Read Online Buried Evidence by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg - Free Book Online Page B

Melrose Avenue. Only the outside lights were burning at Baskin-Robbins, so he assumed the clerk he had seen earlier had gone home. Where had his car been parked? When he had been there before, the parking lot had been empty. The clerk must be a teenager. That meant he could have ridden a bicycle to work, or one of his friends might have picked him up. Surely someone had discovered the injured boy by now and contacted the authorities.
    Driving slowly, John steered to the south side of the parking lot, where the accident had occurred. When he didn’t see anything, he let out a long sigh of relief. The man must have had the wind knocked out of him, then got up and went on his way. Placing his foot on the brakes, he rested his head against the back of the seat. His prayers had been answered. He swore he would never drink again. Now all he had to do was clear his mind. He shut his eyes, willing his body to stop trembling.
    Just then his cell phone rang.
    “Where are you?” Shana demanded, her voice shrill and grating.
    “I’m on my way home, honey.”
    “I’m so tired I’m about to pass out. All I wanted was something sweet—”
    John cut her off. “I didn’t go to Baskin and Robbins.”
    “Why not?”
    “It was too late by the time I left,” he lied. “I didn’t want to disappoint you, so I drove all the way over to Lucky’s. They didn’t have peanut butter and chocolate.”
    “Great,” Shana said facetiously. “You got ice cream, though,
    right?”
    “I got—” John was looking in his rearview mirror to see if it was safe to make a U-turn when he spotted the outline of the boy’s body on the ground. When the rear section of the Mustang had struck him, the boy must have fallen behind a large shrub. He’d been in such a panic before that he’d failed to notice. “I’ll talk to you when I get home,” he said, tossing the phone on the passenger seat.
    He circled the block, then slowed to a stop on the opposite side of the street. Pitiful cries filtered in through the open window. Not only had he verified that the incident had not been an alcohol-induced delusion, the victim had regained consciousness and appeared to be in terrible pain. Clutching his cell phone, he tried to force himself to call the police. He knew the boy’s tortured cries would haunt him the rest of his life.
    John ran his tongue over his lips. His mouth was parched, his head throbbing. Another stab of pain entered his chest. His legs began to ache. He felt paralyzed, almost as if he had been hit by a car instead of the boy. Scenes from his life played out in his mind. He saw his high school graduation, the day he’d married Lily. He saw himself holding his baby daughter only moments after her birth. The pleasant images abruptly disappeared, replaced with a menacing cloud of darkness.
    John’s shoulders shook. He wasn’t a callous individual. He knew right from wrong. All he asked was to be able to walk way from this one mistake. He would not only swear off booze, he’d work harder, sell more houses, never again interfere with Shana’s relationship with her mother. Outside of his arrest for drunk driving, he had never committed a criminal act, never purposely harmed another human being.
    His nose began running. Unable to find a tissue, he retrieveda napkin from the backseat and blew it. In three months his daughter would turn nineteen. For someone so young, she’d suffered more than her share of heartache. He stared at the clock on the dashboard. For over an hour he’d wrestled with his conscience. He tossed the napkin out the window. The battle was over. By not reporting the accident, he might be saving himself from a prison sentence, but he was also protecting his daughter. Seeing another car’s headlights approaching behind him, he stepped on the gas and headed home.

6
    R ichard Fowler parked his Lexus in the Ventura High School parking lot, opening the trunk and removing a fresh shirt encased in plastic from the cleaners.