Read Online As Dog Is My Witness by JEFFREY COHEN - Free Book Online

a
minute.”
    She looked surprised. “Kevin? Kevin’s not here.”
    “I assumed he was the one who bailed Justin out.”
    Mary shook her head. “I don’t know who bailed Justin
out. Justin said he’d never seen the man before.”
    That was a surprise. “A bondsman?”
    Mary nodded. “It seems that way. But I don’t know who
put up the collateral. Justin won’t tell me—he’s too afraid. And
Kevin hasn’t been back home since you saw him. He might have gone
back to Indiana. I don’t know what’s going on, Aaron.”
    At that point, what was going on took a back seat to
the noise from inside Justin Fowler’s bedroom. Tearing paper,
knocking on walls that could legitimately be described as
“banging,” and howls from someone—I assumed Justin—all came at
once. The sudden explosion of sound was startling, but Mary was
already heading for the door before I recovered. She reached it,
but found it locked.
    “Justin?”
    “GO AWAY!” The voice was that of a very angry
adolescent— loud, annoyed, and full of tension. More banging on the
wall came with each syllable: “GO (Bang!) A- (Bang!) WAY!
(Bang!)”
    “I’m sorry, Aaron,” she said. “If he doesn’t want to
talk to me , I don’t think he’ll want to talk to you.”
    I nodded, but asked softly, pointing to the door, “Do
you mind if I try?”
    She seemed surprised, but nodded. I walked to the
door and knocked softly. “Justin,” I said, “can I talk to you?”
    The noises stopped, and a quiet, puzzled voice came
through the door. “Who are you?”
    “I’m Aaron Tucker. I’m a reporter. Lori Shery sent
me.”
    A long soundless moment followed. Then the lock in
the bedroom door clicked, and the door opened slowly. Mary’s eyes
opened wide, and Justin Fowler stuck his head through the opening
in the doorway.
    It was a blond head, with a large forelock of hair
that he’d surely brush back with some regularity. The eyes, when
they made contact with mine—which wasn’t often—were blue and
piercing, and the mouth was thin and serious. Even smiling, Justin
Fowler would be smiling seriously—like Gregory Peck with a bleach
job and Asperger’s.
    “You’re pretty short,” he said, looking me over.
    “So I’ve been told. Can I come in?”
    He looked behind himself, into the room. “It’s pretty
messy,” he said.
    “So’s my whole house,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
    Justin thought about it, and still didn’t look me in
the eye. “Okay,” he said, and let his mother and me into the
room.
    He wasn’t kidding about the mess. The gun posters had
been ripped to shreds, and those that managed to hang onto the
walls were only shards of their former selves. Justin was mad, all
right, and probably at guns. For a young man with AS, having the
central focus in his life turn on him like this must have been
devastating.
    Justin seemed nervous, watching Mary as she assessed
the room. “Sorry, Mom,” he said, then looked away.
    “It’s okay, honey. I understand.” Mary turned away
from her son so he wouldn’t see her eyes moisten.
    I decided to step in. “Justin, can you tell me why
you’re here?”
    His brows met in the middle and his lips
pursed—Justin, it seems, had never heard such a stupid question
before. “I live here,” he said, voice full of condescension.
    “I mean, can you tell me how you got out of
jail?”
    Justin’s eyes clouded over and his voice got softer.
“I got bailed out,” he said.
    “Who bailed you out?”
    I didn’t even get the words out of my mouth—I was
still in the middle of “out”—when Justin began speaking. “Did you
know that the Booth deringer is currently on display at the Ford’s
Theatre National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.?”
    “Justin,” I said, hoping to use some of the tactics
that worked with Ethan, “look at my eyes.”
    But he didn’t. He kept walking around the room in a
circle and talking, louder by the second. “It is a .44-caliber
single-shot, muzzle-loading,