Read Online Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn - Free Book Online
Authors: Mary Downing Hahn
Tags: Suspense
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you just graduate from Eastern?" I say yes again, but I tense up, wondering when he's going to ask if I did it.
"Did you ever cheat on a test?" My heart speeds up because cheating might be a killer's trait. But I tell the truth, I say yes even though I want to lie and say I'd never do that. The lines on the chart shoot way up and way down. Does that mean the machine thinks I'm lying?
"Do you know Cheryl Miller?"
"Yes." The lines jiggle up and down even more than before, a bad sign for sure.
Then it comes. "Did you shoot Cheryl Miller and Barbara Josephine Boyd?" He speaks in the soft, sort of hypnotic voice he's used from the start.
It takes me a second to realize Barbara Josephine Boyd is Bobbi Jo. I'm really shaken up, so I take a deep breath and almost say yes because all my other answers have been yes. "No!" I say it louder than I mean to, and the needles jump and twitch and scribble wild crazy lines. Guilty lines, dark and jagged.
The man sighs and says, "Please don't lie, son. The machine knows you're not telling the truth."
I try to breathe normally, I try to relax. "I'm not lying. I didn't shoot them, I didn't." No matter how hard I try to control my voice, it rises. The needles go haywire, jumping and jiggling sharp peaks and valleys all over the roll of paper.
The man looks at me sadly as if I've let him down really bad. He shakes his head. He presses a buzzer. The cops come in.
The big mean one grabs me, twists my arm way up behind my back, manhandles me out of the room and down some steps, and locks me up. "Think about it for a while, you little son of a bitch," he says. "When I come back, you better be ready to confess. We know you did it."
"And here's the thing, Harold," the other one says. "We've got ways to make you talk." He pounds a fist into the palm of his other hand. No Mr. Nice Guy now.
They leave me in the cell. I hear them laughing as they go upstairs. "Sorry little piece of shit," one says.
And it's true. I am, that's all I am now. It's like I've lost myself somewhere. Nothing seems real. Not even me.
Hours pass. No food, nothing to drink. No cigarette. They come back and take me to the interrogation room. They ask the same questions over and over again. I give them the same answers. Sometimes they confuse me and I don't say what I mean to say.
They give me the lie detector test again. Same questions. Same crazy zigzag marks on the paper.
Then I'm in the cell and it's dark out. I lose track of time. I think I've been here a week, but when they finally let me go, it's only been forty-eight hours. They tell me my gun was in my closet just like I said. They say it wasn't the gun the killer used. They say I passed the lie detector test after all. I can go home. They act like it was just a game. No hard feelings, nobody hurt. Just a few questions, a little roughing up, nothing to worry about.
When my mother and father come for me, they act like they don't know me anymore. They're uncomfortable. They don't complain about the way the cops treated me, they don't seem to notice the bruises on my face.
Maybe they think I did it. I tell them I didn't, I tell them I didn't even know what happened until the cops told me.
They don't want to talk about it. My mother says maybe I should spend a few weeks at her brother's farm in West Virginia, a place I hate but which now seems better than Elmgrove.
Reporters surround my dad's car. They point cameras, blind me with flashbulbs, holler questions. And all the time I'm sitting in the back seat, trying to understand that Cheryl is dead. I will never see her again, never hear her voice, never kiss her.
The cops, my parents, my former friends, they all think I killed her. Me. Buddy Novak, the kid who's always blamed for everything. Cheating on tests, writing cuss words on buildings, loitering, causing trouble, being a bad influence, skipping school, speeding, drinking beer behind the gym. And now this. This. The one thing I haven't done. Would never
"Did you ever cheat on a test?" My heart speeds up because cheating might be a killer's trait. But I tell the truth, I say yes even though I want to lie and say I'd never do that. The lines on the chart shoot way up and way down. Does that mean the machine thinks I'm lying?
"Do you know Cheryl Miller?"
"Yes." The lines jiggle up and down even more than before, a bad sign for sure.
Then it comes. "Did you shoot Cheryl Miller and Barbara Josephine Boyd?" He speaks in the soft, sort of hypnotic voice he's used from the start.
It takes me a second to realize Barbara Josephine Boyd is Bobbi Jo. I'm really shaken up, so I take a deep breath and almost say yes because all my other answers have been yes. "No!" I say it louder than I mean to, and the needles jump and twitch and scribble wild crazy lines. Guilty lines, dark and jagged.
The man sighs and says, "Please don't lie, son. The machine knows you're not telling the truth."
I try to breathe normally, I try to relax. "I'm not lying. I didn't shoot them, I didn't." No matter how hard I try to control my voice, it rises. The needles go haywire, jumping and jiggling sharp peaks and valleys all over the roll of paper.
The man looks at me sadly as if I've let him down really bad. He shakes his head. He presses a buzzer. The cops come in.
The big mean one grabs me, twists my arm way up behind my back, manhandles me out of the room and down some steps, and locks me up. "Think about it for a while, you little son of a bitch," he says. "When I come back, you better be ready to confess. We know you did it."
"And here's the thing, Harold," the other one says. "We've got ways to make you talk." He pounds a fist into the palm of his other hand. No Mr. Nice Guy now.
They leave me in the cell. I hear them laughing as they go upstairs. "Sorry little piece of shit," one says.
And it's true. I am, that's all I am now. It's like I've lost myself somewhere. Nothing seems real. Not even me.
Hours pass. No food, nothing to drink. No cigarette. They come back and take me to the interrogation room. They ask the same questions over and over again. I give them the same answers. Sometimes they confuse me and I don't say what I mean to say.
They give me the lie detector test again. Same questions. Same crazy zigzag marks on the paper.
Then I'm in the cell and it's dark out. I lose track of time. I think I've been here a week, but when they finally let me go, it's only been forty-eight hours. They tell me my gun was in my closet just like I said. They say it wasn't the gun the killer used. They say I passed the lie detector test after all. I can go home. They act like it was just a game. No hard feelings, nobody hurt. Just a few questions, a little roughing up, nothing to worry about.
When my mother and father come for me, they act like they don't know me anymore. They're uncomfortable. They don't complain about the way the cops treated me, they don't seem to notice the bruises on my face.
Maybe they think I did it. I tell them I didn't, I tell them I didn't even know what happened until the cops told me.
They don't want to talk about it. My mother says maybe I should spend a few weeks at her brother's farm in West Virginia, a place I hate but which now seems better than Elmgrove.
Reporters surround my dad's car. They point cameras, blind me with flashbulbs, holler questions. And all the time I'm sitting in the back seat, trying to understand that Cheryl is dead. I will never see her again, never hear her voice, never kiss her.
The cops, my parents, my former friends, they all think I killed her. Me. Buddy Novak, the kid who's always blamed for everything. Cheating on tests, writing cuss words on buildings, loitering, causing trouble, being a bad influence, skipping school, speeding, drinking beer behind the gym. And now this. This. The one thing I haven't done. Would never
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