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“Did Phil seem…despondent at all during the whole session?”
“No. He was cheerful, even when his friend got mad at him. He was laughing, wasn’t taking anything seriously. Not until Everest grabbed that other girl and forced her to sit on his lap. Then Phil got angry. Oh, I think Phil said something about the girl being his sister? I might have been mistaken about that. It was noisy in here. That’s all I know.”
“Okay, thanks,” Nicole said. “Is there anyone else we can talk to about the case?”
“Just his friends. They would know more about what went on than I would. It was a busy night, and except for the fight, I hadn’t really been watching them.”
“All right, thanks,” Nate said.
Then they left and decided to see Gerald, the friend who was so nervous about Phil going missing, and drove over to his apartment.
They soon arrived at Gerald’s apartment complex, parked, and headed for the door. At Nate’s knock, Gerald opened the door. As soon as Nate told him that Phil’s parents had hired the private investigators to search for the truth behind Phil’s disappearance, Gerald nearly closed the door in their faces.
“You know what happened,” Nate said, smelling the fear wafting from the man.
Gerald ran his hands over his long, red hair pulled back into a ponytail. His mustache was a little lighter red than his hair, and he had a full redbeard. His green eyes shifted from Nate to Nicole and down to the patio. “He… He, uh, just needed to get away. He has to sometimes. We all know it. His parents know it. And the police say there’s not a reason that raises any red flags concerning his, uh, disappearance.”
“But you know where he is, don’t you?” Nate bet Gerald knew more than he was letting on.
Gerald looked like he desperately wanted to close the door in their faces again, as though he knew Nate and Nicole were a couple of alpha wolves and he couldn’t get anything past them.
“We know about the fight at the bar,” Nicole said.
That was a great way of telling Gerald he didn’t have to squeal on his friends about it because they already knew.
“And we know Everest does whatever he wants to,” Nicole said. “And gets away with it.”
“Exactly, so I have nothing to say.” Yet Gerald still didn’t shut the door.
“If you didn’t have anything to do with Phil’s disappearance, there’s no reason for you not to tell us the truth,” Nicole said.
“I–I could be an accessory, couldn’t I?”
Okay, so that didn’t sound good—like Geraldwasinvolved in Phil’s disappearance. Which meant Phil most likely wasn’t just taking a break from everyone. Who else was involved? His other friends?
“If you were a witness to a crime but are willingto tell the truth now, you have a much better chance at getting immunity from prosecution.” That was if Gerald had nothing to do with actually killing Phil.
“Everest’s dad’s a prosecutor, and he’s got a lot of powerful friends, and some are on the police force.”
“Can we go inside and talk to you?” Nicole asked, rubbing her back. Nate assumed it was bothering her.
“Uh. Yeah, sure.” Gerald let them inside and locked the door behind them.
“Tell us what you know,” Nate said as Gerald ushered them into his messy bachelor pad: empty beer cans on tables, the odor of pot lingering in the air, a computer on a desk nearby, the monitor showing a game paused, and a flat-screen TV on one wall that was on too, featuring a werewolf movie.
Nate had no clue what the name of it was. He never watched werewolf shows. They were just too unreal for him.
He and Nicole sat down together on the saggy brown sofa while Gerald sat down on an equally saggy blue recliner. A man began howling in pain as he tore off his clothes and turned into a hideous werewolf on the screen.
Gerald grabbed the TV controller and paused the movie. “Great movie, by the way. If you haven’t seen it, you ought to. Okay, so we all went to the Red Dog Pub the night Phil went missing. Everest’s girlfriend, Sarah, was mad at him, so she sat onPhil’s lap and was kissing him. Everest slugged Phil over it, but then when Phil just laughed, Everest headed over to where Phil’s sister, Vicki, was watching, grabbed her arm, and forced her to sit onhislap. Sarah was incensed Everest would do that. Not because she cared anything about Vicki, but Sarah felt Everest had slighted her all night. And she felt it was all Phil’s fault for pulling her onto his lap in the first place and riling Everest up. But the thing of it was, she’d encouraged Phil to do it. She was jealous because Everest was talking to some other girl at the pub, so Sarah wanted to get Everest’s attention. She got it all right.”
“You all left together, right?” Nicole asked.
“We were in two separate vehicles. Phil, Randy, and Ann were in one car, and I was with Sarah and Everest in the other. Everest was fuming that Sarah sat on Phil’s lap, and she was griping at him about the cute black-haired girl he’d been talking it up with at the bar earlier. Anyway, Randy dropped Phil off at his farm, and that was it.”
“As far as what you’ve told us,” Nate said. “What really happened?”
Gerald shifted in his chair. “Everest wouldn’t let it go. He accused Sarah of sneaking around his back to be with Phil, and she said she wasn’t. Though it did make me wonder. Then Everest said, ‘You wouldn’t care if he committed suicide tonight, would you?’ Well, if it could get her out of hot waterwith Everest, she would go along with about anything.” Gerald didn’t say anything after that.
