What was he doing? This was a waste of time. It wasn’t like he was going to find a notebook with the girl’s name, the name of the person who killed his son, and an address where he could find them. What he should do is go back and talk to that kid at the caterer’s. Squeeze the name of the guy who had the party out of him like an apple caught in a vise. Buddy Lee placed his hand on his forehead. The ice maker made a horrific sound before it dropped a load down the chute into the holding container. Buddy Lee thought it sounded like maracas. He took a step toward it. There was a notepad on the fridge attached with a magnet. Buddy Lee grabbed it. There was a doodle on the first page of the notepad. A fairly sophisticated drawing of a pair of shoes, then an arrow, then what he supposed was a piece of fruit followed by an exclamation point. At the bottom of the page there were a series of numbers, then a space and then another set of numbers and an exclamation point.
Buddy Lee studied the drawings. A part of him thought it was just what it looked like, a doodle. Maybe Isiah and Derek were joking around and one of them scrawled an amateur comic strip on their message pad. But his gut told him it was something more. The exclamation point made it seem important. Buddy Lee fanned the pad against his hand.
He tore the page off and put it in his front pocket. He trusted his gut but he didn’t always listen to it. That’s how he ended up taking two falls. He wasn’t a genius but he learned from his mistakes. Most of the time.
Ike stood for a long time in the doorway of the first room he came to. This was Isiah and Derek’s bedroom. This was where they slept together. Held each other through the night. Ike didn’t get it. How could Isiah feel the same way about Derek that Ike felt about Mya? Ike shook his head. If Isiah were here he would tell him there was nothing to get. Love is love. But Isiah wasn’t here. He was dead.
Ike stepped in the room and started to tear it apart. He pulled out the drawers in the nightstands and dumped them on the bed. They were filled with the usual hodgepodge of items that found their way into a nightstand. Fingernail file, eye drops, bandages, lube, and a huge collection of bar napkins. Ike picked up one. In the corner the word Garland’s was printed in cursive. Almost all the napkins were from Garland’s. Ike balled up the napkin and tossed it in the trash. He turned and went to the closet. There was a collection of hats on the top shelf. Baseball caps, fedoras, skullcaps, and a tam-o’-shanter. The closet was jam-packed with shirts and blazers hanging in color-coordinated order. Ike smiled. Isiah used to do the same thing with his sneakers as a kid. The smile faded.
Ike walked out of the bedroom and headed straight for Isiah’s office. The room was just as organized as the closet. A slim bookcase in the far-left corner had all the editions arranged in alphabetical order by title. In the far-right corner was a tall filing cabinet. In the center of the room was a clear Lucite desk. A computer was in the middle of the desk. A landline phone sat next to it like a relic in a museum. There was a composition notebook next to the phone. Ike flipped through it. There were notes written in Isiah’s precise handwriting. Most of it was gibberish to Ike. It was some sort of shorthand that only Isiah could decipher. The last entry was only one sentence.
“Does she know?”
Next to it Isiah had drawn a frowny face. Ike stared at the page. What the hell did that mean? Who was “she”？ Was she the girl from the party? Was she someone else not connected with that girl at all? Ike put the notebook back on the desk. How did the police do this shit? He didn’t know enough about Isiah’s life to make sense of anything in it.
Ike pushed a button on the phone and pulled up the call log. He’d seen a detective do it in a movie once. He scrolled through the numbers without any firm idea of what he was trying to find. He didn’t know Isiah’s friends, so the numbers were just a collection of digits. No one had called since March 24. That was the night it happened. As he scrolled, something jumped out at him. The day before the boys were shot, one number called eight times in a row. Ike pushed another button on the phone and checked the messages. A robotic voice announced there were twelve messages.
Ike pressed PLAY.
The majority of the messages were fairly innocuous. He was sure the cops had already done this, but it didn’t hurt to hear it for himself. The last message was left the day before the shooting. A breathless voice rumbled out of the speaker.
“Hey, it’s me. I changed my mind. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry. I’m scared. Bye.”
The machine cut itself off. Ike didn’t recognize the voice, but he thought it sounded like a woman. She wasn’t just scared. She sounded terrified. Ike checked the phone number. It had a local area code. Ike grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper off the desk and wrote the number down. As he was transcribing the number he couldn’t help thinking, What the hell had Derek gotten Isiah into?