Killer's Cousin Read Online Free PDF Page A

known Emily always, of course—she was Greg’s sister—but that summer … well. I’d wondered casually when she would get around to telling him. Or if he would ever notice on his own. Greg was ten months older than Emily, but that summer he had begun to seem like the younger sibling.
    You were
my
friend first
, he said to me later. Like a spoiled child.
    I wrenched my mind from a picture of Greg’s hate- and despair-filled face the last time I had seen him. In the courtroom, sitting next to his parents, listening as I was acquitted of killing his sister. Maybe he called me jealous—obsessive—violent—because that was how he felt. I don’t know.
    On the stand, his hands shook.
    I pushed away my cereal. It was time to leave.
    I went downstairs quietly, half expecting to find the first-day-of-school rituals being played out with Lily. But Lily’s bedroom door was closed and I remembered that her school didn’t begin until the following Monday. Maybe her parents would be talking to each other by then.
    Vic had given me directions from North Cambridge to the Charles River, where St. Joan’s was, and I drove there easily enough, parking in the small student lot. I got out of my car and watched my new classmates pouroff a city bus and amble toward the stretch of buildings. At my old school, in the suburbs of Baltimore, most of the seniors had driven. It didn’t look to be that way here. Should I ask Vic about bus routes tonight? Even the thought depressed me. As long as I had my car, I had the illusion of an easy escape. Anyway, there was no sense trying to fit in.
    I had expected to feel lonely, but I didn’t. I felt detached.
    I walked past idle clumps of talking kids and went through the main doors of the school. The packet I’d been mailed said to report to the cafeteria. I did that. I stood in line before a table marked T THROUGH Z , and waited my turn, watching, listening to the hubbub around me. Finally I got to the front of the line. When I said my name, the woman looked up at me, something she hadn’t done with the kids before me. But her hands riffled automatically through the box and whipped out a piece of paper. “Here you go, Mr. Yaffe.” I might have imagined the emphasis on my name.
    â€œThanks,” I said politely, and turned away.
    I reported to another table and got my free St. Joan’s T-shirt. It had white lettering on a dark pink background. For a few seconds I thought about advising Dr. Walpole that she’d have more success recruiting boys if the school colors changed. Ha. Like I cared.
    There were tables for clubs and activities. When I saw the one for cross-country, my stomach tightened. But I walked up, nodded to the girl behind the table, and signed my name to a list. And then, as I turned away, I saw the skinhead.
    He was easily six and a half feet tall, and thin as a flagpole. He wore heavy laceless combat boots without socks, camouflage shorts, and the pink, glaringly new St. Joan’s T-shirt. His white head bobbed precariously on a reedlike neck as his watery blue eyes scanned the room. Briefly, as if feeling my gaze, his eyes met mine and then slid down to the schedule clutched between bony fingers.
    He stood alone in the cafeteria. The students parted smoothly before him and rejoined behind, as if he were Moses at the Red Sea.
    I turned back to the cross-country table and said to the girl, “Excuse me, but who is that?”
    She followed my gaze and her mouth twisted a little. “Oh. Frank Delgado.”
    The fact was, you didn’t see a lot of guys my age who shaved their heads. When you did, they didn’t wear combat gear. Unless …
    â€œIs he …” I paused, not certain whether I wanted to say it. But the girl caught my drift and finished for me.
    â€œâ€¦ really a skinhead?” I nodded, and she shrugged. “Who knows? He’s a weirdo, that’s for sure. New last