Strange Bedfellows Part 3. Кейси Майклс

he asked quietly, laying a hand on the boy’s knee. “Have the doctors checked you out? Are you sure you’re all right?”

      Jason nodded, still keeping his head down. “Dr. Howell checked me out a while ago. I’m just sore, where the seat belt grabbed at me, I guess. He gave me some muscle relaxant pills, or something like that. Becky’s okay, too. She—she was pretty upset. Crying and stuff. Screaming. But she’s okay. They’re just going to keep her overnight because she might have hit her head or something. The police said the air bag probably saved her.” He slowly raised his head, his eyes shining with tears. “I—I’m so sorry about the car, Dad. I know how much you loved it.”

      “The car,” Sean said hollowly, feeling his bottom lip beginning to tremble, feeling the prickle of tears behind his eyes. “Jase, I don’t give two damns about the car. Just as long as you’re all right. Do you understand what I’m saying? I love you, son. I love you so much.”

      The next thing Sean knew, a sobbing Jason was draped against him, holding him so tightly he could feel each of his fingertips pressing into his back. “I love you, too, Dad,” he gulped out against his father’s neck as Sean returned his embrace, holding his son as the two of them knelt on the floor, rocking him in his arms, letting him cry.

      After a few moments Sean felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Cassandra standing beside him, tears running down her cheeks as she smiled down at him. He knew his own cheeks were wet, and he didn’t care. All he cared about was that it seemed so right that Cassandra be here with him, with him and Jason. Now. When their world was upside-down. Because, thanks to Cassandra, maybe they had a chance to turn it upright once more.

      “Sean?” Cassandra inquired quietly. “When you have a moment, this officer would like to speak with you and Jason. He has to take his statement and wanted you to be here because Jase is only seventeen. Do you think Jason is up to it, or should we ask if this can wait until tomorrow morning?”

      Sean gave Jason a last hug, then helped him back into his chair and rose to his feet. “What do you say, Jase? Are you ready to tell the officer what you know?”

      Jason wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, then accepted the box of tissues Cassandra had found somewhere and offered to him. He avoided looking directly at Cassandra, at the officer, at his father. “There’s not much to say, Dad.”

      The policeman stepped forward, opening a notebook he’d been holding. “My partner has already spoken with your friend Becky, Jason,” he said kindly, “and she doesn’t remember much beyond a pair of headlights coming at the rear of the car a couple of times, the jolts, and then the squealing of the tires when you lost control of the vehicle. Maybe you can be of more help to us? We know the other vehicle was white, but that’s all we know so far.”

      “Jason?” Sean prompted when his son still said nothing. “Why was the driver after you? Had you cut him off or something? Upset him in some way?”

      “I—I don’t know,” Jason said, then looked up at the officer. “Maybe.” He ran his tongue around his lips. “Yeah. Maybe I did something to get him mad. White, huh? All I could see was headlights. Like Becky. You know, all those lights, and the rain and all? Can I please go home now?”

      Sean looked at the officer, who was already closing his notebook. “He’s pretty shaken up, don’t you think? I can bring him by the station tomorrow sometime, maybe in the afternoon? Around three, if that’s all right? By then he might have remembered something else.”

      “Yeah, that’ll be all right,” the officer said, then put a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Look, son, I know how it is. You don’t want to squeal on anybody, right? You might even think they’ll get off with a slap on the wrist and then come after you, right? Well, think about this, too. That little girl in there might have been killed tonight. You might have been killed. My partner and I, instead of standing here taking notes, might have been knocking on two doors, telling two sets of parents that their kids were smeared all over the street.”

      Jason looked at his father. “But I didn’t see anything. Honest.”

      “And this isn’t the first time this has happened, Jason,” the officer continued, just as if Jason hadn’t spoken, hadn’t denied any knowledge of who had run him down, caused his accident. “We’ve had two similar incidents in the past year, although this is the first time we’ve gotten so much as the white paint we found on the back of your dad’s car to give us something to go on. Son, you have to help us if you can. Help us now, before somebody else’s kids get killed.”

      “I—I don’t remember anything,” Jason repeated, and Sean could see the fear in his son’s eyes, hear it in his voice. “Honest, Dad. Why won’t anyone believe me? I didn’t see anything but the lights! I just want to go home, okay? I want to go home!”

      Cassandra gave out a small cry and pulled the weeping Jason to his feet, gathering him close as she walked him toward the door, hesitating only long enough to throw the officer, and Sean, a withering look over her shoulder. Clearly she felt that Jason had had enough for one night, and that it was time to take him home, feed him some warm milk and put him to bed.

      “I’ll have him at the station tomorrow at three, officer,” Sean said, shaking the man’s hand. “And, I promise you, he’ll be a lot more cooperative then.”

      “Good enough, sir,” the officer told him, reaching for his helmet and gloves, for he was clearly a motorcycle officer. “I gotta get back out there on my bike, anyway. Just let your wife baby him for a while, fuss over him the way women do, and then we’ll give it another try. He’s scared now, confused, but he knows something. I’d bet my badge on it.”

      Sean opened his mouth to tell the officer that Cassandra wasn’t his wife, or Jason’s mother. She was, of all things, his son’s guidance counselor. And a namby-pamby guidance counselor at that, whose methods he disagreed with, whose “all kids are good kids” theories made his teeth ache. But he didn’t bother explaining, because it didn’t matter. Not really.

      Did it?

      No. No, it didn’t. Because Jason needed her. He needed her.

      And they all needed to hear the truth.

      * * *

      Cassandra sat on the living room floor, a half dozen Burke Senior High School yearbooks spread out around her, a notepad on her knee as she gnawed on the end of a pencil. Absently, she scratched Festus behind his left ear as the cat rolled onto his back in ecstasy.

      There was something more than a little distasteful to her about thumbing through page after page of photographs of smiling young teens, looking for anyone who looked capable of running a car off the road and endangering two other young lives.

      But Jason knew something. Much as she’d like to deny it, she had seen it in his eyes. Seen the terrible knowledge there. Seen the fear. And she was certain his father had seen it, as well.