“Buy cars when we turn sixteen,” says Graham. “Well, Markey wanted to buy a car. A Mustang. Rugburn—”
“Who?”
“Thomas Becker. I call him Rugburn. He wanted like a Ford Escape or some other small SUV. And I wanted a pickup. Kind of like what you got. Sweet ride.”
“Yeah,” said Clay. “Are you the one who drove it away from the bridge?”
Graham looks away again and nods.
“Thanks for not banging it up.”
Graham shrugs, reluctant to take the compliment.
“Which one of you picked up the earring from the ground?”
Graham exhales as if it’s a stalling tactic. As if he won’t have to take another breath for half an hour. But he does take another breath and says, “Me.”
“Was that little back thing on it when you found it? The pink clasp?”
Graham shakes his head. “No. But near it. Like Teddy took it off fast and dropped it with the other stuff.”
“A hoodie, a saw, a glove, and an earring… That’s a weird four things to find together. And I assume once you saw the earring, you thought it might be Teddy’s.”
Graham nods. “Yeah…”
“Did you think he might be nearby? Did you call out to him or anything like that?”
Graham bites his lower lip and shakes his head.
“Did you look around for him?”
“No. We just wanted to get out of there with the earring.”
Clay nods as if this makes sense. “Any other details you remember?”
“Like what?”
“Were the hoodie and glove dirty? Were they wet? Did they have any kind of odor?”
Graham shakes his head, but then stops and says, “There is one thing that was kind of odd. When I knelt down to pick up the earring, the hoodie smelled like smoke. Like it’d been hangingaround a campfire or something. It wasn’t exactly that kind of smell but it was like it, do you know what I mean?”
“Not really,” says Clay. “Are you saying the hoodie smelled like woodsmoke?”
Graham thinks about this. “Maybe…” he says. “Kind of like that but not that.”
“Like car exhaust?” says Clay.
“Maybe…” says Graham.
“What did the glove look like?”
“It was a work glove.”
“What color?”
“Brown leather…” Graham thinks for a few more seconds, then adds, “Yeah, pretty sure it was brown. So what’s the deal here? Am I under arrest or what?”
CHAPTER 26
