Page 75 of Locke 2

“You know they shed exactly two weeks ago?”

“That’s when the weather turned.”

“You were here two weeks ago?”

Jem’s vein throbbed in his neck. “Look, these yard guys didn’t clean up the leaves and the other houses had no leaves on their lawns.”

“Cheap labour.”

Jem itched at his chest. “Locke, tell Conor this is something to look into.”

Locke detached a long time ago. His dead eyes settled on Conor for a couple beats too long. Conor’s lips flinched, and I wondered perhaps if he was annoying Jem on purpose. “Jem’s not wrong. We’ll keep all avenues open. I’ll have the companywho went around doing yard work looked into. Compare all the workers to that face on the wall.”

Jem smirked at Conor. “We can’t leave any leaves unturned.”

“Stones,” Conor whispered. “It’s stones, Jem.”

Ignoring him, Jem looked at me, sitting quietly on the armchair. “Was there anything out of the ordinary about the boy by the end?”

“Like what?”

Jem shrugged. “Did he act differently?”

“No, he was the same. Like I said, he was quiet and detached.”

Locke’s eyes caught mine. “Any absences?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but it was way earlier in the month.”

“Why was he absent?”

“There was a nasty flu going around. A bunch of kids didn’t show up that week. Other than that, he never missed a day.”

“We want someone to back that up,” Jem said. “Maybe contact the school.”

My words fell out of my mouth dry and accusatory. “Shouldn’t be an issue for you, since you and Kayla got so close.”

Jem’s face didn’t crack as he looked back at me. “We sure did.”

“Who’s Kayla?” Conor asked.

“The school secretary,” I answered.

“Sweet girl,” Jem added. “I can get her to talk.”

I swallowed back a snort. “Yeah, sure.”

Again, no humour or even a jab from Jem as he continued. I watched him intently, noticing how invested he appeared now in finding Lenny. A far cry from his earlier accusation that I’d used the boy as an excuse to lure Locke. Even his voice changed, turned deeper, more introspective. Something in him poked through. A surprising sort of desperation to learn everything about Lenny.

That was when I caught it.

The slight tremble in his fingers that he tried to hide by crossing his arms tightly across his wide chest. He avoided my eye like the plague, but not this time. He glanced at me quickly, and our eyes locked but didn’t hold. I looked away first because I saw something in his gaze that startled me.

Fear.

They resumed, and I stopped talking. At some point, Jem asked to see the picture of the face again. Locke handed him the phone, and I watched as it went from Jem to Conor. Even hard as nails, they appeared disturbed.

“You really think he’d have drawn the dude that took him?” Conor wondered quietly.

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