McKinley were right about that. They should be prepared. Especially with the amount of people attending.” He’d also made JJ promise not to do anything rash if he was able to identify Tattoo Man. “You get a cop,” Dr. Ben had admonished.

  JJ had agreed, knowing that if he saw the man with the tattoo, he wasn’t going to be thinking all that straight.

  He knew Dr. Ben was right: his parents wouldn’t want him to put himself in danger.

  But he wasn’t making any guarantees.

  Chapter 8

  The Unbreakable Cycle

  You can’t break it

  No one can

  You�
�re making it worse

  Every time you look at me

  I can’t look away

  How can—

  “JJ?”

  JJ slammed his notebook shut and looked up to find McKinley staring down at him.

  “What are you doing here? Creative Writing started five minutes ago. Why are you writing in front of your locker instead of in class?”

  “Uh….” JJ wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t want to see you because I was afraid you weren’t speaking to me anymore, and I was afraid that I would be really upset to find out and I’m not sure what that would mean didn’t really seem like an appropriate answer. “Just didn’t feel like going today. What are you doing here?”

  “Teach sent me to find you. She wanted to make sure you were okay. Someone saw you out here.”

  “Oh.” JJ didn’t know what to say to that. Had Ms. Lyle made McKinley come, or had he volunteered?

  McKinley sank down the bank of lockers to sit next to JJ. “I mean, I asked if I could come look for you. I was worried maybe you didn’t come because of what happened in the library yesterday.”

  “Yeah?” JJ played with the cover of his writing notebook and risked a glance in McKinley’s direction.

  “Yeah. I mean, I know I said I’d be pissed if something happened to my tutoring.”

  “Are you?” JJ hoped his voice didn’t sound as small as he thought it did.

  “Nah.” McKinley gave him a half smile, and liquor had never unwound the spring as quickly as that smile did. “I mean, I was a little upset at first. But Darryl believed me when I said I didn’t know what was going on, and Penny didn’t spill the beans. We’re going to keep up the tutoring, so it’s all good. Plus….” He paused, and JJ waited as his words hung in the air. “I was, like, impressed by how you handled that whole thing. Darryl can be such a bitch sometimes, and you really held your own with her.”

  “Yeah?” Now JJ felt himself smiling.

  “Yeah.” McKinley stood, reaching out a hand to pull JJ up too. “C’mon. If you hurry up, you can spend the next forty minutes in mysterious silence, pretending you’re too good to share your stuff with the rest of us.”

  JJ rolled his eyes and followed obediently. McKinley was wearing a TV On The Radio T-shirt. One of JJ’s favorite bands. Dr. Ben’s words echoed in his head: Who you like is who you like.

  He kept following.

  “JJ, YOU can’t wear that.”

  Not this again. “Why not?” JJ glanced over his outfit. He was wearing khakis and a polo shirt. Wasn’t that what Maggie had wanted him to wear to his court appearance?

  “This is semiformal, JJ. Some people will be in tuxes. You need to wear black pants, hon, and your white shirt… I’ll go find you a tie.”

  JJ flinched. He didn’t even know how a tie worked. “Are you sure, Maggie?”

  She shook her head. “JJ, have you even noticed how I’m dressed?”

  She was wearing a long blue dress and high heels. She’d even pulled up her strawberry blonde hair into some kind of complicated-looking hairdo. JJ had to admit she looked great.

  “Fine,” he grumbled. “Find me a tie.”

  He found the black pants and was trying to shake some wrinkles out of his white button-up shirt (which he’d found in a pile of clothes on the bottom of his closet), when Maggie came in.

  “Oh, give me that to iron,” she sighed as she tossed JJ something silvery. “See what you think of that. It was your dad’s.”

  The tie was nice. It was striped with silver, gray, and black. JJ didn’t have much of a fashion sense, but he thought it would look pretty good with the black pants. He bent over it to figure out how this was supposed to go around his neck, and he immediately breathed in a familiar scent: Tide and Old Spice. His father used to smell like Tide and Old Spice.

  Before Maggie could come back to his room with the newly ironed shirt, JJ buried his nose in the tie for a few long moments.

  I hope I make you proud tonight, Dad.

  THE FRONT lobby of the Bijou Street Movie Theater was covered in white lights. It was a small lobby, and JJ had been wondering how McKinley’s mother was going to fit an entire party into it.

  But the party wasn’t just in the lobby. It was spread throughout the entire theater, with a buffet in Theater One, a silent auction in Theater Two, and a showing of a short documentary commemorating the night of the fire in Theater Three. People were mingling through the lobby between the three theaters, stopping to take food from the well-dressed waitstaff circulating in the crowd.

  JJ and Maggie stopped at what was normally the ticket counter, where someone greeted them and checked their names off a list. Nobody asked them for any money, but JJ had a feeling (based on the outfits people were wearing) that many of them were paying a lot to attend.

  Maggie took something that looked like a mushroom off a waiter’s tray and smiled at JJ. “I was a little apprehensive about coming tonight, JJ. I hope we can enjoy it.”

  JJ nodded. He knew Maggie had been surprised he’d wanted to go to the benefit at all. He still hadn’t said anything to her about McKinley and their part in planning this.

  “Do you think… do you think Penny will come?” JJ already knew the answer to that question even as he asked it.

  Maggie smiled wryly. “I imagine Darryl will. However, I don’t think she’ll bring Penny, JJ. She knows you’re coming, and she’s more upset with you than ever right now.” Maggie accepted a glass of champagne from another tray and went on. “At this point, I’m not sure when either of us will see Penny next.”

  “Maggie, I really didn’t mean to make Darryl that mad.”

  Maggie eyed him over her champagne. “Really?”

  “I mean, I was just at the library and—”

  “JJ, don’t give me that. I know you probably found out about Penny’s tutoring. You knew exactly what you were doing.”

  JJ was surprised to see that Maggie was smiling a little.

  “You’re not mad?”

  She sighed. “I suppose I should be, but I’m not. She’s your sister, and Darryl and I have never seen eye to eye on this issue. I’m just glad you held your temper in check and didn’t throw a punch at her.”

  “Nope. Just thought about it.” JJ grinned.

  Maggie squeezed his shoulder. “Let’s not worry about it tonight, okay, JJ? Tonight I want to think about my brother and his wife… about how much I loved them. I want to think about them before the fire, not all the bad things that have come since. That’s why I agreed to come.”

  “Okay,” JJ murmured, wondering where he rated on that list of bad things.

  They ate food from the buffet in Theater One. It was strange to eat fancy food like glazed duck in movie theater seats while classical music played in the background, but JJ kind of liked it. The food was good, and they ended up sitting next to an elderly couple who were actually pretty interesting.

  “We used to come to these things all the time,” said the woman, Mrs. Somersville. She was wearing some kind of fur getup wrapped around the shoulders of a sparkling red dress. JJ couldn’t figure out if it was real. “There aren’t enough charities and events in this tiny little town… especially ones I can wear my good furs to.”

  So they were real.

  Her husband chuckled. “You’ll have to forgive my wife. She hasn’t quite forgiven me for moving her away from Boston to such a small town to run the new branch of my company. She wishes there were more to do here.”

  “Can you blame me?” Mrs. Somersville gestured to her surroundings. “I’m excited about attending a charity event in a movie theater, for goodness’ sake!”

  JJ had no idea older people could be funny.

  “What brings you two out tonight?” Mr. Somersville asked. “I wouldn’t have thought a teenager would be interested in attending an event like this.

  Maggie squeezed JJ’s shoulder. “We lost some family in the fire. We’re here to honor them.”

  The couple got quiet very quickly. �
�Our apologies,” murmured Mr. Somersville. “Perhaps we should leave the two of you be?”

  “Of course not!” Maggie was indignant. “We’re here to celebrate their memory tonight, not to mourn. JJ and I have already decided that. What do you do for a living, Mr. Somersville?”

  He started going on about something having to do with insurance, and JJ returned to the task he’d been working on periodically throughout the evening: examining the right hand of every person he saw.

  So far, no luck. Not a tattoo in sight. He did another scan of the theater. It was too difficult to see the people on the far end up close, so he excused himself to return to the buffet for more food. He managed to walk all around the theater on his way back to his seat, hoping that Maggie wouldn’t notice. She was still engrossed in talking to the Somersvilles when JJ returned, and he hadn’t seen a single hand with a tattoo.

  Could he have had it removed? Could he be hiding somewhere? Thoughts were churning through JJ’s head as he and Maggie left Theater One.

  “What wonderful people!” Maggie was gushing. “And they took my card for the next time they need a photographer at one of their parties. If I can drum up a little business tonight….”

  JJ wasn’t really listening.

  They walked through the silent auction in Theater Two. There was nothing there JJ could afford, let alone anything that looked very interesting. There was a trip for two to Paris, a spa day (what was a spa day?), some kind of small boat, a skiing vacation. JJ concentrated on people’s hands.

  Maggie was talking to some people whose wedding she’d photographed, and JJ was standing in front of a membership to the local history museum, wondering how much people would actually bid to get into a museum that had a total of five rooms, when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Jacob Jasper Jones,” said Detective Starrow.