Die Job(48)

“My car’s just over there,” Mark said with a nod toward a blue Mustang parked outside the fence. “We could sit there if you want, out of the wind.”

“Sounds good.”

As we headed toward the car, he asked, “What happened to your face?” His hand brushed the air around his own cheek.

“Swimming accident.” I didn’t want to go into it. “How are you holding up? Everyone says you and Braden were best friends.”

“It’s hard,” Mark said. Pulling off his helmet, he tossed his hair out of his eyes with a flip of his head. “I just can’t believe he’s gone. At practice yesterday, Lonnie would run the pattern and turn, waiting for me to throw to him, but it just wasn’t the same. Every time I hit Lonnie with a pass, it reminded me that Braden’s gone. Dead. It was like finding out he’s dead over and over again, you know? Before, I was really pumped about this season, looking forward to the playoffs. Now . . .” He shrugged. “I’m just kinda going through the motions. I’m thinking about quitting.”

He beeped open the car’s locks and we climbed in. The interior was immaculate and smelled vaguely of pine. A sleeve on the visor held a selection of CDs; other than that, the car looked like it had just come off the showroom floor. “She was a present from my folks,” Mark said self-consciously, smoothing a hand along the dashboard. “When I got my appointment to the Naval Academy.”

Whatever happened to giving a kid a suitcase for a graduation present? “What’s Coach Peet think? About you leaving the team?”

“That I should stick with it. My backup’s just a freshman. He’s good, but Coach would rather go with a known quantity.”

I felt for Mark, but I wasn’t qualified to advise him on his football dilemma. “Look, Mark, a couple of people have told me Braden was participating in some sort of drug study. Do you know anything about that?”

“The Relamin study? What about it?” He looked startled, then uneasy, bringing his thumb to his mouth to chew on his cuticle.

“What is it? When did he start with the study?”

Mark turned his head away to stare out the window. “It’s a new antidepressant. It’s supposed to work differently—better than the serotonin re-uptake inhibitors—but I don’t really understand the chemistry behind it.”

Sero-what? I quickly decided I didn’t need to understand how it worked, either. “Did you see any changes in Mark after he started the study?”

He thought for a moment. “Nah. Not really. He hadn’t been through a major depressive episode in quite a while, at least not that I knew about. And I don’t think I would’ve missed it. We spent a lot of time together. He could have been receiving the placebo anyway, in which case—obviously—he wouldn’t have side effects.”

It wasn’t obvious to me. “What do you mean?”

“In drug studies, there’s always a control group that receives a placebo instead of the new medication. You don’t know which group you’re in, so you might be getting the new drug, or you might just be getting a sugar pill.” His brows twitched together with a hint of suspicion. “Why are you asking about Relamin? Do you know something about it? Have you heard something?”

“Nothing. I was wondering about possible side effects, that’s all.”

He seemed to lose interest. “Dr. Solomon would know. But she probably won’t tell you. These drug studies are very hush-hush; at least, that’s what Braden said.”

“Dr. Solomon?”

“Yeah. She’s the one running the study. You met her—she was at the ghost hunt.”

The short woman with the widow’s peak. A chill trickled down my spine. Was it mere coincidence that she was at Rothmere the night Braden fell? I bit my lip. I was letting Mom’s theory color my thinking; of course it was coincidence. I changed the subject, sensing that Mark was about to bail on me by the way his hand rested on the door handle. “Look, can you think of anyone who hated Braden or who might’ve wanted to hurt him?”

Mark was shaking his head before I finished. “No. Everyone liked Braden.”

“Even Lonnie?”

He paused and began gnawing on his cuticle again. “Oh, Lonnie’s okay. He was pissed at Braden after his brother got sent to juvie, but he’s okay with Braden now.”

Hm. Clearly, Mark wasn’t going to rat out a teammate, or probably anyone else. The culture of “don’t tattle” was alive and well in high school, even with a murderer on the loose. I tried to squelch my irritation; it must be incredibly hard to believe that someone you knew, someone who kind of was you—a high school senior looking forward to graduation and maybe college, who played ball and struggled with calculus tests—could kill someone. “He told Rachel that there was some situation he was dealing with, or aware of, and he was debating whether or not to ‘intervene.’ That’s the word he used. Do you know what he was talking about?”