Too Late

            It was another cool and breezy fall afternoon in Catsville. Riverside Park was filled with the usual people. There were the parents pushing their children on swings, or catching them at the bottom of a slide. As for my friends and I, we were playing our usual football games. I had sat down by the benches to catch my breath. Only several short moments had gone by, and before I could even enjoy the sight of the park my phone rang it was Danny. I picked up the phone, “Hello?”

            “Blake, I’ve got some bad news,” Danny responded with a cautious tone in his voice. “I just heard Ricky was murdered last night.”

            “What?”

            He paused. Almost not being able to say it again, “Ricky’s dead.”

            I saw nothing but darkness. For a moment I couldn’t even heard what Danny was saying anymore. Everything around me turned into a blur. I couldn’t even feel my own body. I just couldn’t believe it. My best friend was dead. He told me the police didn’t have a single lead and were not going to take any serious action until they had a solid lead on something. When Danny started describing how the police found Ricky, I knew it wasn’t just a random homicide.

            He was found dead on his bathroom floor, two shots in the back. Nothing was taken from the house. I was desperate to take matters into my own hands. I didn’t know where to start. I had nothing. He ran track. He always met up with his girlfriend after practice. I could start there.

            I could not process any of the words that any of my teachers were saying during school. I could not solve the simplest math problems or spell third grade words. All I could think about was figuring out how Ricky died. Or why would anyone want him dead. It must’ve been an accident. The person who killed him must have not known him because there was no one that could possibly hate him. He had good grades, got along with everyone. I needed to get my mind off this for a little bit. I couldn’t go around thinking about this non-stop. Just as I decided to start taking noted in class, I saw through the open door Alexis, his girlfriend, walk by in the hallway. I had to take this chance to talk to her, “Ms. Bailey,” I said as I raised my hand, “may I go to the bathroom?”
            “Be quick,” she responded, rolling her eyes.

            I had to get out of the classroom if I wanted to still see her in the hallway.

I tried not to run out of the classroom as soon I stepped outside I saw she was caught up at her locker down the hall.

            “Hey Alexis,” I said politely.

            “Oh hey, Blake, what’s up?” she said with a calm, almost joyful tone.

            I tired to be gentle with the words I said. “If you don’t mind…I hope its okay…if I could talk to you about Rick?”

            Then again with the relaxed tone in her voice, “Um, yeah that’s fine. I don’t mind at all. When would you want to talk?”

            “Want to just meet me in the park at 4:00 after school today?”

            “Sure, I’ll see you then.”

            Now I had another reason to not concentrate during class. What was I going to ask Alexis? Did she know who killed Ricky? Maybe it was a mistake to approach her about this. She could still be hurt from what happened. But she seemed perfectly fine when I saw her. She was probably just covering up her feelings. She’ll open up when I talk to her after school. Then I started to notice that every several minutes Keith kept glancing over at me. He was Ricky’s teammate on the track team. Could he possibly be involved with all of this?

            The bell rang. School was over. I had to go talk to Alexis now, but I still wasn’t sure what I was going to ask her. I made my way over to the park. I decided to take the calm and steady approach towards the conversation. When I got there at 3:58, she still wasn’t there. I sat on a bench for at least ten minutes until she came.

            “Alexis, I know this might be hard to talk about…but I’m trying to figure out what happened to Ricky,” I said in the most cautious way possible.

            “I don’t think I can help you, but what do you want to know?” she said in a more confident way than before.

            “I want to know what he was doing that night.”

            “You know, you’re a great person for doing this. Most people would just give up.”

            “I’m smarter than most people,” I said back in the same sort of confidence she was talking to me in. “Right now I just need to know what he was doing that night.”

            “We saw a movie earlier that night. But he went home after that.”

            “What time did the movie end?” I said. I didn’t want to have this conversation end with no useful information.

            “I don’t know, around 10:30 probably. He walked home” she said as she looked down at the table. The confidence seemed to have faded out of her voice. Now she seemed down and weak by hiding a bit of her face when she looked at the ground.

            I decided to also take down my aggressive determined mood. “Do you think he had problems or beef with anyone?”

            She then responded saying, “You knew him just as well as I did. He got along with everyone.”
            I knew I wasn’t going to get anything more out of this conversation. I thanked her for her help. I didn’t want to think that I was never going to move forward with this. Just as I thought I was never going to get a break, I saw Keith walking across the other side of the park himself.

            “Ay Keith! You got a minute?”

            He turned around with a doubtful look on his face. He looked around trying to figure out who was the person that called his name. His eyes met mine.

            “Nah, man, I’m in a hurry. I’ll see you tomorrow during school.”

            He turned back around and continued to walk the way he was going. I hurried to catch up with him. I was not going to leave and get nothing accomplished after talking to two people. I grabbed him from behind and pinned him against the nearest tree.

            “I’m going to talk to you now! What ever you have to do can wait! Now was Ricky at practice Saturday night?”

            “Ay, man, I don’t wanna talk about this.”

            Every time he neglected my question it only made me more impatient. A surge was starting to flow through my blood in every vessel of my body.

            “Answer my fucking question! Was he there or not?”

            “Yeah he was there! Can I go now…you’re such an asshole, shit! What are you trying to do, be Sherlock Holmes or some shit? You’re not gonna get anywhere with this. If the police can’t solve this shit, what makes you think you can?!”

            I started to relax just a bit. The tension on my shoulders and grip on him eased off a bit.

            “I’m just trying to find out what happened to Ricky, alright?”

            “Why? As far as I’m concerned, the track team is better without him. You’re over here trying to so some honorable shit for someone who probably doesn’t deserve this shit. He wasn’t dedicated to what he claimed! The team! Instead he would spend more time with a girlfriend that didn’t even like him. Always pending his time with worthless shit! We tried to tell him that if he put more effort into being with us, he could’ve gone far with track. Instead the cocky side of him got the best of him and caused him to ignore us. I’m sick of this shit. So don’t fucking come up to me again!”
            I lost it. My mind was inches from exploding. The weight on my shouldered pressed down against the grip I had on him. My anger was raging. How could he even disrespect Rick just after what happened? I was not going to let him walk away with nothing after what he just said. I punched him straight in the face with every burst of strength that I could find in my right arm, watched him hit the ground and I turned my back on him.

            Maybe it was due to my anger that I was thinking Keith was the one who killed Ricky. But it was the only lead I had. The way he acted and the things he said led me to suspect that he was involved in this somehow. I decided to go to his house. There was the possibility that I could find something significant there. I started to walk there. When I finally arrived at the house, I went around the back of the house. I wanted to make my visit unseen. The house seemed to be deserted. I checked the back door. It was left unlocked so I walked right in and searched for Keith’s room. I walked into a pale green room, messy with dirty food plated everywhere. I ignored the mess and began looking. I had no idea what to expect would happen in this room. I checked his computer. He still had an AIM conversation open from the previous night.

            He had a conversation with someone whose screen-name I did not recognize.

            The first Instant Message read, “HardClapson23: I know wat u saw that night. If u don’t want shit to happen to u, keep ur fucking mouth shut.”

            “ArticJumper11: Whos dis?”
            “HardClapson23: Doesn’t matter; keep what u saw to yourself or something will happen to u.”
            “ArticJumper11: wait, i really dnt know wat ur talking about. Saw wat?”

            “HardClapson23 has signed off”

            Before I could raise new questions, footsteps interrupted my thoughts. Two people had just entered the house. They seemed to have got caught up with the television downstairs. I took that chance to sneak back out through the back door. As I was making my way to the back door, with the doorknob in sight, one of them began to speak.

            “So you think anyone is going to say something about what happened to Ricky?”

            My legs instantly had shut off. I froze straight in my tracks with the door just a couple feet away. I stood stiller than cat that was starring at me from outside the window. It was Steve Jordan. He was nothing but a punk ass wanna-be-bad-ass. He could be seen hanging out with the other dirty people at school. The second person spoke.

            “I don’t know I could care less.” This person had a deeper voice. I had no idea who it was.

            “Shit, okay, I was just asking.”

            “You know what everyone else said. They made sure no one was gonna say anything. And it’s impossible for someone to even find this out because only one person kinda saw what happened. But that is soon being taken care of.”

            That was the end of their conversation. They stopped talking; I waited a few more seconds to see if their conversation was going to start up again. The only words left were the ones coming from the television. I quickly stepped outside and ran back onto the street before I could be seen. I started walking down the street in rather quick pace. My phone rang, “private number”.

            “Hello?”

            “Blake, I need to talk to you, meet me by the tracks at eight tonight.”

            “What? Wait, who…”
            He hung up. The voice sounded familiar, I could tell the person was trying to change their voice in case I recognized it.

            I spent the rest of the evening in a café. Questions were racing through my mind. Who just called me? What information could he have? Who was the other person in Keith’s house and what did they mean by they will take care of no one saying anything?

            There was half an hour left till eight. I got up from my seat, finished the last sip of my coffee, and went to the nearest bus stop that went to the train tracks.

            I arrived at the tracks at 7:56. I waited. It was 8:15 and I saw no one, no phone calls, no cars, no sound. It was quiet. 8:30. I started walking down the tracks out towards the end of the city. I thought anyone who would try to keep stealth would as far away from the city as possible. After a few minutes of walking I noticed something was lying across the tracks. It was dark and hard to make out the outline of the object. The closer I got to it the more it resembled a human body. It was.

            I sprinted the last hundred feet between me and the body.

            “Fuck.”
            It was Keith; with a gunshot in the chest. I reached for my phone, no reception. I couldn’t just leave him there. It didn’t seem like he was dragged. He must have been shot right here. But I didn’t hear any gunshots in the past forty-five minutes. I quickly started to check his pockets; I went through his recent calls. Alexis. That was the last person who called him.

            Police aren’t worth shit. The only thing they could say about Keith’s murder was that the same bullets where found in Keith as Ricky’s. I could not rely on them anymore. They still had no lead; therefore they weren’t taken any serious actions into solving all of this. I had to talk to Alexis. She was the last person who contacted him.

            I saw her at lunch talking to a couple of guys over by the soda vending machine.

            “Alexis!”

            The look on her face switched from joyful to confuse and concentrated when she saw me.

            “Blake, what’s up?”

            I grabbed her by the arm “Come with me right now.” I pulled her with me and began to walk away from the group of people.

            A different arm grabbed my shoulder and spun me back around.

            “And just who are you to come here and just disrespect her like this?”

            That was the other voice in Keith’s house. There was no way I could mistake it.

            “This doesn’t involve you. Just mind your own business.”

            “You don’t know who you’re messing with right now” he said with a hard tug on my shoulder which caused me to free Alexis.

            “Blake. Why don’t we just talk later?”

            I didn’t say another word. I took her advice and left school.

            I needed to talk to Alexis as soon as possible. I sent her a text telling her to meet me at Ricky’s House in an hour. It was still the early afternoon. I walked as slowly as I could to Ricky’s house to burn up the hour. The closer I got to his house, the colder my blood felt. I knew I had to go. I already told Alexis to meet me there, and even though she didn’t text back I knew she’d show up

            I was now on his block. For a few minutes my feet seemed to be nailed to the ground. I wanted to get closer but my body wouldn’t respond. I though about the bitch that killed Ricky and how he could be anywhere just laughing away his sin. I moved in closer. Then there I was, looking at his front door. Seems like months since I last set foot in his house. I walked right to the front door, unlocked. The doorknob was cold; it gave me the idea that no one was supposed to turn it. I walked right in calmly.

            “Mrs. Skola?” I said, and then paused for a few seconds waiting for a response. After several moments, I concluded that no one was home. I looked at the stairway that led to both Ricky’s room and the bathroom in which he was killed. I hesitated at first, took a couple of deep profound breathes and slowly walked up the stairs. The second I looked at his door, everything around me became blurry and all I could see was the door. I closed my eyes and looked away. I turned down the hall and started walking towards the bathroom. When I put my hand on the doorknob it was twice as cold as the front door knob. My hand started shaking gently. I started inhaling harder, and with a burst of anger I swung the door open and let it slam against the wall.

            It felt like an icebox. I only got three feet in the bathroom when I heard a car pull up in the driveway. I made my way over to the window, it was Alexis’ car. I moved away from the window immediately and looked back into the bathroom. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of person would come this far and want to do something like this.

I heard the door slam.

            “I’m up here!” I yelled out the door.
            She better have a good enough explanation to why she was talking to Keith, and why he was killed shortly after their talk. How else would anyone know where he was at that time? The only people that knew were me Keith and Alexis if Keith told her where he was. There had to be someone close who was spilling this information. I had my back to the door when I heard footsteps stop at the entrance to the bathroom. I turned around slowly.

            Now I was looking down the dark narrow tunnel-like barrel of a gun. The guy who was with Alexis earlier and who was at Keith’s house the day I snuck in, was now standing before me. The gun was cocked back ready to let the silver steel bullet be released at any second.

            “You are getting too close to all of this. If only you just kept you nose out of this shit. I’m not gonna have some little punk turn me in” he said while tightening the grip around the gun.

            No words came out of my mouth. Last thing I saw was the small grin that formed across his face. And without any warning, there was a bang, then pitch black darkness swallowed my body.