Free Wicked Cruel by Rich Wallace Page A

great hoax.
    “But how did you get Bainer to show up on my computer?”
    Gary bursts out laughing. “The links were easy. I just fished around online until I found the right obituary, copied it, and made my own document with Bainer’s name in it. And it worked exactly like I wanted it to.”
    “What do you mean?” I’m getting angry again.
    He smacks my arm. “This wasn’t about you, man. When Scapes beat me up, I spent the next two weeks figuring out how I could get revenge. And when you said you’d seen Bainer on the Internet, it hit me: scare Scapes to death. Let him know that this crap he dishes out can be serious. Maybe even jail-time serious if it goes far enough.”
    He flops onto his bed and laughs again. “You were the perfect helper, even though you didn’t know it. You were scared out of your wits, so Scapes bought everything we said. When I sent you those fake links to the obituary and the sympathy notices, it clinched it. I left you in limbo about it so I could turn the screws on Scapes even tighter.”
    I stare out the window. Barney is whimpering in the hall,so I open the door and let him in. “So that’s one part of it,” I say. “The easy part.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “How’d you get him on that video? How’d you get my computer to turn on by itself?”
    Barney jumps onto the bed and Gary starts wrestling with him. “You really think you saw Bainer on some video?”
    “You think I’m lying?”
    “Okay,” he says. “You
think
you saw him.”
    “I know I saw him.”
    “You didn’t.” He gently shoves Barney off the bed and sits up with his feet dangling. The bottoms of his white socks, just below the toes, say
Hanes
in red stitching. “Look,” he says, “maybe some of these techno guys can do that—make images appear on somebody else’s computer. But I don’t know anything about stuff like that. And anyway, you said he showed up first on your father’s screen. How would I have known that you were looking at that particular video, at that particular time, on your father’s computer? How could anybody know that?”
    “So what are you saying?”
    “I’m saying that I had nothing to do with what you say you saw. I just picked up on what you told me the next day and took it from there, with that fake obituary and all. You were so convinced you’d seen Bainer’s ugly mug on the screen, I figured I’d freak you out some and take Scapes down a notch in the process.”
    I think about each time I actually saw Bainer online, and I guess it was only three times. I also heard that music a bunch of times, but I’d been searching Freewheeler earlier those nights.…
    “I did see him,” I say firmly.
    He shakes his head and smiles. “Like your uncle said, it was the power of suggestion. You thought you might have glimpsed him, and your imagination kicked in. Reading that obit made you all the more sure that you’d seen him. You saw a mirage, buddy.”
    I don’t know what I saw, but it definitely wasn’t my imagination.
    He got me good, and he knows it. But this doesn’t add up. Too many things happened that were out of Gary’s control. I’m not done with this. And I have a very strong feeling Bainer isn’t done yet either.

CHAPTER TEN
    I do a “Lorne Bainer” search on the Internet and find nothing—no sign that he’s dead, no sign that he’s alive—then I study that stupid “Way Back into Love” video a couple of times. Uncle David’s been downstairs watching reruns of
Family Guy
and
The Simpsons
all evening.
    When I hear him turn on the shower around nine thirty, I put on my sweatshirt and gloves and slip out of the house. If he even notices that I’m gone, he’ll figure that I’m over at Gary’s.
    Our street is very dark and heavily tree-lined, so I’m out of sight of the house in seconds. I test the flashlight quickly after turning the corner. It works fine.
    I take my time walking the back streets, but I’m pumped up. I’m scared, yeah, but I’m