The Best American Mystery Stories 2015

Scott Grand A bottle of scotch and a sharp buck knife From Thuglit

Everyone knows this kid. He is dirty and dumb and sits in a corner, lonely, but not alone. His face has an involuntary twitch, and when he makes eye contact, his lids and cheeks squeeze his eyes shut. We call him Blinky. Blinky rolls with it, though, smiles big and toothy when kids shout his name across the schoolyard.

It is late fall and coat season in the eastern part of northern California. Our mothers stuff us into puffy jackets, force homespun beanies all the way over our eyes, both to be ditched as soon as we break onto the playground. We throw them over the scalloped tips of a chain-link fence; fill the yard with sounds of tetherball leather-slapping hammerfists, the creaking of chain links on the swing set, and children hollering.

Blinky is there too, his goofy smile breaking out occasionally, his frayed denim jacket always on, tugged down to his wrists.

I am king of the tetherball. I am strong and I know how to use the momentum to keep the ball turning my way. I ignore the pain when the tide turns and I have to use my palms to stop the ball.

“Come on, Blinky. Step up. Ready to challenge the king?”

But Blinky just shoves his hands in his coat. “Nah, Emmett. Um good. I’ll get you next time.”

“Okay.”

Mr. Glass steps onto the blacktop, crosses the first hopscotch square, extends his arm.

“Who the fuck’s he waving at?” Flynn says, safely away from any adult ears.

“Dare you to flip ’im the bird?”

“Yeah. Fuck you, Emmett. You just don’t want no one to dethrone you.”

“What’d be the difference if you were in detention?”

“Again. Fuck you.”

But Blinky leaves our group, heads toward Mr. Glass, kicking orange and brown leaves. His hands never leaving his coat and his elbows crooked out like broken bird wings.

Our lives are run by the sound of school bells and our mothers’ voices. A week takes forever to pass and a year is an eternity. Our walk home is an unknown distance, but we talk like it spans the galaxy.

We trudge home, backpacks full of books and nothing but swear words in our mouths. Our journey broken by a barbershop, a gas station, and endless fields of wheat-colored scrub grass. The gravel crunches under our feet and Flynn spins the pedals of his bike backward, making a metallic ratcheting noise.

Me, Maxine, Flynn, Brady, and Blinky. Blinky’s headphones are on, the ones with the turquoise earpieces. I can hear New Kids on the Block blaring, Blinky’s head bob missing “You Got It” by half a beat.

Brady pulls the headband and the turquoise foam tilts off his ear. “What’s wrong with you? You trying to burn a hole in your ear?”

“Just thinking,” he says, kind of dreamily. I hear the click of the Stop button and the headphones rest on his shoulders. Blinky stares off at something somewhere.

“It’s okay. I like loud music too,” Maxine says, pats his arm. To Brady, “Where’d you come up with ‘burn a hole in your ear’?”

Brady shrugs. “It’s what my mom says to my brother every time he puts his Walkman on. Is it not true?”

“Do you believe everything your mother tells you?” Flynn says. He’s on his bike and pedals around us.

“Is it not true then? The ear-burning thing? What? Don’t laugh.”

But it just encourages us.

Blinky salutes us, turns off into Heaven’s Acres trailer park.

After we’re past, Flynn says, “Where do you think he got the Walkman? It’s brand-new. And a Sony.”

“Maybe his dad? His birthday’s in a couple months,” Maxine offers.

Over my shoulder I see Blinky’s place. The rust on the window screen, the piece of aluminum that was bent in a storm two winters back, still flapping unchallenged in the breeze. “Yeah. Sure,” I say, ’cause I like that she sees the best in folk, and ’cause I like her.

Flynn and Brady live on one of the newer residential streets. Built up just in time for the paper mill’s new addition. Flynn offers to give Maxine a goodbye hug. He stops his bike, opens his arms wide.

“No. I know it’s hard, but try not to be a weirdo.”

Undeterred as ever. “All right. Your loss. It would have been rockin’.”

Two more blocks, and Maxine’s place is right on the corner. Her house is pristine — green cut lawn, edged, and the house crisply painted in blues and grays. Her dad steps onto the porch, raises his hand.

I wave back. The badge on his chest winks in the afternoon light. “Why does he come out like that? See you tomorrow.”

“To greet me. ’Cause he wants to see me. Don’t your parents do that?” She touches the cuff of my sleeve. Squeezes. “Bye, Emmett.”

The pressure on my arm is all I can think about for the rest of the day.

My home is an old farmhouse an acre down a dirt driveway. It sits in the shade of a big oak caught in the grip of wisteria vine, slowly being strangled to death by lilac blossoms.

The house is empty, quiet in a sleepy kind of way. I microwave mac ’n’ cheese, add a handful of Fritos as a topping from an opened bag on top the fridge. I adjust the rabbit ears slightly to NBC and watch an episode of Highway to Heaven. Michael Landon saves the day, his prose poignant and potent, wrapping the episode in a lesson learned.

I find Roxy — my mutt of unknown origin — lounging on the back porch. I touch her coarse black fur and she is immediately drawn to life and at my side, ready for adventure. We walk through waist-high flaxen grass, slip over a barbed-wire fence. The grazing cows pay us no heed, other than to follow us with their eyes, their mouths always moving, chewing.

Old Spooky is a charred oak tree at the edge of the property, blackened branches reaching for the sky. I wonder if it was struck with lightning or was caught in the path of a wildfire. The bark is black ash and feels like coal in my hand.

I hear the truck, my dad’s Toyota, and stay in the field a while longer. Later there’s the high buzz of my mom’s hatchback and Roxy and I head in.

Dinner is baked chicken and mashed potatoes and store-bought biscuits. My father nurses a beer, only taking his eyes from the paper long enough to take another forkful of food. My mother tells us about the diner and the interesting customers passing through. She asks about my day and I shrug it off. “It’s okay.”

The paper crinkles in my father’s grip. “That’s good. I’d have bad news about life if sixth grade is kicking your ass.”

“What about your day?” Mom asks him.

“You want me to talk about how hot it is in the mill?” His patented answer for anything concerning his work. The black-inked four-leaf clover on his forearm wrinkles as he shifts his grip. Then his eyes go back to the paper.

Silence follows us after that, and I do the dishes, stack it all to dry in the rack, watch the clouds slink over the sky for the night.

It’s almost winter when Blinky pulls a Rubik’s Cube out of his pocket. I see the side, the little squares a random assortment of colors. It makes me laugh. “Blink. Where’d you get that? Was that a recess game?”

“Nope. It’s mine.” He blinks both eyes at me in quick succession. He twists the little cube this way and then that. Then he raises the cube up, each side a solid color.

“No way.”

“Holy shit,” Flynn says. “You’re a genius. But like... a retarded genius.” Maxine smacks the back of Flynn’s head and the sharp noise makes me laugh. “Ouch. Come on, man. You know exactly what I mean.”

“Where’d you get that, Blinky?” Max asks.

Blinky does the thing with his eyes, but in a shy way. He shoves the perfect cube deep into his denim. It causes his cuff to ride up, reveals the blue and black just above his wrist. Blinky immediate pulls it back into place.

“You okay?”

“See ya tomorrow, Emmett,” he says, and then tucks his chin to his chest, shuffles into Heaven’s Acres.

“That was pretty amazing,” Brady says. “I’ve had one since Christmas, and I can only ever get two sides to match.”

“My dog got three sides done on mine,” Flynn says.

“Oh... uh-huh, sure. Why don’t you help him out?” Brady laughs at his own joke.

Flynn doesn’t miss a beat. “Well, I don’t want to ruin the challenge for him, Brady.”

“Where’s Blinky even getting this stuff? Last week he had a set of Micro Machines, a couple days ago he had a brand-new deck of Garbage Pail cards. He even had the new Acne Amy, didn’t even know it was out yet.”

“Think Blinky’s stealing stuff?” I ask.

I get a round of laughs for the line.

“From where?”

“Closest Toys-R-Us is in Red Bluff.”

Flynn gets a smile. “So Blinky gets up in the dead of night, sneaks out of the creaky-ass trailer, walks to Red Bluff, breaks into the mall, then Toys, then he picks a single item, then he resets all of the alarms and hitches a ride back here in time for breakfast.”

“So how’s he getting the stuff?” But only the wind answers.

After Sunday church, Flynn and I steal away, borrow his dad’s tackle box and two of his poles. It’s cold, but we pedal hard and our speed and youth keep us warm as we ride our ten-speeds to Battle Creek. A mile down Carter Street and we see a familiar faded and frayed denim jacket walking along.

We stopped beside him. “Blinky. What are you doing out here?”

“Oh. You know,” he kind of sing-songs and stares at the tops of his shoes.

Flynn just gives me a shrug.

“We’re going fishing, you wanna come?”

“What’re you fishing for?”

“Fish,” Flynn says.

Blinky laughs — to himself, I think. “Okay.”

So I take both the poles and the tackle, and Blinky rides on Flynn’s foot pegs. It takes a while, but we park the bikes on a dead log and trek down the pebble bank. We bait hooks with grubby worms and cast into the middle of a tired but clear stream.

We talk shit and our lines bob, fish swimming right past our lines. Flynn breaks out a single stolen cigarette and a paper book of matches. We pass the Camel back and forth, cough with every gasp of nicotine, and feel cool and adult as the creek burbles at our feet.

“Okay,” Flynn says as he coughs out a cloud. “If you had to do it with a teacher. Which one?”

“Gross,” I say.

“Come on. You know you’ve thought about it.”

“They’re too old.”

“Not too old for boning. Bet their skin’s all soft and papery.”

“Fine. If you’ll stop talking about this, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“That is gross,” he says. “You’re disgusting.”

“You started this.”

“Emmett. No one made you say Mrs. Fletcher. You did that yourself.” After a moment, “You gross bastard.”

“Okay, ass. Who’d you do it with?”

Flynn just shakes his head. “I would never do that. It’s gross. You know in Mrs. Fletcher’s house, they’re not granny panties, they’re just panties.”

I’m still fuming when Blinky chimes in. “Mr. Glass isn’t too old. He doesn’t even have gray hairs.”

I look at Flynn and we laugh so hard the cigarette falls out and dies at the water’s edge. “You’re a fucking gem, Blinky,” he says through the tears. “A fucking gem.”

We bike back at dusk, the world turned soft and smooth by gray shadowed light.

Blinky hops off in front of Heaven’s Acres. “That was a nice place. Thanks. Nicest place I ever been.” He says it so earnestly, not even Flynn laughs.

I start walking Max to her classes. I don’t know why. We just get to talking and I like that our steps match so easily. I like a lot of things about her. The late bell sounds for fourth period; the halls empty.

We stand alone and still outside her class. “You’re gonna be late,” she says, but with a smile.

“Totally worth it,” I say, smiling with all my teeth.

A door opens behind us. Mr. Glass and Blinky come around the corner, whispering harshly to each other. Mr. Glass is stooped down, hand on Blinky’s shoulder, his mouth close to Blinky’s ear.

Mr. Glass straightens, pulls his hand away and squeezes it into a fist, then puts it behind his back. It’s wrong somehow, intimate almost. I can’t help but stare.

Then he’s back on. “Emmett. Maxine. You’re late for class.”

Max ducks into her class.

Mr. Glass looks me right in the eye. “Something else, Emmett? Something else I can help you with?”

“Nope.” To Blinky I say, “See you after school, Blink,” but he doesn’t even look up. My mind is weirdly full and my stomach hurts and my footsteps sound loud on the tile.

The feeling follows me as we walk home, and I spend the whole time looking at Blinky. He looks different or is different. Something. Maybe I’ve seen him wrong this whole time.

The others talk about class and Mrs. Charles’s receding hairline and winter break. I make all the right noises in the right places but don’t participate.

The others trail off and Max stops in front of her house, pushes loose strands of blond hair behind her ears. “Thanks for walking me to class. It’s nice.”

“Did you see Glass and Blinky today?”

“Yeah. I thought we were going to get detention.”

“Did they seem weird to you?”

“I don’t know. I guess.” She bites her bottom lip. “Weird how?” The front door opens and her father steps out. She turns. “See you Monday.”

Home is familiar and normal and I find a dead bantam chicken on the back porch, its black-and-white feathers mottled with drops of red now. “Shit.”

I find Roxy shamed under the porch, feathers still sticking to her bloody maw. It takes a while, but I coax her out and clean her mouth with a garage rag. Then I bury the chicken in the back field, tap the fresh earth down with the shovel blade. I put everything back, clean the dirt and red from under my nails. And pretend like it didn’t happen.

I’m on the floor watching TV when Mr. Speakman’s car pulls into the drive. My dad greets him on the porch. After a few moments, my dad comes in. “Emmett. You seen any bantam chickens on the property?”

I try to make my face blank. “Nope.”

“’Cause something got into Gary Speakman’s coop, killed six of his hens. He’s still missing three.”

I just shrug, turn my head back to Cheers, but my hearing strains for the muffled sounds on the porch.

It is the dead of night when something yanks me by the hair and throws me to the floor. “Oof,” and the wind goes out of me. The bedroom light is snapped on and it seems bright and stark and pierces my bleary vision.

My father’s imposing frame lords over me. “You’re a dipshit.” My father’s voice is even and calm and his black clover tattoo is so dark it must drink the light.

“Yessir,” I wheeze.

“Good. I’m glad we’re starting off on the right tone. Get your boots and coat.”

I dress as instructed and find him in the kitchen. There’s a pot of coffee going and the earthy aroma permeates the air. The dead chicken sits on the kitchen table. A ring of dirt and feathers forms a brown halo. The back door is open and Roxy sits on the other side of the screen, tongue out, tail thumping. Her muzzle is brown with dirt and feathers.

My father pours himself a cup, takes a long sip. “So Roxy musta killed the Speakman chickens, felt bad about it, got my shovel, dug a perfectly round hole, buried said chicken, then put my shovel back with freshly turned soil on it. But later she decided she didn’t feel that bad and wanted to eat the chicken anyway, so she dug it up and fought a coon for it on the back porch. You tracking, Emmett?”

“Yessir.”

“I understand you don’t want your dog to be in trouble. I don’t know why you would lie to me. And you are horrible at it. I knew soon as I asked, saw your whole face go white.”

“Yessir.”

“Hey. Look at me. Whatever else you think of me, I’m not gonna punish your dog for being a dog. And I can’t help you with any problems if I don’t know about them. Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Good. Get a box of matches and some lighter fluid. We’re gonna fix this one together.”

So we put the dead bird, some paper, and two logs of oak into our burn barrel, then I squeeze a half-bottle of lighter fluid into the can. It all goes up in a whoosh of flame. The flames flicker, play light across my father’s face. “See. Fire cleanses all. Should take care of it. If there’s a skeleton left, you can break it up with my framing hammer. Not the finish hammer, though. The framing one.”

“Okay.”

“Emmett... what are the two things that can solve any problem?”

I say my dad’s mantra. “A bottle of Scotch and a sharp Buck knife.”

“Who’s the Scotch for?”

“Me.”

“Good. And the knife?”

“Whoever is the problem.”

“That’s right. Sometimes you need both.” He messes my hair. “Got an early overtime shift at the mill. Enjoy your Saturday. Stay with the fire till it dies down.” He tromps through the grass, never spilling a drop of coffee.

The fire is plenty hot, turns everything to ash.

After some sleep I wake and shower and feel hunger stirring me. Mom’s in the kitchen, sipping steamy coffee, reading a romance novel at the table. “Long night?” she says.

“Yup.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Want some waffles?”

“Please.”

So I eat waffles smothered in butter and thick maple syrup, and watch Garfield and Bugs and later on the Ninja Turtles. And I feel better, normal.

Mom cleans the house around me and I mow the front lawn, around the oak and under the wisteria. I almost hit the paper but stop and overhand it onto the porch. When I’m done my shirt sticks to the sweat on my back, and I wipe my forehead across my sleeve.

Inside I hear soft crying in the kitchen. Mom’s got the paper out, flat on the table. “You okay?” I say.

“Oh Emmett, I’m so sorry.” She blinks puffy red eyes, motions to the paper, and I read the headline:

Body Discovered at Battle Creek

Alfie Johnson, 12, Presumed Suicide

“Who’s Alfie Johnson?”

My mother looks at me, and then cries more. Eventually the tears subside and she says, “Your friend. Blinky. That’s his real name.”

“No. No way.” My mind is too small and I can’t make this idea fit. “I just saw him yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, honey, but he’s gone. It looks like he loaded all his pockets down with rocks and then walked to the middle of the creek and laid down.” She starts crying again.

I could see Blinky in my mind’s eye, lying at the bottom of the creek. For some reason, his eyes were open in my imaginings. “I need to talk to my friends. Can I go out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Mom. Brady and Flynn and Max were his friends too.”

She takes a deep breath. “Okay. But be careful.”

The ten-speed can’t go fast enough, but I just keep pushing the pedals harder. I ditch the bike in Max’s driveway. The door opens after my rapid-fire frantic knocks. Max’s dad answers, and whatever’s on my face is enough. “She’s in her room,” he says softly.

Max is sobbing into her pillow, and it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. I knock on her doorframe and she sits up, her face puffy and red.

“Hey,” I say, to say something.

Then she’s up and her arms are around my neck. We sit on her bed and talk for a long time, about Blinky and the awfulness of the world and how he shouldn’t have left us. Max cries and I squeeze her — like if I do it right, I can make it better. I must have been doing it wrong, though, cause I ended up crying too.

Monday comes and there’s a school assembly. A guy in a tie shows up, tells us through a microphone that it’s okay to feel how we’re feeling, and that time will slowly make things normal again. He talks about tragedy and sense of loss, and strategies for dealing with them, but whatever empathy he’s trying to convey is lost in the electronic sound system.

Off in the corner, by the basketball banners, I see Mr. Glass leaning on the wall, arms crossed and nodding sincerely to the speaker’s words. My stomach does a somersault.

I find Flynn at his locker. “You bring it?”

“Yup.” He hands me the Rubik’s Cube and I tuck it in my bag. “Even got some B-nocs. You really think this is gonna work?”

“I think he’s gonna be sheet-white when he sees it.”

“What does that prove? You think Maxine’s dad can put him in jail on a reaction?”

“I just wanna prove it to myself.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. I just wanna know I’m right.”

Flynn looks at me for a long moment. “Uh-huh. Sure.”

Maxine plays distracter for us. “Just be charming,” I tell her.

“What does that mean?”

Flynn laughs. “Just be yourself. Trust me.”

We go to the teachers’ lounge, and from the hall Maxine asks two teachers a question with an upward inflection. She smiles as they both step out. She walks down the hall and they just follow. Flynn and I walk in right behind them. Flynn pulls the blinds up all the way and cuts the cord so they can’t be lowered. I find Glass’s locker, put the cube right on top.

We walk right past the two teachers and I hear Max. “Thank you so much. You guys are great, really. I gotta get my books, but thanks for the explanation.”

Smoker’s Hill sits across the parking lot and right in front of the teachers’ lounge window. Max catches up. “That was easy.”

“What’d you ask them?”

“Just how the class schedule worked. Which classes were for which periods. They were really nice about it.”

“It’s October,” Flynn says and we both laugh. We laugh even harder at Max’s frown.

We wait on the hill, Flynn with his binoculars and me with the scope off my dad’s Marlin. One of the high school smokers wanders over. “Girls’ locker room is on the other side, fellas,” he tells us, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth.

“Gross. Get out of here,” Max says, and chases him away with a glare.

There’s mass movement after the second-period bell sounds. We wait, eyes glued to the teachers’ lounge. They file in, drinking coffee and carrying folders. Glass opens the locker and backs away. He shuts the door quickly and turns, looking at everyone in the room.

And he is sheet-white.

“Holy shit,” Flynn says.

“What?” Max asks. “What’d he do?”

I think about what I’m going to do. I think about Max’s smile, and how I never want to be out of its brightness. “Nothing,” I say. “I thought he’d react to the cube, but he didn’t. I musta been wrong about him.” Then I drop the scope in my bag, ignore Flynn’s frown, and go to class.

I wake early, meet my dad in the kitchen. It’s still coal-dark outside and he’s only on his first cup of coffee. “Morning,” he says.

“You were something, right? Before you were a millwright?”

He frowns, folds the paper neatly, puts it aside. “I surely was.”

“I have questions.”

“I may have answers,” he says. And he does, answering them all in his calm manner. It’s strange, meeting him for the first time.

Armed with knowledge, I prep my stuff, and the following day we go to Blinky’s funeral. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him in a suit. The boy in the box looks like a poor wax caricature of my friend. Max hugs me fiercely and Flynn tries to be tough. Brady cries more than Max.

People stand, say nice things, say all the right things, but none of it unties the knot in my stomach.

Glass even speaks, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Alfie was a beautiful boy. He had charms the world will never know, and it is a little darker here without him.”

I don’t cry, I just look at Glass and let the heat of my rage turn the tears to steam.

After, in the parking lot, Glass comes over. “I know he was your friend, but I feel like he was mine too.” He hugs us each and I want to crush his spine. I feel slimy and poisonous as I pull away. His eyes are shiny and wet and full of sorrow and I want to put them out with my thumbs.

That night I lie in bed, unable to sleep, staring at my ceiling, waiting. At midnight I grab my special bag, pull on sweats, and walk my ten-speed to the end of the drive before I get on. Then I ride, a river of adrenaline carrying me along. I lean into the pedals, stomp my feet. There’s the pressure of the bag on my back and the cool night air on my face and a sense of peace.

I’m sweating when I reach my destination. There is only stillness and starlight with me on the street. When I knock, I see the lights come on one by one as he moves through the house. Something moves behind the peephole. I grip the ax handle hard and the door opens for me.

“Emmett?” Glass says sleepily. “What...”

But I drive the ax handle into his stomach and he grunts in surprise, steps back, stoops to a knee. I bring the ax down on his back and side and shoulders and I go on until my arms are tired and Glass is a curled ball on the floor. I close the door, bind his hands and ankles with fishing line.

He cries the whole time. “Why?”

I move through the house, snapping on lights. There’s three bedrooms — a master, an office, and one full of brand-new, in-the-box toys. Simon Says and He-Man action figures, and yo-yos. I almost vomit. There’s a Polaroid on his nightstand.

Blinky. Smiling, holding a toy.

I toss the picture on the floor in front of Glass’s withered form. “This is why.”

“What? I didn’t do anything to Alfie. I would never. I only wanted him to be happy.” Glass clears his throat, puts some beef behind it. “If you let me go now, I won’t say anything to the police, Emmett. You could go to jail... prison even.”

I pick up the picture. “Hey, Mr. Glass, I have a question. Why do you have a picture of Blinky?”

He laughs. “Don’t be jealous, Emmett. Alfie needed extra attention. He was a special boy.”

“Why was this photo taken in this house?” I look around. “Right there on that wall.”

Only silence answers me, and in the quiet it strikes me that I sound just like my father.

So I gag him, drag him out to his car, put my bike and bag in the trunk. His car is weird, but I’ve had plenty of practice driving on the farm. The strangest thing is driving on smooth roads. No one passes and nothing moves.

When we get to my home, I drive the last leg with the lights off and kind of coast in. The dome light comes on when I open his door and he screams behind the duct tape. I drag him out despite his struggle and drop him on the tarp, right next to the burn barrel. I think of Blinky, beneath the water, staring up. I hope there was blue sky for him to see. I don’t know why.

“This can’t be settled with Scotch,” I tell him. The snick of the Buck knife opening is loud in the cloudless night.

Soon I have the burn barrel going nice and hot, a few logs of oak and a whole container of lighter fluid. When my dad comes out, coffee mug in hand, gray light has painted the horizon starless. He leans over the barrel. “Jesus.” And after a moment, “You’re definitely going to need the hammer. Remember—”

“I know. The framing hammer.”

“Well, a finish hammer with dings on the face is no good,” he says reasonably. “Now about that car out front...”

And he tells me that lesson.