I sat there as I heard the faucet turn on in the kitchen.
It turned off.
Mr. Martin walked back into the living room. Without a word, he set a glass of water, only half full, on the coffee table in front of me.
“Thank you,” I said, even though there wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d drink anything he offered to me.
“Are you hot?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“You’re sweating.”
“Oh. Yeah, I got hot when I walked here.”
“Don’t you own a bicycle?”
He asked it like an innocent question, no trace of menace that I could detect. But I’d walked here because he might recognize my bicycle from that night.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m trying to get in shape.”
“You can get in shape with a bicycle.”
“I know. I heard walking’s better.”
Mr. Martin nodded. He sat down on a wooden rocking chair that faced the couch, though he did not rock. “How’s this going to work?”
I slid the pencil out of the metal spiral on my notebook. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions. It shouldn’t take very long.” My mouth went dry again, but I tried to hide it. I didn’t want him to urge me to take a drink of water.
“All right.”
“Your name is Gerald Martin, right?”
“Yes.”
I wrote it down. “Spelled just like it sounds?”
“Yes.”
“Where and when were you born?”
“Los Angeles, California, in 1926.”
“Why did you move to Fairbanks?”
“I like the cold. And I like that it’s far away from everything.”
I wrote that down as well. If he asked to look at my notebook, he’d see legitimate notes taken about our interview.
“What happened on the night that Todd Lester disappeared?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Martin. “I’ve never even met him.”
“I mean, what happened to you?”
“I got woken up around one-thirty by a knock at the door. A state trooper. A nice enough guy, considering that he was waking me up to accuse me of kidnapping a kid I’d never even met. It wasn’t like I had to get up at six to go to work or anything, right? I told him that I didn’t know anything about it, and that he was welcome to look around my house even though he didn’t have a search warrant. Are you getting this? Should I slow down?”
“I’m getting it,” I said, frantically scribbling.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to read this paper and find out that I’ve been misquoted.”
“You won’t be.”
“I’m trusting you.”
“Like I said, you’ll get to read it before I turn it in.”
“You live over in Gulfstream Acres, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure you ever told me your name.”
“I did. Curtis Black.”
“Oh, that’s right. Go on.”
“Did anything else happen that night?” I asked.
“Some more state troopers showed up. Searched my place. Left it a mess even though I specifically asked them to be respectful, since I was letting them do it without a warrant. They didn’t find anything, of course. Every once in a while they come back to ask me more questions and harass me some more. All my neighbors think I did it. And now I’ve got kids coming to interview me about it. I should’ve stayed in L.A.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three years.”
“I’m not here to interview you because I think you did it,” I assured him. “My interview is about what it’s like to be falsely accused.”
“You didn’t write down the three years,” Mr. Martin told me.
I wrote it down. “Why do they think it was you?”
“My neighbors? Because the cops keep showing up at my door to chat.”
“I meant the cops.”
“They don’t think it’s me. I’m just on their list of suspects. A very short list. Personally, I think it was his parents, but that’s off the record. You know what ‘off the record’ means, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“It means don’t put it in your paper.”
“I know. I won’t.”
“I try to keep to myself and make an honest living. I don’t bother anybody. The assholes at the end of the block have loud parties every Friday night, blasting the shittiest music you can imagine, crap that I wouldn’t force a dog to listen to, but I’m the creepy villain around here.”
“Do people say anything to you?”
“Would you come up and talk to me if you believed that I murdered some kids?”
“I guess not.”
Mr. Martin shook his head. “They don’t say anything. Yeah, a couple of guys at work tried to start some shit, but I shut that down real quick. Still, everybody looks at me. I know what they’re thinking. You know that I didn’t actually get arrested, right?”
“Yeah.”
“They didn’t even take me into the station. They’ve got nothing. Either somebody else took Todd Lester, or he ran away. He’s either dead or in Anchorage.”
“Okay.”
“You stopped writing again.”
“I thought we were still off the record.”
“Were you friends with Todd?”
“Yeah.”
“Close friends?”
“Yeah.”
“Best friends?”
I shrugged.
“We can go back on the record again,” he said.
“I think I’ve got what I need,” I told him. This had been a spectacularly bad idea. I honestly couldn’t even remember the many clever ways I’d planned to trap him in a lie. All I could think of now was that it would be in my best interest to get the hell out of his house as soon as possible.
“Excuse me?”
“This should do it.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes,” I said, standing up. “I’ve got enough.”
“No, no, no,” said Mr. Martin. “You didn’t interrupt me on my day off for a half-assed interview. You’re going to turn in an A-paper that we both can be proud of. Ask me another question.”
“It doesn’t have to be a very long paper.”
“Sit down and ask me another question.” He was able to convey the tone of shouting without actually raising his voice.
I sat back down on the couch. The moment my butt hit the cushion, I decided that I should’ve just fled for the door. Taken my chances that I could get out of the house before he grabbed me by the shirt collar and threw me to the floor.
I struggled to come up with something to ask. “Do you, uh, do you think you’ll stay around here?”
“Ask me a better question.”
My mind was completely blank. Was I in danger? Should I go for the gun?
“Why were you a suspect?” I asked, and then immediately regretted it.
“That’s a very good, interesting question.” Mr. Martin leaned forward in the rocking chair. “Somebody told the police that I was the one who did it. That’s all they have. An unreliable eyewitness.”