Read Online Vanished in the Night by Eileen Carr - Free Book Online Page B

anything, they were gone. I’ll always regret not stepping between them, not protecting Max from Osborne.” He shrugged. “I choked. The game was on and I didn’t even throw up a brick.”
    “Did you ever see Max again?” Zach asked. An unswept porch? He remembered some of the things he’d done as a teenager. The car he’d stolen from a neighbor’s driveway. The CD he’d shoplifted from a store.
    “He was back the next day, acting like nothing had happened. What else could he do to save face? He laughed it off.” Jackson turned away from Zach and Frank. “And I let him. I didn’t ask for more information, and Max sure as hell didn’t volunteer any.”
    “Did Osborne show up a lot?” Zach asked.
    Jackson shook his head.
    “What about the mother?” Frank asked, his head cocked to one side like a dog waiting for a treat.
    “Pretty much never.” Jackson turned back around from the sink to face them again, his face composed. “But really, what good is this now? What does it have to do with how he died?”
    “We’re trying to figure out where he may have gone after he ran away from the school. We were hoping that you might have some ideas about that.” It seemed completely possible that Max could have turned up on his coach’s doorstep, looking for help.
    “I never saw him after they transferred him up to Sierra.” Jackson’s forehead creased.
    “What about his teammates? Was there anybody he was especially close to?” A kid who’d learned to mistrust adults might be more likely to turn to another kid for help.
    Jackson thought for a moment. “Absolutely. Let me think for a minute. It was a long time ago, and names and faces tend to run together.”
    “We brought along a yearbook,” Zach said. “In case it might help.”
    “It would. It would help a lot.”
    Fifteen minutes later, Jackson had given them a list of five boys who were good friends of Max’s back in the day. He had no idea where any of them were now.
    One of his sons, the more solid one, poked his head into the kitchen. “Hey, Dad, what’s for dinner?”
    “Meatball subs. They’ll be ready in about five.”
    “Excellent,” the boy said and ducked back into the living room.
    “We’ll get out of your way, then.” Frank stood up, scraping the chair legs on the floor. “Thank you for your help.”
    Jackson took in a deep breath and blew it out. “I wish I could do more. I wish I had done more. It’s a shame. He was a good kid.”
    He saw them out, and as they walked down the sidewalk to the Crown Vic, Zach heard him call his sons in for dinner. “You think he’s righteous?” he asked Frank.
    “Yeah. He seemed on the up-and-up.”
    Zach had thought so, too. “What about the names? You think we should run ’em down tonight?”
    Frank looked at his watch. “I think they’ve been sitting for twenty years; another night won’t hurt.”
    “Okay if we run Veronica Osborne’s photo over to her at St. E’s on our way home?”
    Frank glanced at his watch. “Just barely. Sheila will be getting antsy. Tonight’s our ballroom dance class.”
    Zach’s eyebrows went up. “Ballroom dance?”
    Frank scratched his belly. “It’s very romantic. Sheila loves it. I spend two hours cha-chaing once a week and then I get laid without even taking her out to dinner. Plus it’s good exercise.”
    “Sounds like a win-win to me.”
    Frank pointed at him. “There are not too many of those in life, my boy. Pay attention. Grab every one of them that comes your way.”

6
Susan Tennant was a careful and precise woman. Paying attention to things was part of being a good nurse. You had to notice things that other people might not notice, see things that other people might not see. A slight bluish tone around the lips, or a slight dip in a blood test or in blood pressure—little details that would slide right by the average person could mean the difference between someone’s life and death.
    So Susan noticed the car idling down the