Mickey’s block was barricaded off. Cops everywhere. Lights flashing like it was a war zone.
A stab of dread. The cops had found us. At first it was just fear. This whole mess was going to be exposed. I deserved it. To have gotten involved in something so stupid.
Then it wasn’t just fear. It was more like revulsion. Some of the flashing lights were EMS vans.
And they were right in front of Mickey’s house.
Chapter 16
I JUMPED OUT of the Bonneville and pushed my way to the front of the crowd. No way this could be happening again. No way, no way.
I edged up to some old black guy in a janitor’s uniform. Never even had to get the words out of my mouth.
“Some kind of mass-a-cree in that house over there.” He was shaking his head. “Bunch a white folk. Woman, too.”
Everybody was staring at Mickey’s house.
Now it was as if I were having a full-out heart attack. Everything in my chest was so tight that I couldn’t breathe. I stood in the semidarkness with my lips quivering and tears sliding down my cheeks. They had been alive. Dee had told me to come back. Mickey and Barney and Bobby and Dee. How could they be dead now? It was like some terrifying dream that you wake up from, and it isn’t real.
But this was real. I was staring at the yellow house and all those police and EMS people. Tell me this isn’t real!
I pushed forward, just in time to see the front door open. Medical techs appeared. The crowd started to murmur. They were wheeling out the gurneys.
One of the body covers was open. “White boy,” somebody said.
I saw the curly red hair. Mickey.
Watching him being wheeled toward the morgue van, I flashed back twenty years. Mickey always used to punch me in the back at school. His twisted way of saying hello. I never saw it coming.