Maybe Brett was gonna go down. I loved it in theory but it wasn't right. It didn't matter how much I wanted his ass to fry. He had saved Jade from certain abuse, he had wanted to the whole time. In a way, he was braver than me. I had wanted LeClerc dead but I would've never planned it.
He did.
Gale nodded. "I think it's time to hit the Mason kid with a few choice questions."
Garcia shook his head, his razor stare cutting into me. "I think Caleb may have a few things to add."
My parents stood behind me, their presence a warmth at my back.
"Let's go out in the hall where we can talk about these things privately." He gave me a look, his eyes making a subtle shift to where Jade lay then back to me.
Gotcha. He wanted to talk more about LeClerc.
I pressed a kiss to Jade's forehead and she gave a shaky smile. "I'll be back."
She nodded and I left, the pale moon of her face burning in my mind, clenching my gut.
*
I folded my arms, getting pissed. "I told you, I didn't call the Skopamish. They just came." I slapped my thigh with my hand, the sound of it ringing in the strange acoustics of the hospital corridor.
"I'm not blaming you but the morgue has found an interesting wound in LeClerc's skull. And it's not like you have been forthcoming with details at the scene before our arrival."
"Stop busting my balls, Garcia." I heard Mom gasp in the background. Dad was probably catching her as she swooned.
"Caleb," Dad warned.
"Right, sorry." My eyes said differently, Garcia's stare locked with mine. It was enough. I saw the rooster feathers on him stand at attention.
Gale put a hand on his arm. "Listen Raul, let me ask a few things, K?"
He looked at her sharply, his feathers definitely ruffled. She looked at me for a moment. "Listen Caleb. This is important, we need a sequence of events. We need to establish who killed LeClerc."
"Jade told you," I said for the fifth time, exasperated. "Brett had planned on killing him. I don't know why!" I threw up my hands and paced. "Ask him why he was gunning to murder LeClerc," I stated, plugging my hands in the front pockets of my jeans.
"We plan to. But right now we need to go over each thing that transpired, in the proper order, then go to Mason with the run down. We've already talked to Mia Cote and she corroborates everything we know so far. But this bit," she pointed her finger at me, "your zombies showing up..."
"His fully armed zombies," Garcia said, arms folded across his chest.
"What was your first clue?" I asked, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.
Garcia leaned in toward me, hissing softly, "The mortician found a most unusual skull fracture."
I didn't say anything.
"It looked like a small ax. As a point of fact, the blade exactly matched a small ax, wielded from a lower position. A defense position. Or possibly the attacker defending another."
Death by Tomahawk.
"I know it was the Indians, Caleb," he said for only my ears, straightening.
"Yeah. They came," I shrugged like, so what?
Garcia threw up his hands.
Dad said, "Do we need counsel here, Officer Garcia?"
Just then Gramps strolled in and the situation went from bad to worse.
"What in the blue hell is going on here? Why are the cops up in his grill, Peanut?" He directed his question at Mom, who after all my inappropriateness looked a little green.
Oops.
Dad all but did a face-palm on the spot. "Mac, I think it's best if you let us handle it."
Gramps eyes narrowed to slits. "I have no doubt that you have many things handled here, Kyle." He looked Dad in the eye, his glance sliding over to include Garcia, "But when it comes to clusterfucks, I think I may have the corner of the market on righting them like rain."
Mom gasped and Dad's mouth set into a thin line. "Pops," Mom moaned in word-Nazi-agony.
Tiff came up on that last and barked out a laugh. "I just heard clusterfuck? What's that mean?" She said, the echo of her bubble bursting sounding off like a bomb in the hollowness of the hall.
Gale jumped and Gramps answered, "That would be the general malaise of what follows Caleb here," he jerked a finger in my direction and I stifled a grin. Gramps had silenced my parents, the cops and my group had stumbled up and were all staring at him with delayed shock.
Adults never said what they really meant. Gramps was a breed of his own.
Garcia nodded. "That is an apt, if not extremely inappropriate identifier, Mr. O'Brien."
"Right, I know," Gramps agreed.
Wow... just wow.
Dad raked a hand through his hair, making it into a spiky mess. "Okay, Mac, let's bring you up to speed here," he said, planting his hands on his hips, resigned.
Garcia snapped his notebook closed. "I think I have enough here to begin questioning Mason. But," his eyes never left mine, "I am going to need full disclosure. Miss LeClerc will be questioned extensively as well."
Gramps face jerked to Garcia, his gray eyes darkening, reminding me so much of Clyde my chest tightened. "What's wrong with the little Missy?"
"Her dad beat her up... " I began.
Gramps' face turned an alarming shade of red and his hands clenched into fists. "That SOB," Gramps began and Mom did slap her forehead then. "Let me get my hands on him, beatin' a girl like that. Bastard," Gramps seethed from between clenched teeth. Garcia and the guys nodded their assent.
"LeClerc's dead. Brett Mason already did the deed," Garcia spread his hand away from his body, problem solved.
Gramps gave a snort. "The kid that's always in Caleb's business?"
Gale nodded and added, "He's the one. We'd like to say more but it's outside the scope of confidentiality." She shrugged and his eyes narrowed on her.
"If something is going to get saddled on my grandson here, I will definitely become part of the scope of knowledge." His eyes held a threat and a promise, the two cops getting nailed with it. I wouldn't have wanted to be on the receiving end of that look.
Garcia seemed to gather self-restraint like an ill-fitting cloak around himself. He turned away from Gramps and looked at me. "Stay put, Caleb. I'll want to get more details after I talk with Mason." He raised his brows.
"Okay," I said neutrally. I wanted to get back to Jade, my eyes straying to the door.
And I was weak with hunger.
This whole raising the tribe, subsequent brawl and the demise of the LeClerc family had worked me up into a flaming appetite. I laughed and my parents looked at me like I was crazy.
Tiff came up beside me and clapped me on the back. "I gotcha Hart. It's all too weird for words."
"Yeah," I agreed. Sometimes Tiff got me.
"Well at least that ass clown is history. He was a pain-in-our-ass," Jonesy said.
"Jonesy. Not now. Please," Mom wheedled. Trying to make a stab at appealing to his sense of reason.
Good luck with that.
John sighed. "I have to agree. LeClerc was always going to be a problem. I mean, didn't Jade get a restraining order?"
I nodded. "I think that's what put him over the edge."
"Batterers feel like their control is gone when the law steps in," Alex said, shrugging. "Actually... "
"No," Archer said, shaking his head. I smiled, Lewis was getting the deal with the group. Alex was a socially awkward penguin.
"Humph!" Alex said, irritated.
Archer held up his hand. "I'm just saying that maybe you referencing one of your many," Lewis paused, "interesting reference materials may result in Mrs. Hart going into convulsions or... " he shrugged, "anything else."
He had him there.
I looked at Mom and she did look a little... stunned.
Sophie and Buddy walked up and Jonesy scowled. "Is Jade okay?" she asked anxiously.
Not really but... "Yeah, she's gonna be okay but," I tapped my forehead, "her dad beat Andrea to death. And now, she doesn't have anyone."
Sophie gave me steady eyes. "She has you, Caleb."
"She does," I said, never feeling something pass my lips that felt that real, that right.
Gramps approached Sophie and I, the rest of the group a loose bunch around us. His eyes flicked to Buddy then away.
Keeping him in sight.
I heard that. Buddy needed watching.
"You here to see little Missy?"
She nodded.
"You need company?" he asked, gruff.
"That'd be great, Mac," she said, her smile reaching eyes that were now open, the swelling gone.
He grinned, pleased that she'd say yes.
I watched them walk in Jade's hospital room together, my eyes meeting Buddy's. He was the one thing I wasn't sure about.
Was the enemy really my enemy? Or did I keep him close to me? What's that phrase Gramps used?
Oh yeah. Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.
Made perverse sense.
*
Bry looked at the group. "I'm starved."
Tiff and Mia rolled their eyes.
Tiff said casually, "Ya pig."
He shrugged at her. "So sue me."
She huffed, viciously chewing her gum, her jaws flexing and clenching without mercy.
"Somebody needs to do a McDonald's run," Alex said hopefully, looking at everyone, gauging if there were any takers.
"Yeah, we don't want any of the nerds in this group to like, digest their brain matter or something," Jonesy said.
Nice.
"Listen, I can't go because of Garcia... " I began, trying to explain the lock down.
"Yeah. Garcia thinks he might raise all the corpses in the hospital and they'll come to his call, causing mayhem and other troublesome shit like that." Jonesy began doing the classic zombie shuffle, his arms like planks, straight out in front of him.
"Language!" Mom hissed from fifty feet away.
Jonesy dropped his arms, caught.
I sighed, turning to Jonesy. "Listen, ya moron. You know that actual zombies don't shamble around." My tone of voice said it all. Duh. Really?
He slapped his knee, howling, the noise causing about ten thousand nurses to turn and look at us. "It got ya all spun up though, didn't it?"
It had.
I scowled at him.
"It's not authentic," John said, siding smoothly with my logic.
"But it's funny," Mia said, her face a mass of bandages. Her perfect nose broken.
"What?" she asked, forgetting.
Bry gave her a side hug. "You just took everyone's breath away with your great looks."
"Oh," she said quietly. Her face told me it'd been great for her to forget for a little while.
Tiff came up to her. "I'm glad that prick's gone," she said with typical Tiff fierceness.
Yeah.
Dad came over and whipped out his debit pulse. "I heard McDonald's and wanted to fund the run," he winked at me and in that moment I was fiercely glad he was my Dad. "Let me put a credit on this. How much can you kids get by on?"
The guys put their heads together. Finally we came up with a total.
Dad's mouth came open in shock. "Can you tone down the food?"
I shrugged, maybe we could each have only two cheeseburgers? "Okay, if we cut that in half, it'd be only two cheeseburgers per dude and one for each chick. They eat like birds anyway, Dad."
He got over his initial shock, and putting his debit pulse behind his ear, he thought the command for the credit. His pulse disc accessed a bunch of secret code from his bank account then transferred money for that singular purchase. Moving it away from the pulse implant, he handed it to me.
"How much?" I asked him.
"Four hundred," he said.
"K," I turned to John. "You're in charge. I gotta stick around until the cops are done in there." I handed him the card. The slimness of it almost disappeared in his long, tapered fingers.
"John," Dad called.
He turned. "Credit that change back, pal."
"Absolutely, Kyle."
"Nah, Kyle. I'm thinkin' we can use that for a porn credit, ya know, surf the web. Learn some skills... " Jonesy said with a straight face.
Alex piped in, "You can do that with a credit?"
Dad stared at him and I groaned.
"It was a joke, ya doofus," Jonesy said, sorta appalled.
"Oh," he said quietly and Dad's eyes went to his again.
"I guess I'll go with them, Mr. Hart," Alex said in the deepest well of awkwardness I had ever witnessed.