Free Crooked by Laura McNeal Page A

negotiation, I have brought you the photos in question.”
    These words registered slowly. Amos turned in disbelief. From an interior pocket, Bruce withdrew a plastic bag containing a batch of photos, which he fanned out like a card hand, face sides down. “Pick a card, any card,” he said.
    As Amos examined first one picture and then another, he began to feel funny about it. What had Anne Barrineau done to deserve Jay Foley taking pictures of her in her own bathroom and then showing them around at school?
    â€œSo whattaya think?” Bruce said. “Is it A. Barrineau au naturel or not?”
    Amos handed them back and touched his closed right eyelid, which hurt so much that he felt a little sick. “Maybe. But you can’t really see her face.”
    Bruce set the photos in a row at the foot of Amos’s bed and was studying them closely. Suddenly he slid them together. “It’s her all right. I’ve got a very strong feeling about this.” He put the photos into the Ziploc bag and slipped the bag into the lining of his coat. He looked around the room. The boy with the ruptured spleen who’d been in the other bed yesterday was gone this afternoon. “Where’s the spleenbuster?” Bruce asked, nodding toward the empty bed.
    â€œWent home,” Amos said, and thought about it. “Lucky him.” He closed his eyes. “See you later, Crook. I’m asleep. I’m a sleeping boy.”
    Amos thought he heard Bruce leaving but didn’t open his eyes. He felt suddenly lazy and serene, and then he was actually asleep, dreaming first of Anne Barrineau coming to a window and staring out, and then of Clara Wilson coming forward and saying, “Amos, it’s me, Clara.” In his dream, Amos was nodding. “Can you hear me, Amos?” she asked. “Amos, it’s me, Clara,” she said again, and this time Amos felt himself reach out in his sleep to touch one of her breasts, at which point, to his complete surprise, he heard Clara Wilson scream.

11
    RENDEZVOUS
    â€œWhere’s Mr. MacKenzie?” Clara asked in a sharp voice, stepping back and staring at Bruce Crookshank, who was standing at the hospital room door laughing his fool head off.
    â€œWho?” Bruce asked when he’d regained a portion of his composure.
    â€œMr. MacKenzie,” Clara said. “Amos’s father.” She felt as if she were surrounded by lunatics. “Amos’s father said I should come and visit Amos.”
    â€œI’m sure he’ll be back directly. Our boy has a steady stream of visitors.”
    â€œNo, I don’t,” Amos said weakly, but Clara ignored him because the second that Bruce said
our boy,
she knew that the reason Mr. MacKenzie’s voice had sounded strange on the phone was that it hadn’t been Mr. MacKenzie at all. It had been Bruce Crookshank.
    â€œAnd you—” she began in an even sharper tone, turning to Amos. But then she broke off. He looked too pale and shocked and uncertain to be yelled at right now. He had two black eyes and a partly shaved head. And the thin nightgown he was wearing made him look about ten. In a miserable, confused-sounding voice, he said, “I don’t know how what happened happened.”
    â€œYeah, right.”
    â€œNo, I mean it.”
    But she didn’t believe it. He had to have been a part of this embarrassing prank, had possibly even been the brains behind it, and just so they could make her the butt of their awful joke. She stepped toward the door and stared hard at Bruce until he stepped aside. Before leaving, she turned back for a moment. “Just so you’ll know. I don’t think any of this was even the tiniest bit funny.”
    Clara walked down the corridor on legs that hardly felt her own. Cool beads of sweat coursed along her rib cage. She thought of Amos playing this joke on her and her mother leaving home, and suddenly Clara’s face was