Shine - Lauren Myracle [89]
Oh my God. From Huskers, that’s where he must have gotten it. That flaccid sawed-off slab.
Jason glanced at me, and his eyes were deep pools. “You don’t need to be calling Beef, Cat. You need to call the police.”
I shook my head, because that wasn’t the answer. At this point, all we knew was that Beef was mixed up in something bad, and not just mixed up in it but part of it, in so deep that he may have led that badness straight to Patrick, his best friend. His boyfriend, Lord have mercy.
Beef knew more about Patrick’s attack than he was saying, that much was clear. But going to Sheriff Doyle wasn’t the answer. It might come to that, but not yet.
I rubbed my hand over my face. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I could figure everything out if I just put my mind to it.
“Do you think Bailee-Ann knows Beef is gay?” I said. “Is that why she gave me the pack of matches, so I’d find out?”
Jason’s jaw was tense. “You know her better than I do. What do you think?”
I bit my lower lip. Maybe she knew, but didn’t want to. Maybe she had a streak of Aunt Tildy running through her.
I thought about Beef and Robert’s trips to Asheville. Robert on Beef’s motorcycle, holding tight to Beef’s waist. Beef teaching Robert “to be a man,” and to never go down that faggot path, not ever, because homos always got what they deserved.
Beef had been talking about himself, hadn’t he? That bad things happened if you were gay, because look what he’d gotten his very own boyfriend mixed up in. So Beef had been hating himself, that’s what it looked like now. And maybe he didn’t want Robert to face the same fate, but probably it was just more that he needed to talk his feelings out, and who better for an audience than a hero-worshipping kid?
Only Beef, with his rash of dark moods, had stopped talking to Robert . . . and he’d threatened me . . . and then there was the redneck posse, with their secretive looks and their wall of silence . . .
My blood stopped moving. For one sickening pulse, my heart quit beating, and then it started up fast and heavy.
“Jesus,” I whispered. Jason met my gaze, his expression grim. He’d gotten there, too, just a flick of a second ahead of me.
I’d been so suspicious of Tommy that I’d blinded myself to something huge: Tommy wasn’t the only one with a sketchy alibi during the time Patrick was hurt. Beef’s alibi was even sketchier. He’d driven back and forth along the highway deep into the night, and not just once but multiple times. Ridings told me that, and I looked right through it, choosing to see what I wanted to see and nothing else.
My mind reeled. I could hardly take it in. Beef?
I put together the chronology of the night as best I could, hoping it would give me the answers.
First Beef had partied with the others at the Frostee Top. At eleven thirty or so, Tommy suggested a beer run, though his real motivation was to collect Patrick. The redneck posse had decided to confront one of their own, and they planned to do so as a group. Beef argued against the trip to the Come ‘n’ Go—Patrick had already been riding him for screwing up his life, and Beef had no desire to face more of the same—but he was overruled.
At eleven forty-five, they pulled up at the Come ’n’ Go, where Patrick was finishing up his shift. Patrick wasn’t quite ready to close up, but he put off his closing duties, knowing he could return and finish them later. Everyone piled into Bailee-Ann’s pickup, they dropped off Robert at Patrick’s insistence, and then they drove into the forest. By foot, they made their way to Suicide Rock, where Dupree and Bailee-Ann got loopy on some old-timer’s herbal remedy while the others had a talk with Beef.
He must have felt cornered. He must have been furious.
At around one, the party wound down, and Beef drove everyone back down the mountain in Bailee-Ann’s pickup truck. Beef dropped the others off. Then he took Patrick back to the gas station so that Patrick could finish stocking the napkins or whatever. But Beef himself didn’t turn in for the night.
Maybe he cruised