Free Dark Luck (A Suspense Thriller) by Tim Kizer

suspect.”
    “Do you really think that I would murder my parents?”
Zack asked in a moderately indignant tone; that was another piece of advice
Jeremy had given him: he should exhibit innocence at every opportunity but not overact .
    “No, no, Zack, I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m
just saying that a polygraph could put a lot of questions to rest and save us
all time.”
    “Should I do it, Clarisse?” Zack put his hand on his
aunt’s wrist. “I think I’m going to do it. I want all this to be over as soon
as possible.”
    “Are you sure, Zack?” Clarisse asked. “I don’t want you
to do anything you feel uncomfortable about. They can’t make you take the lie
detector.”
    “I have nothing to hide. And if that’s what it takes to
prove I didn’t kill Mom and Dad, then that’s what I’ll do.”
    When they were leaving the police station, Jeremy said
excitedly, “Excellent job, buddy! You definitely have a lot of potential. You
will go far, my boy, I’m sure of it.”
    Needless to say, Zack almost shit his pants with pride
and delight.
     
    6.
    His lie detector test results were
exactly as he had expected. With Jeremy’s help, Zack had managed to get the
machine to confirm his complete innocence, having beaten every devious trick
the police polygrapher had tried on him. Of course he was not out of the woods
just yet as far as the murder investigation was concerned, but it had been a
major positive development for him nonetheless.
    A day later, Zack received even more good news. Aunt
Clarisse told him that it looked like the police had cleared him as a suspect
in the murder of his parents, which had to mean that Jeremy’s fingerprint trick
had worked. But being off the hook with the cops was not the only reason for
Zack to rejoice. The fact that the trick had worked proved irrefutably that
Jeremy actually existed and wasn’t just a figment of his imagination (not that
Zack had ever doubted Jeremy was real).
    “I heard they have a couple of promising leads, but I
bet it’s bullshit,” his aunt said.
    Was the fake fingerprint on the knife one of those
‘promising leads’? You bet your ass it was.
    “Now you see I can do a little magic,” Jeremy said when
they chatted about the success of the fake fingerprint.
    Three days after the police interview, Zack went
through what Jeremy called ‘a confidence building exercise.’ This little
adventure was a lot of fun and made Zack feel like that boy in Karate Kid, who
had had to endure a series of travails before he began to believe in himself.
The exercise involved Lenny Walden, Zack’s schoolmate, who was seventeen years
old and had an intellect and a maturity of a sixth-grader.
    Lenny was a classic bully and had been harassing Zack
on a regular basis by calling him nasty names, giving him wedgies, kicking and
slapping him here and there, taking his lunch money—the usual stuff, nothing particularly
cruel or vicious, you know. And honestly, it didn’t really bother Zack all that
much. He sure was annoyed, but his feelings had never been hurt because he
realized that imbeciles like Lenny were simply unable to control their
cretinous instincts. Zack responded to Lenny’s badgering by silently despising
him and trying to make his encounters with this moron as short and few as
possible.
    Would he have been happy to see Lenny get a taste of
his own medicine? You bet. But Zack had no desire to waste his time plotting
revenge against the worthless buffoon whose GPA was at least one full point
below his.
    When Jeremy told him that killing Lenny Walden would
boost his self-esteem and make him tougher, Zack didn’t argue and simply asked
what Jeremy had in mind.
    “We’ll improvise,” Jeremy replied.
    Luring the bully into their trap proved to be very
easy; all Zack had to do was stand idly in the schoolyard within Lenny’s sight,
talking to Jeremy.
    “Who are you talking to, cocksucker?” Lenny barged in.
“Are you talking to yourself? What a