Coming Clean Read online

  “Man,” I said. We were at a T intersection at the end of the suburban area. If we went right, we’d head toward the downtown core. To the left was the highway. “So what are we going to do?”

  Adam rested his head on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. There’s going to be an investigation. As soon as the police start asking who people were getting drugs from, my name is going to come up. I guess that’s why Sly had it set up this way. He never talked to anyone about drugs. He never handed anything out or was seen with the money.”

  I looked out the window. Adam had been used. He knew it and I knew it, but neither of us were going to say it. Adam was the front. The one everyone knew.

  The one who had sold Mary Jane the drugs that killed her.

  “So what are we supposed to do?”

  “We can just leave,” Adam said. He looked to the left. It was almost six in the morning. My stomach felt filled with acid. Absolutely nothing was making sense.

  “Leave? And go where?”

  “I don’t know. We can figure something out.”

  “Just leave Mom? Leave town? Leave everything? No way.”

  “What other options do we have?” Adam asked.

  “What’s this ‘we’ stuff?” I said. “I never had anything to do with it.” I regretted saying that the second it escaped my mouth. Adam’s face dropped. He had never looked so alone.

  “Then hop out, man. Just go.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. I wondered how much time we had before Adam’s name started popping up all over the place. The investigation would be in full swing come morning.

  “Man, I’m an idiot,” Adam said.

  “The police will be looking for the dealer and the supplier,” I said. “You’re the small fry in all of this.”

  “I’m the front, Rob. That’s what you’re not getting here. I’m the guy people know. And…” He stopped. “And everyone knows I’m full of shit a lot of the time. If the police question me and I tell them the truth, they’ll have, like, fifty people who’ll say I’m a big talker. That I lie all the time. And Sly will be the first one to point the cops my way. He’s totally clean in all of this.”

  “Sly never once gave anyone anything?” I asked. Adam shook his head.

  “No, man, it was all me. He never even talked about drugs. What am I supposed to do?” I looked at the road that led to the highway. I could hop out, and Adam could drive away. He could be hundreds of miles from Resurrection Falls by the time the police came knocking at our door.

  He could just leave.

  Looking back at it now, I wonder what would have happened had I let him go. Not that it was up to me, really. But he was looking for a way out at that moment. He was looking for permission.

  And I made him stay.

  Chapter Seven

  It was Tuesday before the police landed on our doorstep. I’d been home from school for about an hour when it happened. I had an Xbox controller in my hand. Grand Theft Auto was paused on our television.

  A burly man in a long coat stood on the front porch.

  “Robert MacLean?” he said. A wiry mustache tickled his upper lip. He had no sideburns. In fact, he’d trimmed his hair up above his ear, thus producing negative sideburns.

  “Um, yeah?”

  “Detective Weir. Can I ask you a few questions?”

  “About what?”

  He pulled a pad and pencil out. “About the death of Mary Jane McNally. You obviously knew her, right? She was in your class? And you were at the club on the night of her death?”

  “We were in the same grade. Some of the same classes as well. I was DJing that night. My friend and I found her.”

  “What was your relationship with the deceased? You did know she was deceased, correct?”

  “I heard, yeah,” I said. “We were in a couple of the same classes. And then I found her at the club during the blackout.”

  Detective Weir looked around me. “Would you mind if I came in? Are your parents home?”

  “No, my mother’s at work. But, sure, okay, come in.” Adam was in his bedroom. His car was in the garage. I dropped the controller on the back of the couch and quickly shut the television off, feeling even more like a criminal suddenly. I led the detective to the kitchen and pulled a chair out for him.

  “So you saw her on the night of her death?” Weir asked as he sat down. I was suddenly conscious of the fact that our kitchen was a disaster. Plates and dishes all over the place. Towels on the floor. Splotches of sauces and juices that had been dropped and never cleaned.

  “I did. She was just lying there.”

  “Before you found her, I mean.”

  “Oh, yeah, that too,” I said. “I saw her on the dance floor.”

  The detective looked directly at me. “Did you sell or give Mary Jane any illegal narcotics?”

  I shook my head quickly. Not in an immediate denial but in surprise.

  “No, no way,” I said.

  “It has happened before that the DJ, one of the integral links in a club, is also one of the most proficient drug dealers.”

  “I’m not the regular DJ. I was just filling in.”

  He sat back in his chair. “How long have you been filling in?”

  “That was my first night.”

  “I see. And who is the regular DJ?”

  “DJ Sly,” I said. He nodded to this. I was getting the feeling he was asking questions he already knew the answers to.

  “What about your brother?” Detective Weir asked.

  “What about him?”

  He flipped open a little book. “Adam, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was at the club that night as well. What was his relationship with the deceased?”

  “You would have to ask him. I doubt he even knew her. We just found her and—”

  “Yeah, see,” Detective Weir interrupted, “that’s the weird thing. Back at the door, you said it was you and your friend who found her. But we have a written report from your brother. He was the one who carried the deceased out of the club.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure, but my friend Matt was there as well. That’s what I meant.”

  “Is your brother here?”

  “No,” I lied. “I haven’t seen him today.”

  “Does he have a job around here?”

  I stared at Detective Weir for a moment. Maybe a moment too long.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I had no idea what the detective knew, but I wasn’t about to tell him that my brother worked, in some capacity, at the club.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I’m not sure what he’s doing these days.”

  “What kind of work does he do?” Detective Weir asked.

  I paused again. I stared at the table and flicked a cluster of crumbs to the ground. “I don’t really know.”

  “You two not get along or something?” Detective Weir asked.

  “Yeah, sure we do. It’s just—”

  “But you don’t know where he works?”

  “I’m not sure. He’s had a few jobs recently, I guess.”

  “But you don’t know where he is or what he’s doing?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no.”

  Detective Weir slid his pad back into a pocket and straightened out his jacket.

  “It’s a bad thing to have happened,” he said, shaking his head. “And it didn’t need to. Listen, here’s the deal. I don’t really care who it was that sold the drugs to this girl. We know what happens at these clubs. It’s not like you all live on a different planet than us. But I’m tired of trying to bust these small-time guys. What I want to know is who is making this garbage. That and who is selling it in bulk. I want to shut those guys down. If I can do that, then all these small-time guys will just dry up and figure out something else to do with their limited intellect.” He sighed heavily. I couldn’t tell if it was all an act or not. “A girl died at that club Friday night. Fifteen years old, and she’s dead. You
understand?”

  “Sure,” I said. I thought about Mary Jane. About her high-top Converse sneakers. This sweater she would wear that fit her perfectly. The sound of her voice as she answered a question in history class.

  I could feel the tears coming.

  “And it shouldn’t have happened. The whole school’s busted up about this. I know. I’ve talked to a lot of people. The whole community wants this figured out. We all want to get the guy who’s been making this crap.”

  “Okay,” I said. A soft, end-of-day light was coming through the kitchen window.

  “Here’s my card. You hear anything, you give me a call. Your name will remain anonymous. No one but me will know it was you who called. You understand?”

  “Sure,” I said again. “But I really don’t know anything.” The back of my throat felt raw and scratchy. The detective got up and walked out of the kitchen.

  “Let your brother know I need to talk to him,” he said as he opened the door.

  “Why?” I said.

  He pushed at his mustache with his thumb and index finger. “I’m following up with everyone who was at the club that night. Your brother is a principal player here. Right?”

  “How so?”

  “Because he found her and brought her to the ambulance,” he said. He gave me a firm pat on the shoulder and turned toward his car.

  “Yeah. Right,” I said. “Okay.” I watched the cruiser pull away from the curb. Then I heard Adam’s bedroom door open. He was standing in the dim light of the hallway.

  “He gone?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What am I going to do, man?” We’d been waiting for the police to show for four days. I’d even grown a little optimistic that no one would ever arrive. That whatever trail there was between Mary Jane and Adam was too thin. But that obviously wasn’t the case.

  “They don’t really have anything on you,” I said.

  “Not yet,” Adam said. “But they soon will.”

  Chapter Eight

  On Thursday, Detective Weir was on my doorstep again. This time with an arrest warrant.

  “I need to talk to Adam, Rob,” he said by way of greeting.

  “I don’t know where he is,” I said. And I didn’t. He’d left Wednesday morning. He hadn’t said where he was going or if he would be back.

  “This has been issued for a reason,” Detective Weir said, handing me the arrest warrant. “I have come across some information linking your brother to the crime. Adam hasn’t called me. And now he’s disappeared.”

  “Not disappeared,” I said. “I mean, he might have been here this morning.”

  Detective Weir looked at me sadly.

  “If he comes in and talks, everything will be easier. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Then it was Friday night and I was in the DJ booth at The Disco. I was an hour into my set, and Sly still hadn’t made an appearance. It felt strange to be there. The strangeness permeated the building.

  For my part, it was hard to DJ. Every time I got the crowd going, I flashed back to finding Mary Jane against the wall. I almost felt that if I turned around, I would see her there again, slumped against the wall.

  I’d just put on John Selway’s remix of “New Heights” when someone grabbed my ankle. I looked down to find my brother reaching up from behind the DJ booth. He put his finger to his lips and pointed toward the side of the booth.

  I popped my headphones off and knelt down.

  “Come on,” Adam said.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Hit the fog machine.”

  “Okay,” I said. I reached up and shot a thick mist onto the dance floor.

  “Come on, hurry,” Adam said. I jumped off the edge of the booth and landed in the dense smoke.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “We have to get out of here.” We’d made it three steps onto the dance floor when the house lights went on and the club was filled with noise and motion.

  We snaked through the crowd to the chill room. “This way,” Adam said, opening a door that I had never noticed before. I followed him through to a short, dark hallway.

  “What’s going on, Adam?”

  “The police are raiding the club. It’s turn-out-your-pockets time.”

  “I thought they had interviewed everyone already.”

  “They want to catch people with pills on them. Then they can pressure people into finding out where they got them.”

  “There’s already a warrant out for you. Why did you come here?”

  “Because some of the people out there are going to roll on you too.” He opened a door and pulled me into a small, smelly room. There was garbage all over the place and a bit of snow and ice on the floor.

  “What? I had nothing to do with it.” Adam shut the door behind us.

  “Sly has put out the word that it was the two of us who were dealing in here. But it’s not just coming from him any longer. Everyone is repeating the same thing. MacLean brothers, MacLean brothers.”

  “What the hell? But…”

  “There’s no but here, Rob.” Adam opened a hatch in the wall. It was maybe three feet off the floor and big enough for a large garbage pail to be pushed through. A cloud of foul-smelling air rushed in. Adam stuck his head through the hole, then turned back to me.

  “Come on, you go first. I’ll hold it open for you.”

  “Go where first?” I said.

  “Into the Dumpster.”

  “What? I’m not going in there.” There was a banging behind us. Then someone said, “Is this a door?”

  “Those are the cops, Rob. If they bring us in for questioning, we won’t be able to prove anything.” I looked at my brother. He seemed really afraid. In the end, after all the lies and half-truths, I trusted him. I trusted that he would never lead me into something bad. And, though I’d never say it to him, I loved him. So I pulled myself through the little hatch and into the Dumpster.

  It was disgusting inside. The Dumpster had recently been emptied, but there were still things stuck to the sides and back. My foot landed squarely in what once might have been a meatball sub.

  I shuffled to a corner once I was inside, trying to keep as gross-free as possible. Adam came through a moment later and very slowly and gently let the door close behind him. “What’s in here?” someone on the other side of the hatch said. “Ugh, garbage room.” It was dark and cold in the Dumpster. But I didn’t dare make a sound. We heard the door to the garbage room shut. Adam turned around and raised himself up to look over the lip of the container.

  “I parked on Tenth. I don’t see any cops out this side.” He turned to me and then linked his fingers together low to the ground. “I’ll hoist you over. When you land, head to the bushes along the edge of the parking lot. There’s a path there to Tenth. Don’t look back, okay?”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t just talk to them?” I said.

  “They are here for us, Rob. If we go back inside, we’ll be taken in for questioning. They have at least one person’s word that it’s the two of us running a drug ring out of the club. By the end of the night, there’ll be a dozen more people willing to back that story up if it gets them out of trouble.”

  “But it isn’t true.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll explain everything once we’re in the car. Come on, hop out. I’ll be able to climb out. Just run and don’t look back.” I decided to trust my brother once again. Anyway, I was freezing and figured it would look pretty suspicious if I suddenly came crawling through the garbage hole.

  I put my foot on Adam’s clasped hands, and he hoisted me up to the lip of the container. I rolled over the edge and swung down. The moment my feet hit the ground, I started running and didn’t look back.

  Not even once.

  Chapter Nine

  Adam’s car was locked, so I ran around and hid behind it. My back pressed against the trunk, I sat breathing heavy clouds into a densely falling snow. My legs were t
witching, and I wished I’d thought to grab my coat before leaving.

  For some reason, as I was lying there, I started remembering this one time we, as a family, went to this cottage.

  It was one of those endlessly sunny August weekends. My brother was likely thirteen at the time, and at night he would tell me these tales about all the things he’d done or seen or was going to do. Even then, I could tell half of them were fantasy. But I let him talk. It seemed to make him happy to be able to just say things.

  As we were packing to leave, Adam started telling us all about this crazy fish he’d seen when he dove down deep into the lake. We were standing around the car, and Adam was there dripping wet. He started by saying he’d dove down something like twenty feet. That it was darker down there than he’d expected. But he’d been able to hold his breath for at least two minutes. And in that stillness, he’d seen a fish with giant whiskers and an extended tail and giant teeth. It had to be six or seven feet long and had looked right at him, he said. It had opened its mouth, and he’d been afraid it was going to swallow him whole.

  No one said anything.

  Our parents had been fighting. I’d been able to hear their raised voices inside the cabin. They had come outside separately, not speaking to one another. Not even looking at one another. Which was when Adam came up and started in on this story.

  My father finally pointed at my brother, looked at my mother and said, “And you need to put a stop to this shit.”

  Our dad moved out the next week, and a year later, he left the country to open up a scuba-diving business in Costa Rica.

  What I remember most from that day, though, was Adam saying “It’s true!” over and over again until he seemed to believe it himself.

  I heard heavy footfalls in the snow.

  “Rob,” Adam called. I struggled to get turned around and stand up. He yelled again, this time sounding panicked.

  “Right here,” I said.

  He put his key in the driver-side lock and opened the car. “Get in. Let’s go.”

  I ran around the side of the car and got in. It was almost as cold inside the car as it was outside. I wrapped my arms around myself. The wipers whisked away the bit of snow on the windshield.