Free Jesus Jackson by James Ryan Daley Page B

Henry brought it up first. “Nothing. Just, um…so what’s that book all about?”
    â€œOh,” he said, seeming pleased by the turn of the conversation. “It’s amazing. It’s about this detective, Steve Carella, and he’s trying to catch this guy who’s killing all of these cops, and it gets really into all of the methods and techniques that cops would really use to catch the guy, like in the real world, or like in those really real TV shows, and it’s—”
    â€œHold on a second,” I said. “Do you read a lot of these things?”
    â€œBooks?”
    â€œWell, detective novels…”
    â€œOh, yes. Absolutely. I’ve read all of the Sherlock Holmes adventures and Philip Marlow and Sam Spade and Mike Hammer and—”
    â€œOkay, okay. I get it. So, I’ve got a question for you. About, you know, detective stuff.”
    Henry’s eyes opened wide. “Really?” he said. Then very seriously: “Shoot.”
    â€œIf you think that someone may have committed a crime—say, murder—but you’re not really sure, and you totally have no proof, how would you go about investigating it? Like, what would you actually do?”
    â€œWell,” he replied, dramatically stroking his chin, “that depends upon the circumstances of the murder in question.”
    â€œWhat about if you don’t really know the circumstances?”
    Henry leaned in close, gave a look around to make sure no one was near us, and whispered, “How did the victim…meet his demise?”
    â€œA fall,” I said. “Off a cliff.”
    And with those five words, the fun part of the game was over for Henry. “Oh,” he said, staring down at his tater tots.
    â€œLook,” I said. “Just humor me. It’s good for me to talk about things like this. It’s, you know, processing things.”
    Henry let his eyes meet mine, but only for a second. “Okay, I guess. If it’s just talking.”
    â€œJust talking.”
    â€œWell,” he began, “I guess the first thing you’d want to do is investigate the crime scene.”
    Right. I hadn’t even been to the ravine yet. “Yeah, yeah…Crime scene.”
    â€œPoke around, look for clues.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œAnd try to construct a narrative of what happened.”
    Of course. I had a hundred different stories floating around in my brain about how things might have gone down; what I needed was to come up with one plausible story. And who knows? Maybe it would just prove that the whole thing had been an accident, and I could leave it alone. “Great,” I said. “So let’s go right after school, okay? To investigate?”
    Now Henry really looked scared. “Wait, you said we were just talking!”
    â€œYeah, just talking…and a little looking around.”
    â€œOh, I don’t know.”
    I reached over, put my hand on his shoulder. “It’ll really help me process this whole thing.”
    â€œI’ll miss my bus, though. And my parents…”
    â€œWe’ll take the late bus, for the kids that play sports. It’ll be fine.”
    â€œBut shouldn’t we just let the police—”
    â€œListen Henry, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but Alistair said something really suspicious to me when we saw him earlier.”
    â€œSuspicious how?”
    So I told Henry what Alistair had said to me, and then I filled him in on my whole theory about how things might have gone down after we left. He looked a bit uncomfortable about it all at first, but as I went on he clearly became more and more animated, more involved and more curious, as if allowing himself to sink into one of his novels.
    Finally, he cut me off in the middle of one of my theories. “Well the crime scene itself is bound to be a disaster by now. Lots of cops and EMTs and everyone will have trampled through it,