“Yes, I’m not familiar with his high-school teachers.”
“Make sure to introduce me. Any students?”
She nodded and then stepped aside to lean against the wall.
Rafe headed for Mr. Chaney. Like Janie, he seemed miserable. Except while Janie had her arms crossed, as if shielding herself from pain, Mr. Chaney’s hands were buried deep in his pockets. He leaned against the wall looking like he wanted to disappear. Rafe was searching for the right words to say when Mr. Chaney beat him to the punch. “You find any new information?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Rafe responded easily.
“Last month, about this time,” Derek’s dad said, “I was sitting at my desk thinking maybe over the summer we’d rent a cabin, maybe up in Orchard, the whole family. Over some trout fishing, maybe I’d get Derek to open up.”
“And if Dad couldn’t, I would try.” Another man came to stand beside Mr. Chaney. The similarity was enough to give Rafe pause. “This is my oldest boy, Jimmy.”
Mr. Chaney would soon stop saying “oldest boy” because the phrase would remind him that at one time he’d had a youngest boy.
“You expecting any of Derek’s friends to stop by?” Rafe asked Jimmy.
“I think one or two will, with their parents. They’ll be the kids he was close to in junior high and the start of high school.”
“No one from recently?”
“We don’t know any of his current friends,” Mr. Chaney reminded him.
“None of his current friends,” Jimmy said. “They have better sense than to show their faces.”
“We appreciated you stopping by the station and going over mug shots.”
“I only recognized two,” Jimmy said. “Tommy Skinley, who hasn’t been around in a while, and Joshua Beardsley.”
The media hadn’t caught on that Tommy was involved and in the hospital. They would soon, though, since a whole church had witnessed his meltdown.
And as for Joshua Beardsley... When he gazed into the mirror, Justin Robbins gazed back.
“Dad,” Jimmy said suddenly, “go take care of Mom.”
Mrs. Chaney was standing next to a woman and boy. The boy was poised to bolt. The woman was shaking her head.
“Who’s the boy?” Rafe inquired.
“He used to be our next-door neighbor. From the time Derek was eight until about two years ago, they hung around a lot together. Then the family moved. Mom says they left because his dad got a better job and they could afford a better house. But, in reality, they moved so Billy would be away from my little brother.”
“Would Billy know any of Derek’s current friends?”
“No, if anything, Billy was probably secretly relieved to move.”
Before Rafe could ask anything else, a tall man in a black suit started herding people into a small room set up with folding chairs. As he went to fetch Janie, he glanced at the guest book. It was up to twenty names.