Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (22 page)

To make a very long story short, Billy and I were in some major hot water at school earlier this year that revolved around Billy’s cell phone. And since the investigating cop was Officer Borsch, my brain didn’t have much trouble connecting those dots.

“That was Officer Borsch?” I asked as we followed Billy across the grass.

“He said sergeant, but yeah.”

“What’s he want?”

“He said for us to meet in the northwest corner of the south parking structure, second level.” He hesitates. “Or maybe it was the southwest corner of the north?” He shakes his head. “No. It was the northwest of the south.”

“You’re sure?” I ask him.

“Yeah.”

“But … 
all
of us? He knows we’re with you?”

Billy nods. “He saw us from the street. He said he didn’t think we’d appreciate him coming up to us.”

“Wait,” Holly says. “The
south
parking structure? Aren’t we going the wrong way?”

We all stop, think, then do a one-eighty. And as we’re
marching along I remember my last conversation with Officer Borsch and an “Uh-oh” slips out of me.

Marissa looks at me. “You think we’re in trouble?”

I shake my head. “It’s not like we did anything wrong.” I rethink that a second. “Well, not really, anyway.”

“So why the uh-oh?” Marissa asks.

“Well … it probably wasn’t a good idea to call him Crisco Kid to his face.”

“Crisco Kid!” the four of them cry.

“Yeah.” I heave a sigh. “I hope this isn’t payback.”

It took us a little while to figure out which northwest corner Officer Borsch was talking about, seeing how the parking ramps wind around and around and the place does have a few nooks and crannies. Plus we got in a little argument about whether what we thought was north really was north or more east. But eventually we did spot him parked sideways across four spaces in a remote alcove near a stairwell.

He gets out of his squad car and says, “Is out here okay?”

I look around. “Like there’s any choice?”

“Well,” he says, “you could pile in.”

We all look at each other, and Billy cries, “I call shotgun!”

“Billy, no, wait!” I call after him. “There are five of us! We have backpacks and Casey and I have skateboards!”

“Just leave ’em outside!”

“Then why get inside?”

“ ’Cause it’s a paddy wagon!” He’s already by the passenger door. “Marissa!” he calls. “Share shotgun!”

“Not a good idea!” I tell him, but somehow he gets his way and we wind up making a ridiculous pile of stuff on the ground before getting into the car.

“So,” Officer Borsch says when the doors are closed, “I had a talk with that vampire of yours.”

My eyebrows go flying. “You did?”

“Yes.” He makes a
tsssssk
sound sucking on a tooth, then says, “I met with him at the Bosley-Moore Funeral Home and got some very interesting information.”

We all wait while he looks around at us, saying nothing.

Finally I flip my hands up and say, “Such as … ?”

“Such as, he and his longtime golfing buddy Gordon Wales—who also happens to be the manager of the cemetery—were driving by the cemetery on Halloween and noticed that the office floodlight was off. They went in to investigate and discovered that the office manager was already there because kids had been spotted causing mischief. The three of them split up to try and catch the culprits, but the kids got away.”

Marissa eeks out, “So he’s not a vampire?”

Officer Borsch pinches his beady eyes closed and takes a deep breath. “No, Marissa. His name is Sharif Baz. His friends call him Shark, not Vampire.”

Billy snorts and grumbles, “I didn’t think sharks had friends—just things they like to bite.”

Officer Borsch gives him an annoyed look.

“Well, dude!” Billy says. “Besides those teeth, he’s got the meanest eyes on anyone I’ve ever seen!”

Talk about shark attacks. Calling Officer Borsch
dude
was like dangling a cut-up leg in the water. Suddenly it’s like we’re trapped in a tank and Officer Borsch is after blood. His head jerks toward Billy and he snaps, “Maybe that’s because some punk kids battered his classic 1963 Chevy Impala. Maybe those same punk kids showed up at his place of work and compromised his ability to uphold privacy laws. Maybe
they’re
the ones who’ve been knocking over tombstones at the cemetery.”

“Whoa, wait, what?” I cry. “We didn’t knock over any tombstones!”

He turns his beady eyes on me.

“We didn’t!”

He looks around at the others, slurps on a tooth for a second, then says, “Sometimes when we’re with our friends having fun, we do things we know we shouldn’t. We give in to peer pressure. But it’s still no excuse. Desecrating a grave is a very serious offense.”

All of us say, “We didn’t push over any tombstones!”

“Well, somebody did.”

“Officer Borsch! There are a lot of somebodies in this world besides us!” Then I add, “Maybe it was El Zarape! Maybe he was ticked off because it was taking too long to find Ofelia Ortega’s grave and he needed to dig it up so he could steal her skull.”

First Officer Borsch just stares at me. Then his little eyes pinch down so far that I feel like I’m looking at a big, pasty Borsch-faced pie. Finally he says,
“What?”

So I have to go and explain everything about
that
all over again, and when I’m done, he just shakes his head and says, “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean it’s not true,” I tell him like I totally believe it, even though it still sounds crazy to me.

He scratches his temple. “Regardless, the office manager saw a pack of kids running through the graveyard, so it wasn’t this El Zarape character.”

Casey’s phone buzzes, and he shows me the text, which is from his mother:
Get home NOW
. “I’ve been summoned home,” he says to Officer Borsch. “Can I leave?”

Officer Borsch waves him off. “Yeah, go.”

At this point all of us want out of the tank, so Marissa says, “I really should go, too,” and Billy chimes in with, “Yeah, me too!” while Holly opens her door without even asking.

But since I’m in the middle of the backseat I’m the last one to reach a door, and before I can scramble out, Officer Borsch says, “You got a minute, Sammy?”

“Uh …”

“You want me to wait?” Holly asks, but I just shake my head and tell her, “Thanks for what you did at the mall.” Then I holler at Marissa, who’s walking off with Billy, “You were amazing, McKenze!”

She laughs and waves, and pretty soon it’s just me and the Borschman.

“Want to sit up front?” he asks.

“Nah, I’m good.”

He pulls a little face and says, “My neck might appreciate it.”

“Oh. Well, how about this?” and I slide over to the far side of the backseat.

He lets out a puffy-cheeked sigh. “What I was saying about peer pressure before?”

“What about it?”

“I understand that it’s a powerful force.”

“Wait—you still think we knocked over tombstones?”

One of his shoulders goes up like, yeah, maybe.

“Officer Borsch!”

“Look. It’s what got your friend Danny into trouble, all right?”

“Is that what he said?”

“I didn’t want to say that in front of your friends, especially that boyfriend of yours. But it’s important to me that you get this: Peer pressure can make good people do bad things.”

“Hey, it’s not like Danny—” And then an enormous lightbulb clicks on in my head. “Ohmygod—Heather wasn’t just there afterward? She was
part
of it?”

“Look, don’t run wild with this. I shouldn’t tell you any of this, all right? My point here is that I understand what peer pressure can drive kids to, and if you pushed over those tombstones, you’ll feel a lot better if you—”

“We didn’t push over any tombstones!”

He studies me. “You swear?”

“Officer Borsch! Yes! I swear!”

He lets out another puffy-cheeked breath. “Well, then, I wonder who did. And I wonder why the cemetery didn’t file a report.”

“Maybe you should ask the office manager. And while you’re at it, ask him to show you Ofelia Ortega’s grave.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know, Sammy. Someone digging up a grave to retrieve a skull? That seems so farfetched.”

I roll my eyes. “So does finding two skulls in a sack. But they came from
somewhere
. Would you just ask about it when you’re there?” And I don’t know if it’s the billion things that have happened in the last few days numbing my brain or what, but I’ve suddenly just had enough. Plus, I’m starving. So I say, “Look, can I go? I’ve got a mountain of homework and I … I need to get home.”

“Yeah, sure, fine,” he says like he’s got a billion things jumbling up
his
head.

So I get out and hurry home. I wasn’t really worried about Grams being worried, because I’d asked Hudson to tell her I’d be late as I flew out his door, but I was still glad to see her watching the evening news instead of sitting in the kitchen, eating by herself.

“Hi!” I whisper as I put down my skateboard and backpack. “Dinner smells delicious!”

“I’m glad you’re home.” She waves me into the living room. “There’s still no trace of those three men.”

“Really,” I say über-seriously. “No ransom notes?”

She shakes her head.

“No trail of blood?”

She shakes her head some more.

“No sinkhole on Main Street?”

She turns and looks at me. “You’re making fun of me?”

I plop down beside her on the couch. “Only a little.”

“Hrmph,” she says in her classic Grams way.

“All right, all right. So tell me about them. Maybe they’re all members of the Secret Order of Wife Ditchers?”

She hrmphs again, then says, “Not likely. One’s a wealthy businessman, one’s a suspected drug dealer, and one’s a doctor. There seems to be no connection.”

“Well, have they looked into the SOWD?”

Grams sighs. “Samantha. Honestly. Three men have gone missing and all you can do is joke about it?”

“You’re wasting time worrying about a drug dealer?”

“A
suspected
drug dealer. Maybe he’s been set up.” She looks at me. “Innocent until proven guilty, remember?”

I sit there with her a minute, then say, “So maybe they’re all part of a drug ring? One bankrolls it, one makes it, and one deals it?”

She looks at me like I’ve lost my very last marble. “You have such a wild imagination.”

“Maybe ’cause I’m starving?”

She laughs and shuts off the TV. “So let’s eat.”

Grams had made Parmesan salmon with green beans and wild rice and it
was
delicious. And as we ate I was actually thinking that maybe it was time to fill her in on the whole Danny–Heather–Preacher Man thing, but then the phone rings.

“I should probably get that,” Grams says, standing up. “It might be your mother.”

But it wasn’t my mother.

It was my mother’s boyfriend’s ex’s son.

Well, it was my mother’s
boyfriend’s
son, too, but since the boyfriend thought it was fine to leave his son in the
middle of a psycho minefield at his ex’s house, he didn’t count.

Not as far as I was concerned, anyway.

“Hey, Casey,” I said, after Grams handed off the phone. “Everything okay?”

“Not exactly.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I’ve only got a second. Mom’s confiscating my phone, so don’t call it. I’m deleting your number out of the call history.”

“But why is—”

“Can you meet me tomorrow after school?”

“Sure.”

“But not at the mall. It has to be someplace we won’t run into Heather or any of her friends.”

“How about the library?”

“No. Too public.”

My mind races through some possibilities, but what pops out of my mouth is, “How about the graveyard?”

“Perfect,” he says. “See you there.” Then he gets off the phone.

Grams, of course, wanted to know what was going on at the graveyard, so I ended up telling her the whole Danny-Heather drama after all. It took forever, too, because Grams always wants to know the
details
of the details.

I did manage to steer clear of El Zarape and the skulls and the other stuff that happened on Halloween—not just because I thought she’d have a total heart attack over it, but also because I had homework to do and I was so worn out from talking about Heather and Danny that I just didn’t want to open that can of worms.

Or, you know, coffin of maggots.

Anyway, I was completely beat by the time I hit the couch, so I should have slept great, but instead my mind spent the whole night trying to escape things. First a squad car’s chasing me with its lights flashing and I can’t figure out why it’s after me until I look down and see that I have a can of Crisco shortening in my hand. Then I hear “Stop, thief!” and there’s TJ pointing at me from outside of Maynard’s Market.

I drop the can and run through streets and alleys trying to escape, and when I finally check behind me, a big
laughing
skull
is after me. It’s lit up like a jack-o’-lantern, and it’s flying toward me so fast that white smoke is streaming out of its sockets.