Every Inferno Read online

  “Yeah,” sighed JJ.

  “So what do we do now?”

  JJ thought back to one particular Finch story he’d written, where Finch hadn’t had anything to go on from the crime scene. “We have to figure out what kind of person the suspect might be.”

  McKinley nodded. “Makes sense. What do we think?”

  “Well, I’ve always thought that someone who tries to kill an entire theater of people like he did must have been kind of a grandstander. I mean, we know he was targeting Theater Three, so most people think he was trying to kill just one person, but does he just go after that person? Nope. He burns down a whole building.”

  “That’s true,” McKinley said slowly. “What kind of sick man does something like that?”

  “Well….” JJ snapped his fingers. “The kind of person who can’t resist going back to the crime scene!”

  McKinley looked baffled. “What are you talking about?”

  JJ couldn’t tone down his excitement. “Sometimes when someone kills a bunch of people like that, they do it because they need attention. They need to feel important or something. So they like to go back to the scene of the crime—sometimes they even get involved in the investigation. They can’t resist anything that reminds them of what they did, of how many people they hurt.”

  McKinley looked dubious. “Are you sure that’s real, JJ? That sounds like something you saw on some cop show.”

  JJ blushed because, yes, that was a pretty typical plot point on almost any cop show that involved a serial killer, and yes, JJ had seen a lot of those. “Yeah, I know, but I research a lot of stuff I see on those shows for my Finch stories. I did some research on whether or not people really go back to the crime scene for this one story I wrote a while ago. And they do. It’s real.”

  “Wow.” McKinley snorted. “That is… sick.”

  “Yup, it is.” JJ frowned. “But I’m sure the police were watching the people who were involved in the investigation pretty carefully, so if he was one of ’em, they didn’t figure it out. And people go to that movie theater, like, every single day. So I don’t think that’s going to help us.”

  “Unless we make going to the Bijou all about him.” McKinley leaned across the table excitedly.

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, just going to the theater probably doesn’t make him feel all that important—it’s a rebuilt theater with a plaque in front of it. We need to make the theater a place that’s all about the fire, and then he’s almost guaranteed to come back to it.”

  “How do we do that?” JJ asked, and he realized he was leaning across the table now too.

  McKinley tapped the table. “I can’t even believe how perfect this could be! So, here’s what I’m thinking. My mom’s job is actually kind of to throw fundraising events. She works for a party planning company, so she throws a lot of them for people. Well, what if I asked her if anyone has ever done some kind of benefit for the victims of the Bijou Street Movie Theater fire—you know, since it was such a big deal in this town and all. I bet no one has in a really long time. I could suggest that one of the organizations she works with might want to do one, since we’re coming up on the ten-year anniversary of the fire. We could make it a memorial. The guy would probably come to that, wouldn’t he?”

  So maybe JJ wasn’t 100 percent sure that he wasn’t gay. Because at that moment, he was definitely thinking McKinley was the most amazing, wonderful person he’d ever seen in his life.

  It was the perfect idea.

  “CHECK IT out.”

  McKinley said it with great gusto and handed JJ a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. JJ unfolded it.

  Cordelia Events

  Presents

  A Night of Remembrance

  A Memorial and Fundraising Event in

  Honor of Those Who Lost Their Lives

  Ten Years Ago in

  the Bijou Street Movie Theater Fire

  Join Us at the Bijou Street Movie Theater

  For a Night of Music, Food, Memories, and a Silent Auction

  All Proceeds Benefit Families of Victims of the Fire

  Saturday, November 12th, 6:00 p.m.

  JJ leaned against the locker he was standing next to. “Wow. Your mom put that together so quickly?” It was less than a week since McKinley’d come up with this idea.

  “Sure. She’s really good at her job.” McKinley shrugged. “My dad says he thinks that being around all those invitations and table settings is what turned me gay.”

  JJ’s mouth dropped. “Your dad doesn’t like that you’re gay?”

  McKinley rummaged through his locker for something. “He’s okay with it. I mean, I think he wishes I wasn’t, but he still loves me and all. He’s my dad.”

  “Wow.”

  McKinley studied him. “Why ‘wow’?”

  “I dunno.” JJ shrugged. “It just seems like you have everything, you know? You’re always happy, and everyone at school likes you, and your parents are good with you being gay. It’s like you have the perfect life.”

  McKinley laughed and started walking to class and JJ followed. “JJ, I so don’t have a perfect life. No one does.” He paused for a second and put his arm around JJ, who immediately glanced around to make sure no one was watching them and getting ideas—but no one seemed to be paying any attention. “I just don’t try to hide anything or be something I’m not. And I’ve been lucky—so far it’s been going okay.”

  JJ decided to change the subject rather than talk about that too much longer. “Whatever. What if this fundraiser thing doesn’t work out? What if the guy doesn’t show up? Or we can’t figure out who he is?”

  “Then we all get some free food, and money gets added to your college fund.”

  JJ shook his head emphatically. “No way. Any money that anyone sets aside for my family goes right to Penny.”

  “Fine. In the meantime, what do you think? Of the invitation? My mom’s all set to make it a go, but I told her I thought I should run it by a friend who could probably tell me what the victims of the fire would think.”

  JJ didn’t love being called a victim, but that was something to consider. Would the other survivors of the fire want this benefit to happen? There had been a lot of fundraising events right after the fire, but now nobody was even talking about the fact that the ten-year anniversary was happening in a few months. JJ had noticed this was pretty typical when Something Horrible happened to a large group of people. For a while, everyone else was Desperate to Help, until enough time passed that they had to go back to their own lives. And then the people who’d been part of the Something Horrible were left on their own to put the pieces of their lives back together. JJ figured maybe life had to be that way, or the whole world would never stop being miserable. But it sure sucked for people who went through that original horrible thing.

  “A lot moved away,” JJ finally said quietly. “But maybe it would be good for some people. And some of the families could use the money—I know they could.” He remembered one news article from a few years ago about a woman who was living in an old, beat-up apartment complex and trying to raise three kids by herself; her husband hadn’t had life insurance.

  “That fire ruined our lives,” she’d told the reporters. “We lost everything when we lost my husband.”

  JJ could help make sure some of the money got to her.

  “Yeah,” he finally said decisively. “It’s a good idea. I just hope it helps us catch the guy too.”

  McKinley looked smug as he tucked the invitation back into his pocket. “My mom should be able to get a lot of people there. The more, the better. For Penny’s college fund.”

  He headed to class, and JJ spent the next few hours trying to figure out whether part of his unbreakable cycle was that he was trying to be somebody he really wasn’t.

  But how could you be someone you weren’t without knowing it? Wasn’t it impossible not to be the person you really were? Eventually the whole thing hurt JJ’s head too much to think a
bout, and he ended up actually paying attention in history class rather than trying to figure it out anymore.

  Chapter 7

  THE WEEKS leading up to the memorial were a whirlwind. JJ couldn’t remember when time had passed so quickly.

  He was working as many hours as he could in the hospital’s physical therapy center, which had turned out to be a decent place. Dr. Ben must have told them what to expect from JJ, because no one there ever got upset when he answered them by shrugging or something. Anyway, it wasn’t like the work was hard or required a whole lot of talking. Like Dr. Ben had predicted, he mostly just wiped down tables and helped patients from area to area. But it wasn’t totally boring work, and he felt like he was accomplishing something—something good, even. He wasn’t anywhere close to finishing his fifty hours, but he was pretty sure he was farther along than Darryl would expect him to be.

  Every Tuesday and Thursday, he showed up at Penny and McKinley’s table at exactly 4:10. Penny had told JJ that she and Darryl had been fighting a lot when Darryl tried to help her with homework, and Darryl thought it would be a good idea for her to have another “role model” to do her work with. JJ couldn’t even feel bitter about being overlooked for that role. Darryl had never considered him a role model.

  The sessions were fun, though. McKinley usually let JJ do Penny’s extra credit reading with her, and JJ loved reading aloud to her. It was something he had missed out on when he was younger; he’d been banished from Darryl’s house during prime reading-aloud-to-Penny years.

  Every now and then McKinley would sit with him at lunch to give him new details about the benefit: who was coming, what the food would be. They formed a lot of different game plans for what they would do if they actually saw Tattoo Man, as they’d started calling him.

  On weekends he and Lewis hung out. They partied a little, but JJ made a point to avoid places where McKinley might be. For some reason, JJ didn’t want McKinley to see him sloshed again.

  JJ might have started to think about the choices he made in his life and whether or not they were the right ones, but he wasn’t giving too much thought to whether he should stop drinking. The spring was still there, always coiled, and sometimes it felt like a drink was the only thing that kept it slack enough for JJ to get through a day.

  JJ was forced to remember how tight the spring really was a week before the benefit. Because that was the day Darryl caught him.

  IT WAS a fairly ordinary day, all things considered: another silent session of Creative Writing with McKinley smiling at him once in a while from across the room (and what was up with all the smiling anyway? Was that just a gay thing?), another hour of PE spent on the bleachers reading Agatha Christie, who was turning out to be pretty good. The rest of his classes were uneventful. Normal.

  He got to the library at 4:10. Normal.

  He sat down at the table and watched Penny and McKinley work through a chapter in Penny’s science book. He was in the middle of helping with one problem that Penny still wasn’t quite getting when a hand clamped down on his shoulder.

  The three of them all looked up from the book together, and JJ was sure their faces all held the same identical expressions of shock.

  “Jacob Jones.” Darryl’s voice was so icy with contempt that JJ almost shivered. “What are you doing here?”

  JJ tried to remain calm and ignore the spring. He’d need serious composure to lie here. “Um. Yeah. I was… here, you know. Returning a book. I saw Penny, so I came over. And then she and McKinley were working out this problem, so I thought I’d help….”

  It was clear from Darryl’s expression that she didn’t believe a word he was saying.

  “McKinley? Is this true?” Darryl kept her hand clamped to JJ’s shoulder, but she managed to nail McKinley with a hard, fast look at the same time.

  “He ran into us here….” JJ noticed McKinley was very careful with his words. “I didn’t think it was a big deal if he helped, and Penny said he’s her brother, so I said he could hang.” JJ couldn’t help but be impressed by McKinley’s incredible poise and calm in the face of a raging Darryl.

  Darryl turned her death gaze to Penny. “Young lady? You know there are times and places you are allowed to see JJ. You didn’t inform either McKinley or JJ of this?”

  JJ knew his little sister well enough to know how much she hated being in trouble. As Penny’s eyes went wide and teary, JJ decided it was time to act like the big brother he wasn’t usually around to be.

  “Is that fair, Darryl?” JJ asked, standing up to meet her gaze. “What’s she supposed to say? ‘Mom won’t let me see my brother, so I can’t even say hi’? And how’s her tutor supposed to respond to that, anyway? It doesn’t exactly sound normal.”

  Darryl’s eyes narrowed. “That is exactly what she is to say, JJ, and she knows it.” Darryl’s voice was soft and dark. “I know what’s best for her right now. I’m her mother.”

  The spring was coiling more and more tightly within JJ. “I’m her brother, and I’ve never been anything but great to her. All I want to do is spend time with her, and you can’t even let her have that. You’re too much of a control freak.” JJ tried desperately to keep the tone of his voice cool and even like Darryl’s, and not let the anger overtaking him seep through.

  Darryl laughed—a hollow, distant laugh. “Control freak?” She shook her head slowly, almost sadly. “If only she could remember what you did to my Patrick, she’d thank me a hundred times over for my caution.”

  JJ flushed at the memory of the one time he had truly lost his temper and let the spring snap—something he had never done since.

  He needed to get out of that library before it snapped again. “Well, I was six years old, Darryl.” And you sure don’t know what Patrick did to me first.

  “Bye, Penny.” He squeezed her in a hug before she could hug him and get herself in more trouble. “Bye, McKinley. See you in school.”

  He left thinking about how much fun it would be to push Darryl off of her heels and down the stairs of the library.

  Outside, a light, cold rain had started to fall, reminding JJ that winter wasn’t going to avoid Vermont for too much longer. The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees since JJ had gotten to the library less than an hour ago. Too bad he only had his windbreaker with him.

  JJ started up the deserted sidewalk in front of the library, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down. Damn, he needed some liquor. None of Lewis’s usual crap, either. Jack Daniels. What had he just done? Finally lost it on Darryl, that’s what he’d just done. Which meant he’d lost any chance to ever see Penny again, probably. He’d definitely lost these afternoon tutoring sessions.

  Which meant he’d probably lost McKinley too.

  JJ remembered McKinley’s clear promise that he wasn’t having JJ ruining his job tutoring. And now, just like JJ ruined everything else, he’d managed to ruin that too.

  That thought just made JJ’s stomach clench more tightly. Would McKinley even speak to him after this? Was this the end of lunches, and the smiles across the classroom, and talking about the benefit? JJ scrubbed his face and started charging up the sidewalk, not even sure where he was going. Of course McKinley wouldn’t speak to him after this. He’d said from the start that JJ was trouble. JJ just kept proving it.

  It was about that time that JJ realized he had tears running down his face.

  He rubbed at them and kept walking, almost unaware of the soaked clothing that was making him shiver. Why was he so upset about that? It wasn’t like McKinley was his only friend. In fact, he barely knew him. But he just couldn’t escape the fact that the idea of not seeing McKinley anymore—of not talking to him—was winding JJ’s spring more and more tightly.

  It was winding it as much as the idea of not seeing Penny was. And JJ had never remembered wanting to spend time with anyone as much as he wanted to spend time with his sister.

  Oh God. Maybe he really was gay. This wasn’t like the time when Lewis stopped speaking to him
for three days because JJ had made fun of him in front of some other friends of theirs. JJ had felt horrible then, and the idea of losing Lewis as a friend had upset him. But it wasn’t like this. It hadn’t wound JJ’s spring like this.

  JJ fidgeted anxiously as he walked. He needed somewhere to go. Strangely enough, he actually wanted someone to talk to. There was Lewis’s. Lewis would have some liquor, which would help with the spring. But Lewis and JJ never talked about anything real. No way was JJ telling Lewis that McKinley might have turned him gay.

  There was always Maggie. Maybe she’d even lighten up and let him have some of the wine she kept on hand. But JJ wasn’t really interested in talking to Maggie about how you knew if you were into someone. Anyway, Maggie was meeting with her group of other wedding photographers tonight. It was a semi-annual meeting they held to discuss changes in the market and technology, and it usually lasted well into the night. If JJ went home now, it would be to an empty house.

  The problem was that the person JJ really wanted to talk to probably wasn’t speaking to him. And might never speak to him again.

  That really only left one person who might understand anything that JJ was thinking about or feeling—maybe not about the whole gay thing, but at least about some other important things.

  JJ ducked into a drug store where he used his cell phone to find the address of Dr. Ben Peragena. Dr. Ben’s house was probably about two miles up the big hill that headed away from Moreville. JJ pulled his chilly, wet arms inside the front of his shirt to keep a little bit warmer, and started walking. Hopefully he’d find a liquor store. And someone over the age of twenty-one who felt like buying alcohol for a teenager.