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“No way. I’m not throwing him in that pit never to be found and never given a proper funeral.”
    â€œA proper funeral?” Adrian asked, flashing Deak a hateful look.
    â€œLook, what if we go back on the hill and come running down behind the playground and say we found Petey up there and he was already dead?” Deak offered. “Then someone could go up and get him and he wouldn’t have to lie up there in the weeds in the heat with all the bugs.”
    â€œOh, for the love of Christ,” Adrian groaned.
    Pepper hopped off the ledge and said, “Look, first of all, the heat and bugs aren’t bothering Petey, and why in hell do we need a plan?” He looked around at all of us. “Seriously? Why? This is very simple. Listen to me. Tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe a week from now, someone is going to walk up to you and ask, ‘Hey, did you hear about Petey Sanchez?’ When that happens, you say, ‘No. What?’ They’ll say, ‘He’s dead.’ You say, ‘No shit, really? How?’ That’s it. That’s all we have to say. Game over.”
    â€œOnce they find the body the cops will start an investigation. What if they ask us questions?” Deak asked.
    â€œSo what if they do? It’s the same routine,” Pepper said, his voice climbing as his patience with Deak ran short. “If the cops ask you if you’ve seen Petey in the last week, you say no, not that you recall. If they ask if you have any idea who might have killed him, you say not a clue. If they ask if we were up on Chestnut Ridge, we say no. It wasfoggy as hell this morning. No one saw us walk up there. We were a mile from the Postalakis house. They didn’t see us.” He pointed at Deak, then me. “Did either of you guys tell anyone we were going up on Chestnut Ridge?”
    â€œNo,” Deak said. I shook my head.
    â€œWell, there you have it,” Pepper said. “We met at the elementary school and walked down here. We spent the morning hunting for arrowheads. Period. Let’s not make this more complicated than it needs to be. We keep our mouths shut, and when someone asks about Petey Sanchez, we don’t know a damn thing.”
    He was right. If no one could put us on Chestnut Ridge and we kept our mouths shut, there was nothing to fear.
    â€œIf we get caught, we’ll all go to juvenile hall,” Adrian said.
    I nodded. I wasn’t sure that was true, but I was willing to let it hang there for Deak’s benefit. It was a little cruel, but necessary. Deak Coultas was a great friend and a very caring kid. He had a kind word for everyone. In the heat of a basketball game, he would be the first one to extend a hand and help a fallen opponent back to his feet. He was the apotheosis of a parent’s perfect child. The fact that he had been witness to a murder and part of the cover-up was going to be particularly rough on him.
    â€œI just think we should tell someone,” Deak said. “It bothers me that he’s dead and his family doesn’t even know.”
    I said, “Deak, let me ask you this: What good is telling someone going to do besides clearing your conscience? If Adrian gets nailed, we do, too. Adrian threw the rock, but we share in the blame because we didn’t stop him. We let the retarded kid die. And let’s remember this: We didn’t start it. Petey was the one who started it. He headbutted Adrian and clubbed him with a tree limb. Adrian was trying to protect us.”
    We all looked at Deak, the obvious weak link in the chain. “I got it,” he said.
    â€œAre we in agreement?” Pepper asked.
    Deak and I both nodded. Deak, I knew, believed he was failing in the eyes of God and had just committed his soul to eternal damnation. Pepper couldn’t be bothered. He was probably wondering how much Fats Pennington was going to give them for the arrowheads andthe maul. He was concerned for his