Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

sweater. It was blood. Some of it was a bright red but a lot of it had dried the darker color of a sticky Cherry Coke. She’d fallen face down, eyes closed, head turned to one side. She must have cut her cheek when she fell, because blood streaked her sweater, her neck, her face. But then I saw that most of the blood was oozing out of the back part of her left arm, near the shoulder. It oozed like paint from a tube. I could see where her sweater was torn in a ragged cut.
    “This girl…”
    I had trouble speaking, and it came out like the croak of a frog.
    “… Duwayne, this girl’s been stabbed.”
    Duwayne’s eyes grew big. “Like, with a knife?”
    I could see the pulse of an artery in Amy Bedford’s white neck. Blood slid between the freckles. Her lips moved, and for a moment I thought I heard her voice, whispering to herself just the way she did in class.
    I felt dizzy, and I shut my eyes against the sun. When I opened them and the visible world readjusted into focus, I grabbed Duwayne’s arm.
    “See that house at the end of the road, Duwayne? Gray with red shutters? You see it?”
    “I see it.”
    “Get on your bike, dude. Ring the bell. Bang on the door. Tell them to call nine-one-one for an ambulance.”
    Duwayne gulped, and then he nodded. Jumping on his bike, he whirred off down the blacktop, all elbows, knees, and dark blur.
    I took off my jacket and slid it under Amy’s head. She wasn’t bleeding heavily, but I peeled off my T-shirt and tied it as tight as I could above her shoulder to make a kind of tourniquet. Her eyes were still closed, her lips moving. I heard her say, “Princess…”
    I put my hand on her forehead and it was hot. She opened her eyes, and she shifted her head a little. For a minute she stared at me without any expression.
    Then she lifted the edges of her lips as much as she could, into a smile. Maybe not even that. Maybe just the end of the pain for a few seconds, and that made a change that I took for a smile. I watched it fade back to pain. I kept my hand on her forehead.
    I heard the siren of an ambulance. I don’t know how much time had passed. All that time I never budged. I just bent there on my knees with my cut-up hand on Amy’s forehead, feeling the pulse beneath the skin. My knees were on pebbles and they hurt. But I wouldn’t have moved or gotten up or taken my hand away for anything in the world. I had to stay there.
    Duwayne showed up, back-lit by the sun. The people from the house hadn’t come with him. Duwayne had told them he thought someone had stabbed a girl laying by the side of the road. The people in the house made the phone call to 911 but they didn’t want to get more involved.
    The siren grew loud; then it wailed down, rumbled, coughed, and stopped, and two paramedics in white coats jumped out of an East Hampton Fire Department ambulance. “Step back, okay, son?”
    “Sir, where are you taking her?”
    “Southampton Hospital.”
    “Can I come?”
    “Are you a relative?”
    “No.”
    “No can do.”
    They always have rules, and the rules are always against you.
    I gave them Amy’s name. They asked if I knew where she lived, but I didn’t know. The ambulance took off, burning rubber. Its siren wailed, grew fainter, then faded into the silence of the morning. A few birds chirped.
    It was like being in a movie. A girl had been stabbed. I had found her on a back road. I knew the girl. Who had done it to her? And why? And where did it all go from there?

Chapter 5

    My mom put a hand to her mouth. She cried: “Billy… !”
    “It’s okay, Mom. It’s someone else’s blood.”
    My dad was in the den, working on a brief in defense of some New Jersey nursing home company that the government was alleging had cheated big-time on its taxes, but through an open window he heard my mom’s gasp. He strode out to the pool. He was calm — he was always calm. He was dressed in khaki shorts with a dozen pockets and a bright yellow biking shirt.
    In a