Blood Trail Read Online Free PDF Page A

…”
    â€œWho would want to kill Aaron? I mean …”
    â€œâ€¦ if there was somebody in there and he walked in on them … but why …”
    â€œâ€¦ got to be a psycho who came in from the interstate or something.”
    â€œâ€¦ blood all over the place. They say his head was almost cut off.”
    â€œâ€¦ thinks Nathan did it.”
    I went cold. And I guess I wasn’t the only one, because there was this frozen silence. Then Morgan added, “I didn’t say he did it! I just said my mom thinks he did.”
    Some guy growled, “Your mom’s a stupid bitch, then.”
    â€œThank you. I’ll tell her you said so.”
    A bunch of kids started talking at once, mostly saying Nathan couldn’t have done it. Like, it had to be a stranger, not somebody we knew. But one of the guys on the debate team was loudest. “Anyone who thinks Nathan did it ought to be hung by the ears!”
    Morgan said, “Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. What if Nathan, like, lost it—”
    Like listening to a stranger I heard myself say, “For God’s sake, Morgan, Aaron was strong as a Mack truck, and Nathan was smaller. Is, I mean. He weighs less. Why would Aaron let him—”
    â€œI don’t know!” Morgan glared back at me like she was about to cry. “I don’t know what happened, I’m just saying—”
    â€œWhy don’t you just shut up?” I turned away.
    â€œHey, Jeremy,” some girl called, “we’re going to get some flowers. Want to come?”
    It wasn’t like I’d walked all the way to school to talk to some shrink. I did it because I wanted to be with my friends and the other kids. So sure, no problem, I went along with a bunch of girls to the farm market and helped pay for about six kinds of flowers and then we all went to Aaron’s place. I sat in the middle of the backseat feeling really weird as we drove into my development. The girls were busy making the flowers into a bouquet for each of us. Fine, good, whatever. Girls were good at this kind of thing, and I was not. I wasn’t worth a damn at anything. I could have saved Aaron, and I should have, and now he was dead and I didn’t know what to do.
    â€œThere,” somebody said in a whisper, and we pulled up near Aaron’s house.
    It was like a snowplow had gone along the road and left a big drift in front of the Gingrich place, except it wasn’t snow; it was flowers. All along the street and the edge of the lawn under the yellow police tape, bunches of flowers four feet deep, mostly white. Even before I got out of the car, I could smell them like some woman had put on too much perfume. After I laid my bouquet down, I stood there looking at all of them. All those flowers, and notes people had left to tell the Gingrich family they were praying for them, and a cake in the shape of a football, and some real footballs lying in the flowers like oversize brown Easter eggs. And some white wooden crosses, even though Aaron never gave a doo-dah-day about religion. And big posters that said AARON, WE’LL MISS YOU, AARON, WE LOVE YOU .
    It was all so useless. So stupid. Like me.
    â€œWe ought to take a photo for the yearbook,” one of the girls said.
    Like that would do any good? I walked away from them, and now I didn’t even feel like going back to the school. I was about to walk home when I heard the house door open. I looked up and the detective who had taken me home last night was coming out, lugging a big white plastic bag. He called, “Jeremy, wait,” and walked down the driveway to talk with me.
    â€œHow you doing?” he asked.
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œNo.”
    He smiled a little. “You going to get some counseling?”
    â€œNo.” What was the use? I changed the subject. “What’s that?” I asked, looking at the bag.
    â€œCarpet sample for