Blood Trail by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page A

Gingriches’ answering machine for a couple of days?
    â€œYou can’t, honey.” Mom sounded very tired.
    â€œBut what if … what if she saw something, or she knows something.…”
    Mom said sharply, “Jamy, don’t even go there.”
    â€œBut what if she’s scared?”
    The kitchen phone started ringing.
    â€œShut up,” I whispered.
    Mom said, “I’ll get it. I’ll pull the plug, I mean. Jamy, honey, there’s nothing you can do for your friend. I’m sorry. Don’t think about it anymore tonight. You either, sweetie.” She looked at me. “It’s no use worrying. Just try to get some sleep.”
    Yeah. Right.
    I heard every noise the rest of the night, including the newspaper hitting the door at five in the morning. At which point I muttered, “Damn it to hell,” got out of bed, and headed downstairs. I made coffee, got the paper in, and started reading it to see what, exactly, people were saying about me. I still couldn’t quite handle watching the news on TV but I could read the damn paper. And there I was, front page news: “Friend Implicates Gingrich Brother.” Oh, just great. Lovely. The Gingrich family had issued a statement through their lawyer saying the police investigation was a farce and calling for an attorney general’s investigation and apprehension of the real killer. Nathan had been taken in for questioning. There was a picture of Nathan and his father and a lawyer going into the police station, but not hiding their faces under their jackets or anything. Nathan had a fresh buzz cut and he was staring straight ahead.
    I didn’t know my mother was behind me, reading over my shoulder, till she said, “It’s not the first time they had him in for questioning.”
    I jumped. “Huh?”
    Huh, hell, pay attention. Aaron’s voice in my mind. I had to close my eyes.
    Mom was saying, “Nathan’s the chief suspect, I think. They questioned him before.”
    â€œThat’s stupid! He couldn’t have done it.” What I meant was, not the Nathan I knew.
    â€œI’m just telling you.”
    â€œIt’s some kind of weird coincidence. A mistake. Somebody told Aaron a lie or something.” And I’d repeated it and made it worse, and now the police were looking the wrong way while the real murderer was still out there.
    Mom said, “We all believe what we have to, Jeremy.” Whatever that meant. I didn’t ask; she didn’t say. She pulled yesterday’s newspaper off the top of the fridge, laid it in front of me, and got herself coffee.
    There must have been three or four different articles about the murder in each paper. “I don’t want to read all this stuff,” I said.
    Mom sighed. “It wouldn’t hurt you to read for a change.” But then she sat down across from me and said, “When they searched the house, they found some very graphic images of violence in his room. Printed off the Internet, maybe.”
    So what? Nathan had always liked horror movies, gory posters, that kind of thing. “That doesn’t mean—”
    â€œI know, but it makes you wonder.”
    â€œDid they find, um—”
    â€œDrugs? No. Not a trace of drugs anywhere in the house.”
    â€œThat’s not what I meant.” Jeez, what was it with old people and drugs? “Did they find, you know, the knife—”
    â€œThe murder weapon? Yes. A bayonet. Thrown into the sump hole in the basement.”
    â€œWas it, like, a hunting knife or what?”
    â€œThey won’t say.”
    â€œWhere’d it come from? The house?”
    â€œWon’t say.”
    â€œFingerprints on it?”
    â€œThey won’t say that either.”
    They wouldn’t say this, they wouldn’t say that—I wished they wouldn’t have said I blabbed, then. Though my name wasn’t actually in the paper. But hell, there